Our long-running group show was initiated by David Rich and Paulette Myers-Rich in St Paul Minnesota back in July as Full House West. The show migrated to our gallery in Park Slope Brooklyn in early September, and it will remain up until November 2nd.
Showing posts with label ethan pettit gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethan pettit gallery. Show all posts
September 29, 2014
September 26, 2013
Move in Freedom
Move in freedom, move in total freedom, and each moment remember to drop the past. It accumulates like dust. Each moment you have experienced something, and then it goes on accumulating. Don't accumulate it. Just go on ceasing as far as the past is concerned, dying as far as the past is concerned, so you are totally alive, throbbing, pulsating, streaming, and, whatsoever comes, you face it with awareness.
— Osho
With this long-running show featuring three of our represented artists, we drop the word "contemporary" from the name of our gallery, and embark upon a more general encounter with modernity. And especially, we are interested in the "immersive modernity" that we believe is the key to a theory of Brooklyn art. In a forthcoming catalogue we shall elaborate on this idea, and some further commentary is available in our hard copy press release, which you can download here as a pdf.
— Ethan Pettit
Please join us in Park Slope for a reception for
Move in Freedom
featuring the work of
Mari Oshima, Alkemikal Soshu, and Eva Schicker.
Saturday, September 28, 6:30PM – 9:30PM
March 10, 2013
David Rich Opens on April 5th
David Rich Paintings
April 5 - June 2, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 6-9 pm
10 Eighth Avenue, Suite 3
Brooklyn NY 11217
It is an honor to welcome David Rich into our gallery, where he joins an unpredictable dialogue that has taken shape since we first opened our doors in June of last year. David Rich is an exceptionally bold and uncompromising painter, whose reputation precedes him. His paintings are densely layered and decisively edited, and also open and refreshing. They are responses to urban landscape that converse as well with inner life. We are lucky and delighted to have David Rich on board!
Please join us at a reception for David Rich at our elegant new location in Park Slope on April 5th. Map.
Please visit David Rich's page on our website to see more about this artist.
October 7, 2012
When We Were Ancient
Teddy's Bar and Grill celebrates 25 years of solidarity
with the avant garde!
with the avant garde!
As part of the celebrations of their 25th anniversary, and also of 125 years since Peter Doelger opened a tavern at this location, Teddy’s Bar and Grill is proud to present
WHEN WE WERE ANCIENT
a history of the Williamsburg scene
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 20, 9pm to Midnight
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Teddy's Back Room
96 Berry Street, at the corner of North 8th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(L Train to Bedford Avenue)
718.384.9787
An exhibit of archives from the artist and bohemian migration to Williamsburg and Greenpoint in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Zines, posters, photos, weeklies, artist literature of all kinds from 3 decades.
And featuring Ward Shelley’s "Williamsburg Timeline"
Loren Munk’s "Williamsburg Strip" and photography by Mara Catalan.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Minor Injury • The Nose • Flytrap • Cat's Head • Lizard's Tail • Keep Refrigerated • Lalalandia • El Sensorium • Organism • They Might Be Giants • The L Cafe • Mustard • Brand Name Damages • Waterfront Week • Worm • Tony Millionaire • Medea's Weekend • The Curse • The Can Man • The Ten Dollar Man • Test-Site • Open Window Theater • The Pedestrian Project • Nerve Circle • The Astro Zombies • Colored Greens • Hit & Run Theater • Wild Child Productions • Lex Grey • The Ship's Mast • and piles of other ephemera and detritus from the days of $300 apartments in the heart of the Northside
From the archives of ethan pettit contemporary and Eyewash gallery
Special thanks to Larry Walczak
Curated by Ethan Pettit
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••
If you know who you are ... you will not want to miss this
Exhibit runs through November 15, daily
Photo: the Northside waterfront, circa 1990. © Eva Schicker 2012
September 25, 2012
Ideogram and Morphism - Robert Egert
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| Inversion blue chalk, blue conté on printmaking paper, 11 x 17 in. 2012 |
The underworld, a world unknown by any living person, is imagined as an extension of our own world but perversely altered. It exists in a parallel universe–a magical place that obeys the laws of conventional, three dimensional space but yet cannot be accessed save by passing through the transformation of death. Like a mirror to our own world, the underworld is often depicted as an inverted reflection of our living reality. An inverted torch, a window that slides open from the top, a bed that clings to the ceiling. - R.E.
