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The tragedy that has occurred in Paris follows an election in Poland just days earlier that has driven the country in retreat from its just over decade-long membership in the European Union. Paradoxically, this also happens to be just when its western city, Wrocław, is about to become the annually selected 2016 Cultural Capital of Europe. Among what I present in this just completed website are stories of what fatefully brought me into unintended conflicts with both societies that have inevitably served as hard life lessons.
As such, I now realize that a central purpose and message of my life’s work concerns to what extent blind stereotyping scapegoats and sometimes annihilates innocent people and that how we grapple with this may determine the future of the human race.
A long odyssey in my life that taught me these lessons began thirty years ago with a published review of my first ever solo art exhibition in Santa Monica, California. It concluded with a bold statement:
“This installation starts from the premise that all systems in this world are interrelated and interdependent – a fundamental truth which Eastern philosophy is based upon and which scientists have only recently begun to recognize. In bringing these issues to the fore, Abrams’ installation offers an important opportunity to reflect on the current state of world affairs.”
The result of this exhibition, several west coast critics, curators, art dealers and art collectors inspired me to leave my native home of Los Angeles armed with direct referrals that they provided to art dealers, curators, critics and museum directors in New York, London and Paris. I had no notion at that time that I would end up living in New York, France, Spain and Poland for most of the next quarter of a century.
I also had no idea that in having to live up to the quote above that I was about to embark on a steep learning curve concerning global affairs that would pit me in the midst of incomprehensible circumstances precisely during several profound historical moments and events.
This website documents not only the work that I created during this extensive period of my life but the real life lessons I inevitably received along the way. As a result, my artistic expression has become a form of a personal documentation of events as they transpired. Not only do I describe these experiences as multimedia presentations, but I relate stories behind both my artistic creations and a culturally-related business venture I owned and operated in a post-communist country as it engaged in a dramatic socio-economic transformation.
Among the events that I not only witnessed firsthand but was profoundly affected by are:
– 1985 – 86 New York City’s East Village art scene
– 1989 celebration of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution
– 1989 nonviolent revolution in Poland, destruction of the Berlin Wall and liberation of Central Europe
– 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union
– 1990 – 92 urban renewal of Barcelona associated with the Olympics
– 1992 establishment of the European Union
– 2004 Poland’s acceptance as a European Union member
On this site I tell two stories:
“Caught in the Crossfire – Je suis Banned in France” which is associated with the 1989 Bicentennial of the French Revolution 2. “From the Red Star to the Golden Arches” which is primarily about my engagement in the restoration of a ghost-infested medieval tower where from 2005 until 2011 I created, owned and operated a multicultural arts center and restaurant
Also included on this site are:
– new documentation of an ongoing multimedia project begun over thirty years ago called, “The Underground Cathedral,” which is linked to a recently updated website by the same title that was created in 1998
– photography and stained glass artworks that I created both before and during my long saga in Europe
Finally, presented here are 3D rendering slide shows of Abrams’ Tower West, a new private multimedia gallery soon to be constructed in Los Angeles.
November 2015
