still from Patriot Games Redux (The Grand Follies of White Sharks) by Gerald Edwards III
SOPHIE L. & ANNA W. are pleased to announce our first joint curating adventure entitled TO DIE IN AN APARTMENT
The show will open on THURSDAY, AUGUST 28TH, FROM 7-9PM and will be on view until
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST, at A WOLF, a temporary gallery space/idea in Manhattan.
A WOLF
122 EAST 64TH #3R
SOPHIE LVOFF & ANNA WOLFGANG
28 AUGUST 2008
Featuring the work of up-and-coming artists:
Antione Catala
Alana Celii
Gerald Edwards III
Nichole Frochuer
Nate Hill
Jessica Ingram
Katie Kline
Michael Koehler
Sophie Lvoff
Santiago Moslyn
Grady O’Connor
Shabd Simon-Alexander
Jordi Wheeler
Grant Willing
The selection of work is a response to a theme in literature relating to death in one’s transitory living space. The nature of modern death begs the question, “Where do the dead go in such a time and place; to your upstairs neighbors, or down to the 6 train?” Parallelly, A WOLF without art is an empty apartment lacking personality, life, and memorial. The work presented is a collection of photographs, drawings, sculpture, video and sound and is the first time some of these artists have shown together.
BOND STREET GALLERY
297 Bond Street | Brooklyn, NY 11231 (Carroll Gardens)
718.858.2297 | DIRECTIONS: F/G to Carroll St. or R to Union St.
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday – Saturday | 11 am – 6 pm
BOND STREET GALLERY is pleased to announce Young Curators, New Ideas, a group exhibition organized by amani olu and curated by Alana Celii & Grant Willing (Fjord Photo), Michael Bühler-Rose, Jon Feinstein (Humble Arts Foundation), Laurel Ptak (I Heart Photograph), Amy Stein (amysteinphoto.blogspot.com), and Lumi Tan (Why + Wherefore).
The exhibition examines different trends and perspectives in contemporary art photography through the bias of six new and seasoned curators. Each curator (or curatorial group), using roughly ten feet of space, aims to engage viewers in a discussion on where he or she believes art photography is today.
Völuspá, curated by Grant Willing and Alana Celii, focuses on the themes of magic, otherworldliness, secrets and nostalgia. The exhibiting photographers were curated from the Fjord collective, and include Mikaylah Bowman, Gerald Edwards III, Bryan Lear, Miranda Lehman, Seth Lower, Mark McKnight, Erin Jane Nelson, and Jesper Ulvelius. The images from these eight artists represent the ideas of a multi-verse, which is a self-contained, separate reality. All of the photographs point to a place or moment that feels familiar, but objectively is known to rarely exist. These spurious emotions allow the viewers to address a personal memory or follow one’s spiritual quest; yet when presented with the facts that directly make up the photographs, they feel like something that cannot be experienced.
Artist Michael Bühler-Rose presents Opposing Photographers by Charles Benton. Benton’s work examines the nature of portraiture by returning fine art photography to its roots in conceptual art practice. Benton enables the viewer to be placed within the middle of a photographic “volley” to experience not just the gaze of the photographer towards his or her subject, but also to reflect that gaze back and enable the viewer to experience both subject and object simultaneously. Through this lo-tech presentation Benton reassess the slide presentation/photographic document’s traditional function of “pointing to…” and enables the viewer to experience being pointed at.
In Jon Feinstein’s exhibition, Light and Color, he explores notions of science, mysticism, astronomy and the unreal using photographs from Hannah Whitaker, Talia Chetrit, Noel Rodo-Vankuelen, and Ann Woo. Much of the work utilizes stripped down elements such as prisms, rainbows, and seemingly banal sunsets to investigate common themes in art history and larger conceptual issues surrounding the process of image making.
Laurel Ptak’s exhibition takes the show in a different direction by commissioning 26 photographers, designers, and new media artists to embrace the animated GIF. Appropriately titled Graphics Interchange Format, the show explores how a lo-fi digital image technology invented in 1987 fares in contemporary context. Ptak gave artists only 3 days to complete the commission and encouraged the use of photographic materials. A few of the artists had never made an animated GIF before, while others were notorious for it. “Some use the form epically,” says Ptak, “like a novelist or film director; others are self-reflective about the limits of technology and representation; many challenge photography’s usual atemporal disposition; and then some just make me giggle.” The results are 67 artist-made animated GIFs shown on 44-inch flat screen in an infinite loop. Each are sold in an unlimited edition for $20, accompanied by a personalized note from the artist.
