April 29- May 27, 2012 Anna Held Audette: Modern Ruins-A Retrospective Opening Reception: Sunday, April 29, 2-5pm Anna Held Audette Artists in the Western world have depicted the remains of classical antiquity since the fifteenth century. In so doing, they have raised ideas about the erosive nature of time, the longing for a lost past often perceived as perfect, and the decline of the past as it yields to the present. Following such artists, Anna Held Audette paints ruins, but not of antiquity. She paints the ruins of our recent industrial past. Like the early twentieth-century post-cubist painter Charles Sheeler, Audette treats the industrial landscape as a worthy subject for serious art. But where Sheeler’s paintings depict powerful industrial icons, new and vibrant, Audette memorializes them after they have fallen into oblivion, silent remains of collapsed power. Audette’s use of subtle but pervasive color is unexpected in subjects such as machinery, vehicles and industrial settings. With an attention to beauty and a style that hovers between abstraction and realism, Audette renders her subjects with respect and encourages reflection on the nature of memory and change. Opening Statement, Solo exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC 2004
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