after party at USA bar - Ave C btwn 2/3rd St.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Magic For Beginners
Bas Jan Ader, Olaf Breuning
Jennifer Cohen, Scott Hug
Kevin Lips, Niall McClelland,
Jesse McLean, Kristie Muller
Rbt. Sps., Brent Stewart
Curated by Jamie Sterns and Joseph Whitt
July 28 – August 26, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 28, 6-8pm
Historically, the formulas of Modernism have lent themselves to the imposition of structures on nature. Utilizing an economy of means, or a paring down of form, some artists have drawn attention to the processes and materials that they employ in order to comment on limitations inherent in human observation and experience. The impossibility of this search for certainty is prescient in a world rife with unforeseen technological advances and consequences. From Kurzweilian "singularities” to the embrace of dystopic or parallel hyper-realities, many artists today use Modernist tropes to draft odes to possible futures.
In the face of such infinitely malleable destinies, the ten artists selected for this exhibition remain undaunted. In bold, minimal and idiosyncratic terms, they propose new, decidedly un-grandiose, vernaculars through various mediums such as video, photography, and sculpture. Their works concern themselves with an intensely personal present tense, with lives lived and documented in real time. These works are inward, solipsistic, and in some instances, similar to an occult experience or an exercise in ritualized revelation. The art object is often left over from actions performed in service of an impossible quest, or crafted in playful celebration of it. These artists seem to exist in cultural peripheries, lobbing ruminations out of left fields, revealing epistemological truths—truths that have little or nothing to do with changing the world.
Exhibiting artists: Bas Jan Ader (born Winschoten, the Netherlands, 1942, lost at sea, 1975; artist's estate represented by Patrick Painter Gallery, Los Angeles); Olaf Breuning (lives and works in New York City; represented by Metro Pictures, New York); Jennifer Cohen (lives and works in New York City; represented by Salon 94, New York); Scott Hug (lives and works in New York City); Kevin Lips (lives and works in New York City); Niall McClelland (lives and works in Toronto, Canada); Jesse McLean (lives and works in Chicago, Illinois); Kristie Muller (lives and works in Toronto, Canada); Rbt. Sps. (lives and works in Murray, Kentucky); Brent Stewart (lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee)
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Timothy Hull – Warwick, NY
Timothy Hull's family graciously hosted the wedding party of TM & Liam this past weekend on their beautiful 200 acre 300+ year old apple orchard in Warwick, NY. Timothy gave me a private tour of their cottage on the hill with all of their awesome eccentric artworks and nick-nacks + Timothy's teenage bedroom.. it was hard to come back to NYC after a day and a half on this farm!
Nice Day For A Revolution*
Phone-hacking whistle-blower found dead
*installation shot from Too Much Too Little Too Late, John Connelly Presents, NYC (2007)
Monday, July 18, 2011
TM + Liam = Forever
This weekend I had the honor to be a guest at my dear friends, T.M. Davy & Liam O'Malley's wedding. It was the most beautiful wedding that I've ever witnessed set on a 300 year old apple orchard in Warwick, NY. T.M. and Liam met in high school 16 years ago. T.M. had a huge crush on Liam. They were both "straight" at the time. After high school both moved (separately) to NYC from Long Island where they met again on a subway platform. T.M. still had his crush on Liam and went for it! That was about 9 years ago. It's rare when you find the right guy! And now we have equal rights – perfect timing! :) I'm so happy for them!
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Borna Sammak
Considering all of the absurdities; like our ever increasing deficit or withholding 800 million in military aid to Pakistan – it's either join the Dark Side or die.. this bomber jacket by Sammak is howling poetry in the wind tunnel of our collective psyche. It's a great piece and reminds me of Jenny Holzer after a few bong hits. And look out for his video paintings jackets for Burton coming soon.. fall/winter 2012/13.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
TAKE-OUT
TAKE-OUT July 7 – August 20, 2011 Opening reception: Thursday July 7th 6-8pm*Andrew Edlin Gallery
134 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
ae@edlingallery.com
Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present TAKE-OUT, an exhibition of works by Lucky DeBellevue, Jeremy Everett, Rachel Howe, Max Razdow, Ben Schumacher, Ramon Vega, Lyndsy Welgos, Grant Worth & Micki Pellerano, curated by Scott Hug. These artists explore formal, conceptual and metaphorical ways of removing and reconsidering the relationships between the self, the real, the virtual and the other. As each new generation grows further removed and alienated from our natural environment, this exhibition offers a response to that estrangement and to the current, prevalent culture of consumption.
