The Central Libraries > Mid-Manhattan Library > Art > Artist Wall on Third

Lydia Venieri

"See No Evil"

01 May – 28 July 2009
“Art Wall on Third”
The Art Collection, 3rd floor
Mid-Manhattan Library,
40th Street @ 5th Avenue,
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871
Hours: Mon-Wed 9-9, Thu-Sat 10-6, Sun 1-5

01 –30 June 2009
“Art in the Windows”
On view day and night

Contact: Arezoo Moseni

The Art Collection at Mid-Manhattan Library is pleased to present two exhibitions of color digital photographs by the well-known multi-media artist Lydia Venieri. In See No Evil she questions the media’s distortion of reality by how images of war and terror are represented, as she juxtaposes hyper-realistic pictures of war taken from film-stills with the images of children’s dolls. These constructed photographs engage viewers in a world addressing technology and human perception in relation to the dissemination of images and information. Douglas Maxwell, curator, art critic and assistant professor of arts at New York University, will join Venieri for an Artist Dialogue on Monday May 18th at 6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor. The exhibition series Art in the Windows and Art Wall on Third are curated by Arezoo Moseni.

Artist Statement
Every day images of war, through the media, try to penetrate our reality. These images freeze before touching our reality, leaving a wretched ghost of pain to haunt us. It is this haunted look (not the ghost) that I have tried to catch within the dolls’ eyes. This look hosts different feelings like fear or revolt, despair or denial, compassion or immunity. The beauty of the dolls and the violence reflected in their eyes capture the invisible wall which separates the co-existence of these two worlds.

“Lydia Venieri elaborates the starry dance of Genesis. Her flame, captured and petrified describes the crazy sparkles of Greek memory. Her brush captures and contains the colours of the nights of a previous world…

World’s creation is never ending; it will never end. It starts anew with every real sculpture.

What thoughts come to my mind when I see Lydia Venieri’s work? That sculptors are the oldest and the youngest of this world’s children. They play with stone, with lava, with argil just as they would play with the toys of the man of the future.”

Jacques Lacarrière*

* From Ta seistra toy chronoy. Venierē, Lydia (1964- ). Thessaloniki: Municipality of Thessaloniki [1990].