2-UP LAUNCH PARTY FEBRUARY 20, 2010
Who: You, plus yours truly, surrounded by other artists and writers
What: Launch party for the inaugural edition of 2-UP, featuring the work of Monika Zarzeczna and Nathan Lee!
When: February 20, 2010, 5-7pm
Where: Printed Matter, 195 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10011.
Web: www.twoup.org
Who: You, plus yours truly, surrounded by other artists and writers
What: Launch party for the inaugural edition of 2-UP, featuring the work of Monika Zarzeczna and Nathan Lee!
When: February 20, 2010, 5-7pm
Where: Printed Matter, 195 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10011.
Web: www.twoup.org
ANNOUNCING 2-UP
I'm excited to be a member of 2-UP, a new collaborative art and writing project - I'll be working with the poet Cate Marvin (www.catemarvin.com) to create a two-sided poster collaboration that will appear in the summer of 2010.
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2-UP is a collaborative poster project. Comprised of 16 artists and writers, each month 2-UP pairs two of its members together to produce a double-sided newsprint poster, packaged in twos. The content of each poster is entirely a product of the participants 'up' each month. The complete series of 2-UP editions is available as a monthly mail subscription for $40.
If you choose to subscribe, each month for eight months you will receive the latest edition of 2-UP, which includes two copies of a double-sided poster in specially designed packaging. With two copies, you can display both sides of the poster simultaneously; we also encourage you to give away your second copy to a friend. Of course, you can subscribe at any time and receive the back issues you may have missed.
2-UP embodies a creative model for the collaborative production and distribution of art. Production of each poster is funded by monthly contributions from all sixteen participants. All proceeds from the sale of posters and subscriptions to the series are re-invested into 2-UP. With your subscription, not only do you receive a work of art each month, you also provide significant support to artists and the production of contemporary art for a very modest price. This support makes you part of the extended community of the project.
The goal of 2-UP is to make art that is affordable and obtainable; we are making low-cost multiples in large editions, guided by the idea that the value of art can exist independently of money and irrespective of rarity.
The contributors to 2-UP are an exciting array of emerging and mid-career new york based artists and writers who have been exhibited internationally, published widely, and much awarded. They are Monika Zarzeczna + Nathan Lee, Colleen Asper + Davina Semo, Zerek Kempf + Cathy Park Hong, Benjamin Dowell + Mores McWreath, Craig Kalpakjian + Glen Fogel, Benjamin Kress + Cate Marvin, Adam Shecter + Matthea Harvey, and Christian Hawkey + Joe Winter.
To subscribe, and to learn more about the project and its contributors, please visit www.twoup.org.
I'm excited to be a member of 2-UP, a new collaborative art and writing project - I'll be working with the poet Cate Marvin (www.catemarvin.com) to create a two-sided poster collaboration that will appear in the summer of 2010.
-----
2-UP is a collaborative poster project. Comprised of 16 artists and writers, each month 2-UP pairs two of its members together to produce a double-sided newsprint poster, packaged in twos. The content of each poster is entirely a product of the participants 'up' each month. The complete series of 2-UP editions is available as a monthly mail subscription for $40.
If you choose to subscribe, each month for eight months you will receive the latest edition of 2-UP, which includes two copies of a double-sided poster in specially designed packaging. With two copies, you can display both sides of the poster simultaneously; we also encourage you to give away your second copy to a friend. Of course, you can subscribe at any time and receive the back issues you may have missed.
2-UP embodies a creative model for the collaborative production and distribution of art. Production of each poster is funded by monthly contributions from all sixteen participants. All proceeds from the sale of posters and subscriptions to the series are re-invested into 2-UP. With your subscription, not only do you receive a work of art each month, you also provide significant support to artists and the production of contemporary art for a very modest price. This support makes you part of the extended community of the project.
The goal of 2-UP is to make art that is affordable and obtainable; we are making low-cost multiples in large editions, guided by the idea that the value of art can exist independently of money and irrespective of rarity.