Graphics Interchange Format features works by Victor Boullet, Tyler Coburn, Petra Cortright, C. Coy, Daniel Everett, Thobias Fäldt & Per Englund, Martin Fengel, Jason Fulford, Nicholas Grider, Pierre Hourquet, Konst & Teknik, Eke Kriek, Emily Larned, Matt MacFarland, Katja Mater, Kelci McIntosh, Ilia Ovechkin, Robert Overweg, M. River, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Asha Schechter, Trevor Shimizu, Jo-ey Tang, Anne De Vries, Karly Wildenhaus and Damon Zucconi.
In her exhibition, photographer and critic, Amy Stein, selects five photographers working in the tradition of Cindy Sherman, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Gregory Crewdson. Featuring Alison Brady, Olga Cafiero, Alix Smith, Alex Prager, and Ofer Wolberger, these photographers employ directorial image making strategies to explore identity and representation of the self. Whether they are directing loved ones, friends or relative strangers, these five photographers bring us lush, evocative cinematic moments that transport the viewer into a space that is alternately unsettling yet strangely familiar.
Writer and curator, Lumi Tan, presents three photographs from Brian Bress. In these photographs, Bress conflates the space around us, leaving the viewer disorientated and distracted by a certain distorted familiarity. His use of ordinary objects in seemingly chance combinations and chaotic arrangements are uncanny, asking to be decoded but simultaneously resisting interpretation. By engaging the viewer in absurd performative exploration, he points out how easily we are lost in our own cultural detritus.
Come check out Thomas & I make a fool with some Jock Jams Karaoke and an End Zone Dance Contest
NADA’s County Affair July 26th Noon - 6pm 27th Street between 11th and 12 Avenues. NEW YORK CITY
The New Art Dealer’s Alliance (NADA) is organizing an event for 27th street that follows the theme of an art oriented county fair, and will be called “NADA’s County Affair”. It will consist of artist run game booths, swap meet, tag sales, live entertainment, DJs and a benefit raffle! The goal of this event is to create a fun “block party” type event, which both NADA members and their artists will be invited to participate in, as well as engage the general art-going public. We thought that this would be a great first time NADA summer public event. The event will occupy approximately half the block, sidewalk, and one lane of 27th street between 11th and 12th Avenues.
Participants include:
John Connelly Presents - Tag Sale, and Mungo Thomson’s Bouncy House
Matt Bua ( Derek Eller Gallery )- The Architectural Cribbage Design Table
Martha Friedman ( Wallspace ) - Martha Friedman’s Prize Winning Zucchini!!!
Jeffrey Tranchell - YouTube curated playlists Kim Holleman - “Trailer Park”
BoBo’s on 27th Street ( Foxy Productions )
William Powhida and Jade Townsend ( Schroeder Romero ) - “Lemonade Stand” Thomas Seely & Trey Edwards - Armchair Quarterback Sweet Tooth of the Tiger - Renegade Bake Sale and Face Painting
Sara VanDerBeek and Anya Kielar ( Guild & Greyshkul Gallery ) - Jewelry, postcards, friendship pins
Justin Tripp, Ryan Foerster and Shawn Kuruneru - Zines
Andrea Smith ( Zieher and Smith ) - Tag sale Nicelle Beauchene Gallery - Make your own Shrinky Dink crafts
Elizabeth Lovero and Jesse Bransford - Tarot Card Readings
Scott Hug/K48 - Tag sale, K48’s and Merch
The Gamble of Life by Jacques Louis Ramon Vidal ( Sunday ) Sweeeeet Zine ( Cleopatra’s ) Little Cakes - “Turtle Club” Zak Kitnick - Oriental Trader
Liz Luisada ( Klaus von Nichssagend ) - Experimental Drawing Booth
Ronna Lebo - Tag sale Color Wheel
Alexia Lewis and Peggy Jo Pabustan from the performance group “Vos”
Bob Linder - DJ
Ceci Moss - DJ
Joshua Smith and Jennifer Teets - Advice for a Quarter. Like Lucy in the Peanuts. Museum of Miniature Art - Portrait Miniature Replica of Barack Obama Aaron Lazansky-Olivas (aka Spaze Crafte One) - “Comics, Characters & Colors” & LIVE ART spray painting with stencils
Olive’s first showing of pictures commenced last night, and I must say, that they are much more elegant than anything I will ever be able to muster. Up and about for about one month’s time, go sneak in and see them at the Shala Yoga Studio @ 815 Broadway near Union Square. Regs Biz Hours, get up in that spotty immediately, buy all of her photos, then head over to the Mollusk Surf Shop in Brooklyn, purchase 10 surf sticks, pick me up from my house, and let’s go to Montauk, like yesterday.
