(UN)THINKABLE

Gallery Crawl!!!

A solo exhibition of photographs by Phillip Buehler

Friday, September 15th, 6:00-9:00 pm

Wed-Sun 1-6 pm and by appointment

VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.frontroomles.com/

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE: https://www.frontroomles.com/unthinkablepr

Front Room Gallery is proud to present “(un)thinkable,” the culmination of 25 years of Phillip Buehler’s work photographing remnants of the Cold War throughout the United States and Europe. Buehler has visited NATO airbases, Cape Canaveral, the Airplane Graveyard, missile bunkers and silos (even within New York City’s borders) among many other sites that are historic, and yet hidden, forbidden, and forgotten. For anyone growing up during the Cold War the sense of dread of the world’s annihilation was all to concrete. It was evidenced in films like “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Day After.” Everyone knew the U.S. had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world 5 times over, and assumed something similar about the Russians. For those not old enough to remember this built in fear, don’t worry (worry) it is reawakening. We don’t need another Cuban Missile Crisis to push us to the brink, the renewed tension with the Russians, and now North Korea’s recent entry in the the nuclear weapons club is more than enough to unnerve anyone who is watching these conflicts unfold. Phillip Buehler is watching closely.       Through this comprehensive series Buehler’s photos show many  aspects of this non-war war. In Buehler’s aerial photographs from a military airplane storage yard in Arizona the repetion of the same model of bomber aircraft are so abstractly pattern-based that the overall effect begings to feel like a  Middle Eastern tapastry. And in Buehler’s image from inside a Nike Missile bunker in the Rockaways (part of New York City’s old nuclear defense network) a vast graffiti covered concrete and steel structure one can see where the roof opens up to lift and fire a nuclear missile. Of couse this exhibition would not be complete without his photo of the iconic “Fallout Shelter” signs, still visible at public schools and libraries all over the country. The practical nature of these leftover signs could send a chill down the spine of anyone who thinks about it for very long. Phil Buehler’s interest in modern Ruins started in 1973 when he rowed out to then abandoned Ellis Island and he has continued to document 20th -Century ruins around the world seeking to rescue the  past one step ahead of the wrecking ball. Buehler practiced “duck and cover” drills in grammar school - the image below is of the fallout shelter sign still on that school.”His recent book, “Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty,” won numerous awards and documents the singer/songwriter/activist’s life at Greystone Park Psychiatric through an intricate juxtaposition of photographs of the now-abandoned hospital buildings, Guthrie’s writings, medical records and interviews with close friends and family.

Phillip Buehler: (UN)THINKABLE

(UN)THINKABLE

A solo exhibition of photographs by Phillip Buehler

Opening Reception: Friday, September 8th, 7:00-9:00 pm

Wed-Sun 1-6 pm and by appointment

VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.frontroomles.com/

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE: https://www.frontroomles.com/unthinkablepr

