Join Us For a Closing Brunch with the Artists, Sunday May 5th

 

"A Fine Line" Exhibition Extended Through May 5th

Rob de Oude

Rodger Stevens

Rosa Valado

                                                                                                                          
Closing Brunch: Sunday May 5th 3pm


"A Fine Line" features works by Rob de Oude, Rodger Stevens and Rosa Valado. This exhibition explores the concept of layering and repetition as a means of achieving a unified whole while exploring the sum of its parts. Simple elements weave together to create tapestries of grand design, with limitless functions available to each individual part. Through repetition and meticulous placement, base materials like copper wire and masking tape take on a greater form, creating visual stability while inviting close visual scrutiny. Crisscrossing lines, concentric circles, and repeating forms become their own miniature works, elemental to the final form yet definitive in their own right.


Each of the artists in the exhibition use the texture of overlapping linear forms to create a much larger whole. Rob de Oude makes straight lines bend using a complicated and overlapping grid, while Rodger Stevens bent linear sculptural works bring two dimensional linear forms to life in his overwhelming room-sized installation, and Rosa Valado’s architectural table-top configuration confounds and astounds with small, yet massive-seeming wire and metal forms. 

 

 

Ross Racine Featured in "X-Scapes" at Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Ross Racine is featured in "X-scapes" curated by Katie Murdock at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, opening Friday, April 26th.  The exhibition will be on view through June 30th

Ross Racine, "The Oaks"

X-scapes (Studio X) is a group exhibition featuring the work of four artists, Stephanie Beck, Christine Gedeon, Danielle Tegeder, and , who investigate city plans through their artwork by creating fictional landscapes or cityscapes. These artists alter our perspective of community organization and challenge us to reconsider the logic of our landscape. Curated by Katie Murdock, the exhibition features abstract paintings, compositions and complex digital imagery.

Second Friday Performances: Noveller, Seyhan Musa, and Jeremy Slater!

Join us Friday, April 12th for Williamsburg's 2nd Friday Event at the Front Room. We will be presenting performances by: Noveller, Seyhan Musa and Jeremy Slater, in conjunction with our current exhibition: "A Fine Line" (Rob de Oude, Rodger Stevens and Rosa Valado.)

Noveller is the solo electric guitar project of Brooklyn-based composer and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Handling the guitar as her muse, Lipstate summons a sonic palette so rich as to challenge the listener to conceive of how it’s housed in a s...ingle instrument manipulated by a solitary performer. Her one-woman guitar soundscapes have captured the attention of NPR, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, and The Wall Street Journal. Lipstate has collaborated with several renowned musicians, including live improvised duo performances with Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, The Geraldine Fibbers), David Wm. Sims (the Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid), and Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth). She has previously performed as a member of Cold Cave, Parts & Labor, and One Umbrella. Lipstate has also participated in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, Ben Frost’s “Music for 6 Guitars” Ensemble, and Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble. http://www.sarahlipstate.com/

Seyhan Musaoglu is a multi-media artist whose work spans the fields of live performance, sound art, film and video, and 2-D media. Drawing inspiration from diverse sources ranging from science fiction imagery, to fashion, to modern dance choreography, her work investigates the gap between sound production and music composition, contemporary feminist theory, and the history of avant-garde filmmaking. She has been performing widely with collaborations celebrated internationally in genres of sound and experimental noise. She is also an innovative independent curator, and is the founder of the sound, new media&peformance festival {SØNiK}Fest. Seyhan holds an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design. Some of the venues her work has been presented at are: The Kitchen (NYC), New York Studio Gallery (NYC), Lit Lounge (NYC), Curta 8 Film Festival (Brazil), and Istanbul's famed venue, Babylon. To see some of her work:http://www.seyhanmusaoglu.com/

Jeremy D. Slater is a sound artist essentially, but also works with video and sound in performance and installation settings. Performances include sound and live performed video that is ambient and sometimes reactive. Video work also includes single and multiple channel videos for screening and installations with sound and ephemeral sculpture. Jeremy was one of the 1999 recipients of the Computer Art Fellowship from New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) and has attended the Experimental Television Residency was artist in residence at Seoul Art Space in Geumcheon in Seoul, South Korea. He has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally. http://www.jeremyslater.net/ http://www.parenthesismusic.com/


A FINE LINE CURRENTLY ON VIEW:


The Front Room is proud to present new works by Rob de Oude, Rodger Stevens and Rosa Valado. This exhibition explores the concept of layering and repetition as a means of achieving a unified whole while exploring the sum of its parts. Simple elements weave together to create tapestries of grand design, with limitless functions available to each individual part. Through repetition and meticulous placement, base materials like copper wire and masking tape take on a greater form, creating visual stability while inviting close visual scrutiny. Crisscrossing lines, concentric circles, and repeating forms become their own miniature works, elemental to the final form yet definitive in their own right.

