Solo Exhibition by Monique Luchetti
October 5 – November 10
First Friday Reception October 5, 7-9pm
Artist lecture Friday, October 5, 2pm

Monique Luchetti will be joining The Art Center on October 5 to display Forget-Me-Not, a body of work that features endangered birds of Australia and Colorado. Luchetti attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she received her Master’s in Painting. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is highly acclaimed as a nationally recognized artist. Her works have be shown worldwide, and she was the recipient of the Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant.

Luchetti’s thoughtful arrangements have a metaphoric quality suggestive of ritual and burial as she carefully arranges the visual components of each piece. The scenes contain birds, lifeless and illustrated in tones of gray with a splash of color provided by floral bouquets or organic patterning. These cryptic yet visually striking images of the deceased show the creatures on their backs, as if prepared for burial. There is a ceremonial quality to her dark still-life works. The hollow eyes seem to communicate the permanence of loss and the absence of soul, while flightless bodies make a bold statement stimulating a visual dialog regarding these endangered fowl friends.

Luchetti used the taxidermied birds in the ornithology collections at the Queensland Museum in Australia and the Peabody Museum at Yale University as references for the works in this exhibition. One of the main pieces in the body of work is a large-scale drawing focusing on the endangered birds of Colorado. Luchetti says that she thinks about each bird as an anonymous individual. She is hoping to bring the birds to life in her exhibition and spread awareness of the endangered species around the world.

Join Luchetti at 2pm on Friday, October 5, for a one-hour lecture where she will discuss her distinctive works and the process that have led to their creation.