front room gallery

L Magazine Review by Deirdre Hering

2012-02-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

Artists Imagine Inhabitable Habitats

Anyone can tell you that relationships are complicated, but there isn’t one as urgent or all-encompassing as the one between the earth and its inhabitants. Front Room Gallery’s group show In-Habitat (through February 19th) deals with four artists’ concern for the natural world, and what it means to live here.

Painter Gregory Curry creates abstracted figures in oil using classical techniques. Barely distinguishable from their brightly colored backgrounds, the bodies are at once familiar and otherworldly. Photographer Lisa DiLillo captures nocturnal landscapes up close. Peppered with sparks of light, her images are wonderfully dynamic—shafts of wheat bend low in a breeze; the pale stem of a young flower stretches painfully skyward.

The lone sculptures in the show belong to Kim Holleman. Her landscapes thrive in artificial surroundings; Holleman’s miniature ecosystems live and breathe inside of chemistry equipment (glass beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks). Though the forms inside are organic in shape, they look anything but natural—the leaves and rocks come in an array of Crayola colors. Their borders defined by human intervention, Holleman’s sculptures reflect the environs of today’s natural world: severely limited, and marked indelibly by human influence.

The works by Julia Whitney Barnes indicate a desire for a more harmonious relationship with nature. Barnes combines organic imagery—think abstracted clouds and roots —with renderings of man-made materials. In a mixed-media piece, Barnes affixes an image of a tree house over a dusky forest scene. The house melts easily into the trees, creating a touching visual balance between what is wild and what is not. The piece seems to almost sigh—if only it was this easy in real life.

(Kim Holleman, “Ferrous Tree”; Courtesy the artist, Front Room Gallery)

The L Magazine

"In-Habitat" Exhibition

2012-01-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

IN-HABITAT

Julia Whitney Barnes

Gregory Curry

Lisa DiLillo

Kim Holleman

January 20-February 19th

Opening Friday, January 20th 7-9

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.

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.

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.

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

2012-01-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Sunday: New Year's Brunch!

2011-12-31T08:19:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

“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

2011-11-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-18T14:55:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

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

â€œThe Weight of Words,â€ 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.

11/11/11 Sound Performance and Catalog Release

2011-11-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

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"

2011-10-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-30T17:47:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-07-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-07T09:13:00.001-07:00

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!!!

2011-06-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

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!!!!

2011-06-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 21^st

As part of Make Music New York featuring:

6:30 pm: Genux-B

7:30 pm: Parenthesis with KenYa Kawaguchi

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

2011-06-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-24T18:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

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.”

2011-04-09T17:09:00.000-07:00

WAGMAG Benefit Preview

On view through Sunday

Tickets are currently $175 until Sunday the 10th. After that tickets are $225.

Raffle tickets can be purchased here:

A selection of Artworks for this years benefit are now online at:
BENEFIT ARTWORKS

BENEFIT EVENING Tuesday April 12th, 7-9pm:
Reception and Raffle of work
Causey Contemporary
92 Wythe Avenue
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Artists include:
On Megumi Akiyoshi, Amanda Alic, Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor, Ruby Amanze, Audrey Anastasi, Cecilia Biagini, John Boone, Tom Broadbent, Ana Busto, Ken Butler, Ethan Crenson, Gregory Curry, Peggy Cyphers, Irina Danilova, Hans de Castellane, Johannes de Young, Tom Delaney, Matthew Deleget, Lisa DiLillo, Peter Dobill, Elinor Evelyn, Allison Edge, Robert Egert, Mark Esper, Peter Feigenbaum, Gail Flanery, Peter Fox, Linda Ganjian, Eric Heist, Hellbent, Kory Hellebust, Sean Hemmerle, Ed Herman, Amy Hill, Richard Humann, Ryan Humphrey, James Isherwood, David Kesting, Scott Kiernan, Fran Kornfeld, Jesse Lambert, Yuliya Lanina, Brian Larossa, Greg Lindquist, Nancy Lunsford, Stephen Maine, Stephen Mallon, Katerina Marcelja, Eliot Markell, Karen Marston, Rossana Martínez, Mark Masyga, Patrick May, Xanda McCagg, Anne Arden McDonald, Chris McGee, Loren Munk, Ruben Negron, Raul de Nieves, Rob de Oude, Russel Parish, Daniel Permanetter, Pufferela, Ross Racine, Ali Rex, Jason Reyen, Richter Ron, David Victor Rose, Todd Rosenbaum, Tom Rosenthal, Emily Roz, Kris Scheifele, Junko Shimizu, Philip Simmons, Gwendolyn Charlene Skaggs, Jeremy Slater, Patricia Smith, Allison Somers, Philip Stearns, Rodger Stephens, Miho Suzuki, Richard Timperio, Jeanne Tremel, Chris Twomey, Joanne Ungar, Kathleen Vance, Cibele Viere, Don Voisine, Robert Walden, Michael Waugh, Daniel Zeller and many more...

Galleries include:
440 Gallery, Art 101, C.C.C.P, Camel Arts, Causey Contemporary, de Castellane Gallery, Devotion, English Kills, Eyelevel BQE, Factory Fresh, Figureworks, Front Room Gallery, Grace Exhibition Space, Graphite, Hogar Collection, ISCP, Janet Kurnatowski, Kunsthalle Galapagos, Leo Kesting, Like the Space, Live with Animals, Microscope, Mighty Tanaka, Minus Space, MoCADA, Momenta Art, NUTUREarts, Open Source, Parker's Box, Pierogi, RHV Fine Art, Secret Project Robot, Set Gallery, Sideshow, Skink Ink Editions, Sugar, Tabla Rasa, The Invisible Dog, Ventana244 and many more...

Benefit Committee:
Daniel Aycock, Tracy Causey-Jeffrey, Ethan Crenson, Nasa Hadizadeh, Randall Harris, Eric Heist, Erik Hokanson, Barry Hoggard, Mandy Kalajian, Jill McDermid, Ranjitsinh Mahida, Patrick May, Stephen Mallon, Karen Marston, Loren Munk, David Gibson, Marisa Sage, Helen Toomer Labzda, Kathleen Vance, James Wagner, Jennifer Walty, Susie Watkins and Alun Williams

Admission ——to the benefit event at Causey Contemporary, April 12th——is $20 (for non-ticket holders); tickets for the artwork drawing are $175 till April 10th, after which they will be $225. Tickets are available on-site, during the advanced viewing and online at: wagmag.org

Thomas Broadbent's Exhibition has been Extended!!

2011-03-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Join us for one more weekend of Thomas Broadbent's exhibition of new works! Now on view through Sunday the 27th!

Thomas Broadbent: "Unwritten"

In this solo exhibition of works from his "Sketchbook Series" Thomas Broadbent selects principal concepts and ideas from his private artists' log and heightens his focus to get to the core of their complex meaning. His detailed watercolors and drawings question the utility of each compositional component and are presented in such a manner to disengage and re-present their perceived use.

