Gallery Wire

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  Peter Belyi at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, June 19 - July 31

  Posted: 16-June-2008, 10:48pm CEST by admin

  Starting June 19th, Daneyal Mahmood Gallery will exhibit Peter Belyi’s installation Pinocchio’s Library. Modellatura, which generally included an ideal vision of the future, was an extremely popular genre during the 1920s, an age of grand utopias. Not only did artists invest time and energy in creating models of future cities, but conceived their own artworks as indicators for potential technical projects. Peter Belyi’s "memorial modelling," however, casts its gaze into the past, to the 1960s and 1970s, a period that saw the existence of one of the last utopian expressions of our era. The artist’s intent is to use this "new" genre of representation to search for one of the paradigms of humanity: hope in the future produced by disillusionment with the past.

  The wooden puppet Pinocchio is the project’s protagonist, incarnating the figure of an architect obsessed with grandiose projects through which he hopes to transform the world, as well as an indissoluble deposit of utopian ideology present in each and every one of us. Like its hero, Pinocchio’s Library is made of wood, and its books cannot be opened. They are solid marker stones of useless knowledge, inaccessible and impossible to consult ever again. That which was once a source of knowledge has been transformed into an indissoluble deposit of utopian knowledge, a memorial to utopia itself. And yet Pinocchio’s Library is rife with the hopes of each one of us and above all, with the fact that one day the wooden puppet will be transformed into a real child.

  There will be an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, June 19 from 6-8pm.

  Peter Belyi, Pinocchio’s Library
  June 19 - July 31, 2008
  Daneyal Mahmood Gallery
  511 W 25 St, 3rd Fl
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 675-2966

  
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  Women in Photography

  Posted: 4-June-2008, 12:49am CEST by admin

  If you’ve been following the various photography blogs, you may be aware of the brouhaha that erupted over the NY Times article about "gallerinas" that ran a few months back. A corrective effort has been in the works to present a more thoughtful view of women in the arts, spearheaded by Cara Philips and Amy Elkins, which launched today. The "Women in Photography" site will highlight a female photographer on a rotating basis every other Tuesday. The first photographer to be featured is Elinor Carucci. Here’s the image that was sent along to publicize the new site, entitled "and if I don’t get enough attention":

  

  At first, I just couldn’t believe this is the image selected for this show. Is there a knowing irony at play? I’m not 100% sure. And even if there is, I’m not sure it matters. If you click through to the site and review Carucci’s work, you see more nudity, but none of it plays into the female nude stereotype of this example. The story in her work is complex and deeply personal, but you would never guess that from this image.

  
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  Angela Fraleigh at PPOW Gallery, June 5 - July 3

  Posted: 3-June-2008, 6:16pm CEST by admin

  PPOW will present and i would shine in answer/ being/ without becoming, its first solo exhibition of both oil paintings and intimate watercolors by Angela Fraleigh. Fraleigh’s work is unified by an inquiry into social constructs of gender, power, and identity as they simultaneously reflect on art history, literature, popular culture, and the myriad ways we construct individual and collective meaning.

  Under slabs and curls of paint, figures are tangled with revulsion and desire, violence and lust. Fueled by tension, these usually stereotypical images of couples caught in embraces are obscured with ambiguous power structures. Distinguishing pleasure from struggle is complicated by the rich pours of undulating paint that grip the figures and often envelop the compositions.  By disrupting the narrative, spaces and pockets are revealed in between the visible exchanges, they become openings to fill with significance.

  Fraleigh is a painter who embraces her medium.  She accentuates the characteristics and physicality of oil paints and creates illusions by contrasting realism and abstract tactility.  The paint could be covering, hiding, devouring, being expelled, but it is a force that suggests the underlying and hidden causes of what is being produced within and around the female protagonist.  The active complicity of the paint in Fraleigh’s images suggests there is something unseen and unnamed. Swathes of color emphatically state their presence, creating a paradox of revealing and hiding.

  Depicting power struggles within intimate relationships, these specifics become universal hierarchies that affect and inform issues of politics, gender and notions of beauty.  Playing with these stereotypes, Fraleigh confronts social expectations and challenges these constructs. The scale of the paintings, the immediacy of the figures’ closeness and the wetness of the paint induce a voyeurism that is doubly expressed by the seductive gesture and glisten of the paint.  Once you look, you become a witness and participant engaged and part of the story.

  Angela Fraleigh, and i would shine in answer/ being/ without becoming
  June 5 - July 3, 2008
  P·P·O·W Gallery
  555 W 25th St (btwn 10th & 11th Ave)
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 647-1044

  
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  Julian Montague at Black & White Gallery, June 5 - July 12

  Posted: 2-June-2008, 5:47pm CEST by admin

  Black & White Gallery Chelsea is proud to present To Know The Spiders by Julian Montague.

