Installation:
from Gestures:Illustrations of Catastrophe and Remote Times
January 18-June 15 2008
Mattress Factory Museum
Pittsburgh, PA
"Working with scraps or fragments of aged paper, fabric, and miscellaneous debris, as well as paint, crayon, and other more traditional artisan materials, David Montano makes mixed-media collages and paintings based on notions of history, nostalgia, and narratives of lost and forgotten stories. More recently, Montano has moved into letter-sized drawings on textured papers inspired by imagery from comics and children’s drawings. Here the artist has created a multi-sensory installation, covering the walls with red crayon scribbles overlapped by an opaque veil of dripping white paint. A fan gently blows through the space and onto three large swatches of white fabric, affixed to the ceiling and trailing in wedding-like trains along the floor, while music plays from an elevated speaker. Here the experience is one of ephemerality and perhaps even quietly contained chaos: a bubbling apocalypse just beneath the surface, held at bay by the calmness of wind, the soothing upbeat music, and the gently swaying cloths."
