Title

That came out a little country

Description

“But modern man finds a face more beautiful without tattoos than with, even if the tattoos are by Michelangelo himself”
— Adolf Loos

“Not quite blonde, are we? More of a dirty blonde.”
— Patrick Bateman, American Psycho

When applied, a tattoo costs only a few hundred dollars. Its removal requires several thousand dollars, pain and many laser sessions. Whether out of regret or clearing real estate for the new, the cancellation process takes an average of eight treatments, spaced one month apart. Each treatment incrementally fades the tattoo until it is eventually erased. A shadow of the ink line typically remains, a stain of sorts, turning the symbolic gesture into an ambiguous anti-gesture.
Fredrik Værslev’s “Garden Paintings” address the context and frame of the suburban garden as a site of production – a place that cultivates the banalities and repetition found in suburban life. In these works, wood supports encompass a relay of several interrelated but different economies, inhabiting a space positioned in-between figure/ground, interior/exterior, public/private. Both in recent and older projects, Værslev has dealt with the implications of paint in architecture to show where these relationships become emblematic of painting itself - “in architecture as an object for painting, in terms of interior decoration, but also as one aspect of maintaining a site.” This thinking about painting with and against architecture does not presume to discover something about the architectural or “domestic context,” but proceeds with an awareness of the contradictory terms that inform its conduct and vocabulary. It is subject to re-arrangement.
Værslev over-edits the painting’s surface with sand paper and paint remover to prioritize “undoing” over “doing” and “anti-gesture” over “gesture.” He appropriates, to some extent, the conditions of painting to cancel out and repeat them. With these works, painting needs to be considered not just in terms of what appears to be external and ornamental but how it inverts and re-directs these qualities to gain knowledge about its own conditions of production and status as painting. One is invited to examine and re-examine the painting’s slats to find traces of this investigation undoing itself into the stains and scars of the surface.
Fredrik Værslev (b. 1979, Moss, Norway) graduated in 2011 with an MFA from The Art Academy in Malmö, Sweden / Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo; Studio Independienza, Rome; Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö; and Galerie Circus, Berlin. Værslev`s works have also been included in exhibitions such as “I Think and That Is All That I Am” at Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles, “Priority Moments” at Herald Street, London, “The Confidence-man” at Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and “Printemps de Septembre”, in Toulouse. Parallel to the exhibition his works can also be seen in “Collaborations & Interventions” at Kunsthalle Andratx, Mallorca. “That came out a little country” is his first exhibition in New York.

May 1 — June 30, 2012
Front Desk Apparatus
218 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10016
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12 - 6 PM
www.frontdeskapparatus.com

Artist

Fredrik Værslev

Images

That came out a little country, installation view
That came out a little country, installation view
That came out a little country, installation view
That came out a little country, installation view
That came out a little country, installation view
Fredrik Værslev, Untitled (Front Desk Apparatus #3), 2012
Fredrik Værslev, Untitled (Front Desk Apparatus #4), 2012
Fredrik Værslev, Untitled (Front Desk Apparatus #1), 2012
Fredrik Værslev, Untitled (Front Desk Apparatus #2), 2012

Date

May 1 — June 30, 2012

.pdf

Title

Every Hair of the Bear

Description

The camera, with its strong moral claims to truth and objectivity now over a century old [c.1953], has established its manner of seeing as the common visual currency of our time, and we come to think of photographic experience as the equivalent of personal participation. But we should ask ourselves who would be truly richer – one who possessed photographs of every surviving building of the classical world, or Sir John Soane, who had measured every stone of the Coliseum and could quote its intercolumniation even in his old age.
— Reyner Banham, “Parallel of Life and Art”

The creative dimension of taking photographs consists in its being handed over to fashion. “The world is beautiful” – that is its motto, precisely. In it stands revealed the attitude of a kind of photography that is able to make any tin of food look as if it is floating in space but cannot grasp a single one of the human contexts in which that tin features. It is a kind of photography that, however dreamy the subject, heralds more of the marketability of that subject than its apprehension. But since the true face of this photographic creativity is advertising or association, for the same reason its proper counterpart is exposure or construction.
— Walter Benjamin, from A Brief History of Photography

