Rosson Crow "Madame Psychosis Holds a Séance" at Honor Fraser

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963, was a traumatic event in the history of the United States. Some have said that the assassination of Kennedy was the date that America lost its innocence. Rosson Crow's third solo exhibition at Honor Fraser, "Madame Psychosis Holds a Seance" explores and mines the idea of the trauma and the corresponding ;paranoia that emerged after the death of John F. Kennedy. The exhibition explores the trauma of America's past through the character of Madame Psychosis, who obsesses with the assassination and is attempting to communicate with John F. Kennedy through a seance. The origin of the exhibit comes from a tabloid headline, "JFK forgives Lee Harvey," where a medium claims that she spoke with John F. Kennedy and he forgave Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who killed President Kennedy.

The idea of a seance is not only to communicate with the departed, it also an attempt to reconcile with the one who's lost. Crow's striking and mysterious protagonist—whose name is derived from David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest and is a play on the term "metempsychosis", also known as reincarnation—is a character whose sense of herself is inextricably bound up with the events and conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's death. The video is Crow's first foray into video art. The paintings act as both backdrop in the video, and as works on their own where the spirit of the late President lingers throughout the painting space, The works, particularly the video, are allegorical to the past and present condition of America and how it relates to what is lost. Recently artists have dealt with recent events such as September 11th and the Iraq War. The origins of a kind of wound that's been prevalent in political and historical discourse is the Assassination of President Kennedy. Crow engages in this origin. The artist grew up in Dallas, so there is a certain biographical connection to the character in the video. In the end, Crow is asking a fundamental question; Can this country reconcile and heal the wound that Assassination of JFK left?