The contributors to 2-UP are an exciting array of emerging and mid-career new york based artists and writers who have been exhibited internationally, published widely, and much awarded. They are Monika Zarzeczna + Nathan Lee, Colleen Asper + Davina Semo, Zerek Kempf + Cathy Park Hong, Benjamin Dowell + Mores McWreath, Craig Kalpakjian + Glen Fogel, Benjamin Kress + Cate Marvin, Adam Shecter + Matthea Harvey, and Christian Hawkey + Joe Winter.
To subscribe, and to learn more about the project and its contributors, please visit www.twoup.org.
ARTIST TALK AT THE COOPER UNION - SEPTEMBER 29, 2009
Part of the talk series "CU@Lunch with Cooper Union Alumni"
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Cooper Union Alumni Space
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PRESS RELEASE
Benjamin Kress is an artist working in media and processes that range from painting and drawing to sculpture and photography. His work frequently addresses themes of desire, corporality, presence and absence.
Kress received an MFA from Yale University in 2004. He has exhibited his artwork in the U.S. and abroad; has assisted the artists Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, and Anthony Goicolea; and has worked as a freelance sculptor, illustrator, and painter for commercial clients such as MTV and Hornet Inc.
Kress will present his artwork, talk about his post-Cooper experiences as an artist, and address any topics of interest to the audience, including graduate school, art assisting, freelancing, and gallery relationships.
Part of the talk series "CU@Lunch with Cooper Union Alumni"
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Cooper Union Alumni Space
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PRESS RELEASE
Benjamin Kress is an artist working in media and processes that range from painting and drawing to sculpture and photography. His work frequently addresses themes of desire, corporality, presence and absence.
Kress received an MFA from Yale University in 2004. He has exhibited his artwork in the U.S. and abroad; has assisted the artists Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, and Anthony Goicolea; and has worked as a freelance sculptor, illustrator, and painter for commercial clients such as MTV and Hornet Inc.
Kress will present his artwork, talk about his post-Cooper experiences as an artist, and address any topics of interest to the audience, including graduate school, art assisting, freelancing, and gallery relationships.
"BUDDY LIST" AT SPACE 414 - SEPTEMBER 18 TO OCTOBER 18, 2009
"Buddy List"
Perspectives on friendship in the age of social networking, curated by Nathan Lee.
Artwork and performance by Kendal Bennett, Walter Dundervill, Glen Fogel, Benjamin Kress, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Adam Shecter, Jeremiah Teipen, Peter Wilson, Joe Winter, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jing Yu.
Space 414
414 Van Brunt Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11231
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PRESS RELEASE
Space 414 is pleased to present an exhibition simply, and not so simply, about friendship. Curated by Nathan Lee, the show groups sculpture, video, drawing, painting, and performance by twelve artists whose work addresses the changing nature of human relationships in the age of social networking.
Michael, Dialogue (2006), a suite of color photographs by Paul Sepuya, attests to the persistence of portraiture as a vital contemporary form, albeit one inescapably mediated by technology and compulsive self-presentation. Where Sepuya's negotiations of his own image in relation to a subject aims for an elegant, transparent intimacy, The Crack Video (2008, by Kendal Bennett presents a thornier, more provocative model of the artist mediating his relationship to the other. Bennett documents an evening spent in the company of Negra, a middle-aged drug addict he befriended. Passing a video camera - and a crack pipe - back and forth as they wander the halls of a Bushwick housing project, Bennett abdicates full authorship of his work while challenging viewers to address their assumptions about agency, autonomy, and exploitation.
Peter Wilson's Barber Pole (2008) codes different forms of marginal social behavior. Embodying the sign, in western culture, of the barbershop - a rare site of physical intimacy between men - Wilson's painted wood sculpture simultaneously indicates the appropriation of the icon in Asian cultures as a signal for prostitution.
