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8/11/2007

Bodies of/at Work

NurtureArt, New York

Group show

Curated by Brian Balderston

Opening Performance with Holly Faurot and Sarah Paulson

Bodies of/at Work, curated by Brian Balderston. Featured Artists in the exhibition include: Hilary Basing, Nell Breyer, Andrea Cote, Peter Dobill, Holly Faurot and Sarah Paulson, Joshua Eggleton, Marshall Marice and Jose Ruiz.

A man explains the triumph of conceptual art over craftsmanship to a stuffed octopus, another inexplicably flies through the door of his suburban garage, and another dances with his projected alter ego to ward off loneliness. Add to this spectacle aerobics videos, sand-swallowers, discombobulating camera tricks and trained dancers, and you have Bodies of/at Work. An exhibition of both new and old media, performance, and self-redefining ideas, curator Brian Balderston highlights the work of nine emerging artists who move beyond generic body-politics to find new, personal statements of the self. Here, the artists are no longer preoccupied with classical concerns of depictive figuration. Rather, they transform living, breathing bodies literally and metaphorically into sites and tools of art making by addressing elements of self-portraiture, performance, identity politics and location in time and space, which in turn, redefines the contemporary, conceptual understanding of the self.

Hilary Basing has created a body of work based on the cross-pollination of personal and appropriated performance footage by triple exposing film to create overlapped stills combining herself with old aerobics videos. This presents a continuous, uncut filmstrip that depicts a fragmented choreography between the artist and her unwitting collaborators.

Wonderland, Nell Breyer's interactive video installation, alternately utilizes pre-recorded and real-time footage of the artist and the viewer to create a sense of physical fragmentation and dislocation.

Andrea Cote's practice often revolves around the concept of full self-exposure under the guise of mediated anonymity. Her physical presence is always experienced, front and center, while her identity is simultaneously obscured through self-imposed parameters.

Peter Dobill's performances stride the line between corporeal stamina and the vigor of his psyche. By creating aestheticized rituals that channel the mind and challenge the body of the artist, as well as the physical comfort of the viewer, Dobill engages in contemporized shamanistic pursuits that evoke equal parts sadomasochistic intent and the search for spiritual purity.

The drawings that Josh Eggleton produces would seem to fit neatly within the traditional realm of self-portraiture. However, concocting his various scenarios, Eggleton engages in a series of performances for the camera that allows him to distill his own image into a composite gesture, which is then intricately rendered in graphite. human body parts made out of tin or silver to a saint for a cure, miracle, or special favor.

Holly Faurot and Sarah H. Paulson collaborative current body of work, referred to as Surveillance System(s), exists at the confluence of performance and dance, and is invariably mediated by networks of concurrent and pre-recorded cues that set the stage for a dynamic, if at times dysfunctional, redefining of contemporary communication.

Marshall Marice's photographic images present physics-defying juxtapositions of figure and ground/environment, creating a genuine quandary of perspective. By prominently displaying the disconnect between possibility and reality, Marshall's recorded actions reside somewhere between the stunt and the sublime.

The work of Jose Ruiz incorporates himself into a variety of photo and video-based performance scenarios that often present him as complicit actor rather than explicit artist. In his video piece How to Fight Loneliness he engages in a dreamlike, delirium dance with his virtually conjoined alter ego.

Opening: Friday, November 9, 7 - 9PM

NurtureArt
475 Keap St., Ground Floor (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) - New York

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