Twenty Years of Progress: Large-scale drawings by Tom Pazderka opens Aug. 1

From a press release:

Twenty Years of Progress: Large-scale drawings by Tom Pazderka opens Aug. 1

Twenty Years of Progress, an exhibition of large scale drawings on burned book paper by Tom Pazderka will open at Pink Dog Creative, 348 Depot Street, Asheville, NC on Friday, August 1, 2014 with a public reception from 6-8 pm.

Travelling from Prague, Czech Republic, where these works were made during an artist residency at Trafo Studios, Tom Pazderka will present a complementary exhibition at Pink Dog Creative as part of a continued conversation between the two cultures.  The exhibition is “a critical and sometimes ironic look at the history of the past twenty years through the filter of the Event”, and each drawing recalls an Event, based around Alain Badiou’s articulation of the term.  It is also a critical look at progress through the past twenty years, years that Pazderka has spent in the United States as an expat from the Czech Republic, emigrating when he was twelve years old, slowly absorbing American culture as his own, while remaining a distant observer of the one he left behind. Only very recently did progress in the West become “an ideological imperative by which cultures function,” and “it is no wonder that when progress is halted, or somehow turned on its head, culture becomes a negative of itself, questioning and unrest follow.“ The works in this exhibition are a look at the historical events from both cultures, they “draw parallels and consequently point out the differences between both places, by recalling the Event, between the years 1994 (the year I left the newly independent Czech Republic for America) and 2014”

This will be Pazderka’s last exhibition in Asheville for some time, as he is moving on to graduate studies at the UC Santa Barbara, California on a prestigious fellowship at the end of summer. Pazderka is a conceptual interdisciplinary artist.  His work encompasses a wide range of disciplines and interests from painting and sculpture to writing and performance.  Reclaiming, burning, and assembling objects, dumpster diving and social consciousness are some of the ways that Tom engages through art with his audience. His works have also been exhibited at the the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC, Upstairs Arstpace, Tryon, NC, The Push Gallery, Asheville, NC and Grace Center Gallery, Mills River, NC.

Pazderka’s exhibition is being presented at the vibrant Pink Dog Creative, 348 Depot Street, a significant new addition to the city’s River Arts District, committed to supporting the arts and encouraging artists from creation to exhibition. Twenty Years of Progress will be on display from August 1 to August 31, 2014. For additional information about Pink Dog Creative, please visit www.pinkdog-creative.com.