Aftermath:Disasters Happen. Artists React.

Exhibition Dates: September 3-October 12
Reception: September 11, 6-8pm

Special Guest Speakers: 7pm Shanti Norris, from Smith Farm Center for the Arts and Healing
and President for Gifts in Kind, Richard Wong
Candlelight Vigil: 8:30pm

Disasters Happen and Artists React: Target Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Aftermath takes a hard look at artists’ interpretations and reactions to natural and manmade disasters.

Target Gallery’s exhibition opens to the public on September 3 with a special reception on September 11 from 6-8pm and a candlelight vigil beginning at 8:30pm. Aftermath includes a wide range of artists and their work that represent a great cross section of our country to include a few local and international artists as well. They speak through their art about the effects that traumatic events from natural and manmade disasters has had on them personally and on their work. As our juror, Laurel Reuter, Founder and Chief Curator of the North Dakota Museum of Art states, “Today’s artists are not asked to record the definitive history of their times but instead to give their contemporary audiences the means to understand their own times. Ours is not a contemplative society; artists often are. For some artists, like some writers, assume the role of moral compass.”
Ms. Reuter had over 500 entries to sort through, many of which were powerful and outstanding works, out of those entries close to 40 works made the cut. The media spans traditional painting and printmaking to more new media such as video and site specific installations. The work responds to all kinds of disaster whether literally through a photograph or a video or in a conceptual and abstract way by the means of painting or by thousands of tiny bandages wrapping a gallery wall.
The work seeks to create and stir a dialogue with the viewer; some of the work will strike at the innermost chords of our being exposing the vulnerability that exists. It exposes our weaknesses and our imperfect nature. No matter how prepared or powerful we may feel, a disaster has a profound way of bringing us back to earth and to the realization that anything can happen and that our time here is very precious and fleeting. The exhibition also provides a glimpse of the power of art and its unique way of helping people and communities heal, come together and attempt to understand the chaotic nature that exists when disaster strikes.