Bernard Banville, USA

"Dualities"
Installation by Bernard Banville

Taber Gallery, Holyoke Community College, Holyoke Massachusetts
March 9th to April 9th, 2009
Reception: Thursday, April 9th, 5:30-7:30 pm
The Exod(e)us(t) Series
Bernard Banville

The installation series Exod(e)us(t), consists of four parts created during a four-year period: Exod(e)us(t), 2006, Mare Vespera, 2007, Trajectories (Flight of Ghosts), 2008. and Dualities, 2009. The series investigates the flux and transformation of fixed and mutable systems—material, cultural and historical—through found object assemblage and mixed media process. As material signifiers, found objects elicit a strong visual and emotional reaction through the residual and reassigned functionality and altered identity of the components' structure and their modification under the effects of time. Exhumed from the archaeological locus of detritus, these reactivated and reconfigured components provide a setting for the evocation of dormant memories and histories lost or overlooked, and stage the possibility for an investigation of the processes of erosion, distortion and transformation that characterize the continuum of memory as an active process, both cultural and subjective. The systems of reference in the Exod(e)us(t) Series draw primarily on political and cultural events rooted in the first half of the twentieth century—specifically the Holocaust and the consequences of World War II and its aftermath.