Museum Exhibition - Idios Kosmos : Koinos Kosmos

[Comics4SMoCA]

 

on view at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

May 21 through October 2, 2011

 

Opening Public Reception: June 24, 2011, 6:30 to 9:00 pm

 

The tandem exhibitions Us Versus Them, Masters of Collective Reality conceived by Phoenix-based artist Jon Haddock look beyond the comics of superheroes and villains, to a handful of comic artists who utilize the frame of a comic as a platform to explore the struggle of the isolated, individual’s experience and our collective reality.

 

For Masters of Collective Reality Haddock has selected comic artists Matthew Allison, Fred Guardineer, Rory Hayes, Jennifer Diane Reitz, Joe Sacco, R. Sikoryak, John Stanley, Basil Wolverton and Jim Woodring, whose idiosyncrasies and technical virtuosity he has long admired. Each employs the comic as a means of grappling with life’s inequities—personal, cultural and political.

 

Haddock’s installation Us Versus Them explores the divergence of the comic reader’s personal world from the shared fantasy world of comics. Haddock excavates the isolating, and often fetishistic, experience of comic fandom. One series of sculptures by Haddock consists of statuesque portraits of the iconoclastic male comic reader, including celebrated individuals such as Science Fiction writer Philip K. and Haddock’s own self-portrait. These works recognize the commonalities of comic fans, struggling to exercise agency in the face of an alienating world. As well, Haddock, internationally renowned for his politically provocative work, employs the comic book format as a vehicle for addressing the intimate personal questions that concern him. He will also create new work in comics for the exhibition.

 

"In many species of life forms, such as the grazing animals, a newborn individual is more or less thrust out into the koinos kosmos (the shared world) immediately. For a lamb or a pony, the idios kosmos (the personal world) ceases when the first light hits his eyes--but a human child, at birth, still has years of a kind of semireal existence ahead of him..." - Philip K. D ick

 

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

7380 East 2nd Street | Scottsdale, AZ 85251 | www.smoca.org | 480.874.4666