PAX ATTAX with Chris Dacre

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7/6/26, 6:47 AM

PAX ATTAX show with Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow

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PAX ATTAX show with Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA: July - August 2007

https://www.sesow.com/press/2k7/pax.htm

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116126,6:47 AM PAX ATTAX show with Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow

OLD DOMINION

Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow

PAX ATTAX

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Opening Reception
Saturday, July 7, 2007, 7 pm
Through August 19

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PAX ATTAX show with Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow

Two Brave Young Men Say it with Art

By Hannah Serrano
Lining the walls of the ODU Gallery are the intensely colored works of Matt Sesow and
Chris Dacre, two young men whose sardonic responses to the state of American
politics are expressed in their powerful works. Both wore jeans, cowboy shirts and
easy smiles to the opening of their exhibition. It was clear they were just two
Midwestern guys, making some art and talking about issues. Neither carried the
superiority or sense of irony that some young artists are wont to possess. In fact, they
were each unassuming, humble and real. That combination of open, straightforward,
almost na•ve attitudes about art, and the rawness and edginess conveyed in the
pieces, is disarming.
Sesow, who hails from rural Nebraska and admits that he initially became interested
in art to impress a girl, lost one of his arms when he was struck by an airplane
propeller as a child. The trauma of that event is expressed in his work again and
again, with shackled and amputated figures representing not only his own trials but
the ideas of helplessness, pain, and struggle—as seen in the two large-scale works,
Collateral Damage (Living Hell) and HeÕs Got the Whole World in His Hands (With
Entangled Ants). The serial quality and color in SesowÕs other, smaller-scale
paintings are admittedly Warhol-inspired. And his project, 31 Days in July, for which
he began a unique painting each day in July of 2003 in response to articles on the
front page of the Washington Post, is reminiscent of the contemporary Japanese artist
On Kawara, who is similarly activated by newspapers and the passage of time.
SesowÕs clearest artistic forebear, however, seems to be the German Expressionist
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Kirchner, who depicted himself in his art with an amputated
hand, also created energized, intense art that responded to war (in his case, WWII)
and raw human emotion.
Dacre, who was born in a small Ohio farming community and later served in the U.S.
military, presents a 32 foot by 12 foot installation piece, entitled War is Fun. The felt
collage creates a vivid scene of doll-like paratroopers, tanks, helicopters, and
imaginary characters embroiled in battle. If you can imagine a brightly colored
Guernica populated by cartoonish, Nintendo-like figures, you wouldnÕt be far off.
The childlike quality inherent in the work is the very thing that makes DacreÕs
political statement so potent. Though not a conscious decision on the artistÕs part,
DacreÕs use of felt material, political activist agenda and military background
suggest an inheritance from the artist Joseph Beuys, a German artist of the Ô60s. Felt
became a key material for Beuys after he was supposedly revived to health by
tribesmen, who enveloped him in animal fat and felt, after being shot down as a pilot
in World War II.
Here they are—two young Americans, a modern-day Kirchner and Beuys, bringing a
wholly authentic, highly charged and highly intellectual approach to Outsider art. This
is what exciting contemporary art is all about. ¥
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Photos from opening reception (July 7) taken by Jerry S Altares:

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PAX ATTAX show with Chris Dacre and Matt Sesow

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