Sunday: New Year's Brunch!

Join us to get the New Year started at the Front Room Gallery.

Brunch starts at 2pm!

and be sure not to miss:

“Montrose”

EXTENDED through January 8th

featuring:
Thomas Broadbent
Sascha Mallon
Karen Marston
Miho Suzuki


Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “Montrose” an exhibition of new works by: Thomas Broadbent, Sascha Mallon, Karen Marston and Miho Suzuki. Featuring artists who were selected to participate in the Montrose Farm Artist Residency, in historic Long Green Valley, Maryland. Invited artists were given two week residencies during June-July 2011 to develop and inspire new works the results of the residency will be exhibited from December 9th- January 1st.


Miho Suzuki's video and photography explores concepts in cultural anthropological studies in human nature. Her work uses her own experiences as a Universalist visual poetry of longing with a hint of the absurd. At the residency, Suzuki composed the first movement of “Paper Piano” a video of her fantasy of becoming an artistic pianist. Creating a paper piano and selecting idea practice spaces on the private grounds of the farm, Suzuki frames herself into the scenario she has created. On view will be a selection of photographs, the paper piano itself and a video presentation of the first movement of Suzuki’s “Paper Piano”.


Karen Marston’s disturbingly beautiful paintings of disasters, both natural and man-made, instill a sense of awe in the growing litany of frightening disasters consuming the world around us: volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, global warming, war upon war. During the residency, Marston painted outdoors, absorbed in peaceful, beautiful scenes, capturing the immediacy of nearby landscapes. Not exactly disparate, the dark shadows in the woods and the forming clouds hint at destructive power, while the oil fires in her studio work are as gorgeous as they are deadly. Exploring the subtle movements of the light and sky, the colors, shapes and emotional tenor of a particular place in the moment has informed and deepened her studio work year round. Marston is equally influenced by the history of awe inspired landscape painting (from Turner’s storms to Church’s icebergs), as by the stream of violent images in our daily news feed, as well as the direct dialog with nature and organic form fed from painting plein air.


Sascha Mallon’s presents in this exhibition a new series of ceramic sculptures that are inspired by figures from her intensive drawing works. Her time at the residency allowed for the development of two-dimensional figures to 3-d representations. Imagioned as objects discovered in the forest, these delicately formed pieces are encased in selected wooden boxes to give the impression that they are mementos from a lost world. Mallon’s work, in both her drawing practice and this new series of sculptural works create a narrative from history: history of symbiosis of man and nature, but also history of human imperfection, bringing to life protagonists of stories about greed, fear, love, hurt, emptiness and beauty.


Thomas Broadbent’s large scale watercolor paintings convey the importance of books as well as the sense of loss that has occurred with the advent of technologies such as smart phones, e-books and computers. During the residency Broadbent was able to enjoy the isolated environment and focus on further developing this series. These works on paper are developed from principal concepts and ideas from Broadbent’s private artist’s log. Broadbent’s sensitivity to color, tactility, and structure propel these thoughts into reality, while maintaining a key tie to illusion and metaphor. His goal in these works is not to fetishize the book but to point out its place at this pivotal moment in history.

Ross Racine and Patricia Smith in "Aipotu: Visions" at Mikhail Zakin Gallery

UPCOMING EXHIBITION AT THE MIKHAIL ZAKIN GALLERY

DEMAREST, NJ – The Mikhail Zakin Gallery at The Art School at Old Church is excited to present Aipotu: Visions, a group exhibition of contemporary artists and their myriad representations of Utopia. The exhibit is on view through January 17, 2012. There is a free, public reception on Thursday, December 15, 2011, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. The exhibition is wheelchair accessible.

The etymology, or root of the word utopia is a good place to start contemplating the Aipotu: Visions exhibition and the artists represented. The word Utopia comes from the Greek: οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place") and translates literally as “no place”. Essentially, it suggests that the perfect place can be found no place. On the other hand, beauty can be found in pursuing such a place through the artistic spirit and its many manifestations. Most importantly, artists unique visions of what utopia may be like, whether real or imaginary, can change the world.

As a result, utopia is a strong current of thought and a great source of inspiration for many artists over the ages. From the stark modernist pursuits of the Bauhaus school to the idealistic endeavors of the artists of Black Mountain College and into our own time with the dystopian chaos in the work of Ryan Trecartin, the ideas embodied by utopian thinking have been consistently pursued by artists of each era. Neither totally utopian nor dystopian, the artists in this exhibition hold a place much more elusive in their meaning and intention.

Patricia Smith’s mythic worlds are created with pen, ink and rubber stamps. Using the language of historical nautical maps and illustrations, her work transports the viewer into strange and unfamiliar places. Her drawings are engaged with the whole gamut of human emotion, from the utopian notion of a city built for one, to the more melancholy feeling of a space dedicated solely to mourning. In this vein, yet accomplished through sculpture, Kim Holleman’s work is most directly engaged with the duality of utopia and dystopia proposed by the exhibition with much of her work depicting the beauty that can come from the most detrimental environmental catastrophes. Gleaming pools of oil and caustic rust are placed in what could otherwise be considered a more traditional and idyllic setting.

The work of Andrew Bain and Chris Ballantyne comes from a surreal tradition, with paintings and installations that truly depict no place. Bain’s work gives the viewer a glimpse into a fantastical world, a triad of anthropomorphic animals, laser rainbows and huge clusters of roses. Ballantyne’s paintings are focused on the human landscape, where strange but seemingly familiar interventions and architectural slights of hand create dream like worlds. Each has a very distinct style, but a calm sensibility permeates the work, creating openings for earnest contemplation. In the most abstract sense, Gillian Stoneburner’s paintings are surreal combinations of landscapes and cultural references. They are playful in their subtly subversive nature, yet have a sense of urgency and discomfort.

