TS+ PROJECTS

Instant LA Summer 2: HEAVY HAPPY Curated by Esteban Schimpf

Still Waters by Sara Clendening

Liz Craft, Sara Clendening, Chris Coy, Gerald Davis, Marc Horowitz, Pentti Monkkonen, Maha Saab, Sarah Sieradzki, Esteban Schimpf

Carmichael Gallery
5795 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232

July 16 - August 6, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6:30-10pm

Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY, a group exhibition curated by Esteban Schimpf and featuring works by emerging and mid-career artists Liz Craft, Sara Clendening, Chris Coy, Gerald Davis, Marc Horowitz, Pentti Monkkonen, Maha Saab, Sarah Sieradzki and Esteban Schimpf.  An audacious encore to Instant LA Summer, August, 2010, HEAVY HAPPY is unmoved by vitreous polyresin and recruits its louche participants from chop-shops, tunnels of love, talk show sets and haunted manors. Heavy Happy is a congregation of sphinxes assembled from relics carried westward on dirty winds.

There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, July 16 from 6:30 to 10pm with all of the artists in attendance. The exhibition will run through August 6, 2011.

About the Artists:

Liz Craft (b. 1970, Los Angeles, CA USA)

A Los Angeles-based sculptor whose works often comprise cast bronze, polyurethane and fiberglass, meticulously transubstantiated to create fantasies and hallucinations of everyday objects, Liz Craft plays the role of New Age nest-builder in her ongoing Candy Colored Clown Series. Beginning with a mesh surface akin to the screened windows of the suburbs, Craft transmutes flotsam from her studio’s Venice Beach environs (Latin American soccer scarves, keepsake urchin exoskeletons, collectible glassware) into unique painterly pigments. By means of a three step process of reclamation to abstraction to figuration, the resulting objects—churlish, and sometimes cloying, clown faces—speak articulately of post-minimalist abstraction.

Craft received her BFA from Otis Parsons in 1994 and MFA from UCLA in 1997. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Brand New Gallery, Milan (2011), Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica (2010, 2008),  Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2010, 2007, 2004, 2003), Alison Jacques Gallery, London (2009, 2007, 2006), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009, 2007), Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2008), White Cube, London (2008), Hayward Gallery (2007), Gering & Lopez Gallery, New York (2007), Halle für Kunst, Lunëberg (2006), Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2005), 2004 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2004), Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2004), Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2003), Sadie Coles HQ, London (2002), Public Art Fund, New York (2002), The London Institute Gallery, London (2002) and The Barbican Centre, London (2001).

Residencies and awards include the Alfred van Bohlen Award (2006), Blekede Residency (Lunenburg Landkriest) (2006), Linz Centum Fur Gugenwarts Kunst Residency (2000) and Tiffany Award (1999). She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sara Clendening (b. 1980, Philadelphia, PA USA)

Viewers of Sara Clendening’s work can almost feel phantom fingertips kneading their own skin as the trained massage therapist performs the spa culture ritual to her entrancing sculptural works of art. Of equal note is the rakish pathos that takes center stage in her characters’ intriguing battle to upstage their cultural inheritance.
 
Clendening received her BFA in 2003 from the School of Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on painting and sculpture and in 2007 attended The Mountain School of Art, Los Angeles. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2009, 2005), China Art Objects, Los Angeles (2009), Bonelli Contemporary, Los Angeles (2008), Artscape, Baltimore (2008, 2005), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland (2007), Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita (2006), Daniel Reich Gallery, New York (2004), Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2004), and LACE, Los Angeles (2004). Art fairs include the LA Art Fair with Ooga Booga, Los Angeles (2008), Frieze Art Fair with Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, London (2007), Milwaukee International Art Fair, Wilwaukee (2006) and NADA with General Store, Milwaukee (2005).

Publications in which Clendening and her work have been profiled include the Village Voice and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is also featured in Younger than Jesus: Artist Directory, published by the New Museum and Phaidon Press in 2009. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Chris Coy (b. 1981, Fayetville, NV USA)

“My work deals in part with the indeterminacies of terminal-based culture,” explains multi-disciplinary artist Chris Coy. “Objects exist to be digitized into their infinitely reproducible other - a digital double in triplicate. Nothing is fixed. The edges are fuzzy. The pixel is our material.” Stark, stern and self-confident in reproduction, his paintings trespass the recently-resurrected Neo-Minimalist clubhouse. Akin to props on a talk show or sitcom: the surface and support is crafted almost entirely from ephemeral materials, and its monochrome apes the hue of the Hollywood green-screen. Says Coy, “The pseudochromes with their chroma key green paint jobs and white crosses function as recursive markers - indices to alternate sites of post-production. They are support and armature for the everyness: invisible and unknowable cybervoids. When a blackhole looks at itself, what does it see? Does it go to the movies?”

