Betye Saar: CAGE at Michael Rosenfeld

In our humble opinion, this is one not to miss. Betye Saar, whose often challenging work seeks to reveal marginalized or hidden histories, offers just under 30 new works – 4 years of studio work – no small feat for an 84 year old artist.

From the gallery -

Betye Saar: CAGE, A New Series of Assemblages & Collages will be on view from November 6 to December 23, 2010. This ambitious installation of twenty-one mixed-media assemblages and seven collages represents four years of intensive studio work by the eighty-four-year-old Californian. Over the years, Saar has collected various cages from flea markets, yard sales, and antique shops; these ordinary household objects now comprise the foundation for a series centered on forms of containment and confinement. In Saar’s art, the cage is a signifier of physical incarceration and a metaphor for social, psychological, spiritual, economic, and historical exclusion. But, consistent Saar’s affirmative outlook, the cage is also a bold symbol of resilience and survival. The assemblages and collages in Betye Saar: CAGE also share with her other works a global perspective interlaced with the artist’s personal interest in metaphysics, magic, mystery, legends, and superstitions. The questions of repression, disenfranchisement, and resistance that dominate the lives of many people around the world are fused with lessons from US history, African spiritualism, and the rich visual traditions of Afro-diasporic art.

The exhibition runs to December 23, 2010.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
24 West 57th Street
(btw 5th and 6th), 7th Floor*
New York, NY 10019

Above: Betye Saar, Birds of a Feather, 2010. Mixed media collage on paperboard 12 3/4″ x 12″, signed and dated.

A look at Saar’s assemblages after the jump.