In Brandon Friend’s timely series of work, menacing riot police with shields and batons drawn are rendered intricately through the collage of delicate wrapping papers and domestic patterns. Through this technique, the traditional symbols of dystopia are diluted to the point of becoming beautiful. Using a similar strategy, Ross Racine’s computer rendered drawings of suburban tracts found in every corner of the United States takes this utopian ideal to its extreme. Endless rows of houses and roads to and from nowhere expose some of the more poetic and comical aspects to this dream gone wrong.

Each artist in the show brings a unique vision of what “no place” could potentially be like. With the world spinning faster each day, these visions help slow it down from time to time, in the most unexpected ways.

For more information on the Art School at Old Church, visit www.tasoc.org or call 201-767-7160.

561 Piermont Road

Demarest, NJ 07627

201-767-7160

www.tasoc.org

Gallery hours

Monday - Friday: 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM & 7:00-9:00 PM

Saturday: 9:30 AM - 12: 00 PM

Ross Racine and Olalekan Jeyifous in "Flatlands" Exhibition at Skink Ink Editions

Ross Racine & Olalekan Jeyifous

Title: Flatlands

Exhibition dates: Dec. 9th. 2011 to Jan. 22nd. 2012

Gallery hours: 11am to 6pm

Thursday through Sunday

Skink Ink Editions is pleased to present Flatlands a show exploring digital drawing and its relationship to urban and suburban landscapes and architecture. It is a pairing of artists Ross Racine and Lekan Jeyifous through similar subject and process and a heightened awareness of the artificial in the contemporary environment. Themes of urban and suburban housing, architecture, surveillance, and landscape are examined through the medium of prints that originate as drawings made on a computer.

Olalekan Jeyifous is a Nigerian-born, Brooklyn based artist who received his degree in Architecture from Cornell University. Olalekan’s specialization in architecture and architectural software has driven the focus in his recent art to explore the facades of large abandoned buildings. These facades are a hybrid of industrial architecture covered in surreal elements futuristic devices and tools of surveillance. Olalekan’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail and the New York Sun.

Ross Racine is a Canadian artist who works in Montreal and New York City and received his MFA from Concordia University. The subjects of his recent work may be interpreted as models for planned communities as much as aerial views of fictional suburbs. Referring to the dual role of the computer as a tool for urban planning as well as image capture and examining the relation between design and actual lived experience, the works subvert the apparent rationality of urban design, exposing conflicts that lurk beneath the surface.

Each artist has produced an edition for the show and all works will be giclée prints made by Skink Ink Fine Art Printing.

"Montrose" Exhibition Opens Friday December 9th

“Montrose”
December 9-January 1

Opening Reception: Friday, December 9th, 7-9pm
featuring:
Thomas Broadbent
Sascha Mallon
Karen Marston
Miho Suzuki

Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “Montrose” an exhibition of new works by: Thomas Broadbent, Sascha Mallon, Karen Marston and Miho Suzuki. Featuring artists who were selected to participate in the Montrose Farm Artist Residency, in historic Long Green Valley, Maryland. Invited artists were given two week residencies during June-July 2011 to develop and inspire new works the results of the residency will be exhibited from December 9th- January 1st.

Miho Suzuki's video and photography explores concepts in cultural anthropological studies in human nature. Her work uses her own experiences as a Universalist visual poetry of longing with a hint of the absurd. At the residency, Suzuki composed the first movement of “Paper Piano” a video of her fantasy of becoming an artistic pianist. Creating a paper piano and selecting idea practice spaces on the private grounds of the farm, Suzuki frames herself into the scenario she has created. On view will be a selection of photographs, the paper piano itself and a video presentation of the first movement of Suzuki’s “Paper Piano”.

Karen Marston’s disturbingly beautiful paintings of disasters, both natural and man-made, instill a sense of awe in the growing litany of frightening disasters consuming the world around us: volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, global warming, war upon war. During the residency, Marston painted outdoors, absorbed in peaceful, beautiful scenes, capturing the immediacy of nearby landscapes. Not exactly disparate, the dark shadows in the woods and the forming clouds hint at destructive power, while the oil fires in her studio work are as gorgeous as they are deadly. Exploring the subtle movements of the light and sky, the colors, shapes and emotional tenor of a particular place in the moment has informed and deepened her studio work year round. Marston is equally influenced by the history of awe inspired landscape painting (from Turner’s storms to Church’s icebergs), as by the stream of violent images in our daily news feed, as well as the direct dialog with nature and organic form fed from painting plein air.

Sascha Mallon’s presents in this exhibition a new series of ceramic sculptures that are inspired by figures from her intensive drawing works. Her time at the residency allowed for the development of two-dimensional figures to 3-d representations. Imagioned as objects discovered in the forest, these delicately formed pieces are encased in selected wooden boxes to give the
impression that they are mementos from a lost world. Mallon’s work, in both her drawing practice and this new series of sculptural works create a narrative from history: history of symbiosis of man and nature, but also history of human imperfection, bringing to life protagonists of stories about greed, fear, love, hurt, emptiness and beauty.

Thomas Broadbent’s large scale watercolor paintings convey the importance of books as well as the sense of loss that has occurred with the advent of technologies such as smart phones, e-books and computers. During the residency Broadbent was able to enjoy the isolated environment and focus on further developing this series. These works on paper are developed from principal concepts and ideas from Broadbent’s private artist’s log. Broadbent’s sensitivity to color, tactility, and structure propel these thoughts into reality, while maintaining a key tie to illusion and metaphor. His goal in these works is not to fetishize the book but to point out its place at this pivotal moment in history.

Fountain Miami Art Fair 2011

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.

.

If you are in Miami this December

VISIT US AT FOUNTAIN ART FAIR


Dates: December 1-4, 2011
Location: 2505 N. Miami Ave at the corner
of 25th St., Miami FL
Website:
fountainexhibit.com

General Hours: 12pm–7pm
daily
Tickets: $10 daily / $15 weekend pass. All tickets sold at door.


