Category: 2014

From Within the Flesh of the World

Adam Frelin and Rena Leinberger

Curated by Eileen Jeng October 25 – December 13, 2014

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 25, 6-9 pm

Radiator Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent photographs, sculptures, and videos by Adam Frelin and Rena Leinberger. By re-creating, displacing, and transforming seemingly familiar images, objects, sites, and actions, the artists construct distinctive narratives as well as explore the role of the mediums. With their formal qualities, these works subvert art historical conventions as well as cultural and societal expectations. The works conflate fact and fiction, past and present, and the natural and man- made environment. The title of the exhibition, From Within the Flesh of the World, is taken from Victor Burgin’s essay, “Monument and Melancholia” (2008).

nstalled on a diagonal in the back of the main gallery is Frelin’s outdoor sculpture Drifter, a tapered 14- foot long unsealed wood cylinder coated with layers of dirt at the bottom. Having first been situated in a cemetery, the sculpture – symbolic of a safety coffin’s cylinder from the 18th century – has absorbed its surrounding environment. It bridges the uncanny divide between the living and deceased as well as reality and fiction.

Kodamazothgolemnkiski consists of a series of close up photographs of anthropomorphic, totemic sculptures of blackened gum that Frelin scraped off the sidewalks of New York. At a distance, these objects resemble primitive prehistoric figures. The video Firefall is a re-creation of an epic event that took place in Yosemite National Park until the 1960s, where hot embers were shoveled over a cliff, resembling a vivid red waterfall.

Leinberger focuses on the intrigue of the spectacle in relation to constructed and demolished environments in her work. Her Zero Panorama series was inspired by an image she found while searching for historical explosions on the Internet – one of naval officers and one of the wives cutting into a cake to celebrate a nuclear testing site – which was deemed obscene by The Washington Post. Leinberger’s black and white photographs are of re-creations of iconic images, such as the historical explosions of Nagasaki and the Challenger, but in cake frosting. The artist explores the “seduction of the spectacle” of both of the explosion and frosting as well as the dichotomy between the rational and absurd.

In Utopias, Unmoored, Leinberger creates a series of photographs and videos of small-scale islands of urban settings constructed out of unstable and inexpensive materials – foam, colored paper, wood pieces – in the water. Leinberger obscures referential details of location. She examines the relationship between architecture, landscape, and societal interventions as well as failure theory in building materials.

About the Artists

Adam Frelin’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Las Cruces Museum of Fine Art; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Recent group shows have been held at Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; Columbus Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and part of a screening at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Frelin has published two photography books and has had several public artworks commissioned throughout the world. He received a BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Art at the SUNY University at Albany, and he lives in Troy, NY.

Rena Leinberger’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gallery 400 at University of Illinois at Chicago, and Evanston Art Center, and in a commissioned public project by NYC DOT’s Urban Art Program in Queens. Her work has been included in group shows internationally in Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. Recent group shows have been at the Queens Museum; Bronx Museum of the Arts; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; and Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz. Leinberger received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she lives and works in New York.

About the Curator

Eileen Jeng is an independent curator and writer and the archivist at Sperone Westwater in New York. Her recent projects include Suddenly, There: Discovery of the Find at Garis & Hahn in New York, Break/Step at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, and Facture at AIRPLANE in Brooklyn, among others. She was involved in various other exhibitions, including Out to See at the South Street Seaport and FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. She was a research assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned an MA in arts administration and policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in art history and advertising from Syracuse University.

ARTWORKS:

OPENING RECEPTION:

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Boundaries

September 12th – October 17th, 2014

Opening Reception: Friday, September 12th, 6-9pm

Gallery Hours:
Friday and Sunday, 1-6pm and by Appointment

Curated by Marina T. Schindler, Jamie Diamond, Julie Wolfe

Boundaries. Social interaction. Touch. Space. The show explores the guards that we put up as protection against things that may take advantage of our vulnerabilities. This plays out in the show literally through a physical dialogue between humans, the division of space between planes, and the contours that are created to contain and expose alternate shape.

Artist Jamie Diamond exposes body language in her video series Craigslist Strangers. Invited to come have their portrait taken, strangers were put together to mimic the roles of lovers or family. The subjects have agreed to pose for a still image, and do not know that the camera is shooting video. What is captured are hands moving awkwardly over shoulders, fingers tentatively interlacing, smiles fixed on unchanging expressions. The series explores the boundaries that we put up between us and the unknown. Even if we touch, the distance is present in that connection.

