SanArt

Postcards from Gowanus is a creative research program exploring a multitude of approaches to mapping Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood.

An exhibit and radio narrowcast will occur at Cabinet’s gallery space March 17-19, with a closing reception and performances on Friday, March 19 from 6-9pm.

Postcards from Gowanus features work by:
• Bianca Ahmadi – Eyes on Gowanus
• Patrick Carey – Bricks and Paint and Water and Metal
• Penny Duff – Sounding the Infra-ordinary: Gowanus
• Kasia Gladki – The Many Scapes of the Gowanus
• Juan David Gonzalez-Monroy – The Dead Whale: Message from the afterlife.
• Gabrielle Herbst and Allie Tyspin – Architecture as Baggage on the Body
• Amir Husak – Gowanus Unheard
• Maria Papadomanolaki – Sounds in-between
• Heidi Prenevost and David Smith – Double Helix
• Sterling Basement – Songs of the Gowanus
• Bryan Zimmerman – “The Slate Was Her Parlor”

Friday night performances by:
• Juan David Gonzalez-Monroy
• Sterling Basement
• Gabrielle Herbst + Maria Papadomanolaki

Sib Radio Gowanus includes audio work from: A.G, another electronic musician, Knut Aufferman, Giancarlo Bracchi, Myroslav Bytz & Nick Heling, Peter Cusack, dergar, Exportion, Jonny Farrow, Gabrielle Herbst, Amir Husak, Lina Lapelyte, Last Days, Leaf Loft, manekinekod, Sally Ann McIntyre, Todd Merrell, murmer, Naono, near the parenthesis, Oneohtrix Point Never, Dimitris Papadatos, Maria Papadomanolaki, Heidi Prenevost & David Smith, Sawako, Janek Schaeffer, Jeremy D. Slater, Solo Andata, Sterling Basement, Sublamp, Mark Templeton, Myke Dodge Weiskopf, Mark Peter Wright, Bryan Zimmerman.

The program is collaboratively organized by Penny Duff (exhibit), Gabrielle Herbst (performances), and Maria Papadomanolaki (radio) as part of Cabinet’s Intern Initiative Program and is sponsored in part by free103point9.

Cabinet is located at 300 Nevins Street between Union and Sackett Streets in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12–6pm, and by appointment.

For more information about the program, please visit: http://postcardsfromgowanus.blogspot.com

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org
http://www.free103point9.org

Modular A.R.T.: Art of the New Industrialism

Thursday, March 25, 2010
6.00pm to 9.00pm, Free
81 Front Street, ground floor (bet. Main & Washington)
Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York

The analog assembly line of the Industrial Revolution is giving way to the digital production methods of the New Industrialism. Mass customization, modular design, production on demand, open innovation, co-creative design, tele-fabrication and other computer-driven technologies are re-defining how things are made in nearly every sector of the marketplace, with the notable exception of art. Instead, the large majority of artists continue to produce their work in solitude, in editions of one, and using the same pre-industrial methods as did their predecessors centuries ago.

This exhibition of new modular art promotes the premise that if art is to be truly contemporary it must not only exhibit modernity in its outward form but be made in a contemporary way as well. Accordingly, all the pieces shown have been produced on demand and fabricated directly from digital files uploaded to remote production facilities.

Based on a modular design system, each assembled work is composed of interlocking components that can be disconnected from each other and then re-assembled in an infinite variety of compositions. Thus the artist is no longer the sole generator of form and the work of art no longer a sacred object to be worshipped from a distance. Rather, the collector is invited to co-create the work together with the artist, bringing the piece into closer alignment with the fluid and collaborative nature of 21st century culture.

website:

Kumble Gallery at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus
1 University Plaza

Brooklyn Misc.

April 8 – April 30, 2010
Opening: Thursday, April 8, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Liberty or Death, curated by Mezze, features paintings and sculptures by Grace Yung Ting Teng, a Texan-born, Chinese-American artist based in Brooklyn. Teng’s work melds together icons and decorative motifs of the romanticized Orient and American Southwestern frontier. Teng explores the two as fictionalized “places” and created a new hybrid of the two in intricately painted portraits of American nineteenth century army generals and American Indian chiefs, and sculptures of laser-cut leather and paper that appear simultaneously as cowboy boots and delicate Chinese porcelain vases.

Kumble Gallery at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus
1 University Plaza

Brooklyn Misc.

