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Artist: Thom Klepach |
| Exhibition: Dtroit |
| Date: December 11 2003 - January 31 2004 |
Curator: Trevor Schoonmaker
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Bio:
Detroit is a cracked mirror reflecting the fractured American dream, the dream implied in the promise of a life in urban utopia, the dream deferred by the seeds of deceit, violence and the fear that breeds hatred; seeds of deceit sown by an auto industry seeking disposable labor and a complicit and corrupt white municipal government, recurring lies bearing fruit in the concept that sports teams and casinos are viable vehicles for the remediation of a dysfunctional society. The implicit lie, unconsciously motivated by white guilt, that civic freedom can exist outside the context of civic responsibility spawned the trademark urban crime and apathy that a undiversified and repressive economy fuels. Seeds of violence as old as this American nation took root in Detroit during the conveniently forgotten riots of 1943, were maintained by police brutality throughout the 50s, boiled over in 1967, and as Malice Greene attests to from the grave, continue today. This includes violence of a more abstract form manifest in the environmental and economic discrimination against the poor by industry in partnership with an at best ambivalent government on the local, state and national levels. Seeds of fear persist, sown by urban planners that built a city without mass transit, which constructed both the Northland Mall in 1952 and I75, bulldozing a wide patch of a primarily black neighborhood to support the white flight to the suburbs. Despite all of this, Detroit is as fertile a ground for genuine culture as anyplace in the country. The hope that Detroit offers our nation is hidden in the city motto: Resurget Cineribus, it will rise from the ashes. My art here deals with these contrasting realities.
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