Kim Holleman | Joanne Ungar Opening January 9th

Consumed:

Kim Holleman | Joanne Ungar 

January 9th - February 8th

Opening Reception: January 9th 7-9PM

Front Room Gallery is proud to present: “Consumed” an exhibition of new works by artists: Kim Holleman and Joanne Ungar.  Each artist’s solo presentation opens a dialog about material matters, consumption and waste.   Objects are suspended and redefined by the artists’ divergent processes.  While Ungar utilizes the organic wax and recycled cardboard, Holleman conflates the synthetic and natural, with petrochemicals fusing collected materials.

Kim Holleman composes and assembles with found objects collected from the urban environment.  For this exhibition she has created a room-sized installation incorporating broken auto glass; poured resin returns the shards of glass to a solid state, transfixing the incident in time. The experience of the artist’s initial discovery of the objects is captured and re-related by Holleman’s references to a landscape, which is simultaneously in and out of balance with nature.

Holleman’s works elucidate the problematic choices we make as a society as well as the beautiful moments as we evolve and grapple with becoming a sustainable society.  Outmoded chemistry vessels are repurposed, culling back to a time of ethical chemical manipulations.  Holleman cultivates ecosystems of imagined origins, and creates landscapes which emerge from petrochemicals and trash.

While Holleman’s use of resin gives a clarity to the objects she has collected, Joanne Ungar’s use of wax obscures and mystifies the origin of the materials she has embedded.  Joanne Ungar reprocesses cardboard packaging; the corrugated lines and smooth surfaces are enhanced, transforming the byproduct of consumerism into a completely new entity.  Color and opacity plays a large role in Ungar’s process, in which she holds a tenuous control over the outcome of each poured layer of molten wax.

Joanne Ungar achieves a heightened visual depth through her choice of pigmentation and the level of translucence within each strata of wax.   Ungar examines the physical and ideological concept of packaging, considering the value of the stuff we cast off, misleading facades and the pervasiveness of materialism in our culture.

Ungar and Holleman exemplify their personal philosophies through the use of found objects  - frozen in composed display, heightening visual qualities of the inherent body of the materials, consumed by resin in the case of Holleman and wax for Ungar. 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Happy Holidays from the Front Room!
Best Wishes for a Festive Season of JOY!

   This weekend is the final weekend of Emily Roz's exhibition.
   The gallery is open by appointment December 26-28
   (please schedule visits one day in advance.) 
___________________________________________________________________________

sonicfront Performances Tonight for Williamsburg Second Friday!

Second Friday event, Fri Dec 12, 8pm: SONIC FRONT

Featuring:  LEA BERTUCCI  |  TMM MULLIGAN  |  IAN EPPS

sonic front is an exploration of electro-acoustic improvisation, electronic music, and sound art.

sonic front performances for Williamsburg 2nd Friday Event

sonic front presents:

DOKTOR23 (DOK GREGORY)


(  )


NOT HAPPY



November 14th 8-10PM

DOKTOR23 (DOK GREGORY) analog & vtol modular synthesizer/theremin/werkbench sampler.
Dok has been composing, performing and recording experimental/electronic music since 1983. He has been a member of NYC based audio visual group Amoeba Technology since 1997, toured and performed in festivals throughout the United States, Europe, Russia and South America and had recorded works released in most of the same. Doks' collaborative audio-visual works have been featured in programs at the Forum Des Images in Paris, Basel Art Fair in Switzerland, The Kitchen and Lincoln Center in NYC and elsewhere. In 2007 he began work on the ISRS system (a shortwave radio synthesizer) and continues to research, develop and deploy the technology. Dok has also toured and collaborated extensively as a member of Silence Corporation, Incidence Transmission Network, Psychic TV, Trance Pop Loops, Future Dream Transmissions and the Ransom Corps. He is and has been based in Brooklyn, N.Y. for the past 23 years and is director of the 23 Windows Arts Collective.current projects include:
Plan 23(NYC) with Peter Principle/WvS/( )
Byzantine Art Punk Ensemble (NYC/SPb) w/ Alexei Pliousnine/Dmitry Kakhovsky
Telesmatic Sound Box (NYC/Helsinki) with Timo Viialainen
Sewer Rats BK (NYC) with CX Kidtronic/Jason BK
ZGT (NYC) with Peter Principle/Zemi17
www.zgt.me

