Dark Decor

Dark Decor presents the work of 14 artists who share an interest in decorative and ornamental pattern. In the 26 stylistically diverse paintings, photographs, prints, installations, and mixed-media works in this exhibition the artists use pattern to present and organize visual images and material and to introduce aesthetic and extra-aesthetic issues. In these works pattern does not stand alone; it is a visual language, encoded by culture, which under scrutiny reveals sometimes dark, dangerous, or critical messages embedded within ornamentation. Collectively, and through their various investigations, critiques, and speculations, the artists call attention to social, cultural, and political concerns such as totalitarianism, war, AIDS, gender bias, cultural conditioning, race, feminism, urban decay, commodity culture, and the nature of aesthetic language.