New Show at Manresa Gallery - The Icon & the Iconic

Dear Friends of NOMA GALLERY,

We would like to invite you on behalf of Manresa Gallery  to the opening of “The Icon and the Iconic”  this coming Thursday, April 2^nd. Manresa Gallery has an amazing space inside of St. Ignatius church in San Francisco. (http://www.stignatiussf.org/).

We are very excited that works by Michail Petkov who NOMA GALLERY represents were selected to be part of this extraordinary exhibit. You will be able to see nine of his contemporary mezzotint prints displayed next to traditional icons from around the world and together with works by another ten artists. The official announcement and the details about the exhibit are included below.  

You could find more information about Michail Petkov at: http://www.nomagallerysf.com/artists/MichailPetkov/index.html

We hope to have the chance to see you at the opening!

Best regards!

NOMA GALLERY

www.nomagallerysf.com

The Icon & the Iconic
April 2 – June 7, 2009

The Manresa Gallery
St. Ignatius Church
Fulton at Parker Avenues
San Francisco, CA

Curated by: James Blaettler, S.J., with Lynn Marie Kirby

Work By: Tommy Becker, Serena Cole, David Gurman, Shari Lamanet La Londe, Sergy Michev, Robert Lentz, Dimosthenis Papadopoulos, Michail Petkov, Dmitry Shkolnik, Andy Warhol, Konstantin Zlatev

Opening Reception Events*
5:30 – 6:15 pm   Lecture: Hieromonk Juvenal Herrin, “The Use of the Icon in Devotion”

6:30 – 7:00 pm   Concert: Fr. Stephen Meholick, Blagovest Bell Pealing and St. John of San Francisco Men’s Chorale

7:00 – 9:00 pm   Gallery Reception
                           *all events are inside of the St. Ignatius Church

Related Events
10:50 – 11:40 am Sunday April 5th 2009
Dmitry Shkolnik, “A Contemporary Look at Traditional Icons”, Xavier Hall, Fromm Building (north of church)

5:30 – 7:00 pm Thursday April 23rd 2009
Artists Discuss the Iconic, Manresa Gallery


            For many the word icon first and foremost recalls the computer world: the imaged button to click for immediate results, after quick and satisfying visual recognition.  For others it recalls the starlit realm the public envies or targets in modern film, fashion and politics like the Andy Warhol Marilyn or his series of electric chairs.  But for those reared in the eastern Christian religious tradition, the icon represents the venerable image originally made by God, through whose faithful veneration creative humans strive to become divine (Gen. 1:26).  In effect, the icon represents the risky paradox of making the invisible visible.

            This exhibition explores the religious icon with its traditional techniques, media and subjects through examples from Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Ethiopia and other sites.  It addresses the disturbing political destruction of some such images (Petkov) and the re-thinking of others by the eye fixed on the modern gaze (Cole and Warhol).  And it shows how the re-assembly of fragmented symbols, in part iconic, recalls the dissolution of the strict boundaries between the icon as a presumably static frontal confrontation and a moving, subjective performance (La Londe and Becker).  Even the more distant ethnic variations echo the traditional icon –Western religious subjects created in China (Ricci) and the purity of a Russian icon bell connected to the Internet (Gurman).  All draw upon the aura, energy and power of the icon to network across time and space and present the mysteries of life and death, which are simultaneously harrowing and comforting, hopefully divine and always human.  Both the icon and its iconic variations search for windows to the beyond of sometimes distant shores, for mirrors of the celestial or for the evasive mystical and helpful screens which keep at bay or somehow control the overwhelming possibility of directly seeing heaven – most especially God – and thereby dying (Gen. 32:30).  Whatever the origin – whether religiously specific or not – the artistic memory searches, sometimes compulsively to bring heaven down to earth in manageable bites, to coach cautiously a desert of temptation back home, to at least the possibility of a temporary inner peace.

James Blaettler, Director

HOURS: Sunday 2-5 pm and by appointment: (415) 422-6639
DIRECTIONS: Please visit us at manresagallery.org
PARKING: Street parking can be difficult; paid parking available at St. Mary Hospital Garage (on Shrader between Fulton and Grove)

For further information please call (415) 422-2188
Manresa Gallery is located inside St. Ignatius Church, 650 Parker Avenue (at Fulton), San Francisco, CA 94118