Planes (1968)

This Spring, New Dialect in collaboration with OZ Nashville and Zeitgeist Gallery—will present Planes, the groundbreaking 1968 installation by Trisha Brown to Nashville audiences free-of-charge.

Brown is an avant-garde and postmodernist choreographer whose more than forty-year contribution to contemporary dance has made a significant impact on the field worldwide. It has been said that her movement investigations find “the extraordinary in the everyday and challenge existing perceptions of what constitutes performance.” 

In May the Trisha Brown Dance Company will travel to Nashville to perform twice at OZ Nashville. During that month, one of the Company’s dancers will also set Brown’s renowned work Planes on the dancers of New Dialect, who will then perform the piece nine times at Zeitgeist Gallery. These performances will be free to the public. 

Installation Dates and Times:

Saturdays, May 2, 9, 23, & 30 at 11 AM and 6 PM

*Special performance featuring dancers from Trisha Brown Dance Company with New Dialect: Friday, May 15, at 7:30 PM

Interview with artist Lain York

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Where does the name Scissor Bell come from?

Lain York in front of Landscape: Thompson Lane and Armory Drive (Crazy Cave)

It came from a conversation about My Little Pony (Sweetie Belle). I liked the idea of a title that alluded to a simple deconstructive process and something suggesting resonance.

How does working in vinyl change the way you express ideas? Does it limit you?

The new work is very abstracted but I still think of it as figurative. I wanted to address the figure in a new way (for me); to move away from silhouette and into a more organic way of drawing. I thought of Alberto Giacometti drawings and the way he moved from the inside out rendering a figure. The web-like imagery was looking at the figure, drawing grids, and connecting dots within the grids. I then used the finished shapes as templates to make several, layered resonating shapes. Weaving strips of color was another fun, very rhythmic process.

Portrait: BobLobertiniJackieFargo

The vinyl is fun and immediate but it is also very particular; there are rules. There are moments to break the rules and some negotiating that goes on. Whether I work with paint, graphite, correct tape or vinyl there is a particular sensitivity that I think has to be respected that’s important for successful finished pieces.  I think that through attentively addressing parameters or limitations, one sees more possibilities. 

What inspired you to make this show about Nashville? What are you trying to say about the city? How does it fit in with other recent shows about Nashville – Brady Haston’s?

The end of the year is always a very inward looking period for me. The city is progressing so quickly and as a native, I of course feel that some things are being lost. I also feel that Creative Industry in Nashville has much to do with this development. Almost all of the references are from things that are now gone but that’s the natural trade-off for moving forward and I am comfortable with it. I like the analogy of being an archaeologist and assessing a progressing landscape from looking down at what has been covered up.

Barging Session (Fairfax and 32nd Avenue), 2014

I thought Brady Haston’s document of Chronicles of the Cumberland by Paul Clemments was a brilliant example of using abstract painting to convey a very particular narrative. I don’t think mine sought to be nearly as articulate or focused. The idea of Narrative, particularly more localized accounts is incredibly timely; I see it everywhere. Story-telling in the digital age seems to be human beings beginning to scratch the surface of making sense of ridiculous amounts of data we gathered. Inevitably, this narrative has deep roots in the past.

How has your work changed since your last show? Is this more personal?

I definitely wanted to move away from anything as content driven as earlier work. Emphasizing the more formal aspects of the new series (color, texture, rhythm, etc.) was very important. The process of making the images has to be engaging and I pulled images/shapes from a lot of fairly unrelated sources. The previous body of work was very focused and it was a bit of chore this go-round to focus. There are many new avenues that I am looking forward to exploring because of this.

Stuart Davis - Report from Rockport, 1940

This latest work was indeed very personal. I am still absorbing it.

Who are your current influences?

Stuart Davis, Matisse, N Dash, 70’s skate board magazines/Glen Friedman photography, Gedi Sibony, George Condo, Jean Michel Alberola, Hurtado Segovia

Scissor Bell is on view at Zeitgeist Gallery through February 28, 2015

Interview with artist Jeremiah Ariaz

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How and when did the project that became Once Upon a Time in the West start?

The project started in 2007 after a chance stop in Tucumcari, NM. I became enthralled with the town and for the next four years returned whenever I had the opportunity, usually twice a year for a few days at a time. As the project took shape I became aware of the Sergio Leone films that were made in the Almeria region of Spain, a landscape that looks like the American West. One film in particular, For A Few Dollars More, was partially set in a fictionalized Tucumcari. This provided a perfect link for me to photograph there as a companion project.  