Robert Egert’s biomorphic, blue chalk drawings took me by surprise – full of magma energy, wit, and speculations on the body, on science, on nature mimicking art. His images are Darwin’s dreams, Philip Guston’s party-jokes, or Frida Kahlo’s sighs of grief. They hold underworlds of swirly vessels, Klein bottles (non-orientable, mathematical surfaces), slaughterhouse slurry turned into bone meal, and pumping diastolic hearts. While classically beautiful, they shocked me to subservience – I was suddenly alone, at 30,000 feet, where I could hear a pin drop.
— William Allen, WG Magazine, September 2012
Robert Egert grew up riding his bicycle through Bushwick in the 1970s. Twenty years later he was living in Williamsburg and was one of the handful of artists who founded the artists’ community there. Williamsburg’s early bohemians share an intense bond. They are like family to me. And even if I might not know them well, as friends in the ordinary sense, I know them deeply in connection with our shared philosophical roots.
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| Lekythoi No.6 tempera on archival paper 23 x 30 in. 2012 |
Williamsburg in the 90s was an oasis of weirdness at a time when art on the whole was very derivative. There was a movement here that advanced synthesis over analysis in art making. The neighborhood became known for hybrid forms and unearthly environments. There was a generative, organic quality to the art that was starkly different from the imagistic literalism of postmodernism. You can see this overall trend in Williamsburg in the work of Roxy Paine, Chris Martin, Amy Sillman, Ken Butler, Rachel Harrison, Ebon Fisher, to name a few. And you can also see in the history of this art scene a fusion between conceptualism and abstract painting.
To be sure, art writers invariably strain to find overarching narratives, and I would not attempt to do this, for example, with the new trends in painting in Bushwick, which in most cases I think are no more connected with old Williamsburg than they are with any number of other historical trends in painting. Still, we can point to some things that happened to New York Art at the turn of the century as the scene began to migrate across the East River. The appearance of certain esoteric and organic motifs in abstract painting in Greenpoint in the 1980s (James Harrison, Peter Acheson, Chris Martin). And the way in which certain conceits of minimalism merged with media art in the “warehouse movement” along the waterfront in the early 90s.
Robert Egert’s work provides a key to this transition. His work spans the whole of it. Some of his paintings even look like keys, or compact hybrids of organic life and language poised for an unraveling.
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| Torasik conté on printmaking paper, approx. 12 x 23 in. 2010-2011 |
A Klein Bottle is a mathematical construction that takes the form of a three-dimensional object. The Klein Bottle has a single continuous surface that coterminously includes both interior and exterior surfaces. Apposite to the basic nature of evolutionary biology, the Klein Bottle is in fact a primitive model for capture, consumption and digestion. - R.E.
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| Robert Egert oil on canvas, late 80s |
Robert began his career in the postmodern East Village and Soho in the 80s. Then he was in the middle of the Brooklyn phenomenon in the 90s. He took a master’s degree in Marxist studies at the storied CUNY grad center under Marshall Berman, a right of passage of many thinkers and readers in the neighborhood at that time. And so even though there is a Brooklyn synthetic quality to his organic forms, there is also an analytic quality that comes through from the 80s fascination with history, power, the construction of knowledge (epistemology), and so forth.
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| Organ 1 conté on printmaking paper, 12 x 17 in. 2009 |
The delicate red and blue conté drawings remind me of those mysterious illustrations in the very first encyclopedias, like the drawings assembled by the brigade of draftsmen who accompanied Napoleon’s army to Egypt. Specimens from a naïve science.
