OPENING RECEPTION Sunday, December 1st 6:00pm - 8:00pm 

RAQUE FORD: Yeah. Some of the fan letters people would write just had so much obsession and love for these people. It was so beautiful, so that’s kind of how it started. And then I was making these plexiglas pieces and listening to a lot of Usher. With R&B songs they use a lot of grind, or words that are often in there, and I would put that into the pieces. I did the show at Soloway in Brooklyn, and I felt like all the pieces looked like they were for someone, or there was a character. And that kind of started me thinking maybe I should write for the woman I think it would be for. Kind of like how people talk about fashion lines, like who’s this woman? I think that’s kind of how it started with the Beyonce piece. So that was the first time I was like I’m going to write a whole… Well my friend was like you should write an erotic novel for this thing. I tried to and I was like I can’t write that much, a whole novel is hard!

Opens Tonight, Feb 26, 6-8p: "Krypta"  by collaborative group DRAOK Soloway Gallery, 348 South 4th St., Brooklyn, NY Sat & Sun 12-5p, Subway: L to Lorimer 347-776-1023 Giorgio Guidi and Marta Pierobon formed Draok in 2010 to work collaboratively on shared interests including architecture, perception and social systems. Both Guidi and Peirobon have long been fascinated by the secretive and hidden: crypts, cults, ghosts and memories. Italian cities are built on the foundations of previous settlements--Etruscan, Roman and medieval--producing a stratification of civilizations. New buildings rise on the ruins of the old, burying earlier structures in rubble and debris. In Italian Catholicism there is a long tradition of covering and hiding the past; it is deeply embedded in the hierarchy of the church. Beneath the modern city lies the still present and living past and its treasures, relics, and corpses.   Draok's work is an attempt to excavate, archive and rebuild this hidden past. Both Guidi and Pierobon grew up in the city of Brescia, outside Milan. The cathedral of St. Filastrio in Brescia is an architectural composite, a layering of different historical forms and styles that make up the present building, from the secretive crypt to the public place of worship. For their exhibition at Soloway, the artists have rebuilt this labyrinthine structure, as a theater set for the present. -thru Mar 30