SanArt

Until April 3, 2010, Mike Weiss Gallery in New York presents Remote Control, a multimedia installation including sculpture, photography and drawing by artist Sofi Zezmer. It’s the artist’s third solo exhibition at Mike Weiss Gallery. Work her work, she uses fragments of manmade, mostly synthetic materials.

Sofi Zezmer constructs her works by a gradual additive process dependent on intuitive responses to the materials and objects she uses forming color-saturated assemblages. Among the elements she incorporates are objects such as drinking straws, IV drip tubing, construction netting, film, foil, packing materials, bicycle helmets, cable ties and funnels. “In fusing the elements and breaking them down, Zezmer disrupts the common meaning assigned to the items and calls into question our own familiarity with them. Zezmer’s sculptures suggest irrational Duchampian hybrids of mechanical and biological systems. They are embodiments of the complexity of life in the modern age, ruminations on the omnipresence of mass-production, space travel and biotechnology.” (Excerpt from the press release).

Sofi Zezmer lives and works in Germany. Her work has been exhibited in numerous international gallery and museum exhibitions, such as her solo exhibitions at Museum Wiesbaden, at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan and her forty two foot long hanging sculpture, Es Darf Kein Mangel Herrschen, commissioned by the NASPA Bank, Wiesbaden, Germany.

Sofi Zezmer: Remote Control / Mike Weiss Gallery, New York. Opening reception, February 27, 2010.

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Now in its 75th year, the Whitney Biennial is still the big kahuna—the show every American artist wants to be in and every art lover wants to see. This year, the career-boosting show includes no Philadelphia artists. Instead, the curators of this national show sought talent in Chicago, Oregon, Los Angeles and, of course, New York. They rounded up 55 artists and, for the first time, more than half were women. Reflecting our times of war and global recession, the show is a somber parade, sometimes tedious, sometimes achingly beautiful, with a surprising number of photographers and video artists channeling anthropology á la Margaret Mead. It’s a good show—you should see it.

One of several Portland, OR artists in the Whitney Biennial. Storm Tharp, Pigeon (After Shunsen), 2009 Ink, gouache, and colored pencil on paper, 58 x 42 (147.3 x 106.7) Collection of the artist; courtesy PDX Contemporary Art, Portland

But why should you have to travel all the way to New York to see such a high-cailber show? Here’s an idea. Let’s have a Philadelphia Biennial—a large curated show of regional contemporary art hosted by all of our major art museums, organized by museum curators and with a catalog. Though staging a biennial in Philadelphia would be expensive, Whitney’s 75-year track record proves that it can be a lasting investment.

Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), recently spoke at a panel titled “Can the Arts Revive Our Cities and the Nation’s Economy?” Landesman and the other panelists—practitioners from Austin and New Orleans, an academic from Penn and the head of the National Council for the Traditional Arts—all delivered a resounding “Yes, we can.”  (More on that panel in another post. Meanwhile, read Gary Steuer’s post and the Inquirer’s story on the panel.)

The NEA is offering 15 grants of $250,000 to cities (including Philadelphia) to fund bold arts initiatives. Proposing a Philadelphia Biennial is just the kind of move that could win the city that money. PEI (Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiatives, an arm of Pew Trusts) could match that as an initial priming of the money pump locally. But it’s going to take more.

The Whitney Biennial 2010 is sponsored by Deutsche Bank, Tommy Hilfiger, Sothebys, a couple foundations and the Friends Committee of the Whitney Museum. Philadelphia corporations like Comcast, PNC Bank and others could step forward. Local donors and art museum trustees could create a Friends of the Philadelphia Biennial fund.

The exhibit could be at the Institute of Contemporary Art one year; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts the next; Philadelphia Museum of Art after that. It could be split between the museums and our premier big-box space, the Icebox at Crane Arts Center. There are no rules to break and creative thinking can pull this off.

Biennials, like museum shows in general, are democratic—they are shows for the people. A Philadelphia Biennial would bring the public to contemporary art and educate them about it. In the local art community, people bemoan the lack of educated art consumers in Philadelphia. Buying art is essential to retaining artists here and keeping the arts economy going and growing. Create the Philadelphia Biennial and you will be taking the first step in educating this new group of collectors.

