Oct.21 - Nov. 20, 2004

"Golden Years (Jester with Skull #2)," Iris print, 20 x 24 in.

M.Y. ART PROSPECTS is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition of the Brazilian-born, New York-based artist Cleverson.

The exhibition entitled Golden Years extends Cleverson's previous formal and thematic concerns in myriad directions. Consisting of photography, video and sculpture, Golden Years is a meditation of sorts on the fleeting nature of life. Yet even when they plummet into what may ostensibly be dark themes, the works in the exhibition are more than contemporary memento mori as they existentially examine violence and death through the prism of childhood, which, in turn, are collectively anchored in a colloquialism known for the elderly that is the exhibition's title.

The disparity between works that include images of youth and those that refer to the twilight of life are poetic couplings that evince a philosophical concern with subject matter underscored with a mastery of artistic execution. Cleverson's subtle artistic strategies infuse his works with sublimity that produces formal and conceptual tensions.

In the video entitled Golden Years, for example, a young boy voices his fears about a violently heinous crime that may have occurred or that may be purely fictional. The child's intensity of vocal delivery is offset by his seemingly innocent air of boyhood. Compounding this is a young girl whose appearance is interspersed with the young boy and who philosophically muses as to "where you go before you die." Reminiscent of music videos while citing such film genres as noir and horror, the piece is also evocative of the gothic and is accentuated via the wide range of formal techniques deployed including rapid-fire editing, idiosyncratic camera angles and lighting, and seamless meshing of soundtrack and imagery. Formal repetition of the video has a psychological effect achieved through the cacophonic barrage of sound and image as well as its overall cinematic rhythm.

Similar affectation can also be found in Cleverson's photographs; here, however, the pictures are more demure but they are no less as powerful. The slightly blurred quality of the photographs attains an aesthetic sensibility closer to painting. The pictures consist of children holding skulls or human bones and dressed in carnival garb; these images have been taken out of their original context and now photographically reside somewhere between portraiture, the film still, animation, computer imaging and digital manipulation.

Cleverson (b.1972) studied sculpture at the Escola de Musica e Belas Artes do Parana in Brazil. He started working with children in 1995 when he produced Pias do Zodiaco, a short film which won the Ed Wood Prize at the 12th Annual Rio Cine Festival, with the children at Casa do Pia Boys Shelter in Brazil. Since then he has been studying digital media through giving film and video workshops for children at Children's Aid Society and Goodwill Industries. In 2003, he had a solo exhibition at Museu Joaquim Nabuco in Recife, Brazil and Museu da Fotografia Solar do Barao in Curitba, Brazil, where he is from. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh and Chicago. His first solo exhibition in New York "Clevelandia 2002" was at M.Y. ART PROSPECTS in 2002 and was reviewed by Grace Glueck of the New York Times.

M.Y. ART PROSPECTS is located at 547 West 27th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues on the second floor. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographic materials, please contact 212 268 7132 / e-mail. MYartpro@aol.com.