( ) is Jeremy D. Slater. His sound work consists of field recordings as a base to create processed drones with guitar, objects, ambient noise, and environmental sound. Performances include live performed video that is ambient and reactive. Video work includes single and multiple channel videos for screening and installations with sound and ephemeral sculpture. He is a member of Plan 23, ROTC (Rubaiyats of the Cicadas), Frogwell, and tū. He is currently curator of a "sonic front" at Front Room Gallery, series exploring electroacoustic improvisation, electronic music, and sound art. He's curated numerous performance events and gallery shows in New York including “A Sound Show” at Front Room Gallery, the sound/video performance series “kere.u” and “FLOW”, “Sun Khronos” at Millennium Film Workshop, and “Video as an Instrument” at The Tank and Supreme Trading Gallery. Jeremy Slater was one of the 1999 recipients of the Computer Art Fellowship from New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) and has attended the Experimental Television Residency, was guest musician at Watermill Center and HERE with Cave/Leimay, and was artist in residence at Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon in Seoul, South Korea. He has exhibited and performed in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, South Korea, and Japan. www.jeremyslater.net www.parenthesismusic.com



NOT HAPPY is Johnny Scuotto (Synths/Loops), Steven Welbourne (Viola), and Nick John Stevens (Synths).

Emily Roz: "Ripe" Exhibition Opens November 7th

Emily Roz

Ripe

November 7th - December 28th

Opening: Friday November 7th, 7-9

"Stacked" oil on panel, 36"x36"

The paintings in Emily Roz’s exhibition “Ripe” will surely make you blush. Referencing seedpods of a specific Southern Magnolia tree from the artist’s youth in Chapel Hill, these lush, tactile paintings exude the sexuality of the reproduction system of the Magnolia grandiflora. The large, cone-like forms of the Magnolia fruit are made from multiple ovaries, which bear vivid red seeds, that hang from the individual follicles by long silken threads. Roz’s depiction of these intimate parts of the pods is done at a larger scale, which arouses one’s desire for closer inspection.

Emily Roz exaggerates the visceral and sensual qualities
 of the pods through the use of saturated colors and the 
drama of baroque light. Roz enhances the shallow visual 
depth with the macro-texture of each form. She captures 
each minute detail of the final stages of propagation as 
the hard, lustrous crimson seeds protrude and penetrate their tantalizing furry enclosures. The exacting detail of these structures is counterbalanced by her use of the flat blue negative space surrounding the pods. These seemingly infinite fields of color paired with intense detail are inspired by Roz’s love of Northern Renaissance and Flemish paintings that use color in both realistic and symbolic ways.

“These paintings are my way of flirting. They want to turn you on, in a painting kind of way. Their texture and shapes may make you blush while their color and light appeals to you on a more cerebral level. Plants and animals have evolved for their essential purpose: to procreate. In these paintings I explore how both artworks and people pull out all the stops to get attention. These paintings are reminders of the universal impulse to use whatever resources we have to attract and connect, physically, emotionally or intellectually.”

- Emily Roz

"Spooning 2" oil on panel, 36"x36"

Born in 1972, Emily Roz received a BA from Hampshire College where she studied Art History, Literature and Weaving. She went on to receive an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been reviewed in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, The Washington Post, Joy Quarterly, W+G Williamsburg News + Art, Apollo Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail and NewCity Chicago.  Emily was raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and currently works in Queens. She lives on a small island off the coast of North America with her husband and son. This is her third solo show at the Front Room Gallery.