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| Robert Egert oil on cavas, late 80s |
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| Pendulum conté on printmaking paper, 11 x 17 in. 2012 |
The word pendulum can refer to the swinging part of a clock that acts to maintain and regulate movement. But the origin of the word comes from the latin, pendulus, hanging down. Our own gross (large) organs are concentrated in our chest, thorax, neck and head, and our appendages are largely composed of skeletal, muscular, adipose tissue, nerve, skin, etc. In the future, scientists will likely explore the implantation of sensory organs in our appendages to enhance our sensorial capacity. This will be especially useful in military applications. - R.E.
The conté drawings could also be rubbings from some alien fossil, or powdery carbon copies drawn out of some forgotten photomechanical process. One inspiration that Robert mentions are medical illustrations of vascular systems, where long arteries are truncated for easier viewing.
Somewhere between language and life form, Egert draws these entities as discrete symbols, carefully conjoined with their negative spaces. And then there are intricate details inside the shapes, rendering a deeper layer of anatomy. The drawings are done on a rough and allegedly extinct kind of laid printing paper. The pigment dust lies on the page a delicate powder, much like Odilon Redon’s use of charcoal.
They are pithy but not cynical. Actually they are affirmative and sincere. They hold out an ephemeral optimism against a disembodied modernity that they nonetheless acknowledge. Simply, the possibility of new aesthetic life against considerable odds. They remind me of the marks that a philosopher might make who has forsaken writing, but whose pictograms still contain the powder of the battlefield.
— Ethan Pettit, 25 September 2012
August 28, 2012
Wackadoodle !!!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Opening Reception — Friday, September 7 — 7PM-11PM
Ken Butler • Robert Egert • Jan Holthoff • Gili Levy • Henry G. Sanchez
Eva Schicker • Alkemikal Soshu
August 26, 2012
Ken Butler Is in the House!
We count ourselves lucky among New York City galleries now to be representing an iconoclast of two major currents of activity across the turn of the century. Ken Butler is outsized both in Williamsburg and in the downtown school of Zorn. He is probably also the only artist in the world who can claim the distinction of having had simultaneous shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum.
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| Ken Butler, Sled Cello, 1998, Mixed media. Collection of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette, Oregon, Gift of the artist |
I am most pleased that Ken has joined us. I welcome and thank him. In our upcoming group show opening September 7 (still TBA) you'll see some of Ken Butler’s famous hybrid instruments.
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| Ken Butler, Torso Cello, 1994, Mixed media. 51 x 14 x 12 |
June 7, 2012
Inaugural Show
The inaugural show of our new gallery was a resounding success. We had good support early on from the community, good buzz, and great attendance. It took place over the weekend of Bushwick Open Studios, and we were listed in Bushwickdaily.com among the "top 15" galleries and studios to visit during the open studio weekend. Really a very thrilling weekend overall. THANK YOU to all of you who came out to support us and see the art. Visit us for more pics and info at the gallery and on Facebook.
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| One of our artists, Rafael Fuchs (aka "Fuchs of Bushwick") performs a night action while all of Germany looks on via the ZDF TV station. Friday night, June 1, 2012 |
May 18, 2012
Abstract Painting ... of all People!
The Art of Gili Levy
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| Islands oil on canvas 2012 |
In this essay from May 2012, I discuss Gili Levy’s work in terms of “abstraction.” Since then I’ve realized the word has almost no meaning any more. I have since taken to calling the general gist of this work “transparent narrative.” It is not strictly abstract — that is, non-objective — for there is figuration and perspectival space here as well. In any case, it is an education for me, and I credit Gili Levy for introducing me and my gallery to the endlessly fascinating painting scene in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (ep, Sept. 2012)
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| gouache on paper 14 x 17 in. 2012 |
In the past ten years or so we have been seeing “abstract” or non-objective paintings that have the alacrity of conceptual art. Paintings are now being made that advance abstraction as a universal shorthand for esthetic life. This is not the defensive kind of abstract painting that seeks only to uphold the cult, but something more ambitious, more outgoing. We see paintings that hoover up discourses that not long ago were the purview of specialized “avant gardes” that avoided painting in general and abstraction in particular.
