LMAKprojects is pleased to present Every Sad Song Will Have a Brighter Day a solo exhibit by Gerald Petit. This will be Petit’s second show with the gallery, as he will continue to relay his fascination with music and its surrounding visual elements. The exhibit features photographs, prints and a sculpture with imprinted imagery.
The exhibit’s main focus is the sculpture titled Osmosis Part 2, it addresses the taboos that were and still are broken by music and its culture. The work is filled with sexual references and derives its influence from 70’s Funk and Soul. Albums by Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life or Innervision, any cover of the Parlamant/Funkadelic albums and even Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew come to mind. However the work also references painting archetypes, from Hokusai to David Hockney’s of this time.
Petit continues to explore the emotional responses that are evoked by music, and does so through the imagery of LP album covers. Petit feels that listening to an LP pulls the listener into the emotional realm of music, as there is a certain ritual that occurs as you listen to an LP. The ritual creates awareness for the participant and the cover and its imagery are a huge part of this experience. Some of the images exhibited are a play on cover art as they capture the relation between evocation and the literal. Petit visualizes the music, and conveys its emotions through his subject matter, he feels that through music the body becomes fixed into a sort of ecstatic trance of which ever state of mind it tries to emulate. In the series Crying over you, who’s shear production closely resembles the physicality of a vinyl record, is inspired by shots from Elvis fans in the 60’s, and is a perfect example of Petit’s fascination with emotion, but also conveys the irony and shallowness of obsession.
Also in the exhibit Petit presents a new work Fairy Queen, a color photograph as part of his ongoing series of his mother as muse, which started in 2001. The portrait relays the ecstatic state produced upon hearing a lecture, which is drawn from Fairy Queen by Olivier Cadiot, in which a fairy is visiting Gertrude Stein and they cross time and space through an enigmatic and metaphoric series of situations. The image offers the viewer a similar emotional experience other than through music.
Petit’s work is sincere in its depictions, ironic in its observations, and genuine in its attempt to create an efficient, positive and powerful image. Bob Dylan seems to capture it best: I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.
After his residency at ISCP (NY) in 2004, Gerald Petit had his first solo-exhibit with LMAKprojects titled Facing the present that night at Otter Lake in 2005. He has since exhibited throughout Europe and Japan and featured at such institutes as Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Museu da Presidência da República, Portugal, Musée Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône and the Biennale of Lyon in 2009.
Every Sad Song Will Have a Brighter Day will be on view from Saturday September 12th until October 18th, 2009. Our gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11-6 and Sunday 12-6, if you need additional materials or have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at louky@lmakprojects, bart@lmakprojects or 212 255 9707