What is needed to make this happen is leadership. Mayor Nutter and art czar Gary Steuer need to get on board and exert political clout. Financial leadership from foundations, the city, universities, corporations and private donors is a necessity.

Who is the audience for the Philadelphia Biennial? It’s the Flower Show attendees—people interested in the city, the arts, beauty and discourse about things that bring joy and meaning to life, that and the thousands of artists, gallerists, collectors, museum professionals and arts lovers in the region.

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s research shows that people in this region spend twice as much on culture as they do on sporting events—and these same people report more satisfaction from those art events than from sporting events. Give the people what satisfies them—a grand, blockbuster contemporary art show to talk about for months with their friends.

If Whitney can do it, so can we. We have the beginnings of a model for this in Philagrafika 2010, the citywide print festival. It’s risky and it’s going to cost money, but the payback could be huge.

Read this story at Philadelphia Weekly.

John Baldessari, "Beach Scene/Nuns/Nurse (with Choices)", 1991 courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Within the first few pages of the season 5 Educators’ Guide, readers are asked to think about the power and influence of juxtaposing images in order to give the viewer very different experiences. Working with artists like John Baldessari, a few of my classes recently began a unit to explore how juxtaposition has the power to send visual messages, tell stories, and even share qualities about ourselves.

Over the course of a few days, I asked students to bring in and collect a variety of images they would like to combine in a single artwork. After assembling the images and cropping them a bit, I asked them about the images they selected and what these images said about their interests, their habits and even their passions. One student remarked that the images he selected basically described his obsession with money. Another described her images as being primarily connected to food, which is something finds comfort in. Still another described his images revolving around his work related to environmental projects.

As students assemble their works this week, we will also begin moving into some small-group research exploring how juxtaposition can be used to send messages simply by placing certain images side-by side.

Nancy Spero "Masha Bruskina / Gestapo Victim" 1994, courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York

Students will be asked to work with partners to research and collect images (fine art reproductions, advertisements, posters, etc.) that send specific messages through juxtaposition. Along with viewing works by John Baldessari, we will be also be looking into artists such as Yinka Shonibare MBE, Nancy Spero, Kerry James Marshall, and Eleanor Antin.

Creating high quality works of art that are technically proficient is always very satisfying for both teachers and students, but when we have the opportunity to make students more aware of the images they see, and how they relate to larger themes and broader issues, we are teaching students not only how to create works of art but also how to interpret them.

Joshua Liner Gallery
548 West 28th Street, 3rd Floor, 212-244-7415

Chelsea

March 18 – April 17, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 18, 6 – 9 PM
Web Site

Joshua Liner Gallery is very pleased to present the New York/Tokyo-based collective the Barnstormers in their first group exhibition at the gallery. With thirty-five artists featured, this is the largest exhibition to date at Joshua Liner, which will double its gallery space temporarily to accommodate the special event. Expanding to host the collective’s full spectrum of art practices, the gallery will show individual works in painting, printmaking, photography, video, installation, and other mediums by the following Barnstormer artists:

Alex Lebedev, Alice Mazorra, Bluster One, Che Jen, Chris Mendoza, Chuck Webster, Cycle, Daikon, David Ellis, Dennis McNett, Doze Green, Ge-ology, Gion, Guillermo Carrion, Joey Garfield, JPL (UFO), Kami, Kenji Hirata, Kiku Yamaguchi, KR , Madsaki, Manny Pangilinan (Wello), Marlene Marino, Martin Mazorra, Maya Hayuk, Mikal Hameed, Mike Houston, Mike Ming, Miyuki (Pai) Hirai, Naomi Kazama, Pablo Power, Paul Coors, Pema Rinzin, Rostarr, Ryan McGinness, Sasu, Shie Moreno, Swoon, West One, Yuri Shibuya, and Yuri Shimojo.

