Five Feet Under the Surface of a Pond
Fritz Horstman
There will be two bodies of work. 13 photographs will act as a frieze along the top of the gallery, and 5 sculptures made of tree sections will be presented at the front of the space. The photographs were taken with an underwater camera and represent the change in the physical conditions within a pond over the course of an entire year. The sculptures are sections of trees from which specific rings have been removed, and then filled with a foreign material.
Human society spends a lot of time and energy combating its natural origins. When an aspect of humanity bears too many markers of a natural process we either privatize it or ritualize it. Over time those aspects are elaborated upon in the form of clothes, ceremonies, laws, and other modalities. Those privatized and ritualized aspects are the grounds for culture's existence.
It is this membrane between nature and culture that I am interested in exploring. It is a virtually indefinable territory, because it permeates every corner of our lives. The modes of presenting my findings are diverse, reflecting the ubiquity of the subject. I employ drawing, photography, installation, objects, sound, and video.
I am exploring the underlying principals of how human culture is constructed, and how it relates to the natural systems that are in place. I see ecology as the system through which an organism interacts with its environment. In that sense, my work is entirely ecological. -- Fritz Horstman, 2011
THRONE
By Esperanza Cortes
Throne is a large installation work which incorporates over 500 clay flowers made by the artist. Each petal bearing the life lines from her left hand surrounding a bamboo baby chair. This work is fueled by rituals of birth, death and renewal.
I was originally inspired to become an artist by the "Houses of Worship" I attended as a child. These "Churches" were total environments: architecture, lighting, incense, painted and sculpted images all combined to create a sense of awe in the viewer. My works are metaphors of experience. I use the human body as a symbol of nature, vulnerability and power.
My interest in the folk art traditions, ritualistic art, music and dance of Latin America, The Caribbean, Africa and their continuous and evolving changes are at the core of my sculpture and installation work. My installations are informed by individual and collective memory. My recent body of work examines the extent to which a consciousness, national or personal, defines itself through the opposing force of a transcultural experience. -- Esperanza Cortes
The Retrospective Project
10/28/2011 - 11/10/2011
Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present The Retrospective Project - An exhibition with artist Dorothy Krakovsky. At 88 years old, Krakovsky has been working for 50 years with few opportunities to exhibit her paintings. The Retrospective Project encourages people in communities around the world to support artists who have worked a lifetime with little or no opportunities to share their work by offering a retrospective in a traditional or non-traditional art space. This first exhibition is a project model for future exhibitions. This model can flourish accordingly based on the generosity, support and enlightenment of community members willing to encourage and celebrate an individual’s lifelong engagement in their art practice, as Jimmy Greenfield, founder of Soapbox Gallery has generously done.
This exhibition honors the commitment and dedication of an artist whose body of work encompasses a lifetime of creativity with many decades of investigation, passion and vision. The Retrospective Project is a performative art work by Chere Krakovsky.
PLATYCOMB: THE WAY YOU LIVE NOW
10/1/2011 - 10/13/2011
Eric Worcester
PlatyComb-The Way You Live Now is a modular architectural work that examines the twin aspects of luxury and survival that seem to condition contemporary urbanized habitats. The project specifically focuses on the way meaning is derived from connection. This has a twofold quality, first in the way that the work connects to a site, and second in the way it connects with itself. The first quality is seen as ambiguous in nature, where the question of what and who the architecture is for is unsettled, while the second is seen as positive in the sense that problems of construction and form are internally regulated. The negentropy that mediates this twofold is what the work attempts to make manifest.
Eric Worcester is a New York based architect who sees architecture as an instrument for exploring the cultural and formal conditions that implicate buildings and their environments. Identifying the primary problem of architecture to be mediation, efforts typically involve the decomposition of the ordering systems that constitute a work. The production and manifestation of a work addresses the systems, techniques and attitudes that direct architecture's tendency towards omniscience. Eric received his graduate degree from Columbia University and formed his practice Manifold over a decade ago.
