Erin Cosgrove: In Defense of Ghosts

In Defense of Ghosts  is an exhibition of new videos, sculpture and drawings. The Urfathers are five low-relief, polychrome wood sculptures depicting the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln as violent, celestial deities. Each figure—Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln—is carved in a slurry of ancient and colonial 

styles, as the  Ur-  (“first,” “oldest,” or “primal”) fathers of the nation. Ancient Assyrian bas-reliefs, Japanese Yokai, gothic grotesques, and Himalayan Buddhas are referenced in the brightly painted sculptures, which are standing on, or supported by, a cast of unfortunate mortals and downtrodden souls. No longer leaders of the Enlightenment, 

these founding deities are mooning us—in some cases “tea-bagging” the very people supporting their weight. The Urfathers reflect the fractious political zeitgeist. Two new videos, In Defense of Ghosts and The March of History, will be screened in an adjacent gallery. The video works challenge Western notions of the basis of social and political 

order. Narrated in PBS-style, or borrowing the teachings of Chinese philosopher Mo Tzu, the videos satirize the ruling class. The Urfathers, ancient deities updated in the forms of the Founding Fathers, step out of the video works, straddling the content of both.

Cosgrove’s new works continue her ongoing investigation of political themes. Her practice aims to move beyond reductive bumper sticker clichés and the commodification of protest, to challenge the propensity of political rhetoric. Her work in all media, from drawing and video, to colorful sculptural forms, strives to be inviting to the viewer, but 

still pointed in tone and ambition.