T Zone
June 4th - July 17th, 2005
Smack Mellon, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Artists: Anke Sievers, Richard Deon, Tara Fracalossi, Erik Guzman, Thomas Lail, Julie Langsam, Nickolas Lascot, Rob Lemon, Julie Mann, Rune Olsen, Monika Sosnowski and Kikuko Tanaka
Curated by Peter Dudek Architecture and autobiography, fiction and fantasy, taxidermy and zoology all pair off and collide in T-Zone. Through an embroiling intentionality and purposeful entanglement awkward unions are explored and made profoundly present. Dissimilarity and the apparent lack of commonality bring together a diverse range of practitioners. Presenting sculptures, photographs, drawings, websites, videos, paintings, each and every one with little topic or content similarity, yet boldly embedded throughout the T-Zone.
Anke Sievers. Although made from the perspective of a dead person remembering a failed life filled with nostalgia, fear and confusion, Anke's recent paintings, drawings and embroideries are remarkably humorous and lovely to look at. This implausibly cheerful miscellany of lighter-than-air arabesques defies gravitas and the deadly silence of an otherworldly vacuum. She is from Germany and did medieval studies while a student in Holland.
Richard Deon. Richard has made a large body of heroic and unseen canvases (richarddeon.com). For his paintings he reworks images from 1950's high school textbooks creating what he calls "Social Surrealism". By fusing images of colonial exploitation, urban delinquency and stiff academic or corporate authority figures, an uneasy pictorial absurdity is achieved.
Tara Fracalossi. Tara has been obsessively assembling an archive of images (found, as well as ones taken by herself) that she selectively exhibits in multi-thematic arrangements. As presented, the photos are uncompromisingly deadpan and steady in their narrative ambiguity. In her studio "the archive" is housed in boxes (also shown at the exhibitions) that often act as pedestals for the images.
Erik Guzman. Erik is a sculptor of kinetic forms (erikguzman.com). He is also a founder of Goliath, a Brooklyn based artist collective (goliath777.com). In his sculpture exquisitely crafted forms of glass and metal are slowly animated. These closely calibrated sequential actions lead to an elegant yet Sisyphean repetitions of tasks -- a never-ending, never complete rotation of actions.
Thomas Lail. Thom's installations combine a wry and subtle analysis of space with an aggressive use of form and material. A raw yet studied architectural aesthetic that psycho/physically alters the space of the gallery and viewer. Pushing the mind/body split into the fractured realm of a gypsum board Dr. Calagari.
Julie Langsam. Julie is a New York City native and painter who splits her time between New York and Cleveland, where she teaches. Her experiences of living in both the center and the periphery of the art world have influenced her paintings. Alienation and prominence, isolation and distinction await her subjects, iconic forms selected from the history of art and architecture.
Nickolas Lascot. Nick is developing a drawing and sculptural bestiary. These creatures celebrate and perform for reasons perhaps known only to them. Nick's blending of Social Darwinism and The Wonderful World of Disney provokes a struggle of the not so fit. He works a semi-functional and sometimes disgruntled cast of characters, oblivious to the needs of others, caught in a world indifferent to their situation.
Rob Lemon. For the last 8 years Rob has been busy constructing his own worldview (yleg.com). He has produced several books full of explanatory text and complex drawings that reveal individuals uniquely capable of populating a new Oz. At yelg.com the Noseless Man, the Ephemeral Enabler and other members of their tribe are depicted in animated drawings, which further expose their behavioral traits, historical roles and evolutionary fate. This burgeoning populace is allegorically presented in his sculpture, a structure that Jules Verne would fancy.
Julie Mann. This Julie is from Washington State and lives in NYC. The remoteness of her early years on the Pacific Rim has infused her work with an outsider perspective and the sophisticated feel of a self-taught specialist. A radical taxidermist of articular forms she has just begun to exhibit her work (julieannemann.com), which is rife with the gothic touch of one who makes her sculptures from bones purchased on eBay.
Rune Olsen. Norway has given us Rune. Present day cultural norms, as examined and looked at through aggressive animal behavior is his forte. Physical to the extreme despite their commonplace materiality, his sculptures' often-violent postures provoke a gyroscopic disturbance to the viewer's balance. A yin-yang of the creator/destroyer sensibility plays out in this feral theatre in the round.
Monika Sosnowski. Since the mid 90's Monika has been busy producing several distinctly different bodies of photographic work. Hauntingly beautiful color photographs of interiors; grainy black and white images of people and places; and more recently, she has been manipulating found images into albums of fictitious yet empathetic narratives; narratives that simultaneously engage and withhold.
Kikuko Tanaka. Kikuko's art delivers an erotic jolt to the man/nature imbalance. She works this territory through her photographic, sculptural and video projects, all of which reveal a keen sense for craft and presentation. These complex works are infused with a material self-awareness and a bold sexuality. She is from Japan where she studied architecture before coming to the U.S to make sculpture.
T-Zone is the second in a series of exhibitions being curated by Peter Dudek where artists, whose work is seemingly, and quite probably, completely unrelated to each other, are invited to interact (participate) in a group exhibition. The first exhibition, entitled Confabulations, was held at Hunter College in the fall of 2003 and the third will be at the Lab gallery (NYC) in July 2005, a fourth will be at the Saratoga Arts Center in September.
Peter Dudek is a sculptor and independent curator (peterdudek.com). He teaches at Hunter College and the School of Visual Arts. He is currently the Director of Exhibitions for the Sculptors Guild.