SOMEWHERE BETWEEN
CURATED BY JULIE MCKIM
ART HELIX, BROOKLYN, NY
JUNE, 2015
SONYA BLESOFSKY / ANGELES COSSIO / ROB FISCHER / ERIK HOUGEN / MATTHEW CONRADT / JON ELLIOTT / DANIELE GENADRY / WYATT NASH
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN, 2015
The work in Somewhere Between finds weight in the uncertain place between the familiar and the unknown. The eight artists in this show - Sonya Blesofsky, Matthew Conradt, Angeles Cossio, Jon Elliott, Rob Fischer, Daniele Genadry, Erik Hougen and Wyatt Nash - employ sculpture, site specific installation, painting, silkscreen and photography to look at memory, history and place. Pulling source material from their everyday lives and surroundings, they construct work that collapses times, balances between the abstract and the delineated, and is layered and fragmented. Their work offers fleeting glimpses into histories long forgotten, hints at unfounded narratives, and presents cloudy reminders of places, perhaps, never visited.
The visual clues offered seem both familiar and hard to place, taking the viewer on a circuitous hunt for recognizable forms and meaning. Once engaged in the work, only then is it discovered, that what appeared familiar, is actually unknown. The viewer is confronted with a memory, history, landscape that is not their own. It is here, in this limbo, between object and viewer that the work of these artists balances. This middle place where meaning is open ended, connotations multiple and subjective and possibilities infinite.
In conjunction with Somewhere Between, three performances took place throughout Bushwick Open Studios Weekend.
BUSHWICK OPEN STUDIOs PERFORMANCES, 2015
Jeff Thompson | Performance for Modified Chord Organ and Laptop
Jeff Thompson performED using a modified chord organ outfitted for micro adjustments and a laptop running custom software, creating slowly shifting drones and subtle dissonances.
Dirty Churches | Performance by Rachel Blackwell; Music by Jesse Gelaznik
Musicians: Violin: Carolin Pook; Viola: Eric Elterman; Cello: Eric Allen
DIRTY CHURCHES BIO:
Rachel Blackwell and Jesse Gelaznik are Dirty Churches. They combine experimental sound and music with sculptural installations and ritual-based performance in what they describe as a manifestation of the collective subconscious. Jesse Gelaznik founded Dirty Churches with Joe Robinson, Alex Beard and John Delassi in Brooklyn in 2003. The group began as a noise collective that incorporated a range of musicians for large improv concerts. It has since morphed into a two-headed video art monster that performs original chamber music inside installations with costumed performers.The couple alternatively starts from the music or the concept to develop immersive themed visions such as there most recent performance at the Kunsthalle Galapagos titled SHE is Near, which incorporated a sculpture and video installation along with a live performance. The Dirty Churches performance titled A Guest in the Cavern premiered at the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center, Inc.’s 2013 Arts Happening series in Brooklyn. The site specific performance titled An Orchard of Echoes was performed at Soho20 Gallery as part of their annual Savior-Faire performance series, and the video component from A Guest in the Cavern was featured. In a world so desperate for control, Dirty Churches defy the notion that we must rely on a constant reality to exist.
William Hempel | read red read
pieces performed with Stephen Witt, Gabriel Hopson and Cora Kobischka
William Hempel is a New York City based conceptual and visual artist who creates language based works often pulled from the everyday landscape, both physical and mental. Hempel uses strategies of collection to represent languages as aesthetic experiences and exercises in free thinking. His multi person reading performances are read from texts prepared by these methods of language collection.