Evoking eros on more personal terms, Jing Yu's The Golden Fleece (2009) is a delicate, shimmering representation of her boyfriend's chest hair. Affections are distanced, if not hallucinated, in Yu's lithographic series XXOO Christian Bale (2008), while Precious Memories (2008) transposes the artist's affection for mid-century Japanese porcelain figurines, sourced on eBay, into cast lard simulacra that inexorably dissolve.
Glen Fogel's meticulously framed and printed diptych First Love Summer 1994 (2003) memorializes a fleeting moment of adoration and youthful verve. Benjamin Kress summons another ghostly presence in his disquieting sculptural installation Silent Words Empty Forms (2009). Jeremiah Teipen emulates a social networking site gone haywire in Together (2009). Adam Shecter presents a series of Selected T-Shirts 2004-2009 given to friends as gifts and retrieved, in various states of wear, for this exhibition. Apichatpong Weerasethakul contributes Teens With a Ship (2009), a photo related to his multimedia PRIMITIVE PROJECT. Joe Winter's kinetic sculpture Ω Negative (Model) (2009) enters into a curious relationship with his Ω Negative (Pattern) (2009). Jill Lyon offers a whimsical diagram of a Red Hook apartment building in Shantytown. The exhibition will open with a performance by artist, choreographer, and dancer Walter Dundervill.
"Buddy List"
Perspectives on friendship in the age of social networking, curated by Nathan Lee.
Artwork and performance by Kendal Bennett, Walter Dundervill, Glen Fogel, Benjamin Kress, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Adam Shecter, Jeremiah Teipen, Peter Wilson, Joe Winter, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jing Yu.
Space 414
414 Van Brunt Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11231
-----
PRESS RELEASE
Space 414 is pleased to present an exhibition simply, and not so simply, about friendship. Curated by Nathan Lee, the show groups sculpture, video, drawing, painting, and performance by twelve artists whose work addresses the changing nature of human relationships in the age of social networking.
Michael, Dialogue (2006), a suite of color photographs by Paul Sepuya, attests to the persistence of portraiture as a vital contemporary form, albeit one inescapably mediated by technology and compulsive self-presentation. Where Sepuya's negotiations of his own image in relation to a subject aims for an elegant, transparent intimacy, The Crack Video (2008, by Kendal Bennett presents a thornier, more provocative model of the artist mediating his relationship to the other. Bennett documents an evening spent in the company of Negra, a middle-aged drug addict he befriended. Passing a video camera - and a crack pipe - back and forth as they wander the halls of a Bushwick housing project, Bennett abdicates full authorship of his work while challenging viewers to address their assumptions about agency, autonomy, and exploitation.
Peter Wilson's Barber Pole (2008) codes different forms of marginal social behavior. Embodying the sign, in western culture, of the barbershop - a rare site of physical intimacy between men - Wilson's painted wood sculpture simultaneously indicates the appropriation of the icon in Asian cultures as a signal for prostitution.
Evoking eros on more personal terms, Jing Yu's The Golden Fleece (2009) is a delicate, shimmering representation of her boyfriend's chest hair. Affections are distanced, if not hallucinated, in Yu's lithographic series XXOO Christian Bale (2008), while Precious Memories (2008) transposes the artist's affection for mid-century Japanese porcelain figurines, sourced on eBay, into cast lard simulacra that inexorably dissolve.
Glen Fogel's meticulously framed and printed diptych First Love Summer 1994 (2003) memorializes a fleeting moment of adoration and youthful verve. Benjamin Kress summons another ghostly presence in his disquieting sculptural installation Silent Words Empty Forms (2009). Jeremiah Teipen emulates a social networking site gone haywire in Together (2009). Adam Shecter presents a series of Selected T-Shirts 2004-2009 given to friends as gifts and retrieved, in various states of wear, for this exhibition. Apichatpong Weerasethakul contributes Teens With a Ship (2009), a photo related to his multimedia PRIMITIVE PROJECT. Joe Winter's kinetic sculpture Ω Negative (Model) (2009) enters into a curious relationship with his Ω Negative (Pattern) (2009). Jill Lyon offers a whimsical diagram of a Red Hook apartment building in Shantytown. The exhibition will open with a performance by artist, choreographer, and dancer Walter Dundervill.