Front Room Gallery is proud to present “(un)thinkable,” the culmination of 25 years of Phillip Buehler’s work photographing remnants of the Cold War throughout the United States and Europe. Buehler has visited NATO airbases, Cape Canaveral, the Airplane Graveyard, missile bunkers and silos (even within New York City’s borders) among many other sites that are historic, and yet hidden, forbidden, and forgotten. For anyone growing up during the Cold War the sense of dread of the world’s annihilation was all to concrete. It was evidenced in films like “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Day After.” Everyone knew the U.S. had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world 5 times over, and assumed something similar about the Russians. For those not old enough to remember this built in fear, don’t worry (worry) it is reawakening. We don’t need another Cuban Missile Crisis to push us to the brink, the renewed tension with the Russians, and now North Korea’s recent entry in the the nuclear weapons club is more than enough to unnerve anyone who is watching these conflicts unfold. Phillip Buehler is watching closely.       Through this comprehensive series Buehler’s photos show many  aspects of this non-war war. In Buehler’s aerial photographs from a military airplane storage yard in Arizona the repetion of the same model of bomber aircraft are so abstractly pattern-based that the overall effect begings to feel like a  Middle Eastern tapastry. And in Buehler’s image from inside a Nike Missile bunker in the Rockaways (part of New York City’s old nuclear defense network) a vast graffiti covered concrete and steel structure one can see where the roof opens up to lift and fire a nuclear missile. Of couse this exhibition would not be complete without his photo of the iconic “Fallout Shelter” signs, still visible at public schools and libraries all over the country. The practical nature of these leftover signs could send a chill down the spine of anyone who thinks about it for very long. Phil Buehler’s interest in modern Ruins started in 1973 when he rowed out to then abandoned Ellis Island and he has continued to document 20th -Century ruins around the world seeking to rescue the  past one step ahead of the wrecking ball. Buehler practiced “duck and cover” drills in grammar school - the image below is of the fallout shelter sign still on that school.”His recent book, “Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty,” won numerous awards and documents the singer/songwriter/activist’s life at Greystone Park Psychiatric through an intricate juxtaposition of photographs of the now-abandoned hospital buildings, Guthrie’s writings, medical records and interviews with close friends and family.

SUMMER SAMPLER

June 16 - July 16th, 2017

Reception: Friday, June 16th 7-9PM

Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Phillip Buehler, Jade Doskow, Peter Fox, Sean Hemmerle, Amy Hill, Jesse Lambert, Mark Masyga, Stephen Mallon, Sascha Mallon, Melissa Pokorny, Ross Racine, Ken Ragsdale, Paul Raphaelson, Emily Roz, Patricia Smith, Joanne Ungar, Edie Winograde

For some people the summer begins with Memorial Day, for others it is the Summer Solstice, but for those in the know—it begins with "Summer Sampler." The Front Room Gallery is proud to present the 13th annual Summer Sampler featuring: Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Phillip Buehler, Jade Doskow, Peter Fox, Sean Hemmerle, Amy Hill, Jesse Lambert, Mark Masyga, Stephen Mallon, Sascha Mallon, Melissa Pokorny, Ross Racine, Ken Ragsdale, Paul Raphaelson, Emily Roz, Patricia Smith, Joanne Ungar, Edie Winograde. Front Room Gallery's traditional Summer group exhibition is a sampling of works by the gallery's stable of painters, photographers, and sculptors featuring a selection of things from the upcoming season as well as some favorites by artists who have had recent shows at our new Lower East Side location.

Sasha Bezzubov’s photographic approach has developed through diverse series that address the contemporary condition and explore the nature of the document. Working both solo and with his sometime collaborator Jessica Sucher, Sasha Bezzubov uses a large format camera to photograph the people and the land in diverse series including, The Gringo Project, Expats and Natives, Things Fall Apart, The Searchers, Albedo Zone, Facts on the Ground and most recently, Republic of Dust.

Thomas Broadbent has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Broadbent’s work won the Pulse Prize for best solo booth at Pulse Art Fair. 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.

Phillip Buehler, Phillip Buehler has been photographing abandoned places around the world since he rowed to the (then abandoned) Ellis Island in 1974. Many, like Greystone Park Hospital, have since been demolished; some, like Ellis Island and the High Line, have been restored, and some, like the S.S. United States and the New York State Pavilion, are now in jeopardy.

Jade Doskow’s “Lost Utopias” documents what remains of these World Fairgrounds, in their profound grandeur, but also the relics of less notable attractions that have been repurposed or left to decline. Lost Utopias project juxtaposes emblematic monuments with sad and abandoned decaying structures, provoking the viewer to consider how idealistic feats of architecture can either succeed or disappear into obscurity.

Peter Fox, Expanding on his signature style of drip painting, Peter Fox's spilled paint works have taken on bold gestural movements. Referencing formal systems of Abstract Painting, he explores the language of relational color, as articulated through layered processes. Each composition is developed through variance and repetition, and evolves with the allowance of chance.

