E.V. Day's Divas Ascending at Houston Grand Opera !

Salomon Contemporary and Texas Gallery are pleased to announce that seven of E.V. Day's Divas Ascending sculptures are currently on exhibit at Houston Grand Opera to celebrate the commencement of HGO's 2012-2013 season. The exhibition also conicides with HGO's production of La Bohème that runs through November 10, and The Italian Girl in Algiers, that runs October 26 through November 11, 2012.

The works will be on view through Saturday, November 10, 2012 and will include Violetta from Verdi's La Traviata, Mimi from Puccini's La Bohème, Bizet's Carmen, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Cinderella, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Hats, a work comprised of hats from various opera productions. E.V. Day says, "I wanted the sculptures to reflect and refract the specific roles the costumes had played...I wanted to reanimate those lives and give them a future form."

Divas Ascending is a series of 14 suspended sculptures made with costumes from the New York City Opera's archives, a collection comprised of wardrobes from prominent international opera houses. Mimi and Carmen come from the New York Metropolitan Opera, Pagliacci from Deutsche Opera in Berlin, Cinderella from the Royal Opera House in Covent Gardens, and Violetta from the Vienna State Opera.

Originally commissioned in 2009, Divas Ascending was first exhibited in the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center for the 2010 season of the New York City Opera. Since then, various works from the series have been shown throughout the country. Presented by Salomon Contemporary and Art Without Walls, the series traveled to the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, Louisville from April through December 2011. Carmen, Merry Widow, and Hats, were on view at Southern Methodist University, Dallas from April through September 2012. Cinderella, Mimi, Don Giovanni and Pagliacci were on display at the Rosewood Crescent Hotel, Dallas from March through July 2012. Recently, Merry Widow was on display in the main hall of the Texas Contemporary Art Fair, October 18 -21, 2012. HGO previously exhibited Violetta during the run of La Traviata from January 27 through February 12, 2012.

E.V. Day received her MFA in sculpture from Yale in 1995. Bombshell, the first sculpture in her Exploding Couture series from 1999, was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, and is now in the museum's permanent collection. Day has had numerous solo exhibitions including the 2001 installation G- Force at the Whitney Museum at Altria, a ten-year survey exhibition in 2004 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York, and Bride Fight at the Lever House in New York City in 2006. Day's work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the New York Public Library, and numerous private collections.

For further information please contact:

James Salomon: (917) 617-0828 / james@salomoncontemporary.com Nancy Douthey: (713) 524-1593 / nancy@texgal.com