VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Holocaust Museum Houston presents the exhibition Bela Gold: The Book of Memory. On view in the Laurie and Milton Boniuk Resource Center and Library February 2, 2010 through April 25, 2010.  Holocaust Museum Houston is proud to collaborate with the Consulate General of Mexico in presenting samples of the work by artist Bela Gold.

For several years, Gold's work has been a reflection of the complexity of contemporary culture. Her work is defined by a contrast between beauty and cultural references; in her case, the Holocaust. She puts this conflict on display in all her pieces, which offer evidence of our own ambivalence toward the beauty of artistic expression and the social impact it creates. Gold offers a sample book of the various graphics techniques depicting a variety of metal etchings, photoengraved-intaglio, engraved-intaglio, laser engraving, graphite on stone, silkscreen and graphite drawing on stone, and digital embroidery on cloth.

The interest in the recovery of historic memory found in testimonials, bundles and kept in stored documents, preserved and systematically classified and its artistic production, among other creative concerns, are some of the substantial motivation that are developed in Gold's work.

One of the distinctive characteristics of her investigation is the construction of aesthetic projects creating artistic models that might contribute to transfigure the language in favor of the work itself and its intentions starting from aesthetic models that perpetuate memory.

These works are particular as they look to reconvert the texts into images, given that the appropriate material, transformed and post-produced, has its origins in documents from written archives and manuscripts, most of them typographic, which accentuate the interpretative polysemy, metaphorical and conceptual. These search to retake the history of the documents in an artistic context, but also to narrate the hidden story behind the words; to make a story out of the truth of facts and declare or denounce them.

The exhibit is on view in Holocaust Museum Houston's Laurie and Milton Boniuk Resource Center and Library from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The library is closed Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free.

The exhibit is sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Bank of America and is part of the celebratory events of Mexico’s Independence Bicentennial and Centennial of its Revolution.

For more information, visit www.houstoncelebratesmexico2010.com.

Gold will be showing her complete exhibit alongside artist Naomi Siegmann at Canal Street Gallery from Feb. 25 through April 30, 2010.