DRAWING ATTENTION
9/16/2011 - 9/30/2011
Lori Sikorski
Drawing Attention is a viewer driven installation that draws on audience participation to encourage projection and self-reflection in order to better consider the role, responsibilities, and consequences of being an American soldier. By considering hypothetical service in the military, participants are compelled to confront American complacency and bystander apathy towards the 10-year "war against terror". The audience is asked to wear provided military gear and face their transformation in the mirror. Digital Polaroids will record each of these 'soldiers' after which point the images will be arranged by the artist on-site.
www.drawingattentionproject.com
As a nation, we have witnessed the precipitating incidents, the resultant events, and all the consequent circumstances leading us to the present day. The war in the Middle East has polarized our nation to the stage where soldiers have stopped being seen as you or I. War becomes exalted or scorned according to personal or political beliefs and our soldiers - our citizens - become lost in a very large picture.
Ten years later, loss of life continues. We have transitioned through Operation Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom. To date, more than 6000 enlisted men and women have lost their lives. Countless more have been injured and civilians have paid a heavy price.
Please take a moment to view this installation, perhaps put yourself in a soldiers shoes, and participate in the dialogue.
FOLLY, WHIMSY & TRAGEDY; LINCOLN'S DEATH IN THE THREE ACTS!!!
9/2/2011 - 9/16/2011
Charles Printz Kopelson
Act I Dueling with J. Shields
Act II Assassination by J. Booth
Act III Funeral Train back to Illinois
I am interested in using art-making as a kind of archeology. Art making exposes a layering of personal and cultural narratives and destroys the past even as it creates a window to the present moment. There is no automatic civilization in a moment. The past exists around me but it is incoherent and unsatisfying. What exists is interfering with my ability to decipher the moment. I attempt to surface personal themes through the obsessive elaboration of graphical motifs. My work both references the distractive nature of the layered cultural landscape while at once drawing it together into a total engagement with the spectator. Just as one might not perceive a divine truth by attempting to decipher its mechanics, there is too much spectacle to digest, themes collapse and also constitute themselves, but it is their conjunction in the visual space that resolves this tension.
AVENUES OF THE BLACK MIND: FUCK POST BLACK
8/19/2011 - 8/31/2011
Kwaku Osei
Schizoid (L) 55 X 37.25 inches, Mixed media on canvas, 2011
Apocalypse Scene I (M) 30 x 72 inches, Mixed media on canvas, 2011
Harem Guard (R) 50 x 40 inches, Mixed media on canvas, 2011
The manifestation deals with the illusion of space within the context of society and the picture plane. It is deliberately satiric, exclaimed by counterfeit titles. Painting entices my curiosity to how things bend, turn, reflect, and build. Angles, planes, lines, rays, and shapes excite my eyes in every which way. Once color is recognized as a raw purity, there is such an excessive presence, moments become pleasantly intoxicating. This is when naivety sets in and almost nothing seems to hold subjective weight. The images are reflections of dreams and nightmares, where anything is possible, where science becomes mysticism. It is manipulation at the finger tips, reality sinking into fabrication.
ITINERANT GOODS
8/5/2011 - 8/18/2011
Venetia Dale
Itinerant Goods reflects on the plaid plastic bags’ economic, social, and cultural significance in an installation at Soapbox Gallery. Commonly found in Brooklyn dollar and grocery stores, these bags are lugged through the streets, laundry mats, and subways of the city. At Soapbox Gallery, the re-invented sewn plaid bags, hung on wallpaper of the same material, bear resemblance to commodities ordered and displayed in the compact spaces of markets and street stalls. Itinerant Goods, imagines new space and forms for red, white and blue plaid bags, inviting reflection on rituals of everyday consumption, mobility, and lifestyle in the urban landscape.
Travels in South America, China, Southeast Asia, and West Africa have influenced the perspective from which I study and respond to the circulation of goods between people and place. Through the use, translation, and interpretation of familiar objects my work attempts to articulate the space between what is lost and re-invented in the evaluation and transformation of our material world.
I was born and raised in the Midwest, received my BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004 and MFA from State University of New York at New Paltz in 2009. I am currently residing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I maintain my studio practice and teach in the Art Department at UW-Milwaukee.