  Investigations into overlooked realms of daily life, continues to be at the heart of Montague’s art practice. In his highly acclaimed The Stray Shopping Cart Identification System project exhibited in the fall of 2006 at Black & White Gallery, Montague’s method was to build a system of classification around a mundane object. In To Know the Spiders, Montague mounts a visual exploration of seemingly mundane animals – the spiders that occupy the peripheries of human architectural space. His process begins with the collection and killing of a spider. He then studies its face under a microscope and from the resulting drawings creates a portrait of the spider in the form of a fabric banner. The banner is then placed and photographed in the exact spot of collection. The banner illuminates the presence of a silent witness and sometime symbiotic partner while also serving as a memorial to the spider that had to die for that understanding to be gained.

  Since his graduation from Hampshire College in 1996 with a BA in Media Studies, Julian Montague’s photographs and other works have been exhibited in solo and group shows at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, OH, Art in General in NYC, Light Factory in Charlotte, NC and at the Collectors Gallery at Albright - Knox in Buffalo, NY. In 2005 Montague’s work was included in the Albright - Knox Art Gallery Beyond/In Western New York biennial at the Castellani Art Museum in Niagara Falls, NY. In 2006 the book version of the Stray Shopping Cart Identification System project, The Stray Shopping Carts Of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification was published by Harry Abrams and is now widely available in bookstores and on most online book sellers. Julian Montague is the winner of the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of 2006. He lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

  Julian Montague, To Know The Spiders
  June 5 - July 12, 2008
  Black & White Gallery
  636 W 28th St
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 244-3007

  
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  Philippe Gronon at Yossi Milo Gallery, May 22 - July 11

  Posted: 22-May-2008, 2:25am CEST by admin

  Photographer Philippe Gronon’s first US show will open on Thursday, May 22 at Yossi Milo Gallery. This exhibition consists of Philippe Gronon’s gelatin silver prints of wall safes, library card catalogues and elevator doors. Through strict observation, Gronon captures meticulous details with a studio camera and enlarges each print to the exact scale of the object, presenting it unframed and devoid of context. A card catalogue from the Vatican Library, for example, is photographed in its original surroundings and then re-presented on a gallery wall, shifting perception of the object according to the setting.

  While extremely detailed, the images are conceptual in their abstraction of commonplace and outmoded objects. Presenting his photographs in this dual manner, Gronon anchors each object in time by preserving visual traces of use, and yet strips them of their original functions so that a plurality of meanings may come to mind. Focusing on banal objects that are representative of a common past, Gronon’s work considers icons of a collective memory.

  Philippe Gronon
  May 22 - July 11, 2008
  Yossi Milo Gallery
  25 W 25th St
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 414-0371

  
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  Michael Eastman at DNJ Gallery, May 31 - July 19

  Posted: 30-May-2008, 11:23pm CEST by admin

  Opening tomorrow, DNJ Gallery will be showing “Vanishing America,” Michael Eastman’s large-scale images recording the common, everyday places which once made up the greater American landscape. Eastman’s photographs do not depict humans, but nevertheless are about people. He captures the restaurants, movie theaters, bars, bowling alleys, city halls, hotels and the outskirts of the community – focusing on the public space. Eastman is firmly committed to portraying the legacy of small communities. He preserves the vanishing townscape.

  One of Eastman’s major influences, Eugene Atget, a painter turned photographer, believed he was the author of his environment. He illustrated the late 19th century storefronts of Paris to record them for the future generations. Similarly, another one of his influences, Walker Evans, was known for concentrating on the ordinary. Evans noticed those common places that are not missed until they are no longer there. In this vein, “Vanishing America” celebrates the forgotten, preserving the rich visual relics still remaining, and holding evidence to our collective past. In 2003, Eastman began his three and a half-year project, traveling across the United States six times. Shooting with his 4×5 camera has made him a keen observer of the world, and given way to a developed poetic vision of what a more superficial observer would consider mundane architecture. Eastman’s images have a quiet painterly attention to light and space, which also translate beautifully to the colors of film. “Vanishing America” reveals the hidden jewels of the rural American buildings, recalling a history that in modern times has often been traded for corporate chains and mass uniformity. “The heart of our country is not along its highways, but in the small towns that dot the map along the way,” Eastman says about his work. There is a definite nostalgia for a part of our past slowly being demolished, but Eastman chooses to preserve what remains, taking subtle care as if he were an archeologist uncovering a long, lost civilization.

  There will be an artist reception and book signing on opening night, Saturday, May 31, from 6pm to 8pm.

  Michael Eastman, Vanishing America
  May 31 - July 19, 2008
  DNJ Gallery
  154½ N. La Brea Ave.
  Los Angeles, CA 90036
  (323) 931-1311

  
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  Martina Nerhling at Zg Gallery, June 6 - July 12

  Posted: 30-May-2008, 1:34am CEST by admin

  Martina Nehrling’s paintings are abstract compositions inspired by the simplicity of everyday life, translated through the complex filter of human thought and emotion.  Martina states, “My recent work begins with observing the dappled sunlight of the Midwestern summer in a 21 foot panoramic painting titled, Through a Purple Patch, and develops into a study of the lulling experience of being present to the richly textured cacophony of daily life in a series of paintings titled, In Waves.”

