| Hosfelt
Gallery is pleased to present the inaugural exhibition in its new
Hell's
Kitchen, Manhattan venue.
The exhibition spaces are designed around concepts of spatial flow
and proli-
feration of daylight. A sixty-foot-long exhibition space links two
forty by forty-
foot galleries. Art will be lit by diffused skylight, yet all of
the galleries are
designed with the possibility of darkening them completely to accommodate
artworks utilizing technologies. Design is by award-winning San
Francisco
designer Louis Schump in association with the Manhattan architecture
firm
FXFowle. A permanent piece by digital artist Jim Campbell will be
installed on
the exterior of the building later this year.
The exhibition previews the work of artists who will have future
projects in
the gallery:
John Andrews creates color fields of extraordinary depth and
complexity. His
practice involves repeated applications of wax and within each layer,
a grid of
pigmented pinpricks. Randomness emerges from the structure in these
minimal
yet dynamic paintings.
Richard Barnes’ photographs present a continuing investigation
into the pre-
servation and display of objects. Recent work documenting natural
history
museums explores the way humans collect, classify, contextualize
and display
artifacts in an institutional setting -- and what that presentation
says about
cultural values.
Dutch artist, Nelleke
Beltjens, makes serene, minimal sculptures. In this series
of works in steel, Beltjens creates a dialogue between forms in
pairs. Despite
their medium, the works possess unexpected lightness and refinement.
Jim Campbell’s
background as filmmaker and MIT-trained engineer and mathe-
matician informs his ground-breaking installation and sculptural
work dealing
with information theory and human comprehension that has set the
standard
for new media art. Three large-scale light boxes present accumulated
high-
resolution images of multidimensional scenes that visually and conceptually
express the passage of time and energy of the crowd. Also exhibited
is a new
LED work exploring the amount of information the human mind requires
to
discern meaning.
Susan Marie Dopp
balances the application of boldly painted spaces on fields
of fine-spun mulberry paper. The results are crisp compositions
of patterned
events. Some works develop according to established or self-generated
sys-
tems, such as geometric spirals fanning out in a Fibonacci sequence
or ruled
lines germinating from ‘seeds’ set in a gridded plane.
Others beautifully
exploit the tension created when her paper buckles as pigment dries
on its
surface, making the work both objectively and subjectively transcend
the
two-dimensional.
Based in Los Angeles, Anoka Faruqee makes paintings that play with
percep-
tion of color, gesture, and reproduction. Faruqee exhibits a series
of diptychs,
in which there is an ‘original’ and a ‘duplicate.’
‘Originals’ are completed by a
simple act such as pours of paint or strokes from a large brush.
The ‘duplicate’
results from a complex process of blending colors and plotting points
to create
a faithful, human-made, pixilated reproduction of the initial gesture.
The work
raises questions about painting and originality at a time of overwhelming
technology.
Nicole Phungrasamee Fein's watercolor paintings begin with four
pencil points
marking a rectangle within which she lays down free-hand strokes
of color. The
first brushstroke is made with water tinted with a single pigment.
For the
second brushstroke, pigment is added to the previously tinted water.
The color
of each successive brushstroke represents the addition of another
color to the
water. Vibrant stripes of apparently unrelated color are conceived
through the
additive process.
Andrea Higgins
makes paintings that are magnifications of fabric swatches.
Moire, herringbone, houndstooth, plaid -- each fiber is represented
by layered
brushstrokes. Repetition of marks, like weaving of threads, creates
patterns
that are both minimal and dynamic. While the paintings appear to
be elegant
abstractions, they are in fact portraits. The textiles represent
the “look” of a
particular historical figure as well as the character of the person
portrayed by
representing their “taste” and the social position they
occupy or aspire to.
Australian Timothy
Horn’s sculpture is about ornament, desire and fetish.
Chandelier-scaled “jewels” of nickel-plated bronze and
lead crystal -- based
on 18th Century French designs – are enticingly vulgar. They
hint at intimacy,
social status, the meaning of public display of wealth. Likewise,
interpretations
of Thomas Chippendale’s designs in fleshy, amber-colored rubber,
unexpect-
edly and gaudily seduce.
The “cuteness” of the hand-made, quasi-industrial figures
that populate
Chinese-Canadian, Joyce Hsu’s work is strategic. Utilizing
a visual vocabulary
akin to Asian cartoon and toy industries, she creates a universe
that, while
charming at first, explores human vulnerability, desire for companionship
and
emotional dependence on consumerism.
Naomie Kremer’s
large-scale paintings are neither abstract nor representa-
tional, yet contains aspects of both genres. Broad, physical gestures
recall
abstract expressionism and action painting, but Kremer moves her
work
beyond those references with her ability to convey memory. Apparent
im-
provisation evolves into multi-layered representations of figures
and space.
Photographer and bookmaker, Michael
Light, explores landscape, ecology and
the concept of the sublime. Some Dry Space is an ongoing series
of large-
scale, black and white, aerial images of the desert southwest, including
Los
Angeles. 100 SUNS documents the American nuclear test program and
explores its cultural implications.
Within the universe of Crystal
Liu’s photographs and drawings exists a visual
vocabulary built of domestic objects and nature transformed. Scale
shifts,
simple things take on enormous import and viewers find themselves
open to
new realities. Everything is extraordinary and anything is possible.
Uruguayan Marco
Maggi’s needle-thin line drawings web across surfaces
of
aluminum foil and white paper. Inscriptions/encryptions in his lexicon
of "pre-
Columbian and post-Clintonian" abstraction suggest incomprehensible
alpha-
bets, genome mapping and satellite surveillance. Inscrutable works
made with
simple media defy notions of technological advancement. Maggi’s
art is a
meditation on communication for an impatient culture.
The work of Australian Dorothy
Napangardi conveys her sense of place
with points of paint. Every point is a marker and each marks a path.
The work transcends its formal elegance to communicate ideas of
travel,
tradition, cultural trade and spirituality. Within the paintings,
dots of
paint create a visual corollary to a cultural landscape. Outside
the picture
plane, where these paintings meet notions of ‘the contemporary,’
there
exists a rich variety of references and interpretations.
Gay Outlaw’s
work in photography and sculpture explores form through
structure, pattern and translation. Her process often begins with
a form
from one of her photographs. She distills the shape or pattern and
re-
works it in a variety of materials -- rubber, cardboard, vinyl,
wood, glass.
Each re-thinking leads to another. Every shift in scale, material
or dimen-
sion is made with such sensitivity and care that no matter how extreme
or unexpected, it seems logical, even inevitable.
Argentinian Liliana
Porter draws from her extensive collection of souvenirs,
toys, functional knickknacks and figurines in the creation of photographs
and video. Porter presents these characters, de-contextualized against
single-color grounds, in various scenarios that, with masterful
simplicity,
distill life to the elemental and expose political and cultural
dichotomies.
Californian Greg Rose
makes paintings that lie between anime and mini-
malism, traditional Chinese landscape painting and abstraction,
the
aesthetic and the tacky. Organic forms, architectural structure
and refer-
ences to cinematography commingle in color combinations pleasingly
shocking. Referencing Eastern art forms of garden design and ikebana,
Rose explores the desire to reconnect with nature through control
and
manipulation.
London-based Gideon
Rubin’s paintings focus on portraiture. By painting
an image on top of itself many times, the subjects are reduced to
simple
forms. Characteristics are recognizable, but defining qualities
are missing.
Figures are solid but smoothed-out, as if eroded by time.
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