Each of the artists in the exhibition use the texture of overlapping linear forms to create a much larger whole. Rob de Oude makes straight lines bend using a complicated and overlapping grid, while Rodger Stevens bent linear sculptural works bring two dimensional linear forms to life in his overwhelming room-sized installation, and Rosa Valado’s architectural table-top configuration confounds and astounds with small, yet massive-seeming wire and metal forms.

Rob de Oude’s paintings and drawings are composed of multitudes of meticulously placed and repeated lines to reveal geometric shapes and patterns. The repeated use of a single line displays the infinite possibilities of simple units towards seeking an orchestrated balance in a larger scheme. De Oude’s rigorous painting process consists of layering and weaving matrices of straight lines until, between the contrasting colors and crisscrossing patterns, grids begin to bow and warp.

In this exhibition Rodger Stevens’ installation of his linear sculptures create a space of inhabited entities, sometimes recognizable, often not, of shape and form—homages to often under appreciated things around him, they are like Egyptian hieroglyphs of our current times. Inside the space of his installation one feels absorbed and confronted, overwhelmed, by not only the objects around oneself but also by the shadows on the wall within this dense forest of sinewy metal.

Rosa Valado’s sculptures are inspired by sacred geometry, physics, and nature. Using a range of metallic light-reflecting materials, Rosa has been creating architectural forms that interact with the viewer, often containing an interior space that one can enter. Rosa, normally known for her massive public sculptures, is working on a smaller “table-top” ratio for this exhibition allowing the viewer to draw oneself inside the architectural installation, like a plan for an unworldly world’s fair unrealized.

"A Fine Line" Exhibition Opens This Friday

Please join us this Friday from 7-9pm for the opening reception of "A Fine Line" with the artists Rob de Oude, Rodger Stevens and Rosa Valado. 

The Front Room is proud to present new works by Rob de Oude, Rodger Stevens and Rosa Valado. This exhibition explores the concept of layering and repetition as a means of achieving a unified whole while exploring the sum of its parts. Simple elements weave together to create tapestries of grand design, with limitless functions available to each individual part. Through repetition and meticulous placement, base materials like copper wire and masking tape take on a greater form, creating visual stability while inviting close visual scrutiny. Crisscrossing lines, concentric circles, and repeating forms become their own miniature works, elemental to the final form yet definitive in their own right. 




Each of the artists in the exhibition use the texture of overlapping linear forms to create a much larger whole. Rob de Oude makes straight lines bend using a complicated and overlapping grid, while Rodger Stevens bent linear sculptural works bring two dimensional linear forms to life in his overwhelming room-sized installation, and Rosa Valado’s architectural table-top configuration confounds and astounds with small, yet massive-seeming wire and metal forms. 

Rob de Oude’s paintings and drawings are composed of multitudes of meticulously placed and repeated lines to reveal geometric shapes and patterns. The repeated use of a single line displays the infinite possibilities of simple units towards seeking an orchestrated balance in a grand design. De Oude’s rigorous and meticulous painting process, layering and weaving matrices of straight lines until, between the contrasting colors and crisscrossing patterns, grids begin to bow and warp.

In this exhibition Rodger Stevens’ installation of his linear sculptures create is a space inhabited entities, sometimes recognizable, often not, of shape and form—homages to often under appreciated things around him they are like Egyptian hieroglyphs of our current times. Inside the space of his installation one feels absorbed and confronted, overwhelmed, by not only the objects around oneself but also by the shadows on the wall within this dense forest of sinewy metal. 

Rosa Valado’s sculptures are inspired by sacred geometry, physics, and nature. Using a range of metallic light-reflecting materials, Rosa has been creating architectural forms that interact with the viewer, often containing an interior space that one can enter. Rosa is known for massive public sculptures that envelope the viewers. In this exhibition the smaller table-top ratio draws oneself inside the architectural installation, like a plan for an unworldly world’s fair unrealized. 

Sean Hemmerle: Rust Belt Closing Reception

This Sunday, March 24th from 3-5pm

Sean Hemmerle: 

"Artist Guac"Artist Talk 


Please join us for a closing reception/brunch for the “Rust Belt” exhibition with the artist Sean Hemmerle.
We will have food and drinks and Sean will be making his famous Guacamole for his “Artist’s Guac” Artist Talk