As Always, she has much much more on her cosmically charged webber HQ - The Olive Branch
June 27 - July 27, 2008
Opening Reception June 27, 6-8pm
Schroeder Romero Gallery
637 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001
T: 212 630 0722
Curated By Trey Edwards & Thomas Seely
Artwork By
Elaine Kaufman, Maria Dumlao & Jane Johnston, Alex Brown, Rob Carter, Institute for Aesthletics, Marisa Olson, Javier Piñon, Shannon Plumb, Justin Rancourt & Chuck Yatsuk, Fernando Sanchez, Tom Sanford, Jessica Tam, Lee Walton
Featuring
Opening Reception Participatory Street Sporting Event by the Institute of Aesthletics
29th Anniversary Screening of Disco Demolition Documentary Film (July 12, 2008 6-8pm)
Limited Edition Hyper Super Blooper Reel Commemorative DVD
Exhibition Poster Catalog (Available at Schroeder Romero Gallery)
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting…There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige…There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.
-George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit, 1945
On July 12, 1972 a Chicago radio disc jockey, strolled out to Comiskey Park’s center field, dressed in Army fatigues. There, he gave a brief rallying declaration before detonating a box filled with thousands of disco vinyl records. The 50,000 fans in record attendance promptly stormed the field and began rioting. The fires, and destruction of the stadium was only quelled at the arrival of Chicago’s riot squad.
Almost two thousand years earlier, Roman Emperor Commodus crafted his public image in the light of the warrior god Hercules, defeating all challengers in gladiatorial battles, through staged battles performed to reinforce his status as the protector of Rome, a god on earth.
This year we will experience two highly anticipated world events, the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, and the U.S Presidential election. With each of these events we see athletics and games intertwined with issues of human rights, war, globalization, gender politics, fashion, and the environment. Professional sports embrace nationalistic fervor on all scales, while adopting metaphors of war and conquest and simultaneously operating as branded corporate entities. Similarly the lexicon of sports, the embrace of spectacle, the championing of team apparel and team (brand or party) identity manifest themselves in our politics, military and foreign policy.
The Main Event draws from across the spectrum of human competition searching for a degree of clouded understanding in the ways in which the spheres of sports, and athletics penetrate and intermingle with the larger world, brought together by competition of all sorts. Is the boxer different from the artist? Is the wrestler different from the politician? What do the Meadowlands share with Capitol Hill?
Elaine Kaufman, Maria Dumlao & Jane Johnston
In the absurdist video from their episodic collaboration The Go Show, these three artists lambast the “league” of galleries, and the competitive world of artist trading by making analogy to the selection of players in the NBA draft. The art world, like the world of professional sports is ruthless, and has proven to quickly turn it’s back on those whose performance is not consistently up to par. www.brainstormersreport.net
Alex Brown
Crafts intricate battle scenes based on historical, and imagined contests of human competition. Brown’s armies highlight the absurdity and futility of war as well as our nostalgic romanticization of it. Drawn from video games and books, rather than the chaos of the embattled world at large, his figures appear almost figurines chaotically spilled across the global game board. www.esopusmag.com/files/archive_flash/7/doingbattles
Rob Carter
His photographs address “…the conflicting relationships between architecture, sport, religion, class, and entertainment” that contemporary athletic stadiums serve to represent as iconographic structures. In Wrigley Castle, Carter draws parallels between historical European fortresses and American baseball stadiums in order to reveal the power hierarchies of landscape domination, and community development surrounding these significant edifices. www.robcarter.net
Maria Dumlao
In her photograph Interrogation Mark, Maria Dumlao injects the space of the sports stadium with a sense of dread, drawing parallels between the way that war metaphors are used as rally cries in an athletic context, and perhaps recalling the history of the stadium as a primary site for death, and violence as entertainment. www.mariadumlao.com
Institute for Aesthletics
The Institute for Aesthletics is an organization dedicated to the playing of sports as performance. Aesthletics is a conscious acknowledgement of sport, especially contemporary spectator sports, as a mixture of physical activity, social interaction, performance, and ritual. Aesthletics aims to unleash the great opportunities inherent in competitive contests for social rather than monetary capital.
