calendario eventi  :: 




6/7/2004

Synthesis

Axel Raben Gallery, New York

Experiments in Collaboration with work by nine participating artists' teams. This exhibition came together as a result of the curators' desire to develop a strategy that allows both indi-viduals to merge into a kind of third person. This way of working is not necessarily shaped by their personal language and their personal concerns. It is a method that is based on mutual respect and trust that has al-lowed both of them to venture into new and unknown directions.


comunicato stampa

EXPERIMENTS IN COLLABORATION
CURATED BY RON JANOWICH AND MERIJN VAN DER HEIJDEN

Axel Raben Gallery is proud to present SYNTHESIS: Experiments in Collaboration with work by nine participating artists' teams.

Joe Biondo & Ed Kerns both have interests in using materials to symbolically define space by contrasting nature's internal processes and the external solutions of design. Their collabo-rative work strongly suggests "that renewed perceptions of space, distance, and time are measures of the narrowing gap between the internal and external realities of humanity's col-lective consciousness."

Jim Clark & Creighton Michael created two autonomous, yet complementary works for the exhibition. The result is an environment activated by motion, resulting in a dance of primary colors, light, and shadows, activating a "conversation" between Clark's suspended columns and Michael's large three-dimensional drawing.

Brian Davis & Jon Rajkovich address the experience of modern institutional architecture. They use the archetypical institutional building as a starting point in their collaborative proc-ess, evoking past impressions that Davis and Rajkovich then mix elements of their own imagination.

Angie Drakoupolis & Daniel Hill will present their project "Mythograph," a digital video projection that combines animation and sound. Using pulsating images that represent a dia-gram of the inner ear, it is accompanied by a harmonious composition of sound. Drakoupo-lis and Hill seek "to bring the mind into a state of equilibrium, to experience the space be-tween thoughts and words, the space where imagination and myth are generated."

David Humphrey & Jennifer Coates have been making collaborative paintings and draw-ings since they first met in 1996. What started as an improvisatory back and forth slowly evolved into a game-like operation. Their process follows an imperative to amuse and sur-prise, in which "habits are disabled, inhibitions dissolved, misremembering and skill short-comings encouraged, and individual voices lost and found again."

Merijn van der Heijden & Ron Janowich have worked through a series of investigations in a variety of media, including digital prints, painting, photography, and sound. The idea of synthesis emerged when they became interested in each other's methods, viewpoints, and rules of art making. At first glance it seems they are preoccupied with almost opposing strategies: adding to create a multi-layered transparency and taking away to create a clear and single view. The goal in both of their work is to get to an essence/truth that reflects and re-lates to personal experiences from their everyday life, mundane or profound.

Laura Lisbon & Suzanne Maura Silver share a mutual interest in language, interference, borders, and structural visibility. They decided to collaborate by documenting the processes in their individual works through an online exchange of ideas rather than working on the same canvas or sheet of paper. For this collaboration they are interested in the simultaneity and mutual interference of layered mark-making in paint and pencil.

Craig Miller & Sean Miller will exhibit a series of handcrafted shipping crates. This series will collectively function as a miniature museum space. The interiors of the crates will con-tain individual miniature galleries. Miller and Miller will, in turn, curate several artists to oc-cupy each gallery space, expanding on the idea of collaboration. In terms of art practice these objects also occupy several different categories i.e. shipping container, exhibition space and art object. As art objects, these crates may be perceived as sculpture, performance pieces and a functional, collaborative portrait of contemporary art practice.

Sybrigje Westerhof & Marijan Vos, besides continuing to create autonomous artwork, both have branched out in the fields of applied arts and interior design. Among other pro-jects, Sybrigje Westerhof designed a new line of laminate floors for a prominent Dutch inte-rior design firm and Marijan Vos currently is the creative director for Textile design at Ikea, in the Netherlands. Their investigation for this exhibition has taken them to the question of decoration and to the fine line between an autonomous piece of art and a purely decorative work.

This exhibition came together as a result of the curators' desire to develop a strategy that allows both indi-viduals to merge into a kind of third person. This way of working is not necessarily shaped by their personal language and their personal concerns. It is a method that is based on mutual respect and trust that has al-lowed both of them to venture into new and unknown directions.

This method of collaboration became the premise for this exhibition. The notion of synthesis as a coming to-gether of two separate identities into a new and highly invigorating investigation, where, as a pre-requisite, one must question or set aside one's own art making rules and set of tools and one must open up to a particular problem in art and visual language from a completely different perspective.

On View July 7 - August 7, 2004

Opening reception July 7, 6 - 9 pm

Axel Raben Gallery
526 West 26th Street #304
New York

IN ARCHIVIO [1]
Synthesis
dal 6/7/2004 al 7/8/2004

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