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9/9/2009

Two exhibitions

Abrons Arts Center, New York

Mary A. Valverde, Glexis Novoa and writer Rose Oluronke Ojo Untitled (land-scape)

"We rehearse our fears in order to lessen them. In a way this "letting go" of the work – this refusal to make a static form, a monolithic sculpture, in favor of a disappearing, changing, unstable, and fragile form..."
-Felix Gonzales Torres

The Abrons Arts Center is pleased to announce a new exhibition opening September 10, 2009 in the Main Gallery featuring artists Mary A. Valverde, Glexis Novoa and writer Rose Oluronke Ojo. Untitled (land-scape) presents work that depicts imagined topographies through the use of iconography, allegory and metaphor.

The exhibition is comprised of statements that offer and propose the way we perceive familiar and unfamiliar images and physical objects. Creating different entry points to visual and written languages where what is understood can also be foreign in translation thus propelling one to reconsider how language is used and understood.

This exhibition posits all three participating artists/writer in developing site-specific gestures in response to our current global economic landscape which sparks many views, totalitarianism and distractions. Mary Valverde will activate the gallery space through ephemera, fragile offerings that suggest a need for alternative perspectives in how society can consider its past and present and find the value of dual meaning rather than single trajectories that are now economically worn thin. Valverde’s art practice includes references to her ancestral origins of Ecuador.

Glexis Novoa, like Valverde, is a multi-media artist from Cuba who will be making a single graphite landscape drawing that incorporates various cities from different countries the artist has visited including various historical landmarks located in Lower Manhattan.

Rose Oluronke Ojo’s writing depicts a trans-Atlantic dialogue between individuals. While detailing separation, loss and gain through the use of contemporary iconography and symbolism, the work also functions as the topographic details of an incorporeal landscape.

This exhibition at the Abrons Arts Center was co-organized by artist/curator William Cordova and writer Rose Oluronke Ojo as part of BASE, a forum, a response in discourse and design. It exists as a platform for locality and groundedness that includes choreographers, writers, visual artists and community activists.

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Jayson Keeling: Behind the Green Door

The Abrons Arts Center is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by artist Jayson Keeling titled Behind the Green Door. This exhibition will be opening in our Upper Main Gallery and includes a selection of new paintings, sculpture, and videos which continue Keeling’s deft exploration of cultural production and appropriation as it relates to the notion of transfiguration.

Transfiguration of the self and transfiguration of the image may be one in the same in Keeling's boldly graphic interrogation of social constructs and appropriated imagery. Keeling is a cipher for a manifold of visual appropriations including porn and horror films, marginalized third world signage and advertising, popular music lyrics and album covers, and various related texts. His operation upon these appropriated subjects is both literally and symbolically textural in his skillfully hand made paintings and sculptures.

Layer upon layer of textured glitter, dust, and debris coalesce in his paintings to create highly frontal, glinting and mysterious new icons. The role of these works is like that of the Sphinx – the composite human/animal poised as a guardian to ancient secrets that are projected into the future through its forward gaze. The sources of Behind the Green Door are often obliterated so there is no use in returning to any one singular present.

Projecting forward, even literally being carried forward in a horse drawn buggy through the Ethiopian countryside in his video like a woodpecker with a headache or a nightingale with a toothache (2009), there is no need for reverse because the construction of meaning is created by what the viewer/videographer passes during the journey. Naturally, the horse will make its physical deposits along the roadside, but this involuntary action is assurance that the corporeal will always be the carrier of these elusive secrets.

Jayson Keeling lives and works in Long Island City, Queens. His photography, video and sculptural work has been featured in many exhibitions including The Queens International 4, The Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Filmic, VideoStudio, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Summer Mixtape Vol. 1, Exit Art, New York and The Wu-Tang googolplex Show (Congress), GBE@passerby, New York. His residencies include: The Apex Art Outbound Travel Residency to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2009), The LMCC Swing Space Residency (2009) and Workspace Residency (2007), The Bronx Museum’s A.I.M 27 (2006) and Aljiria’s Emerge 08 (2006).

This exhibition was organized by Abrons Visual Arts Director Jonathan Durham. He can be reached at 212-589-0400 x 202

Image: Jayson Keeling Bangles 2009, glitter and debris on canvas

For press inquiries please contact Adrian Saldaña at 212.598.0400 x216 or asaldana@henrystreet.org

Opening Reception September 10, 2009 6 – 9 pm

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street) New York, NY 10002
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am until 6pm.

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