Popcorn

Spring Thaw

Oracle Four, Christine Gray, Oil on birch panel, 42" x 46"

If this image doesn't attract you to the opening of our Christine Gray exhibition this Saturday, then I have nothing for you.

CHRISTINE GRAY

SPRING THAW

April 19 - May 24, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 19, 6:00 - 8:30pm

Christine Gray's paintings represent the translation from a constructed environment to an illusionistic world. Painted from models she creates using common craft materials, the works become fantastically abstracted scenes based on objects domestic and kitsch. While gestural marks and rich textures compose much of these surreal landscapes, Gray also interposes areas where her source materials are highly rendered. This brings both a compelling balance and an irony to the picture plane.

Gray sees her work as speaking to the dysfunction of the Martha Stewart institution for its presentation of perfect craft, food, entertaining, and interior decor as an "Everyday" goal that individuals try to imitate. She explains, "I represent landscape through several degrees of mediation (first by building modest micro-sculptures, then through painting) using themes of failed geometry, failed architecture, and failed illusionism. This removal from the real reflects what I find to be a prevalent contemporary anxiety toward not only so-called 'nature' but also toward 'the real' itself."

Christine Gray received an MFA from The University of California Santa Barbara, California in 2007 and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited in group shows in California and Texas. She currently teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University.

ARTIST NEWS / EXHIBITIONS

Washingtonian Magazine
ON THE EDGE - The area's contemporary-art galleries, many with bold spring shows, feature some of the brightest work on today's art scene.

Beau Chamberlain
"183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art"
National Academy Museum New York, May 28th - Sept 7, 2008

Michael Scoggins
"Sunny Dispositions"
Gallerie Ernst Hilger - Hilger Contemporary, Austria, through May 4, 2008

Raymond Uhlir
"20 To Watch"
Austin Museum of Art, through May 11, 2008

Brian Ulrich
"Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes"
Walker Art Museum, through August 18, 2008
Carnegie Museum of Art, October 4, 2008 - January 18, 2009
"Variable Capital"
Bluecoats Arts Centre, Liverpool, UK, May 15 - June 29, 2008
"Branded and On Display"
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, Jun 14 - Sept 21, 2008

A Relaxed Ambience

Project 4 leaves for Scope NY tomorrow! On my pre-Art Fair day of relaxation I've decided to point out two photographers who I've been thinking a lot about lately.

Christina Seely and Michael Vahrenwald are both photographing the urban and suburban ambient light as it affects outlying areas.

Christina Seely, Metropolis 35°00'N135°45'E, C-Print

Seely's series, Lux, documents the artificial flow produced by major cities in the three brightest regions, as seen on a NASA map of the world at night. The awe-inspiring images immediately achieve an irony in the contrast and interplay between the superficial beauty of ambient light and the aggressive human dominance which it represents. But the photographs are layered in both their process and resulting image. Using a long exposure time, Seely sets up the shots so that they become surreal, fantastical landscapes, all while using actual data, not manipulated.

Using research from NASA and photography without fiction, Seely creates landscapes that seem to be existing scenes placed in an illusory context, while really these are existing scenes being viewed in a way which highlights a specific, and real, phenomenon. This ostensible displacement reflects the distance between our (humans') perceived, experienced, everyday reality and the reality of a larger perspective - the effect our everyday reality has on the physical world within which we humbly exist.

Interestingly, this project sparked the formation of the collective, Civil Twilight. This collective's concerns are with "issues surrounding the intersection of nature and culture." One of the collective's projects is the creation of Lunar-Resonant Streetlights which are streetlights that dim and brighten based on the brightness of the moon. Read more about it here.

Michael Vahrenwald, Bramble, Wal-Mart, Boonton NJ, C-print

Michael Vahrenwald documents pedestrian landscapes. He romanticizes the outlying spaces of newly constructed "big box" stores. The dark, empty expanses surpass the initial nostalgia for pure land that they trigger. The use of ambient light, here, phenomenologically elicits the human attraction to light. The ambient light here connotes the warm and comforting indication of civilization as it is contrasted with the cold expanse of land around it.

