The Greenway Project | Primary Flight
The Miami-based street art collective Primary Flight will visit North Carolina from April 18th to May 8th to create a mural for the Spring Garden underpass section of downtown Greensboro’s Greenway–a 4 mile bike trail that circles the city being developed with a strong public art emphasis. Commissioned by the NC Arts Council, the mural will add a significant contemporary work to Greensboro’s public art landscape and beautify the underpass for trailgoers and drivers alike. A series of events–movies, lectures, and a public opening–will provide opportunities to meet the artists and learn more about street art as a medium and movement.
The Primary Flight project is co-produced by The Downtown Greenway and Elsewhere–a living museum and international artist project set in a former thrift store on South Elm Street–who will provide a base of operations for these artists during their time in Greensboro. The new mural will cover the seven currently gray Spring Garden Underpass platforms that support the highway above with bright lines and colors inspired by a Bauhaus building in Greensboro and the “movement” theme for this section of the trail. Events (listed below) will share the depth and breadth of street art practices with Greensboro audiences and participants, broadening exposure and understanding of their collaborative public practice while bringing together four exceptional Greensboro non-profit creative initiatives.
Lawrence Gipe | Primary Projects
In the Valle de los Caidos | A Solo Exhibit of NEW Works from Lawrence Gipe | Opening Reception, Saturday, April 14, 2012 | 7 – 11 PM
Private Collectors Preview | Friday, April 13, 2012 | 6 – 9 PM | rsvp@primaryprojectspace.com
This April 14, Primary Projects is pleased to present a new installation by conceptual artist and University of Arizona professor Lawrence Gipe entitled In La Valle de los Caidos. This exhibition will feature epically-scaled mixed media paintings on raw canvas, a video installation, and numerous small works that address the fascist-era iconography and structures of his contentious subject: the Santa Cruz de la Valle de los Caidos cathedral – a gigantic Roman Catholic basilica built by Generalissimo Francisco Franco as a tomb for himself.
In this work, Gipe challenges the viewer to consider forgotten histories as nostalgic, heroic and ridiculous all at once. The exhibition’s images are sourced from a wide swath of archival and contemporary material from historical photos, propaganda films, a Franco-era spy thriller that used the church grounds as a set and; images from current-day blogs on both the left and right-wing sides of the divisive controversy that clouds the church’s future.
As a site of reconciliation and ‘atonement’ between the warring factions of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the symbolic reputation of Santa Cruz de la Valle de los Caidos has been tainted by the usage of slave labor from the Popular Front’s prisoners-of-war in the precarious years of demolition for the basilica during the 1940’s. The mountain that surrounds the basilica is crowned with the world’s largest stone cross (towering over 500 feet high). Fascist leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco was interred under the altar upon his death in 1975, after years of Pharaoh-like obsession over the construction of his own funerary monument.
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