Opens: Friday, April 1, 7–9 PM

Location: 487 Driggs Ave, between N. 9 and N. 10

Dates: April 2–May 1, 2005

Gallery Hours: Thurs-Mon, 12–6pm

Contact: Don@JackthePelicanPresents.com, 646-644-6756


Jack the Pelican is pleased to present "Culture Vulture," a group show guest-curated by David Gibson.

In 1967, Carl Andre said, "Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us." "Culture Vulture" show explores notion that art and culture are not the same thing.

"Culture Vulture" originated in diverse sources: a sixties article in MAD Magazine on the rent-a-beatnik craze; tourists at Hopi villages, buying up all the cheap roadside jewelry like it were the last on earth and gawking at rain dances; revelers at night clubs; late night internet junkies downloading Paris Hilton. The search for culture, or its most immediate facsimile, is a search for identity. Culture is an imposition, or even a virus, that infects us with the need to fill in the blanks.

A variety of expressions assail the viewer in "Culture Vulture:" Sandra Bermudez creates floral arrangements that upon closer inspection arrange themselves into psychedelic constellations of beautiful Vegas showgirls, all with the artist’s own appearance; Marcy Brafman takes the primary image of a 19th-century silhouette as the inspiration for her gestural painting; Katherine Daniels weaves beaded sculptures that take on the decorative structure of Appalachian blankets, a geographic sourcebook from her own family’s history that is alien to her through the veil of decades; Susan Hamburger makes sectional paintings that depict the subtle details of the domestic sphere, providing the viewer with an elliptical view of simple objects and their esthetic appreciation, while filling in the details of each object with images of her own experience and imagining; Karen Heagle reaches back into the distant past of her childhood to depict a hero and idol of her dreams, the letter-turner from "The Price Is Right," circa 1977.