Broadbent's new 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. The large scale watercolors he presents succinctly capture the illusive quality of sketchbook thoughts. His sensitivity to color, tactility, and structure propel these thoughts into reality, while maintaining a key tie to illusion and metaphor.

A Special Presentation by Steven Gagnon

2011-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

Armory Event (Focus on Williamsburg)
Saturday, March 5th 7-10pm
The Front Room Presents: "Border Cruiser" a special presentation by Steven Gagnon

The Front Room will feature Steven Gagnon’s first ever NYC presentation of “Border Cruiser” during Armory show week. The “Border Cruiser” projection vehicle will be stationed outside of our Williamsburg location March 5th between 7-10 pm.

Viewable evenings during March 2-5, “Border Cruiser” is a video installation inside a former police car. The story of a Brazilian immigrant’s illegal entry into the United States and the continued hardship he faces will be projected from the inside onto the rear windows of the vehicle. Catch a glimpse of the “Border Cruiser” rove the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan as it makes special appearances at various locations in conjunction with art fairs during the armory show week.

A New Exhibition of Works by Thomas Broadbent

2011-02-16T10:36:00.000-08:00

The Front Room Gallery Presents:

"Unwritten"

Thomas Broadbent

February 18-March 20

Opening Reception: Friday, February 18th from 7-9pm

In this solo exhibition of works from his “Sketchbook Series” Thomas Broadbent selects principal concepts and ideas from his private artists’ log and heightens his focus to get to the core of their complex meaning. His detailed watercolors and drawings question the utility of each compositional component and are presented in such a manner to disengage and re-present their perceived use.

Broadbent’s new 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. The large scale watercolors he presents succinctly capture the illusive quality of sketchbook thoughts. His sensitivity to color, tactility, and structure propel these thoughts into reality, while maintaining a key tie to illusion and metaphor.

Williamsburg Second Friday Event: "An Uncommon Thread" Reception

2011-02-09T16:03:00.000-08:00

Join us this Friday, February 11th from 7-9pm for Williamsburg's Second Friday Event. We will be hosting a reception for "An Uncommon Thread" featuring the works of: Caroline Burton
Nancy Cohen, Katherine Daniels, Mary Early, Susan Graham, Adelle Lutz, Leonora Loeb, Marsha Pels, curated by Emma Tapley and Paul Caranicas.

Front Room Gallery is proud to present “An Uncommon Thread,”
curated by Emma Tapley and Paul Caranicas, which explores the idea that there is a shared inherited consciousness in the practice of making art that arises from work that came before. Working within the realm of each artist’s expertise, this exhibition unravels the
underlying connection of subtlety, elegance, intelligence, and
lyricism that is seen in these artist's work. On view through February 13, 2011.

Stephen Mallon Featured in the Wall Street Journal

2011-02-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

A New York Bridge - Delivered

Over 30,000 still photographs are assembled into an animation chronicling the epic journey of the newly constructed Willis Avenue Bridge from its assembly point near Albany to its home on the Harlem River near 125th Street. Follow the progress of this massive structure as it is floated and dragged, pushed and pulled over one hundred miles of New York's historic waterways. Courtesy of Stephen Mallon.

-Wall Street Journal

Stephen Mallon: "Next Stop Atlantic" Opens Tonight at Calumet Photographic

2011-02-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

Stephen Mallon
"Next Stop Atlantic"

Opening Thursday, February 3rd from 6-9pm

Presented at:
Calumet Photographic
22 West 22nd St, 2nd Fl.
February 3rd-19th, 2011
Hours: Mon-Fri 8:30-5:30, Sat 9-5:30

Calumet Photographic and Front Room gallery present ‘Next Stop Atlantic’ a solo exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon, opening February 3rd from 6-9pm, continuing through February 19, 2011. Mallon's stunning series of photographs track the final passage of hundreds of decommissioned subways cars as they make their way to their last stop: The Atlantic Ocean.
In a bold move, the NYC Transit authority joined the artificial reef building program off the East Coast of the US in 2000 and sent stripped and decontaminated subway cars off on barges to be dropped into the Ocean in order to build refuge for many species of fish and crustaceans which would colonize the structures. Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of sunshine streams through their removed doors as they wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths of the ocean floor. Mallon's photographs elicit both the sadness and the beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time. Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC Transit's involvement in this program. The photographs that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the water.

Stephen Mallon in GQ Eye

2011-02-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

GQ Eye
"Trains to Nowhere" by Jacqueline Jesko

Ever wonder what happens to subway cars once they've kicked the bucket? Well, we can't speak for the dozens that have probably been sold for parts or reappropriated into Hoarder dwellings, but in 2000, hundreds were stripped by the MTA and used to construct an eco-friendly artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean. Assuming you don't have a deep-rooted fear of enclosed flooded spaces, check out Stephen Mallon's photos of the event over at Flavorwire.

GQ EYE

Stephen Mallon in flavorwire

2011-02-01T20:08:00.000-08:00

Photo Gallery: Where Subway Cars Go to Retire
by Caroline Stanley

Back in 2000, the NYC Transit Authority joined the artificial reef building program off the East Coast of the US and hundreds of stripped and decontaminated subway cars were sent via barge to be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean. Industrial photographer Stephen Mallon spent three years traveling from Delaware to South Carolin, documenting the entire process. In Next Stop Atlantic, his upcoming solo show at Calumet Photographic, the resulting large scale photographs anthropomorphize the massive metal hulls, making what should be a happy voyage (yay, repurposing!) feel like a strangely sad experience for the viewer.

Mallon agrees in his artist statement: “Seeing these massive mechanisms being tossed into the ocean like a toy in the bathtub is a ping in my heart. I have always been attached to these machines, their surreal beauty integrated into their functional engineering. At first I was stunned, the moments of violent recycling, watching the water quickly adapt to its new underwater houses. After being pushed and stacked like a sardine in these subways cars over the past decade, it is nice to see the sardine actually getting one of these as its new steel condo.”

flavorwire.com

'An Uncommon Thread' Featured in artnet

2011-01-25T15:53:00.000-08:00

We were pleased that Emily Nathan from Artnet Magazine joined us for the opening of "An Uncommon Thread." A very nice account of her visit to Brooklyn and the Front Room gallery. Compliments to the artists and the curators of this exhibition, which will be on view through the 6th of February.

