Barbara Siegel's ~ SideShow ~ at A.I.R. Gallery

Written by Vincent Wertz Tuesday, 08 February 2011 23:49

New York, N.Y - A.I.R. Gallery announces Sideshow, an exhibition of multi-media installations by Barbara Siegel.  The opening will be held October 12 until 5 November, 2006.

Sideshow is an exhibition of biographical works inspired by the unique and creative lives of five unusual individuals and the honkey-tonk magic of Coney Island.  As art historian and curator Kristen Frederickson writes about Siegel’s work: “Siegel delves into the realm of memorialization and honoring in her work.  Through a combination of found and reconstructed materials, some organic and some manmade, some transitory and some with an air of timelessness, she reaches into the personal history of extraordinary people and their legacies.  Siegel is inspired by the experiences and legacies of carnival performers and bereaved widows, as well as by the daily significance of all the people who surround us and whose histories and achievements remain unknown.  Influenced by such disparate artists as Eva Hesse and Marsden Hartley, she recreates a tapestry of details, repeated and recontextualized and in doing so maps a charted territory of the individual whose significance lies in collaboration and social context.”

Accompanied by audio-interviews with four of her subjects, Siegel’s installations take a quirky look at the lives of Bea Muller, a widow in her 80’s and the sole permanent resident of the QEII ocean-liner, Hector G. Wallace, the ebullient Jamaican-born artist who has for the past 25 years painted the food and amusement park signs at Coney island, Melvin Burkhart, the “Human Blockhead,” a renowned sideshow performer, Jennifer Miller, a former star of the Coney Island sideshow and star and impresario of her traveling Circus Amok, and Lucia Gimeno, a thoughtful and outspoken young person committed to candidly and sensitively exploring life’s complex challenges.