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March 3 , 2007

Contact: Jessica Moore, jkmoore@emory.edu, 404-727-1687

Fantasy Baseball According to Radcliffe Bailey and Alejandro Aguilera

Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey (see artist bios below) first met in 1998 when Bailey saw Aguilera’s work at Atlanta’s Hammonds House. They immediately became friends, and often talked about exploring the commonalities in their work through a joint exhibition. The long-awaited collaboration will finally come to fruition with “Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey: Pitching,” opening on March 23, 2007 at Emory University’s Visual Arts Gallery. The gallery is located directly across from the baseball field on Emory’s main campus, and the view of the field from the only window in the gallery provided some inspiration for the exhibition’s baseball theme. The opening reception will include surprise baseball-related performance aspects that will bring the installation to life. This exhibition is supported in part by generous grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Emory Coca-Cola Artists-in-Residence Program.

For the exhibition Bailey will create a fantasy baseball league called the Liberators, based on his childhood memories and heroes. “I want to explore sports, particularly baseball, as a vehicle for communication in the world,” says Bailey. Among the heroes to be included is Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), the African American leader who influenced politics and culture around the world through his creation of the “Back to Africa” movement in the United States and later became an inspirational figure for civil rights activists.

Every baseball team needs a throng of devoted fans, and Aguilera will provide them for the Liberators through an original three-dimensional mural. To design his crowd Aguilera will draw from his fascination with African American self-taught folk artist and former slave Bill Traylor (1856-1947). Images culled from Traylor’s paintings, which are typically geometric silhouettes of human and animal figures exhibiting a remarkably intuitive sense of space, will be given added dimension and a baseball context through Aguilera’s imagination.

“Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey: Pitching” will be on view at Emory University’s Visual Arts Gallery from March 23 – April 21, 2007, with an opening reception on Friday, March 23rd from 5 to 8 pm featuring food, libations, and live jazz from the Emory Jazz Combo. For more information contact Mary Catherine Johnson, 404-712-4390 or mcjohn7@emory.edu, or visit http://visualarts.emory.edu/.

About the Artists:

Alejandro Aguilera, born in Cuba in 1964, now lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.  He received his education at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, the Higher Institute of Art in Havana, Cuba, and the School of Art in Holguin, Cuba. He creates sculptures, paintings and drawings. Although his work has become increasingly abstract in recent years, it retains strong references to his recent memories of Cuba. Such references include banderas (small flags that typically decorate the streets and businesses on the island) as well as motifs related to the ocean and to the landscape. Aguilera combines these elements with the swirling imagery of what he describes as “so-called primitive cultures.”  Aguilera has exhibited in the United States and internationally, and his work is included in the public collections of the Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, CEMEX in Monterrey, Mexico, the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico, and the National Museum Palace of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba.

Radcliffe Bailey is an Atlanta artist who works by patterning together vintage photographs, objects he collects, painted words, and maps in a multi-layered narrative which explores the both history of African Americans, as well as his own personal history and influences. Bailey received his B.F.A. from the Atlanta College of Art and has had one-person shows at Solomon Projects in Atlanta, Georgia, the Arthur Rogers Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, as well as the Temporary Contemporary at the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2001 Birmingham Museum of Art curator David Moos worked with Bailey to organize “The Magic City,” a one person show that traveled from the Birmingham Museum of Art to the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis and to the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston. His work has appeared widely across the country in group shows. His selected bibliography features articles in the Village Voice, The New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Flash Art, and Art in America.

VISUAL ARTS GALLERY AT EMORY UNIVERSITY
The Emory Visual Arts Gallery is first and foremost a place where innovative and unfamiliar work is exhibited for the benefit of Emory University and the larger Atlanta community. In addition to regular faculty and student shows, gallery exhibitions feature international and new media artists who may not be familiar to a regional audience, as well as cooperative shows with regional and national institutions. 

ARTS AT EMORY
The mission for the arts at Emory University is to provide a dynamic, multidisciplinary environment for the study, creation and presentation of the arts. For more information on the Schwartz Center or Arts at Emory events, visit www.arts.emory.edu and www.schwartzcenter.emory.edu, or call the Arts at Emory box office at 404-727-5050.

EDITORS PLEASE NOTE : Photographs available upon request.

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