Special Events:

Thursday, December 01
12pm – 5pm:
VIP/Press Preview

Friday, December 02
7pm - 12am:
Artlog Presents Opening Night Reception: Fab 5 Freddy, Ninjasonik,
NSR

Saturday, December 03
7pm – midnight: Miami New Times
Presents: DJ Laura (of Miami), Entresol

Peter Fox: Artist Talk and Closing Reception this Sunday at 5pm

Join us this Sunday at 5pm for:

Peter Fox
Artist's Talk and Closing Reception

This Sunday, November 20th, 5pm
At The Front Room


This Sunday Peter Fox will discuss his unique process, working style, influences and motivations. This is the last day of the exhibition, be sure not to miss it.



"Trick Question," is a solo exhibition of drip and stencil paintings by Peter Fox. Peter Fox’s paintings are loaded. Loaded with paint and texture, loaded with context in their relationship to movements in formal and conceptual art, and overflowing with color. They have been described as Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Punk Rock, or a mixture of all of them.

In his "Process" series Fox creates directed forms through composed accident, creating a visual structure that accumulates on the surface of each painting, developing a textural world of color that is drenched in abstraction. Entering a new arena of self-reflexive discourse, Fox has established a nuanced language, built from his vocabulary developed through his signature style of drip painting.

Peter Fox's stencil paintings act as a counterpoint to the copious tactile forms in his "Process" series, extracting the compositional structure of selected, individual brightly banded droplets. Fox analyses the arc of color-separations formed through gravity and translates them into articled shapes that reference the fluidity of natural interventions. While referencing the form and structure developed through chance, Fox utilizes a stencil artifice to enact an authority over the outcome of each composition. These works create an eye popping display of luscious color and forms, pulling out all of the stops.

"Bibliomania" curated by Mary Birmingham at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, through December 11

New art exhibits show disappearance of paper books in electronic age

Published: Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 7:20 AM Updated: Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 3:13 PM

By Dan Bischoff/For The Star-Ledger

“The Weight of Words,” 2010, a watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 in., by Thomas Broadbent, is part of "€œBibliomania,"€ a new exhibit at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

Two new exhibitions, one at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton and another at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, are devoted to books — but they’re not literary at all.

Instead, both shows try to take the measure of books as symbols of knowledge and its loss in an electronic information age, and then try to repurpose the book as a particularly potent visual metaphor.

Books, of course, have been collectibles for a long time — Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two leading fine art auction houses, began as rare-book dealers in the 18th century, after all. And, given the way popular forms of mass communication have become fine arts once technology supersedes them (think lithography and silkscreens), it seems utterly natural that artists would find the physical presence of the paper book an important subject just as it seems to fade away.

In the Visual Arts Center’s “Bibliomania,” curated by Mary Birmingham, all the paradoxes of the book are explored by 10 artists, ranging from beautiful and vaguely snarky watercolors by Thomas Broadbent (his “The Weight of Words,” 2010, shows a pile of heavy books teetering over a tiny blue songbird, like Godzilla over Bambi) to Nina Katchadourian’s “Sorted Books” project, which involves the artist lining up book titles to form a sentence. Like, for example, “Primitive Art,” which uses the spines of four books to spell out “Primitive Art/Just Imagine/Picasso/Raised by Wolves.” Katchadourian has realized her program in private homes, libraries, altogether at more than 130 sites, many quite outside the normal run of visual arts venues.

What is immediately apparent in the Summit show is the easy analogy that can be made between books and other forms of found-object assemblage — paper books are sculptural objects, almost like bricks, but they show the individual marks of wear and tear as clearly as any used tool. Ryan Brown and Richard Baker both reproduce battered book covers as documents of use and hard-won knowledge; on the other hand, Brandon Lattu reproduces book covers digitally on hard plastic shells that look just like brand new books when packed tightly together, but are in fact entirely empty.

“Din of Murmurs” at the Grounds is similar but very, very different. Grounds is showing a small selection of the “GlassBook Project,” begun by Nick Kline, an assistant professor in the Arts, Culture, and Media Department at Rutgers-Newark, and Helga Luest, president of Witness Justice, an advocacy group for trauma victims. They met again four years ago at their high school reunion in Sparta, and Kline, who had just visited the GlassWorks studio in Newark, thought his students could make socially engaged art based on the stories of survivors of violence.

Kline thought “books” made of fused glass were the perfect medium for these stories. Small enough to fill your hand but big enough to contain a world, books are a bit like people (in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” people willingly devote themselves to memorizing a single book and then take its title as their name). Kline brings other fine artists in as advisers as well as trauma survivors and community groups, and his award-winning project has produced work about everything from domestic abuse to world peace, using every glass technique from kiln-firing to sand-blasting to etching words on wine bottles.

“This is not art as therapy,” Kline says, “but as metaphor: People, like glass, can break. … The great thing about the books is the way they create an immediate sense of empathy. Helga takes a few of them to meetings with politicians or caregivers and they see the point right away; it’s become an advocacy tool for survivors of violence.”

So the GlassBook Project has made an accordion book more than 100 feet long for the Dali Lama’s “Peace Summit,” and an exhibition devoted to special needs kids that was viewed by U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-10th Dist), pressing for their support. His class is currently working on a letter in glass to an Ohio judge who’s deciding a controversial child abuse case.

The book is indeed a great metaphor — for themselves as much as for everything else. One piece at the Grounds, a fused glass book submerged in a glass fishbowl, tells you all you need to know: Books are underwater.

Bibliomania
Where: Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 68 Elm St., Summit
When: Through Dec. 11. Open Mondays to Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
How much: Free. For more information, call (908) 273-9121 or visit artcenternj.org.

