Exhibition opens at 7 pm until 10 pm where we will all move to Under Construction Bar for the Rocky Horror Show themed Halloween party...
About the artist:
Darshana Bolt’s art is drawn from apocryphal dreams, lonely
lingerers, absurd stories, myths as memes, and outrage. Many of her visual
images are connected to poems and songs that are born alongside them as aural
twins, as in “Red Dust Lullabye” and “I Don’t Want Your Good Luck”. The latter
pairing of painting and punk song encapsulates a bittersweet encounter with a
Siem Reap street child and explores the overlapping roles of consumer and consumed
in an impoverished society:
A flower girl/ She
was, she came/ The rain in Spain/
Fell far more gently than on her plain/ They’re not Eliza’s violets, Her roses
rot unbought/ And should some rich old linguist/ Bring some rice into her pot
(Nyaam bai!)/ Innocence lies/ Everywhere, by plastic bags and old rags…La
beaute est dans la rue…la beaute est dans la rue...
Chorus: I don’t want
your good luck, she said/ I don’t want your good luck, no!/ I don’t want your
good luck, barang/ Pack up all your luck and go!
Much of her work is an American anarchist’s response to the
enormity of the ills inflicted by worldwide greed and gluttonous materialism,
as in “Dream of the Regime” (another pairing of song and painting.)
She tarnishes the
sublime with tongue-in-cheek titles like “Danae’s Golden Shower” (a portrait of
the Greek god Zeus as, according to legend, he impregnates Danae in a shower of
golden coins.) This and other pieces such as the “Bruises” series deal with the
seductive nature of the sinister on an archetypal level.
All of the artwork, writing, and songs included in the show
were made during the past five months in Cambodia as a visual record of the
artist digesting and being digested by a new universe (literally—her recurring
intestinal parasites alongside the conflicted idea of Western tourists as hedonistic
parasites made for a lot of inspiration!)
The artist has
delved into relief printmaking, engraving, and lithography, as well as
ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, performance art, mixed-media installation,
digital art, fabric art/ clothing design, digital photography, and professional
illustration. Her favorite media remain painting, drawing, sculpture, and
relief printmaking (only some of which she has been willing and able to do in Cambodia).
Please look at these websites for more of her artworks,
writing, and music:
Art and Writing: http://www.thecambodiasketchbooks.wordpress.com
Art and Writing: http://www.darshanart.wordpress.com
Ridiculous Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7Q_IObpgs