FR: 15 - 15th Anniversary Exhibition Opens This Friday

Oct 10th-Nov 2nd, 2014
Reception: Friday, Oct 10th, 7-9
Outdoor Art Festival:
October 11th, 1-6

Featuring:
Amanda Alic, Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Gregory Curry, Ethan Crenson, Lisa Dilillo, Mark Esper, Peter Fox, Amy Hill, Sascha Mallon, Stephen Mallon, Mark Masyga, Sean Hemmerle, Kim Holleman, David Kramer, Jesse Lambert, Allan Packer, Walker Pickering, Melissa Pokorny, Ross Racine, Kenneth Ragsdale, Emily Roz, Sante Scardillo, Philip Simmons, Mark Stilwell, Jeremy Slater, Patricia Smith, Rodger Stevens, Miho Suzuki, Joanne Ungar, Rosa Valado, Julia Whitney Barnes, Edie Winograde, Monika Wuhrer and more.

The Front Room Gallery is proud to announce FR:15, Front Room's Fifteenth Anniversary exhibition. We are thrilled to say that we have had over 117 exhibitions since we opened in Williamsburg at 147 Roebling Street on October 9th, 1999. This exhibition will feature some of our stalwarts that have been with us from the beginning such as Amanda Alic, Ethan Crenson, Sean Hemmerle, and Edie Winograde, as well as our current stable of artists who have shaped Front Room throughout the years and artists that have shown at Front Room in the past 15 years whose works we have always admired.

We have seen good and bad changes in Williamsburg in the last 6.66% of a century, and we are still happy to be here on Roebling Street right in the middle of the craziness. In 1999 none of us had cell phones, most artists sent their submissions in the form of slides, Chelsea was just getting started, LES and Bushwick didn't exist as art scenes and the idea of art fairs was just getting started. Since then Front Room and it's talented roster of artists has been involved in many art fairs and exchanges with museums and galleries throughout the world, and has received critical acclaim from renowned publications in print to hip young blogs online. We thank everyone for their continued support and look forward to a grand future.

In conjunction with our 15th Anniversary we are celebrating with an outdoor arts festival on the block of Hope Street, between Roebling and Havemeyer, adjacent to the gallery. Join us Saturday October 11th from 1-6PM for an afternoon of music, performance and video installations, featuring works from local artists.

Brutal Legacy: A Conversation about Paul Rudolph and his Endangered Masterwork

Front Room Gallery is Proud to Present:

Brutal Legacy: A Conversation about Paul Rudolph and his Endangered Masterwork

2pm, Sunday September 28th
Fri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment


Please join us for coffee, bagels, and a conversation with Theoharis David, Sean Khorsandi, and William Watson. We will be discussing the imperiled Orange County Government Center, Paul Rudolph’s legacy, and the necessity for preservation. Currently on view at the Front Room is Brutal Legacy, a selection of images by photographer Sean Hemmerle. Taken over the past three years, the images represent the most comprehensive visual archive of the Government Center to date. Doors open at 1:00. The discussion will begin at 2:00, lasting approximately one hour, with a question and answer period to follow.

Architect Theo David was a student and friend of Paul Rudolph. Architect Sean Khorsandi is Co-Dirtector of the Paul Rudolph Foundation. Designer William Watson has been compiling a scholarly archive about the Government Center since 2012. Watson and Hemmerle were awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in 2013 for their project, Brutal Legacy.

Theoharis David FAIA, is an American born architect/educator of Cypriot origin practicing in New York City and Nicosia, Cyprus. He is a tenured Professor of Architecture, former Faculty President and Chairman of Graduate Architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award 2013-14 from Pratt and holds the title of Institute Professor. He has degrees from Pratt Institute and Yale University, where he studied under Serge Chermayeff and Paul Rudolph.

Sean Khorsandi is an architect in the firm Samuel Anderson Architects in New York, specializing in museum work and laboratories for art and book conservation and preservation. He holds a Bachelors of Architecture from Cooper Union and a Masters of Architecture from Yale University, where he helped process the archives of Eero Saarinen's practice. Involved with the Paul Rudolph Foundation since 2006, Khorsandi has helped expand advocacy efforts and events to support the legacy of Paul Rudolph.

