Maniac Friday, June 26th

Novus Taedium Seclorum/

(new world boredom)

New Painting by James Bradley and Erin Allen


Opening Night Friday June 26th, 2009 8 pm-11 pm


Exhibition Runs 06.26.09 - 07.31.09


MANIAC

387 17th Street

Oakland, CA 94612


MANIAC presents a collaborative program produced by Bay Area based artists James Bradley and Erin Allen, Novus Taedium Seclorum: New Painting by James Bradley and Erin Allen opening Friday, June 26th. Allen and Bradley actualize a visual re-consolidation of our current social landscape considering the new wave of 'progressionary politics' in the Western World, specifically the United States. Severing over- contextualizing, Allen and Bradley present new painting delivering a surveyed reaction of their world right now while deciding what sphere they belong to as part and parcel of what is described as Generation XYZ: namely the generation of over-cynical, culturally sensitized, commercialists coming of age in the New World, 2009.


In revision is the idea of painting and creating new art for a world that is seemingly more separatist than collective, more isolated than incorporated whilst all visual messages are forcing the contrary. All of this considered, a reconsidered way of living and seeing is necessary in this new landscape to combat the dead-ends of past generational ideologies and the popular side of social conditioning that seeks reform as a marketing campaign effort. In essence, when nothing is considered important and nothing's shocking, anything and everything can be considered precious.


Artist Statement:

As the world around us continues its seeming spiral into chaos and confusion more and more people, in a last-ditch effort to establish a framework for making sense of the senseless, are speculating as to the existence of hidden forces, shadow governments, and secret societies pulling the strings of our lives on a global scale. Amidst this climate of potentially-justified paranoia, a tiny minority of super-rich men in business suits offer up the supposedly reassuring claim that we are heading into a "New World Order," while the vast majority of us sit back and watch it on T.V., powerless to offer any input that will allow us to guide our own collective fate in any meaningful way. Because of the incremental and multi-generational nature of this process, we find ourselves with plenty of time to sit around and be bored in the interim, and some of us have chosen art-making as the preferred antidote to this New World Boredom.