Installation, Once Upon a Time in the West by Jeremiah Ariaz

My work often deals with the tension between reality and artifice. Therefore, the kind of conflict I try to highlight in a photograph, I could think about in a broader context over multiple projects. This opened up creative possibilities for me. 

What is your personal connection to this project?

As a boy growing up in Kansas, I felt a particular draw to the West.  Where “the West” begins has been a shifting, even contested, local. Once, to be west of the Mississippi River was to be in the West. Today, I think most people imagine a Southwestern landscape and the Pacific coast. I guess for me, the West began in Kansas. There is a romance to the West, which admittedly, I never felt, but seemed to intrigue people I met traveling, especially abroad, when they learned I was from Kansas. Maybe the work started trying to understand what they thought of as the West.

Indian on Horse, Western City (Dasing, Germany) 2013 by Jeremiah Ariaz

Where did your travels take you and what surprised you about what you saw there?

In addition to photographing in New Mexico, this project took me to southern Spain and across Germany. It was startling to see people from other cultures reenact stories I’d thought of as distinctly American. 

How has it changed how you think of American history? Of how outsiders view it?

I tend to read American history with a critical eye. Much of my artwork questions assumptions people historically had, such as the idea of Manifest Destiny.  I think by often showcasing facades in my work, one might question the American ideas at their root…. ‘if what I’m looking at isn’t real, what is?’

Who are your artistic influences?

August Sander

There are many. I’m drawn to August Sander and his ambitious attempt to create a collective portrait of German society in the twentieth century. I was thinking about him as I was trying to portray Tucumcari, and how that one place might be a window into America. I appreciate the stark realism of photographers like Dorothea Lange, most known for her images of depression era America, and writers like John Steinbeck. The characters in Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” seemed to populate the New Mexico town where my project started. I’m drawn to the colors and the melancholic sense of isolation in Edward Hopper’s paintings. Richard Prince has long been an influence for me, particularly his “re-photography” of the Marlboro Man and the questions his work raise of authorship and masculinity. When I started working on this project I had a chance to see several Sergio Leone’s films on the big screen, which was a real thrill. I would be amiss not to mention Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, a husband and wife team that also photographed German Indians (specifically the reenactors rather than the theatrical performances most of my images highlight). Alec Soth’s work always excites me; most recently the “Dispatches” he has been doing though his publishing company LBM. As a teacher, I’m influenced by my students that get excited when discovering things for the first time and those that show sincere commitment to their work.

Ariaz's show "Once Upon a Time in the West" is on view at Zeitgeist Gallery through February 28. View available works.

Vesna Pavlović in FOUND show in UK

 FOUND

30 January - 3 May 2015

Vesna Pavlović - Search for New Landscapes, 2011

The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK  is delighted to present a selection of works by seven international contemporary artists who work with found images, whether gleaned from the internet, flea markets and second-hand shops or mass produced printed sources such as magazine pages and postcards. The artists employ a range of processes and techniques including cuts, embellishments, erasure and interference, to transform or 're-stage' the found image, separating it from its original use, context and meaning. The exhibition explores themes of loss, memory and mass experience as well as socially-constructed hierarchies and identities concerning gender, race and religion. Drawing attention to our relentless consumption and self-projection of visual information in a digital age, the selected artworks reverberate and bring into question the feeling of being suffocated and framed by representations of other people’s lives, tastes and experiences.

FOUND features work by Paul Chiappe, Ruth Claxton, Julie Cockburn, Ellen Gallagher, Vesna Pavlović, Erik Kessels and John Stezaker, including six new works specially commissioned by The New Art Gallery Walsall.

Preview

Thursday 29 January 2015

6-8pm

Join us for the preview in the company of the artists.

There will be an opportunity to hear artist Vesna Pavlović introduce her work from 6-6.15pm in the exhibition.


Artist Information

Paul Chiappe www.paulchiappe.com      www.carslawstlukes.com

Ruth Claxton www.ruthclaxton.info          www.houldsworth.co.uk

Julie Cockburn www.juliecockburn.com     www.flowersgallery.com

Ellen Gallagher www.hauserwirth.com

Erik Kessels www.kesselskramerpublishing.com   www.kkoutlet.com

Vesna Pavlovic www.vesnapavlovic.com

John Stezaker www.theapproach.co.uk


Open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sunday 12noon – 4pm.

Closed Mondays and Bank Holidays. Free admission. For more information visit thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk

 

Portfolios Group 4

For a limited time, Zeitgeist is releasing specially curated portfolios by individual Zeitgeist artists in limited quantities. If you see one you'd like to hold or order please e-mail lain@zeitgeist-art.com or call 615-256-4805 or come in. Here is a sample of the work available:

See groups one, two, and three as well.

