Seattle's Most Wanted Painting
Reverse Archaeology, has been commissioned by CoCA as a site specific work and will play with the notion of a non-linear map of history - a map where dead-ends and abandonments take on new significance. Through this process, CoCA's space will become a model of history closely resembling the models of space and time which were developed early this century. The results should be unusual, smart and unpredictable.
RIGGA consists of Ean Eldred, James Harrison, John Kashiwabara, and Peter Nylen. All were trained at The Cooper Union in New York, moved independently to Portland and ended up finding and working with each other once there. Their alliance is extremely eclectic and encompasses projects outside of art installation such as more conventional architecture, furniture design and lighting fabrication. Their last art installation was entitled Diverted History and was seen at The Art Gym in 1996. RIGGA garnered a good deal of positive attention for Diverted History from the press as well as the public.
CoCA has a long history of supporting the work of emerging artists. The circumstances which allow a reasonable budget, space and organizational energy to be assigned to lesser known artists is quite rare. As an organization which is about taking artistic risk, CoCA is quite pleased to be presenting RIGGA.
Reverse Archaeology is supported with funding from The Maurer Family Foundation, Seattle Arts Commission, Corporate Council for the Arts, Washington State Arts Commission and King County Arts Commission.
Komar & Melamid have commissioned several scientific polls to uncover public attitudes toward the visual arts. Thus informed, they have executed the Most Wanted and the Most Unwanted paintings for various locales including America, Russia, France, China and Scotland and now Seattle.
Based on a series of public meetings and information gathering that happened in 1995, Komar & Melamid have created Seattle's Most Wanted painting which is not just a painting, but contains a three dimensional element, sounds and smells.
During this exhibition CoCA will also premiere the musical CD America's Most Wanted Song, a project sponsored by The Dia Center for the Arts in New York. America's Most Wanted Song brings together Komar & Melamid with composer David Soldier to create a composite of America's taste and desires in music. The project was funded by an anonymous Northwest art patron, thus the premiere in our fair city.