More than inciting sadness in the viewer over the lost land pictured, the images reflect the homogeneity of suburban commercial culture. Further, as (according to Victor Burgin in Looking at Photographs, 1977) images of photography are "inextricably caught up within the specificity of the social acts which intend that image and its meanings", the real sadness and romanticism to be found in these photographs is not in the contemplation of the land but of the lone artist wandering off behind Target in middle America at night.

Scope

Mark Wentzel, XLounge, Eames Chair, leather and foam

Project 4 is proud to participate in
SCOPE NEW YORK 08 - BOOTH #9

LOCATION SCOPE Pavilion at Lincoln Center Damrosch Park
62nd Street and 10th/Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10023
SCHEDULE
March 26-30
First View - Wed, March 26 - 3pm - 9pm
rsvp rsvp@madmuseum.org
PressView - Wed, March 26 - 5pm - 9pm
rsvp dan@susagrantlewin.com

Thursday, March 27, 10am - 8pm
Friday, March 28, 10am - 8pm
Saturday, March 29, 10am - 8pm
Sunday, March 30, 10am - 6pm

ADMISSION First View - $100 Free for VIP cardholders
General - $15 Free for VIP cardholders
Student - $10
Featuring the work of
Beau Chamberlain
Christine Gray
Patrick Holderfield
Tricia Keightley
Laurel Lukaszewski
Brian Ulrich
Alexis Weidig
Mark Wentzel

NEW YORK - Building on Miami’s overwhelming success, SCOPE launches its 2008 season with its flagship fair, SCOPE New York 08. SNY08, an invitation only edition of SCOPE art fairs, proudly returns to Manhattan’s most famous cultural icon, Lincoln Center, with a glass facade pavilion situated in Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, at the corner of 62nd Street and 10th Avenue. SCOPE New York is just blocks from the Armory Show and serviced daily by VIP Zipcars, shuttles and pedicabs.

Featuring galleries from four continents and 20 countries, including China, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Spain, and Canada, SCOPE New York 2008’s 50 invitees will uphold its unique tradition of solo and thematic group shows presented alongside museum-quality programming, collector tours, screenings, and special events.The fair opens to Press,SCOPEand Armory VIPs on Wednesday, March 26, 3-9pm with the FirstView benefit, a $100 charitable donation for all non-VIP cardholders.

Introducing artists, curators, and cutting-edge galleries to new audiences internationally has made SCOPE the most comprehensive destination for the emerging art world available anywhere. With art fairs in Miami, Basel, New York, London, and the Hamptons, SCOPE is proud to be an influential presence in the expanding global art market.

For more information go to : http://www.scopenewyork.com/
or contact:
Anne Surak, Director
Rebecca Jones, Assistant Gallery Director

Amy Ross in New American Paintings

Amy Ross, Woodpeckershrooms # 1, Collage on paper, 15" x 22", 2007

On stands now!

Scope NY

Project 4 will be in Scope NY this month:

Download Project4Scope.pdf

Gangi Wednesday, Pilgrim Saturday

Wednesday, 9:00 sharp, join me (speckled in white paint) at The Red & The Black to see Gangi.

And then this weekend...

Project 4 presents :

PATRICK HOLDERFIELD

Pilgrim

March 8 – April 12, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 8, 6:00 - 8:30pm

Collectors Preview: Friday, March 7, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Project 4 is proud to present a drawing and sculpture installation by Seattle-based artist Patrick Holderfield.

Drawing from diverse associations and sources, Patrick Holderfield endeavors to create work that requires an emotional and intellectual engagement. His goal is to offer some type of authentic experience inciting the viewer’s contemplation of his or herself in relation to the larger world through the poetic use of both familiar and the idiosyncratic imagery.

This current body of work centers around a series of drawings portraying environments that suggest pilgrimage, inappropriate expressions of emotions, transformation and conflict. Using the landscape as a grounding element, these scenes of tragedy and eloquence make analogy to current political, social and personal happenings. The accompanying sculptures and site-specific installations are seen as an extension of the drawings referencing boundaries and nature: specifically, the space, physically and psychologically, that confines and defines an environment.

