The gallery is pleased to announce that a photograph by Ken Gonzales-Day is now currently on display as part of group show TRANSFORMATIONS: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art at the Wende Museum. While the show originally opened October 4, 2020, the museum was closed to the public as part of an effort to protect the community from the COVID-19 epidemic. On May 1st, the Wende opened its collection and exhibitions back up to public viewing; extending the show's closing date to October 24, 2021.
The exhibition highlights an array of objects from the Wende's collection of Cold War artifacts displayed amongst contemporary art pieces from Ken Gonzales-Day, Chelle Barbour, Farrah Karapetian, and Bari Ziperstein. The show seeks to combine military artifacts within a domestic space and allows for their artists to play with ideas surrounding surveliance, propaganda, and patriotism.
Ken Gonzales-Day’s large-scale digital print Monumental Vision: Labor/Lenin(2020) is a pigment print on vinyl itself at a monumental scale, which considers the fate of discarded sculptural testaments to Soviet rule in the implicit context of toppled Confederate monuments in the U.S. and indeed, the altars to violent colonialism that pollute so much of the world.
The mission of the Wende Museum is to preserve Cold War art, culture, and history from the Soviet Bloc countries, inspire a broad understanding of the period, and explore its enduring legacy.