As part of The Main Event, the Institute for Aesthletics is organizing a participatory street sporting event during the opening reception. Bring your sneakers and some Powerade, and partake in an exciting new sport while dodging cars on 27th Street. Uniforms, equipment, and performance enhancing drugs provided. www.aesthletics.org
Marisa Olson
In a critical interpretation of political competition, Marisa Olson’s video 96-00-04-08 presents the presidential elections of the last twelve years as a glorified version of the Coke vs. Pepsi taste test challenge. www.marisaolson.com
Javier Piñon
Using the classic Western ideologies of masculine heroism, Javier Piñon attacks, and undermines over a broad range of historical record, mashing through collage conflicting epochs of fantastical feats of Man over his adversaries, bringing to light the tenuous clarity of Good and Evil. www.ziehersmith.com/a_pinon.html
Shannon Plumb
In her film Olympics Track and Field 2005, Shannon Plumb tells the story of a group of athletes jockeying for the gold, a slapstick 8mm dissection of the Olympics’ ritualistic pomp, and competitive spirt that evokes both Charlie Chaplin, and Triumph of the Will. www.shannonplumb.com
Justin Rancourt & Chuck Yatsuk
With their sculptural installation Bringing Down the Rim, these two artists create an homage to one of the most arresting events in professional sports, the unexpected annihilation of the basketball goal, transforming the game’s towering symbol of power into a fallen giant. www.vbpa.org
Fernando Sanchez
In his video, Sanchez presents the first play of Super Bowl XL1 as seen by nine different fans. The concurrent shifting of perspective whips the viewer into the thundering frenzy often experienced by the participant viewers of a large sporting event, from those watching at home, to those sitting in the stands. www.thankgodforconceptualart.com
Tom Sanford
Sanford’s twelve portraits of disgraced sports stars speaks to the systematic abuse by public figures, such as professional athletes, as they take advantage of their privileged societal positions, enlarging their human flaws to god-like caricatures of our own shortcomings. www.leokoenig.com/artist/view/459
Jessica Tam
The figures in Jessica Tam’s paintings are writhing monsters of flesh. Her pictures of professional wrestlers juxtapose the sport’s inherent savagery with its distinctive theatricality. Despite the intensely vibrant hues of oil paint, One Mask lays out a wrestling mask resembling an executioner’s hood, and Ring Monsters shows a frenetic interlocking of two sweat soaked men battling to death. Tam’s images speak to the power of costume to transform an individual into an terrifying harbinger of pain. www.jessicajtam.com
Lee Walton
His Experiential models of performance based systems, has led him to collaborate with the curators of The Main Event in order to remotely create a perpetually changing floor sculpture that maps the results of six rounds of golf played over the duration of the exhibition. www.leewalton.com
Double Dutch, finally the ball rolls on getting the implosion pictures going, made the first trip to Jonesboro, Arkansas to catch the Arkansas State University TWIN TOWERS dorm buildings be imploded. Gnarly late night solo flight/drive with some good parking lot sleep PLUS the shattering of my ground glass in the 4×5 thanks to American Airlines lovely new baggage policy where they charge you for all checked bags, PLUS guarantee to break some of your stuff too. Sleep deprivation breeds etheral experience, and I was floatin on a hot, juicy, Southern Cloud for 36 hours of mayhem.
Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present Featuring artwork by Gerald Edwards III, Brennan Hill, Kent Lambert, Squirrel, and Brendan Threadgill. Curated by Chris Fitzpatrick.