Over the past decade, the Barnstormers have created large-scale collaborative paintings, films, and performances. The group formed in 1999 after a pilgrimage of twenty-five artists to the rural town of Cameron, North Carolina, where they painted barns, tractor-trailers, shacks, and farm equipment, and continue to return to paint new murals. The Barnstormers’ “motion paintings” best demonstrate the range and flexibility of their collaboration: each timelapse video depicts a mural in the making as members dart about, adding and effacing marks, evolving the image with each passing second. A 2005 project included the disassembly/relocation/reassembly of a barn captured on video in a time-lapse flurry of activity. Improvisation, in spirit and practice, is the Barnstormer ethos.

In this exhibition, the Barnstormers will present works by the group’s individual artists, all of whom have drawn acclaim in their own right and individual careers. As the unofficial founder of the Barnstormers (which rejects any form of organizational hierarchy), North Carolina native David Ellis is nonetheless the driving force who first drew this intrepid band of artists South. In his own practice, Ellis has received acclaim for freestylin’ installations inspired by popular music and DJ-ing, specifically the ways that image, sound, materials, and technology interconnect in
contemporary culture. His installations have been featured at the Huntington Museum of Art, WV; Rice University Gallery, Houston, TX; Tidal, Osaka, Japan; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; and Deitch Projects, New York. Other Southeasterners in the collective include Virginian Dennis McNett, West Virginian Martin Mazorra, and North Carolinian Mike Houston, all master printers (in a cracked, R.Crumb vein) working with Cannonball Press.

Swoon is a Brooklyn-based street artist who gained immediate international attention in the mid-’00s for her woodcut-print-on-paper portraits—lovely, intricate, and life-size, these casual views of neighborhood denizens were wheatpasted by the artist on walls and other surfaces of the urban environment in close proximity to the lives depicted. More recently, Swoon has led teams of artists in the construction of “Swimming Cities,” handmade rafts of art navigated to various ports of call on the Mississippi River, Hudson River, and Adriatic Sea where the group has
performed songs and skits for local audiences.

Among the Barnstormers’ Eastern cohort are Hitotzuki, the collaborative duo of Kami and Sasu. The husband and wife team are Tokyo-based muralists who work in a distinctive style of wavy lines and geometric patterns. Born in Osaka, the artist Madsaki spent 25 years in the United States, three as a bicycle messenger in New York—now based in Tokyo, his art incorporates painting, contemporary graphic design, masks, heraldry insignia, and tag-style text, among other sources and media. Also originally from Tokyo, Yuri Shimojo brings a very different contribution
to the collective: supremely delicate works in watercolor on paper. Blending imagery from nature and eastern mythology, her practice also includes journaling, dance, and the traditional arts of the Samurai from whom she is descended.

The Nagasaki-born Kenji Hirata is inspired by billboards, Southeast Asian signage, and the pop-cultural legacies of Futurism and Superflat. His unique approach to hard-edged abstraction celebrates the dynamic interplay of color and form. The photographic arts are represented by the Okayama-born Gion, who has often served as documentary photographer for the Barnstormers’ international projects. Additionally, several of the collective’s artists hail from South Korea. The Seoul-born Che Jen works in sumi ink and acrylic on vellum and paper, building up gorgeous
abstractions from ornate filigree and calligraphy-style marks (she has also collaborated with Madsaki on installation works). And from Daegu, the artist known as Rostarr is the South Korean “Frank Stella,” creating dynamic abstract paintings and murals of banded colors, wavy lines, and camouflage-like patterns in acrylic and aerosol.

The Queens, NY-born graffiti writer KR became so successful that he now markets his own specially designed line of paint and markers called Krink—he built his fine art reputation in the active street/gallery crossover scene of San Francisco before coming back to New York. Doze Green, another New York-born graffiti artist in the collective, pioneered the use of ongoing-characters in street work, as well as participated in the burgeoning breakdancing and B-Boying dance styles with the Rock Steady Crew.