Chris Coy completed a one day residency at Hallway Projects in 2010 and is currently earning his MFA at the University of Southern California. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally at LaViola Gallery, New York (2010), Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City (2010), Pixxelpoint New Media Art Festival, Nova Gorica, Slovenia (2009), Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Amsterdam (2009), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2008) and JstChillin.org (the internet), amongst other venues. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Gerald Davis (b. 1974, Pittsburgh, PA USA)
 
Gerald Davis’ intensely detailed and delicate oil and pencil works on paper ooze a brash, youth-drenched sexuality paired with undertones of an endearingly self-conscious humility. The muted tones he employs in these works subtly but significantly enhance his emblematic motifs of memory, mirage and fantasia.

Davis received his BFA from Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited his work include Saatchi Gallery, London (2008, 2006), Yvon Lambert Gallery (2007), Salon 94 and John Connelly Presents, New York (2006), Royal Academy at Burlington Gardens, London (2006), Peres Projects, Berlin (2006), Baronian Francey, Brussels (2006), Bergdorf Goodman, New York (2005) and Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles (2005, 2003).

Publications in which Davis and his work have been profiled include ARTnews and Art in America. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Marc Horowitz (b. 1976, Westerville, OH USA)

Marc Horowitz is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in performance, video and installation. The central concerns driving most of his work have to do with engaging strangers in public and on the internet around absurdist principles. His projects engage in a dialog with a diverse range of subjects including entertainment, advertising, architectural environments, commerce and the quest for daily meaning. He is constantly making lists of potential inventions, neologisms, moneymaking schemes, jokes, drawings, websites, characters and impromptu videos. His work speaks to “the moment,” reflects and critiques American idealism, expansionism and capitalism; and parodies pop culture so successfully it becomes re-appropriated by it.

Horowitz received his BS Marketing from Indiana University, Bloomington and is currently earning his MFA at the University of Southern California Roski, School of Fine Arts. Select solo and group exhibitions includeCaminamos. Alrededor es Imposible, curated by Lorenzo Sandoval, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2011), The Advice of Strangers.com, funded by Creative Time, curated by Nato Thompson (2010), The National Dinner Tour & The Signature Series. Somewhere Else, curated Paul Ardenne, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2010), talkshow247.com, ARoS Museum, Denmark (2009), Twitter Drawings. The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, Postmasters Gallery, New York (2009), NYCommercial & Google Maps Road Trip, Conflux Festival (NYU), New York (2009), Golden America Loves You, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles (2009), The Me & You Show, The Hayward Gallery Project Space, curated by Ralph Rugoff, London (2008), 7 Days in a Sentra,Working Men, curated by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva (2008), The Center for Improved Living, Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva (2007), The Center for Improved Living: Life Coaching, Sister Gallery, Los Angeles (2007), Video Window, curated by Harrell Flecter, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland (2007) and I Invented the Internet, Fluctuating Image - Contemporary Media Art, Stuttgart (2007).

Publications in which Horowitz and his work have been profiled include The Economist, Interview Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Esse Magazine, The New York Times, ReadyMade Magazine, The Independent, Useless Magazine, Dazed & Confused Magazine and People Magazine. He was one of 25 emerging artists to be awarded a $25,000 grant in AOL’s 2010 25 for 25 Grant. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Pentti Monkkonen (b. 1975, Minneapolis, MN USA)
 
Pentti Monkkonen tunes a strident chord with his playful monuments, rendered both large and small in the heavy medium of cast bronze and always fraught with potent meta-narratives. His contribution to Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY is a new sculpture entitled Hydra, a multi-headed bronze beast reminiscent of a late Louise Bourgeois that wails endless perfidious melodramas both private and public, yet finally begets transcendent, albeit uncertain, laughter.

