SanArt

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.

PS122 Gallery
150 First Avenue, 212 288 4249

East Village / Lower East Side

March 20 – March 20, 2010
Opening: Saturday, March 20, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Using home movies, found footage and handmade film techniques, these four short films by filmmaker Sara Strahan explore the complex relationship between media, storytelling and the construction of memory. Sound by Melissa Grey.

About Sara Strahan:

A Chicago native who spent years in Japan, Sara Strahan is an artist, producer & video-maker now residing in the East Village. She is a graduate of the Masters in Media Studies program at the New School and a member of the Paper Tiger Television Collective. An avid supporter of community and youth media—an a 20 year veteran of the field—Sara is devoted to making critical, non-commercial media in fun, thoughtful way.

Project and screening made possible by a generous grant made by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Manhattan Community Arts Fund.

PS122 Gallery
150 First Avenue, 212 288 4249

East Village / Lower East Side

March 20 – March 20, 2010
Opening: Saturday, March 20, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Using home movies, found footage and handmade film techniques, these four short films by filmmaker Sara Strahan explore the complex relationship between media, storytelling and the construction of memory. Sound by Melissa Grey.

About Sara Strahan:

A Chicago native who spent years in Japan, Sara Strahan is an artist, producer & video-maker now residing in the East Village. She is a graduate of the Masters in Media Studies program at the New School and a member of the Paper Tiger Television Collective. An avid supporter of community and youth media—an a 20 year veteran of the field—Sara is devoted to making critical, non-commercial media in fun, thoughtful way.

Project and screening made possible by a generous grant made by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Manhattan Community Arts Fund.

Scaramouche
53 Stanton Street, 212-228-2229

East Village / Lower East Side

March 12 – May 2, 2010
Opening: Friday, March 12, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

As the final exhibition at the former Fruit & Flower Deli space, Scaramouche is pleased to present an exhibition by Italian artist Cristiana Palandri. Beginning in May, the gallery will move to its new premises at 52 Orchard Street, NYC.

For her first solo-show in New York, Palandri presents a selection of recent drawings and sculptures, as well as an installation specifically conceived for the gallery space. Building on her previous investigation with organic materials, this new body of work continues to explore the sculptural possibilities of human hair, animal bones and bees wax, which simultaneously act as both fragile, ephemeral elements, as well as objects that transcend life.

As if it were a Wunderkammer, the gallery is taken over by Palandri’s personal microcosm of destabilized and reinvented structures, deformed pieces of furniture, and test tubes filled with exotic materials in dilution. Borrowing its title from her recent work “Noiseless”, the show articulates around the imperceptible processes of decomposition and transformation that the artist’s works undergo.

Cristiana Palandri (b. 1977, lives and works in Florence) is a graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Bologna. Her work has been exhibited in various public spaces and museums including BACC – Bangkok Art and Culture Centre; Quarter Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Florence; MLAC, Rome and Galleria Civica di Monza, Milan. Recently she is the recipient of the 52nd Premio Termoli Award 2009, and the A.T. Kearney Prize Milan, 2008.

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.

Christopher Henry Gallery
127 Elizabeth Street, at Broome, 212-244-6004

East Village / Lower East Side

March 12 – April 18, 2010
Opening: Friday, March 12, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Christopher Henry Gallery is pleased to announce Friends in High Places , an exhibition of abstract painting and sculpture by seventeen contemporary artists, organized by participants Zach Needler and Adrian Ting.

Conceived as an organic interchange, Friends in High Places, explores the implicit connections within a community and takes as an article of faith that a fluid curatorial approach can yield a comprehensive catalog of practices and principles. The project began with a select number of artists who were asked to recommend artists they felt were making strong abstract work, who were then asked to make their own recommendations. The result is a show that while strikingly varied in form and professional experience reveals a common conceptual framework behind artistic tendencies and methods. Surprising synergies between the organic and the modular, the excessive and the minimal, and the intuitive and the formal are affirmed.
Friends in High Places features work by Ernesto Burgos, Angie Drakopoulos, Jason Duval, Jack Featherly, Elisa Lendvay, Michael Mahalchick, Chris Martin, Thomas McDonell, Douglas Melini, Zach Needler, Julie Phillips, Julia Rommel, David Shaw, Michael St. John, Jessica Stockholder, Adrian Ting and Tamara Zahaykevich.

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.

Participant Inc.
253 East Houston Street, 212-254-4334

East Village / Lower East Side

February 28 – April 11, 2010
Opening: Sunday, February 28, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Participant Inc. is pleased to present When it rains, all shines black, the first U.S. solo exhibition of Barcelona-based artist Alejandro Vidal. Known for his large-format photographs, videos, and installations that assert a post-cinematic aesthetic of conflict, seen through a generational lens that distinguishes the obsolescence of transgression in societies obsessed with control, the exhibition will consist of new works in photography and video. Vidal’s new photographs for When it rains, all shines black are a loose re-staging of a common form of popular political dissent in
Latin American countries, involving the symbolic washing of the national flag in front of government buildings. Shooting at night from a hermetically remote location, usually from inside a car and illuminated only by the glare of headlights, Vidal de-objectifies the original act through distancing strategies, insinuating a subtle yet threatening rupture. The location and actions appear inscrutable, foreboding a dystopic resistance or enacting a B-movie-esque ceremony of an imaginary secret society. The flags are unidentifiable, and the actors are theatrically styled to produce a “vernacular upheaval, insinuating those forms of cultural subversion that are more powerful for going undetected.” (Erica Papernik, Crime and Punishment, Tallinn Kunstihoone, 2006).