April 8 – April 30, 2010
Opening: Thursday, April 8, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Liberty or Death, curated by Mezze, features paintings and sculptures by Grace Yung Ting Teng, a Texan-born, Chinese-American artist based in Brooklyn. Teng’s work melds together icons and decorative motifs of the romanticized Orient and American Southwestern frontier. Teng explores the two as fictionalized “places” and created a new hybrid of the two in intricately painted portraits of American nineteenth century army generals and American Indian chiefs, and sculptures of laser-cut leather and paper that appear simultaneously as cowboy boots and delicate Chinese porcelain vases.

Thierry Goldberg Projects
5 Rivington Street, 212-967-2260

East Village / Lower East Side

March 11 – April 18, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Thierry Goldberg Projects is pleased to present Unspecific Objects, a group exhibition with works by Martin Basher, Jona Bechtolt, Daniel Ellis, Rashawn Griffin, David Scanavino, and Takayuki Kubota.

Making a reference to “Specific Objects,” Donald Judd’s seminal essay of 1965, the show brings together a group of six artists, who approach art-making with a fresh take on the process of reduction. It is through this reduction that the artists reinvest minimalist art, what Judd located as “neither painting nor sculpture,” with a voice specific to their own time and attitudes.

Through these artists’ ironic sense of touch, they deflect any sense of nostalgia. As this particular brand of Minimalism has been incorporated into the mainstream of fashion and music, these six aren’t just looking back, but looking towards the contemporary culture and economy of a style.

Martin Basher confronts painting and sculpture with an ironic take on desire and disappointment. His casual handling of ready-made materials can be seen in his installation piece where a poster of a Claude Monet landscape is affixed to a vertically stripped hard-edge painting. He undercuts notions of escape by the harsh fluorescent light propped against the painting. Both attracting and deflecting the viewer, the fluorescent tube is part Dan Flavin part bug-light.

Best known for his band Yacht, Jona Bechtolt primarily works with sound and video. His piece NTSC-YA animates what is typically the static field of a standard TV test pattern. Where Minimalism and Colorfield paintings once focused on uniformity, Bechtolt’s video disrupts and transforms the standard by infusing it with a sense of play, as a childhood Chimalong.

Minimal and monochromatic, Daniel Ellis’ paintings capture networks of regular repeating patterns. The patterns, on the one hand, articulate the surface of the painting and, at the same time, soften the solid backgrounds. His work deals with the tension between subtle affects via regimented graphic elements.

Though spare in composition, Rashawn Griffin’s work is loaded with references brought by his materials. His paintings feature fabrics, second-hand and new, bringing their own associations and histories to the minimalist object, so often devoid of the personal. Free standing, and sometimes suspended, his work speak to the sculptural presence of painting.

Parts and wholes are consistent players in David Scanavino’s work. For instance, his sculpture Untitled (rope cast) makes two parts of one length of rope while his Untitled (one square foot) makes one form of equally sized parts. His use of common materials as standards keeps their transformations articulate and arresting.

Takayuki Kubota presents sound in the format of painting. He unravels and splices together reels of tape-recorded readings or atmospheric sound and adheres them to panels. In this way, the work becomes a sonic portrait of a space or literary work.

Takayuki Kubota was born in 1985 in Kobe, Japan and currently lives and works in Tokyo. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Temple University, Japan Campus. His work has been recently shown at the Laundromat Gallery in Brooklyn and at Gallery Q, Tokyo, Japan.

David Scanavino was born in 1978 in Denver and currently lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. His work has been shown at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Newman Popiashvili, Southfirst, Satori, and Gavin Brown’s Passerby – all in New York.

Rashawn Griffin was born in 1980 in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Kansas. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. He has participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Marianne Boesky, New York; Arndt & Partner, Berlin; John Connelly, New York, Smith Stewart, New York; Thomas Erben, New York; and Galerie Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt.

Jona Bechtolt was born in 1980. He is an electronic musician and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has played with The Blow and The Badger King before founding YACHT, what he calls “a Band, Business, and Belief System” and has performed pieces commissioned by P.S.1, Rhizome, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Martin Basher was born in 1979 in Wellington, New Zealand. He currently lives and works in New York and New Zealand. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. Basher has shown at Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand; Susan Inglett, New York; and Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand. He was recently awarded an artist residency at the McCahon House Trust.

Thierry Goldberg Projects
5 Rivington Street, 212-967-2260

East Village / Lower East Side

March 11 – April 18, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Thierry Goldberg Projects is pleased to present Unspecific Objects, a group exhibition with works by Martin Basher, Jona Bechtolt, Daniel Ellis, Rashawn Griffin, David Scanavino, and Takayuki Kubota.