Claudia Butz
Windows 1
2009
Figureworks Gallery

Mary Early
Untitled (Arch)
Front Room Gallery

Leonora Loeb
Outskirt
Front Room Gallery

Susan Graham
Beautiful Ohio
Front Room Gallery

Nancy Cohen
In Pulverum
Front Room Gallery

Adelle Lutz
Blonde
Front Room Gallery

Katherine Daniels
Pearl Bed
Front Room Gallery

Andrei Roiter
The Message
2010
Allan Nederpelt

Javier Pinon
Medusa
2009
Allan Nederpelt

Sarah Malakoff
Untitled Interior (Boat Bar)
2006
Allan Nederpelt

Xanda McCagg
Being
2010
Art101 Gallery

Xanda McCagg
Present
2010
Art101 Gallery

BROOKLYN LOCAL

by Emily Nathan

I’ll admit, it took an assignment -- "I’d like a report about exhibitions in another borough!" declared my editor -- to get me to galleries in Brooklyn. Shocking, I know, shameful even, but it’s the truth. Lucky for me, last weekend the Williamsburg and Greenpoint art scene was hopping, as it is most weekends, or so I gather. So out I went, despite frigid winds and nearly insurmountable snowdrifts, and found myself in good -- and good-looking -- company.

My first stop was Figureworks, a quaint, second-floor gallery that seems to occupy someone’s living room. The gallery was opening with "She Works Hard for the Money," an exhibition of paintings by the Swiss-born artist Claudia Butz, a graduate of the New York Academy of Art. Figureworks specializes in "fine art of the human form," and for this series, Butz painted Amsterdam prostitutes posing like mannequins behind shop-windows. Quiet and sorrowful, her women are rendered in a melancholy palette of deep blues, grays and tans; the canvases are sleepy but sexy, and her stroke is skillful.

To complement her show, the gallery has also hung in the room next door -- the den? -- paintings and drawings by several artists that engage with notions of sex and gender, not to mention the female body. Some are reminiscent of well-known greats, most notably Sigmar Polke and Fernando Botero.

Around the corner, on Roebling Street just south of Metropolitan Avenue, The Front Room -- where Parker Posey was among the visitors, who spilled out the graffitied gallery doors onto the sidewalk -- hosted "An Uncommon Thread," a show of eight artists organized by painters Emma Tapley and Paul Caranicas.

The art is, in a word, thrilling. Visceral and material, the works integrate the organic with the manufactured: mint-green plastics hammered into something like sea glass, glue woven like macramé into tiny 3D models, resins that simulate honeycomb, and flinty, charcoal clay are all used to represent not nature but human innovation -- shopping carts, apartment complexes, highways.

I grabbed a plastic cup of Pernod on the rocks -- ah, a cordial -- and made my way around the crowded room. Mary Early, a D.C. artist who is director of the Hemphill Gallery there, contributed a sculpture Untitled (Arch) built out of glue and beeswax. Arching like a gymnast from the floor to the wall, it appears solid and stable when viewed from the side, but from above reveals a labyrinth of interlocked chambers, reminiscent of honeycomb, that in fact constitute its core: the structure as a whole supports itself based on congeries of independent-yet-interdependent voids.

Against the opposite wall, Leonora Loeb’s Outskirt consists of a row of sea anemone-shaped objects displayed in a glass vitrine. Zoomorphic but artificial, each object is a clay base stuck with metal clips that extend out like attenuated tentacles. From one end of the row to the other, the clips fan out wider and wider, progressively opening up, as if blooming. The cumulative effect is something akin to that of a diorama which documents the evolution of a natural process.

Susan Graham’s Beautiful Ohio occupies a stretch of floor with an assembly of model vehicles, offering an aerial view of a weekend highway jam-up: cars, semis, cabs, trailers are all made of a delicate threading of white substance that reads like porcelain.

Fragile and dainty, the sculptures are made in a way that suggests folkloric traditions of artisanal craft. Graham’s subject is in fact neither romantic nor archaic, however, but rather the epitome of the modern condition: vehicles stuck in city traffic. The juxtaposition is a shock, and this seemingly paradoxical negotiation of the organic and the mechanical may be the "uncommon thread" that runs through the show.

Other noteworthy works include Caroline Burton’s mini-cityscape, whose individual structures are composed of a gallimaufry of mediums including rubber and hydrocal -- one of them is even topped with fur, like a rooftop garden -- and Nancy Cohen’s sculptures: a dolly and a shopping cart made from decaying wood and draped with oozing sheets of what appears to be green sea glass.

In a corner of the gallery, Adelle Lutz -- the designer, actor and former wife of David Byrne -- presents Blond, a chair the color of human skin that has been outfitted with long strands of wool and hair -- a personified manifestation of the meeting between human body and ergonomic fabrication.

Katherine Daniels, who has long specialized in beaded sculptures and paintings, here presents Pearl Bed. The work reads like an exhibition in the butterfly room of the Natural History Museum, with each insect elegantly impaled on a long pin stuck into the wall, mapping the evolution of the species. But Daniels’ display features molecular bunches of pearls instead of butterflies. They surge and sweep across the walls of the two connected galleries in bold loops that almost look like a swarm of bees, comprising a study not in lepidopterology but in human luxury.

Cold and lazy, but committed to my itinerary, I headed to Greenpoint. And good thing I did: ringing in at probably the most exciting of the evening’s events, Allan Nederpelt gallery -- a gargantuan loft space on Freeman Street -- was the victim of an attempted robbery, which took place during its opening for "Rules of Engagement," organized by sometime Artnet Magazine interviewer David Coggins.

No worries, though -- Martin Nederpelt, the gallery’s resident "long-legged Dutchman," saved the day, sensing a young attendee’s mounting agitation just seconds before watching him snatch a small, $1,200 Ridley Howard drawing from the wall and bolt out the door. After some drama, the painting was returned, no damage done -- though the would-be thief spent a night in jail.

Ironically, the exhibition revolves around the notion of "restraint," with the goal of displaying modest artworks in a vast, bare space so that viewers are encouraged to engage with the art slowly and thoughtfully. The eight artists in the show work in various mediums: Ridley Howard contributed a painting, for instance, while Sarah Malakoff is showing digital C-prints and Javier Pinon collages.

But the show’s real message is one of emptiness and alienation. Malakoff’s gaudy images of vacant wood-paneled interiors are not restrained, but they are definitely dysphoric. And in Andrei Roiter’s moody oil paintings, isolated objects -- a pile of bricks, a pup tent, a dilapidated roadside sign -- are clearly abandoned. Works range in price from $1,200 to $8,000.

As the clock struck eight, I hopped back on the subway train towards civilization and Art101, at 101 Grand Street in Williamsburg, to see a new exhibition of paintings by Xanda McCagg. Directed by Ellen Rand, the gallery is a tiny, window-filled space with white walls and clean, white floors. McCagg’s abstract oil paintings -- which feature glorious, sweeping swaths of pigment, a kaleidoscope of colors and varying textures -- are simply breathtaking. Small canvases start at around $350 and the larger works range from $2,400 to $8,000.