THE LIST WALL PROJECT: NATIONALLY TOURING INSTALLATION BY LISA LALA
The List Wall Project is a grassroots-driven conceptual art installation that invites the public to aspire by submitting anonymous, handwritten lists of their goals. Originating in Kansas City, this project has been touring nationally since February of 2010. As the List Wall moves from city to city, the public at each new venue may add their own lists by tacking them to the wall. The artist will be at the Soap Box gallery each evening from 5-7pm, so the public may read the wall or add their own list in person.
Lisa Lala is most commonly know for her luscious oil paintings exhibited coast to coast and held in many private, public and museum collections. Born near San Francisco, California, Lala was raised with a global perspective as her family often traveled to impoverished countries as medical volunteers. Lala received her BFA from the University of Kansas, and also studied with Wolf Kahn and Tjasa Demsar (in France). Lala has been moderating the List Wall Project since it's inception in 2009.
WHEN THE GROUND BREAKS BY ELAINE ANGELOPOULOS
A giant window map with arranged artifacts and ephemera loaned from residents of the neighborhoods surrounding Atlantic Yards pays homage to the local community dedicated to challenge big business and government dealings surrounding the Atlantic Yards Project. Elaine Angelopoulos will conduct public events that focus on the construction project in process and in direct view across the street of Soapbox Gallery. Local residents are invited to record their stories to serve as an archive of their experiences on how the neighborhood has changed.
www.re-title.com/artists/Elaine-Angelopoulos.asp
Angelopoulos has had a dynamic twenty plus year practice as an exhibiting artist and a collective practitioner amongst activist for civil liberties. She activates her installation works with performance to connect with her audience. The Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine; Five Myles in Brooklyn; ABC No Rio in Manhattan; and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London are among the exhibition venues that have featured her work. Awards most noted are the Jerome Fellowship through Franconia Sculpture Park, Foundation for Contemporary Art, and an Honorarium from SUNY Plattsburgh.
CLEANING DAY DAILY PERFORMANCE BY CHERE KRAKOVSKY
Home in all its familiarity, arrangement and structure is a constantly shifting environment, a stranger at times. Cleaning Day will be completed over a period of 6.5 days. Each day from 5:00PM to 7:00PM the arrangement of furniture and personal items from the artist Chere Krakovsky’s East Village home will be dismantled and new objects added creating a new configuration, from kitchen into library, from sitting room into study. The Soapbox window will be cleaned in and out, a daily practice, a meditation, a blank page, or empty canvas. The public is invited to participate by bringing a personal object to include in each days new arrangement. Home is shared as the artist reconstructs the familiar, making the personal- public to those who pass by.
newsgrist.typepad.com/chere_krakovsky
Chere Krakovsky received her BFA from California Institute of the Arts and her MFA from Goddard College in Vermont. She has performed in various non- traditional settings in New York City; Iowa City, IA; Providence, RI; and Philadelphia, PA.
MOVIE NIGHT FOR ALL AGES: A RETROSPECTIVE OF FILMMAKER HOWARD BETTER
Using the window as a projection screen, a retrospective of thirty years of moving images that use a mixture of animation, collage and live action will be shown by Filmmaker Howard Better. His work investigates relationships between time, space, and perception. "My movies unfold in time like music, with reoccurring themes and patterns. Although I do not tell stories, there is a narrative element that appears. I always carry a video camera, and I am constantly capturing images from the world around me. Much of my work from the last few years has been about New York City as it is and as it could have been. I am fascinated by the flow of time, and how our thoughts refer not only to the world around us, but are manifestations of that world. Movies, like consciousness itself, are works in progress."
Howard Better is an artist living in Uptown Manhattan. He is currently working on animated video installations and 3-D collages. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts with a BFA focusing on film. Better has exhibited nationally and has shown work at P.S. 1 and The Anthology Film Archives. He received a grant from the Puffin Foundation and teaches Video and Animation in the NYC school system.
