calendario eventi  :: 

X

19/5/2004

Two exhibitions

Feigen Contemporary, New York

David Kramer
Main Gallery

'In a perfect world I would be one happy mother fucker,' David Kramer declares in a drawing of a beautiful woman posing next to a convertible. 'I want to know how the other half lives,' he announces in another of a six-pack of Bud with three cans missing. Such desire is the driving force behind Kramer's comedic drawings, videos, and sculptures. Perceived inadequacies at work or awkwardness at parties are magnified by juxtaposing his self-deprecating stories with the clichéd expectations of success and splendor showcased in the unreal world of flashy advertising and popular culture.

This exhibition includes over 50 of his trademark sardonic drawings, three sculptures and a video work. The Gallery's back viewing area is converted into 'Old Man Bar', a tableau of a gritty local lounge where long afternoons can be wiled away drinking beers. Playing on the TV behind the bar is the 1940's style DVD 'Million Dollar Moment', Kramer's autobiographical takeoff on the film classic 'The Fountainhead', which reenacts the true story of a mix-up in names that accidentally brought Kramer to the attention of a prominent Chelsea gallery. Other sculptures include a life-sized enlargement of the common bar figurine of a hobo leaning against a lamppost, and a Las Vegas inspired circular settee with a working fountain of stacked champagne glasses as its center.

Kramer's art as a whole demonstrates the disparity between the artist's everyday reality and the ersatz glamour and glitz of the elusive 'good life', reminding us that the desire for an idealized success is a constant benchmark against which we measure our actual achievements.

David Kramer was born in New York City. His artworks and performances have been appreciated across the United States, Canada and Europe. Currently his work can be seen in 'Open House: Working in Brooklyn' at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

----

Giles Lyon
New Painting
Front Gallery

The four recent paintings by Giles Lyon on exhibition in the Front Gallery attest to the artist's continued exploration into the process of painting and a personal abstract topography. Spills, splatters and stains are obsessively outlined and accentuated. Layered and encrusted build-ups might include detritus from insects, flowers, and food to the artist's hair and credit cards. Organic compositions of biomorphic nebula and clustered constellations allude to the biological and the cosmological, while comic book colors reference popular culture.

A long lineage and wide range of inspirations are insightfully reconciled to create new relationships between gesture, image and abstraction. Shifting between accidental incident and deliberate delineation, Lyon finds a balance of the chaotic and the controlled, as his paintings slowly coalesce into their own identity. Lyon's paintings exist as a physical mapping of their creation, and the intricate networks of brightly hued fragments and flatly rendered formations offer a kaleidoscope of psychological associations.

Giles Lyon lives and works in Brooklyn and has exhibited nationally and abroad. One of his paintings is now on view in the exhibition 'Surface Tension' at the Chelsea Museum, New York City.

Image: Giles Lyon
Lamb Mind, 2004
acrylic on canvas
83 x 90 inches

Exhibition Hours Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Office Hours Monday - Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Feigen Contemporary
535 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.929.0500 Fax 212.929.0065

stampa

permanent link