Monkkonen received his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 and his MFA from Vermont College. Select galleries, institutions and outdoor venues that have exhibited his work include the Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2009), Marianne Boesky Gallery (2008), Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles (2007), Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles (2005), General Store, Milwaukee (2003), ACME, Los Angeles (2002, 1999) and the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2000). He currently works and lives in Los Angeles.

Maha Saab (b. 1979, New York, NY USA)
 
Maha Saab works range from conceptual photography and painting to post-minimalist mixed media sculpture. No matter the medium, an enigmatic sophistication marks the poetic intelligence of her socially conscious creations.

Saab received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2003 and her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2007. Select galleries that have exhibited her work include ltd los angeles, Los Angeles (2010), Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2010), Pepin Moore Gallery, Los Angeles (2010), Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York (2010), Cardwell Jimmerson, Culver City (2010), LA><ART, Culver City (2010), Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2007), Hayworth Gallery, Los Angeles (2007) and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2005). She curated The Chef’s Theory at 533, Los Angeles in 2009.

Media outlets in which Saab and her work have been profiled include The L Magazine, The New Yorker and Artforum. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sarah Sieradzki (b. 1986, New York, NY USA)
 
“Photographs are commonplace,” asserts genre-defying mixed media artist and photographer Sarah Sieradzki, “their conventions recognizable, and more often than not, their nostalgic obligation to a particular time and place must shine through in some glorified light. In order to confront both the physical and temporal boundaries of photographs, my work seeks to simultaneously deflate the tired old regime of the “grand photograph” and reveal some unexpected possibilities that are latent in the medium. Is it the frame that constitutes the photograph in physical space, or perhaps, its relationship to time as it reduces its authoritative force to a feeble nuance? We live in a world that serves as an interesting platform from which we can collect, perform, edit, and arrange things we see. I believe objects, photographs, materials, colors, and text, in radically different contexts and arrangements, can relieve themselves of their traditional associations and enter into new, Platonic relationships with each other. Whatever it means to place one material next to another; to imply an image of a sunset “rising” over an IKEA chair… It suggests nothing, but reminds us of everything. They are universal aesthetics that have no denomination and can be put in a vast category of Things We See.”

Sieradzki received her BFA in Photography and Visual / Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Select galleries and venues that have exhibited her work include Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn (2011), Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles (2010), Rainbo Club, Chicago, Monument 2 Gallery, Chicago (2010) and New York Studio Program, Brooklyn (2009). She was the 2010 recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Esteban Schimpf (b. 1986, Bogotá, Colombia)
 
The practice of artist and curator Esteban Schimpf traffics in irreverence and authority. The distinctive satirical voice of his work enables him to poke fun at profound subjects whilst maintaining a comically nonchalant distance. For his work God, Imagine the storm on Jupiter, which was included in the Billboard Project at Portugal Arte 10 in Lisbon, he scrawled the aforementioned title onto a large billboard in a large European square to disarm viewers and lead them into a world of the subjective, the humorous and the sublime.

Schimpf received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including Hang In There, curated by Jason Lazurus Co-prosperity Sphere, Chicago (2011), REVERSEVENT, organized by Thomas Macker, Joe Zorrilla, Calvin Lee, Venice, CA (2011), California Dreamin’, curated by Fred Hoffmann at Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon (2010), Billboard Project, curated by Lauri Firstenberg and Cesar Garcia of LA><ART, Los Angeles for Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon (2010) and Bad Moon at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago (2008). In addition to Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY, he curated its prequel, Instant LA Summer, at Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles (2010).

Additional interests and talents of Schimpf include Culture and Loitering. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Breach of Privacy, Curated by Simmy Swinder, Opening May 21, 2011

Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce Breach of Privacy, a group exhibition curated by Simmy Swinder and featuring works by Yasmine Chatila, Hilo Chen, Adam Krueger, Alyssa Monks and Jaclyn Santos, five New York-based artists whose creative practices span a disparate range of media, yet coalesce to represent compelling explorations of voyeurism in its shifting states of ecstasy, release and isolation. Via exhilarating photorealistic oils, hauntingly subtractive mixed media works and raw black and white photography, each artist fashions his or her own unique voyeuristic allegory, some oblique, others candid, but all bound by a bittersweet philosophical thread that delves far deeper than that which is externally revealed.