William Watson is a designer and writer practicing in New York. His recent article on the Orange County Government Center, “Paul Rudolph: Song of Deeds,” was published in the Fall 2012 issue of San Rocco Magazine. He is a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute in New York and cofounder of Castro Watson, an interdisciplinary design and research firm. He received his MA from the University of Texas at Austin and his BA in economics from Princeton University. He has worked for Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects and Gluckman Mayner Architects in New York, Rubio & Álvarez-Sala Architects in Madrid, and a World Health Organization Collaboration Center in Tokyo.

Sean Hemmerle is a New York based photographer whose work ranges from war zones to contemporary architecture. He has created iconic photographs that reflect the pathos and poetry of the American Rust Belt, including work from Detroit, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Gary, and Albany. Hemmerle has exhibited nationally and internationally, recently in a solo show at the Feroz Galerie in Germany, Paris Photo and AIPAD. He has been showing at Front Room since 1999. His work can be found in public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center for Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse.

Williamsburg Second Friday

See you tonight for Williamsburg Second Friday.  We will be presenting a projection of images from Sean Hemmerle's "Brutal Legacy" exhibition.

Front Room is Proud to Present:

Sean Hemmerle

Brutal Legacy

Sept 5th-Oct 5th, 2014
Reception: Friday, Sept 5th, 7-9Fri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment

Front Room Gallery is proud to present Brutal Legacy, a solo exhibition of photographs by Brooklyn based artistSean Hemmerle. In this recent series of photographs, Hemmerle shows images of an imperiled Brutalist masterwork, The Orange County Government Centerin Goshen, NY.For the past three years, Hemmerle and designer William Watson have collaborated to produce an archive of photographs and research about Paul Rudolph'sextraordinary Government Center. At this critical juncture, their project aims to understand the structure through the materials and disposition that will bring about its preservation, or its demise, and to illuminate the moment at which a building and an architectural style face proscription. 

Sean Hemmerle and William Watson were awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts in 2013 to continue their efforts. This marks Hemmerle’s fifth solo show with the gallery. 

WILLIAMSBURG EVERY SECOND, FRIDAY
Friday September 12th 2014, 7-9pm
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Every 2:nd Friday will be taking place on September 12. Participating galleries are:

Art101
Cotton Candy Machine
Firework Gallery
Figureworks
Front Room
REVERSE Space
Endangered Artists
Gitana Rosa
Ventana244

Sean Hemmerle: "Brutal Legacy" Opens Friday September 5th, from 7-9PM

Sean Hemmerle

Brutal Legacy

Sept 5th-Oct 5th, 2014
Reception: Friday, Sept 5th, 7-9Fri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment

Front Room Gallery is proud to present Brutal Legacy, a solo exhibition of photographs by Brooklyn based artist Sean Hemmerle. In this recent series of photographs, Hemmerle shows images of an imperiled Brutalist masterwork, The Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY.

For the past three years, Hemmerle and designer William Watson have collaborated to produce an archive of photographs and research about Paul Rudolph's extraordinary Government Center. At this critical juncture, their project aims to understand the structure through the materials and disposition that will bring about its preservation, or its demise, and to illuminate the moment at which a building and an architectural style face proscription.

The Orange County Government Center has been the focus of an ongoing public debate concerning the viability and relevance of Brutalist architecture. Built in 1967, the Center opened in 1971, at a time of civic optimism, but the building was quickly beset by recessions, political reversals, and negligent maintenance, leaving it damaged and unpopular. Forty years later, local politicians, who considered the complex an economic and visual burden, forced the building’s evacuation and continue to lobby for its full or partial demolition.

The Orange County Government Center is an important example of Paul Rudolph’s sculptural, multi-leveled Brutalist designs, which play with concepts of volume, texture and light; this building is considered one of his finest remaining structures. This series of photographs by Sean Hemmerle embraces the often illusive, experiential quality of the architectural components that make up this unique design.