A still life assembled from domestic products (cup, bowl, saucer, and plate) is marked with black squares of tape, and pictured from six perpendicular angles (front, back, left, right, top, bottom). The black squares function as tokens, which allow the spatial geometry of the still life to be discerned. This is done in first angle Mongean space (standard fare for the industrial engineer). An ideational six-sided planar box is then constructed around the set, from which perpendicular linear projectors are extended, forming a trace upon each of the six receiving planes of the box. This box of traces is opened and then refolded in a systematized way so that multiple views may fold together simultaneously. A system for folding the tokens of the four objects is developed, in multiples of two/four. Objects become views; four items presented in distinct cases as one, two, four, or six views are folded into a single plane. This plane then becomes the array, which informs the material images’ unfolding into lived space, or a domestic scene. At which point one could pose the Herzogian question (while considering the entirety of the phone book), “Yes, but do they dream?”

November 11 — December 17, 2011
Presented in collaboration with Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner
Front Desk Apparatus
218 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10016
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12 - 6 PM
www.frontdeskapparatus.com

Organized

In collaboration with Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner

Artists

Sean Paul

Images

Installation View
Josephine Eleonore Marie Pauline de Galard de Brassacede Bearn, princesse de Broglie,Today, 2011
Josephine Eleonore Marie Pauline de Galard de Brassacede Bearn, princesse de Broglie,Today, 2011 (Detail)
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Every Hair of the Bear (Carnelian), 2011
Arrangement 16, Front, 2011
Arrangement 16, Front/Top, 2011
Arrangement 16, Front/Top/Bottom/Right, 2011
Arrangement 16, Front/Top/Bottom/Right/Left/Back, 2011
Installation View

Date

November 11 — December 17, 2011

Links

Thea Westrich Art Advisory Services

.pdf

Title

Balice Hertling & Lewis

Description

Front Desk Apparatus is pleased to announce a group exhibition by Balice Hertling & Lewis.
Balice Hertling & Lewis is a collaboration between Paris-based gallerists Daniel Balice and Alexander Hertling and the American art critic David Lewis. The project was born of a Paris-based friendship and it is open-ended. Its direction will emerge organically (one hopes), over time; emerge, perhaps, from an accumulation of events, performances, lectures, readings, and encounters, and above all from the impetuses and interaction of artists. For now it is mainly a sketch, a rough draft of a kind of community: not limited by place, not necessarily united in taste, but linked by a desire to make room for each others' voices.
The works in the exhibition have been chosen because in various ways and on various levels they articulate the spirit, or rather the spirits, of the project. In some cases these procedures, or reasons, and their attendant poetry, are fairly explicit; in other cases they are more muted, or even openly occluded. But the general logic is one of substitution, which means multiplicity, and the knowledge, taken for granted, that the one is already many, and for the best.

March 04 - April 16, 2011
Presented by Balice Hertling & Lewis

Opening Reception
Friday, March 04 from 5 - 7 pm

For more information, please contact info@frontdeskapparatus.com

Organized by

Balice Hertling & Lewis

Artists

Neil Beloufa
Isabelle Cornaro
Ara Dymond
Nikolas Gambaroff
DAS INSTITUT
Charles Mayton
Falke Pisano
Stephen Willats
Viola Yesiltac

Images

Installation View
Das Institut / To be titled, 2011
Das Institut / To be titled, 2011
Viola Yesiltac / I really must congratulate you on your attention to detail, 2011
Isabelle Cornaro / Moulages sur le vif , 2011
Nikolas Gambaroff / Untitled, 2011
Ara Dymond / Cameo, 2011
Charles Mayton / Hinge / Blank Space, Not an Interior / 'Untitled' In an off-white room, 2011
Falke Pisano / Chillida (Forms & Feelings), 2006
Neil Beloufa / Untitled, 2011
Neil Beloufa / Untitled, 2011
Stephen Willats / Confrontations No.4, 1982
Nikolas Gambaroff / Untitled, 2011
Das Institut / Untitled from Viola!, 2011
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View

