CAROL WAX, "DANCE OF SHADOWS" - The Best from Greece

Posted on: 22/May/2011 From Saturday, March 5th to Sunday, June 19th the Herakleidon Museum will present the exhibition Carol Wax, “Dance of Shadows”. The exhibition will include 100 works on paper of the contemporary New York artist Carol Wax. The majority of these works are mezzotints, however a number of pencil and mixed media drawings will also be shown.

The antique sewing machines, typewriters, electric fans, toys, instruments, cameras, projectors, textiles and other items she collects inspire Carol’s images. Living with these objects in her home and studio means she is constantly studying them from different angles and finding new and diverse ways to revisit subjects: To me, ordinary objects seem extraordinary. Artifacts of early industrial manufacturing, discarded shards of recent technology, and kitsch of any era reveal a great deal about our materialistic culture and changing attitudes toward the “stuff” in our lives. Common objects are laden with magic and symbolic associations that reflect and affect the psyche. (…) My interest in kitschy items has recently been heightened by things I find in the street. Whenever I come across these items, (dollar store chatchkes, gag gifts, broken children’s toys, etc.) I question how they came into being and the effort that went into making them. How many sketches, meetings, prototypes, office memos, man-hours, plastic, and energy went into their manufacture? Who would buy these items, how were they used, and did anyone care when they were discarded? Even finding a single child’s sock on the ground makes me think of the effort that went into its manufacture, thoughts the mother had while buying it, and the sadness that must have been felt upon discovering its loss. It’s not just a lost sock, it’s a mini-opera of human pathos. Each item and the manner of its discovery seem to shout, “Pay attention -- something happened!”

~Carol Wax

The Herakleidon Museum is privileged to have among its permanent collections the entire body of works of Carol Wax’s printmaking career. In addition, the museum owns several of her pencil drawings and an original copper plate, a generous gift from the artist. The founders of the museum, Paul and Belinda Firos, avid collectors of her work, recognize Carol Wax’s place among the great artists of the emerging twenty first century. She is the foremost authority on mezzotint and has written a book on the subject, The Mezzotint: History and Technique, first published by Harry N. Abrams in 1990.

The Herakleidon Museum has published a catalogue raisonn

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