Winston Smith and Grant’s Tomb presents:
Insect Music
Surrealism, Alchemy and the ImagePenelope Rosemont • Dennis Cunningham • Winston Smith
The greatest effects are often produced by the smallest causes. —Lautréamont
This small show may be one of the most important collage shows ever, it demonstrates the marvels that can be created with the materials at hand, those objects and images manufactured and quickly rejected by the society of the spectacle in its never ending cycle. Sometimes these images have been part of the repressive infrastructure…religion, advertizing. Collage restores their sense of wonder, their true connection with the marvelous. By creating a new balance, we refresh our own minds. Not only can we liberate these images and objects, we can imagine, and even create, liberated futures.
Insect Music
Surrealism, Alchemy and the Image
Penelope Rosemont • Dennis Cunningham • Winston Smith
Friday, July 27 • 6pm — 9pm
at Grant’s Tomb,
North Beach, San Francisco, CAAs part of North Beach First Fridays.
Artists will be in attendance.
Food • Beverage • Art
Free Admission
About the Artists
Penelope Rosemont, Dennis Cunningham and Winston Smith embody the creative energy of collage each in their own unique way — a difference that demonstrates the incredible power of collage.
Penelope Rosemont is a long-time surrealist, whose recent book is Dreams & Every-day Life. She met André Breton and the surrealist group in Paris in the 1960’s, and is showing collages she calls “insect music.” These are a light-hearted adventure, provoking thoughts on “sizeism.” That is relative scale and the different worlds that exist all around us. A pluriverse, characters that seldom have a chance to meet or interact except in collage. A newt and Marilyn Monroe, a preying-mantis and African masks.
Dennis Cunningham, more famous for his work as defender of Black Panthers, Judi Bari, and prisoners has long made assemblages of found objects. Cunningham’s creatures are not intellectual abstractions, cold and remote, as much of sculpture is; his creatures are personal, humorous, beautiful. Like life they have plenty of rough edges, like living beings they long for each others’ company. To be with them is to be possessed by good demons…eudaimonia. Their presence projects and brings good fortune.
Winston Smith is considered by some as one of the more influential modern-day collagists. His works embody, without effort, warm humor and black humor, détournement and fantasy. His collages of the happy people of the 1950’s combine with images and titles that shock one’s sensibility.
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