"In-Habitat" Exhibition

IN-HABITAT

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Julia Whitney Barnes

Gregory Curry

Lisa DiLillo

Kim Holleman

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January 20-February 19th

Opening Friday, January 20th 7-9

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Front Room Gallery is proud to present, “In-Habitat” an exhibition of new works by: Julia Whitney Barnes, Gregory Curry, Lisa DiLillo, and Kim Holleman. In the exhibition “In-Habitat” each artist takes a unique perspective of the concept of habitat, and what it is to inhabit this world.

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Gregory Curry’s paintings relate his postulations of a post human environment inspired by and extrapolated from the various dynamic conditions now impacting on the human animal. The environments and entities that populate his paintings seem imbued with pure energy on a primordial level, set against a background of contrasting complimentary colors. Curry utilizes familiar modes of representation such as rendering, perspective and classic spatial relationships in a way that draws the viewers into these uncanny realms, relating our temporality within an environment of elemental particles and genetic materials.

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Lisa DiLillo creates nocturnal landscapes and still lives that engage luminosity as a visual correlation to nature's life force. The photographs depict a liminal state where subjects are transforming or are in the process of coming into being, reflecting on our evolving environment and on unusual climatic occurances. The intensity and incertitude of these photographs underscore the idea that the more we investigate nature the more mystifying and complex it becomes.

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Rooted simultaneously in science while evoking the fantastic, Julia Whitney Barnes creates works that reinterpret life and the natural environment. Her paintings explore the complex relationship and power struggles of humans with nature, and the contradictions in which our society gives life to and reveres nature while abusing and overlooking it. Her large scale oil painting depicting a tree house abstracted with layers transparencies and lush patches of color, transposes elements of the forest and individual trees with the interior panels of a the structure, relating her desire for a more balanced relationship with nature.
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Kim Holleman relates environmental issues of contamination of our natural resources, brought on by radioactive fallout, chemicals seeping into ground water, oil spills and the ephemera in our petro-chemical environment. She infers the impact of these elements and the increasing toll on our natural environment, presenting an installation of displays and scenes, colliding natural and artificial reality, both fantastical and frightening, into a curio collection gone awry. This faux-scientific archive shows us beautiful, sometimes-toxic parks, public spaces, visions of nostalgic environments and constructions straining towards natural growth, but spinning out of control, coated to saturation which threatens their very existence.

Williamsburg Second Friday at the Front Room

Join us this Friday, January 13th from 7-10pm for an evening of Sound and Performance featuring:

7pm Tom Swirly
8pm Bradford Reed and Chris Jordan
9pm Rubaiyats Of The Cicadas (ROTC) with Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica of LEIMAY

Tom Swirly

Tom Swirly has been a force for chaos and fun on New York City's underground scene for decades. As a virtuoso on the electronic wind instrument, and as an electronic vocalist, he has played all over the world, including at the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival in Rotterdam, a live broadcast on Sydney's Bondi Radio, a performance at KEK Gallery, Budapest, and other performances in Australia, Asia, Canada and the United States. He was a member of the legendary avant-garde performance band Verge for over 20 years, and more recent the deranged, charismatic synthesist and vocalizator for the space-punk band The Megatoids. His acting credits include dozens of musicals with Verge, including Journey To Oz, The Space Show, The Five-pointed Star and Speak of the Devil; he premiered the role of William Shakespeare in Faux-Real Theatre's original production, William Shakespeare's Haunted House, which went on to run for almost a decade in rep; and has had various other roles of greater or lesser size at various times, most notably 9 mostly-comic characters in Gorilla Rep's production of Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 at New York City's Henry Street Settlement. In 2009, Tom retired after over five years as an engineer in Google's New York office to devote himself full-time to playing and writing music, creating music software, writing and theatre.

Bradford Reed and Chris Jordan

Bradford Reed is a Brooklyn based composer, performer and producer who fights and tames the idiosyncrasies of the pencilina, an original instrument of his own design. He played with King Missile III (and produced 4 of their records) and in the Blue Man Group's original band. He's composed for film and television including the music for the first season Superjail! on Adult Swim and is currently working on the score for his third season on Ugly Americans the new hit series on Comedy Central, an album of his own music and playing the drums with Zach Layton in their project Minerals.

Chris Jordan explores the medium of light, movement, and time through the use of technology. His installations have appeared at the Moma, The New Museum, The Whitney, The Museum of Natural History, The Chelsea Museum, Times Square, numerous galleries and clubs; and the incidental spaces inbetween. The common elements that define Chris’ work include explorations into memory, photography, film, interactivity, and projections. By examining the political and social implications technology has on us through a diversity of media, his work challenges the viewer to redefine perceptions of audience and performer. In addition Chris teaches interactive design at Baruch College and NYU; and organizes T-Minus, G33kXmas, rooftop movies, and visualist salons in New York City.

Rubaiyats Of The Cicadas (ROTC) with Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica of LEIMAY

Rubaiyats Of The Cicadas (ROTC) are underground inhabitants emerging to emit frequencies of warmth and to create cadences of fragile ephemeral structure.

Shige Moriya is a Japanese born video and installation artist. He studied architecture at Kinki University in Osaka. Moriya has been active as a curator and producer. In 1996 he co-founded CAVE as a space for the development of experimental and interdisciplinary art in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His solo work has been presented in Japan, Finland, Vietnam, Spain, Germany and the US. Shige received the 2009 Armani Design Award through the Robert Wilson Watermill Center. He has received fellowship and residencies from the Ford Foundation, the Puffin Foundation and the Hanoi Contemporary Art Center.

Ximena Garnica (b. 1981) is a Colombian-born interdisciplinary choreographer, director and artist based in New York. She received a B.A. in theater arts with a minor in multimedia studies from the City College of New York. In 2006 she graduated from Akira Kasai’s Tenshikan Dance Institute in Tokyo. Ximena is active as a curator and producer. She has been awarded with the 2010 Bessie Schonberg Individual Choreographers Residency at the Yard and has been recognized with the prestigious Van Lier Fellowship for young Hispanic directors in New York. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in Japan, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Mexico and Colombia. She is Co Director of the Brooklyn base art space CAVE and of The New York Butoh Festival. Currently she teaches at P.H.T.S, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Drama. Other teaching credits included master classes and lectures at Denison University, Skidmore College, DeSales University, Muhlenberg College and the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogota. She is currently on the Junior Advisory Board of Dance NYC. Ximena’s performance explorations have led her to travels in Poland and Denmark. She lives in Brooklyn and leads ongoing training in dance and performance at CAVE.

LEIMAY is a project of the experimental and contemporary art and performance space known as CAVE.