ArtBUZZ: June 24-June 30, 2010

 

 

Opening Reception: Friday, June 25, 6-8pm

 

What is the allure and fascination of the Polaroid? Beyond the sheer magic of seeing an image appear from nothingness; the prints could be remarkably rich, vibrant and resolute, rivaling and sometimes surpassing the finest silver or color prints. The Polaroid print was a living object; you shook it in the air or held it in the warmth of your armpit to accelerate development. With the sharing of the image and the subsequent marvel, taking a picture became an interactive experience.

 

Photographers have used Polaroids for myriad reasons; sometimes to make certain in the here and now that “they got the shot”- to achieve a simulation of real life. Chuck Close has used the vivid large format 20×24” Polaroids as both objects of documentation and as studies for his larger paint canvases. Other artists have shot with Polaroids for the opposite purpose; to achieve something unknown or unfamiliar. How might a Polaroid reinterpret and change reality? Ellen Carey takes this exploration to it’s rawest level, unconcerned with camera image. Carey uses the color dye pods as starting points for abstract smears, always unexpected, but definitively recognizable as a Polaroid.

 

Lately, a resurgence of young photographers have been revisiting the wonders and quirkiness of Polaroid film. Using expired Spectra film, and a new film manufactured in a former bankrupt Polaroid plant in Belgium; this generation has created a novel vernacular language in instant photography. Blog sites of Polaroid art permeate the internet. With a new generation of advocates, the continuation of Polaroid art seems assured.

 

The artists selected for this show include: Lynka Adams, Michael Anton, Jimmy Baynes, Todd Boebel, Ellen Carey, Brendan Carroll, Chuck Close, William Coupon, Melanie Einzig, Andrew Garn, Stan Gregory, Jack Johnston, Till Krautkraemer, Eric Kroll, Richard McCabe, Barbara Mensch, Ber Murphy, Nagatani/ Tracey, Bill Ray, David Stock, Molly Surno, Jennifer Trausch, Robert Vizzini, Robert Warhover and William Wegman. Text via photographer and curator Andrew Garn.

 

 

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 24, 6-10pm

 

If painting moves us, then Maurice Maréchal’s certainly fits the description.His paintings question, suggest, mislead our senses- yet clear the way, though tortuous, to our pulsions. At a time where everything is classified and categorized, it is difficult to label such works: crude and primitive, violent and abstract. Momo’s paintings, as he is known, ignore simple qualifications and genres. If one must find an answer to explain the facts, it is evidently to be found in the non-standard itinerary of this artist. With musical intervention by Michel Gondry, Becky Stark, and MC Paul Barman

 

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 26. 7-10pm

 

Brooklyn Workshop Gallery presents Midsummer, a two-person exhibition of paintings by Deborah Barlow and sculpture by Rina Peleg. This is the first major exhibit at the new gallery space in Carroll Gardens.

 

 

Opening Reception: Friday, June 25, 6-9pm

 

Guest curated by Jessica Duffett, the exhibition focuses on local painters and sculptors whose works are in unique dialogue with the language of geometric abstraction.

 

“Please Jump Around Here” incorporates a broad range of visual mantras. References include imagery from ancient art, indigenous textiles and painting, shaker visions, Hudson River school painting, abstract expressionism and minimalism. However disparate these influences, all of the works share an unusual commonality: an affinity towards ritual process and sublime experience. The title, derived from a painting by EJ Hauser, encapsulates this sensibility in its literal command to the viewer.

 

Aberrant yet devotional, this group of works reconstitutes imagery and content from an expansive visual history. Now, as part of the lexicon of contemporary abstraction, ecstatic iconography is translated in an alchemic way to the viewer. Please Jump Around Here is a conversation about practice and ritual, and eliciting viewer’s presence in their experience of the work.

 

Featured in Please Jump Around Here are works by Ariel Dill, Rico Gatson, Tamara Gonzales, EJ Hauser, Brooke Moyse, Ted O’Sullivan, Rebecca Potts, Nathlie Provosty, R&D, Christian Sampson and Mamie Tinkler.

 

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 26, 7-10pm

 

“I am fascinated by the idea of the natural environment,” writes Crystal Wagner, “but find more and more that I am being alienated from it.” Through intensely skillful drawing, printmaking, and collage, “Hybrid Jungle” reflects this ambivalence, transforming Famous Accountants into an immersive space that suggests an enchanted forest or an impenetrable bramble. Shunning archetypal earth tones for sour, lurid colors and deep oily blacks, the floral–insectoid forms in Ms.Wagner’s work are beautiful yet repellant, marvelous yet insidious. Nature becomes completely unnatural in the Hybrid Jungle, like a twisted idea of the Garden of Eden manufactured by a Chinese plastics factory. She continues, “I can’t help but to scrutinize the plastic plant, painted bright green, as a stand-in for something living, and the neon light or fluorescent streak for something beautiful.” Curated by Christopher Howard.