Gallery Archive
September at Vox Populi
EXHIBITION DATES: September 3 - 26, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 3 from 6 - 11pm
GALLERY HOURS: Wednesday - Sunday 12 - 6pm
GALLERY TALK: Sunday, September 19, 3pm, with a special guest
Jamie Dillon, Pictures of Smoke
For the past five years, Dillon has been secretly making pictures of smoke. He hasn't started making them yet but has ordered the paper–UPS tracking number 1Z493EW00346441362. Harnessing a kind of fictionalized sadism, Dillon will become "The Destructive Character," attempting to make images with fire. Dating back to prehistoric times, this technique has become popular again in fashion, art, advertising, and war. Dillon says, "I want to repeat myself and still offer a formal display layered with enough meaning and metaphor to be Googleable." Of the 100 works to be created, Dillon will select only the "coolest looking ones" to be exhibited. "Working as cultural producer for free creates surplus value and the potential 'valorization' of the artist's labor," he says. Stuzky, the infamous hermaphrodite, will also be on hand to offer his popular version of sexualized propaganda and answer any questions.
David Kontra, Can You Survive the Insanity?
Kontra is a self-taught painter whose work deals head-on with prejudices and ignorance in our society. Kontra has less than 5 percent of vision remaining in his left eye and only a small amount of light perception remaining in his right eye. When Kontra paints, he sees less than a quarter-inch section of the canvas at a time. Kontra's world is one not of distinct images, but of shadowy inhabitants, hints of colors, shapes and textures which can change at any time into something else. Kontra lives and works near Hartville, Missouri. Kontra's website.
Jonathan Prull, Eastwood Is Eighty
Eastwood Is Eighty features ink drawings that reveal Prull's interest in an aging movie icon. The drawings form a stream-of-consciousness landscape, an uninterrupted space that attempts to integrate various stages of an artist's process otherwise confined to sketchbooks and studies. Prull received a BFA from the University of Rhode Island and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He has been an artist-member of Vox Populi since 2006.
Paradise, Curated by Roxana Pérez-Méndez
As we address the impact of the global recession on our personal lives, and as a new air of frugality and domestic economy take form, Paradise looks into the reflexive process of the artist. This group show looks to contentment as a constructed landscape or place and to the ever-present inverse to the frailties of our current state. Paradise features the work of Kia Carscallen, Coke Whitworth, Gisela Insuaste, Lisette Morell, German Tagle, Christopher Robbins, David Antonio Cruz and Rosalind Murray & Michael Bizon.
VIDEO LOUNGE
Sarah J. Christman, Broad Channel
Broad Channel is a documentary portrait of a unique urban beach. While its pollution and traffic noise make it an unlikely spot to commune with nature, this unnamed narrow strip of beach invites a remarkably diverse cross-section of New Yorkers to meet the water.
Soon after relocating to New York City, Christman employed Google satellite imagery to explore the green and beige parts of the outer boroughs. She quickly discovered that most of the large undeveloped areas, which look pristine from the distance of a thousand miles, were in fact landfills. Making her way toward the popular shores of the Rockaways, she crossed into Rulers Bar Hassock. Commonly known as "Broad Channel," it is the only inhabited island in the tidal estuary of Jamaica Bay. It is a tenuous, evolving ecosystem, constantly in flux. Here, swimsuits and towels are rare, while coconuts, rats, and swans are ordinary occurrences. With airplanes queuing up for landing overhead, beach combers pace the shoreline with their metal detectors. Loud groups of fisherman haul in their catch, while Hindu families release puja offerings into the bay. Over the course of one year, Christman joined the waves of regular visitors with her noisy hand-cranked sixteen millimeter camera, documenting the complex relationship between people and the environment in this dynamic microcosm.
Christman's films and videos have screened internationally, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, where her film Dear Bill Gates earned the New Visions Award. She is an Assistant Professor in the film department at Brooklyn College. Christman's website.
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