Sean Hemmerle’s photographs depict the the Government Center’s cavernous spaces, its volumes capped with more than eighty individual rooves. Hemmerle’s rigid and direct photographs reveal the underlying harmony of Rudolph's genius. Within Hemmerle’s photographs the viewer can slip inside the Government Center, illuminated indirectly from periscopic openings and uniquely fitted windows. One can palpably sense Rudolph’s brilliance expressed in the silent concrete chambers accented in hues of aubergine and ochre.

Sometimes I think we build too many goldfish bowls and not enough caves.–Paul Rudolph.

This series strives to aid in the preservation the Government Center by recording it before it is demolished, blighted by neglect, or altered significantly. Sean Hemmerle and William Watson were awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts in 2013 to continue their efforts. This marks Hemmerle’s fifth solo show with the gallery. 

Summer Love

July 2 – August 24, 2014
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 2, 6:00–9:00pm
Closing brunch: Sunday, August 24, 3:00–6:00pm


Amanda Alic + Ethan Crenson
Rachel Feinstein + John Currin
Jolynn Krystosek + Halsey Hathaway
Katherine Newbegin + Todd Knopke
Alexandra Posen + Nils Folke Anderson
Sascha Mallon + Stephen Mallon
Jessica Sucher + Sasha Bezzubov
Kathleen Vance + Daniel Aycock
Cibele Vieira + Peter Fox
Ursula Weissmüller + Robert Ortega
Julia Whitney Barnes + Sean Hemmerle

Front Room gallery is proud to present: “Summer Love” a group show curated by Julia Whitney Barnes celebrating artists’ love in tandem with her recent nuptials with Sean Hemmerle. As part of their wedding celebration, artist Julia Whitney Barnes selected eleven married artist couples, each of whom have a personal connection to the newlyweds. The concept for the show developed while Julia was going over their wedding invite list and noticed how many artist couples were included. Several of the artists work collaboratively, and without question, each couple is influenced by each other's work. About half the artists are Front Room regulars and for the other half, this will mark their first show with the gallery.

Whitney Barnes structured the selection of artworks by directing each spouse to choose which piece would represent their partner in the exhibition, or the artists selected collaborative work. This process mimics the couples selecting each other to marry, with the artworks exhibited in pairs.

ABOUT THE WORK:

Amanda Alic and Ethan Crenson collaborated on the video "People in Trees." Very much as the title implies, single figures appear high in a tree in a snowy, quiet, otherwise depopulated landscape. It is ambiguous and meditative. With David Ramirez, John Keefe, Edie Winograde and Matthew Crenson.

World-renowned artist couple, Rachel Feinstein and John Currincollaborated on a graphite drawing of two topless women wearing glasses, based on vintage porn images. The more buxom figure is looking at nude photographs on the floor and the skinnier figure is grasping open a book on top of a stack of other books.  In making these works, Rachel draws the playful contours and John elaborates with refined shading.


Jolynn Krystosek's wall mounted gray felt sculpture creates a space of both shallow and infinite depth. The felt works inspire a variety of aesthetic references including hoods, bonnets, or habits and are suggestive of feminine anatomy. Halsey Hathaway’s tall acrylic on dyed canvas painting is imbued with translucent overlapping fields of color. The accumulated forms build up to a space that can be seen both as figure and as void, intentionally allowing the work to change with each viewer’s own subjectivity.

Katherine Newbegin's Chromogenic print of a Mosque in Mumbai is from her solo travels in India during 2010 and 2011. Though Todd initially aimed to select one of Katherine's works from their frequent mutual travels, his love of this charged yet tranquil space won out. Todd Knopke's wall mounted fabric work combines the traditions of American quilting and European tapestry making, mixed with contemporary ideas of collage, painting, and sculpture. The work uses repurposed fabric including his friends and family's clothes, sheets and towels and is reminiscent of a sunny figure emerging from water with mountains in the background.

