The Wine Dark Sea, Photographs by Mikael Kennedy

Melanie Flood Projects is pleased to announce its latest exhibition, a new body of work from Mikael Kennedy’s The Odysseus series entitled “The Wine Dark Sea.” The title of the series refers to the passage in Homer’s epic tale in which Odysseus sits by the shore, captive of the goddess Calypso, yearning to return to home to his family and lands. This is where the journey begins. The images represented in “The Wine Dark Sea” are American coastlines photographed between 2006 and 2009. As Kennedy explains, “The American frontier, once viewed as the Wild West and the new world, is no longer seen as uncharted territory or undiscovered land.” This collection revisits that perspective, using landscape as the starting point of a philosophical journey and a reckoning with nature. In the artist’s experience as a modern day cipher, The Odyssey becomes a journey through the vistas of America, a search for renewed vision of the land that carries both the excitement and isolation of exploration. The photographs displayed in rough wooden frames are installed as tableaux in a studio with pieces collected from the artist’s travels. Reflecting Joseph Campbell’s theory of the adventurer bringing back talismans into the “wasteland” of society as the very purpose of the journey, Kennedy’s trinkets and photographs construct and capture the idea of exploration. The artist has recreated the walls of his home at Melanie Flood Projects, hanging feathers, crystals, tiny stones, bits of bone, and other remnants of nature and of the road; a tactile extension of the images he has gathered in this series. A live performance by musician and friend Matt Bauer (www.mattbauermusic.com) will coincide with the exhibition opening, pairing haunting Americana folk music with the dark nostalgia of Kennedy’s atmospheric images. ABOUT THE ARTIST Mikael Kennedy (b.1979) is an artist born and raised in Randolph, Vermont. With a focus on the storytelling aspect of photography, his work has been shown in galleries across the United States and is represented in several private collections. His Polaroid prints are part of the Boston Photographic Resource Center’s Museum Collection. His photographic stories have been featured in magazines internationally and in limited edition artists books that can be found at select boutiques, bookstores, and online at www.mikaelkennedy.com. ABOUT THE GALLERY Melanie Flood Projects is a contemporary art project space operating in the Brooklyn home of Melanie Flood. The gallery brings artists and art lovers together in a space that juxtaposes the aesthetic dialogue of fine art with the haphazard and personal existence of the domestic setting, highlighting contrasts and commonalities in unexpected ways. The aim of Melanie Flood Projects is to create a fresh and informal meeting point for looking at, reflecting on, and talking about art.