TRAVELING: A KINETIC INSTALLATION BY KIM MIKENIS
A controversy is brewing in Atlantic Yards. Nine Brooklyn brownstones were excavated to make way for a NY Nets Sports Arena. This small-scale model represents 20 blocks that were in peril of being demolished, in this case, by a giant remote control operated basketball. The neighborhood is spring-loaded and resilient, as are the residents who continue to spring back up in opposition to having their homes replaced with a sporting arena. Traveling is a term used in basketball when a player walks while holding onto the ball possessively without dribbling or passing. This piece is meant to draw much needed attention to this issue and to promote the preservation of historic Brooklyn.
Kim Mikenis has performed her self-written and constructed puppet shows throughout NY in locations such as Galapagos, Dixon Place, Tank with Drama of Works- a company granted numerous Henson Foundation Grants, New Britain Museum of Art in CT and ArtSpace, New Haven, CT. Her most recent work based on the phenomena of the McGurk Effect was featured in Mindsets, a linguistics inspired show at Yale University.
XRU & Friends Present World Percussion And Protest Music With Musicians Paul Anceau & Robert Lepre
XRU and friends perform modern American music with an emphasis on percussion, experimenting with a wide range of sounds from current styles through world music and made from found objects, synthesizers, computers and globally influenced rhythmic events using hand drumming. Audience participants will be invited to step up and speak their mind via a “junk-rap” style vamp. Music provides a spirit for expression and can enhance a message or persuade people to feel different. In a world of light speed messaging and conflict, having a chance to wonder out loud or cry foul is important and just plain fun. XRU intends to provide an energy that will inspire people to speak out. At the core of XRU are musicians Robert LePre of NYC and Paul Anceau of FLA, both life long professional percussionists.
Robert Lepre is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and is actively engaged in the Electro music scene in NYC. Paul Anceau graduated from California Institute of the Arts and has toured with the Repercussion Unit, a ground-breaking award winning group of percussionists who originated in California. Both Bob & Paul met performing together with the Repercussion Unit.
Ellen Hackl Fagan
ColorSoundGrammar: A COMMUNITY INTERACTIVE GAME. The public is invited to partake in a playful interactive game in which viewers get recorded in their selection of colored squares that best represent each note of the Do-Re-Mi musical scale, later getting translated into pseudoscientific meditations, and ultimately, paintings on the blended language of color and sound. Looking for consistencies in peoples colorsoundgrammar choices can demonstrate that there is an innate grammar we all posses, perhaps used more consistently at an earlier phase in our evolution. Participants leave with a personal awareness of color’s sonic potential and its communicative breadth.
Ellen Hackl Fagan earned a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Painting and Interdisciplinary Media in 2005 from Hartford Art School, CT. She has been a RADIUS artist at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT and has exhibited her work extensively throughout New England more recently, in New York City. She maintains a studio in Harlem and works on ceramic sculptures at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York.
Melanie Carr
SWAP SHOP is a participatory public piece about exchange. SWAP SHOP allows participants/the public to set the market by their willingness to contribute in an exchange of goods where the "swap" becomes the market price; one item equals one item, etc. The Swap Shop becomes social sculpture with restorative power for human connectedness. The SWAP SHOP depends upon public participation where one’s willingness to partake in an alternative system spur’s the creativity of its makers and viewers, where viewers become producers of an experience, and life and art are finely integrated among all.
Melanie Carr was born and raised in Connecticut. She earned a B.A. in painting at Central Connecticut State University in 2000 after serving in the United States Military. She is an M.F.A. candidate of the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University 2011.
David Borawski
Emphasizing the dynamics of Soap Box's Window space, a silhouette of NBA star Carmelo Anthony (born and raised in Red Hook and who now plays for the Knicks), is frozen in mid jump shot, literally 'pealed' out of his circle, floating in the forefront for all to look up to. A video using in-game imagery and footage shot at an empty neighborhood basketball court mixed with the future stadium construction site across the street reflects upon changes and real space. This piece speaks of class and education, and that to some kids, basketball and the dream of playing in the NBA can be the only ticket to success.
David Borawski lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut, and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. A conceptually based installation and video artist, he uses common materials to address socio-political issues, while leaving the interpretations intentionally fluid. The inclusion of video acts as an extension of the sculptural elements, expanding the visual field and the abstract forum.