Sean Hemmerle "Rust Belt" Exhibition Opens Next Friday

The Front Room Presents:  Sean Hemmerle "Rust Belt" February 15-March 10, 2013 Opening Reception Friday, February, 15th 7-9pm Fri-Sun 1-6 & by appointment In Sean Hemmerle's poignant photographs of theaters, banks, factories, and abandoned houses in the "Rust Belt" the architecture is metaphoric of societal issues that have evolved over decades. Hemmerle's stunning photos create a visual language in textures of flaking paint, broken windows and decayed reflections in pools of frozen industrial interiors- that instills in us a feeling of loneliness and longing for these neighborhoods that have been all but forgotten. The Industrial Center of the United States once stretched from Chicago to New York City. Linked first by waterways, then rail, and finally by road, built by the likes of Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Ford, affluence blossomed in cities like Gary, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Albany with the advent of steel, rail, oil and associated industries. Manufacturing in the United States continued to outpace the rest of the world for almost 100 years, eliciting phrases like "American Exceptionalism" to mark this period of unprecedented growth and prosperity. When manufacturing slipped away from these cities the area began to die the death of 1000 cuts, and in 1976 Walter Mondale renamed the acres of darkened factories and streets stretching from Chicago to New York as "The Rust Belt". As the automobile industry declined, acres of downtown Detroit reverted to prairie. As steel production shifted to Asia, workers abandoned Braddock, and Gary. Citizens of Troy, New York know of the final resting place of Uncle Sam in the local cemetery and the shuttered houses that border it. Sean Hemmerle's photographs explore the architectural icons of American independence as they become repurposed into a new post-manufacturing era. Hemmerle's haunting images of these once bustling towns and city-centers explore the transformation into decay, as proud structures are reclaimed back into the land. Once glorious architectural elements have been absorbed into a contemporary post modernism, and long-standing hold-outs struggle to preserve at least an aesthetic of community. This is Sean's fourth solo show at the Front Room Gallery. His work has recently been shown at Paris Photo and in Bonn at Feroz Gallery. He will be presenting His Rust Belt work at the New York Public Library in May. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The International Center of Photography, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

“Territorial Re-Marks” Opens January 11, 2013

Montreal/Brooklyn Exchange with articule gallery

Opening reception : January 11th, 7-9pm

 Exhibition in Brooklyn : January 11 – February 3, 2013 

The exhibition “Territorial Re-Marks” will feature works by Front Room artists Emily Roz and Patricia Smith in conjunction with Articule artists Jérôme Havre, Michelle Lacombe.



As part of the project Montréal-Brooklyn organized in collaboration with : Parker’s Box, Momenta Art, Pierogi, Smack Mellon, Front Room Gallery, A.I.R Gallery, Causey Contemporary, Residency Unlimited & Interstate Projects, Centre CLARK, articule, Optica, Les Territoires, Galerie [SAS], Galerie de l’UQAM, MACM, Galerie Division.



The first major artistic and cultural exchange between Montreal and New York City in over 10 years, Montreal – Brooklyn will reveal cultural similarities and differences between two major cities and beacons of North American contemporary art, via a series of exhibitions in galleries and museums in both cities.



For this exchange, artist-run center articule and The Front Room Gallery collaborate to organize an exhibition that will be presented in both Montréal in and Brooklyn. This exchange was developed as an occasion for both organizations to explore and share each other’s concepts about art, artists, the working styles and cultural variances between the two cities. The concept of the exhibition, “Territorial Re-Marks” grew from this exchange and became the focus for the curation of representative artists and artworks from Brooklyn and Montréal. Artists were selected whose work deals with the idea of territory: territory of the mind, territory of the body, territory of societies, territory of wilderness. By presenting a range of working styles from performance to painting, drawing and sculpture, each artist explores the complexities of desire, social organization, hierarchy, and mark-making relative to the various forms of territories. 

Patricia Smith

In Plot Plans for an Ideal City, Patricia Smith proposes un-realistic plans for city developments that will never be realized. Drawing delicate psychological maps, she uses the movement of desire to prescribe domains, territories and unattainable plot plans. Patricia Smith's map-like drawings reflect how inner architecture can constrain our action in society. 

Emily Roz

Emily Roz paints territories in which wilderness and domestic domains intertwine. Wild animals act ferociously – feeding upon each other, fighting, and roaring – in luxurious domestic flora. Their instincts of survival and territorial control can be viewed as human actions in relation to the space they share, competing against each other to control the land, to feed, and propagate.

With, Where we touched; A drawing of places to meet authors, Michelle Lacombe explores the encounter between author and reader and the way one contributes to shaping the mind of the other. In a performative action, Michelle Lacombe will translate onto a wall, marks she made to emphasize important passages while she was reading. By reenacting the action of underlining, she will be tracing a horizon of the mind.

Jerome Havre

Jérôme Havre presents an installation entitled, "Objet de travail (Object of Work)"  Havre questions the purpose and utility of his chosen initial object: a wooden paddle, reworking the surface with random sewing to create a topographical relief.  The surface of the newly envisioned object presents a territory of outgrowth that draws a fictional landscape.  In the modification of original object, its created purpose is transformed into a new utility of Havres' creation.

In the exhibition, “Territorial Re-Marks,” each artist examines the conditions of control over territory. Havre’s sculptural installation considers the materiality of desire as illustrated through opulent objects – and how this desire for control can taint the reality of actions. Roz’s paintings reference our own underlying desires, and the impulses of survival that can fuel wild actions, even in the calmest of people. Dominion over these base impulses drives an internalization of territorial control. Lacombe’s visually striking wall installation expands the internal relationship inherent in reading and writing and exposes the insulated realm between the two. Smith transforms the internal and private realms of desire into publicly displayed architectural plans. Both Lacombe and Smith cross the boundaries between the hidden internal thoughts and methodologies expanding the territory of the mind to that of the physical world.