Lars Strandh

digital print on paper (unframed), paper size: 16 ½” x 16 ½”        $1,800. Ensemble

 
 

Alicia Henry

Untitled (dress)   2014, mixed media, on fabric, 15” x 11”

Untitled (figure)  2014, mixed media on fabric, 27” x 14 ½”     $2,700. Ensemble

 

Ward Schumaker

Handmade Books, edition of 10, 32 pages      $650. each

 

Portfolios Group 3

For a limited time, Zeitgeist is releasing specially curated portfolios by individual Zeitgeist artists in limited quantities. If you see one you'd like to hold or order please e-mail lain@zeitgeist-art.com or call 615-256-4805 or come in. Here is a sample of the work available:

See groups one, two, and four as well.

Brady Haston

Aug. 21, 2009/Apr. 2007, mixed media on paper, 9 x 12”    $1,600. ensemble                               

Karen Seapker

Untitled, 2014, mixed media on paper, 3 @ 9"x12", 1 @ 11"x15"     $850. ensemble

Lain York

One and the other

Watercolor, graphite, gouache on paper, 9” x 12”             $600. ensemble

 

Portfolios Group 2

For a limited time, Zeitgeist is releasing specially curated portfolios by individual Zeitgeist artists in limited quantities. If you see one you'd like to hold or order please e-mail lain@zeitgeist-art.com or call 615-256-4805 or come in. Here is a sample of the work available:

See groups one, three , and four as well.

Nancy Rhoda

black and white photography, 10" x 15 1/4", edition of 35        $1,650. ensemble

 

Megan Lightell

Oil on paper, 7" x 7" and 7" x 13.5"              $2,200. ensemble

Manuel Zeitlin

lithograph on Rives BFK Arches Printing paper, artist proofs; 19” x 15”     $1,950. ensemble

 

Portfolios Group 1

For a limited time, Zeitgeist is releasing specially curated portfolios by individual Zeitgeist artists in limited quantities. If you see one you'd like to hold or order please e-mail lain@zeitgeist-art.com or call 615-256-4805 or come in. Here is a sample of the work available:

See groups two, three , and four as well.

Patirck Deguira

Acrylic & silkscreen on Rives paper, 14 ¾” x 20”                  $3,000. ensemble

 

 

Paul Collins

Ink and watercolor on paper, 18" x 24"               $1,500. ensemble

 

 

Wayne White

Mixed media on paper, 7" x 11.5"                    $900. ensemble

 

Todd McDaniel on ramble, repeat

mcdanileinstall1114c.jpg

The motivation for my most recent work comes from an overall interest in landscape, and more specifically, surrounding that landscape with a fragmentary, “dumb” structural element.  Architect Paul Rudolph once wrote:  “We build isolated buildings with no regard to the space between them, monotonous and endless streets, too many gold fish bowls and too few caves.  We tend to build merely diagrams of buildings.”  Living in New York again, these words hold great meaning to me.  I am constantly searching for those “caves,” both outside and within myself. Most of my current work utilizes drawing, something I all but abandoned for years. My interest in it now is confined to an almost mechanical process, eliminating gesture for the most part.  I feel the linear element, handled in an almost naïve way, strengthens the fragmentary, allusive, and ephemeral cloud that seems to hang over the work.  And because I quickly become tired of the image at hand, my work has always been small in scale.

My paintings / drawings reference nothing other than a search to locate visual facts which I feel are buried somewhere within all of us.  My devotion to the memory of early visual stimulation in my life is increasing as I get older – I find myself using the same compositional map that I unwittingly used in drawings I made when I was a kid.  I could mention architecture (primarily ancient and antique), older films (especially “B” types and serials), and surviving examples of Roman decorative wall painting as influences, but because I don’t bring these things to the act of making the image, I don’t feel it would be entirely truthful to do so.  I employ a non-conceptual approach to the process, and I deny content as much as I possibly can.  It’s merely point/line to color to point/line…and on and on.   These small pieces (fragments) are slowly coming together to form a much-larger thing.  What that is, I cannot say.  Maybe the viewer can complete the picture. 

work on view at Zeitgeist through December 21

Best of Nashville 2014

New Work by Christopher Roberson

"My practice, while rooted in sculpture, finds its genesis in line, or more specifically, the disruption of line. I am interested in line that has been warped, distorted, liquefied, rotated, and abruptly ended. The source drawings for my sculptures are often produced digitally, which makes it possible to see an origin line manipulated in real time. This vulnerability that is applied to the drawings often produces unanticipated results and allows the injection of chance into a process that can be very methodical. Working in a vector environment also gives me the freedom to play with an economy of imagery that can be repeated and scaled infinitely.