Alexandra Posen's "Soft Paintings," call on a unique language of abstraction that engages color, transparency, shadow and ephemerality to project imaginary spaces. They are created from translucent painted silk, stretched over wooden bars. Nils Folke Anderson's painted Aquaresin sculpture looks like bent wood on first glance. His sensuous work hovers in the enigmatic territory between abstraction and evocation

Sascha (Prinz zu Schaumburg-Lippe) Mallon's multifaceted drawing, infused with surrealist-influenced narrative, is populated with creatures that are like the unseen within the obvious: animals, half-humans, imaginary hybrid beings in a constant state of change. Stephen Mallon's Chromogenic print "New Grass" was shot on the Coast of Ireland on the day he proposed to Sascha in 2005. It is part of his series about vacation places out of season.

Jessica Sucher and Sasha Bezzubov's collaborative black and white silver gelatin prints are of untended olive trees, found throughout the Palestinian Occupied Territories from their series “Facts on the Ground.” Raggedly beautiful, these trees are visible evidence of Israeli policies that have made many orchards in the West Bank inaccessible to Palestinian farmers. Ties to these trees run deep, and cutting off farmers and families from their orchards is a powerful strategy of symbolic and economic discouragement.

Kathleen Vance's "Rogue Stream" is a site-specific installation of a miniature meandering stream that transverses a wall, connecting intermittently, through the use of wooden trestles.  This piece explores issues of ground water rights and environmental issues relative to the source stream referenced in the installation. Daniel Aycock’s “Geisen Family Journal” uses manipulated tintype photographs to trace the lineage of a family that was documented in a found journal written in 1896.

Cibele Vieira and Peter Fox 's selected works are from the era that they got together in 2006. Cibele's photo from her “Single and Looking for…” series explores the nature of relationships and interaction. The works are an invitation to enter and explore a world of desires and expectations on how people relate to each other. Peter's painting “Quiet Sort” was his homecoming gift to Cibele and their newborn son Sam, on their arrival home from the hospital. The painting is from a transitional moment in the evolution of his spilled paint series, shortly before he discovered the striped drip, of which he is known.

Ursula Weissmüller and Robert Ortega installation of drawings, collages and illustrated love letters from the past decade shows the couples passion for each other and the art of paper. The two also collaborated on the design of the show's exhibition card.


Julia Whitney Barnes and Sean Hemmerle's work relates to their travels in Iceland last summer. Julia's oil painting on mylar is from her "Bricks and Stones May Break" series and features cairns (manmade stacks of stones) that have since ancient times been erected as landmarks. For thousands of years they have also been built as sepulchral monuments, or used for defensive, hunting, ceremonial, astronomical and other purposes. The stacks in Julia’s painting are along the road to Þingvallavatn, where the North American and Eurasian continental plates meet. Sean's Chromogenic print shows three pairs of Icelandic sheep in a meadow just below the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano that erupted in 2010, covering in ash all of the immediate area and spanning across a large area of northern Europe. The sheep are immersed in lush greenery and seem unaware of the volcano's previous effects.

The Super Defense Force, Operation: God Hammer (War of the Tittanno Beasts)!!!

Join us this Saturday, June 21st at 8PM for the forth installment of the Mark Stilwell oeuvre which tells the tale of the Super Defense Force and the Tittanno Beasts.

Organized collectively, these performances depict giant robots battling giant monsters created from cardboard and recycled materials also including, experimental rock music composed by Brian Olin, accompanied by an array of video imagery and stop motion animation.

This Saturday's performance, in conjunction with Make Music New York, depicts the titanic struggle between the monsters and robots, Max Salvo, supreme commander of the Super Defense Force and the overlord of the Tittanno Beasts, Kungra exchange heated words, reminiscent of Gulf War era rhetoric.

The Super Defense Force, Operation: God Hammer (War of the Tittanno Beasts)!!!
June 21st, 8PM
FEATURING:
Mark Stilwell- Creator
Yoko Stilwell - Creator
Ethan Crenson - Creator/Performer
Christopher Paisley - Creator/Performer
Brian Olin - Musician
Kevin Kozak - Musician
Angelo Roldan - Performer
Mark Gonzalez - Performer
Kangsim Lee - Video Support

Reflection/Refraction Opens this Friday, June 6th

Reflection/Refraction

June 6th – June 29th, 2014
Reception: Friday, June 6th, 7-9PMFri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment

Featuring works by Mark Warren Jacques, Meryl Pataky, Randy Colosky, Sean Newport, and Sebastian Wahl

Front Room Gallery and guest curator Jillian Mackintosh are pleased to present Reflection/Refraction, a group exhibition based on a contemporary examination of artists who engage the viewers' perception and provoke shifting patterns of forms and optical mixtures of colors. Through various media, including painting, resin, sculpture, neon, ceramic and wood, the artists comment on the history of geometric abstraction.