Nick Kline: Din of Murmurs
Where: Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road, Hamilton
When: Through Dec. 11. Open Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
How much: Adults, $12; seniors, $10; children, $8 (children younger than 5 admitted free). For more information, call (609) 586-0616 or visit groundsforsculpture.org.

© 2011 NJ.com. All rights reserved.

11/11/11 Sound Performance and Catalog Release

Friday, November 11th 7-9

Performances by:

ZILMRAH, RICHARD KAMERMAN, tū

and a special catalog release for:

PETER FOX
"Trick Question"

SHOW EXTENDED THROUGH NOV. 20TH

Friday November 11th, Front Room will be presenting an evening of sound performances curated by Jeremy Slater in conjunction with our current exhibition, Peter Fox: Trick Question." With performances by Zilmrah, Richard Kamerman and tū.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

"The name Zilmrah is a made up word that came about in the early 90's while I was playing in the band Splungent (also a made up word). As drummer Louis Clausi and I were naming tracks the word Zilmrah was born. Years later as I began to put together this particular project, it really felt right to use Zilmrah as a moniker for it primarily because there are no expectations in words that lack definition; just as the Zilmrah sound defies definition as it morphs through all barrier free genre. In keeping continuity with this loose mantra, I began building my own instruments to redefine the sounds I choose to use and break away from my comfort zones that I already had on other instruments. I found a new way to keep myself honest to my musical belief system. The overall sound shape often change as a result of the energy being conveyed by different collaborators, something I am striving for and evolving with in a way that enables others to channel these individual energies collectively to push the sound somewhere it has not been or needs to visit. As of this writing the current Zilmrah line up is a four piece consisting of Ernest Anderson III on Bass, Free jazz great Marc Edwards on drums, David Tamura on Tenor Sax and myself playing electronics and hand made stringed instruments."
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Z-I-L-M-R-A-H/130725230281693

Richard Kamerman's artistic interest is aimed foremost on the task of magnification. Small sounds, small gestures - made large. Inconsequential events - made important. The vast difference made to a narrative by a small change in focus. Room acoustics, microphone/pickup placement, and amplification are often very important to his live construction of sound, where he places great weight on the embracing of unintended consequences - e.g. errors in translation/format conversion, bursts of feedback, power supply failures. Although primarily a percussionist, he rarely sits behind a drum kit, preferring to explore the percussive behaviors of various repurposed electronics, ranging from computer circuit boards to a system of found mechanical parts - fans, motors, etc - that he has been developing since 2006. Frequent collaborators include Reed Evan Rosenberg (as Tandem Electrics), Anne Guthrie & Billy Gomberg (as Delicate Sen), Steven Flato & Corey Larkin (as Fyxzis), Jordan Topiel Paul, Eric Laska, and the quintet Frogwell.
http://www.richardkamerman.com/

Tamara Yadao and Jeremy D. Slater are the audiovisual performance duo known as tū. Their sound work uses field recordings, spoken word, ambient noise and drones created with guitars, oscillators, radios, voice, and other electronic objects. Investigations may include arbitrary structures in conceptual improvisation, the collective experience of listening in the medium of radio, liminal relationships in sound juxtaposition, phonemic reduction and memory differentiation of sound and signifier. Selected exhibitions and performances include Conflux Festival 2009, FLOW at Front Room Gallery, Cube Considered at Monkeytown, NOISE! Festival 2009 at the Ontological Theater, Recherche, a conference on the work of Marcel Proust at Stony Brook University and the Avant Ghetto series at Zebulon.
http://www.myspace.com/musicoftu

FRONT ROOM GALLERY

Front Room gallery is proud to present "Trick Question" a solo exhibition of drip and stencil paintings by Peter Fox. Friday, November 11, we will be releasing a special exhibition catalog of Peter Fox's new work. "Trick Question" will be on view through February 20th.

Peter Fox’s paintings are loaded. Loaded with paint and texture, loaded with context in their relationship to movements in formal and conceptual art, and overflowing with color. They have been described as Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Punk Rock, or a mixture of all of them.

In his "Process" series Fox creates directed forms through composed accident, creating a visual structure that accumulates on the surface of each painting, developing a textural world of color that is drenched in abstraction. Entering a new arena of self-reflexive discourse, Fox has established a nuanced language, built from his vocabulary developed through his signature style of drip painting.

Peter Fox's stencil paintings act as a counterpoint to the copious tactile forms in his "Process" series, extracting the compositional structure of selected, individual brightly banded droplets. Fox analyses the arc of color-separations formed through gravity and translates them into articled shapes that reference the fluidity of natural interventions. While referencing the form and structure developed through chance, Fox utilizes a stencil artifice to enact an authority over the outcome of each composition. These works create an eye popping display of luscious color and forms, pulling out all of the stops

Peter Fox: "Trick Question"

Peter Fox "Trick Question"

Opening Reception:Friday, October 14th, 7-9

Oct 14th-Nov 6th

Front Room gallery is proud to present "Trick Question" a solo exhibition of drip and stencil paintings by Peter Fox. Peter Fox’s paintings are loaded. Loaded with paint and texture, loaded with context in their relationship to movements in formal and conceptual art, and overflowing with color. They have been described as Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Punk Rock, or a mixture of all of them.

In his "Process" series Fox creates directed forms through composed, creating a visual structure that accumulates on the surface of each painting, developing a textural world of color that is drenched in abstraction. Entering a new arena of self-reflexive discourse, Fox has established a nuanced language, built from his vocabulary developed through his signature style of drip painting. Peter Fox's stencil paintings act as a counterpoint to the copious tactile forms in his "Process" series, extracting the compositional structure of selected, individual brightly banded droplets. Fox analyses the arc of color-separations formed through gravity and translates them into articled shapes that reference the fluidity of natural interventions. While referencing the form and structure developed through chance, Fox utilizes a stencil artifice to enact an authority over the outcome of each composition. These works create an eye popping display of luscious color and forms, pulling out all of the stops.