Claudia Butz and selected artists, "She Works Hard for the Money," Jan. 14-Mar. 7, 2011, at Figureworks, 168 North 6th Street, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y. 11211

"An Uncommon Thread," Jan. 14-Feb. 6, 2011, at Front Room Gallery, 147 Roebling Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11211

"Rules of Engagement," curated by David Coggins, Jan. 14-Feb. 13, 2011, at Allan Nederpelt, 60 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11222

Xanda McCagg, "Paintings," Jan. 14-Feb. 6, 2011, at Art101, 101 Grand Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11211

EMILY NATHAN is assistant editor at Artnet Magazine.

Stephen Mallon "Next Stop Atlantic" exhibition at Calumet Photographic

2011-01-24T18:14:00.000-08:00

Next Stop Atlantic
Solo Exhibition of Photographs by Stephen Mallon
Calumet Photographic
22 West 22nd Street, 2nd Floor
NY, NY

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3rd from 6-9pm.

Opening Thursday, February 3rd from 6-9pm,
Calumet Photographic will be hosting “Next
Stop Atlantic,” an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon.
In his second solo exhibition at the gallery Mallon presents
a stunning series of photographs, which capture
the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway cars to the
depths of the Atlantic Ocean. In a bold move, the NYC Transit
authority joined the artificial reef building program off the
East Coast of the US in 2000 and sent stripped and
decontaminated subway cars off on barges to be dropped
into the Ocean in order to build refuge for many species
of fish and crustaceans which would colonize the structures.

Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way
towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the
viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are
transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer
of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly
depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren
hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of
sunshine streams through their removed doors as they
wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths
of the ocean floor.

Mallon’s photographs elicit both the sadness and the
beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures
of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface
of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time.
Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following
this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC
Transit’s involvement in this program. The photographs
that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity
of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars
can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the
water.

These photographs are from Mallon’s
continuing series; “American Reclamation” which
chronicles and examines recycling processes in the U.S.
This series holds optimism in the innovation of salvaging
techniques, showing the possible gains that can be
made as industrial waste is revivified. In “Next Stop Atlantic”
Mallon determinedly tracks the final stage of the
lives of these, once indispensable modes of transit for
passengers on the New York subway lines, canonizing
them in New York history.

Last Day to See Allan Packer's Exhibition, "Gate."

2011-01-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of Allan Packer's show. If you haven't already seen this amazing exhibition of sculpture and paintings, featuring his room-sized kinetic installation, "Gate," please stop by!

"An Uncommon Thread" Opens Next Friday

2011-01-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

Join us Next Friday, from 7-9pm, during the Williamsburg 2nd Friday event for the opening of "An Uncommon Thread."

An Uncommon Thread

Curated by Emma Tapley and Paul Caranicas

With works by:
Caroline Burton
Nancy Cohen
Katherine Daniels
Mary Early
Susan Graham
Adelle Lutz
Leonora Loeb
Marsha Pels
January 14 – February 6, 2011
Reception: Friday, January 14, 2011, 7-9
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment

Front Room Gallery is pleased to present, “An Uncommon Thread” curated by Emma Tapley and Paul Caranicas, which explores the idea that there is a shared inherited consciousness in the practice of making art that arises from work that came before. Working within the realm of each artist’s expertise, this exhibition unravels the underlying connection of subtlety, elegance, intelligence, and lyricism that is seen in these artist’s work. Featuring works by: Caroline
Burton, Nancy Cohen, Katherine Daniels, Mary Early, Susan Graham, Adelle Lutz, Leonora
Loeb and Marsha Pels. On view through February 6, 2011.

Caroline Burton presents a selection of works from her series, “Drain Works” which are inspired
by her familiarity with the intricacies of design and engineering of wastewater systems. Burton organizes the unfamiliar through the use of the grid, which defines a structure that holds together seemingly tenuous relationships.

Nancy Cohen is interested in the juxtaposition of fragility and strength, evident in our personal lives and our broader environment. Cohen works in processes that share these dualities and allow for the merging of material and content, creating a balance amongst each incorporated element.

Katherine Daniel’s sculptural installations embrace abstract ornamentation, with beading and jewel-tone extravagance and an attentive eye to the detail. Her ‘opulent abstract gardens’ invoke spirit and paradise and draw the viewer into a delicate world of embellished design.

Mary Early utilizes forms selected for their use in repetition to create larger objects, which she fabricates in multiples, stacks, and secures to create a mass. Early’s sculptural works hint at naturally occurring forms, which appear seamless but when examined closely their origin is revealed.

Susan Graham uses sugar and porcelain to create delicate works that investigate the concepts of preciousness, fragility, and intense process. Graham’s sculptures and installations use repetitive acts or actions that are linked to particular psychological state, her choice of materials give the pieces a feeling of domesticity or sweetness, while the subjects are often uncomfortable.

Leonora Loeb weaves small found and manipulated elements together to create works, which contain components of a dialogue that begins to form when they are seen together. They are strong enough to suggest moments, memories, and spaces, but slightly out of the viewer’s grasp so as to never attain a narrative.

With her foundation in film and theater, Adelle Lutz creates pieces bridging sculpture, installation and performance. Using materials such as found furniture, clothing and pillowcases or, by drawing with human hair and razor wire, she subverts the mundane to explore the existential realities of war, protection, isolation and shared humanity.

Marsha Pels is known for sculptures, which include a range of labor-intensive objects, multi-media installations and outdoor site-specific pieces. “The Hitler Vitrines” are a series of six cast crystal objects in halogen-lit steel and glass vitrines. A seventh vitrine housed live eels swimming above human teeth.

Allan Packer's Solo Exhibition, "Gate" Opens This Friday, November 19th at 7pm

2010-11-16T17:01:00.001-08:00

Join us this Friday from 7-9pm for the opening reception of Allan Packer's solo exhibition, "Gate."

Allan Packer
“Gate”

November 19th—January 9th
Reception: Fri. Nov. 19th, 7-9

We are proud to present a solo exhibition of new works by Allan Packer which features an installation and series of sculptures and paintings inspired during the artists residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM. Studying astro-archeological sites on the canyon floor of the Rio-Grande provided Packer an entry into the mythological unknown of ancient civilizations. Referencing sites where the Puebloan and other Native American groups used petroglyph markings to note locations of importance, Packer adopted one of the most frequently used symbols: the spiral, which symbolized a portal to the spiritual dimension. The belief is that at these sites, the spiritually enlightened could transcend their physical form. This concept, and the symbolic significance of the spiral petroglyph was Packer’s point of departure into a new body of work that references time and matter and addresses our understanding of infinity.

In this exhibition Allan Packer presents “Portal” which directly references the markings of this lost culture, revivifying their beliefs into a contemporary perspective. With this piece, Packer animates a spiral petroglyph, in a kinetic sculpture that is both hypnotic and meditatively calming.

