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Yuri Arajs: Reclaimed Memory
OPENING: Friday June 20th @ 7-11 pm 2008
EXHIBIT
RUNS: June 20th - July 27h, 2008
The Rogue Buddha Gallery is excited to present the solo work of Yuri Arajs. This exhibit marks his last solo show in Minneapolis before taking leave for Canada, his native country.
This exhibit features a new series of found photograph/found mixed media works.
Many may know Yuri Arajs for his work in the Minneapolis art community via his gallery Outsiders and Others along with numerous independently curated exhibits centered around outsider artists and artists with disabilities.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I’ve been collecting old photographs for many years. I have found them at estate sales, garage sales and in the trash. It amazes me that people dispose of things like this. We record our and others histories only to have them discarded. Why?
Each one of the pieces in the Reclaimed Memory Series is unique in that it was created without anything else in mind but the photograph. The photo had a story to tell me, I listened to it and what came back was my own version of a memory that is not mine. But I have now reclaimed these memories as my own and this is what they look like.
The use of found materials, beyond the photographs, also plays an important role in these works. Found materials have a history and an aesthetic that I don’t feel I can reproduce or create. The paper, the marks I make, the objects introduced, and finally the found frame, all add additional information to the narrative of each piece.
Forward by Robyne Robinson:
Can a discarded life become a subconscious memory? The visual images Yuri Arajs has created in this latest body of work are proof of that link. Each piece is a time capsule of places, cultural identity and psychological perspectives -- imprints that span a multitude of consciousness.
"Reclaimed Memories" is an evolution in Arajs' work away from the solitary, insular landscapes that reject cathartic emotion and leaping straighforward into those feelings and experiences that are intensely powerful to us. They are reconstituted memories we long to hold onto, as we move into the twilight of our lives -- an exploration of our shared human existence.
Online exhibit at: reclaimed-memories.blogspot.com
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