Dawit L. Petros
Franklin Art Works
Minneapolis, MN
Dawit L. Petros exhibits two multiple-panel, photographic works created during his recent travels to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Dakar, Senegal.
Two 24-panel works, titled Addis/Chrome No. 4, 24 Ready found colour and exterior walls on the way around the boundaries and Dakar/Chrome No. 3, 24 Ready found colour and exterior walls on the way around the boundaries, are projects rooted in photography that that encompass painting, sculpture, architecture and installation. By using a highly formal language to investigate place, a parallel strategy for applying photography and extrapolating the histories of a specific location are proposed. The working strategy involves a series of walks in which photographs of color and related objects such as architectural fragments, fabrics, and refuse are collected. These photographs are transferred to the computer and their colors are sampled to create monochromatic fields.
The final components are close-up images of the walls of buildings that border the neighborhoods in which the walks occur.
Accompanying these works are two large triptychs, Demarcation (Drawing a Line From Sand to Sea), Pointes Des Almadies, Dakar, Senegal, December 18, 2010 and Demarcation (Painting Sea on Land), Asmara Road, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Custom Blue Paint, Red Sear Water, Red Soil, December 12, 2010. The triptychs are derived from a set of discrete performances by the artist carried out in Ethiopia and Senegal.