A reading of titles from an extensive science-fiction archive by Matthew Post
A slideshow with 35mm photos sent anonymously to the gallery
Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present will close Saturday, April 12th with an evening of events, including a lecture, catalog release, slide show, sci-fi reading, and sound installation. The exhibition features contemporary artifacts by US artists that, Ed Halter writes, “posit a society haunted by the wartime logic of both PsyOps and BlackOps, in which fact and fiction have become increasingly indistinguishable, and power exerts itself through a thick fog of unknowing.”(1) Composite photographs, videos, drawing, taped interviews, and exploded car bomb fragments loudly collide the real and the un / non / hyper / possibly / probably / imponderably / unconscionably (real) in a time when our present is the Administration’s past, when they exist in our future, now (2)
Jeanne Storck notes that, “a nagging doubt runs through every piece in the show so that even when you exit into the alley, a cloud of unease follows. But better unease than complacency.”3 Approaching the gallery through this alley, the Patriot Act will be heard reflecting through Lilac Street via Morse code in a sound installation by Gerald Edwards III. Inside the Epicenter, the exhibition will be on display, the exhibition catalog will be available, plus a reading of titles from an extensive science-fiction archive by Matthew Post and a viewing of slides sent anonymously to the gallery, supposedly “taken at a party celebrating the end of WWIII, from the archives of a defunct newspaper.” Then at 8pm, Frank Chu will give an illuminating talk about the 12 Galaxies, taking us beyond earth, to a where that has yet to be seen. There will be wine. Will there be more?
I was asked to submit some images to an elegant web based project called The Ones We Love. Please go have a visit, and see the maximum depths of everyone’s mad love!
“The Ones We Love is a project highlighting young and talented photographers from around the world. Each artist contributed six photographs of the person(s) who is most important to them, taken outdoors in a natural setting. The goal of the website is to portray the people who are loved, cherished, and inspirational to these artists, and also showcase the differences and similarities in the photographs each of them took within the same guidelines.”
Photo Epicenter
26 Lilac Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Monday – Saturday, 10am – 8pm
www.hamburgereyes.com
psymulation@chrisfitzpatrick.net
415-550-0701
Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present
March 14th–April 11th, 2008
Opening reception on Friday, March 14th from 6–9pm
Gallery hours are Monday – Saturday, 10am – 8pm
ARTISTS:
Gerald Edwards (New York)
Brennan Hill (Los Angeles)
Kent Lambert (Chicago)
Matthew Post (Oakland)
Squirrel (Indiana)
Brendan Threadgill (Los Angeles)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March, 2008)—Photo Epicenter presents Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present, an exhibition of contemporary artifacts closing April 11, 2008. This text is the combination of the press release and wall text for this exhibition, and will soon be transformed again into one of several extended essays in a catalog currently being produced. We will release this book at the end of the exhibition, coinciding with additional yet-undisclosed programming. If you are currently in the gallery, please press play on the tape player provided, if not, please go there now.
This text should be read while listening to an interview between researcher, conspiracist, and orchid smuggler, Dr. Armen Victorian (a.k.a. Henry Azadehdel, Habib Azadehdel, Henry X, and Cassava N’tumba) and retired U.S. Army Major Ed Dames, who performed psychic espionage for the U.S. Military. In addition to discussing Major Dames’ intriguing work in “Remote Viewing,” their recorded telephone conversation covers other bizarre territories—from UFOs and Mars to the reproductive mutilation of animals and the MJ12 Group. Their conversation sets the tone and provides a framework and point of departure for engaging with the work in this exhibition, but do you believe them?
When instances of science-non-fiction are disclosed to the public, such as those in the interview, the conspiratorial imagination and sci-fi feedback and become an automatic alibi; even the most nefarious revelation is reducible to the imaginative drivel of fringe paranoids. Others are relegated to conjecture through shredding and redaction, suffocated beneath incessant media distractions, or ignored in the general paralysis of cynicism. Yet as time slowly catches up, such revelations are key to approaching and understanding what might be happening today in the future, beyond reality and time.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
In the statement above, a Bush aide sends us all back in time as members of “the reality-based community,” as they forge a future we can only react to and try to make sense of from a key temporal remove. Their past is our present, yet our “reality” is hologramatic, hyperreal, and moreover, cultural study is time travel. To avoid fossilization, futurology becomes necessity, yet speculation is hardly “judicious.” In this non-time when now was, contemporary artworks—whether material or immaterial—are artifacts of a present, future, and past simultaneously, the exhibitions they comprise and sites they inhabit are interlaced interstices.
Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present includes a range of work by artists based across the U.S. who address a variety of ongoing criticalities heightened in the war on terror through artistic processes of appropriation and reconstitution, disruption and degradation, reclamation and re-contextualization. In addition to the conspiratorial abyss referenced earlier, the artists explore other forces of obfuscation and distraction, as well as recent changes in policy since the onset of the war on terror. PsyOps and the media, BlackOps and conspiracy, casualties and collateral damage, civil liberties and security, distraction and indoctrination, torture and liberation, the psychological and the physical, apophenia and paranoia, science-fiction, science-non-fiction, as well as notions of past, present, future, time and non-time surface throughout. Although these works were not necessarily created to illustrate the destabilization of time, they are, like everything, products of the divorce; they are reenactments of the present.
Following last year’s Swan Songs exhibition, Psymulation is the second installment in a series of projects Chris Fitzpatrick is curating for Photo Epicenter. Gerald Edwards III, Brennan Hill, Kent Lambert, Squirrel, and Brendan Threadgill have contributed work that will be on display from March 14 – April 11, 2008. Additionally, the opening reception will feature a psychological tuba performance by Matthew Post, and a catalog is being produced as an extension of the exhibition.
In Psych Securities LLC, an ongoing series of photographic composites by Gerald Edwards III, faceless PsyOps agents and technicolored HazMat workers inhabit strange environments from electromagnetic pulse tests to extraordinary rendition flight waiting rooms. He combines research into the black world of clandestine operations and experimentation with historical narratives and a heavy dose of psychedelic conjecture, envisaging realities shrouded in a stigma of conspiracy.
Appropriating various media distractions, Kent Lambert explores a number of pertinent issues from national security to international torture in three videos with sound. The trilogy—which consists of Security Anthem, Hymn of Reckoning, and Sunset Coda—features guest appearances by Tom Cruise, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the cast of Lost, G.I. Joe, and Lambert as a young boy, whose prescience has a particular resonance today.
Brendan Threadgill’s Partially Reconstructed Fragment (SKU# 3059778), the mangled roof of a car used as a bomb, sprawls across the floor in the center of the gallery. He refinished these materials in strict accordance with automotive industry standards, but avoided altering them structurally. Also included is Painted Fragment With Overspray, a two-panel diptych, that further reveals the impossibility of erasing or concealing the traces of violence and unknowable histories embedded within.
The recent hyper-aestheticization of torture has had a considerable effect on perception.Through association and apophoria, in Threatening Chair—a large photograph by Brennan Hill—a tool intended to aid the improvement of vision can be perceived as an instrument of infliction. Similarly, Sinus Horror, a drawing based on a highly detailed medical illustration has been reduced into a pulp-comic formalism that allows for multiple readings.
In Nuclear Holocaust, a video with sound by Squirrel, appropriated footage of nuclear explosions, desert warfare, and George W. Bush are combined with epic symphonic music and what the artist calls “a psychotic church radio program” about God, Satan, the Saints, and the apocalypse. Collateral Damage, another video with sound, collides the superficial with the unconscionable, revealing the causal relationship between two seemingly dichotomous images.
During the opening reception, Matthew Post will repeatedly perform “Enter Sandman” by Metallica on a tuba equipped with a sousaphone bell. The song has been used extensively to torture and terrify in Iraq and Afghanistan and brass instruments have been used as psychological weapons in war for thousands of years. The performance is made more poetic by an interview on NPR, in which Metallica-singer James Hetfield paradoxically stated, “If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be part of their exposure.”
For high-resolution photos, more information, or descriptions of the included works, please email psymulation@chrisfitzpatrick.net
ARTISTS:
Chiken Coop Collective
Leslie Grant
Nate Hill
John Kilduff
David McBride
Visual Buffet Public Arts
February 1st-15th Opening Reception: Friday February 1st 6-9pm
Broadway Gallery, 473 Broadway 7th Floor New York, NY 10013
212-274-8993 www.betterbeasts.com
“God Made Man, But He Used a Monkey to Do it.” - Devo
On the eve of recession, in the face of tradition, and in the spirit of “why the hell not?” Broadway Gallery proudly presents Better Beasts, an art offering curated by Thomas Seely and Gerald Edwards III. For two weeks only, we invite you to come marvel at the creations of the planet’s most volatile animal.
Incorporating painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance and found photographs, Better Beasts investigates the human quest for progress, power and self-improvement—the desire to consume, create, mythologize, categorize and dispose of anything or anyone standing in the way of quantifiable satisfaction.
