Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion
Organized by Terrie Sultan
with text by Terrie Sultan, David Pagel, Colin Gardner, and Claudia Schmuckli, and a short story by Nick Flynn

136 pages, softcover
Design by Miscano Design, London
Published by D Giles Limited and Blaffer Gallery
$45.00

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The works featured in Damaged Romanticism capture the complexity of contemporary reality by giving form to ambivalent even contradictory sentiments. In the work of fifteen international artists, rebellion, disillusionment, and defiance come together, strengthening and tempering each other much as heat tempers iron into steel. Neither nihilistic nor utopian, these works are stubbornly optimistic, illustrating an “aftermath aesthetic” – the silence of irrecoverable loss, the sadness of mourning, the incomprehensibility of extreme trauma, and the psychological complexity born of an awareness of fate’s capricious finality. Featured artists include Richard Billingham (England); Berlinde De Bruyckere (Belgium); Edward Burtynsky (Canada); Sophie Calle (France); Petah Coyne (United States); Angelo Filomeno (Italy/United States); Jesper Just (Denmark/United States); Florian Maier-Aichen (Germany/United States); Mary McCleary (United States); Wangechi Mutu (Kenya/United States); Anneè Olofsson (Sweden); Julia Oschatz (Germany); David Schnell (Germany); and Ryan Taber/Cheyenne Weaver (United States).

Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, Blaffer Gallery, August 22 – November 15, 2008. On view in two venues at The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, N.Y., February 8 – April 12, 2009, and the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, January 18 – April 4, 2009.