PRINTS AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING AT FREDERIEKE TAYLOR GALLERY (ONGOING)
"Shadows" is an editioned series of five photographic prints made with hand-drawn negatives. Originally included in the exhibition "The Figure in the Carpet" curated by Colleen Asper, the prints are now available for viewing upon request in the flatfile space of Frederieke Taylor Gallery.
Frederieke Taylor Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.frederieketaylorgallery.com
"Shadows" is an editioned series of five photographic prints made with hand-drawn negatives. Originally included in the exhibition "The Figure in the Carpet" curated by Colleen Asper, the prints are now available for viewing upon request in the flatfile space of Frederieke Taylor Gallery.
Frederieke Taylor Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.frederieketaylorgallery.com
"THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET" CURATED BY COLLEEN ASPER AT FREDERIEKE TAYLOR GALLERY - DECEMBER 2, 2008 TO JANUARY 10, 2009
"The Figure in the Carpet"
Curated by Colleen Asper
Artwork by Sophia Dixon, Benjamin Kress, and Ted Mineo
Frederieke Taylor Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.frederieketaylorgallery.com
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PRESS RELEASE
"The Figure in the Carpet" is a Henry James short story, a title borrowed for this exhibition of works on paper by Sophia Dixon, Benjamin Kress, and Ted Mineo. Henry James's story is narrated by a critic, a device that tempts the reader to look to the narrative for insights into James's own thoughts on the relationship between art and meaning. It begins with the narrator's high hopes for a piece of criticism he has written of the latest novel by the fashionable author Hugh Vereker. When circumstances align to introduce our critic and his author, the narrator's pride over his insightful review is crushed by Vereker's unexpected dismissal. This bit of criticism, like all the others contends Vereker, has entirely missed the point. Taking pity on our dejected critic, Vereker later reveals to him something he claims to have told no others, that his work has a secret subject, something for the critic to find that is "like a complex figure in a Persian carpet".
The narrator becomes obsessed with uncovering the true meaning of the novelist's work and this search soon rules his life and doubly ensnares the lives of those around him, becoming the cause of marriage and death alike, but as is the case with many of James's tales, revelation never comes. The reader is provoked to look for the hidden figure in James's own writing while simultaneously made into the hapless critic for doing so. This parable of problematic interpretation serves as a metaphor for the artists in the show, whose seductive and enigmatic works invite decoding only to elude fixed meaning.
Sophia Dixon's drawings straddle traditional genres. "Tree House" is a landscape whose composition becomes anthropomorphic, making it double as a portrait. When seen as an image of the phases of the moon moving through the sky "Four Months" invokes a landscape as well, but when viewed as a calendar, it shifts to still life. Her evocation of witchcraft and astrology is at odds with a resolutely earthbound use of the basic medium of graphite on paper. Benjamin Kress's photographic contact prints are made using hand-drawn negatives; not simply a reproduction nor a handmade work, they too slide away from single categorization. The drawings are based on found images of men that are rendered, cut, sliced, folded, and finally inverted in the final print. These processes alter his source imagery in a manner that is violent, delicate, and erotic. The source imagery in Ted Mineo's invented still lives is pulled from the swamp of vernacular storytelling. His drawings of objects such as a mask, a spooky tree, or a mechanical pod invoke the familiar language of fantasy illustration, but are each depicted with a hermetic logic and calculating precision that renders their common narrative associations suspect.
All three artists work with images that in other contexts need no interpretation; meaning is transparent and easily grasped. Their reconfiguration of these images acts to complicate meaning while the intricacy with which they construct their work invites scrutiny. This intricacy is exacting, making their process not unlike that of a weaver. Whether one should attempt to find a figure in the carpet, however, is up to the viewer.
