The Violet Hour
STROUM GALLERY
June 21 – October 12, 2008


AUDIO: Matthew Day Jackson + Sara Krajewski on The Violet Hour (18.1 MB)
Matthew Day Jackson, a University of Washington alumni, debuts three new works, including a sculpture consisting of a crashed race car frame lit with low rider effects and an immense wood panel “painting” depicting the constellations of the night sky, made from the coin currencies of many nations. Jackson’s work explores events in American history and envisions a future of uprisings rectifying past injustices. Sara and Matthew discuss the exhibition’s themes, his work in The Violet Hour, sculpture, history, and performance.

AUDIO: Jen Liu + Sara Krajewski on The Violet Hour (26.4 MB)
Jen Liu’s videos and large scale watercolor drawings feature the “Brethren of the Stone,” a back-to-nature cult that clashes with modern industrial society. Beyond the battle between nature and technology, her work underscores issues of state power and civil disobedience, modernity and nostalgia, and a comical take on science fiction and recent pop culture. Sara and Jen discuss the exhibition’s apocalyptic themes, her work in The Violet Hour, T.S. Eliot, heavy metal music, and death.



David Maljkovic. Lost Pavilion from These Days. 2006.
Photocollage. Courtesy of the artist, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam,
and Metro Pictures, New York.

The violet hour is dusk, a temporal bridge from the clarity of daylight to the obfuscation of night. Borrowing a phrase from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land for its title, this exhibition presents art about a twilight time that may be our immediate future. Artists Matthew Day Jackson, Jen Liu, and David Maljkovic imagine alternative realities that could emerge from the socio-political strife and environmental degradation now accumulating on the global stage. The Violet Hour features video, sculpture and two-dimensional works that address the physical and emotional weariness of our time in an attempt to overcome the cultural amnesia preventing us from learning the lessons of history.

Matthew Day Jackson debuts three new works, including a sculpture consisting of a crashed race car frame lit with low rider effects and an immense wood panel “painting” depicting the constellations of the night sky, made from the coin currencies of many nations. Jackson’s work explores events in American history and envisions a future of uprisings rectifying past injustices.



Jen Liu. The Brethren of the Stone: Comfortably Numb (still). 2006 Single channel video.
Courtesy of the artist and Lizbeth Oliveria Gallery.

Jen Liu’s videos and large scale watercolor drawings feature the “Brethren of the Stone,” a back-to-nature cult that clashes with modern industrial society. Beyond the battle between nature and technology, her work underscores issues of state power and civil disobedience, modernity and nostalgia, and a comical take on science fiction and recent pop culture.

In his videos and collaged photographs, Croatian artist David Maljkovic depicts his generation as lost and listless souls unmoored from their own heritage by years of warfare. Maljkovic finds inspiration for his work in the nostalgic desire for the socialist system at a time when his country is entering the increasingly globalized European Union.