“There’s no such thing as autobiography, there’s only art and lies.” – Jeanette Winterson

Curated by Risa Shoup, Art & Lies features a diverse collection of work focusing on issues that have figured prominently in her life: gender, environment, time, alienation and isolation. Shoup hopes to provoke the audience to consider the creative role of the curator when viewing work that responds to themes that have been so crucial in the shaping of her life’s trajectory. An Opening Party for Art & Lies will take place on Friday, April 1 from 6PM to 9PM at the Invisible Dog Art Center and the exhibition will be on view from April 1 through April 14, 2011.

The group show features installations, photography, sculpture, video, and collage by six artists: Ryan Frank, R. Justin Stewart, Danielle Durchslag, Samantha Vernon, Morgan Levy, and Kerry Downey.

“Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring”, an installation by Ryan Frank, portrays a series of figurative sculptures representing one woman’s struggle with how to present her gender and her transformation from femme to butch. Presented in its NYC debut, is R. Justin Stewart’s “2AM to 2PM”, a 3-D sculptural map of the Minneapolis Bus System. “2AM to 2PM” has previously traveled to the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI, the Mesa Art Center in Mesa, AZ and the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO. Collages by Danielle Durchslag and photographs by Morgan Levy will be the only 2-D, wall-mounted work in the show. Durchslag’s portraits of infants collaged from different types of paper depict distress in childhood, while Levy’s large-format composite photographs portray the isolation of the wilderness in Iceland. Kerry Downey’s videos address alienation with dark wit, and Samantha Vernon’s work recalls the disparate influences of Kara Walker and Edward Gorey to create a truly haunting environmental installation about violence, race and psychic trauma.

In conjunction with Art & Lies, Shoup has invited participating artist Kerry Downey to present two video screenings that expand upon the themes of the exhibition. The first screening, Here and There, will be Wednesday, April 6 from 7-9PM, and will feature short films that explore how the social body navigates time and space and the subsequent anxieties and pleasures that ensue. This evening will feature short films by: Kerry Downey, Cybele Lyle, Douglas Paulson, Gordon Sasaki, Lior Shvil, and Jennifer Sullivan. The second screening, Do Me, will be Wednesday April 13 from 7-9PM, and will address sex, the absurd, orgasms, gender, and other literal and figurative connotations of “getting fucked.” Short films by: Kerry Downey, Rebecca Goyette, David Kagen, Jannicke Låker, Tara Mateik, Jennifer Sullivan and Andrew Steinmetz , and Amber Hawk Swanson.