In Full Sight/ I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick

The work shown in Cannonball Run 3 at Zeitgeist finds me picking up the scraps of these source drawings and allowing them to stand alone. Mining a lexicon of cartoons, sports, and the suburban landscape, the resulting structures, while abstract in nature, can become familiar and elemental. I feel that this recognition magnifies the irregularities and modifications of material. The subtle contrast between textures like black adhesive vinyl and black vinyl fabric, reinforce these ideas. My intention is to call up associations with youth and exterior/interior domains- aiming to in some way preserve the juvenescent spirit, while acknowledging its fading vitality. 

The series of prints called Wallop developed through a push-and-pull of creating space and then immediately jumbling the imagery. This process was repeated until I felt that the pieces snapped into place and a tense harmony existed between the gestures. Built upon a Peanuts comic, the individual elements were both reduced and camouflaged by the added imagery until the source nearly vanished. By isolating the compositions on a field of black, my hope was to create a sort of gravity and isolation in the drawings. There is a ubiquitous loneliness that I wish to acknowledge in my work."

Wallop Series

Sonnenzimmer on Round w Flat w Sound

"Round w Flat w Sound" is a kinetic sculpture that explores the discrepancies of digital representation and reality. By mirroring a static digital image with its in-the-round counterpart, we aim to subtly make aware the differences and similarities of these two very real matrices. On screen, the image never changes, but the digital interface begs for movement and audience interaction. Try to interact or wait for a change and you will be disappointed. The physical installation, on the other hand, is full of movement—the beach ball slowly deflates and the record spins and repeats, due to its imbeded sculptural qualities. The floating record player, precariously balanced, transmits sound to adjacent quilt through an FM signal and a hidden radio. In doing so, the installation engages curiosity in a similar fashion to the digital image, as sources are obscured and abstracted. “Round w Flat w Sound” is a quilt. “Round w Flat w Sound” is a house track. “Round w Flat w Sound” features a one of a kind sculptural record. “Round w Flat w Sound” deflates. “Round w Flat w Sound” is static.

“Round w Flat w Sound” is documented with a limited edition publication called “Round w Flat w Sound Collated”. The publication features a screen-printed poster that incorporates elements of the installation and its creation as well as a flexi record of the original song heard in the work.

On Lauren Ruth's Installation in Cannonball Run III

Lauren Ruth, 2014, Long Run

"I grew up in Silicon Valley in a culture that required one to perform and conform within a strict culture of perfection and success. My work aims to poke holes and relieve some of the pressure to acheive by creating a space where the strange and the illogical can coexist. I derive my aesthetic from the sanitized material culture of institutions, gyms, and gathering spaces, and the work lampoons the macho cultures bred within these bodily associations that speak to repressed fantasies and how we sublimate our desires. Harkening back to a high school gymnasium with hanging banners, gym mats, vague motivational signage, the work references an adolescent anxiety brought on by a fiercely competitive culture that weeds out the winners from the losers.

Lauren Ruth, 2011, Invisible Link

We live in a world that never lets us off the hook and often become blind to the absurdity of our own lives. Humor and weirdness are a way of coping with the mythology of perfection that requires us to take life so seriously. Reveling in awkwardness and performing vulnerability, my work embraces failure and offers itself as a space for connection and social interaction."

Lauren Ruth, 2014, The Charger and Sanitation Seating

On artist Karen Barbour

Installation of Karen Barbour paintings in Cannonball Run III at Zeitgeist, 2014

Installation of Karen Barbour paintings in Cannonball Run III at Zeitgeist, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I paint figuratively and abstractly, sometimes combining the two - I work in gouache and acrylic and also oil on wood and canvas.

These are psychological interpretations of our perceptions of our bodies, possessions and place in the world.

Woman with No Private Parts, 2014, Karen Barbour

Fragmented figures feeling judged. Avoiding by dreaming about others - forms that humans struggle to maintain - whether their bodies or their gardens or their hair.

Society always evaluating people by their body shapes - the clothing that shapes us - and protects us and presents an identity - same with our cars and houses etc.

Undergarments that transform the human body - push up bras, falsies, darts, corsets, spanks.

Transforming the body with electrolysis, liposuction, implants, chin implants.

