NASHVILLE |DATE: MARCH 26, 2006
FROM: MARCEE RONDAN
EXENE CERVENKA:
SINGER/SONGWRITER/POET & ARTIST
DIVERSIFIES
WITH FIRST ART BOOK
“MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE”
AND HER FIRST SOLO LOS ANGELES ART EXHIBITION
For EXENE CERVENKA–the woman best known to many as the singer/songwriter for the acclaimed Los Angeles group X–what may seem like a new venture in this true renaissance woman’s career is indeed one of her oldest passions: the creation of visual art. X fans are already familiar with the infamous collages that have graced the influential group’s albums throughout the years. And now they’ll get the chance to own not only a book featuring her well-known collages, but the opportunity to also attend the first gallery showing of her work in her former adopted Los Angeles hometown.
While this is be no means the end of EXENE CERVENKA’s musical career–she continues to perform with both X and the Knitters along with the Original Sinners–she’s taking this time to devote herself full time to her art. She has in fact converted the barn at the Missouri home she shares with her husband of five years, Jason Edge (who is a member of the Original Sinners) into an art studio and music space.
Her latest book, MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE–released in late 2006 by Perceval Press–features the provocative collages, which have garnered high praise for CERVENKA in recent New York and Los Angeles gallery shows. The multi-layered collages revolve around her obsessions and fears and the beauty she perceives in unlikely places. Cartoons and vintage postcards, cocktail napkins from shabby bars, crass advertisements and religious iconography, playing cards and cheap souvenirs–a world of forlorn discards are resurrected and given a final resting place in her art.
Perceval Press publisher Viggo Mortensen says, “Having admired Exene's drawings, paintings and collage work for a long time, I was glad to see her success with recent exhibitions in Santa Monica and in New York City, and to see that she is continuing to create and show new work this year. Aside from the graphic work she has provided for X records and merchandise over the years, these exhibitions have for the first time given the public a chance to see first-hand this side of her rich creative output. It did not surprise me that those shows were so well received, nor that her work sold so readily. As with her songwriting, poetry, music, and personal style, she has again proven to be a unique and forward-looking artist. We at Perceval Press were proud to be allowed to reproduce and present her collages for Magical Meteorite Songwriting Device. It is one of our most handsome and popular artist's publications, and I hope that it will help Exene's artwork gain a deservedly greater audience.”
Publication of the book follows her 2005 Santa Monica Museum of Art exhibition of her work, America the Beautiful. Accompanied by a catalogue published by Smart Art Press, the show featured the illustrated journals she’s maintained throughout her 27 years as a traveling musician. Also in 2006, Exene had her first one-person show in New York at DCKT Contemporary Art; in addition, her work was featured at the Miami Basel Art Fair. This June, she’ll have her first solo gallery exhibition in Southern California, at Western Project in Culver City.
Here’s some critical praise for EXENE’s artwork:
New Yorker (1/31/2006): “Kurt Schwitters’s ‘Merz,’ the self-invented term for his Dada assemblages of prosaic refuse is reinvented with punk-feminist pluck by Cervenka…Her first New York exhibition features journals in a vitrine, collages…the journals’ naïve aesthetic veers at times into quaint adolescent angst, but you can practically hear the rough poetry-cum-lyrics moaning off the page.”
Los Angeles Times (10/6/2005): “Cervenka’s collage sensibility mirrors the beauty and humor she brought to X. Like punk, which was birthed by non-musicians deciding to make music anyway, Cervenka’s work is folk art in the truest sense—unexpected, unschooled and resourcefully pieced together from cast-away cultural ephemera in the name of love, not money.”
Papermag.com (1/26/06): “…you’ve got to pay respects to one of punk’s first priestesses. You’ve got to bask in the hip that was hip…despite their explosions of color and found objects, Cervenka’s collages are strangely fastidious—trapped behind glass…perhaps these confines speak to the unavoidable structure and cramped space of life on tour.”
Popmatters.com (12/4/06): “…her public career, from the beginning in 1977 upon the formation of the seminal Los Angeles punk band X, has been defined by a healthy irreverence for boundaries between art, literature, music, poetry, fashion, and performance art. Cervenka has been credited in popular culture for insinuating the vintage-gothic-dolly fashion so enthusiastically…Exene Cervenka has lost none of her drive to express, create, and move forward musically, artistically, and, as evidenced by her soulful collages, personally.”
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EXENE CERVENKA: SINGER/CONGWRITER/POET & ARTIST DIVERSIFIES WITH FIRST ART BOOK "MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE" AND HER FIRST SOLO LOS ANGELES ART EXHIBITION