Maya Hayuk, who also got her footing in San Francisco, is now based in Brooklyn. She draws pure pleasure (or “bliss,” as several titles suggest) from the interplay of Day-Glo color and pure geometric forms, creating wall works of prismatic facets, spectral rays, and explosive starbursts. Similarly abstract and colorful but incorporating more organic, even vaguely representational forms, the New York-born Chuck Webster works both large and small in oil on panel. Rounding out the New York-based Barnstormers cohort is the Nicaraguan-born, Bronx-raised Chris Mendoza. His fantastical ink-on-paper drawings display a love of architectural draftsmanship and call to mind the abstract works of Miro, Kandinsky, and the Chilean modernist Matta.

To highlight the Barnstormers’ no-holds-barred sense of improvisation and internationalism, the exhibition will include Confessional Booth, a live, transatlantic project by Greater New York alum Ryan McGinness. While currently in Madrid executing his solo show Studio Franchise at La Casa Encendida, McGinness will host one-to-one conversations via Skype videoconferencing throughout the run of the Barnstormers show. Open to all visitors, the “confessionals” will be conducted during set hours from inside a draped cubicle, complementing the artist’s collaborative studio-cum-showroom project occurring simultaneously in the Spanish exhibition.

In their myriad combinations and collaborations, the Barnstormers have conducted public art projects and participated in exhibitions at venues worldwide, including Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Museo del Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC; Society for Arts and Technology, Montreal, Canada; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; and CWC Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

Hauser & Wirth
32 East 69th Street, 212-794-4970

Upper East Side

March 16 – April 24, 2010
Opening: Tuesday, March 16, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

In 1969, one year before her death at the age of 34, German-born American artist Eva Hesse wrote of her desire “to get to non-art, non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-nothing; everything…It’s not the new, it is what is yet not known, thought, seen, touched; but really what is not and that is.” In her effort to make works that could transcend literal associations, Hesse cultivated mistakes and surprise, precariousness and enigma. The objects she produced, at once humble and enormously charismatic, came to play a central role in the transformation of contemporary art practice.

Hauser & Wirth New York is presenting exhibition of such objects: Eva Hesse brings together fourteen works, many never before shown publicly in the United States, that previously have been considered improvisational ‘test pieces’ or prototypes for larger sculptures. Of these, eleven are delicate papier caché forms – wisps of assembled paper, tape, cheesecloth and adhesive made between 1966 and 1969 – that are neither round nor rectangular, but indeterminate. Intimate manifestations of the artist’s thought process, they evoke the bodily, suggesting fragments of skull, sheaths of timeworn parchment, tablets awaiting manuscript, curving shadows, the lens of an eyeball. These objects evade easy definition: They have been seen variously as experiments, little pieces, molds, tests for larger works, or finished works in their own right. In her recent research on Hesse’s work, prominent British art historian Briony Fer has renamed these objects collectively as ‘studioworks,’ proposing that their precarious nature places them at the very heart of Hesse’s influential practice and raises important questions about traditional notions of what constitutes sculpture.

Eva Hesse will present its contents upon a plinth that loosely alludes to how these works may have been encountered in Hesse’s studio, temporarily arranged in groups on the artist’s work table, always subject to change. The objects in this exhibition will be included in the museum survey ‘Eva Hesse: Studioworks’ at Fundació Antoni Tapies in Barcelona (May 14 – August 1, 2010), the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (September 10, 2010 – January 2, 2011), and the Berkeley Art Museum in California (January 26 – April 24, 2011).

In New York in the 1960s, Hesse was among a group of artists, including Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Robert Smithson, who engaged materials that were originally soft and flexible: aluminum, latex rubber, plastic, lead, polythene, copper, felt, chicken-wire, dirt, sawdust, paper pulp and glue. Often unstable, these elements yielded works forever alive in their relativity and mutability. Hesse was aware she produced objects that were ephemeral, but this problem was of less concern to her than the desire to exploit materials with a temporal dimension. Much of the tumescent, life-affirming power of Hesse’s art derives from this confident embrace of moment. As she stated in an interview with Cindy Nemser in 1970, “Life doesn’t last; art doesn’t last.”

