Alejandro Cardenas

Medusa Flag, 2010, Pen, ink, watercolor and gouache on paper, 30 x 30 inches

Alejandro Cardenas
NARCOMEDUSA

January 30th -- February 28th 2010
Reception: Friday, January 29th, 6 -- 8 pm

James Fuentes LLC is pleased to announce Alejandro Cardenas' forthcoming exhibition, Narcomedusa.

A Narcomedusa is a type of jellyfish found in the darkest depths of the Pacific Ocean. Two thousand feet below sea level, it lives its entire life in total darkness, floating elegantly in pressures that could crush a human skull. It feeds passively, as small animals stumble into its tentacles and are slowly digested in its translucent stomach. On the rare occasions that this creature has been seen with human eyes it has been with spotlights and through the acrylic dome of a submarine; the Narcomedusa's form silhouetted in stark contrast to the absolute blackness of the deep sea.

Cardenas begins these works with random watercolor compositions that involve no brushwork. Once the paint has settled, Cardenas looks for the image within the randomness, defining elements and unifying the form with black gouache and ink. The paintings end up resembling sea creatures caught in an explorer's spotlights. The series concerns human interaction with nature, contrasting the angularity of the man-made with the varied hues and forms of the natural. The exhibition title
describes this motif: Narco (Latin: sleep) and Medusa (the mythological character that caused any onlooker to turn to stone) both imply transitive states.

Alejandro Cardenas has presented solo exhibitions at LISTE The Young Art Fair in Basel (2009), James Fuentes LLC (2008), and Bas-Fisher Invitational in Miami (2005). He was a founding member of the Lansing-Dreiden art collective. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Rivington Arms, Daniel Reich Gallery, and LFL Gallery. His work is included in the Progressive Art Collection.

For additional information please contact Becky or James at 212.577.1201 or info@jamesfuentes.com.

Gallery hours: Wednesday -- Sunday, 12pm - 6pm

BEN SNEAD

131 ALLEN ST NEW YORK NY 10002 USA 212.675.7772 featureinc@featureinc.com
wednesday–saturday 12am–6pm, sunday 1–6pm


BEN SNEAD - recent paintings
opening reception thursday january 28, 6 - 8pm
continuing thru saturday february 27





ben snead continues to use frogs, fish, birds, snakes, and various insects, as the fodder of his paintings. previously the compositions were quite literal and often hinted at social constructs and amusing choreography while the most recent paintings have a more abstracted eccentricity that includes partial disappearances into folds as in paper or windows as in computers, mashings, and fragmentation. two of my favorites are a heap of chopped up purplish fogs against a black ground that look rather like a car crash or the makings of a dinner and a hilariously frightening talking head composed of swarming grasshoppers. there is as well a more classical and spacious arrangement of three stacked rows of three, 9 grouper, a fish, heads, all but one oddball face the same direction, and it is a perfect opportunity to observe the wide range of superficial similarities and differences within a species. same different; different same. the implications are intended. peace.

in december 09, ben snead’s commission by the metropolitan transit authority was completed. it is in the departures and arrivals area, mezzanine level of the a-f jay st. borough hall line, towards the south end of the station.

ben snead, 38, lives and works in brooklyn. he began exhibiting with feature inc in 2001 and this is his third one person exhibition with the gallery. ben snead attended the school of the art institute in chicago for undergraduate studies and has a mfa from rhode island school of design.

for further information or images, contact feature inc. via email to featureinc@featureinc.com or view the gallery’s site: featureinc.com

Ken Butler

Ken Butler’s Voices of Anxious Objects

(solo)

Sunday Jan. 17th 8pm

Zebulon

258 Wythe Ave.

Williamsburg
zebuloncafeconcert.com/

Kenneth Noland R.I.P.

From: Ken Butler

HELLO FRIENDS AND BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT 2010!!

KB update: I've been very very busy lately (a month of 18hr. days!) exclusively making new

artworks utilizing virtually all my stash of objects and images. Cleanin house! The 25 or so

works are in many media including instruments, collages, assemblages, and more which I

hope to exhibit in the coming year. Along with performing on my hybrid instruments, I will be

re-configuring a large-scale installation/interactive/film project entitled "Tilted Picnic", a version

of which is pictured below. I am feeling great and tackling life with passion and purpose.

