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TOMORROW: J. Vandervoort Werkhaus
A chap named Richard was nice enough to tip me off to this one. A new art space is set to grace the Garden Spot (Or “Greenwick”, take your pick!) starting this Saturday, October 25! Here’s the 411 per their press release:
The J. Vandervoort Werkhaus Presents:
Inside the OutOctober 25th – November 23rd 2008
Opening Reception Saturday, October 25th, 6 – 9pm
By appointment until November 23rdSascha Braunig
Eisaku Dovoc
Ivy Haldeman
Andreas Laszlo Konrath
Kant Smith
Alexander V.The J. Vandervoort Werkhaus opens its doors to the public this October with Inside the Out, an exhibition highlighting six emerging artists. The work presented expresses a respect and nostalgia for the traditional forms of painting, photography and sculpture; yet, with calculated and irreverent gestures, these artists throw hierarchy to the wind. Sculpture is conflated with implements of personal vanity. Photography is assimilated into architecture. Painting, being so ubiquitous, contends with the art market as its progenitor, and searches for a valid posture.
Ivy Haldeman’s text paintings combine nostalgia for abstract expressionism with the self-reflexive doubt of the text painting. Her painting methods are laid bare as painter’s tape lays half peeled and curling enticingly from the canvas. Lyricizing the ambitions and failings of the individual artist, these paintings are laughingly pessimistic.
Alexander V. toys with painting’s ever-expanding toolbox. Neon chickens (!!! —Ed. Note), absurd quotes, spray painted stencils, and beams of light are all players in his graphic landscape of explosive, vividly colored paintings. With a swagger Alexander V. notes his own philosophy on life with the painted text, “If you’re gonna do it right, don’t do it at all.â€
Kant Smith’s lightbox constructions resurrect key American paintings of the 20th century. His pain-staking self-illuminating reproductions create an atmosphere of wonder, bringing traditional painting to face with today’s onslaught of mass visual information. Is painting desperately trying to catch up here?
Eisaku Dovoc, affecting trompe l’oeil, presents isometric plans of art shipping crates. These assemblages utilize a method of 3-d marquetry such that wood represents wood, and yet shipping labels are illusionistically painted, creating a synergetic clash of representation and literal construction.
Andreas Laszlo Konrath creates an icon of a somber teenage boy in a photographic meditation on adolescence. Utilizing the unique architecture of the gallery, Konrath collapses the viewer’s space into the diegetic space of the photograph. His work draws from the compression and visual overload of the urban landscape.
Pivoting on the intersection between the dusty curiosity, the homemade relic, and the beauty salon, Sascha Braunig’s work conjures the bizarre and disquieting that lurks within the banal. In this show, she presents the Portrait Head of a Real Woman, in vivacious three dimensions.
Gallery hours are noon to 6pm, Saturdays and Sundays, October 26th – November 23rd…
The J. Vandervoort Werkhaus is dedicated to promoting progressive and challenging work in the visual arts. The Werkhaus is located in the Williamsburg Industrial Park accessible by the L train, Graham Ave. stop.
The J. Vandervoort Werkhaus
413 Vandervoort Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
Neon chickens = check it out!
Miss Heather
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