Melanie Flood Projects is pleased to announce its latest exhibition, a new body of work from Mikael Kennedy’s The Odysseus series entitled “The Wine Dark Sea”.
The title of the series, “The Wine Dark Sea,” refers to the passage in Homer’s epic tale in which Odysseus sits by the shore, captive ... Read more
Melanie Flood Projects is pleased to announce its latest exhibition, a new body of work from Mikael Kennedy’s The Odysseus series entitled “The Wine Dark Sea”.
The title of the series, “The Wine Dark Sea,” refers to the passage in Homer’s epic tale in which Odysseus sits by the shore, captive of the goddess Calypso, yearning to return to home to his family and lands. This is where the journey begins. The images represented in this series are American coastlines photographed between 2006 and 2009. As Kennedy explains, “The American frontier itself, once viewed as the wild west and the new world, is no longer viewed as uncharted territory or undiscovered land”. This collection revisits that perspective as the starting point of a journey, and of a longing to move. In the artist’s experience as a modern day cipher, the Odyssey becomes a journey through the vistas of America, a search for renewed vision of the land that carries both the excitement and isolation of exploration.
The photographs displayed in one of a kind rough wood frames are installed as tableaux in a studio with pieces collected from the artist’s travels. Reflecting Joseph Campbell’s theory of the adventurer bringing something lacking back into the “wasteland” of society as the purpose of the journey, Kennedy’s trinkets and photographs construct and capture a vision of the outer reaches of exploration.
Kennedy recreates on the walls of Melanie Flood Projects the walls of his home, hanging feathers, crystals, tiny stones, little bits of bone, and other relics of nature and of the road that he has gathered; an extension of the images he has gathered in this series.
A live performance by musician and friend Matt Bauer (www.mattbauermusic.com) will coincide with the exhibition opening, pairing haunting Americana folk music with the dark nostalgia of Kennedy’s atmospheric images.
Mikael Kennedy’s “the wine dark sea” opens on Thursday, July 9, 2009, with an opening reception at the gallery from 7–10 pm, and closes on August 8. Please RSVP to mfloodprojects@gmail.com for the reception or to schedule a viewing, as the gallery is open by appointment only.
