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Art
Hot Ticket: Dark art
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published November 10, 2005
Arnold Mesches, a Gainesville artist, has had a distinguished career, with more than 113 solo exhibitions since 1946. His work has mostly been figurative, with a fascinatingly macabre quality. But he garnered more than the usual national attention with a work created several years ago using pages from the 760-page file the FBI had accumulated on him for almost 30 years, suspecting him of un-American activities. Under the Freedom of Information Act, he obtained it in 1999 and combined elements of it with collaged news clippings, photos and other ephemera. It created a sensation when it was shown at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art's P.S. 1.
He has moved on - or back - with a series of paintings that uses circus imagery in service to a nihilist world view that reminds one of Goya's Black Paintings. A group of them is on view at Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art, 556 S Pineapple Ave., Sarasota, through Nov. 19. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Call (941) 366-2093.
- LENNIE BENNETT, Times art critic
[Last modified November 9, 2005, 10:39:08]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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