Date

March 04 — April 16, 2011

Links

Balice Hertling & Lewis

.pdf

Title

Bouvard and Pecuchet's Invented Desk For Copying

Description

Please join us Wednesday, March 30 at 6:30PM for a conversation about the desk and the current location of work with Christian Rattemeyer and Gareth Long.
The talk is the first in a series of public programs that respond to Henri Lefebvre's short essay Preface to the Study of the Habitat of the 'Pavillon' and address his question 'What does it mean to inhabit?'. The programs invite artists and critics to appropriate the resources of the project environment as a subject for public research and proceed with an awareness of the contradictory terms (building, making, arrangement, dwelling, etc.) that inform its conduct and vocabulary.
Project 1 will feature the work of Gareth Long and adopts his projects Bouvard and Pecuchet's Invented Desk For Copying and "Who Invented the Desk?" as a starting point for a public talk and workshop.
The workshop will occupy the space Thursday and Friday, March 31-April 01, 2011 from 12:00-6:00PM

- The desk is both never invented and perpetually invented
- There is no singular moment of invention for the desk.

Gareth Long & Liam Gillick
Bouvard and Pecuchet's Invented Desk For Copying, 2007-2009

Organized by

The Library Project

Contributors

Gareth Long
Christian Rattemeyer

Date

March 30, 2011

Links

Gareth Long
Who Invented the Desk (Version 1, Gareth Long & Liam Gillick)
Who Invented the Desk (Version 2, Gareth Long, Liam Gillick, Mike Gallagher)

.pdf

Title

What does it mean to inhabit?

Description

In a detached apartment, modern man 'dwells poetically.' By that we understand that his 'inhabiting' is in some way his creative work. ...Now let us consider for a moment the space of work. Such a space is not itself a thing or material 'object.' It is a floating 'medium,' a simple abstraction, where the most individualized and singular aspects of our work reach broader and more general levels of public knowledge; and it is here - the socialization of individual space and the simultaneous individualization of social space - that "living research" has lessons to learn from studying it.
Our situation - in both practice and thinking - poses a question at once analogous and contrary to discursive structures that privilege public research and alternative models of production.
The question, 'What does it mean to inhabit?' remains open.

Notes**

1. As we were saying, the contrast between 'the pavillon habitat' and housing estates is striking. Let us spell out some aspects of this contrast. In a detached house, modern man 'dwells poetically'. By that we understand that his 'inhabiting' is in some way his creative work. The space in which he is able to organize it relate to his own taste and [malleable] patterns. It lends itself to rearrangement. ...Space in a detached house allows the group and its individual members to appropriate to some extent the conditions of their own existence. They can alter, add or subtract and superimpose their own ideas (organization) on what is provided.
2. We can distinguish:
A.) Appropriation of space in the pavillon — that is, the socialization of individual space and the simultaneous individualization of social space — tends to be elemental (though subject to a cultural system). Here, the most individualized and singular aspects of pavillon existence reaches broader and more general levels; and it is here that architecture and planning have lessons to learn from studying it. The question, 'What does it mean to inhabit?' remains open.
3. We refer to the present conditions of dwelling as our starting-point - thinking of 'dwelling' as a form of 'building'. (p.122)
4. The Library Project was initiated by Front Desk Apparatus to focus on editorial creation, independent publications and the position of writing and design in contemporary practice. The Library Project aims to build upon Front Desk Apparatus's founding premise by using the office context as a framework that acknowledges, uncovers and excavates the library's potential to generate concrete possibilities in the form of "living" research and knowledge production. Here, the vocabulary of the work environment offers itself as a public site for reframing a practice of display, distribution, critical inquiry and the archive form to spatially facilitate and symbolize the contingent relationships - in the private sphere - that have the potential to reach broader and more general levels of public knowledge, collaborative work, negotiation and hospitality.
* ('Preface' in Henri Raymond, Marie-Genevieve Raymond, Nicole Haumont and M. Coornaert, L'Habitat pavillonnaire (Paris: Editions du CRU [Centre de recherche d'urbanisme], 1966), pp. 3-13, 14-23; reprinted as 'Introduction a l'etude de l'habitat pavillonnaire' in Du Rural a l'urbain, 3e edn (Paris: Anthropos, 2001), pp. 159-70, 171-80)
** All notes except "note 4" taken directly from Henri Lefebvre's 'Preface'.