“My vision is of the individual setting off on a journey that is both benevolent and malevolent and where the two are not so clear. It is also what’s found along the way” Patrick Holderfield, 2007

Patrick Holderfield holds a BFA from State University College in Buffalo NY. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the Pacific Northwest including the Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum and James Harris Gallery in Seattle. His work is in collections including the Tacoma Art Museum, Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, and the City of Seattle.

For additional information please Contact:
Anne Surak, Director
Rebecca Jones, Assistant Gallery Director

DIRECTIONS AND INFORMATION :

Project 4

Contact: 903 U Street NW Washington DC 20001
tel: 202 232 4340 fax: 202 232 4341
info@project4gallery.com
Website: http://www.project4gallery.com/
Hours: Wednesday - Friday 2:00 - 6:00 pm, Saturday noon - 6:00 pm and by appointment.
Map: See our location on Google Map (We are located at the intersection of 9th Street and U street NW).
Metro Access: Project 4 is easily accessible by metro. We are located one block east of the green line U St/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo metro station, 10th Street exit.

Alexis Weidig

Alexis Weidig, This Bride’s Fate, chair, artificial pears, ceramic basket, found objects, 4' x 6' x 4' (approximately), 2007

Alexis Weidig, in an obsessively self-conscious manner, adorns and combines found objects that signify the kitsch decor of her youth that caused Weidig to contemplate ethnographic concepts of beauty and her personal sense of identity.

Weidig's grandmother immigrated to the United States from Albania at the beginning of World War II (after the Italian invasion) and today Weidig is a practicing Albanian Orthodox. Her sculptural and installation based work is expressive of both the extremely ornate style of the ethnicity, and of the disenchantment Weidig experienced upon realizing at young age that her grandmother's (her ethnicity's) taste was considered "tacky" by American standards.

In sculptural assemblages such as This Bride's Fate one can see this complex amalgamation of emotions and cultural signs passionately combined. The way that opulence is synthesized using low-brow, mass produced items personifies a grasping for dignity. The hyperbole and explosive decorative elements of this sculptural work, as well as others by Weidig, address the emotionally heightened nostalgia Weidig feels towards these objects which both reflect her own childhood and poignantly remind Weidig of her grandmother's past.

Project 4 will be taking sculptural works by Alexis Weidig to SCOPE NY this year.

Divide and Conquer

Margaret Boozer, detail of Dichotomy of Dirt, Black stoneware, porcelain and white earthenware, 35" x 68", 2007

In the documentation, exploration or scouring of the space within which we exist, whether in search of the overlooked details, the new or the Truth, what we take possession of from such a vast expanse and how is continually significant in explaining the culture from where the acquisition occurs.

Margaret Boozer's work always involves the exploitation of the natural formations and tendencies of clay. In her most current body of work, she uses these organic, random tendencies and then compartmentalizes this form, creating discs which are all commensurate with each other in size, but unique in surface. The work is unruly and unbound in both its surface and description of source, but rigidly stylized at the edges and in its presentation as grid. The transition describes human intervention with the most essential constituent of the landscape. The act of the artist's acquisition of this piece of the land is the tale that's told through this display of organized raw material.

Amy Ross, Duck Magnolia #2, Watercolor on paper, 22" x 30"

The original purpose of botanical illustration was to help identify plants for medicinal purposes. Amy Ross's watercolors make use of the freedom of a now obsolete genre to create mutations that balance between fantasy and a closely observed realism. Again, the organizational intervention of humanity with the landscape is described. Done so delicately, these drawings narrate the plucking of elements out of their context and the rearrangement of them according to the will of the artist. The process of encapsulation, in this case, is representational rather than literal, as it occurs in Boozer's work. But this encapsulation does refer to the ornamental and to the close examination of what's become a personal object. As well, the relationship with the technical and medical foundation that these drawings retain reinforces this process of taking control and ownership of nature.