Since the 1990s, Lucky DeBellevue has made DIY works that involve mixing high and low art materials with an eye towards both formal and conceptual interests. Recently, he has been deconstructing found umbrellas, draping them as wall hangings that create free-form shapes. Each is printed on either side, so that both surfaces are covered and exposed according to it’s draping, rendering a utilitarian object useless in the service of art. But the recycling of a cheap umbrella also furthers an interest that the artist has in the use of mass manufactured ready-mades that are re-imagined. There also remains inherent in the object an evocation of its original use as something that covers and protects.
"Collaged Over Poster of a Statue of a Man on a Horse" (2009) is part of an ongoing project where DeBellevue collaborates by using other artworks, usually found and anonymous, to create a synthesis with the original artist and artwork using different methods and media. Lucky doesn't like to waste a thing.
Artist Jeremy Everett flooded his personal library, submerging volumes, manuals, and classics. Using the architecture and information of these books as raw material, Everett grows compositions of crystals and color from the existing ink in each book. “I am fascinated by books acting as systems of exchange. I want to republish these books, pass them through the filter of my studio, so they exist in a purely visual system.” As the crystals grow from the books, they become celebrated objects of information and suggest relics lost in a geological timeline.
Everett’s "buried drawings" of landmarks and figures serve as maps of decay, studies of details in a larger entropy. Each subject is photographed, printed and then buried for approximately 1-2 workdays. “I set up a grid in a garden plot and use a system very similar to that of agricultural production, but instead make drawings of a visual de-production.”
"Pipe Dream" (2010) is part of a larger series of monochromatic paintings each of which begin as drawings. Everett drafts autobiographical text onto the canvas, obscuring it through layers of graphite and physical intervention. By actively rubbing the lead into the surface, he denies access to the original form and meaning. The drawing becomes a painting, which is worked over physically until the surfaces shine - the artist’s physical motion only reflected in the remains of his action.
Rachel Howe identifies the disjunction between external appearances and internal, emotional realities. Howe wrote the Teenage Art Manifesto published in K48 No. 3: Teenage Rebel (2002). Self-doubt, inexperience and teenage angst are all themes running throughout her art. Her new works use hand-cut stencils of shapes and fonts, simulating a mechanical printing process, yet retaining her handcraft and creating a unique piece. Inspired by and sourcing from vintage fashion magazines and graphic design, Howe creates repetition of fragmented motifs, making a whole greater than its parts. A lot of the drawings use the word "NO" as a visual motif and as a simultaneous refusal of the piece itself. For "A Process of Withdrawal (Occult Abstraction 4)" (2011), a cutout pattern overlaid onto magazine pages makes an abstract pattern, blocking out the figural elements that would create a narrative.
In another work titled, "Soft Focus (Isabel)" (2010), Howe uses photography to emulate the look of photography of the past in an amateurish, homemade way - letting light leak in, allowing the camera to have some agency in making the photograph through accidents and her "inexpertness" in the same way the home-made stencils quickly fail and allow paint to leak out, creating random variations.
Pencil on paper is the most honest medium for "I Heart Transylvania" (2007) - an ongoing series exploring the apathy and excitement that is the teenage experience. This piece has the figurative element and lettering of the older drawings, but also a confusion of patterning and placement.