Sean Hemmerle, He quickly established his reputation as a sought-after architectural and urban landscape photographer, and since 9/11 has turned his eye toward documenting the effects of war in New York, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Amy Hill’s paintings are updates of works from earlier eras. She has chosen portraiture as it is a genre that runs through art history and allows her through poses, gestures and fashion detail to make social, psychological and anthropological statements about her subjects. Humor emerges through the juxtaposition of modern day fashion and historical figures.

Jesse Lambert's ink and watercolor paintings on paper depict ad-hoc structures constructed out of scraps of wood and debris such as bent nails, string, cloth, clothespins, discarded tools and other household implements. Evoking the universal human desire for shelter and protection, these assemblages reference domestic spaces, but fail to function as those spaces normally would.

Mark Masyga's compositions have lively linear elements balanced with a sensitive, yet intense sense of color. Mark Masyga uses line to enhance both specificity and ambiguity, creating a sense of mystery.

Stephen Mallon, Mallon is known for his photographs of big (with a capital “B”) things crashing, sinking, levitating, being dismantled or constructed. In his long running series “American Reclamation” many of the subjects are small bails, stacks, compressed cubes, mounds, random/shapeless units, and swirling vortexes. Light gleams of the corners and facets of gears and chrome strips or fades indistinctly into bails of office papers that have been squished into abstract forms.

Sascha Mallon’s drawings are personal and metaphoric with a focus on love, pleasure, longing, reflections on body and passion. The source of her inspiration are daydreams mixed with reality, which she transforms into visual fairytales. Her works expand on her interest in life, the end of life and transitions. The narratives she creates are filled with strong memories and feelings; they are visual poems full of meaning.

Melissa Pokorny's constructed systems and collective actions suggest something akin to speculative biomes, or psychological landscapes. Individual works are re-collections of moments: lived, imagined, and borrowed. They are experientially derived, suggesting layered relationships based on memories of place, material affinities, (un)natural phenomena, and the desires of things.

Ross Racine creates his hyper-real suburban landscapes with a uniquely developed drawing method combining the languages of drawing and digital imaging. The importance of color varies greatly from image to image, as some images are saturated, some have subdued tints, and some revert back to pure gray scale. The decisions about color are made as each image evolves during the process of creation, and its final form is meant to reinforce a particular mood that matches the character of the landscape.

Ken Ragsdale, Memories and personal recollections inform Ragsdale’s works and help to identify the key components of each work. Once the composition and components are determined as to capture the aura of a memory, schematic drawings are documented and prepared for hand assembly. Laboriously the schematics are cut out, folded and tabbed to create their final 3-dimensional formats. As each object is placed and the structures oriented, Ragsdale modifies the scenes to perfectly frame each scenario for the final photograph.

Paul Raphaelson's photographs of the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn document a topic of continuing controversy. It was once the biggest sugar refinery in the world. Originally a complex, now just one historically landmarked building still stands on the Brooklyn waterfront. On it's way to becoming high-rise condos it might well be the best symbol of the climate in Brooklyn today.

Emily Roz uses addition and omission to morph segmented botanical shapes into incongruous bodily juxtapositions. In browns, pinks and orange, the sexualized forms hover on a white gessoed background of negative space. Roz’s compositions exist in a void. The permutations are fluid and re-embodied to infer figuration.

Patricia Smith is known for her idiosyncratic cartographic explorations of the psyche and mental states, Smith incorporates new outer and inner geographical regions in her latest works. Smith's mappings are not exclusively anchored in external geography. Often she organizes and analyzes texts, and maps their intersections with her own thoughts. The results are a highly individual infiltration of mapping into the fluid and mysterious regions of the mind.

Joanne Ungar , Joanne Ungar’s background in collage arts transitioned into her current process works when she began working with wax in the 1990’s. This current series began as a "packaging" double entendre: it was a way to address and explore feelings about the cosmetics industry and her own involvement in it.