In a larger installation, entitled “Gate,” Packer references portal sites from the base of the Chaco Canyon, recreating the perceived/proposed experience of transcendence. Packer re-envisions landscape painting, through the incorporation of an endless canvas, with a rotating scroll of an infinite landscape of the New Mexico desert. Allan Packer captures the quality of light as popularized in South-Western style of painting and presents an experience of temporal and spatial expansion and compression. Static sculptural elements counter this kinetic component of the installation. Carved figures of an owl and snake allude to contemporary and ancient symbology of ‘the messenger” or “the protector.”

Join Us this Friday, October 15, from 7-9 for the Opening Reception of "My Territory is the One You Stole From Me" New Works by Patricia Smith

2010-10-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

MY TERRITORY IS THE ONE YOU STOLE FROM ME

Patricia Smith

October 15 - November 14, 2010
Opening: Friday, October 15, 7 - 9 PM

We are pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Patricia Smith entitled, My Territory Is The One You Stole From Me. In her persona as a cartographer of the psyche, Smith delves deep into the subconscious to return to the surface with a planar view of unedited impulses and allegiances, exposing unmitigated and raw internal motivations. Her delicate ink and watercolor paintings and drawings act as organic architectural plans developed from emotional inner-workings, these highly detailed works expose the confused density of the mind, clarifying the often incongruous and oppositional standpoints of decision making and alliances.

There is a dark humor to Smith’s work as she turn a critical eye to the self, the atmosphere she builds through layers of stippling and washes of color complements her decisive pen-work used in defining the walls of these imagined plot plans. With these new works, the artist characterizes the physical space within the mind, mapping ideas and thoughts, giving a logical designation on paper to the intangible. Smith takes a position of authority as she uncovers the absurdity that can be found in complex reasoning and emotions, listing and verifying their structural whereabouts with certainty.

In her “Structural Containment for Reactive Clandestinism” organic chambers and enclosures form this proposed system for containment and capture. Smith daringly exposes the relevant placement and wall density necessary to secure secret thoughts and issues from escape; in these schemes areas are labeled as holding fields for “Mitigated truth”, “Clouded issues” “Negotiated risk”, “Trust issues” and “Stored resentment”. Smith emboldens her standpoint of authority for the commission of these plans with marked plot plan numbers and stamps such as used to approve building plans, but in an act of misdirection, Smith alters the terms stamped to such statements as “‘recalcitrant’ or “no fame, no shame”.

This is Patricia Smith’s third solo exhibition at the Front Room gallery. She has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the United States. In October her work will be featured in “Zweierlei” at Ausstellungsraum Klingental in Basel, Switzerland.

"Next Stop Atlantic" Extended through October 10th, Join us for the closing reception, tonight Friday, October 8th from 7-9pm

2010-10-08T13:58:00.001-07:00

In his second solo exhibition at the gallery Mallon presents a stunning series of photographs, which capture the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway cars to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

In a bold move, the NYC Transit authority joined the artificial reef building program off the East Coast of the US in 2000 and sent stripped and decontaminated subway cars off on barges to be dropped into the Ocean in order to build refuge for many species of fish and crustaceans which would colonize the structures.

Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of sunshine streams through their removed doors as they wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths of the ocean floor.

Mallon's photographs elicit both the sadness and the beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time. Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC Transit's involvement in this program. The photographs that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the water.

These newly released photographs are from Mallon's continuing series; "American Reclamation" which chronicles and examines recycling processes in the U.S. This series holds optimism in the innovation of salvaging techniques, showing the possible gains that can be made as industrial waste is revivified. In "Next Stop Atlantic" Mallon determinedly tracks the final stage of the lives of these, once indispensable modes of transit for passengers on the New York subway lines, canonizing them in New York history.

Coming in September: Next Stop Atlantic, photographs by Stephen Mallon

2010-07-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Save the date: September 10, 2010 for the opening of "Next Stop Atlantic", a solo show of photographs by Stephen Mallon.

September 10th—October 3rd, 2010
Reception: Friday, September 10th, 7-9pm
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appt.

The Front Room gallery is proud to present “Next Stop
Atlantic,” an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon.
In his second solo exhibition at the gallery Mallon presents
a stunning series of photographs, which capture
the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway
cars to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

In a bold move, the NYC Transit authority joined the artificial
reef building program off the East Coast of the US
in 2000 and sent stripped and decontaminated subway
cars off on barges to be dropped into the Ocean in order
to build refuge for many species of fish and crustaceans
which would colonize the structures.

Mallon traces the progress of the train cars on their way
towards their last voyage, majestic waves approach the
viewer in these large scale photographs as they too are
transported out to sea to behold the lifting and transfer
of these massive machines. One photograph hauntingly
depicts elements of nature creeping into their barren
hulls, drifts of snow lines the walkways, a glimpse of
sunshine streams through their removed doors as they
wait in stacks to be carted off to sink to the dark depths
of the ocean floor.

Mallon’s photographs elicit both the sadness and the
beauty of cascading water overtaking these iconic figures
of New York transit as they sink beneath the surface
of the water; surges and sprays are caught in time.
Stephen Mallon dedicated the last three years to following
this endeavor, chronicling the last phase of NYC
Transit’s involvement in this program. The photographs
that are presented in this exhibition capture the grandiosity
of this effort; the weight of these 18-ton train cars
can be felt as they are ferried off and plunged into the
water.

These newly released photographs are from Mallon’s
continuing series; “American Reclamation” which
chronicles and examines recycling processes in the U.S.
This series holds optimism in the innovation of salvaging
techniques, showing the possible gains that can be
made as industrial waste is revivified. In “Next Stop Atlantic”
Mallon determinedly tracks the final stage of the
lives of these, once indispensable modes of transit for
passengers on the New York subway lines, canonizing
them in New York history.

Most recently, Mallon gained much acclaim with his
striking “Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549,”
a series of 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 in on January 15,
2009. The images Mallon produced during the two-week
effort by maritime contractor Weeks Marine have since
been exhibited in New York and featured in numerous
publications and media including: New York magazine,
Vanity Fair, NBC, CBS, Resource Magazine and Wired.
In the summer of 2010, “Brace for Impact: The Salvage
of Flight 1549” will be exhibited at the University of the
Arts in Philadelphia.

June 21st from 6-10pm join us for Make Music New York

2010-06-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 21st, from 6-10pm join us for an exhibition of sound curated by Jeremy Slater as part of Make Music New York

Featuring the artists:

6-6:20 - AOI

6:30-6:50 – Tangerine Engine

7-7:20 – Tom Swirly

7:30-7:50 - tū

8-8:20 – Joy Through Noise

8:30-8:50 – NYC Papermill

9-9:20 – Noise Floor Music

9:30-9:50 - Chris Burke and Tamara Yadao

Opening Reception of "The Shadows of Panspermia"

2010-04-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Join us this Friday from 7-9pm for the opening reception of "The Shadows of Panspermia" with new work by Gregory Curry and Lisa DiLillo.