Tom Giebel
TOM GIEBEL's solo exhibition of photographs, XYLEM AND PHLOEM, will be on display at the SOAPBOX GALLERY in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn from Friday, November 12th through November 25th. Join the photographer for refreshments and a secondary exhibit of NEW WORK at the opening reception, which will take place from 6:00pm to 8:00pm on Friday, November 12th.
TOM GIEBEL's photographs have appeared in numerous online publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Observer, and others. He has exhibited work in several group shows, including Look See: Reflection at the Brooklyn Artists Gym, As We See It at The Center, and Click! A Crowd-curated Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. A Wisconsin native, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 1988 and moved to New York city. He currently resides in Brooklyn, where he finds ample photographic inspiration.
Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni
CORALINA CATALDI-TASSONI'S solo exhibition of ink drawings, HIDDEN BY A THREAD, will run from Friday, Oct. 29th to Nov. 11th, 2010. Opening reception will take place from 6.00 pm to 9.00 pm Friday Oct. 29th. The artist will be present at the opening.
www.CoralinaContemporaryArt.com
For more information on Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni visit: www.coralina.net or www.CoralinaContemporaryArt.com
The artist can be contacted at Coralina@CoralinaContemporaryArt.com
For private viewings in Manhattan and for all inquiries, please email View@CoralinaContemporaryArt.com
Vanessa Hill
“From My Streets” — 3 photos on vinyl - 54"x78" each - June 25-July 8, 2010
I'm inspired by my Barrio...it brings music to my eyes.
Stephanie Borgese
“Sanctify” — June 11-24, 2010
Stephanie's current body of work deals with the rites and rituals. This piece speaks to the rituals that man performs in search of sanctity, holiness and purity. The suspended figure, encased in gold and paper, sheds his exterior shell in the process of transformation.
BIO:
Stephanie Borgese is a New York City-based figurative sculptor. Her love of the human form led her to the art of sculpture in 2002. Since then she has received scholarships from The National Sculpture Society, The Art Students League of New York and New York Academy of Art, where she completed her MFA in 2007.
Brian Dupont
“Gravity and Array” — May 28–June 10, 2010. Reception Friday, May 28 6–8 PM Street level installation *Anytime*.
Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present “Gravity and Array,” a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based painter Brian Dupont.
Brian Dupont studies the transmission — and distortion — of the visual aspects of information within the framework of abstract painting. In each painting he uses diagrams, scientific images, written language, symbols, and musical notation to establish an underlying pattern or structure, which he then stresses through a process of editing, erasure, and re-transcription. The final image emerges from these accumulations and removals of layers of paint and reverberates with contemporary anxieties about the threat of collapse, decay, miscommunication, and information overload.
Brian Dupont lives and works in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Cornell University. He has exhibited his work in New York, Kansas City, and Houston. He also writes on art and painting at briandupont.wordpress.com.
John Davis
“Cut Out” - May 14-May 28, 2010 (Interior gallery 12-6pm daily/Street level installation *Anytime*)
Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present “Cut Out”, a solo exhibition by San Antonio-based artist John Davis.
John Davis’ practice of painting investigates problems with communication, fragmented living and identity roles. Personal concerns derived from a background in 80’s suburbia inspire methodical, at times obsessive pictures. The painting process and resulting works are a way to edit culture. By cutting out, removing, and rearranging images on a surface Davis exposes the underlying tension within the American lifestyle. Through lack of dialogue a dialogue emerges. The division of picture planes indicate divisions between people, and suggest a syndrome of pretension and miscommunication. Materials and image sources for the work come from everyday unapologetic content: cassettes, comics, white out and other memorabilia.
John Davis lives and works in San Antonio, TX. He received his MFA from the University of New Orleans. He has exhibited paintings in Italy, Austria, New York and Chicago. While in New Orleans his work was purchased by the New Orleans Museum of Art. In 2007 Davis contributed as a visiting artist to the graduate program at Yale.
Alex White Mazzarella
“Society Under Fire” - April 30-May 15, 2010
The Soapbox Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition that presents recent works by artist Alex White Mazzarella. The show, titled “Society Under Fire”, presents six neo-expressionist mixed media paintings that visually communicate our perceived societal condition and the increasing threat it holds to our humanity.
