Thompson Owen, Home Management Center in a Box, 1996,
mixed media, 12" x 20" x 5"

The lion has traditionally been associated with institutional authority through its historical use in heraldry. The Spanish expression "El leÛn no es tan fiero como lo pintan," or "The lion is not as fierce as they paint him," describes the ambiguities inherent in visual representations. Since antiquity, artists have pursued representations of "truth" which often involve falsification, visual trickery, and projected ideologies that reinvent what we understand as "reality." Seeing often entails distortion, and in art, things are often not what they seem.

The artists in Concerning Truth question the distinction between truth and deception, both formally and contextually. J.S.G. Boggs' nearly exact replicas of bank notes question how we represent value. Thompson Owen's carrying case full of home management supplies critiques our idea of perfection through consumption. Hernandez de Luna's fabricated postage stamps contain provocative content- sexual and political imagery- which he attempts to validate through the U.S. mail.

Pablo Helguera wrote that Concerning Truth aims to "transcend the polarity of true vs. false...inviting us to think in a different way about our reality." The artists in this show share the common goal of societal and cultural critique, and of shifting art out of its expected context.

Accompanied by an 8 page, b/w, mock-newspaper format catalog.
(currently unavailable)