My Name is Asher Lev, 2015

Installation view

Dog with Sunglasses #4, acrylic on shrinkwrap on canvas, 24 x 30", 2015

Dog with Sunglasses #1

Dog with Sunglasses #5

Dog with Sunglasses #3

Project Diana at The Alice, Seattle
October 24—November 28, 2015

“How many styles, genres, literary movements (even very small ones) have but one dream—to fill a major language function, to offer their services as the language of the state, the official tongue?... Fashion the opposite dream: know to create a becoming-minor.”
—Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Robert Brinkley, ‘What is a Minor Literature?’, Mississippi Review 11:3, 1983.

“Asher Lev, you want to go off into a corner somewhere and paint little rabbis in long beards? Then go away and do not waste my time. Go paint your little rabbis. No one will pay attention to you. I am not telling you to paint crucifixions. I am telling you that you must understand what a crucifixion is in art if you want to be a great artist. The crucifixion must be available to you as a form. Do you understand? No, I see you do not understand. In any case, we will see more crucifixions and more resurrections and more nativities and more Greek and Roman gods and more scenes of war and love—because that is the world of art, Asher Lev....”
—My Name is Asher Lev, a novel by Chaim Potok, 1972