Reflection/Refraction experiments with science, space and symbolism to tell a modern story. The fierce hues and psychedelic‎ palate is balanced by an organic integration of material and form. Natural forces such as light and shadow challenging the viewer to change their physical viewpoint while spatially creating balance.

The exhibition seeks to explore how our minds react to optical fabrications, allowing us to delve deeper into reality’s notions that are inherently rooted within ourselves. We hope to share with the community a vibrant and engaging selection of artworks from emerging artist from across the country.

About the work:

Mark Warren Jacques’ paintings seek to find equilibrium by stacking clean, geometric shapes and ancient symbols in front of blazing gradients, often creating an almost religious composition.

Similarly, Meryl Pataky combines concepts and imagery of spiritual language, the universe and psychology. These images are made with the elements of the periodic table (noble gases, carbon, silver and sodium) and serve as a foundation for her work.

Randy Colosky takes utilitarian materials and through unorthodox transformation re-contextualize there content. With the engineered ceramic material he works with, the pieces appears solid, however upon further investigation, viewed from certain vantage points the material seems to become momentarily invisible calling into question the initial perception of the object versus its material reality.

Sean Newport’s work manipulates color and light in a way that bends reality. He explores the 3rd and 4th dimension with hand cut geometric shapes tiled together creating peaks and valley's along with ever changing shadows and light play.

Sebastian Wahl’s collages are encased in layers of thick resin, creating physical depth to each hand cut image. Mused by sacred geometry and shamanic visions Whal attempt to channel these inspirations into his work in the form of psychedelic landscapes, iconic, mandalic and spiritual mayhem.

Closing Brunch with the Artist

Join us this Sunday, June 1st from 1-4PM for Brunch with the artist, Thomas Broadbent.

Thomas Broadbent

Adaptation

May 2nd-June 1st, 2014
Closing Brunch: Sunday, June 1st, 1-4PMFri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment

Front Room Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Thomas Broadbent. In this new series of works the artist explores the idea of situational adaption of nature, with curious results. Broadbent often pairs commonly known birds with typical household objects, creating uncanny scenarios that seem familiar, but point to larger implications. Broabent's philosophical compositions often depict birds amongst mundane trappings of everyday humanity. These paintings, in a seemingly well-structured world of man-made artifice, reference the underlying impulses of nature.

Broadbent's large-scale watercolors have an absurdity to them that borders on the surreal, they are plausible scenarios, but the unlikely combination of elements, objects, and animals are otherworldly and common at the same time. Broadbent incorporates the style of James Audubon, representing birds and natural elements as life-size, with impeccable attention to detail.

Broadbent often juxtaposes these birds with objects in his stark picture plane that should be ten times bigger. Scale itself seems contorted in these new works; the viewer is suspended in a recalibration of realism, where a chickadee may seem gigantic in comparison to the ladder where it is perched, or the ladder itself appears miniaturized

Thomas Broadbent defines adaptation as a change in a plant or animal that makes it better able to live in a particular place or situation. His fascination with the way in which nature is endlessly able to adjust to a rapidly changing world, helps to inform his choice of elements in his compositions. His specifically limits his aviary subjects to birds that are reverenced in the famous: "Birds of America.” In this context Broadbent has selected volumes specific to his personal travels and objects relative to domesticity and construction in the United States. Environmental adaptation is personal as it is universal in the natural world; the quality of nature to adapt allows for preservation. The visualization of this adaptation can be surprising as it is fantastical and disquieting.