  “Grouped or tangled together, I use distinct brushstrokes for their directness, but rich color in order to engage and explore its imprecise language.  I revel in color’s complexity, noticing how the eye tracks patterns of value and intensity and can be interrupted by particular relationships or a shift in scale.   When I paint I am sounding out elements of my everyday life and I am captivated by the pulsation of disparate events, information, things… at once the beauty, the horror, the weight of it all.  And so my work consists largely of compositions of accumulation.  These seem to me one of the most legitimate kinds of pictures to make in our cultural landscape of abundant consumer goods, the privilege/burden of access to information, and the general order and disorder, calm and panic, chaos and hope.”

  There will be an opening reception at the gallery, Friday, June 6th.

  Martina Nerhling, Through a Purple Patch
  June 6 – July 12
  Zg Gallery
  300 W. Superior St.
  Chicago, IL 60610
  (312) 654-9900

  
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  Works on Paper at Bravura Arts & Objects, Oct 6 - 29

  Posted: 8-October-2007, 4:23am CEST by admin

  An exhibit of 40 figurative and abstract artworks explores the diversity of how artists approach working on paper. The selection also attempts to demonstrate the influence of paper on the creative process and the finished artworks. Bold work by Pierre Alechinsky, David Burliuk, Herman Cherry, William Gropper Tschacbasov and Irene Zevon are shown in contrast to the linear work of Willem de Kooning, Jennifer Brown and the delicate plein aire work of Nikolai Cikovsky, Edouard Goerg and Wolf Kahn. The exhibit features rare works by European masters including Bonnard, Maillol and Rodin in combination with drawings, prints and collage by local artists including: Jennifer Brown, Robert Dash, Mark Humphrey, Joan Miller, Paton Miller, Faith Dorian Wright, Judith Zabar and others. Photographs by Peter Beard, Miles Ladin, Christopher Makos, Gerard Malanga and Anton Perich span the 1970s Manhattan Warhol era to images of contemporary Istanbul.

  Oct 6 - 29
  Bravura Art & Objects
  22 Nugent Street
  Southampton, NY 11968
  (631) 259-2605

  
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  Emilie Clark at Morgan Lehman, Oct 25 - Dec 22

  Posted: 8-October-2007, 3:16pm CEST by admin

  Morgan Lehman is pleased to present Emilie Clark’s solo exhibition: The Weeklies, an ongoing body of work created over the last twelve years. Clark began the project in 1995, completing one 12 x 9 inch panel for each week of each year. She has finished 614 paintings to date, and plans to continue the project for the rest of her life.

  Most of Clark’s work stems from her interest in natural history specifically, and the encyclopedic organization of knowledge more generally. Her previous projects, Letters to Mary Ward and Home Studies in Nature, restage the experiments of 19th century women naturalists as a basis for installations that include drawing, painting, writing and specimens. The Weeklies could be thought to connect all of Clark’s research projects inasmuch as they constitute an ongoing laboratory for her visual language, offering a structure in which any visual specimen can enter. Essentially anything can be included, but it must fit into the form of paint on board to the exact size of 12 x 9 inches, and be completed before Sunday night each week of the year.

  They have become, as she describes, “a non- systematic way to investigate all of life’s concerns that have not yet become systematic-this being its encyclopedism.” Clark likens the process of making a painting each week to that of a scientist who conducts controlled experiments, while at the same time collecting specimens, observing phenomena, and speculating about conclusions not related to the experiment or project. The Weeklies is deeply personal and autobiographical because of the painting’s relationship to events in her life. The paintings serve as visual records of these events, like snapshots or pages from a diary.

  Morgan Lehman is presenting The Weeklies in its entirety, for the first time, with Clark adding a painting per week throughout the exhibition, thereby completing the 12th year. Each year, fifty- two distinct paintings, will hang eight paintings high and seven paintings wide, wrapping the entire gallery. Together the work forms a type of specimen collection, in which the collection itself is as valuable, important, and informational as the individual works. Though a compilation of Clark’s disparate impressions, thoughts, and feelings, they create a dialogue that touches upon any viewer’s relationship to time itself.

  Oct 25 - Dec 22
  Morgan Lehman Gallery
  317 10th Ave (btwn 28th & 29th)
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 268-6699

  
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  Doug Keyes at Foley Gallery, Nov 1 - Jan 5

  Posted: 21-October-2007, 3:34pm CEST by admin

  Foley Gallery is pleased to announce Collective Memory, an exhibition of photographs by Seattle-based artist Doug Keyes.

  With this new body of work Doug Keyes presents a series of luminescent and semi-figurative photographs. By layering multiple exposures on a single piece of film Keyes compresses entire books into single images. These portraits are abstract representations that visually intimate the accumulation of information over time.

  

  The contrast between the white pages of each book set against the black background of the photographs makes each images seem to flutter like the constant turning of pages. As these haunting images are printed at the same size as their source material, they refuse sheer abstraction and retain the physical identity of books. Although no longer legible, each word and grammatical turn is still present in these new complex forms.

  Doug Keyes lives and works in Seattle. He has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. In 2007, Keyes won the Project Competition Juror?s Choice Award.

  Nov 1 - Jan 5
  Foley Gallery
  547 W 27th St, 5TH Flr
  New York, NY 10001
  (212) 244-9081