Emily Roz Artist Talk and Catalog Release this Sunday

Please join us this Sunday, October 9th at 5pm
for
an Artist's Talk & Catalog Release Party

Featuring the work
of
Emily Roz

"The Rutting Season"
On view through October 9th

The Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “The Rutting Season,” a solo exhibition of new works by Emily Roz. This series of paintings play with the volatile activity of animals com- peting to satiate themselves amidst a perpetual spring of bloom and decay. Through heightened realism, flowers, seedpods, branches and carcasses coexist in a world of dreamlike unreality. As the animals in these scenes fight for position under the teasing petals, the muted color backdrops preserve the freshness of such eroticism found in nature and violence. The palette in Roz’s paintings captures the deep hues and tones of a dawn and dusk atmosphere, which are the prime hunting times for the predatory animals she depicts.

The ‘rut’ is the breeding season of ruminant animals, which makes them vulnerable to predators, as they are distracted with their desire to mate. Emily Roz captures the tenuous balance between this animalistic desire to mate and propagate, paired with the need to feed and kill. These carnal urges are reflected in their flora counterparts with blossoming flowers, sprays of budding tips and foreboding barren branches. The luminous arousal of either flora or flesh is temporal, regardless of the promise of one’s cyclical return and the other’s inevitability.

Roz’s paintings present the ambition of spring and the voracity of nature through compositions
of stark, fruitless tree limbs, echoed in the understructure of delicately interwoven curtains of blooms and blankets of lush green. The balance of these selected floral components with the harsh realism of perched predators and open flesh heightens our awareness of our own vulnerability and natural desires.

Emily Roz: "The Rutting Season" Opens Friday, September 9th

Join us for the opening reception for Emily Roz's upcoming exhibition: "The Rutting Season" Friday, September 9th from 7-9pm.

Emily Roz
"The Rutting Season"

September 9th-October 9th, 2011
Reception Friday, September 9th.



The Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “The Rutting Season,” a solo exhibition of new works by Emily Roz. This series of paintings play with the volatile activity of animals com- peting to satiate themselves amidst a perpetual spring of bloom and decay. Through heightened realism, flowers, seedpods, branches and carcasses coexist in a world of dreamlike unreality. As the animals in these scenes fight for position under the teasing petals, the muted color backdrops preserve the freshness of such eroticism found in nature and violence. The palette in Roz’s paintings captures the deep hues and tones of a dawn and dusk atmosphere, which are the prime hunting times for the predatory animals she depicts.


The ‘rut’ is the breeding season of ruminant animals, which makes them vulnerable to predators, as they are distracted with their desire to mate. Emily Roz captures the tenuous balance between this animalistic desire to mate and propagate, paired with the need to feed and kill. These carnal urges are reflected in their flora counterparts with blossoming flowers, sprays of budding tips and foreboding barren branches. The luminous arousal of either flora or flesh is temporal, regardless of the promise of one’s cyclical return and the other’s inevitability.

Roz’s paintings present the ambition of spring and the voracity of nature through compositions of stark, fruitless tree limbs, echoed in the understructure of delicately interwoven curtains of blooms and blankets of lush green. The balance of these selected floral components with the harsh realism of perched predators and open flesh heightens our awareness of our own vulnerability and natural desires.

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Stephen Mallon Exhibiting at 60Six Gallery, Opening August 20th

"Passage: Capturing Movement
August 20 - September 16th

Saturday, August 20, 2011

opening reception 6–8:30pm
closing party September 16, 6–9pm

• David King
• Steve Bird
• Anne Terpstra
• David Magnusson
• Stephen Mallon
• Michael Jang

Passage: capturing movement

This exhibit, featuring the work of diverse photographers, explores themes of: the immediacy of contemporary photography (camera phone images by Dave King), panoramic collages revealing and distorting perception while presenting a static moment captured within places of extreme movement (Steve Bird), filmic blurry nuanced images of societies in flux (Anne Terpstra), the compensatory response to digital culture of returning to high craft...ulilizing photography as sculpture (David Magnusson), dramatic documentation of construction and deconstruction (Stephen Mallon), shifts in the value of photographic images with the passage of time. (Michael Jang).

60SIX Gallery

66 Elgin Park
San Francisco, CA 94103

Stephen Mallon's "Next Stop Atlantic" Exhibition Opens Tonight at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Mitzi & Warren Eisenberg Gallery

STEPHEN MALLON: NEXT STOP ATLANTIC
July 29 - September 25, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, July 29, 6 pm - 8 pm
Closing Reception: Friday, September 23, 6 pm - 8 pm

The industrial landscape has held a life-long attraction for photographer Stephen Mallon. Seeking what he calls “a surreal beauty” in its machinery and sites, he creates powerful images and captures some extraordinary moments. Mallon also has a special interest in reclamation projects that salvage, rebuild or repurpose the products of industry. These twin impulses led him to spend three years documenting the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority’s recycling program that builds artificial underwater reefs from decommissioned subway cars. Next Stop Atlantic tracks the final journey of these cars as they travel toward their last stop, the Atlantic Ocean.

This photographic series dramatically depicts the moments before, during, and after the cars are dropped into the ocean to create a new home for undersea life. Mallon shows us the subway cars in a transitional stage between their former and future lives, before their transformation from active to passive is complete. He offers two kinds of images: cars at rest—stripped, stockpiled, and seemingly at the end of the line—and cars put back in motion as they are dropped off the barges. The poignancy of the images may result from the displacement of the trains—they are quite literally out of their element. There is a poetic, even elegiac quality to many of these photographs. Virginia Placement, which freezes the moment just before a car hits the water, suggests a burial at sea. In images like Sink and Settling we witness the instant before the ocean swallows the cars whole. The American flag on the side of the sinking train in Pool is a stunning reminder of Nature’s ultimate power over Man.

