Brooklyn, NY (October 5, 2005) - The Rotunda Gallery's upcoming exhibition Time's Arrow -> Twelve Random Thoughts on Beauty will probe beauty's enduring yet dynamically changing value to artists, a debate which remains pressing in today's discourse on contemporary art. The exhibition thematically responds to various historical comments on beauty, presenting a range of works whose incontrovertible elegance, beauty and opulence belie a more serious social, cultural or political agenda. The exhibition will open on Thursday, November 17, 2005 and run through December 23, 2005.

Curator and Rotunda Visual Arts Director Janine Cirincione has assembled a dynamic, evocative group of artists. Ambreen Butt, Rina Banerjee, Kamrooz Aram and Chitra Ganesh combine a contemporary sensibility with the superb technique and storytelling power of civilizations. Butt studied Indian miniature painting in Pakistan and now incorporates the technique into her politically charged collages, while Aram embraces Islamic geometric patterns in his compositions. Ganesh's site-specific installation inspired by Indian mythology and Rina Banerjee's goddesses gone wild celebrate the feminine while subtly exploiting the seductive impulse of the exotic.

Fred Tomaselli, Adriana Arenas, and Rosemary Laing employ beauty as a metaphor for escapism. Tomaselli creates an artificial paradise of color and pattern composed of painted pharmaceutical products and their real-life counterparts. Laing's flying brides hover above super saturated landscapes, while Arenas' karaoke video presents cotton candy characters backed by a soundtrack of Latin love songs. Laura Letinsky and Walker and Walker critique art historical notions of beauty. Letinsky's still-life series Morning and Melancholia captures the post-bacchanal moment, depicting empty glasses, stained tablecloths and half-eaten meals, capturing the tension between ripeness and decay. Walker and Walker subtly challenge Romantic notions of the sublime in their neon sign sculpture, Twilight.

Another group of artists navigate the landscape of contemporary consumer culture through an aesthetic lens. Penelope Umbrico's enlarged photographs of mirrors taken from furniture catalogues confuse and distort our expectations of happiness, hearth and home. Japanese sculptor Yuken Teruya revitalizes the spirit of the forest within discarded shopping bags, creating a miniature interior landscape of paper cutouts and light.

For some artists, beauty is a tool used to subvert and resist dominant social paradigms. Sarah Gregg Millman's video piece The Headliner features the artist embedded in a war zone, lip synching Marlene Dietrich's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." The hooded figures in Kent Henricksen's ornate but unsettling Rococo landscapes resonate with contemporary political undertones. The intricate patterning in Tina Potter's collages mask the original source, photographs of garbage. Claudia Hart and Michael Ferraro's animated Sleeping Beauty, upends the relationship between spectator and spectacle as the computer character responds to the viewer.

Rotunda will host an Exhibition Preview and Gala Dinner on November 3, 2005, honoring Martha A. Rubin. The event will begin at 6:00 p.m. at our dramatic, award-winning gallery space and will include an art sale featuring works by the exhibiting artists. For tickets and information, please contact Sharon Polli at 718.875.4047 x11 or visit us online at www.briconline.org/rotunda.

THE ROTUNDA GALLERY, an award-winning not-for-profit exhibition space, has exhibited the work of over 2,000 artists - from Brooklyn's most exciting emerging talents to its most prominent artists. Each year, the Gallery's innovative arts education program provides services to over 9,000 New York City students. THE ROTUNDA GALLERY is a project of BRIC/BROOKLYN INFORMATION AND CULTURE, an organization founded to present cultural, educational, and informational programs that enhance the quality of life for residents of Brooklyn.