The Guild Art Gallery
45 West 21st Street, #39, second floor, 212-229-2110

Chelsea

March 11 – April 13, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Web Site

The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present, Domus Vulgus, the New York debut show of Contemporary India artist Apnavi Thacker. Born in Bombay, India and brought up in Geneva, Switzerland, Apnavi Thacker grew up benefiting from two very different cultures. Her experiences in both cities have had a major impact on her work. Apnavi is a self-taught artist, although she gained valuable knowledge and experience during her two years of training under the guidance of Bose Krishnamachari. Her work addresses such issues as the possible link between a woman and her self-confidence and level of comfort with her sexuality, and the impact of urban development on the environment.

Her work retains a focus on street art, common in most cities around the world although it remains non-existent in Bombay. Apnavi has exhibited in Bombay in both solo and group shows. This includes the Mumbai Festival in 2005, for which she was commissioned to do a single piece inspired by her thoughts on the city of Bombay, and the Kala Ghoda festival in 2006 for which she created an installation consisting of urinals. The works represent a continuation of themes based on urban development.

For DOMUS VULGUS, Thacker will literally recreate a shack, similar to the ones seen in slum dwellings of the city of Mumbai, India, as well as paintings. Being a street artist Thacker has developed a keen eye for urban environments and in particular what society would term as urban decay – meaning the vast slum areas that are now synonymous with urban construction and the landscape of Mumbai. Her initial practice as an artist in Switzerland exposed her to street art and graffiti something that is virtually non-existent in India. Thackers work therefore amalgamates the visual aesthetic of street art from one culture and the literal visual and functional aspects of street culture in another, to conjure up strongly individualistic, socio-political statements.

About her work, Thacker says:

Through my work I want to be able to provide an insight on the dichotomy of these two lifestyles and thereby the blatant socio-economic barrier that divides them. An underlying theme which is equally important is the use of space by the two disparate segments of society… My canvas works are often dark but they’re not negative. They are reflections of my thought process and the struggle within me to adapt to the great dichotomy which is Bombay.

The Guild Art Gallery
45 West 21st Street, #39, second floor, 212-229-2110

Chelsea

March 11 – April 13, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Web Site

The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present, Domus Vulgus, the New York debut show of Contemporary India artist Apnavi Thacker. Born in Bombay, India and brought up in Geneva, Switzerland, Apnavi Thacker grew up benefiting from two very different cultures. Her experiences in both cities have had a major impact on her work. Apnavi is a self-taught artist, although she gained valuable knowledge and experience during her two years of training under the guidance of Bose Krishnamachari. Her work addresses such issues as the possible link between a woman and her self-confidence and level of comfort with her sexuality, and the impact of urban development on the environment.

Her work retains a focus on street art, common in most cities around the world although it remains non-existent in Bombay. Apnavi has exhibited in Bombay in both solo and group shows. This includes the Mumbai Festival in 2005, for which she was commissioned to do a single piece inspired by her thoughts on the city of Bombay, and the Kala Ghoda festival in 2006 for which she created an installation consisting of urinals. The works represent a continuation of themes based on urban development.

For DOMUS VULGUS, Thacker will literally recreate a shack, similar to the ones seen in slum dwellings of the city of Mumbai, India, as well as paintings. Being a street artist Thacker has developed a keen eye for urban environments and in particular what society would term as urban decay – meaning the vast slum areas that are now synonymous with urban construction and the landscape of Mumbai. Her initial practice as an artist in Switzerland exposed her to street art and graffiti something that is virtually non-existent in India. Thackers work therefore amalgamates the visual aesthetic of street art from one culture and the literal visual and functional aspects of street culture in another, to conjure up strongly individualistic, socio-political statements.

About her work, Thacker says:

Through my work I want to be able to provide an insight on the dichotomy of these two lifestyles and thereby the blatant socio-economic barrier that divides them. An underlying theme which is equally important is the use of space by the two disparate segments of society… My canvas works are often dark but they’re not negative. They are reflections of my thought process and the struggle within me to adapt to the great dichotomy which is Bombay.

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:

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.