It is almost possible to hear the sounds implicit in these photographs—the clanking of steel, the large “splash” and then the final, eerie silence. The rapid motion, dynamism and often overpowering noises associated with working subway cars are distant memories. The future of these trains will be quiet and stationary; the only movement they experience will be the water’s currents and the darting fish. They are a perfect symbol of the surreal beauty Mallon seeks.

Mary Birmingham, Curator

Front Room Heats Up with this Year's "Summer Sampler" Exhibition

Join us this Friday evening for the opening reception of "Summer Sampler" and Williamsburg's "Second Friday" event.

"Summer Sampler"

Opening Reception: Friday July 8th, 7-9
July 8th-31st
Hours Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appt.



The Front Room Gallery is proud to present "Summer Sampler", a tantalizing treat featuring works by the last season's Front Room artists as well as a preview of the shows to come, and some splendid new selections. With works by: Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Peter Fox, Stephen Mallon, Allan Packer, Melissa Pokorny, Ross Racine, Emily Roz, Patricia Smith, Julia Whitney Barnes, and more.

Sasha Bezzubov's ongoing series "Things Fall Apart," is large-scale landscape photographs of the aftermath of natural disasters— forest fires, earthquakes, tidal waves, and tornados, around the world. These heartwrenchly beautiful landscapes draw us in and confront us with the uncomfortable notion that we might be somehow to blame.

Thomas Broadbent's works on paper incorporate trompe l'oeil representations of seemingly unrelated objects and scenes, which allude to existentialistic ideas and create sophisticated associative meaning within each piece. His sensitivity to color, tactility, and structure propel these thoughts into reality, while maintaining a key tie to illusion and metaphor.

Peter Fox's brilliantly colorful paintings use elements of Minimalism, OP art and Psychadelia. Fox spills paint onto the canvas, allowing chance and fluid dynamics a central role in shaping process and outcome.

Stephen Mallon's ongoing body of work, "American Reclamation" tracts the recycling industry in the United States. Mallon's striking series, "Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549," presents photographs documenting the salvaging of the US Airway flight that, amazingly, airline captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger had managed to safely emergency land in the Hudson River.

Allan Packer's extensive and impressive body of work examines elemental and cultural ideas, often referencing time and matter and to addresse our understanding of infinity.

Melissa Pokorny uses overtly artificial means to represent space, coupled with uncannily realistic animal figurines and casts, to question our estrangement from, and subsequent longing for connection to the natural world, and the resulting substitution of the real by the fake.

Ross Racine depicts realistic aerial views of fictional suburban communities, which amplify an awareness of modern choices in building and living styles. Racine employs common structural archetypes in his compositions, with an expanded view that exaggerates the rational utility of these imagined infrastructures.

Emily Roz's investigates this most basic primitive directive, with stunning depictions of wild animals in seemingly native habitats, revealed as illusion, with her insertion of domestic floral. These works display the incongruity within wild, natural impulses and the human desire to cultivate beauty through the propagation of plant-life.

Patricia Smith's meticulous, quietly subversive works on paper commingle elements of architectural drawings, medical illustrations, and antique maps. Labeled with text captions, these imaginary structures address the anxieties of contemporary life and the coping mechanisms that develop in the collective psyche.

Julia Whitney Barnes's vivid, luminous paintings cull naturalistic imagery from an abstracted ground. These works are rooted simultaneously in science while evoking the fantastical.

Titanno Beasts are Coming at Sundown Tonight!!!

The Titanno Beasts vs. Super Defense Force, Tonight at 8:30

The Titanno Beast vs The Super Defense Force is a performance depicting a violent battle between giant robots and monsters amongst a downtown city center and high rise urban housing, created from cardboard and recycled materials. The action takes place in two darkened rooms of the Front Room gallery, which are somewhat illuminated from the flashing and multicolored light of the buildings. Brian Olin plays live music to accompany the actions of the costume performers with sounds that range from ambiant to creepy electronic noise. The style of music creates an overall sense of drama and mystery. Without the music the actions of the monsters and robots might appear more comical or whimsical. In this sense, The Titanno Beast vs The Super Defense Force is a true collaboration of visual art and music.

Art by: Mark Stilwell; Music by: Brian Olin;
Creative Team and Performers:
Francios Duboucheron, Carlos Hernandez, John Mejias,
Chris Paisley and Yoko Stilwell

Make Music New York Tonight!!!!

Tuesday, June 21^st

As part of Make Music New York featuring:

6:30 pm: Genux-B

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7:30 pm: Parenthesis with KenYa Kawaguchi

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9pm The Titanno Beasts vs. Super Defense Force

(Art by: Mark Stilwell, Music by: Brian Olin, Creative Team and Performers: Francios Duboucheron, Carlos Hernandez, John Mejias,

Chris Paisley and Yoko Stilwell)

Williamsburg Second Friday Event: Alarums and Excursions

Join us Friday night until 9pm, we will be open late with Fuse Works: "Alarums and Excursions." Check out all the fascinating new additions to Fuse Works Multiples and Editions, including:
Gregory Curry's "Wraq"
Glen Einbinder's "Dreamcards"
Ross Racine's "West Concentric Estates"
Chuck Jones' "untitled (rubber stamp)"
Jody Hanson's "Private Rainbow"
Luca Bertolo's "Kharms-multiple"
Andrew MacDonald's "Little Wonder (Sadness) Edition"
James Leonard's "un-Suicide Note"
Celeste Fichter's "Screensavers"
Peter Feigenbaum's "Vacant Tile"
David Shapiro's "Potato"
Jan Obornik's "settlement (house)"
Chiara Camoni's "Senza Titolo 14"
John O. Smith's "Currency Exchange: Volume Five"
Julia Whitney Barnes' "eat me, drink me"
Rik de Boe's "Testbeelden (test images)"
Lotte Lindner and Till Steinbrenner's "If"
Sarah Vogwill's "marilyn/playboy/FBI"
George Spencer's "Ghost Phones after Jasper Johns"
Emily Roz and Cammi Climaco's "I Can’t Stop"
Cadence Giersbach's "water-slide decals"
Serge Onnen's "Obromanie"
Seldon Yuan's "Thinking of You"