Project 1

Bouvard and Pecuchet's Invented Desk For Copying

Description

The Library Project at Front Desk Apparatus is pleased to announce 'What does it mean to inhabit?' an ongoing study that addresses and responds to Henri Lefebvre's short essay Preface to the Study of the Habitat of the 'Pavillon'*. The project coincides with a group exhibition presented by Balice Hertling & Lewis that will inhabit the Front Desk Apparatus project space throughout March. The study invites artists and critics to appropriate the resources of the project environment as a subject for public research and proceeds with an awareness of the contradictory terms (building, making, arrangement, dwelling, etc.) that inform its conduct and vocabulary.
Project 1 will feature the work of Gareth Long and adopts his projects Bouvard and Pecuchet's Invented Desk For Copying and "Who Invented the Desk?" as a starting point for a public talk and workshop.
"Who Invented the Desk?" is an ongoing text and book project that investigates the current location of work. It uses the desk as a cipher to the recent movements from studio to study - artisan to administrator - to touch on post-studio practice, globalization, leisure and the location of production. New and edited versions of the text will follow the workshop, with additional authors, edited and changed texts, showing the 'work-in-progress' nature of the book.
If there is a shift in the current artistic sensibility -- away from what is strictly produced to the how and potential of production (how things might be produced), then the site of production is always in question. And as such, an artist, like a knowledge worker or another producer of culture has that unique ability to turn any flat surface into a desk.

- The desk is both never invented and perpetually invented
- There is no singular moment of invention for the desk.

Organized by

The Library Project

Contributors

Gareth Long
Christian Rattemeyer

Date

Ongoing

Links

Gareth Long
Who Invented the Desk (Version 1, Gareth Long & Liam Gillick)
Who Invented the Desk (Version 2, Gareth Long, Liam Gillick, Mike Gallagher)

.pdf

Title

Today I Made Nothing

Description

Front Desk Apparatus is pleased to present Today I Made Nothing, a group exhibition that considers the relationship between work and leisure, non-productivity and the negation of work, in a contemporary context in which people are perpetually available and continually securing their economy. Where the first part of the exhibition at Elizabeth Dee Gallery (which ran from July 27 - September 18) included works by Duncan Campbell, Alejandro Cesarco, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Tyler Coburn, Liam Gillick, Renee Green, Sam Lewitt, Jonathan Monk, Virginia Overton, Josef Strau, and Mika Tajima, the installation at Front Desk Apparatus is comprised of Harun Farocki's twelve channel video installation "Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades." The exhibition takes its title from Russian writer and poet Daniil Kharms, who adopted various pseudonyms and titles to critically engage and evade the positioning of a "singular" author and practice.
From factory workers to the labor movement, the Art Workers' Coalition to the proliferation of freelance professionals, artists' practices continue to be associated with varying forms of labor. But even with the rise of immaterial labor and the expansion of the periods of time during which one is potentially working, the amount of time spent at work does not have a direct corollary with increased levels of production: working less can actually result in getting more done. With times of production and research (or conception), becoming increasingly indistinguishable, the culture worker is often working when it might appear otherwise, even when at a casual lunch meeting or exhibition opening. Given that this process can also be reversible, repeated, or reduced to a set of instructions, art practice can be further separated from the act of labor - perhaps even positioned in direct opposition to the very idea of work - as a kind of non productivity that might best align itself with one aspect of art's history: that of doing nothing.
In Harun Farocki's "Workers Leaving the Factory," the artist assembled film excerpts spanning the entire history of cinema, each depicting people at the conclusion of their work day and leaving the site of their labor. Like the works in the exhibition's first phase that employ pre-existing or found materials, Farocki begins with history's first film, Lumiere's "La sortie des usines Lumiere" as a starting point. Much as Kharms wrote stories that refused to function as traditional, linear narratives, Farocki adopts the vocabulary of cinema to trace alternative lineages and histories of the site of production.
The question then is how do we take the models from the past and improve upon them, be they ones developed in the 1960s and presented by Robert Morris, Jean-Luc Godard or Herman Miller, or Guy Debord's even earlier declaration "Ne travaillez jamais," then echoed by the Italian Autonomists? By investigating the value of work and questioning what constitutes it today, can we develop ideas about how we might best replace the present post-Fordist neoliberal model with a better one, reclaiming both the governance of time as well as work itself?
Additionally, the exhibition is also accompanied by the second phase of Front Desk Apparatus's The Library Project, an initiative that focuses on editorial creation, independent publications and the position of writing and design in contemporary practice. In a filing cabinet in the Front Desk Apparatus office, a selection of readings pertaining to the exhibition, aims to employ the office context as a framework that acknowledges, uncovers and excavates the library's potential to generate concrete possibilities in the form of "living" research and knowledge production.

