| current exhibition | ||
NOW ON VIEW! Michelle Grabner: Get Better Mrs. Michelle!, MINUS SPACE project space, Brooklyn, NY, March 27 – May 1, 2010 Michelle Grabner, Untitled, 2010 March 27 – May 1, 2010 MINUS SPACE project space MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce a new exhibition of drawings by Chicago-based artist Michelle Grabner. Grabner works primarily in painting, drawing, and printmaking, and her practice is commonly organized around straightforward mathematical systems. For her exhibition, Grabner will present a new series of drawings made from black gesso and silverpoint on heavyweight paper. In contrast to her other work, Grabner thinks of her drawing practice as “purely playing — it’s curiosity.” She continues saying, “The drawing just has to be executed, I have to play through it. I’m working on a lot of silverpoints right now; they’re not painting, but in their presence, I see them as an extension of painting.” Michelle Grabner has exhibited her work extensively, including in North America, Europe, and Australia. Her work has been presented at museums, such as the Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Kunsthalle (Bern, Switzerland), Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), Smart Museum (Chicago, IL), Mary and Leigh Block Museum (Evanston, IL), Naples Museum of Art (Naples, FL), Ulrich Museum (Wichita, KS), and Tweed Museum of Art (Duluth, MN). Her work has been reviewed widely and is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), Musée d’Art Moderne (Luxembourg), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Daimler Art Collection (Berlin, Germany), and Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC). Michelle Grabner is also a professor and chairperson of the Department of Painting and Drawing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University in Chicago, and an MA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. In addition to her artistic work, Grabner and her husband, artist Brad Killam, founded and direct The Suburban, a very well regarded, experimental exhibition space in Oak Park, Illinois. Grabner has also written extensively for publications, such as ArtForum, Modern Painters, Frieze, and X-tra. In collaboration with MINUS SPACE, Grabner recently organized the online VIEWLIST project There are many things in the air and all of them are for free, published in May 2009. Her work was also included in the group exhibition Open House for Butterflies at MINUS SPACE in August 2009. A comprehensive interview with Michelle Grabner by Saul Ostrow appears in the March 2010 issue of Art in America magazine. |
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Michelle Grabner
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Momenta Benefit
Aron Namenwirth "peace pipe" pin oak, 3.5x.5x.5 2008-1010 (click on image to enlarge)
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 | save the date Annual Benefit may 26 discount tickets until april 30 | |||
| Brain Coral. 2010, benefit multiple by Katy Schimert. | ||||
| Order your tickets now for momenta art's annual benefit raffle and auction. All tickets purchased before april 30 will receive a $50 discount.
 Momenta Art presents its fifteenth annual benefit to support its ongoing mission to exhibit the work of emerging and underrepresented artists. A ticket guarantees you a work of art and entrance for two to the silent auction and raffle drawing held at White Columns Gallery on May 26. Tickets are limited to the number of artworks included. Tickets purchased after April 30 will cost $225. | ||||
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Friday, March 19, 2010
KWAWRK
KWAWRK
Charles Lahti
Steven Salzman
Boris Torres
March 19 - April 11, 2010
Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday 1-6pm
or by appointment
Bowman / Bloom Gallery
95 East 7th Street, NYC
basement (between 1st Avenue & Avenue A)
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Jim Torok
JIM TOROK
Portraits and Clowns
Jim Torok is known for both his photo realistic, miniature portraits and his narrative storyboard, cartoon-like paintings, both based on acute observation. His portraits are generally of ordinary people he knows—artists, friends, neighbors—and depict the everyday rather than celebrity status. They are small studies of fact and plainness. His cartoon works are simultaneously hilarious and sobering, innocently optimistic and cynical, because they state so plainly what is known but most often left unsaid.
In this exhibition Torok will focus on the portrait, both realistic and cartoon-like abstractions. In Gallery 1 will be a group of Torok's miniature portraits-each no larger than 5 x 4 inches-primarily of his upstate New York neighbors. Gallery 2 will be filled with a new series of cartoon-like clown portraits and text paintings. As clowns often are, these are both comic and sinister. One text painting reads “Life Is OK, Except for the Clowns.” Another reads, “You Are A Vibrant Human Being.” Stylistically, the two groups of paintings could not be more different. The miniature portraits are carefully painted in oil with great detail using extra-fine brushes, whereas the clown portraits are larger and loosely painted in acrylic with brushy strokes of color on panel. The abstraction and loose rendering of the clown paintings links Torok's portrait work with his storyboard panel paintings.
Regarding Torok's portraits, the curators of “Portraiture Now: Communities” write—
For Torok, the discoveries made through the process of creating a likeness are part of portraiture's appeal. By painting twenty-three members of a single family, he created a record of three generations; in doing so, he also confronted the larger issue of family resemblance. What are the traits that unite a family and other group relationships? This question is central to the idea of communities. (Fortune, Goodyear, Goodyear II, 2009)
Torok's portraits are compelling studies that range from objective, life-like representations of real people, to entirely subjective, spontaneous abstractions. The work in this exhibition demonstrates a dexterity that few besides Torok can accomplish so seamlessly. In a sense he is painting independently with his left and right brain, each with complete control. At first glance these two bodies of work appear completely unrelated but they do have a real and fortunate co-existence. These are paintings that interpret the human condition and Torok makes no judgment about the distance between them, as he views the world through a wide lens.
This will be Jim Torok's third one-person exhibition at Pierogi. Torok's work is currently on view in “Portraiture Now: Communities,” a three-person exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC and was recently included in “The Lens and the Mirror: Self-Portraits from the Collection, 1957-2007” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC), “Attention to Detail,” (The FLAG Art Foundation, NYC, Curated by Chuck Close), among others. He received a MFA from Brooklyn College and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
STEVE MUMFORD
STEVE MUMFORD Wish I Was, 2009, oil and spray paint on canvas, 12 x 16 inches
opening saturday at postmasters
Friday, February 12, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Alejandro Cardenas
Alejandro Cardenas
NARCOMEDUSA
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.
Friday, January 22, 2010
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
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Ken Butler
zebuloncafeconcert.com/
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
From: Ken Butler
Ken Butler
HYBRID VISIONS
427 Manhattan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
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WEBSITE www.mindspring.
MYSPACE www.myspace.com/
YOUTUBE www.youtube.com/view_play_
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PHONE (718) 782-4383
Saturday, January 2, 2010
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.