Julie Wolfe’s Contour Series explores the theme through thin lines which contour the dancers of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo images from the 1940’s, creating boundaries between the subjects and the outside world. Abstracted, these geometric shapes become icons of confinement that, in effect, limit our ability to share, touch and interact with one another.

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Practical Feminism

May 2nd, 2014 – June 6th, 2014

Open Fridays and Sundays 1-6 pm or by appointment

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, May 2nd, 6-9 PM

Artists: Maria Raquel Cochez, Michelle Hagewood, Megan Hildebrandt, Sara Holwerda, Lauren Howard, Sarah Kelly, Magnolia Laurie, Cynthia Mason, Ellen Mueller, Briana Phelps, Megan Piontkowski, Christine Sajecki

Curated by Eyesplice Collective Organized by Megan Piontkowski

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Many of us have had feminist theory classes in which we read and discussed fascinating ideas, but often found them inapplicable to everyday life. While theory is important and certainly has its place, I am most interested in the practical side of feminism. What do we say to street harassers? How do we respond to a family member or close friend who says something offhandedly sexist? How do we deal with the insidious undercurrent of sexism that pervades our lives? And maybe most difficult of all, how do we handle internalized sexism? Creating a new world order is not without its difficulties.

After thinking long and hard about these subjects, I have come to the conclusion that confrontation is the short answer. Being mindful of your personal safety, tell others that you do not agree with them, and explain why if possible. This is easier said than done, but it’s a good strategy to aspire to. I most often find the discomfort of confrontation to be preferable to the feeling of powerlessness. I would also add that pervasive insidious sexism discourages women from being confrontational, which is just another facet of the problem. We all need to look into ourselves and confront the sexism within. It’s more productive to ask ourselves “am I being sexist?” than to say, “I am not sexist” and leave our inner workings unquestioned and thus unchanged.

Eyesplice Collective is a group of artists working in similar veins in a variety of media. The artists are spread out across Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, West Virginia, Austin and Panama. The collective was founded in 2012 by Megan Hildebrandt who chose artists whose work she felt drawn to and with whom she had built friendships in educational institutions and artists residencies. All the artists in the group happen to be women… Or do they just “happen” to be women? When forming the group, Hildebrandt had just graduated from an MFA program made up almost entirely of men. Maybe she craved the camaraderie that women provide for each other, or perhaps she was just drawn to the work of female artists.

Practical Feminism is a collection of the work of these 12 female artists who show the ways individuals deal with feminism on a practical level. For example, Sara Holwerda inverts the idea of a lap dance in a video in which a chair, an object, stands in for a man. Megan Hildebrandt’s delicate cut paper work meditates on her child as both a part of herself as well as a separate individual. Maria Raquel Cochez’s photographs offer the viewer a difficult set of questions when confronted with her photographic diptych of self-portraits, which show her body with breast implants as well as after they were removed. Magnolia Laurie’s work explores metaphors of survival and persistence in the face of perpetual hurdles and backtracking, something every feminist can relate to. And finally, my own work uses semaphore flags to spell out things I wish I had said to men in response to street harassment.

But wait, you may ask, what does this work do to fix the problem of sexism? How does this art exhibition help the world? I would respond that it is definitely helping the artists who make it, and hopefully some of our viewers as well, and I think that in it self is important.

EXHIBITION:

FEMINIST TEA PARTY:

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“Submerged!”

Video+Sound Art Exhibition

March 21st-April 25th, 2014

Open Fridays and Sundays 12-6 pm or by appointment

OPENING PARTY: Friday, March 21, 6-9PM

Artists: Danielle de Picciotto and Alex Hacke Sam Marlow and Alon Cohen Nicole Antebi and Laura Ortman Kitzinger Gabor and Alex Hamadey Shir Lieberman, Jonathan Phelps and Fabio Fonda United VJs, Jim Ellis

Curated by Leo Kuelbs and Karl Erickson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“Submerged!” is a new seven-channel video+sound art exhibition based on three short stories by co-curator Leo Kuelbs, making its North American debut at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, NYC. Considered seven pieces of a whole, “Submerged!” brings artists from a variety of backgrounds together to react to the stories, minimizing narrative aspects while amplifying personal response. The result is a presentation of multi-faceted, dynamic perspectives creating a setting and an almost tangible realization of the subconscious. Eyewitness accounts of fictitious happenings, observed through the psyche of the protagonists are blown apart, the reconstituted fragments then put to sound in this series of collaborative works. Digital and hand-drawn animations mix with overlaid imagery and camera-based work to further envelope the viewer in the “Submerged!” experience.

