December 6 - January 30th, 2003

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 6, 7-9pm

with special guest DJ
and LIVE performance by Derek and Angela

In the Main Gallery:

Jason Lahr is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts at Pennsylvania State University. Lahr currently lives in South Bend Indiana where he works as an assistant curator at the South Bend Regional Art Center. He has exhibited widely and often in venues from Durban, South Africa to Florida to Chicago to California. He has a large rectangular beard that is truly something to behold.

Lahr says of his work: "I address the desires that move me through my life, fueled by years of listening to and watching TV, movies, and recorded music...And I seek a higher ground. Not a higher ground in the sense of a higher, snobbier, I’m-bored-and-I-need-something-stronger higher ground, but a higher ground that helps me reconcile my life with the world around me. I collect images and I write stories, and then I shuffle them. Sometimes I write a story for an image and sometimes I look for an image to fit a story.

I think about the monochrome backgrounds being like the pissed-off husband. They’re like Brice Marden Paintings, a constipated sort of masculinity that says, "I won’t lose my temper. I won’t say anything. There’s nothing wrong." In fact, Gerald Prince also cites the spectators’ active process of working toward a text’s ending, as they weigh possible results of current scenes: "Reading a narrative is waiting for the end and the quality of that waiting is the quality of the narrative." …A story, therefore, is comprehended as a series of interrelated functions, indices, informants, and characters, each of which has a varying effect on the resolution of individual scenes and on the eventual ending. I build narratives out of appropriated images and written texts.

In the Hall Gallery:

The Fugitive Art Center is pleased to present a site specific installation composed of drawings, prints, animated video, and audio compilations by art/noise renegades Angela Messina and Derek Schartung. Messina and Schartung began collaborating while attending Memphis College of Art in the early 1990’s, forming the noise/punk trio, CORNFED. In the tradition of art school bands, Messina and Schartung began to infuse their musical interest with a heavy sense of visual language, creating posters, zines, and packaging design. After moving to Nashville in 1999, Messina and Schartung have continued their visual and musical practice. The duo has co-founded such notorious performance groups as NEW FAGGOT CUNTS, TAN AS FUCK, and SWEET SMALL CHILDREN, as well as developing an expansive body of visual art composed of pattern and product veiled by a psychedelic dream of comic books and serenity.

for more info see Derek and Angela’s website: http//:tanasfuck.com

Gallery hours:
Saturdays 12-5pm, Sundays 12- 3pm or by appointment, come by and see us

Directions to Gallery:
From Downtown, 8 th Ave. south to Chestnut St., turn left (east), go past baseball stadium, follow sharp curve to left, go right on Martin St., go left on Houston St. The gallery is half way down the block on the left. [view a map]