DOMINIC ALLELUIA with COLLABORATIVE VIDEOS by SUSAN ALLELUIA

BREAKING NEWS

MARCH 1 -  April 5, 2014

For over 5 decades Dominic Alleluia has been creating a body of work that includes painting, sculpture, drawing, assemblage, collage, installation, mail art, dance, music, sound poetry, and video / film with the latter being a collaboration with Susan Alleluia.  Alleluia describes his own art practice as a “commitment to total epic art making”.    

In the context of his  “Gesamtkunstwerk” commitment to his work, we come to his current exhibition, Breaking News, where he continues his ongoing cultural critique of a society bombarded by mass advertisements which glorifies material wealth above the human condition. In Breaking News, Alleluia mines the ports of Asia for detritus materials such as advertisements, newsprint, headlines, fashion magazines, travel ephemeral, etc, that he then cuts, chops, tears, paste, destroys, and ultimately forms into exquisitely poignant collages, paintings and assemblages. In what can be seen as a helter skelter tableaux, Alleluia is at ease working and combining different styles which includes figurative, abstract expressionistic, and formalist geometric. Demanding and rigorous, Alleluia’s current works does not shy away from the “breaking news” such as historically relevant Tiananmen Square uprising, to more current events such as the Pussy Riot imprisonment and the Edward Snowden mass surveillance scandal.

Dominic Alleluia was born in New York City in 1937.  After traveling the world with the US Navy, he settled in San Francisco in 1958 where he currently lives and works with his wife and collaborator, Susan Alleluia.  He has studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Art Academy, and the University of California Extension in San Francisco under Fred Reichman and Sidney Gordin. Selected solo exhibitions include A440 Gallery, Southern Exposure both in  San Francisco, CA, Window Installation at Franklin Furnace, NYC and La Positas College in Livermore, CA. Selected group exhibitions include the Bayennale, Oakland, CA, Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute, Paule Anglim Gallery, Intersection for the Arts,  and ATA Gallery all in San Francisco. His sound works have been exhibited in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. He has participated in Mail Art exhibitions worldwide since 1977. He was the co-producer of the West Coast International Sound Poetry Festival at la Mamelle and was part of the “Alternative Spaces Retrospective” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. With dancer-choreographer Susan Alleluia, he has collaborated on performances, films, videos, and installations in various San Francisco and Los Angeles theaters and art spaces.  His interventions/ performances on institutional critique in front of museums and in art fairs are legendary.