Roq la Rue Homepage

Roq La Rue Gallery
Presents
“ALTERNATE REALITIES ”
paintings by Travis Louie and Robert Craig

Opens Friday May 12th 6-10 pm

(runs until June 3rd)

Featuring a special musical score created by Jack West exclusively for the "Alternate Reatlities" show.

Roq La Rue is very pleased to present “Alternate Realities” and show featuring two New York painters who combine flawless painterly skill combined with mesmerizing scenarios largely influenced by dreams.

Travis Louie’s hypnotic “portraiture” is compelling for its blend of the hyper realistic with the blatantly surreal. Fantastical creatures gaze out from paintings so technically refined (using transparent layers of acrylic paint over a tight graphite drawing on a smooth flat surface) that they look uncannily like old photographs. Adding to the discomfiting presence these animal like characters have are the human expressions- even if the creature in the paintings looks a bit bizarre, it also looks spookily familiar as well.

This particular series by Louie deals with the idea of historical identity, and of the feeling of disconnect many people have with their own cultural origins. As the artist says: “I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood where most of my friends could trace their ancestry back many generations and often had these wonderful turn of the century photographs that documented their family history. Unfortunately, I'm unable to go back any further than my great grandfather, who came here at the beginning of the 20th century. But there are no photos, just stories, full of inaccuracies…”

With this latest series of paintings Louie wanted to create mythological ancestors…long-lost “relatives” captured in Victorian cabinet card/ tint type images. His own interest in Noir imagery, German Expressionism, personal dream imagery, as well as his recent discovery of old photographs of “human oddities” that were not from sideshow photographs, but rather pictures that documented that person’s “normal life” (i.e. the famous photo of John Merrick (The Elephant Man) dressed in formal evening wear for a night at the theater) all combined in this latest series of works to create an incredible series of portraits that you may just recognize elements of your own family members in!

Robert Craig creates Technicolor dreamscapes where toys, deities, skeletons, and advertising archetypes intermingle and cavort under bright blue skies. Inspired by everything from Michelangelo, Dali, Norman Rockwell, and Rick Griffin to the images on a box of pancake mix, Craig defiantly refuses to raise one influence as loftier than the other, in fact states that while he cites as influence old sci-fi movies, cartoons, his own childhood, Hindu art, LSD, the catholic church, and the death of his daughter, “My paintings have no inherent, intentional meaning because I don't believe that life has any inherent meaning...it just is. I have no great wisdom, moral messages or cosmic profundity to impart in my work. I feel that would only detract from it. Like watching a great movie and a commercial buts in. 'Shut up and paint!' Sez I.”

In addition, this exhibit was "scored" by musician Jack West. Using the art by Robert Craig and Travis Louie as a cue, West created an entirely original soundtrack to the show that evokes everything from the music of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, demented circus calliope music, and some of the more euphoric music by Danny Elfman, and was produced by Roq la Rue as a companion piece for the show. This cd will be on rotation at the gallery during the run of “Alternate Realities”, and will also be available for sale!