"Unreliable Narrators," a group show featuring art by Barbara Friedman, Melora Griffis & Judith Simonian, is on view June 8 to July 5, 2019.
The The exhibition's title derives from an ongoing body of work by Barbara Friedman, in which familiar protagonists from children’s literature and popular culture appear in precarious situations.
In fiction, “a work that has an unreliable narrator compels the reader to second-guess the information they are given, to view as suspect any “truth” or claim of veracity on the part of the main storyteller, a work of fiction becoming doubly so.” - Enrico Gomez
Each of the artists in the exhibition employs narrative generally as a framework for expression; specific anecdotes may reside within one work or spread across a series. All of the works blur the lines between abstraction and representation, fantasy and reality, fact and fiction. The question of who, exactly, is the “unreliable narrator” - the artist, the subjects of the works, the artworks as a whole, or the viewer - permeates the exhibition.