Conversations overheard and then illustrated. Mental illness, gossip, imaginings, trying to be perfect, anxiety, boredom, doubts, and everlasting dissatisfaction. Part imagination, part memory, part drawn from life."

Works featured in Cannonball Run III:

Karen Barbour lives in California. She got her MFA in film from the San Francisco Art Institute and has shown all over the world including at Jack Hanley in New York and The Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo. Her illustrations have appeared in the New York Times. 

Karen Barbour, 2014 from New York Times article "Cousins, Across the Color Line"

Karen Barbour, 2014 from New York Times article "Cousins, Across the Color Line"

Karen Barbour, 2013, from New York Times article "The Misnomer of 'Motherless' Parenting"

Karen Barbour, 2013, from New York Times article "The Misnomer of 'Motherless' Parenting"

Hans Schmitt-Matzen on his works in Cannonball Run III

John's Shark

John is my three-year-old son and he is an artist. He prefers to work in his Lightning McQueen underpants executing simple pen and ink gestures on paper. He is self-taught and rather prolific.

One afternoon while visiting my son's studio table, I found myself reflecting on questions I have found perplexing for over a decade. How do artistic gestures arrive at their meanings? What roles do training and experience play in engendering meaning in a mark? How do such simple forms appear to be complete ideas? Is there a language of marks that is innate for us?

John's Tyrannosaurus Rex

I thought about how easy it can be for adults to dismiss children's early abstract artworks. In the past I have been guilty of not giving the work of young artists as much time and attention as they may deserve. I wanted to translate some of John's best drawings into a grander medium that made his forms more difficult to neglect. Neon signs are a medium designed for making bold announcements in the public sphere, and they are nearly impossible to ignore. I have always loved the way neon tubes appear to harness light, I view neon works as non-objects that instead reveal themselves as a delicate and ephemeral ether. These connotations made the neon medium a poetic choice for me.

 

Article on hyperallergic.com about Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis

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Big Bang Vinyl

Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis, “Plane of Impact” (Performance Still) (2014), HD Video, 14:00 Minutes, Edition of 3 (1 AP)

Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis, “Plane of Impact” (Performance Still) (2014), HD Video, 14:00 Minutes, Edition of 3 (1 AP)

Using the breaking and reformation of a thousand vinyl records, artists Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis interpret the creation of the cosmos. The relics of this process and its final cacophonous product are on view at Pierogi gallery in Williamsburg.

Taking a line from Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 sci-fi novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, My God, It’s Full of Stars started at Nashville’s United Record Pressing. There 500 grooveless black records, and 500 grooveless white records, were made, only to be shattered by volunteers against a grey wall (a perhaps heavy-handed suggestion of black and white color mixing). A video of the destruction projects against one wall in Pierogi, in which bits of dark and light vinyl pile up against the shattering noise. This sound was recorded on one side of new records pressed from the shards, with the other side imprinted with the sounds of the records’ creation.

Cosmic references aside, the project is definitely a successor to “Box with the Sound of Its Own Making” by Robert Morris from 1961 — a wooden cube which played a recording of its construction. That along with the 2001 reference and the vinyl record itself make the whole project a bit of an art and pop culture throwback. One of the Harmony of the Spheres records made from the melting of black and white vinyl bits spins silently in the gallery, the uncut edges from the pressing process left in a gnarled ring of encircling plastic. While the LP’s birth, death, and rebirth is on center stage — with limited edition box sets available — the experiments with the vinyl byproducts can be just as interesting. In “OMG, It’s Full of Stars,” raw PVC beads act as the darkness of the universe over a flat screen while suggestions of galaxies and stars beautifully emerge from the cracks; “Oddity” has a record reduced to a black blob meant to look like a meteorite. The two feel more immediately engaged in the vinyl record-cosmos crossover.

My God, It’s Full of Stars, which was exhibited in another edition earlier this year at Zeitgeist Gallery near United Record Pressing in Nashville, is the first New York solo show for the duo of Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis. Cooley has exhibited with Pierogi before, with last year’s Skyward film installation on the ceiling of the Boiler. Together they’ve also collaborated on the video and installation “Through the Skies for You” (2013), a tribute to the missing ship of 17th century explorer Robert de La Salle, lost somewhere in Lake Michigan. Both artists have an intense interest in process and the materials, and while you might not think of the Big Bang or black holes or the formation of universes when you accidentally drop a vinyl record, there can be these grand echoes even in the simplest of destructions.

Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis: My God, It’s Full of Stars continues at Pierogi (177 North 9th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) through July 27.