Here is a review by Dr. José Rodiero

"IS CHRIST ... POLITICALLY ... PROPHETICALLY ... CORRECT?"

Visual art show by post-pop artist Ultra Violet.

2004 years have elapsed since Christ's birth.  Yet His name, His historical being and His image are on the news.  And yet, people are trying through advances in science and art to determine the various meanings behind His significance. For example, consider Mel Gibson's recent blockbuster film The Passion of the Christ, as well as 'Superstar' Ultra Violet's current exhibition entitled "Is Christ Politically … Prophetically… Correct?", which testifies to Ultra Violet's insightful and preoccupation with the personage of Christ and the global implications of His alleged life, death, resurrection and return in the Millennium. The title of Ultra Violet's show asks timely and topical questions. "What is right, what is true, in politics or in religions?"   With evidence of fanaticism contorting into terrorism with the mass media and technology endowing philistines and barbarians with grand illusions of taste and intellect, while actually catering to democratic banalities, and the lowest common denominator, who is to say that, the majority, the "vox populi" is necessarily right?

If one agrees with Marcel Duchamp that the most important part of any artwork is its title, then the way to critique Ultra Violet's current show is to deconstruct the title of her exhibition and to investigate the etymology of the term "politically correct!" , thereby hermeneutically unlocking the essentials that are imbedded within her art.  The idea of "political correctness" began in the 1920s.  It was fostered by a group of Marxist intellectuals at Frankfurt University's School of Social Research.  They believed that images and words were powerful conveyers of political intentions, and that people should self-censor their language and image choices in order to avoid offending other people or creating hostile social climates that might jeopardize social cohesion, collective cooperation, work production, and other Marxist economic and societal concerns. Hitler shut them down for being generally a Jewish and Marxist enterprise, they departed for New York; and there they joined the New School of Social Research.    With time, in the US and in other liberal democracies, their ideas evolved into the chic leftist doctrine of being "politically correct."

As an answer, and as a soothing balm placed upon civilization's injured aesthetics (e.g. the current loss of pure Beauty), Ultra Violet proposes a voyage, a flight into what is above us.   Her art reexamines the iconology of the "sky", as a symbolic conduit conveying many significations and aspirations, e.g. hope, heaven, harbor, happiness, as well as focusing on that airy region from which (some believe) Christ will descend in the latter days.  Ultra Violet invites us to look up with new eyes, experiencing the sky's panoramic, expansive and sublime phenomenon anew.  Ultra Violet's highly intuitive genius is revealing a visionary art, which opens horizonless vistas.  Like all the radar systems in the world that are constantly tracking the heavens for signs of life, asteroids, comets, satellites, missiles, bombers, and Kamikaze pilots, these are Apocalyptic days that require humanity's fixed heavenward attention as well; we should all be looking up. Ultra Violet's show is an installation of hundreds of feet of skies, comprised of two-and three dimensional images using a wide range of materials, including paint, found-objects, collages, hand-manipulated pigments, assemblages, amazers, and computer-generated images.

Ultra Violet's show is at New Jersey City University's 'The Gallery,' Jersey City, NJ; it will run from March 18 to April 8, 2004. The March 18th opening (4:00 -7:00 PM) is free to the public. Gallery hours MON.-FRI. 11 A.M. - 4:00P.M. The address is 100 Culver, near the corner of 2039 Kennedy Blvd. Gallery Director Midori Yoshimoto 201 200 2197.

A Brief Critique of Ultra Violet's NJCU Exhibition by Dr. José Rodeiro,Coordinator of Art History,

New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, March 15, 2004.