DAVID
ROHN
"Archetypes In Character"
Opening reception
and performance, Friday April
16, 7-11PM
Exhibit
runs through May 2
Unfaithful Wife (The Realtor).
She
began her adult life with some assumptions that were based on
her physical attractiveness but which required drastic
revision later on: After a good marriage and 2 kids, her
husband became interested in a younger woman. After their
divorce, she became a real estate agent and has sought to put
in place an economic and emotional infrastructure to replace
the one that was lost. Although her own resilience and
resourcefulness has surprised herself perhaps more than anyone
who knew her, the lesson that being a beautiful young woman
wasn t enough to carry her through life has been a harsh one
to learn.
Carol Jazzar is pleased to present
"Archetypes In Character" the latest solo exhibition
by David Rohn, a Miami based artist working
mainly with performance and lens based media.
A
staple of the Miami arts community since settling here in the
early 90’s, David Rohn is known for his embodiment of various
characters whose outlandish first impressions often serve as
catalysts for epiphanies concerning our appreciation for
cultural perceptions and the human heart.
With
this body of work, which manifests here as a series of 6
performances and 8 photographs, Rohn explores his deep
investment of Carl Jung’s archetypes - elemental forces that
play a vital role in the creation of our fabricated realities.
Expressing a multitude of polarized and strongly defined
personas in an attempt to draw focus on the notion of a single
universal consciousness, the artist prompts us by example to
muster the courage to look within ourselves, at ourselves, and
discover the impersonal and collective patterns by which we
live and coexist.
Modern humankind is unanimously a wearer of masks.
Beneath our many faces, however, the myths of our species lay
bared by simple truths, the most potent of which is that we do
not have separate, personal unconscious minds, but rather a
shared pool of experience that informs (if not directs) our
present actions from the shadows of our collective past like a
prophetic echo. Characterized by deft imitation of select
factions, Rohn’s work itself is party to this colorful
amalgam, but unlike the broadly perfunctory nature of our
behavior is pointed and decisive.
On
the opening night between 8 pm and 11 pm there will be
on-going performance during which the artist will represent 3
different characters.
On
Sunday May 2nd, a closing reception will take place between
6:30 pm and 9:30 pm during which the artist will represent a
further 3 characters.
Outcast (The Gangster).
Deprived of the requisite love he knew he deserved as a
child, the outcast can never transcend his incurable rage.
Instead gestures of care and tenderness only inflame his sense
of exemption, making him a kind of free radical subversive
bent on destroying any expression of the nurturing he failed
to receive, and that all living creatures seem to need the
most.
The Scapegoat: (The
Femme Boy).
He was never the
least bit masculine and has been been derided and ridiculed
for it from his earliest memories. The outsider role has
been as informative as it is painful: he has learned that his
attackers are motivated by their own insecurities; so he
fights back with reckless insults of his own.
His own inevitable
self-loathing has also kept him from growing beyond a
kind of adolescent self-absorption. So he remains
a kind of emotional lightweight, unable to find another
person with whom he feels safe enough to explore his own
emotional depth.
Devil (The
Senator).
He was always a golden
boy who’s every gesture could only please his parents, and
later everyone else he encountered. Every success came
easily, and he was convinced of his own superiority
before he finished high school. In business and The Law, he
set his own rules and later, in politics, became accustomed to
the idea that there are superior beings like himself, who are
entitled to privilege, but not bound by the same ethical
restraints that are needed to keep ‘the masses’ in line. Over
time his self-indulgence has transformed him into a pillar of
society who is completely incapable of being honest with
himself, let alone anybody else.
 Platonic Ideal: (The
Curator).
Smarter and above all, far more perceptive than most of her
peers, she felt more connected with great artists from times
past than any men she was able to find around her. So her
elevated relationship grew up with art and aesthetic
perception. Her frustration lies only in the energy required
to navigate around men who either can t recognize her greater
gifts, or who can t accept that they are possessed by a
woman.
Carol Jazzar – Contemporary
Art
158 NW
91 Street
Miami,
Florida 33150
305 490
6906
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