Max Razdow creates post-apocalyptic sci-fi narrative landscapes depicting the collective howl. In "The D33P" (2010-11) a series of drawings and printed poems, in his own words: “examines the neo-magical union of the human and the animal, as a way to populate the empty casket of virtuality with the lushness of nature in the depths of digital fantasy… following the choice of the self to move away from the apnea of the infinite, to find the cat mask and journey deep into the space of the bats, where the mask unfolds to become a million nested faces, a voice.” Razdow often pairs his works with poems. These ongoing and overlapping folklores tell stories of the dualities between man and nature, prophesizing doom and his own self-destruction while emphasizing reconstruction and balance.
Recent NYU MFA graduate, Ben Schumacher explores new ways to conceptualize and present art via the Internet. His work feels as if Schumacher extracted, repurposed and froze the digital experience in real time. Data sharing, 3-D Google warehouse, digital skins, and social networking capital all inform new ways of thinking about reality - mixing what is real with virtual simulations opening a “synthetic portal in-between a 'real' thing in the world and the creative representation of that thing. This paradox is only worked through if one is willing to think through the idea that, what one sees in front of one in the world right now may have mutated from Courbet’s day (which could be a terrifying idea to think through). The work involves a new type of 'realism' - a realism premised not on distinctions between real and virtual, but on the mixed reality thresholds between the two.” - Post Internet
Ramon Vega created a series of collages and sculptures that mine the language of marketing and advertising through a remix of forms. Vega describes the point where the world of fashion and sports intersects with politics and violence. Using these subjects as surrogates, Vega examines the way identity is created and disseminated in the public arena in popular culture. In Vega’s work "Win, Lose or Draw" (2011), the viewer becomes witness to a fictional sporting event that is about to begin or has just occurred. The empty stage is a site of expectation, anticipation and consumption. It is a fictional place of promise where one can train for success, compete and take-out their opponents. The spectacle has been removed and the spectators, like moths to the flame are drawn to the light.
In "Camino a la Sabiduria (Path to Knowledge)" (2011), sculptures made of ArtForum magazines are stacked as Modernist modular units. The system of information draws the viewer in through an aesthetic experience only to deny them access to the content except for carefully selected images Vega reconstitutes and repurposes through careful cropping and editing.
Lyndsy Welgos considers the function of photography or its dysfunction within art history paying special attention to its many taboos (like being a photographer in general) and the over emphasis of time as a Heideggerian springboard to achieve relevance in a contemporary art context. The continued search for identity and the freedom to use photographic materials interchangeably are core interests of her work. Welgos’ gradients, portraits, and abstractions consider darkroom practices and Adobe Photoshop tools as one-in-the-same. "Spilling Circles" (2010) and "Valerie" (2010) are built around a framework of blurring, obscuring and avoiding implied elements of time. In Valerie, bright gradient layers separate the viewer from the subject with material abstraction, which takes the subject out of his/her time-based realism and into a meta-physical realm.
Using the Impossible Project’s "Fade to Black" Polaroid film, Grant Worth & Micki Pellerano rendered magical intentions for loved ones, the universe, and their own personal trajectories. Rituals were performed in both of their living spaces and around New York City. Combining the appropriate correspondences related to the planetary qualities of each intention, talismans were created in the form of Polaroid photographs. The title of the series is an unpronounceable string of sigils specifically constructed for the individual talismans. Left alone to develop, Fade to Black Polaroid film turns completely black within twenty-four hours. By documenting each ritual with film, the ephemeral nature of the prayer is extended, and the spell gains strength through its reproduction and the psychic energy of every observer. The complete series records the ten cast spells and the offering of the sigils at the closing of the final ceremony.
*In addition to the show, Andrew Edlin Gallery + K48 have organized a TAKE-OUT after party at Youth Group Gallery directly following the opening reception. Artworks will be on view by 3 young artists: Jake Courtois, Tania Cross, and Ben Dowell. Courtois will perform as KOORTWAH after, Cross and Dowell make up the experimental sound art duo, THE CRIPPLER and will perform new work.
YOUTH GROUP GALLERY
407 Johnson Ave. Brooklyn, NY (Morgan L stop)
www.youthgroupgallery.com
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