NEW ORLEANS, LA.- Jonathan Ferrara Gallery announces that gallery artist Dan Tague is a featured artist in Prospect.2 New Orleans Biennial. Tague joins twenty-seven other featured artists from around the world in Prospect.2, the largest international biennial exhibition of contemporary art held in the U.S. Her installation, Department of Civil Obedience, will be on exhibit in the Contemporary Arts Center's St. Joseph Street gallery from October 20, 2011- January 29, 2012.

Dan Tague
Dan Tague has an MFA in Studio Arts from The University of New Orleans, and is a multi-media artist, curator, and activist whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of several awards and residencies including grants from The Joan Mitchell Foundation and Pollock Krasner Foundation, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the La Napoule Art Foundation in France.

Dan Tague's work is multi-faceted. He is well known for his dollar bill works that are a hybrid of sculpture, photography and political statements. Tague's installations and other works often address the issues of our day by rendering visual equivalents by the most powerful means necessary. Installations, photography and artistic activism are his means of confronting and responding to the concerns of today's world.

Tague's work has been exhibited across the US including Exit Art, DUMBO Arts Center, LMCC, Bronx River Arts Center, The Soap Factory in Minneapolis; Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University; Ballroom Marfa and Civilian Art Projects in Washington D.C. Several notable publications have featured Tague's work, including ArtForum, The Times-Picyaune, and The Washington Post.

Tague's work is in numerous public and private collections including The Whitney Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, the Sanam Vaziri Quraishi Foundation, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Daniel Loeb and The Louisiana State Museum.

Dan Tague lives and works in New Orleans, LA and is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery

Prospect.2
Founded by the curator Dan Cameron, Prospect New Orleans is one of the leading biennials of international contemporary art in the United States. Conceived in the tradition of the great international biennials, such as the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo, Prospect New Orleans showcases new artistic practices from around the world in settings that are both historic and culturally exceptional, and contributes to the cultural economy of New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf region by spurring cultural tourism and bringing international attention to the area's vibrant visual arts community.

In its inaugural year, Prospect.1 New Orleans featured 81 artists who exhibited at 24 venues throughout the city, occupying a combined 200,000 square feet of space spread widely over miles of the city's eclectic and historic neighborhoods. From November 2008 through January 2009, Prospect.1 attracted 42,000 individual visitors (88,000 admissions), generating over $23 million in economic activity.

Prospect.2 is now scheduled to open to the public on October 22, 2011, and will be on view until January 29, 2012. The current list of artists includes 27 artists from nine countries, including the United States, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Japan, Chile, and Vietnam including Sophie Calle, Francesco Vezzoli, William Pope L., Nick Cave, William Eggleston, Ivan Navarro and Jennifer Steinkamp.

In keeping with Prospect's commitment to the promotion of the visual art community in New Orleans, this year's biennial will feature work by several artists who live and work in the city, as well as a variety of site-specific projects inspired by the city's distinctive history and culture and conceived specifically for the city of New Orleans. Prospect New Orleans is founded on the principle that art engenders social progress.

The Department of Civil Obedience

In this presentation, The Department of Civil Obedience proudly unveils archives from two of their strongest initiative programs: The Young Patriots Initiative and the Cars for Crisis Program.

The Young Patriots Initiative, established in the 1980's to reduce juvenile delinquency, encourages private partnerships in the delivery of services for the prevention and treatment* of juvenile delinquency in order to alleviate taxpayer burden. It is mandatory for each YPI entrant, whether initiated by free will or coercion, to consign the civilian clothing worn upon entry in exchange for the official uniform. These articles of individuality are then stitched together into the ultimate symbol of "The Greater Good" (see Young Patriots Flag, circa. 1984)

Also on display from the Cars for Crisis Program: a Crisis Car prototype from the $20 million scrappage** program set up by the USDCO in the summer of 2006 at bequest of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as a means to solve the rampant problem of homelessness post-Katrina. This program has the dual aim of stimulating the automobile industry and meeting the demands for additional adequate housing for the displaced population. More than 3,000 flood-damaged cars were converted into individual shelters throughout the New Orleans area.

This historical repository is offset by large scale renderings of the Dominator Plaques, designed through an effort on part of the Department of Civil Obedience to enhance civic pride.

Also included in the exhibition is an artwork entitled American Muscle executed upon commission by New Orleans artist Dan Tague, which renders the tenets of American lives and politics: Morality, Economy, and War. The American Eagle, a symbol of the Nation is fittingly rendered upon another iconic symbol, the hood of a '69 Pontiac Firebird.

*The term "treatment" includes but is not limited to medical, educational, special education, social, psychological, and corrective guidance designed to protect the public. All corrective measures are approved by the majority congressional standards.

** A scrappage program is a government budget program to promote the replacement of old vehicles with modern vehicles.

For more information about The Department of Civil Obedience, please visit www.usdco.org.

To view an interview with Dan Tague presented by The Department of Civil Obedience, please visit www.usdco.org.