“Red/Black” fills the lobby of the Power Center with large-scale, highly animated murals and canvases painted in red and black by artist/dancer Peter Sparling.

The lobby is open to the public one hour before and during performances in October (tickets to events not required for entry):
10/3, 6:30-9 pm
10/4, 1-3:30 pm
10/23, 6:30-9 pm
10/24, 6:30-9 pm

Artist’s Statement:
Although black is considered not a color but a shade and does not appear with red on the color wheel, I would propose that black makes red redder, and red makes black a color.

I am drawn to these two bold, intensely saturated colors for the power they radiate and provoke in juxtaposition and their potential for strong graphic patterns, alone or together. By limiting my palette for this exhibit to red and black, I challenged myself to “exhaust the limits of the possible” and create a set of paintings that worked both autonomously and as a noisy kind of dialogue or unfolding pictorial panorama.

Influences? Meanings by juxtaposition, association or coincidence? The textile tapestry by Picasso, “Volutes”, that has hung in this lobby since 1970, the dance work by guest artist Shamel Pitts on stage early this month, the novel by Stendhal I have yet to read, or least likely the team colors of Atlanta Falcons, AC Milan, Alabama State University (representing pride and resilience), or Detroit Red Wings (when they throw in black to highlight the red wing)?

Is it that I am literally seeing red in these trying times, enraged by the rampant greed of large institutions, parties and predators of every shape and size? Perhaps the paintings abstract metaphors for the sheer pleasures of form in motion and the stroke of the paint brush (the dancer/choreographer in me). Titles help by serving like titles of poems: you hope not to give the work away but rather draw the reader/viewer in and suggest a tone or point of view that acts as both overture and summation or amen in retrospect. May they serve in this way to guide you, the viewer into and out of the pictures.