Curators Karl Erickson and Leo Kuelbs have presented works all over the world including: “The Decelerator” and “A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images,” as well as numerous public and marketing art events including “Blueprints and Perspectives” (Dallas, 2013), “Codex Dynamic” (NYC, 2012) and “Divine Coalescence” for Dom Perignon (Berlin 2012). Concentrating on conceptual and new media art, Karl Erickson has been involved in the NYC art scene as an artist recently exhibiting at The Center for Strategic Art and Agriculture and Winter Shack, as a resident at LMCC’s Swing Space, and as the Executive Director of Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn.

Radiator Gallery, located in Long Island City, NYC, has continuously presented a cutting-edge program of conceptual and international works. With its ingenious integration of gallery and studio spaces, Radiator not only presents, butalso develops new artists and ideas for the international arts community. Innovative programming also moves beyond Radiator’s walls. International exchanges and off-site collaborations round out Radiator’s ambitious program.

Interesting Artist Notes:

*Contributing a soundtrack to “Submerged!” is Alex Hacke of Einsturzende Neubauten and other groups who is married to artist and author Danielle de Picciotto who also contributes to the show.

*Shir Lieberman is not only a talented animator, she also creates films for textile artist OLEK.

*Jim Ellis’ work has appeared in movies like Terrance Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”

*“Submerged!” artists come from Brazil, Germany, Hungary, The US, Israel, Italy and Native America, making it a truly international show.

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OFFLINE

February 7-March 15th, 2014

Opening reception: Opening February 7th, 6-9 pm

Curated by: Sarah G. Sharp

Participating Artists: Martha Clippinger, Molly Dilworth, Carolyn Lambert, Beth Letain, Stacie Johnson, Sarah G. Sharp, Parsley Steinweiss

In the 2012 ArtForum article “Whatever Happened to Digital Art?” Claire Bishop described what she sees as a lack of critical response within the artworld to the digital era: “Why do I have a sense that the appearance and content of contemporary art have been curiously unresponsive to the total upheaval in our labor and leisure inaugurated by the digital revolution? While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital?” OFFLINE proposes that part of this “invisible” response to the overwhelm of information, access, images and mutable identities that come with life lived on the internet and mediated through a screen, includes a re-envisioning and invocation of the very thing the digital era suggests we leave behind: the “real.” The show presents seven artists who respond to these contemporary “upheavals” by reframing the mundane, concrete material of their lived experience in light of contemporary metaphors like rhizomatic relationships, the recombinant, virtual reality and the network. Without nostalgically fetishizing the analog or relying on anti-technology rhetoric, these artists use familiar forms like abstract painting, sculpture, performance and photography to re-imagine our new everyday in concrete terms and provoke altered perceptual readings of our “offline” experiences. We are reminded that our concrete experiences and identities are both re-framed by and persist alongside our online “lives.”

Stacie Johnson’s tightly designed paintings play with our perceptions of illusionistic space. Smooth surfaces, precisely rendered shapes and hand-made gradients reference the hyper-real while subtle shifts between painted surface and the wall challenge our perception of space, flatness and illusion. In her Photo Objects Parsley Steinweiss also investigates perception, illusion and surface. By combining photographic reproductions of various textures with “real” materials Steinweiss’s images force us to flip between an easy recognition of familiar objects and the sense of the uncanny that surrounds digital production methods.

Literally taking from the everyday, Martha Clippinger invests found objects with new life as colorful installation elements. In each exhibition Clippinger’s familiar objects are carefully placed within the space and in relation to each other suggesting an infinite number of combinations of form and possible new meanings. Sarah G. Sharp’s recent collages re-combine found images of utopian communities from popular media sources, reinvigorating what was once mundane and disposable with a new “aura.”

The compositional energy in Beth Letain’s abstract paintings relies on subtle shifts between object, surface and edge. Letain references recent visual forms like scrolling screens, signal strength bars and the ever-present “glitch,” within a complex visual syntax that is deceptively casual. Molly Dilworth’s Archive presents us with collected and combined scraps left from other works; an index of unseen objects and labor.

Carolyn Lambert’s performative work relies on personally formed research methods and activities that disrupt flows of condoned behavior for the tenant or citizen. In Gutter the abstract concept of gleaning one’s own water is made concrete by connecting the body, architecture and what is at hand with the basic act of survival through provisional infrastructure.

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