September 25 - November 06, 2010
Organized by Tim Saltarelli

Opening Reception
Saturday, September 25 from 6-8pm

For more information, please contact info@frontdeskapparatus.com

Organized by

Tim Saltarelli

Artists

Harun Farocki

Images

Workers Leaving The Factory In Eleven Decades
Workers Leaving The Factory In Eleven Decades (Detail)
Workers Leaving The Factory In Eleven Decades (Detail)
Workers Leaving The Factory In Eleven Decades (Detail)
The Library Project
The Library Project (Detail)
The Library Project (Detail)

Date

September 25 — October 23, 2010

Links

Elizabeth Dee Gallery

.pdf

Title

Today I Made Nothing

Description

Today I Made Nothing is an exhibition in two parts, the second installment opening at Front Desk Apparatus in September. Additionally, the exhibition is accompanied by the first phase of The Library Project, presented at Elizabeth Dee by Front Desk Apparatus, an initiative that focuses on editorial creation, independent publications and the position of writing and design in contemporary practice. In a filing cabinet in the gallery's office space, a selection of readings pertaining to the exhibition, aims to employ the office context as a framework that acknowledges, uncovers and excavates the library's potential to generate concrete possibilities in the form of "living" research and knowledge production.

Organized by

Tim Saltarelli

Artists

Duncan Campbell
Alejandro Cesarco
Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda
Tyler Coburn
Harun Farocki
Liam Gillick
Renee Green
Sam Lewitt
Jonathan Monk
Virginia Overton
Josef Strau
Mika Tajima

Images

The Library Project
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View

Date

July 27 — September 18, 2010

Location

Elizabeth Dee
545 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

Tel 212 924 7545
Fax 212 924 7671
E. info@elizabethdeegallery.com

Links

Elizabeth Dee Gallery

.pdf

Title

Negation Subtraction Dissolution

Description

Every image offered our gaze is only presented, in its very obviousness, by means of the disconcerting economy of paradoxes that are always tied up with other paradoxes. Every image is offered only as a maddening, often sublime, intensity of simultaneous contradictions, a meeting of heterogeneous orders that move unhindered between thing-representations and word-representations. But in this "freedom" of imaginary associations, we have to recognize a true fact of structure, where every image becomes clear only in passing within view of all the others, however disparate or dissemblant they are among themselves.

*Georges Didi-Huberman

Curator

Front Desk Apparatus

Artists

Seth Price
Josef Strau
Quentin Curry
Gareth James
Steven Parrino
Jutta Koether
Matias Faldbakken
Andy Warhol
John Cage
Philippe Decrauzat
Amir Mogharabi
Amy Granat
Jacob Kassay

Images

Quentin Curry / Canvas 1 (primed), 2010
Andy Warhol / Oxidation Painting (a), 1978
John Cage / Dereau #20, 1982
Jesse Cohen / Untitled, 2009
Gareth James / The image provides a false balance to materials in space/time. The image provides a way to see the balance in space/time that the unbalanced spectator cannot approach. The image balances that which didn't require balance outside of that perspective., 2009
Seth Price / Untitled, 2008
Steven Parrino / Black Planet Magnetic Distortion, 2004
Jutta Koether / demonic option, 2010 series #4, 2010
Matias Faldbakken / ONE SPRAY CAN SQUEAL, 2010
Josef Strau / Breaking Words, 2006
Philippe Decrauzat / Slow Motion #1, 2008
Amir Mogharabi / Untitled (For Josef Strau), 2010
Amy Granat / Chemical Scratch (Return of the Creature), 2003
Jacob Kassay / Untitled, 2010
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View

Date

May 24 — June 29, 2010

Location

Kantor Gallery
7025 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Tel 323.933.6976
Fax 323.933.6975
E. info@kantorgallery.com

