Exhibition with Evening of Art + Performance
On view: July 17 – August 2, 2015

LeRoiOPENING WITH EYE TO EYE SCREENING, READING + PERFORMANCE: Fri. July 17, 6 – 8 pm

CLOSING WITH DISCUSSION BETWEEN JACK WALLS + SEAN OSBORNE: Sat. Aug. 1, 6 – 8 pm

GALLERY HOURS: Saturday + Sunday, July 17 – Aug. 2 from noon – 4 pm, or by appointment

Free and open to the public.

Basilica Hudson is proud to announce an exhibition by artist Jack Walls. Paintings, Et Cetera opens Friday, July 17 from 6 – 8 pm and will feature vibrant paintings and selected ephemera by the legendary artist. Mr. Walls has been a fixture on the New York creative scene since the early 1980s, working primarily in collage and painting. In addition to his visual work, he is also an established poet and author, most notably for The Ebony Prick of the White Rose’s Thorn, which he will read from on opening night. The exhibition will be on view through Sunday, August 2, with a closing party and artist discussion on Saturday, August 1 from 6 – 8 pm. Gallery hours for the show are between noon and 4 pm every Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment which can be made by emailing info@basilicahudson.org.

The opening will include a screening of EYE TO EYE (Isabel Hegner, First Run/Icarus Films, 1989, 18 min.), a documentary film about Robert Mapplethorpe, Walls’ longtime partner and fellow artist who is known for his controversial, erotic, and highly stylized black and white photographs. EYE TO EYE features Walls’ narration over many of Mapplethorpe’s most provocative images. As told by Mr. Walls, viewers learn of the forces that drove Mapplethorpe’s evolution as an artist and his relationships to his subjects, right up until his passing.

After the screening, a reading from The Ebony Prick of the White Rose’s Thorn (aka T. E. P. W. R. T.) will take place with musical accompaniment by Harbour (Jonas Bers and Damian Patrick Cleary).

The closing party on Saturday, August 1 will feature a conversation with Jack Walls and Sean Osborne on the artist’s work, life and times from 6 – 8 pm. Sean Osborne, a resident of the Hudson Valley, completed his Master’s coursework at SUNY Purchase in Art History, with a focus on painting and sculpture of the late twentieth century and American modernism of the 1900s – 1940s.

jackAbout the Artist:
Chicago-born artist Jack Walls as been a vital part of the New York art world for over 30 years. He is a writer, poet, painter, and performer. In his early years in New York, he met and lived as a couple with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. This relationship lasted until Mapplethorpe’s untimely death in 1989. Since then, Walls has become a source of inspiration for a new generation of young artists. Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, and the late Dash Snow, to mention a few, have acknowledged Walls’ influence. Jack Walls lives and works in Hudson, New York. For more information, please visit www.jackwalls.com

The exhibition at Basilica Hudson is made possible in part with support from Green Mountain Energy.

Image credits: (top) Le Roi, painting by Jack Walls; (bottom) Portrait of Jack Walls by Steven Sebring.