It is hard to imagine even less understand a woman that is relocated to a concentration camp in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Is it possible for a citizen of the United States to ever feel patriotism for a country that jabs the knife of political injustice mercilessly? Artist, Tony Wynn takes on this challenge and explores the ideas of patriotism and political identities, drawing inspiration from this woman and author to Citizen 13660, Miné Okubo, and pursuing this political antithesis between a citizen and a patriot.
21st century post black folk intuitive artist, Tony Wynn, reemerges from his gallery Serious Studios to the Wynwood area where he focuses his energy into the Upcoming Art Basel 2011. Evolving from Citizenship Projects, as well as subthemes : The Right to Remain Silent, Ugly American Tour, and Accidental Patriot, he re-launches old political series’ into his latest exhibition PATRIOTICA, a visual angle on intuition, spirit, and the people’s “American Heaven” along concepts of victory, confusion, and eminence that suggests a “Patriot.”
The idea behind Patriotica is demonstrating exactly what a Patriot entails, hence the title, but more so distinguishing the meaning of this word from that of the word “citizen.” A citizen is a native inhabitant of a state or a nation; while a Patriot seeks ownership, belonging, and allegiance to his or her own country. Artist Tony Wynn targets this loyalist support and depicts this in his collection of images, uncovering a deeper meaning rather than just love for a country. Patriotica talks us through the imagination of a patriot and what it means to have a voice (The Right to Remain Silent), and how to acknowledge it (Accidental Patriot). It uses this voice to reveal a patriot in disguise, at the same time paying homage to a country that can reinforce and reciprocate loyalty. Both subjects, the citizen and the country must act as buttresses in order to unfold Patriotica.
After savoring his newest showcase, he reflects back as being simply a gallerist or curator and admits “After 14 years in the background I always felt like the best man but never the groom. Until now. Now it’s my turn. The walls are all mine.” Indeed, they are. At first glance, it is made evident that all the walls that enclose his new gallery Tony Wynn Modern Art Gallery, represent art belonging only to him. It is his return to “his [My] Miami 2.0” where he can begin exchanges between what he considers to be the two kinds of people in the art world, artists and art lovers. “It is the rare opportunity”, he continues, “to see the man and the years of work and really understand.” With walls inundated by his very own artwork, he is finally able to manifest and transmit man’s predicaments and advances through contextual images.
Upon completion of his latest exhibition, Patriotica, he will showcase his older and newer images both at his gallery and online. Located at 3223 NE 2nd Ave in Miami, this is the perfect opportunity to witness and see a black folk intuitive artist at work, especially in a predominant Latin American community and gather a different perspective on our country as we approach the 2012 election.
Every Man’s Land
By: Kimberly Susana Colomer
…And I thought it was almost like that with me too except I wanted to live to see 2012.
That I wanted my everyday breathing life in my constant cognizance and to keep my living Heaven.
Keep my Love American Dream…
Which was a mix of fund raising promises and first lady fantasies
That I call my Patriotica….
(Old Gloria,mixed media collage w/ acrylic, canvas
poem by Tony Wynn)
(Old Gloria,mixed media collage w/ acrylic, canvas
poem by Tony Wynn)
Tony Wynn’s latest exhibition features a vision of “first lady fantasies and fundraising promises,” a show that pays homage and support to the “land of millions.” This series identifies an “American Heaven”, a promise land that derives from mind of the man, or rather the man of the mind. This is the man of Hope with his Heaven of Red, white, and Blue and his Patriotica.
Patriotica is a controlled intervention of what the citizen ultimately stands for, particularly with the nearing of the 2012 election. It is a prologue to the fate of a country and a verbal and visual representation of the country’s convergence. It is the face of union depicted through iconic subject matter and color themes.
This exhibition is a cultivation and continuation to prior showcases Citizenship Projects, first launched in an exhibition in Helsinski in 2001 and Ugly American Tour, in Berlin 2006. With the upcoming Art Basel and nearing election, Patriotica seeks to synergize the art world and the political realm in order to establish a more active and substantial relationship between art fantasy and political reality.
The themes of American life are expressed through the perspective of a citizen, a man or woman within the system gathering and bestowing his or her intuition and spirit into a series of images that filter concepts of America and its preconceptual notions.
Patriotica ultimately addresses a fostered nature of “American Heaven” all the while withholding an ambiguity, allowing the viewer to formulate his or her own insight on Patriotica’s story. As undecipherable as it is, images like First Lady Fantasies, My Miss America Moment, and Fundraiser evidently parallel artist Tony Wynn’s narrative poems, framing a system similar to our nation’s own. Each image, filled with its own rendition of American spirit, studies moments of victory, exhaustion, and confusion as well as indiscernible icons whose subject matters breathe allegiance and attachment for its country and it’s Patriotica.
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