Highlighting the show is a seven-foot red, yellow and gray painting/drawing, titled “Becoming Bubble Gum”. Here alongside an iconic language and provocative script, a punk like fetus lays hostage to an arriving sharp and jagged environment. This painting is made from oil pastel, charcoal, acrylic paint, enamel, coffee grounds and buckets of water. It will remain in the storefront gallery window through May 15.
Building upon street art and graffiti as the cave paintings of today, Alex White Mazzarella intense yet whimsical work expresses perspectives on the contemporary human in an urban language derived from his current working city, New York.
Michelle Carollo
April 16-29, 2010
Michelle Carollo’s multi-disciplinary practice – painting, sculpture, drawing and installation – grows out of a process based on Modernist ideals: simplifying form, eliminating ornament, and arranging pure color. She invents her visual language with the use of found materials, geometric shapes and three-dimensional space to create her installations.
Leigh Davis
“Debra Freeman, Room 1006” (from "Residence" series), Archival Pigment Prints, 43" x 55" - April, 2010
My photography projects are investigations of how people utilize, inhabit and conceive of their living spaces. Residence is a project I conducted at a residence hall for women located within the YWCA of Brooklyn. For two years I worked in this community, visiting twenty-five women in their individual rooms. I developed a process that focused on forming relationships, resulting in a series of photographs. These images of intimate spaces capture the dialect between engagement and voyeurism that has been fundamental to my practice.
Michael Pribich
“Too Much Sugar for a Dime” - March 19-April 2, 2010
Too Much Sugar for a Dime: 9' x 7' x 8'h, Materials used: corregated tin, steel and wood machetes, 100lb sugar bags, 22k gold leaf, steel plate, Haitian and Dominican Republic flags, 3" brass tubing, chain.
Too Much Sugar for a Dime critiques the social condition that emphasizes otherness, transterritory geography, and refugee status as told through Haitian sugar cane workers living and working in the Dominican Republic. This place-based work, affirms and deepens our understanding of the globalization that sweetens our coffee.
Works of art by Brad Darcy and Chaw Ei Thein, curated by Nunu Hung
“Transformed Conversation” - February 19 to March 18, 2010 - Opening Reception Friday, February 19, 6pm–9pm
Soapbox Gallery is pleased to present the two person exhibition "Transformed Conversation" with New York based artist Brad Darcy and Burma based artist Chaw Ei Thein. In "Transformed Conversation", Mr. Darcy and Ms Chaw Ei Thein explore the artist's self conscious role in the engagement of social and political issues, and the responsibility to communicate perspectives on an aesthetic level.
Mr. Darcy has been concentrating on human evolution as the central theme of his work, and for "Transformed Conversation" his exploration consists of abstracted cyclical interpretations. Through sketches, animations, and paintings, his physically charged lines and manipulated imagery touch on various themes including mass media, connectivity, as well as natural phenomena.
Ms Chaw Ei Thein explores political truths of her native country, Burma. Assimilating current Burmese realities, her sculptures are dedicated to those who have suffered political repression and human rights abuses. In her latest work, "Bed", Chaw Ei Thein transforms her bittersweet memories and emotions of her exiled hometown into a meditative installation.
"Transformed Conversation" is curated by NuNu Hung
Rebeca Olguin
“Naive Artifacts of Compulsion + Almost Trying to Forget” (A series of drawings & an installation) - Dec 18-Jan 04, 2009 (Interior gallery 12-6 pm daily/Street level installation)
Statement
Regarding themes
I'm easily fascinated by the physical world, by things and their representation. Consequently, I represent things in a rather primitive state of contemplation in which making follows seeing. Perhaps representation works as an enchantment that liberates me from their spell, and allows me to experience a brief control over their chaos and multiplicity, to posses them, in a way, or, better, to participate in the configuration of their meanings. Creating becomes the act of naming the specific within a gigantic, monstrous world.