Making a reference to “Specific Objects,” Donald Judd’s seminal essay of 1965, the show brings together a group of six artists, who approach art-making with a fresh take on the process of reduction. It is through this reduction that the artists reinvest minimalist art, what Judd located as “neither painting nor sculpture,” with a voice specific to their own time and attitudes.

Through these artists’ ironic sense of touch, they deflect any sense of nostalgia. As this particular brand of Minimalism has been incorporated into the mainstream of fashion and music, these six aren’t just looking back, but looking towards the contemporary culture and economy of a style.

Martin Basher confronts painting and sculpture with an ironic take on desire and disappointment. His casual handling of ready-made materials can be seen in his installation piece where a poster of a Claude Monet landscape is affixed to a vertically stripped hard-edge painting. He undercuts notions of escape by the harsh fluorescent light propped against the painting. Both attracting and deflecting the viewer, the fluorescent tube is part Dan Flavin part bug-light.

Best known for his band Yacht, Jona Bechtolt primarily works with sound and video. His piece NTSC-YA animates what is typically the static field of a standard TV test pattern. Where Minimalism and Colorfield paintings once focused on uniformity, Bechtolt’s video disrupts and transforms the standard by infusing it with a sense of play, as a childhood Chimalong.

Minimal and monochromatic, Daniel Ellis’ paintings capture networks of regular repeating patterns. The patterns, on the one hand, articulate the surface of the painting and, at the same time, soften the solid backgrounds. His work deals with the tension between subtle affects via regimented graphic elements.

Though spare in composition, Rashawn Griffin’s work is loaded with references brought by his materials. His paintings feature fabrics, second-hand and new, bringing their own associations and histories to the minimalist object, so often devoid of the personal. Free standing, and sometimes suspended, his work speak to the sculptural presence of painting.

Parts and wholes are consistent players in David Scanavino’s work. For instance, his sculpture Untitled (rope cast) makes two parts of one length of rope while his Untitled (one square foot) makes one form of equally sized parts. His use of common materials as standards keeps their transformations articulate and arresting.

Takayuki Kubota presents sound in the format of painting. He unravels and splices together reels of tape-recorded readings or atmospheric sound and adheres them to panels. In this way, the work becomes a sonic portrait of a space or literary work.

Takayuki Kubota was born in 1985 in Kobe, Japan and currently lives and works in Tokyo. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Temple University, Japan Campus. His work has been recently shown at the Laundromat Gallery in Brooklyn and at Gallery Q, Tokyo, Japan.

David Scanavino was born in 1978 in Denver and currently lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. His work has been shown at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Newman Popiashvili, Southfirst, Satori, and Gavin Brown’s Passerby – all in New York.

Rashawn Griffin was born in 1980 in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Kansas. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. He has participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Marianne Boesky, New York; Arndt & Partner, Berlin; John Connelly, New York, Smith Stewart, New York; Thomas Erben, New York; and Galerie Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt.

Jona Bechtolt was born in 1980. He is an electronic musician and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has played with The Blow and The Badger King before founding YACHT, what he calls “a Band, Business, and Belief System” and has performed pieces commissioned by P.S.1, Rhizome, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Martin Basher was born in 1979 in Wellington, New Zealand. He currently lives and works in New York and New Zealand. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. Basher has shown at Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand; Susan Inglett, New York; and Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand. He was recently awarded an artist residency at the McCahon House Trust.

Sloan Fine Art
128 Rivington Street, 212-477-1140

East Village / Lower East Side

March 24 – April 17, 2010
Opening: Wednesday, March 24, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Sloan Fine Art is pleased to present So the Story Goes, by Diane Barcelowsky in the front gallery and At Night, Lights Fell and Loved Ones Returned Home, by Edwin Ushiro in the project room.

Diane Barcelowsky returns to Sloan Fine Art with a new body of work So the Story Goes. With an installation that includes mixed media elements and abstract and representational works on both paper and panel, Barcelowsky transforms the main gallery at Sloan Fine Art into a continuous, flowing narrative. Elaborate patterns of color, line and texture act as portals to another world. Vacant landscapes, flowing waterways, mysterious trails and roads all entice the viewer from one dreamlike narrative to the next. Once arrived, Barcelowsky’s impossible perspectives, saturated colors, fantasy characters and peculiar, yet familiar situations captivate the viewer in a voyeuristic trance. Each individual work is a stand-alone piece with a message of its own. Together they are an epic saga, rich with humor, tragedy and the contagious optimism that makes Barcelowsky’s work consistently engaging and compelling.