The Shadows of Panspermia
with works by: Gregory Curry and Lisa DiLillo
April 16th—May 16th
Reception: Friday, April 16th, 7-9
Hours Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appt.

The Front room gallery is proud to present "Shadows of Panspermia," an exhibition featuring paintings by Gregory Curry and photographs by Lisa DiLillo. Both artists create dreamlike, ambiguous, landscapes. By avoiding easily recognizable elements of our environment these two artists give us new perspectives on our surroundings.

Gregory Curry states that the mission of his paintings is "to contemplate a post human environment inspired by and extrapolated from the various dynamic conditions now impacting on the human animal." The entities that populate his paintings seem imbued with pure energy on a primordial level, set against a background of contrasting complimentary colors. Yet Curry still utilizes familiar modes of representation such as rendering, perspective and classic spatial relationships in a way that draws the viewers into these uncanny realms.

Lisa DiLillo's images, in contrast, are actual photographs of elemental forms existing in nature. DiLillo focuses on environments in transition using common materials such as bubble gum, air freshener gels, glue, shampoo, Styrofoam, and glitter to create luminous, sparkling terrain. In DeLillo's photographs ordinary materials are imbued with transcendent qualities, building on such qualities of light as fugitive light trails, reflections, and translucence.

“Space of Mind, works on paper” Opens Friday, February 26th

2010-02-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

“Space of Mind, works on paper”
With works by: Thomas Broadbent, Emily Roz and Patricia Smith
February 26th-March 28th
Reception: Friday, February 26th, 7-9
Williamsburg Armory Event: Saturday, March 6th, 7-midnight
Hours: Friday-Sunday 1-6 and by appointment

We are pleased to present, “Space of Mind, works on paper” a three artist exhibition of the medium, including works by Thomas Broadbent, Emily Roz and Patricia Smith.

In this exhibition, Patricia Smith presents a series of drawings that re-create the physical space within the mind, mapping ideas and thoughts, giving a logical designation on paper to the intangible. Elusive concepts become concrete under the hand of Smith as she delicately lays out paths and constructions, marking these thoughts like territories. The language Patricia Smith uses clarifies desires and creates a foundation for imaginative thinking to flourish.

Emily Roz’s new works in this show captivate the viewer with images of core animalistic behaviors in feeding. Roz 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, with the propagation of plant-life.

Thomas Broadbent, known for his large-scale sculptural installations, presents new works on paper that explore existentialistic ideas through trompe l’oeil representations of seemingly unrelated objects and scenes. These works stride between illusion and metaphor to consider the physical reality of each piece and its representative elements. Broadbent’s detailed watercolors and drawings question the utility of each component when presented in such a manner to disengage and re-present their perceived use.

Join us for Tonight's 2nd Friday event in Williamsburg

2010-02-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

This Friday, February 12, 2010, Front Room gallery will be open late for Williamsburg's 2nd Friday event. Participating galleries in the WGA will open their doors late, for a fun festive evening of art viewing. If you have not yet gotten the chance to visit Sasha Bezzubov's exhibition, "Wildfire" this is the last weekend. So take advantage of the comparably warm weather and join us for a glass of wine or a frosty beer.

Final Weekend of Sasha Bezzubov's "Wildfire" Exhibition

2010-02-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

This coming weekend is the last weekend to view Sasha Bezzubov's "Wildfire" exhibition.
On view through this Sunday, February 14, 2010.

"Wildfire"
Photographs by Sasha Bezzubov
January 8th—February 14th
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment

Front Room Gallery is pleased to present Sasha Bezzubov's "Wildfire." This will be the first public exhibition of photographs from Bezzubov’s recent book by the same name, published by Nazraeli Press. In the “Wildfire” series Bezzubov focuses on the devastation wrought by wildfires on the American west, with dramatic large-scale landscapes containing charred, burned-out forests, houses and neighborhoods. In one image a spiral staircase rises skyward out of the wreckage, the last remnant of a once standing home. Other photographs in this series focus on the damage inflicted on nature, the pine forests, and whole mountainsides reduced to ashes.

These heartwrenchly beautiful landscapes draw us in and confront us with the uncomfortable notion that we might be somehow to blame. In the introduction to the book ”Wildfire,” writer Bill McKibben explains these distressing statistics: in the last 35 years the number of fires increased by a factor of four; the average fire went from lasting a week to lasting five; the total area burned increased by six and a half times; the average fire season increased by 78 days, or 64 percent. McKibben then goes on to express that these fires are an indicator of global climate change, caused in part by the earlier thaws of snow in the mountains and longer dry seasons. Within these series of photographs, the larger scope of our involvement with the natural world and our ability to protect and preserve against some of the more devastating effects of natural disasters is brought to question…are we to blame, and can we prevent the onslaught of wildfires, are just a few of the questions that arise from Bezzubov’s most recent series.

This is Sasha Bezzubov’s third exhibition at the Front Room Gallery, and a continuation of his ongoing series “Things Fall Apart,” landscape photographs of the aftermath of natural disasters. This series, which began in 2001, contains photographs of forest fires, earthquakes, tidal waves, and tornados, around the world. “Wildfire,” Bezzubov’s most recent presentation from this larger series, targets an intimate look at the catastrophic impact of these uncontrollable fires on many varied landscapes, from urban to wilderness.

Front Room gallery

Stephen Mallon featured in the London Sunday Times

2010-02-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

"They Walked on Water" by William Langewiesche

Fuse Works: Multiples and Editions

2009-11-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

Fuse Works: Multiples and Editions
curated by Amanda Alic and Ethan Crenson
December 4 - January 3rd
Opening Reception Friday, December 11th, 7-9
Hours Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appt.

Join us Friday, December 11th from 7-9 for the reception of Fuse Works: Multiples and Editions

Fuse Works grew out of the Front Room’s multiples and editions program which began in early 2007. Dedicated to presenting artists who approach the editioned work as a field of artistic discourse and inquiry rather than simple mass marketing, Fuse Works has assembled an extensive catalog of multiples and editions representing a diverse group of artists and a wide range of approaches. December’s exhibition will present all-new work by both veteran Fuse Works artists and newly discovered talents.

Fuse Works defines the term 'multiple' to denote a work of art that is produced in quantity. An artist may have these works mass-produced, but may also produce each piece him/herself so that there is some variation between examples. Usually a multiple is smaller and more affordable than unique artwork. An editioned work, on the other hand, is produced so that there is no variation between examples (i.e. a photographic print, lithograph, etc.) Books, objects, photographs, works on paper, video, audio and digital art are all included in this exhibition.

