Andrea Dezsö: Small Works
Robert Lehman wing

September 5 – January 6, 2006

Lehman College Art Gallery is pleased to present Andrea Dezsö: Small Works as part of the ongoing Spotlight Series, which highlights artists who have created public art projects in the Bronx. Andrea Dezsö’s mosaic installation is currently being created under the MTA’s Art for Transit program and will be installed at the Bedford Park Blvd Station on the 4 line late in 2006.

Andrea Dezsö: Small Works offers a survey of drawings, constructions, and painted journals created over the past ten years by Romanian-born New York-based artist Andrea Dezsö. Dezsö is a storyteller whose visual content is drawn from her life—childhood in Romania, family relationships, immigration to Hungary and then to America, life in New York—as well as a rich imagination. Often combining content, imagery, and materials in unexpected ways that flow in a stream of consciousness, Dezsö’s visual sources range widely from advertising graphics and folk art to alternative comics. Open-ended allegories invite the viewer to create their own narrative.

Names In A Book In Random Order, a story Dezsö wrote and illustrated about three good friends—Death, Accident and Disease—appeared in the yearly alternative comic anthology Blab! It is presented in the exhibition with original drawings, early sketches, character development studies, an edited narrative, and a mock-up. A selection of journals and sketchbooks is also included. Insectmen, a colorful, one of a kind hand-bound painted journal offers a story about men who pretend to be insects. The 2006 Publikum Calendar, a cutting edge graphic design and multimedia project published in Serbia, which features a prominent artist from around the world, is also presented. The 2006 calendar features Andrea Dezsö’s Tales from Serbia, an imaginary trip to Serbia inspired by Victorian travel books in which the writer never leaves New York. The exhibition also includes shadow book tableaux illuminated with LED diodes, visual studies of the local laundromat and drawings populated with fantastic creatures, aliens, self-portraits, childhood heroes like Nadia Comaneci, fears, phobias and her favorite foods.