“His factory complexes look both fastidious and funky; his Manhattan skyscrapers are wrapped in a puff of cigarette-smoke smog. But any incipient sweetness is cut by unexpected touches.”
The New York Times
there is no here; it has been erased, trodden over by the down trodden, their feet carrying them ever further, to great, more beguiling promises, 2001
On exhibition for the first time will be photographic works from DeSouza’s new series, Cityscapes. The series was in development during the artist’s residency at Art in General in New York in 2008. The exhibit also features works from the Terrain series and is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Allan DeSouza has created peacefully disturbing landscapes that beckon us with an uncommitted familiarity only to reveal the unexpected with closer examination. The works spur an initial nostalgia that dissolves rapidly on discover of our misplaced authentication, the questioning of our belonging to them, and our basis for identification.
it was one of those moments-whether or not they actually did happen, he would never know for sure-that assumed gargantuan proportions, becoming thresholds, epiphanies against which he measures his life, 2001 (Detail)
The photographs feature models that were created by the artist from the detritus of the body and the city. With sweat, floss, hair, earwax, electronic components, and discarded wood from the streets, DeSouza has created his “lands.” The result is sweeping barren desert dunes with warm earth tones, yet seemingly cold and deserted unearthly. The lands appear so familiar yet fictitious; cityscapes and sprawls, street grids, rows of skyscrapers. According to DeSouza, the photographs of his “fabricated tabletop landscape” models evoke strategies of fiction, masquerade and elusiveness in order to refute readings of authenticity. As the viewer discovers their misplaced perceptions, especially in regards to the cityscape works, they will come to understand how art today reveals that fiction is much closer to fact.
there comes a point when he has to let go, a point when he recognizes that he can be and is more than the sum of his past, 2001
Allan deSouza was born in Kenya of Indian parents and raised in England. He was educated at the Bath Academy of Art in England and at Goldsmiths College in London. In 1992 he moved to the United States and continued his education in Critical studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, then received his Masters of Fine Arts from UCLA (1997). deSouza’s work have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions frequently across the US and England, as well as in Canada, Germany, Portugal and the Philippines. In New York his works were included in Out of India at the Queens Museum in 1997; Transforming the Crown at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1997. deSouza’s works have also been exhibited at Pompidou Centre, Paris; International Center of Photography, NY; Museum Kunst Palast, Germany; Museum for African Art, NY; Smithsonian Museum, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gwangju Biennale, Korea and 3rd Guangzhou Triennale, China; and in recent solo exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF; Fowler Museum, LA; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL.Allan deSouza lives and works in the Bay Area, California, where he is a Professor in the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.
Exhibition View
Exhibition View
Exhibition View
he gazed into the liquid darkness in which desires drowned, from where the body's delicious pains emerged, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
19 1/2" x 39"
A blurring of the world, a refocusing seconds, minutes, hours, days, maybe years later, with everything put together differently, in ways he doesn't understand, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
21" x 47"
it was one of those moments-whether or not they actually did happen, he would never know for sure-that assumed gargantuan proportions, becoming thresholds, epiphanies against which he measures his life, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
14" x 47"
he had a vague sense of an elusive meaning, a light in the distance, a glimmer on the horizon, something he wanted to say if only he had the language for it, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2" x 46 1/2"
if there is truth, where does it lie and who will take us there, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2" x 46 1/2"
there is no here; it has been erased, trodden over by the down trodden, their feet carrying them ever further, to great, more beguiling promises, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2" x 46 1/2"
how to tell a story before it is spoken, before it descends from the convolutions of the mind onto the slippery slopes of the tongue, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2" x 47"
it didn't hurt, nothing hurt, and he let himself float into the strangeness of the sensation, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2″ x 39″
there comes a point when he has to let go, a point when he recognizes that he can be and is more than the sum of his past, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
20" x 15 3/4"
his eyes had seen enough and in protest had begun to cloud, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
20″ x 15 3/4″
not a return to ease or comfort, but to an equanimity so discomfited, so conflicted, so fought over, so fought over, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
20" x 15 3/4"
the camera turned against him, 2001
C Print on Aluminum
23 1/2" x 47"