“Art is not money” Sean Landers wrote not long ago. Recent events involving credit default swaps and mortgage derivatives have begun to suggest that money is not money either. Artists have noticed, and some of the artists in this exhibition have responded by making currency the subject of their artwork as well as the vehicle for its exchange. Double A projects (Athena Robles and Anna Stein), for instance, have produced One World Currency--a global currency created in conjunction with the first Global Free Store (2009). The bills can be purchased from Fuse Works, or can be obtained by exchanging goods or services with either the gallery or the artist. Lotte Lindner & Till Steinbrenner have produced a screen print resembling paper money in an edition of 1000. The first print in the edition is offered at $1, the second at $2...the final bill in the edition $1000. In this it seems that the dispersal of the full edition resembles a simple but audacious ponzi scheme, but one that bears a resemblance to the standard pricing of editions by print galleries. John O. Smith has devised a similar scheme in the production of his book project Currency Exchange. Smith began by binding one dollar bills into handsome hardbound books in an edition of ten. Proceeds of the sale of Vol. I were rolled over to create the edition of Vol. II which consists of bound editions of two dollar bills. Vol. II will generate Vol. V and so on. The value of the project will continue to appreciate until all common denominations of US currency have been exchanged into artist book form. For this exhibition Fuse Works will offer Volume II at no mark-up thus preserving the conceptual integrity of the Currency Exchange project. Other artists who engage the almighty Dollar/Yen/Pound/Euro are Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano who have produced Dough-Yos, a limited edition yo-yo.

Another subject explored by artists in this exhibition is the concept of time. Though time seems more intangible than money, it has been mined and refined by Chiara Camoni. Her piece “10 days” offers time for sale. The time in question has lain unclaimed for centuries: 10 days excised from the Gregorian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII. With the help of a notary Camoni took possession of the 10 days and offers to bestow them on collectors. Celeste Fichter’s “Time Stamp” is a simple reminder of our changing relationship to time and it’s measurement. Fichter has produced a rubber ink stamp reading “time” and instructs the collector to stamp it on the wrist--the former location of many a wrist watch, since replaced by the ubiquitous cell phone. Andrew Eyman’s Shell Beach, an installation and multiple, reminds us that clocks and watches merely represent an abstract concept. The multiple offered here is a wristwatch in which the face and works have been replaced with colorful sand--evoking the utopian paradise of the title. Dominick DiPietrantonio’s has made clocks that dance stunning patterns across their faces, but they do not tell you the time.

Some of the artists in the exhibition create transactional artwork--work that requires the collector to interact with the artwork (or in some cases the artist) beyond simply purchasing it. James Leonard’s lenticular post card “Greetings from America” is one such case. Once purchased, the card is sent to the collector through regular post with a personal note from the artist. Chuck Jones offers a mash-up video of all of the Star Wars movies in packages of three. The purchaser is required to give 2 of the copies away to friends. Other pieces in the show are wearable, including work by Serge Onnen and Jan Obornik.

The exhibition also includes artists who have produced books (Luca Bertolo, Robert Flynt, Christian Brown), works on paper & photographs (Sara Sun, Patricia Smith, David Kramer, Ross Racine, Gregory Curry, Heidi Cody, Alison Unsworth), video (Matt Richards, Stephanie Koseff) and objects (Rebecca Loyche, Oscar Perez, George Spencer, John Marriott).

The Front Room Gallery is located at:
147 Roebling Street in Williamsburg Brooklyn.
718-782-2556

A printed Fuse Works catalog is available at the Front Room gallery (www.frontroom.org) and all works will be available for purchase on the Fuse Works web site ( www.fuse-works.com)

COME EARLY, STAY LATE this Saturday

2009-10-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

COME EARLY!!!
Join us to celebrate 10 years of the Front Room gallery from 7-9 featuring our 10th Anniversary exhibition with works by: Amanda Alic, Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Ethan Crenson, Eric Guzman, Sean Hemmerle, Stephen Mallon, Allan Packer, Melissa Pokorny, Emily Roz, Philip Simmons, Patricia Smith, Mark Stilwell,
Edie Winograde, up through November 22nd.

STAY LATE!!!
After 10:30pm the gallery will transform into party mode for our Annual Halloween Party. Costumes Required.
We will have some deliciously spooky beverages, but please bring along some additional drinks to add to the festivities.

10th Anniversary Exhibition

2009-10-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

Please join us October 31st from 7-9 to celebrate our 10th year Anniversary.

We are pleased to announce our 10th anniversary exhibition celebrating a decade of art, installation and performance at 147 Roebling Street. We are proud to have had the opportunity over the last ten years to work with so many talented artists, and in this show we are offering a glimpse of some of our favorites. Featuring works by: Amanda Alic, Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Ethan Crenson, Eric Guzman, Sean Hemmerle, Stephen Mallon, Allan Packer, Melissa Pokorny, Emily Roz, Philip Simmons, Patricia Smith, Mark Stilwell and Edie Winograde.

Amanda Alic's photography captures the construction of our personal and public character, domesticity, pleasure and discord. Her works range from "straight" photography to video processed images.

Sasha Bezzubov’s photographs the destruction caused by natural disasters as evidence of the fragility of the man-made, as it is transformed into dreamscapes of apocalyptic proportions.

Thomas Broadbent’s room-sized installations have included inflatable sewn sculptures, video, billboards, and ice sculpture. He addresses social and political issues with a humor that serves to expose inherent contradictions.

Ethan Crenson’s works are directed at the givens of contemporary culture. Social boundaries, language and commerce collide with odd, sometimes repulsive materials that speak their own language of discord and dissent.

Erik Guzman's sculptural aesthetic combines graphic icons, church architecture and components from Japanese patterns and temples to produce works which often incorporate dazzling light, polished aluminum and plexiglass and are activated by the presence of a viewer.

Sean Hemmerle’s most recent photo series, “The American Rust Belt,” shot along the banks of the Great Lakes, covers cities of importance in the American auto industry and gives us a melancholy look at the grandiose ruins of American exceptionalism.

Stephen Mallon's large-scale photographs in the series "Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549,” taken during the salvage of the fuselage and engine, impart a physicality and scale to these incomprehensible occurrences.

Allan Packer's extensive and impressive body of work examines elemental and cultural ideas. Packer relates his experiences and travels through large-scale sculptures that revive lesser known cultural ideas

Melissa Pokorny's “homemade cultural probes” are assemblages consisting of quirky casts, found objects, and synthetic building materials.

Emily Roz unleashes the fury and frustration of these uncertain times through images of wild animals, blatantly revealing their primordial aggression.

Philip Simmons merges contours of American imagery, defining new icons for this century. His elegant silhouetted forms revel in the machismo culture so particularly American with the glorification of the Wild West, gunfights between cowboys and Indians, soldiers, and ultimately war.

Patricia Smith makes use of Rococo-like ornamentation characterized by lightness and delicacy, and creates fantastical structures that resemble both microorganisms and planetary surfaces.

Mark Stilwell's works are relief painting / installations constructed from cardboard, paper mache, and various materials from 99 cent stores. Stilwell's installations take the form of invading armies of creatures amongst urban neighborhoods.