Links

Kantor Gallery

.pdf

Title

Lucie Fontaine

Biography

Lucie Fontaine is an art employer who lives and works in Colmar, France. Describing herself as an "art employer," Lucie Fontaine avoids harnessing her practice to a specific figure of the art field, preferring to cultivate a modus operandi driven solely by her relationship with two* employees, a concept of self-generated labor similar to the Master-Slave dialectic presented by Hegel is his master-piece, Phenomenology of Spirit. Her two* art employees like to define her as the Jamie Lynn Spears of contemporary art: "pregnant and in search of easy success." Thus, Lucie Fontaine incarnates the following three assumptions: 1) the anti-hierarchical perception of the art field, where artists, curators, gallerists, collectors, editors and critics are all considered "players" in the same game; 2) the theory of expanded practice, in which the artist is not only considered the "creator" of an artwork, but also a cultural operator able to write, manage galleries, curate, collect, etc.; 3) the consideration of the entire discourse around the artwork: conception / creation / production / presentation / distribution / communication / promotion. In 2007, Lucie Fontaine opened a space in Milan, which was intended as a meeting place for the artistic community. Deliberately collaborating only with Italian artists, Lucie Fontaine and her entourage organized unconventional projects with Italian artists Valerio Carrubba, Alessandro Roma, Valerio Rocco Orlando and Mauro Vignando, as well as first time solo shows by Cleo Fariselli, Enza Galantini and Riccardo Beretta. In 2008, T293 gallery in Naples hosted Lucie Fontaine's first solo show. In 2009, she exhibited in Murcia, Spain (with Fruit and Flower Deli) and at "No Soul For Sale" at X-initiative, New York. During Performa09 in New York, she produced the last iteration of ~~Performat~~, her ongoing collaboration with Italian artist and filmmaker Marcella Vanzo with the special participation of Irish contemporary music composer Jennifer Walshe. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at The Promenade Gallery in Vlore, Albania in 2010. Lucie Fontaine is currently working on a book titled The Talismans and will be the editor of the catalogue raisonne of Swedish painter Ylva Ogland.

*L'Anti-Oedipe was written by the two of us, and since each of us was several, we were already quite a crowd." Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari

Images

Date

March 06 — April 10, 2010

.pdf

Title

The Obstacle is Tautology

Description

Front Desk Apparatus is pleased to present the second iteration of the "The Obstacle is Tautology," an ongoing project organized by Benoit Maire and Amir Mogharabi. Originally held in Vilnius, Lithuania, "The Obstacle is Tautology," is repeated in different forms and locations. Each iteration, takes as its organizing principle, the successive content of an overarching conversation between the two artists.
A tautology (both a symbolic statement that is true by way of deductive logic, and a superfluous statement rendered arbitrary by its repetition) poses problems pivotal for commencing a paradigm shift away from the tenets of conceptual art. Although the existence of a tautology cannot be empirically asserted in the world, it is still apprehended by reason as an idea, as an object of intellect, as pure referent repeated into being.
As such, there exists a disparity between reason and experience, whereby reason serves the imperative for what is otherwise impossible to define, impossible to objectify. And yet, we go on lying, we go on defining, we go on asking and answering why, we go on categorizing; when our responsibility may precisely b, to undermine the logic of experience, undermine the logic of love and the disambiguation of poetry. To resolve our ongoing dissatisfaction with explanation, by not asking for any more than what art has to offer as a limitless medium in itself, or beside itself.

Organizers

Benoit Maire and Amir Mogharabi

Artists

Jesse Cohen
Guy de Cointet
Lucie Fontaine
Joelle Leandre
Benoit Maire
COCO DU NOM
Jeffrey Perkins
Adrian Piper
Soma Wingelaar

Images

Installation View
COCO DU NOM / Untitled, (for Henry Flynt), 2007
Joelle Leandre / Untitled composition for contrabass, 1972
Joelle Leandre / Untitled composition for contrabass, 1972
Jesse Cohen / Untitled, 2009
Installation View
Installation View
Soma Wingelaar / Untitled, 2009
Soma Wingelaar / Untitled, 2009
Adrian Piper / Everything #2/7, 2003
Installation View
Guy de Cointet / "Espahor ledet..." 1977
Guy de Cointet / Espahor Ledet Ko Uluner!, Publication Proof, 1977
Lucie Fontaine / Untitled, 2009
Lucie Fontaine / Untitled, 2009
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View
COCO DU NOM (for Adrian Piper), 2009
Benoit Maire / The Aesthetics of Differends, 2009
Benoit Maire / The Aesthetics of Differends, 2009 [Detail]
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View
Jeffrey Perkins / Untitled, 1977
Jeffrey Perkins / Untitled, 1977
Guy de Cointet / Toc Tic Tic Tac, 1980
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View
The Obstacle is Tautology Installation View

Date

May 2009 — February 2010

.pdf

Title

Jasime

Description

"These are (J) (A) (S) men. Jacob, Amir and Sam. Though all a generation younger, I believe their work to be wise and ageless. They continue a tradition of sculpture, painting and filmmaking that keeps me hopeful and inspired... makes the future smell sweet - like a fresh bouquet of flowers. I hope you enjoy the show."