Life is filled with glimpses of private moments and the artists in Breach of Privacy capture these experiences of curiosity, attraction and idleness by employing various forms of visual realism to depict a fleeting instance in their subjects’ lives and create a non-linear narrative in which the viewer is encouraged to be complicit. In their fluctuation between delicacy and darkness, the works of art both reference the poignant beauty implicit in the nature of voyeurism and brazenly confront the societal mores that condemn the shameful exhilaration such an act can provoke in the human being’s mind and body. Chatila, Chen, Krueger, Monks and Santos portray these revelations of illusion or disillusion in a manner that is equally sophisticated, skillful and considerate, offering viewers a more informed critique of contemporary life and relationships, whether real, imagined or simply viewed ambiguously from afar.

There will be an opening reception for Breach of Privacy on Saturday, May 21 from 6 to 8pm with Adam Krueger in attendance. The exhibition will run through June 11, 2011.

Yasmine Chatila (b. 1974, Cairo, Egypt)

The photographs and videos that comprise Yasmine Chatila’s captivating Stolen Moment series seize fleeting flashes of human behavior viewed through the windows of New York City’s architecturally stunning apartment buildings and transform them into timeless, edifying expositions of the world around us. In a recent conversation in Interview Magazine, Chatila elucidated of her works, which recall the spirit of movements such as German Expressionism and Film Noir, “My goal is to capture the moment and distill its essence without exposing anyone’s identity. I am not interested in who these people really are. Not knowing allows me the freedom to project onto them and fill in the gaps with my imagination.”

Chatila graduated with a B.F.A. from Parsons, an M.F.A. in photography from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York in 2002 and is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited her work include Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, KunstWerke, Berlin (2009) and Edelman Arts, New York, John Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin (2008). Film festivals her work has been honored in to date include the Locarno Festival, Locarno (2007), Kunst Film Biennale, Cologne (2008) and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009).

Chatila and her work have been profiled in Interview, Art in America, Wired, Foam, Blackbook, NY ARTS, Art Actuel and Dazed and Confused, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York. 

Hilo Chen (b. 1942, Yilan, Taiwan)

Hilo Chen’s hyper-realistic renderings of the nude or semi-nude female form are breathtaking both in their beauty and craftsmanship. Whether lounging on a beach or emerging from a bathtub, the individual depicted in Chen’s oils on canvas often appears with her face either turned away or not depicted at all. An artistic choice intentional in its means of protecting the female’s identity without alienating it, it also affords the viewer to observe and admire her physical perfection without the guilt that the voyeuristic tendency toward such intensely visceral eye candy might otherwise induce. Chen’s uncompromising persistence in transgressing the conservative line that continues to be drawn between sexual controversy and the celebration of it has only served to forward his lengthy, successful career.

Chen graduated with a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from Chung Yien College in Taiwan in 1966. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited his work include Bernaducci.Meisel.Gallery, New York (2006, 2008) and The Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut (2008). His work is represented in major international public collections, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, San Jose Museum of Art, California, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei and Taiwan Museum of Arts, Taichung, as well as in numerous private collections.

Chen and his work have been profiled in Playboy and American Art Collector, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. He currently lives and works in New York.

Adam Krueger (b. 1982, Elburn, IL USA)

Adam Krueger’s elimination of key parts of a female’s body in an individual piece, whilst simultaneously emphasizing enigmatic shapes and colors via hand-cut stencils and atypical mixed media, seductively draws viewers in and invites them to complete the image in the privacy of their own mind. At once symbolic and surreal, the concept of voyeurism takes on a new meaning when interpreted by Krueger. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, the technical effortlessness with which he executes his work takes an affable second place to his ability to transform the entire wall, room or gallery setting in which he places it. This genius for innovative installation of his already genre-defying artwork only serves to emphasize the unique aspects of his creative practice. The negative space beyond the piece of art itself has no chance against Krueger, whose work literally knows no boundaries.

Krueger attended Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence in 2003 and graduated with a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island in 2004 and an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2006. He is the recipient of several scholarships, including the School of Visual Arts Fine Arts Award (2005, 2006), RISD’s Trent Burleson Painting Prize (1^st Place) and Award for Pictorial Excellence (2004) and winner of the Congressional Art Competition (1999, 2000). Select galleries that have recently exhibited his work include Coleman Burke Gallery, New York (2010), Deitch Studios, New York (2009), Marlborough Gallery – Chelsea, New York, StolenSpace Gallery, London (2008), Art Gotham, New York (2007) and David Zwirner (2006). His work is publically represented in the Erotic Museum of Barcelona, as well as in numerous private collections.