Fuse Works presents: Alarums and Excursions, Opening Friday, June 3rd

Fuse Works presents: Alarums and Excursions
June 3 - June 26, 2011
Opening Reception Friday June 3, 2011, 7-9pm
With a brief reading by James Leonard


An exhibition of multiples and prints including: Gregory Curry, Glen Einbinder, Ross Racine, Chuck Jones, Jody Hanson, Luca Bertolo, Andrew MacDonald, James Leonard, Celeste Fichter, Peter Feigenbaum, David Shapiro, Jan Obornik, Chiara Camoni, John O. Smith, Julia Whitney Barnes, Rik de Boe, Lotte Lindner and Till Steinbrenner, Sarah Vogwill, George Spencer, Emily Roz and Cammi Climaco, Cadence Giersbach, Serge Onnen and Seldon Yuan.

Alarums and Excursions is the sixth exhibition of multiples and prints by Fuse Works, an organization dedicated to exhibiting and promoting editioned artwork. The exhibition presents new work by 21 artist comprising prints, multiples, books, and digital works.

Alarums and Excursions follows quick on the heels of the recent survey show of the last four years of Fuse Works (2007-2011) which took place at Central Connecticut State University in April. This latest exhibition presents a selection of new work as well as a few projects which, by their very nature, unfold over time and reward periodic viewings as they develop.

One such project is John O. Smith's series of artist's books "Currency Exchange". For Vol. I, Smith bound 48 one dollar bills into a handsome hardbound book in an edition of 10. The book sold for $100 and the edition quickly sold out. The proceeds funded Vol. 2 composed of 48 bound two dollar bills—at $250, this volume also sold out. For the current exhibition Smith presents Vol. 5, with it's handsome off-center portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the 5 dollar bill. Smith intends to bind all of the denominations of US currency.

Glen Einbinder presents his full edition of Dreamcards, Science Times, 2000. Dreamcards is a set of 52 printed cards with collage elements. Each card is based on a news story that ran in the Science Times section of the New York Times in the year 2000—one card for each week of the year. They are Einbinder's interpretations and personal reflections on the news, incorporating ideas from dreambooks which connect dream imagery with numerology and mysticism. The series was begun in 2007 and was completed earlier this year. Fuse Works is pleased to be the first to show the full edition.

Gregory Curry has created a wall sculpture out of bicycle parts and heavy duty rubber gloves. The result is as much simulated hunting trophy as it is a take on the work of Picasso.

Artist, prankster Chuck Jones offers two editions for Alarums and Excursions. The first is a simple rubber stamp produced by an online service. It reads: If I've been to your house, I've peed in your sink. Another edition is a mail art project in the form of an elaborate prank. Jones offers to mail a package to any innocent victim the purchaser specifies. The package contains a letter, photographs and a CD that leads them to believe that a group of itinerant musicians are coming to their home.

Luca Bertolo has exhibited books and folios of prints with Fuse Works over in its previous four years. For this exhibition Bertolo has produced a woodblock print portrait of the great Russian poet Daniil Kharms printed on an inverted page of the art magazine Mousse.

For the second year James Leonard presents a mail art project for a Fuse Works exhibition. His latest is entitled un-Suicide Note is a five page hand-written note, a long and detailed meditation on the philosophy of continued existence. The letter is an "iterated edition"—each copy transcribed from the previous one, permitting variations in format and errors and corrections to work their way through the entire edition.

David Shapiro creates understated multiples cast in bronze. His editions of realistic looking pistachio nuts and bronzed cigarette butts have drawn double takes in previous Fuse Works exhibitions. For the current exhibition Shapiro presents a single bronze potato.

Chiara Camoni's work combines a poetic conceptualism that explores time and the natural world with the acute elegance of a minimalist. Previously for Fuse Works she sold the 10 days excised from the calendar by Pope Gregory in 1582. For the current exhibition she uses a mineral with surprising properties, ulexite, to simultaneously obscure and illuminate a simple phrase.

Sarah Vogwill's recent prints tease a frenetic abstraction out of girlie magazine centerfolds. For this exhibition she has used as a starting point the iconic December 1953 Playboy magazine cover of Marilyn Monroe. But coupled with this modified portrait of the oft fetishized sex symbol, Vogwill has added an even more intimate portrait. Bound in a Playboy magazine sized softcover book are the FBI's complete files on Monroe obtained thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.

Emily Roz and Cammi Climaco collaborated on a series of small prints on paper that pair Roz's gory, vivid images of carnivores and scavengers eviscerating bloody cadavers with Climaco's wry observations as captions in handsome letterpress. The debut print, "I Can't Stop", from the series will be shown in this exhibition.

Ross Racine's West Concentric Estates is his second small print made for Fuse Works. These digital drawings appear to be aerial photographs of planned communities, in fact there are no photographs or scanned material used. The images, drawn freehand in the computer, seek to expose conflicts between constructed landscapes, the human transformation of nature and our domestic ideals.

Jody Hanson's fascination with the science of light, time and motion inform her multiple Private Rainbow, a palm-sized slide viewer and slide. The actual appearance of a rainbow depends upon the refraction of light relative to the viewer's position, rendering each rainbow sighting unique to its viewer. Private Rainbow allows us to pocket that elusive joy.

Andrew McDonald's small knitted sculptures from the series "Little Wonders" provoke associations with children's toys, sweaters and tea cozy's—they are at once all and none of these—removed from the domestic tactile realm to the visual realm of wall sculpture. McDonald's work re-configures everyday materials and manufacturing processes, and in this group of multiples also plays with our notions of the production line as each one is not an exact duplicate of the one before it.