The new abstract painters are many and prolific, and they are taking to the stage of the canvas in ways that recall the first half of the last century, and make the “return of painting” in the 1980s look like a false start.
Abstract painting has a paradoxical and problematic place in modern art. It was at the font of modernity, at the birth of the avant garde. And then it was its nemesis, that content-free “safe” kind of painting of the McCarthy era and of the corporate art of the sixties and seventies. It has provided the most brilliant and the most boring events on canvas of the past hundred years.
To be sure, abstract painting has provided every decade with marvelous pictures, but it has only really rocked a few decades. It has spent long interludes as a cloistered and very demanding form of art, and it has come in frequently for bruising criticism on account of “lack of content.” Yet this is also the painting that launched high modernism in Europe and that put America on the international art map. It is the painting that gave to art a new and ineffable world.
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| Dancer oil on canvas 60 x 36 in. 2008 |
And how interesting that in our own time, when these very narratives of modern art, abstract art, avant garde art, and the historical tensions between them … have all come in for a kind of global meltdown in a brave new world, that it should be abstract painting — “of all people!” — that would now appear to be coming along to sort it all out.
And I think this aspect of “sorting things out” is what separates the present generation of abstract painters from the old schools. The navigational problems are more acute. There is a larger and rather different field of impulses and elements to integrate. There are greater pressures on the vocabulary of abstraction. Old muscles must be stretched and new muscles must be grown.
The first thing I ask when I look at a contemporary abstract painting, is whether it is really an abstract painting, or just another presentational dodge in the “style” of abstraction. I look, in other words, not for artifact, not for “color” or “composition” or “balance,” and certainly not for cheeky references, but for character and intelligence. And then for a process that is convincing on some level.
I am convinced by the work of Gili Levy. She has introduced me to the work of most of the new abstractionists, and it is her work that satisfies more than most what I have come to value and expect in this kind of painting.
Levy is a relentless painter. One has the sense of paint being heaved and deployed almost violently, to trump our habits of viewing and get to the bones of a psychological process. What distinguishes her work, her signature style you might say, and what makes her paintings real abstraction and not stylized abstraction, is that Levy does not settle on novelty. The paintings “hide from the first viewer” as a philosopher once said. The impulse to “newness” for its own sake is denied, or put in abeyance, in the interest of directing the viewer to a genuine experience.
And I think this aspect of “sorting things out” is what separates the present generation of abstract painters from the old schools. The navigational problems are more acute. There is a larger and rather different field of impulses and elements to integrate. There are greater pressures on the vocabulary of abstraction. Old muscles must be stretched and new muscles must be grown.
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| One Man Show 1 oil on canvas 60 x 72 in. 2009 |
The first thing I ask when I look at a contemporary abstract painting, is whether it is really an abstract painting, or just another presentational dodge in the “style” of abstraction. I look, in other words, not for artifact, not for “color” or “composition” or “balance,” and certainly not for cheeky references, but for character and intelligence. And then for a process that is convincing on some level.
I am convinced by the work of Gili Levy. She has introduced me to the work of most of the new abstractionists, and it is her work that satisfies more than most what I have come to value and expect in this kind of painting.
Levy is a relentless painter. One has the sense of paint being heaved and deployed almost violently, to trump our habits of viewing and get to the bones of a psychological process. What distinguishes her work, her signature style you might say, and what makes her paintings real abstraction and not stylized abstraction, is that Levy does not settle on novelty. The paintings “hide from the first viewer” as a philosopher once said. The impulse to “newness” for its own sake is denied, or put in abeyance, in the interest of directing the viewer to a genuine experience.
— Ethan Pettit, 18 May 2012