Krueger and his work have been profiled in The New York Times, The Columbia Spectator, The Times Argus, The Daily Herald and Boink Magazine, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. He currently lives and works in New York.

Alyssa Monks (b. 1977, Ridgewood, NJ USA)

Sultry condensation, distorted bubbles and disheveled wet locks offer a tense, but thrilling contrast to the otherwise still waters that envelope the breathless faces at the heart of Alyssa Monks’ larger-than-life oils on linen. Whilst the mysterious, innocent detachment of her subjects’ expressions may lead some viewers to question whether these girls are aware that they are being observed at such close quarters and if so, should they wish to be, Monks’ intuitive ability to unravel such irrelevancies to reveal a greater message make these questions evaporate faster than steam. As she once observed, “Realism and Abstraction are in a symbiotic relationship – they need each other to exist and eventually become the same.” A notion contemplated, let alone attempted, by few artists, it is accomplished time and time again with the graceful, otherworldly ease of Monks’ brush.

Monks studied at The New School in New York, Montclair State University in New Jersey and Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence and graduated with a B.A. from Boston College in 1999 and an M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited her work include Sloan Fine Art, Forbes Galleries, New York (2011), Eden Rock Gallery, St. Barth’s, David Klein Gallery, Michigan, DFN Gallery, New York, Scott White Contemporary Art, California, The Center for Contemporary Art, New Jersey, The Noyes Museum, New Jersey, Kunstmuseum, Ahlen (2010). Art fairs she has recently participated in include The Armory Show – Modern, New York (with David Klein Gallery) (2011), Art Miami (with David Klein Gallery), San Francisco Fine Art Fair (with Hespe Gallery) (2010) and Art Hamptons (with DFN Gallery) (2009). In addition to representation in national public collections such as the Savannah College of Arts, Fullerton College and the Somerset Art Association, Monks’ work is featured in numerous private collections, including the Seavest Collection and those of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl.

Monks and her work have been profiled in The New York Post, Daily Mail, Telegraph, La Repubblica, ARTnews, The Detroit News, Harper’s Magazine and American Art Collector, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York.

Jaclyn Santos (b. 1984, Pittsburgh, PA USA)

Jaclyn Santos crafts tender but unabashed oils on canvas that flout the clichéd notions of femininity to produce an unexpectedly multi-faceted array of intelligent opinions on this theme. “As an artist and individual, I have always been concerned with themes of sexuality and spirituality, and through my narrative paintings of women I embrace and question this supposed dichotomy,” Santos explains. The contemporary cultural channels uncovered and traversed in her works, which “also typically explore themes of voyeurism, vulnerability and identity,” exude a subtle sensitivity and quality of isolation in a manner that both male and female viewers connect with and embrace.

Santos graduated Cum Laude with a B.F.A. in Painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 2007 and is the recipient of numerous artistic scholarships and academic awards, including the Maryland Institute College of Art Painting Departmental Recognition Award (2006-2007), Francis Burns Harvey Merit Scholarship (2006-2007), Dominico Pelicano Award and Winifred M. Gordon International Programs Award, both scholarships for study abroad in Italy (2006), C. Louis Mullin Flannigan Scholarship (2005), Maryland Institute College of Art Achievement Award (2004), Maryland Institute College of Art Transfer Scholarship, Maryland Institute College of Art Talent Grant (2004-2007) and The Fund for American Studies Scholarship, Georgetown University (2003). Following exhibitions in New York, Sorrento and Miami and a two-year period as a studio assistant to Jeff Koons, Santos rose to international prominence as a semi-finalist on Bravo’s television series, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.

Santos and her work have been profiled in The Baltimore Sun, Female Persuasion, Art Scout TV, In The Air and Gallery Beat, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York.

“Hueless” at Mallick Williams

Article originally written for Gallery Crawl

By: Simmy Swinder

Mallick Williams is currently hosting its fourth exhibition since its recent launch in November 2010. Spearheaded by Director Jeremy Kaplan, who used to work for Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, “Hueless” draws together nineteen street artists of varying degrees of fame and popularity, from Curtis Kulig and D*Face to Lindsey de Ovies and Sam Ske.