Diane Barcelowsky is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been shown at BravinLee, Giant Robot and Alona Kagan Gallery in New York, Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn, Found Gallery in Los Angeles and Beaver Projects in Copenhagen among others. She has participated in performances at Rivington Arms in New York, Black Diamond in Los Angeles and Space 405 in Brooklyn. Diane Barcelowsky lives and works in Brooklyn.

The content of Edwin Ushiro’s work is as richly layered as the works themselves. Influenced by the memories and folklore of his childhood in Hawaii and with nods to Japanese Anime, he creates his own mythology populated with modern characters and contemporary references. With At Night, Lights Fell and Loved Ones Returned Home, Ushiro utilizes his technique of layering paint, ink, graphite, varnish and iron transfers on vinyl sheets to create romantic, luminescent works that focus on the often mystery, and histories, held by abandoned and forgotten places.

Edwin Ushiro earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since he began exhibiting in 2006, his works have been shown at galleries and museums worldwide including LeBasse Projects and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, Svenska Mobler Gallery in Chicago, Atticus Galeria in Barcelona, the Insa Art Center in Seoul and the Museum of Kyoto Japan. Ushiro currently resides in Culver City, California.

Arts in Bushwick presents Loud Objects with Jennifer Walshe and Torino:Margolis

Sunday, March 7, 2010
6PM to 9PM, Free
Naxal Belt
175 Jefferson St #1L (at Central Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11206

6PM: Noise Tent
7PM: Panel Discussion
8PM: Performance

The Loud Objects create electronic noise with minimal components: microchips, a power jack, an audio jack, and wire. The group solders custom audio circuits live, creating audible fluctuations of electricity with these bare elements. Gradually building a complex sound circuit, they present electronic music in a form closer to a physical instrument than a laptop. Their performances invite the audience to bear conscious witness to each musical gesture: the addition of a microchip; the soldering of an output pin to the audio jack.

Using a disparate melange of elements such as voice, broken plastic, words, parts of words, stories, chanting, jigs, screaming, and shouting, Irish composer and extended technique vocalist Jennifer Walshe works with the breakdown of syntax, dissonance, and disintegration.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that crosses physical and psychological barriers, using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea that the self is transient, elusive, and modular by playing with the notions of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the human experience.

Curated by Andrea Liu

featuring:
- Loud Objects (http://www.loudobjects.com)
- Torino:Margolis (http://www.torinomargolis.com)
- Jennifer Walshe (http://www.milker.org)

More Information:
- Naxal Belt: http://naxalbelt.blogspot.com
- Contact Email: noise@loudobjects.com
- Contact Telephone: (917) 690-4991
- Venue Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=175%20Jefferson%20St,%20Brooklyn,%20NY%20(Naxal%20Belt%20%201L)

"Yummy Smurf Cake." Source: bluebuddies.com

I don’t know about you but I can’t get enough. I promise not too play with my food too much (maybe) but I can guarantee I will be asking for seconds. It’s one of the busiest weeks in the Art World and a lot of it is happening in New York City. Although I have been on the verge of art overload, with my eyes literally buzzing the other night from over-stimulation, I won’t be shouting mayday because I have the optimism that I will experience something intriguing the very next moment just by default. My favorite so far is the muli-layered curatorial contrast between the more traditional yet uber-commercial Armory Show and the INDEPENDENT.

Meanwhile, I bet you all are still hungry as well – so here you go!

