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11/9/2003

Breaking Ground

White Columns, New York

curated by Lauren Ross

Breaking Ground presents emerging artists constructing landscape images in collage and assemblage. Disparate materials are combined in various media and formats, including flat paper collage, sculptural assemblage, and digitally manipulated video. References to landscape exist in each piece, but sometimes take stylized and abstract forms.

Jeff Grant presents Arbor Rig, clusters of tree branches wrapped in yarn that hang from the ceiling. Reminiscent of mobile sculpture or a theater prop that can be raised and lowered, the piece hangs with yarn guidelines that also anchor it to the floor. Debra Hampton displays small compositions on individual light boxes, packaged in portable Plexiglas cases. Each box depicts an abstracted scene in materials such as artificial grass packaged with takeout sushi. The disconcerting garden scene in David Krippendorff's DVD projection, Beyond the Moonx{2026} is actually a brief clip from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, looped to repeat, with manipulated sound and color effects. Krippendorff uses this bit of quintessentially American utopian vision to question the nature of fantasy and the familiar. Elissa Levy sews cut photographs of camouflage fabric into symmetrical patterns. Manipulating the shape and color of the camouflage, she distances it from its origin in the simulacrum of nature based on visual comprehension. Jason Paradis's recent work focuses on the patterns of stars and constellations. Using actual coordinates of stars as a source for his work, the artist depicts abstracted stellar clusters in collaged paper, and maps their path in radiating chalk lines. A miniature tent and forest scene complete the installation's basis in childhood memories of gazing at the nighttime sky while on outdoor camping trips. Susie Reiss creates "paintings" by attaching pieces of fabric to wood panels. The organic shapes and overlapping colors form painterly compositions of abstracted flowers and terrain. Troy Richards forms a lush bacchanalian scene of flowers, fruit and insects from cut foam, construction paper and other materials adhered to the wall. Gedi Sibony assembles a sculpture from seemingly disparate materials: sewn carpet remnants, an arch of driftwood twigs, and a piece of folded cardboard. This work, resembling an aerial view of a landscape, is based on simple connections, formal tensions and the viewers own associations. Austin Thomas shows a selection from her series of "Build Drawings,"collages constructed from found and shaped papers. Similar to the porch and patio-like sculptures which Thomas has been installing in public spaces for the last two years, many of the collages suggest yards and landscaped gardens.


About the curator: Lauren Ross is the Director/Chief Curator of White Columns.

WHITE ROOMS (solo exhibitions for artists unaffiliated with a New York gallery):

Dan Levenson's paintings defy easy interpretation, as they address and are influenced by a broad range of principles. The artist lists his main concerns as "perspective and formlessness, solidity and suspension, austerity and pleasure." Each piece presents a sort of psychic landscape; a flat, indeterminate space containing clouds and holes. Visual depictions of these items give solidity and shape to that which is inherently without mass or form, as well as holding specific emotional associations, such as dreaminess, thoughtfulness, fear and anxiety. Although ephemeral in nature, the compositions have the solid appearance of three-dimensional objects, the result of being designed and modeled with computer software. Beginning with the formulation of perspective in pictorial space, this work draws on many traditions in art history, including the flatness of Pop art, and the psychological associations of Surrealism. Levenson recently had a solo show at *sixtyseven in Brooklyn. He holds a MFA in painting from London's Royal College of Art.

Gary Cruz has been exploring issues of male identity, image, and ritual for several years by incorporating the act of shaving into his artwork. This investigation has taken different manifestations, from drawings of moustaches made of the artist's own facial stubble to a site-specific installation in which Cruz lathered and shaved every inch of a public bathroom. In his White Room, Cruz shows new paintings that depict silhouetted heads of men. The paintings are made with a combination of white paint and shaving cream that is applied to a painted black canvas, and then shaved off with a disposable razor. Trails of shaving cream remain as evidence of each stroke, which is then filled in with colored oil stick. Titled with common male names such as Joe and John, each piece depicts an individual, yet is not a portrait; it is a cross between the specific and the generic. Cruz has shown his work at such venues as The Drawing Center, Art in General, Matthew Marks Gallery, and the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. This is his first solo show.

White Columns
320 West 13th Steet
New York
tel. 212-9244212
fax. 212-6454764

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