Katsu, A Psycho, 2011, 48’‘x48’’, oil on canvas. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

Lindsey de Ovies, TAADAA!, 2010, 8’’x 8’’ x 9,” bronze. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

Unlike many other gallery shows that strive to create a conceptual or visual link between one artwork and the next, or a retrospective exhibit that focuses on providing a range of works or one memorable work by a single artist, the works in “Hueless” are grouped by the lack of color. In addition to this shared trait, each piece is executed and presented in a well-polished, collection-ready manner. That is, though the artists are active street artists, the works in “Hueless” have an air of white-cube aspiration, and certainly placing them at Mallick Williams helps the cause. In fact, a mixed-media wall work by NTEL is reminiscent of collage work by Robert Rauschenberg or an Edward Kienholz assemblage while the photorealistic renditions by Dirk Dzimirsky and Lu Gold continue the tradition of documenting contemporary Americana paintings like those by Richard Phillips and Raplh Goings.

After numerous gallery shows showing art by street artists, the next logical step is moving those works into the ivory tower of the art world, the art museum. Jeffrey Deitch, a longtime supporter of the street art movement, has taken initiative through his still recent appointment at MOCA Los Angeles. Art on the Streets, curated by Aaron Rose, Roger Gastman and Fred Brathwaite finally gives those artists, and those aspiring to be like them, the legitimacy and historical presence they seek.

NTEL, A Prestige of Materials, 2011, 40’’ x 60,’’ mixed media. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co

Dirk Dzimirsky, Drawn Face V (Nicole), 18.1’’ x 25.2,’’ graphite on canvas. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

But this comes with a price. D*Face himself is quoted saying in a 2008 interview with Fecal Face, “…the more aware the public becomes of street art the less applicable it seems to be.” No longer are their political messages about advertising, consumerism and the government the crux of their message, their names and fame are. This has led the art world—which has allowed street art to prosper commercially via gallery shows—to question whether it is possible to monetize and thus privatize an art object that was meant to be seen by the public, free of cost. Street artists also face this problem; they must walk a tightrope between integrity and profitability, between being recognized for their artistry and selling out. There is no right or wrong answer because there is no moral arbiter in the art world and thus everyone has the responsibility of keeping art, to some extent, sacred.

Other artists in “Hueless” include Distort, Erik Haze, Marissa Textor, Pete Watts, FAUST, Marco Zamora, Katsu, Nicholas Forker, Michael M. Koehler, Nathan Pickett, Russell Young and Skullphone.

“Hueless” at Mallick Williams & Co. runs through April 15^th

Mallick Williams & Co.

150 11th Avenue  (Between 21^st and 22^nd St)

Take the A,C, or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 11^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tues-F, 10-6; Sat, 11-6 

Gallery Website: http://www.mallickwilliams.com

This article was taken from Gallery Crawl.

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Our Friends at Gawker Artists

We are thrilled to present the newest offerings of our limited editions prints by two more of our favorite Gawker Artists. Produced by Society6, these Giclée prints are printed on archival, acid free paper with archival inks. Each edition of only 100 is supervised by the artist and comes paired with a signed certificate of authenticity. Buy yours now before they are sold out!

Kelsey Bennett’s photographs are based on the concept of hypnogogia (the state between wakefulness and sleep). Her visuals resonate with the psychological unhinging of the human subconscious and her characters exist in a world where ideology meets fear and the American dream starts to feel like a hallucination saturated in color and filled with homages to cinema. Bennett is fascinated by people; their dreams, longings, fears, secrets, the composition of their identity.

Pie | 23 x 17 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

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Doug Smock’s paintings feature vintage imagery, along with precise technical sensibilities, to create an interpretive and sometimes challenging visual experience. A suburban dad is enjoying a mow of the grass, oblivious to catastrophe. Was it only a test of the Emergency Broadcast System? Or, a real emergency? Like the Twilight Zone episode where a test pilot lands in a world where time has stopped and he has to rig a truck from rolling into his daughter, in Thunderstorm Terror (that’s the name on the cassette tape) it’s up to interpretation what will happen when the clock starts.

Thunderstorm Terror | 22 x 17 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

This is only a test | 17 x 21 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It