Beware of the Year 7000

Art School faculty member and figurative sculpture guru Janice Mauro has embarked on an incredible journey into the future. Beginning in 2009, Janice and collaborator Joanne Pagano Weber began exploring the artifacts uncovered at the site of a future archaeological dig. This month, the ongoing project will be visible to those of us dwelling in 2014 at exhibitions across two Connecticut galleries.

Read more about this project including the artists' statement from bewareoftheyear7000.com:

"Janice Mauro and collaborator Joanne Pagano Weber present “Beware of the Year 7000,” a mixed media installation which expands upon “The Tidal Decade,” hosted by Silvermines’s Director’s Choice to delighted audiences in 2009. Art 101 Gallery held a coordinating exhibit in Brooklyn and visitors were encouraged to “make the pilgrimage.” 

The ever-growing urgency of the ramifications of global warming and corporate greed, along with the evident loss of one’s humanity, provoke our ongoing collaboration. The work will comprise mixed media: sculpture, painting, voice, and text. 

The meaning of sculptures of an evolving robotic race is revealed through a series of letters by two fictional artists, along with their paintings. The correspondence, which thematically explores the human condition circa the year 7000 is a lifeline for the artists, who describe a horrific period of future history where humanity repeats its tragic exploitation of the living planet. The content of the sculpture and the painting in this show is nothing less than the loss of the human soul and the fight to preserve it.

Our ongoing work reopens an uncomfortable wound for examination and presents a fresh way to bring all-important humor and self criticism to the table. We have seen the positive results of engaging audiences by resonating the content of our art with their lives, allowing them to discover the narrative as they move through the show. The use of found objects to create futuristic sculptures, gadgets, and paintings reflects and subverts today’s obsession with technology through comedic social criticism.

The project is inherently educational as a wake-up call and a speculative journey into the unknown. As we consciously experience a monumental shift in our planet’s evolution due to climate change, City Lights Gallery and Trailer Box Gallery presents Beware of the Year 7000, where installation artists Janice Mauro and Joanne Pagano Weber ask the question, if corporations are people, too, what if they lose their humanity? Art lovers, thinkers, prophets, or gamers, look no further."

City Lights Gallery, Bridgeport, CT opening reception 5:30-8:30PM, 9/25, on view through 10/23/14
Trailer Box Gallery, Danbury, CT opening reception 5:00-8:00PM 9/27, on view through 11/1/14

"It’s the second melting of the polar icecap. The power of the few dictate the blueprint of a resurgent planet depleted once again. All resources are up for grabs as the human race divides along biological / robotic fault lines. While multitudes transition becoming semi-human mechanisms under the control of an artificial brain, two artists continue their work in hiding, corresponding by the only thing they have left – their creativity."