Peter Feigenbaum's Vacant Tile is his third multiple for Fuse Works and an extension of his ongoing "Trainset Ghetto" project. "Trainset Ghetto" is a series in which Feigenbaum creates physical landscapes on trainset scale in order to photograph them. His blighted cityscapes are brilliantly generic, and almost capable of triggering false memories of 1970s New York. Plucked from his fabricated realities, Vacant Vacant Tile is a simulacrum of a urban vacant lot created on a 6 x 6 ceramic tile.

Settlement (house), Jan Obornik's new multiple places a web-like tangle of welded metal inside a quintessential house form. The multiple seems to express a chaotic restlessness within the desire for the domestic comfort of homogeneity, or perhaps something even more sinister.

Lotte Lindner & Till Steinbrenner's photograph, If, of an MTA poster shows a brownpaper wrapped parcel, the dust and grit on its Plexiglas covering and the reflection of the subway car it is on. The poster, which is familiar to most New Yorkers, comes from the MTA anti-terrorism campaign "If you see something, say something." Lindner and Steinbrenner's spatially disorienting reproduction derails the already conflicted PR sentiment of the slogan with a meditation on the complexities and ambiguities of the act of seeing. Lindner and Steinbrenner will also show Instant Prayer, a set of three palm sized sound devices which, when activated, play a sound recording of a Muezzin calling, a Rabbi singing, or the Pope blessing.

George Spencer brings us Ghost Phone, a pair of cellphones of black plastic and gold leaf mounted on a simple base— an homage to Jasper John's seminal multiple Painted Bronze (Ballantine Ale) of 1960.

Celeste Fichter is one of Fuse Works most prolific contributors with work ranging from video, to work on paper to multiples. Her work treads a beautiful line between humorous and poignant. Screensavers is a set of images meant to be used as screensavers, the images are literally screens (computer monitors) in various acts of being saved; from destruction to salvation.

The book Testbeelden (test images) was compiled by Rik De Boe with drawings and pictures out of his family album. He asked Johan De Wilde and Wouters Coolens for a reaction. Johan De Wilde wrote a letter. Wouter Coolens inserted newspaper cuttings all over the book, as picture-letters.

Julia Whitney Barnes has slipcast organic vessel forms to drink out of with the words in small script 'eat me, drink me' on the inside and on the outside glazed fungi forms.

Substantially more than simple performance documentation, Serge Onnen's DVD and book Obromanie knits together haunting images from performances in which the band Oorbeek plays inside a giant shadow puppet theater constructed using a gazebo in an Amsterdam park. The accompanying booklet with stills from the DVD was made on a vintage color mimeograph machine.

Seldon Yuan's Thinking of You is deliberately vague (self) portrait of both artist and viewer. A coarse halftone image of the artist partially obscures and reveals a mirror beneath. Standing in front of the mirror one is able to see a reflection of oneself in the mirror woven into the image of the artist.

Known for her vertiginous, large-scale murals of room interiors, Cadence Giersbach has produced smaller versions in three colors as easy-to-transfer wall decals. Giersbach isolated and manipulated three views of the empty set of Hitchcock's classic 1954 suspense thriller, Dial M for Murder.

Williamsburg Second Friday Event: Tonight

Join us for this tonight from 7-9pm for this month's 2nd Friday Event! Every Second Friday of the month in Williamsburg, galleries stay open late with performances and events. This evening we will be presenting a series of performances and on view in the gallery will be Ross Racine's "North of Piney Acres.

Performances: Ami Yamasaki, ( ), North Guinea Hills, Hari Ganglberger, Simon Shippey, and friends


Currently on view:
Ross Racine
“North of Piney Acres”
April 29th—May 29th, 2011

Williamsburg Second Friday Event, Friday May 13th from 7-9:
Ami Yamasaki, ( ), North Guinea Hills, Hari Ganglberger, Simon Shippey, and friends

AT&T has teamed up with Williamsburg Every 2:ND Friday to sponsor the May 13th monthly after-hours gallery crawl—an evening where visitors join the galleries for opening receptions, artist discussions, performances and other events—and to launch the Learn to Collect project.

Ross Racine, "North of Piney Acres" Opens Friday April 29th

Join us next Friday, April 29th from 7-9pm for the Opening of Ross Racine's Solo Exhibition, "North of Piney Acres"



Ross Racine

“North of Piney Acres”

April 29th—May 29th, 2011
Reception Friday April 29th 7-9,


Front Room Gallery is proud to present “North of Piney Acres,” a solo exhibition of works on paper by Ross Racine. In this series, Racine depicts realistic aerial views of fictional suburban communities, which amplify an awareness of modern choices in building and living styles. Racine employs common structural archetypes in his compositions, with an expanded view that exaggerates the rational utility of these imagined infrastructures.

Ross Racine creates these visions of hyper-real suburban landscapes and structures with a uniquely developed digital drawing method. These works on paper present structural layouts of invented subdivisions, which illustrate the insulated conditions common in these types of developments. Using an omniscient viewpoint from above, Racine creates intricate layouts of communities that are filled with nuanced detail. The aerial atmosphere of each work presents a particular mood that matches its character. In certain works looming clouds shadow the buildings below, while others have light airy clouds drifting above, creating a feeling of omniscient subjectivity.

In Racine’s piece “Elmwood and Oaklawn,” endless rows of streets run parallel to each other with only a small slip of undeveloped land separating the compact areas of development. There is an intense believability in this work; the structures and layouts are so plausible in their realism that it is not until further investigation that you realize that the streets do not connect and each row is isolated from its neighbors just one block over.

Ross masters this play between the tangible reality of suburbia and the illusionary realm, concisely depicting the disconnection between desire and its actualization, questioning the feasibility and logic in fulfilling dreams of more space, the luxury of easy access to stores and goods, a neighborly atmosphere, and the overarching attraction to “more.”