Broadbent has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Broadbent’s numerous solo exhibitions include the Visual Art’s Center of New Jersey, Voorkhamer Gallery (Lier, Belgium), Croxhapox Gallery (Gent, Belgium) Inspace gallery (Beijing, China) and the Newark Arts Council. Broadbent’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, NY Arts, The Brooklyn Rail and numerous other publications.

Thomas Broadbent "Adaptation" Exhibition Now On View

Thomas Broadbent

Adaptation

May 2nd-June 1st, 2014
Reception: Friday, May 2nd, 7-9Fri–Sun 1-6 & by appointment

Front Room Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Thomas Broadbent. In this new series of works the artist explores the idea of situational adaption of nature, with curious results. Broadbent often pairs commonly known birds with typical household objects, creating uncanny scenarios that seem familiar, but point to larger implications. Broabent's philosophical compositions often depict birds amongst mundane trappings of everyday humanity. These paintings, in a seemingly well-structured world of man-made artifice, reference the underlying impulses of nature.

Broadbent's large-scale watercolors have an absurdity to them that borders on the surreal, they are plausible scenarios, but the unlikely combination of elements, objects, and animals are otherworldly and common at the same time. Broadbent incorporates the style of James Audubon, representing birds and natural elements as life-size, with impeccable attention to detail.

Broadbent often juxtaposes these birds with objects in his stark picture plane that should be ten times bigger. Scale itself seems contorted in these new works; the viewer is suspended in a recalibration of realism, where a chickadee may seem gigantic in comparison to the ladder where it is perched, or the ladder itself appears miniaturized

Thomas Broadbent defines adaptation as a change in a plant or animal that makes it better able to live in a particular place or situation. His fascination with the way in which nature is endlessly able to adjust to a rapidly changing world, helps to inform his choice of elements in his compositions. His specifically limits his aviary subjects to birds that are reverenced in the famous: "Birds of America.” In this context Broadbent has selected volumes specific to his personal travels and objects relative to domesticity and construction in the United States. Environmental adaptation is personal as it is universal in the natural world; the quality of nature to adapt allows for preservation. The visualization of this adaptation can be surprising as it is fantastical and disquieting.

Broadbent has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Broadbent’s numerous solo exhibitions include the Visual Art’s Center of New Jersey, Croxhapox Gallery (Gent, Belgium) Inspace gallery (Beijing, China) and the Newark Arts Council. Broadbent’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, NY Arts, The Brooklyn Rail and numerous other publications.

April Williamsburg Second Friday Event

Join us Friday, April 11th from 7-9PM for
Williamsburg Second Friday Event

Walker Pickering: "Nearly West"

on view through April 27th

Front Room Gallery is proud to present “Nearly West,” a solo
exhibition of photographs by Austin based artist Walker Pickering. In
this series Pickering reflects on the subtleties in the landscape and
culture from West Texas to the Southern regions of the US. Through
the lens of travel and adventure, he seeks out the hidden among the
ordinary. Pickering’s work captures the mundane trappings of
travel, rest-stops and unexpected roadside encounters.

The places immortalized in Pickering’s work often show the wear of
time, they seem to have gone unnoticed for years, they have their own
lives and feel like they might never change—or they might be gone
already. In one of Pickering’s photographs a forgotten
architectural feature, an ornate entryway to a no longer existing
building, with the word “Mayflower” carved into the stone stands
guard over an empty plot in a field. In another photo, “Business
Cards,” a dimly lit storage space in an office, business cards are
taped to the walls cover every available surface, a textural overload
that has built over decades.

Pickering’s photographs in this series almost never have people in
them but the human hand is always evident in the environment. In
“Hole” a bucolic landscape containing a verdant river flows from
the distance towards the viewer, the lush fauna is reflected in the
river, an altogether beautiful scene—but centered in the middle of
the square photo is a large, completely unexplainable, circular hole
in the river. While the hole in the river is obviously man-made it is
a mysterious presence in the photo, a vortex to another dimension.

This is Walker Pickering’s first solo exhibition at The Front Room,
Walker received his MFA in photography from Savannah College of Art
and Design, and currently teaches photography at the Art Institute of
Austin.