Steve McClure, Untitled (Stage), 2012, Stone Lithograph hand printed on Magnani. Edition: 7  12 5/8 X 17 in.


Steve McClure: Mentiri

Vernissage: Friday, April 19, 2013, 5-8 PM

Exhibition: April 20 - May 18, 2013


I was in Montreal for the first time in 1991, and I discovered a church known as the Sailor's Church: Notre Dame de Bon Secours. I was in front of the subject of Steve McClure's work. I didn't know Steve at this time, but the subject of the work is not the artist; the subject is in front of him, or behind him, or above him; the subject belongs to his memory, it belongs to the collective memory where it can be shared by everyone; the subject is the two apples on a plate in front of Paul Cezanne.

Montreal is a city of fishermen from a time when boats were more useful and more dangerous than carriages. Montreal of the 18th century was a city of fishermen's widows, lost boats, stories of ship wrecks; the culture of disappearance.

That church was the home of all those lost hopes, all those tears, and of all that fear in front of a sea who eats its men and their boats. Hundreds of beautiful small ship models were suspended from the ceiling of this church; like leaves on the branches of a tree, with their names inscribed on the side, like little baby boats in a maternity ward.

I was struck by that vision that reappears now, in front of the work of Steve McClure, exhibited in the space of Bleu Acier in Tampa. MENTIRI, is, as you know, the infinitive of the Latin to lie, and because I am French, I will share with you a phrase of the great French writer, Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), who said: The art of lying in a loud voice, while telling the truth in a whisper.

With some drops of ink and a glass of water, Ships in a Box of Cardboard are the ultimate vision of our common tragedies. Homes, ghosts, ships, and hopes appear and disappear suddenly under the brush and the talent of Steve McClure. His play within the appearance and disappearance of the form-subject has deep roots in his artistic technique.  The way we transform each aspect of materiality, gives the artist the keys to the sense of his personal language. Nothing is less stable than water and ink together; it is a strange love affair, an event in perpetual progress to which we are invited.

The same with the Stage of the Opera House, an empty stage of course, with empty seats as well; the only reality of that kind of space is in its architecture. The presence of a strong and rich architecture underlines the fragility of the fiction, of the dream, of the hope, and of the belief, just as in a church. Aristotle has taught Steve McClure in a very distant past that nature abhors a vacuum and Steve uses this vacuum as a lie to create because to lie is to imagine.

Apologize, Pull Out Your Eyes, is the title of one of the series of work exhibited at Bleu Acier. I like the work of Steve because he leaves me the place to inscribe my own story, and that is the unique target of an authentic work of art.

Dominique Labauvie
Tampa, April 7 2013



Steve McClure lives and works in Brooklyn NY.  He is a graduate of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Steve received a Visual Arts fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and an Editions Residency from the Lower East Side Print Shop in NYC. He has exhibited nationally in the U.S. and his work is part of private and public collections, among which are The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, N.C


Bleu Acier is a Fine Art Print Publisher with an atelier that functions as a collaborative and contract studio owned and operated by Erika Greenberg-Schneider, and the show room exhibits works in all disciplines with a concentration in works on paper and prints by mid-career and established artists from the US and Europe, with an emphasis on Contemporary French Artists. Bleu Acier continues its commitment to bring International and National mid career and established artists to Tampa. For more information or images please contact Erika Schneider: 813.215.0622 or erika@bleuacier.com


Gallery Hours during exhibition:  
Saturdays: 11-5 PM
Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays: by appointment.



109 West Columbus Drive | Tampa, Florida | 33602
www.bleuacier.com | erika@bleuacier.com