However, there are objects, ideas and symbols in this world that reveal themselves as denser, or as more monstrous than others. Within culture, one of the densest symbols I have found is encompassed by male and female sexual organs (which could be collapsed in the concept of sex). I explore those symbols in my work because they posses multiple meanings and forces. They are powerful, magical objects, objects of desire and taboo, symbols that unleash power calculations, mechanisms of control, but also of liberation; they are bearers of identity, meaning and the sense of belonging, as well as the sense of absence, loss and dissolution. They are arcana of life and death. They are symbols I like to dismantle and dissect in my work. I like to put them in relation with other objects, to arm and disarm them in order to extract, through an alchemic process that also involves the reactions others have when they see my work, some sort of meaning.
Regarding my creative process
My process is always in motion. I can only see this retroactively, and I really don't know what to expect from it in the future. It is eminently intuitive. It usually manifests itself as the tension between my search for meaning and the opaque forces of the world, which oppose it (time, matter, chance, love and death, my own ignorance and finitude). In practical terms, my creative process generates out of an inquietude that is hard to explain, but which I experience when I see some objects or concepts that suddenly shine more than others. I believe those objects are related with each other, but I can't tell how, I don't know their specific syntax. This moves me to try to give them a meaning; since I'm an artist, I do so by creating things. To create is, for me, to manipulate the material world through a sort of ritual (my artistic process) in which I must communicate with the spirituality as well as the materiality of the media I use, of culture, and of other forces I cannot name. Usually, when an object or series of objects appear to me as possible objects of representation, I seek and contemplate other existing representations of those same objects in culture before I start my own task. A piece, for me, is finished when I experience a sort of consolation by contemplating it, when I forget my personal, human experience by seeing it. It is, indeed, some kind of transcendence.
Regarding media
I'm interested in exploring the expressive capacity of different media. However, I find some materials especially appealing, for different reasons. I particularly like oil painting, because it has a direct connection with earthly elements. Besides, its process is slow, so it gives room for a constant rethinking of the meanings and paths the piece will take; this also allows me to create effects such as transparencies and sfumatto.
Pencil drawing interests me because it allows a sensual communication between the artist and graphite and, through it, between artist and paper. Thus, I conceive drawing as a tactile exchange of forces that must find a balance through an intuitive equation between the artist's idea and the resistances of the media, which are, in the end, the resistances the world (space and time) poses against being modified through my creative action. Regarding this, ink is similar to pencil, the difference being that, instead of graphite, water serves as a mean of communication and, therefore, the whole equation loses balance, because water is a primordial, physical and spiritual force of the universe.
I'm interested in digital collage because it's evident that new media have generated physical realities, concepts and particular ways of interaction which can only be explored through their specific, hyper-codified languages. I enjoy the possibility to approach these new media through collage, i.e. through the manipulation of representations already generated by these media in order to put them in communication with each other, and to do all this from an external, human perspective. Digital collage allows me to have an intuitive, basic and innocent dialogue with machines. Play with their combinations.
Creation of artifacts (tridimensional objects) is also an expressive medium that has grasped my attention, and I'm beginning to explore.
Jessica Baker
“Seasonal Fall” - December 4-17, 2009 (12-10pm daily) - Opening Sunday, Dec 6, 4-7pm
Visual artist Jessica Baker’s work has been lauded by The New York Times as, "brilliant…subtle…absolutely beautiful," and featured on National Public Radio. Her window installation, "Seasonal Fall", presents a final glimpse of the retreating season’s majesty. Seasonal Fall represents the culmination of the artist’s three-year journey collecting fall leaves from the parks and streets of Brooklyn.
" …[the] all too short-lived prints resonate in the mind long after one leaves the show. They are absolutely beautiful."
– NY Times
"…the leaves are like a one-of-a-kind piece of paper…highlight[ing] the leaf’s singular beauty."
– The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
"By using a leaf that has fallen from a tree in November, I try to capture a moment in the growth and life cycle of a tree and to convey its transient beauty,"explains Baker. “It is perhaps this ongoing transformation through the inexorable passage of time, this mirroring of life, that has the greatest effect on me."