- Amy Granat, 2009

Filmmaker Amy Granat (b. 1976) curates her first exhibition in New York. Situated in the context of Front Desk Apparatus, artists are producers while works are actors; responding to, reflecting, or negating the stage within they are set.
Questioning the working methods of formal abstraction, Jacob Kassay (b. 1984) proposes alternative solutions to arriving at a painting. Priming the surface of the canvas with acrylic, followed by an electroplating process that paradoxically eradicates and sentimentalizes the gesture - Kassay's paintings are an echoed reflection of the context in which they find themselves. The monochrome surface simulates movement and enthusiastically responds to changes in light. The viewer's presence renders Kassay's paintings awake, where an element performativity enters and is in constant flux.
Amir Mogharabi (b. 1982) refutes exactitude in explanation. With an acute background in philosophy, a myriad of references hint at a disdain for indexicality and fixed definition. A gentle invitation into an open-ended discourse is brought by what appears to be analogous elements that rarely lands at an answer, but raises further question as to why. Works are composed, arranged and performed into physicality...
Sam Parker (b. 1988) collapses notions of material and time by challenging perceptions of the past and present. Oscillating between video and film, the physical surface of "Proud Mary" presents a history that is further complicated by period costumes and timeless uniforms. Through the sensitivity of film, and its strong sense of materiality, Parker suggests the importance, integrity, and ephemerality of emotion from the "performers," depicted.

Curator

Amy Granat

Artists

Jacob Kassay
Amir Mogharabi
Sam Parker

Images

Amir Mogharabi / Untitled, 2009
Amir Mogharabi / Untitled, 2009
Amir Mogharabi / Untitled, 2009
Amir Mogharabi / Untitled (Stone), 2009
Jacob Kassay / Untitled, 2009
Jacob Kassay / Untitled, 2009
Jacob Kassay / Untitled, 2009
Jacob Kassay / Untitled, 2009
Sam Parker / Proud Mary, 2009
Sam Parker / Proud Mary, 2009
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View
Installation View

Date

October 4 — November 21, 2009

.pdf

Title

Plus B

Description

If Jasmine can be thought of as a quotation of a film, Plus B is the inaudible soundtrack. Performing as dialogue, sound effect and score, emotive and physical, the intimately scaled objects composing Plus B instinctually reverberate. Physically contained in what could be read as a precious display, the art object submits to a hyper-fetishized context, tenuously waiting under the head of a shower.
Found in the tenets of painting, Brandon Anschultz (b. 1972) moves into the language of sculpture to find resolution. Satisfactory form is achieved only through the in-between state and outside of either tradition. Seen as conduits of uncertainty, the pursuit of ambiguity is actualized as much through deconstruction as construction.
Directed by Google Earth/Sky, Becket Bowes (b.1976) paints "Stars over Gabrielle's head, 11.11.07, 15:42," the form and pattern based on the location and coordinates of a friend. What is traditionally understood as a romantic, sentimental, gesture of painting the night sky, becomes mechanized through the use of technology. The act bringing artist and subject closer by what otherwise may not be possible. Rather than physically sitting under the night sky side by side, it is shared through the lens of the computer screen.
Using sculpture as a device for the exploration of not knowing, Bruce Sherman (b.1942) composes and arranges form out of disparate ceramic shapes. The moment the object suggests a particular contented configuration; the form is solidified with coats of sand paint, revealing the point of satisfaction. Being present, sensitive and aware of each passing moment is seen as a practice in further understanding oneself.
Matthew Strauss (b.1972) interests lie in the inadequacy of representation to effectively communicate between artist and viewer. The intended communicative device (the image) is present, but turned away from the viewer - evoking a mental image formed as a result of the given information, namely the title. Confronted with a blank page, the content hidden on the reverse, the viewer is given the authority to create an ideal representation. Out of this, a situation is created where the full experience of the work is never granted.