"The Figure in the Carpet"
Curated by Colleen Asper
Artwork by Sophia Dixon, Benjamin Kress, and Ted Mineo
Frederieke Taylor Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.frederieketaylorgallery.com
-----
PRESS RELEASE
"The Figure in the Carpet" is a Henry James short story, a title borrowed for this exhibition of works on paper by Sophia Dixon, Benjamin Kress, and Ted Mineo. Henry James's story is narrated by a critic, a device that tempts the reader to look to the narrative for insights into James's own thoughts on the relationship between art and meaning. It begins with the narrator's high hopes for a piece of criticism he has written of the latest novel by the fashionable author Hugh Vereker. When circumstances align to introduce our critic and his author, the narrator's pride over his insightful review is crushed by Vereker's unexpected dismissal. This bit of criticism, like all the others contends Vereker, has entirely missed the point. Taking pity on our dejected critic, Vereker later reveals to him something he claims to have told no others, that his work has a secret subject, something for the critic to find that is "like a complex figure in a Persian carpet".
The narrator becomes obsessed with uncovering the true meaning of the novelist's work and this search soon rules his life and doubly ensnares the lives of those around him, becoming the cause of marriage and death alike, but as is the case with many of James's tales, revelation never comes. The reader is provoked to look for the hidden figure in James's own writing while simultaneously made into the hapless critic for doing so. This parable of problematic interpretation serves as a metaphor for the artists in the show, whose seductive and enigmatic works invite decoding only to elude fixed meaning.
Sophia Dixon's drawings straddle traditional genres. "Tree House" is a landscape whose composition becomes anthropomorphic, making it double as a portrait. When seen as an image of the phases of the moon moving through the sky "Four Months" invokes a landscape as well, but when viewed as a calendar, it shifts to still life. Her evocation of witchcraft and astrology is at odds with a resolutely earthbound use of the basic medium of graphite on paper. Benjamin Kress's photographic contact prints are made using hand-drawn negatives; not simply a reproduction nor a handmade work, they too slide away from single categorization. The drawings are based on found images of men that are rendered, cut, sliced, folded, and finally inverted in the final print. These processes alter his source imagery in a manner that is violent, delicate, and erotic. The source imagery in Ted Mineo's invented still lives is pulled from the swamp of vernacular storytelling. His drawings of objects such as a mask, a spooky tree, or a mechanical pod invoke the familiar language of fantasy illustration, but are each depicted with a hermetic logic and calculating precision that renders their common narrative associations suspect.
All three artists work with images that in other contexts need no interpretation; meaning is transparent and easily grasped. Their reconfiguration of these images acts to complicate meaning while the intricacy with which they construct their work invites scrutiny. This intricacy is exacting, making their process not unlike that of a weaver. Whether one should attempt to find a figure in the carpet, however, is up to the viewer.
"POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE: A BENEFIT FOR VISUAL AIDS" AT METRO PICTURES - JANUARY 9 & 10, 2009
New work will be included in "Postcards from the Edge: A Benefit for Visual AIDS".
Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
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PRESS RELEASE
"Postcards From the Edge" is a Visual AIDS benefit show and sale of original, postcard-sized works on paper by established and emerging artists. All works are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. The works are signed on the back and exhibited so the artists' signatures cannot be seen. While buyers receive a list of all participating artists, they don't know who created which piece until purchased.
All proceeds support the work of Visual AIDS, utilizing contemporary art for AIDS advocacy and historicizing the work of HIV-positive artists while offering career support.
New work will be included in "Postcards from the Edge: A Benefit for Visual AIDS".
Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
-----
PRESS RELEASE
"Postcards From the Edge" is a Visual AIDS benefit show and sale of original, postcard-sized works on paper by established and emerging artists. All works are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. The works are signed on the back and exhibited so the artists' signatures cannot be seen. While buyers receive a list of all participating artists, they don't know who created which piece until purchased.
All proceeds support the work of Visual AIDS, utilizing contemporary art for AIDS advocacy and historicizing the work of HIV-positive artists while offering career support.
JANUARY 2009: WEBSITE LAUNCHED
