calendario eventi  :: 

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15/3/2007

Two Exhibitions

Pierogi 2000, New York

David Shapiro, Rock Iraq + Jonathan Herder, Denomination

David Shapiro, Rock Iraq

In his exploration of the nature of reality and artificiality, and the dichotomy of nature and culture, through a diverse body of work created over the last fifteen years, David Shapiro has infused formal ambiguity of minimal sculpture with personal meaning.

From casting faces in tofu, to casting pistachio nuts in bronze, from ongoing visual diaries, to saving two years worth of empty packages containing traces of his consumption, Shapiro has continually challenged the boundaries of the familiar and the unfamiliar, realness and absurdity, and the way art interacts in an urban context.

This exhibition will feature an 8-by-8 foot tabletop model of a hypothetical benefit concert, Rock Iraq, which doesn't exist but quite possibly could. It is a concert with corporate logos but no sponsors, no musicians, and no music. It exists as a tabletop model to American ambiguity, assuaging guilt, displaying compassion, condemning failure, and inventing triumph.

Jonathan Herder, Denomination

The works in Jonathan Herder's exhibition perpetuate his focus on the raw material of postage stamps, with widened attention to include other official currencies such as bank notes and stock certificates. The drawings and collages that comprise this exhibition engage the perceived dual qualities in their source material, of the exalted and pragmatic, i.e. evoking the noblest of ideals for mundane function. Those works entirely collaged from postage stamps stem from the artist's desire to stage the drama of their graphic potency, made conspicuous once lifted from the prescriptive confines of bureaucratic purpose.

The group of bank note drawings in this show represent the artist's attempt to cope with the recent destabilization of U.S. bank note design. As the once immutable appearance of U.S. money has given way to a flurry of reiterations and abandonment of long held aesthetic standards, the artist has responded by issuing yet another series of New Money. These bills offer a range of apprehensions; from consumerist advocacy to capitalistic inevitability. Indeed, a boundary between the marketplace and the individual can prove elusive, as these sometimes ethically conflicted bank notes attest.

Image: David Shapiro

Opening: Friday, March 16, 7:00PM - 9:00PM

Pierogi 2000
177 north 9th street Brooklyn New York

stampa

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