• It’s Pure Beauty! Otherwise known as an exhibition of that very name, featuring John Baldessari, which opens in Spain; the Whitney Biennial in NYC; Shrewd & Sassy Survey of American Arists opened in Nebraska; Collier Schorr’s German Faces at the Modern Art Gallery in London…Nicole Caruth Rounds Them Up here. At 19 additional bits and bites, this week’s most recent roundup is a whopper!
• EDUCATION | Teaching with Contemporary Art. How do you hold an art exhibition in your hand? Read Part One of this  interview with Tod Lippy, founder and editor of ESOPUS magazine, by Joe Fusaro, for some insight into how Lippy has materialized his curatorial vision in a plethora of pages released on two very anticipated dates per year. In Part Two, Lippy talks about the periodical as useful a resource for educators.
• What are you thinking, I mean eating? Don’t know? Try charting it out. You might get some  some unexpected answers. In Gastro-Vision: Stomache, Nicole Caruth gives us the scoop on artist Christina Mazzalupo’s very colorful food diaries. It’s true that what you eat can’t only be measured as a numeric caloric intake.
• How does the Internet see you? Here’s a new way to ask this androgynous digital connector, in the form of an initial question posed by Aaron Zinman of MIT.  Meanwhile, be sure to read on here as there are many other connections made.
• Have you every chosen not to be, well, the most polite that you could be? What was the outcome? Here’s a glimpse into Paul McCarthy’s studio, a workshop that often dares to be irreverent. In this video, Paul McCarthy | Lifecasting, the artist is surrounded by various figurative sculptures, including an oversized bust of President George W. Bush. McCarthy discusses the process of casting from life and the resulting perfections and imperfections. Be sure to also watch Jessica Stockholder | Form. Stockholder discusses the strength of form and the difficulty in articulating the meaning behind abstract shapes from her home in New Haven, Connecticut.
• Inside the Artist’s Studio | Christa Holka. Vanity, queerness, friends, and family. Sometimes the seemingly superficial is actually quite intimate. Holka talks about her photography, past travels, lifestyles, and hopes for the future.
• Welcome Kevin McGarry, our new guest blogger! Kevin is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. His journalism has recently appeared on Rhizome, T Magazine Blog, and the online editions of Art in America, Artforum and Interview. Read about his first impressions of Skin Fruit, the exhibition curated by Jeff Koons at the New Museum.
• Flash Points: Must Art Be Ethical? What would happen if you took a stray animal off the street and put it in a gallery as a work of art? According to  David Yanez, perhaps no other exhibition has caused as much controversy over the ethical use of live animals in art as Exposición No.1., a show by Guillermo Vargas, a Costa Rican artist also known as “Habacuc.” IT took place on August 16, 2007 at Galería Códice in Managua, Nicaragua. YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ.
• The Oscars, aka prom night for Hollywood, are just around the corner! Who does the Academy love more: the noble savage, the noble soldier, or the noble soldier-turned-savage? Are you on the edge of your seat or what? If you answered “or what” to that question, you might prefer to spend this Sunday at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, whose current exhibitions offer an excellent antidote to “movie magic.”
• Building relationships can be hard for some and quite natural for others. What about that space in-between? How does photographer Alec Soth work at his relationships with his subjects? Read The Process Behind the Portrait, an interview with Soth by Rachel Craft.

PICK

Nicelle Beauchene
21 Orchard Street, 212-375-8043

East Village / Lower East Side

March 4 – April 11, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 4, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to announce Cosmic Collisions, a new exhibition of sculpture by Valerie Hegarty.

For this exhibition, Hegarty expands her dialogue between American master paintings and catalytic events by drawing upon a broad range of influences to include the sublime, quantum physics, alchemy, origami, abstract expressionism and imagery produced from the Hubble telescope. As in works past, Hegarty reconfigures the paradigms of American painting through interventions that appear to be the result of natural events. With works that recall Rothko, LeWitt and Pollock, Cosmic Collisions pushes the parameters of such events, to suggest the effects of the quantum mechanics of space on these iconic works, creating almost petrified relics.

Curving off the gallery wall, Starry Rothko appears nearly singed beyond recognition, with the implied heat or fire causing it to crumple up on itself. Shaped after an explosion in space seen from the Hubble telescope, Starry Rothko’s canvas surface seems to be tearing away, revealing a glimpse of the cosmos with burn holes that mock the twinkling of stars. Here, Hegarty attempts to literally transform the atmospheric painting of Rothko into pure atmosphere, trying to catch the pivotal moment before the piece falls to the ground in a pile of ashes.

In Space Cubes, Hegarty measures the interiors of Sol LeWitt’s open cubes (1’x1’x1’) and creates her own blocks of space from compacted paper. Toying with traditional constructs of two- and three- dimensionality, Hegarty’s molded paper depicts ephemeral images from the Hubble telescope. These chunks of ‘space,’ stacked in a LeWitt building block formation, start to unfurl as the cubes get higher in their configuration. While referencing LeWitt’s ideas of form and their relationship to philosophical and mathematical concepts, Hegarty’s representations of the sublime nod to the elements of chance, irrationality and perception that inspired the creation of such scientific systems.

Valerie Hegarty received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. She has shown internationally including solo shows at Guild & Greyshkul, New York; MUSEUM 52, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and CTRL Gallery, Houston. Additionally, she has been included in group exhibitions at the Depart Foundation, Rome; The Drawing Center, New York and White Columns, New York. Her work is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of their permanent collection and at the Highline as part of their public art program. Hegarty lives and works in Brooklyn.

VIDEO LOUNGE:: Shannon Plumb, ‘Olympics (Track and Field),’ 2005

Inspired by the stoic, silent comedy of Buster Keaton and Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 documentary Olympia, Olympics (Track and Field) follows a group of aspiring athletes through their Olympic events. Relying on spontaneity and character traits, Plumb presents the humor in going for the gold.

Total running time: 18 minutes.