Installation view, "Tilted Picnic" , variable interactive installation, Dayton Art Institute, 2008
Ken Butler

HYBRID VISIONS

427 Manhattan Ave.

Brooklyn, NY 11222

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WEBSITE www.mindspring.com/~kbhybrid

MYSPACE www.myspace.com/kenbutlerhybridvisions

YOUTUBE www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=83B16249693B2B32&search_query=ken

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PHONE (718) 782-4383

OMER FAST

image: Take a Deep Breath, 2008 two screen video installation, production still (photograph by Yon Thomas)

For immediate release:

January 9 – February 13, 2010

OMER FAST

Opening reception Saturday, January 9, 6-8 pm

"I don’t deal directly with reality but with representations and stories. The truth basis of what I’m doing is not interesting to me. In an act of storytelling, there is a truth." Omer Fast, as quoted in New York Magazine, December 21-28, 2009.

These exact words were never uttered in this order. But, like in Fast’s works, it is precisely in re-telling, editing, interpretation, misunderstanding and subjective recollections that we encounter the kernels of what is real.

Postmasters Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of two video works by Omer Fast. The show opening on January 9th coincides with Fast’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“Take A Deep Breath” (2008)

In the summer of 2002, Martin F. was standing outside a Falafel shop in Jerusalem when it exploded. A trained medic, he went in and discovered the body of a young man on the floor. The young man had lost both legs as well as an arm, but his eyes were open and focused. Hoping for a miracle, Martin F. decided to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a few minutes though, the young man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he expired. A crowd of onlookers had gathered outside and the police showed up. They wanted to know how many casualties were inside. When he responded that there was only one, Martin F. realized the young man he had just left inside was the suicide bomber

In “Take A Deep Breath,” extracts from a conversation recorded with Martin F. in Jerusalem alternate with scenes filmed in Los Angeles in which a team of actors attempts to stage his ordeal for the camera. There are two cameras shooting simultaneously. Each shoots a different view.

“De Grote Boodschap” (2007)

Filmed on-location in Mechelen, Belgium, “De Grote Boodschap” presents the stories of paired Flemish characters who appear to be caught in a time-warp: A stewardess and her unemployed husband, an old junkie and her caregiver, a white beatboxer and his black girlfriend, a real-estate agent and a taciturn Arab. As the characters interact, the story of a family's diamonds is revealed and retracted in an endless loop that mistakes the scatological for the profound.

"Fast is interminably drawn to the figure of "the witness"—the individuals un/officially earmarked to repeat their personal experiences for something like the greater good. And it is precisely in these active, "acted" retellings, in which memory is vocally rehashed, that Fast encourages his protagonists to stumble. Rather than drawing a fine-tooth comb through their dreams à la psychoanalysis, Fast surveys their seemingly-scripted public stories, and from stilted syllables and logical missteps excavates flashes of that abstract notion of the "real." (…)Perhaps because of this interpretive flair, Gideon Lewis-Kraus has called Fast a "reanimator"; in particular, it is his ability to imagine an interviewee's (beaten, dead) tale as something other than it is (alive). Trafficking in structural manipulation allows Fast to avoid the video artist's inevitable gambit of camera-as-confessional, leaving critical, and even ethical, space for the viewer to wallow about in."
 Kari Rittenbach “Dramatic Witness: The Art of Omer Fast (Art In America online December 2009)

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Omer Fast was a recipient of the Bucksbaum Award at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. In October 2009 he has received National Gallery Prize for Young Art in Berlin. Most recently Fast’s works were shown at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Gallery of South London, Berkeley Art Museum, Lund Konsthall, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Performa 2009.

Postmasters Gallery is open tuesdays through saturdays between 11 and 6 pm. Please contact Magdalena Sawon or Paulina Bebecka with questions or image requests.

Postmasters Gallery

459 west 19th street

New York, NY 10011

212-727-3323

www.postmastersart.com

postmasters@thing.net