THE CORPSES

For almost two decades and ongoing, painter Laura Bell and poet Ian Ganassi have been mailing between them the collaborative collage/assemblage series THE CORPSES, a title derived from the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse.  Pop culture, politics, religion, and poetry make appearances, and recurring images and phrases create echoes and connections. Called “joyously Fluxus-like” by Robert Shuster in the Village Voice and described by writer H. Byron Earhart as going “beyond collaborative to a kind of conspiratorial imagination,” each piece reflects a process that has retained its initial sense of play, while also reflecting battles over the obliteration of a passage of paint or text or the declaring of a piece finished.