Prestel Defying Gravity

The centenary of the Wright brother's outlandish feat prompted the North Carlolina Museum of Art to organize an exhibition celebrating their crativity. The show and this accompanying, fully illustrated publication show how the human obsession with flight has provides fertile ground for contemporary artists working in disparate media. Works by artists ranging from Panamarenko and Malcolm Morley to Albert Chong and Vera Lutter illustrate the protean response flight has engendered. The exhibition notes the paradoxical gifts of technology and the psychic benefits of fantasy concoctions (hybrids merging man, machine, and natural fliers like birds, bats, und butterflies). The cocial commenteary of Roger Brown and Phong Nguyen and the evealing neutrality of Fischli and Weiss coexist with the laconix wisdom of Ed Ruscha and the sleek abstractions of James Rosenquist in this ecumenical study of the impact of aviation on modern society and the new vantage point it literally and figuratively makes possible.