Sean Logue, 21. Ode to Sir Edmund Hillary's First Ascent, Archival digital print on 8.5" x 11" paper and in notebook

As the new space of virtuality continually expands the context in which we exist, this becomes our Sublime Landscape. Sean Logue culls his images from the internet, news sources, personal snapshots, and anywhere else that he finds an image that can be plucked from it's environment and acquired as his will and imagination dictates. The subject becomes completely possessed by Logue now about an inch in size and helplessly stored away in his notebook. The images become conquered elements of Logue's personal design, and emphasize the vast world of images and context within we live and through which we navigate everyday. Logue's work is a highly abstract example of this process of dividing and conquering our landscape.

These works draw us in by displaying objects we can imagine holding. The works rides on our desire to own and makes easy for us, as a museum does, the studying of a particular piece of our world, or our culture. They provide a way for viewers to seek/gain control over the vast and overwhelming landscape we are a part of.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Basalt rocks and earth, 1500' x 15', 1970

While the afore mentioned artists break down and conquer the landscape, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) does the opposite in every way. In a 2005 issue of The Nation, Arthur C. Danto wrote a short critique of Smithson's artistic career and of his retrospective at the Whitney. In this article Danto proclaims Spiral Jetty "an emblem of the American Sublime." It surrenders to nature and actually manifests the unbound qualities of the entire landscape by existing as a work impossible to see wholly (in person), elusive and unable to be exhibited. Instead of creating something personal, precious and sharable, Smithson creates a monument completely unattainable. According to Danto, this work articulated the sublime in its time of creation, breaking free from the "purist" philosophy of Clement Greenberg and embracing fragmentation - both critically and in the way one can view the work in person.

If we do in fact consider Spiral Jetty to be as significant in the historicity of art as DuChamp, Warhol and Barthes than we can look at the work as breaking open ideas of full ownership, purity and Truth, which has been the trend during and since post-modernism. Smithson breaks this open in a new way. The idea of possession and full ownership is questioned by each of these artists, whether through the use of appropriation or, like in Smithson's case, through the creation of an unattainable and unaccessible work.

Accessibility is a key concept in contemporary art, as individuals of this culture become increasingly familiar with new forms of communication and increased access to information. These artists are all presenting contemplations of what they choose to take ownership of from a fully accessible world.

Anniversary

Project 4 presents :

2

Margaret Boozer
Beau Chamberlain
Christine Gray
Amy Kaplan
Ani Kasten
Tricia Keightley
Lisa Lindgren
Laurel Lukaszewski
J.J. McCracken
Gregory McLellan
Rich MacDonald
Amy Ross
Rene Trevino
Paul Villinski

February 2, 2008 - March 1, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 2, 2008 - 6:00pm - 8:30pm

Project 4 celebrates its two-year anniversary in February with an exhibition of new works by a selection of our artists as well as a preview of artists being introduced this year. This survey of work reveals themes explored during the course of our programming.

Ideas of ornament and nature reoccur in selected works as do investigations of spacial concerns. Project 4 is a collaboration of individuals coming from different creative practices. The exhibition is a combined vision and intends not only to reflect on what the gallery has presented, but to look forward as well.

For additional information please Contact:
Anne Surak, Director
Rebecca Jones, Assistant Gallery Director

DIRECTIONS AND INFORMATION :

Project 4

Contact: 903 U Street NW Washington DC 20001
tel: 202 232 4340 fax: 202 232 4341
info@project4gallery.com
Website: http://www.project4gallery.com/
Hours: Wednesday - Friday 2:00 - 6:00 pm, Saturday noon - 6:00 pm and by appointment.
Map: See our location on Google Map (We are located at the intersection of 9th Street and U street NW).
Metro Access: Project 4 is easily accessible by metro. We are located one block east of the green line U St/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo metro station, 10th Street exit.

Working Woman

I've been busy. I will post something soon. Look into my fuzzy eyes, can't you tell I'm serious?

Recent Acquisitions

I've recently been given a stunning, commissioned Beau Chamberlain painting as a late holiday gift, much to my surprise. Pictures will be posted soon - once I find a suitable place to hang it.

Upcoming Events

February 2nd - Opening for a month long, celebratory art exhibition for Project 4's two year anniversary. Link to PR soon to come.

News

I've recently been brought on as a producer for this video magazine series in collaboration with Dissident Display covering the arts environment in Washington DC. More information (this is getting redundant) soon to come.