Edie Winograde captures the temporal relationships between past and present through landscape photography and unstaged photographs taken in American national parks and monuments throughout the United States. These photographs expose the mundane moments and often unnoticed coincidences that occur to travelers and tourists against the backdrop of grandeur that is the American "Wilderness."

Happy Hour with the Artist

Wednesday, June 7th 5-7PM

Join us for an "Afterglow" Happy Hour with the artist, Emily Roz Wednesday June 7th, from 5-7PM.

A special sunset viewing of her solo exhibition of paintings with signature "Afterglow" cocktails

EMILY ROZ: AFTERGLOW
May 19 - June 11, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, May 19th 7-9PM

The Front Room is proud to present Emily Roz’s “Afterglow,” her 4th solo exhibition with the gallery. Roz is known for her (sometimes lurid) hyper-detailed oil paintings and drawings depicting scenes from nature. Her macroscopic paintings referencing the seed-pods from the Southern Magnolia fruit pods titillate and tantalize. In her new paintings, Emily Roz embraces the perverse. Biomorphic forms push up against each other, spill over and attempt to penetrate, taking an equal opportunity approach to inexact body parts.


Beginning with observational drawing, Roz uses addition and omission to morph segmented botanical shapes into incongruous bodily juxtapositions. In browns, pinks and orange, the sexualized forms hover on a white gessoed background of negative space. Roz’s compositions exist in a void. The permutations are fluid and re-embodied to infer figuration. Loaded up with bulbous volume and lush texture, the incongruous shapes resemble flesh and muscle and bones. The intentionally charged ambiguity leaves the innuendo open to uninhibited interpretation.


Emily Roz received an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA from Hampshire College where she studied Art History, Literature and Weaving. She has been covered in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, Joy Quarterly, W+G Williamsburg News + Art, Apollo Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail and NewCity Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Front Room Gallery, Mulherin, Auxiliary Projects, Parlour, and 31Grand in New York; Decatur Blue in Washington DC; NUDASHANK in Baltimore; articule in Montreal; Gardenfresh in Chicago, Franklin Street Works in Connecticut and The Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.


Front Room Gallery • 48 Hester Street• NYC, NY 10002 • 718-782-2556 •

Thomas Broadbent, "Phylum" Inaugural Exhibition at Our New Location

PHYLUM 

a solo exhibition of new works by:

Thomas Broadbent

March 19th - April 9th

Inaugural Reception: 

Friday March 24th, 7-9PM

Join us for an opening reception of Thomas Broadbent's exhibition, "Phylum" and the grand opening of our new location in Manhattan's Lower East Side at 48 Hester Street (on the corner of Ludlow)

Front Room Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Thomas Broadbent. In the exhibition “Phylum.” Broadbent’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’s birds are rendered sensitively with a naturalist’s eye for detail often in conjunction with objects such as stacks of books, Modernist furniture, and ladders. 

These objects could possibly be looked at as stand-ins for society in an ambiguous relationship with nature that is absurd—and yet peculiarly comfortable. His beautifully rendered astrological bodies might question the core of our existence, our evolution as a planet. Or perhaps they are simply representations of massive physical objects reverently painted in black and white lit by starlight with deep dark shadowy craters. Like all of Broadbent’s endeavors the answers are not that cut and dried.

Broadbent has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Broadbent’s work won the Pulse Prize for best solo booth at Pulse Art Fair. His work was subsequently featured in “Mission to Space” at the Children’s Art Museum in Manhattan. His work is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Broadbent’s numerous solo exhibitions include the Visual Art’s Center of New Jersey, Croxhapox Gallery (Gent, Belgium) Voorkamer Gallery (Lier, 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.

Front Room Gallery • 48 Hester Street • NY, NY 10002 • 718-782-2556

gallery hours: Wednesday- Sunday 1-6PM