"Under a Dismal Boston Skyline" exhibition opens to the public

September 14–October 28, 2018 | Opening Reception: Thurs., September 13 @ 6:00-8:00 p.m. Stone Gallery 855 Commonwealth Avenue Tuesday–Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m. Under a Dismal Boston Skyline examines the city as witness to intensely concentrated moments of artistic experimentation over the last several decades. The exhibition reexamines a group of practitioners working in the late 1970s and 1980s, collectively known as the Boston School. Considering resonances between this group and other iconoclastic artists working outside of Boston’s culturally conservative mainstream, the exhibition connects the Boston School to other artists in the city who have set their own terms for art, life, and community. Taking its title from a photograph by the late Boston School artist Mark Morrisroe, Under a Dismal Boston Skyline proposes a loose lineage of artists from the late 1970s to the present, tracing affinities in materials and artistic practices. With a particular focus on photography, video, and performance, the works in the exhibition challenge archetypes of identity, gender, and community. Across the decades, a rapidly changing city, at once dismal and beautiful, hostile and nurturing, cultivated Boston’s counter-cultural underground. Under the city’s skyline, and in different circumstances and time periods, the artists in this exhibition sought to represent their friends, families, haunts, homes, lovers, and selves.