Jessica Baker lives and works in Brooklyn, where she collects her materials from the streets and parks of Brooklyn, and creates all of her own prints on a table-top etching press in her studio near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her prints have been presented in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. For more information, visit www.jessicabaker.net.
Halina Marki
"Evolution"
The enigma of human existence is the pivitol subject of my paintings. I try to make sense of chaos needing to be sorted through. My intention is to suggest the relationship between the cessation of life and its rebirth. Juxtaposing abstract patterns with realistic images or symbols, my motive is to reveal the interconnectedness of abstraction with realism, expressionism with precision, and chaos with order.
Winicjusz Lysik
"Doctor"
Art captures the present moment. When I complete a painting, it is no longer “mine;” it belongs to the past. I live in the present. My newest painting is always closest to me—communicating my emotions and reactions to what is happening in the world around me. I’m living in the trenches looking for the portal.
Pauline Halper
September 4-September 17 2009
I work in different mediums and sizes at once. Moving between these different kinds of drawing keeps my ideas fresh. My paintings in oil tend to be large, while my drawings and collages are mostly smaller. I work quickly and on several pieces at once. Characters—old men, birds, pyramids—are recurring symbols in my work and often form loose narrative series.
Kelly Evers Jackson
"Paintings", August 22-September 3 2009
My work is all about the little things, conglomerating into a mass that represents the meeting place between thoughts and actual events.
I try to acknowledge the beauty and humor that results from the human tendency to attempt to control chaos and nature, while simultaneously venerating both.
My perspective is distinctly human, reveling in all of its limits, trying to eke out a perception beyond them.
Guy Nelson
"Mimics and Mutualists", August 6-19 2009
Guy Nelson is interested in mass, form, and color. He uses dichotomous materials- resins, candy, and elements of nature- with the common threads and interrelated concepts of structure, self-preservation, and survival.
Mikhail Iliatov
"A road To Shuri-Jo", July 20 - August 5
I start with memories of my dreams searching for places that I never visited and lives that I never lived.
On the way there other questions come up and I often get side-tracked.
Realizing the dreams I forget the memories.
Recalling the memories I stop dreaming.
And so it all ends up being a struggle to hold on to ephemeral instances.
Also see Marcel Proust on madeleine cakes and 'Proust' by Samuel Beckett – they said it better.
Austin Kennedy
"Untitled (20th Century)", C-prints on aluminum, 19x24 inches each - July 2-19, 2009
The series "Untitled (20th Century)" draws from a personal collection of printed images to expand the interstices of memory. Stepping beyond the original piece of fetishized memorabilia by extracting minute textures and details, the work confronts the nature of the photograph as a vessel for meaning.
Sandra Osip
"After Life", Found objects and mixed media - June 4-28, 2009
picasaweb.google.com/Sandra.Osip/Sculptures#slideshow
"After Life" is a statement about environmental sustainability. My art reflects how nature would take over after humans no longer exists.
Fred Bendheim
"Big Bang", April 2009
I make paintings, drawings and sculpture. My recent work is the result of thirty years of exploring mind through art. Each piece’s structure is made from a line that forms a circuit of shapes, colors, gestures and feelings. Like small universes, the works contain endless differences, and yet they are essentially one.
Sandra Osip
"Eco-Effective", Found objects and mixed media, 68"x70"x40" - October 2006
In the book "Cradle to Cradle," William McDonough and Michael Braungart talk about products you would find in a typical landfill today. "Most of these products were made from valuable materials that required effort and expense to extract and make, billions of dollard worth of material assets. Unfortunately, all of these things are heaped in a landfill, where their value is wasted." My work incorporates the throw-away landfill items with a return to a life overtaken with growing organisms. I attempt to mimic the "cradle to cradle" concept McDonough and Braugart explore in their book. -- Sandra Osip
James Greenfield
The Indomitable Human Spirit, sticks and dirt, approx. 7'x66"x30" - June-July, 2006
The impulse to wage battle is perhaps as ingrained in man's psyche as his will to survive. In this world of ever shrinking resources, increased environmental crises, the collision of cultures, and the explosion of scientific and technologic development, the need for a new way of being could not be more critical. What will bring about this evolution of human spirit or are we destined to self destruct?