Edie Winograde has photographed reenactments of events in the history of Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion, presented in their original locales.

Stephen Mallon Artist Talk, this Sunday, October 4th at 4pm

2009-09-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

Please join us this Sunday at 4pm as we host an Artist talk with Stephen Mallon

"Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549"
Photographs by Stephen Mallon
September 10th-October 11th, 2009
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment

"On Jan. 15, 2009, a few Canadian geese with bad timing became snarge, a steely pilot became a hero, and the world became fascinated with images of a jet splashing into the Hudson River and then floating calmly as passengers crowded its wings.

But until now, few people have seen the equally surprising pictures of the second half of this story: when a salvage team used the biggest floating crane on the East Coast to pluck the ill-fated Airbus A320 from the frigid water.”

Front Room gallery

Matthew Shechmeister, “Wired Magazine”

Front Room Gallery is pleased to host Stephen Mallon's artist talk for "Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549.” It is very difficult to encapsulate the events that happened during and following the crash of flight 1549, but Stephen Mallon's large-scale photographs, taken during the salvage of the fuselage and engine, impart a physicality and scale to these incomprehensible occurrences. Mallon's photos present us with the aftermath of this disaster and remind us how it was averted despite nearly unbeatable odds through the mastery and bravery of the pilot and crew.

Allan Packer at Gardiner Art Gallery

2009-09-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

Allan Packer at Gardiner Art Gallery
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK
405-744-6016

October 12 - October 30

Reception 5 – 6pm, Artist’s Lecture 6 -7 pm, Thursday, October 8

Paintings, prints, sculpture + drawings of space, machines + myth from NASA, Cape Canaveral, Knossos, Crete, Lake Tahoe, CA. Cape Dorset, Nunuvit, and Taos NM.

Weaving between deep space exploration and Hollywood references of time travel Packer takes us on a journey in the spiritual realm of the unknown.

Andrew Siff Interview on WNBC

2009-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

"Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549" Opening Reception Saturday, September 12th from 7-9 pm

2009-09-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

"Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549"
Photographs by Stephen Mallon
September 10th-October 11th, 2009
Reception Sat. Sept 12th, 7-10
Viewing hours: Fri-Sun 1-6 and by appointment

Join us this Saturday from 7-10pm for the Opening reception of "Brace For Impact: the aftermath of flight 1549", photographs by Stephen Mallon

It is very difficult to encapsulate the events that happened during and following the crash of flight 1549, but Stephen Mallon's large-scale photographs, taken during the salvage of the fuselage and engine, impart a physicality and scale to these incomprehensible occurrences. Mallon's photos present us with the aftermath of this disaster and remind us how it was averted despite nearly unbeatable odds through the mastery and bravery of the pilot and crew.

Never before has a commercial aircraft crashed in the Hudson with the complete survival of all passengers and crew. They were rescued by the Circle Line sightseeing cruise ferry (along with other rescuers) almost instantly. Men, women and children waited their turns patiently standing on the wings of the plane, half-submerged in the icy water on what felt like the coldest day of the year. This feat is a testament to the bravery of the crew and passengers.

As the fuselage and engine of the aircraft were later brought up intact by a gigantic crane and a team of divers in heated wetsuits, Stephen Mallon captured the moment standing on the deck of the crane-barge. In Mallon's uncanny photographs the plane sometimes appears to be a metaphorical wounded animal, like a whale lifted completely out of the water. It is damaged, beat up and missing one of its engines, but it nevertheless survives. The divers, in their heated wetsuits with huge face-gear, seem like astronauts floating through an icy void in space. And, we finally get a glimpse of the famous engine—disabled by some unfortunate Canadian geese—in a stunning pseudo-portrait by Stephen Mallon as it is lifted from some eighty feet of icy water.

Message From Copenhagen

2009-09-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

Philip Simmons and his collaborative artist team with Katja Jakobsen and Hartmut Stockter send an update from Copenhagen where they are presenting an ambitious outdoor installation as part of Kurs: the Harbour.

Here is an image of the exterior of the pilot house in its location.

Image of interior of Pilot house, with map by Philip
Simmons

Another image of the interior with ship-in-bottles by Philip and Hartmut. (Philip's is the green one with a model of their previous project "Gowanus Haven")

KURS: The Harbour

2009-09-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

This September 5th-November 29th, Philip Simmons will be presenting work with the collaborative team Katja Jakobsen, Hartmut Stockter and himself in Copenhagen, Denmark.

As part of the KURS: The Harbour, organized by KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces, this group will be creating a collaborative art installation next to a harbor in Køge, Denmark. They will be creating a a full-size pilot house, such as one would typically see on a fishing boat. Inside the pilot each artist in this team will be creating individual art pieces which, working together, will create a unified experience of being at a point of coming and going, between the desire to travel and to return home. The pilot house will be installed on the end of the jetty which forms the entrance and exit to Køge Harbor.

Emily Roz in Joy Quarterly

2009-09-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

Issue 4 of Joy Quarterly features an interview and a six page spread profiling the work of Emily Roz by writer and performer, Richard Toth.

Sasha Bezzubov's "Wildfire"

2009-07-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Sasha on his book "Wildfire" published by Nazraeli Press.
Visit: Nazraeli Press

In the American west during the last 35 years, the number of fires increased by a factor of four; the average fire went from lasting one week to lasting five; the total area burned increased by six-and-a-half times; and the average fire season increased by 78 days. All of which is to say, as Bill McKibben points out in his introduction to Wildfire, we really shouldn’t be calling them wildfires any more. Sasha Bezzubov has gained wide recognition for his photographs of natural disasters in his ongoing project “Things Fall Apart.” Wildfire, the artist’s first monograph, is comprised of 32 large-scale photographs of the aftermath of forest fires in California. Using the genre of landscape photography, a tradition born with, and used to celebrate, industrial expansion, these photographs evidence the fragility of the man-made as it is transformed into dreamscapes of apocalyptic proportions. “The cycle of destruction and regeneration, of death and birth, is a reality that is not subject to human contravection. Despite the muted palette, these pictures present stunning vistas of natural wreckage that mirror man-made war zones. The vastness of the devastation is at once appalling and breathtaking.” — Mary Hrbacek, New York Art World

September Show

2009-07-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

Save the date! Opening reception: September 12th, 7-10PM. Photographs of the salvage of US Airways Flight 1549 by Stephen Mallon. Sept. 10th- Oct 11th.

Summer's here!!

2009-07-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

Keep up with the Brooklyn art scene this summer and check out the July/August Wagmag- your guide to exhibitions, openings and events: WAGMAG

Within the Menagerie

2009-06-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

"Within the Menagerie" is an exhibition featuring sculptures by Melissa Pokorny and an installation by Julia Whitney Barnes. Runs through June 21st.

Visit Front Room's website for full Press Release: FRONT ROOM gallery