Vidal’s Firestorm (5 min. video/sound) covertly announces the globalization of the image of terror. Images of fireworks, ripped fromthe net, burst to the sound of explosions from real, ‘live’ conflicts. Conflicts of the analog age were generally specific in location and duration, but today’s digital media release them into something of almost limitless scope, universal location, and endless loop. Real violence has evolved into a semiotic commodity, pointing the way to a new aesthetic of terror, a new condition of life characterized by personal and collective paranoia, routine disorder, mayhem, and imperceptibly but rapidly eroding civil liberties. “With the end of the classical form of war between sovereign states, it becomes clear that security finds its end in globalization: the idea of a new planetary order, which is, in truth, the worst of all disorders. Because this condition requires constant reference to a state of exception, the measure of security works towards a growing de-politicization of society, irreconcilable with democracy.” (Giorgio Agamben, “On Security and Terror,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 20, 2001)

Also included will be a new series of twenty small-scale photographs, Somewhere in a great country (2010), comprised of imagery taken from captured low resolution Internet videos. These images belong to popular celebrations and festive acts like Independence Day, political rallies, etc., in which fireworks are used. However, there is scarcely any human presence in the photos, resembling instead acts of dissent or sabotage, car bombs or threats. The image quality is reminiscent of surveillance, or the green tone of a night vision lens. Like Firestorm, Somewhere in a great country explores the relationship between history and fiction, and the future of the image.

Early of Vidal’s works brought together references to activism, early rave period, ‘80s cult movies, manuals of self-defense, and punk nihilism to analyze states of repressed aggression. It has been noted that, “Vidal seems to delight in a moment prior to the action, the moment of the preparative rituals of fighting, in gestures encoded inthe heart of action films… He presents the factual literality of images in a neutral unaffected manner, tossing all this thuggish power around to shake us out of the social dream, wretched self-control, the worst form of repression, a law assumed without resistance.” (Amanda Cuesta, Not afraid of tears, Galeria Joan Prats, 2008)

Alejandro Vidal (Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 1972) lives and works in Barcelona. He has exhibited his work at numerous international museums and centers such as Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienna; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; MIS, Sao Paulo; Da2, Salamanca; Kling & Bang, Reikjavik; and Mambo; Bologna. He took part in the Busan Biennial, South Korea, 2006. Recently he has exhibited at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona; Galleria ARTRA, Milan; Galeria Elba Benitez, Madrid; Galerie Thomas Schulte and Play Platform for Film and Video, Berlin; and Monitor, Rome. Upcoming projects include Seven deadly sins at Zentrum Paul Klee/Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, and Glück Happens at Kunstpalais Erlangen, Germany.

Alejandro Vidal, When it rains, all shines black, is co-organized by SEACEX, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior. Special thanks to The Cooper Square Hotel, New York.

Participant Inc.’s exhibitions are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Participant Inc. receives generous support from the Harriett Ames
Charitable Trust; Bloomberg; The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston;
Foundation 20 21; Gesso Foundation; Peter Norton Family Foundation;
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; an anonymous donor of the Community Foundation of Abilene; Friends of Participant Inc. and numerous individuals; and Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.

Simon Preston Gallery
301 Broome Street, 212-431-1105

East Village / Lower East Side

March 6 – April 25, 2010
Opening: Saturday, March 6, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Adopting traits from a variety of late 19th Century Gothic fiction, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1866), H.G Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the exhibition comprises of a series of sculptures, photographs and drawings. By combining elements of romance and horror, Rios suggests various modes of physical and emotional transformation, while continuing to mine an intimate personal psychology.

The title of the show, Plasma Pool, directly references Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), itself a modern day story of metamorphosis and mutation. Titles such as Neurochemical Squirt and Affectionate Cranial Scoop, suggest tender, if unsettling, gestures towards intimacy, while the objects themselves, a human-scale nutcracker and spoon-shaped drill-bit, reveal the hyperbolic brutality required to perform their unique tasks. Tip Sips (700ml at a time), a glass device shaped to wrap around the necks of a couple in embrace, implies the ingesting of tears expelled and caught in delicate eyeglasses. Orificial Juice Exchange, a large-scale laboratory-inspired glass sculpture, foregoes this modesty and restraint, with attachments for a total bodily fluid transfusion.

By assuming literary, filmic and art historical guises, Rios is able to employ humor and slapstick in his exploration of a mind tormented by plurality. The walls of the gallery are painted to resemble a theatrical stage or setting. Two black and white photographs depict the artist firstly with a rock tethered to his head, and then with his head entirely replaced by a nut. In a third fleeting snapshot, while caught in an act of depravity, his face appears as a grotesque. Two ‘dry-erase’ drawings attempt to illustrate and work through this condition in a futile attempt at diagnosis and understanding.

Marco Rios graduated in 2006 from University of California, Irvine. He has since participated in the 2008 California Biennial, and was included in Phantom Sightings, a traveling group exhibition at LACMA; Mixed Signals, a traveling exhibition organized by ICI; and This is Killing Me, a group exhibition at MASS MoCA. Death’s Boutique, a forthcoming commission with Kara Tanaka, will open at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco this month. He lives and works in Los Angeles.