Birk, a Los Angeles-based artist who graduated from Otis Art Institute of Parson’s School of Design, has developed an extensive body of work inspired by his perception of urban life in America, primarily in Southern California. Throughout Birk’s artistic career he has been awarded numerous grants, fellowships and residencies. Birk is represented by galleries in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York and by the HuiPress in Hawaii. His work has been shown internationally. Since its completion, The Depravities of War has been exhibited at several galleries and museums including The Kunstverein Museum in Heidelberg Germany, The Contemporary Art Museum of San Diego, P. P. O. W. Gallery in New York and The Betty Rhymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.
Classical artists such as Callot and Goya, who have depicted war in their times through printmaking, inspired Birk to create this series on the Iraq war. Similar to the tradition of classical printmakers of old, using apprentices as aids, Birk used several assistants at HuiPress in Maui, Hawaii to help carve and print this series of monumental woodcut prints, each measuring four feet high by eight feet wide.
During the creation of this series Birk was inspired by the flood of images from the war and directly references several critical events which were covered in the mass media. The main focus of this series follows the narrative of U.S. soldiers from recruitment all the way through returning home, transformed by the war experience. The storyboard Birk depicts follows their journey and also touches on important political issues within the US government and society.
By expanding to such a large scale, Birk takes the tradition of his artistic predecessors a step further and stakes a claim for the relevance of visual artists making social commentary with their art. These enormous black and white prints absorb the power of the American media to record the events of the war while slowing the viewer down with their sheer size, thus demanding of the viewer serious contemplation of what it means to “let slip the dogs of war”.
An opening reception in honor of Sandow Birk will be held at HSU First Street Gallery on Saturday, April 4, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The exhibition will run from April 4 – May 17. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m., and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is free and those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead at 707-443-6363. To learn more, visit www.humboldt.edu/~first.