Private View: January 7, 6-8 PM

The cow is both subject and vehicle in Annette Lemieux’s latest foray into the folklore and symbolism of the American farm. Imagery culled from 1950’s livestock books opens itself to multiple interpretations, associating freely with ideas from religion, art history and popular culture.

In these new works, golden calves, angelic milkmaids, and holy straw hats playfully invoke the iconography of religious traditions. Together, they form a dialogue that evolves as it travels from piece to piece. For example, in Mary with Holy Figure, a young woman appears next to a cow wearing a straw hat. The idea that the hat might constitute a halo led Lemieux to make another work - a gold gilded straw sombrero. These two works were also linked by Lemieux’s discovery that the early etymology of “halo” includes the crop circle created by threshing oxen. The young woman makes a repeat appearance, literally, in Twenty-Five Hail Marys, without the straw-hatted cow, silkscreened into a grid of twenty-five that are nearly identical other than the natural variations generated by the printmaking process.

This exhibition continues an investigation that began in 2008, when Lemieux created a stand for the Armory Show that moved from art fair to country fair. Playing off of the context of the event, Lemieux’s installation employed such elements as a best-in-show cow, walls made from old barn boards, vernacular signage, and fresh apple pie. In the body of work that followed, images of pigs referenced both George Orwell and the homespun rhetoric of the campaign trail. With each renewed investigation, the subject matter builds in new directions. The Armory Show featured a circular painting of a green gingham tablecloth, Tabletop Painting (Green). Here that series is continued with a version of the work in classic red. But the title of the new work is Table for One, and its appearance, together with the evocation of the twelve apostles and the host of other religious references, leaves as an open question the identity of that solitary presence.

A mid career survey exhibition entitled The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux is being hosted by the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Opening October 28, 2010 - January 2, 2011, and traveling to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, April 9 - October 9, 2011. A fully-illustrated catalogue will include essays by the exhibition curators, Lelia Amalfitano and Judy Hoos Fox along with guest essayists, Rosetta Brooks, Peggy Phelan, and Robert Pincus-Witten.