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Indepth Arts News:
"Reliable Disappointment: Megan Foster and OUT:Tom Kotik"
2005-04-29 until 2005-06-06
Black and White Gallery
Brooklyn, NY,
USA United States of America
Brooklyn, NY. Black & White Gallery is proud to present RELIABLE DISAPPOINTMENT (recent paintings) - the second solo exhibition by the New York based artist Megan Foster and OUT (maximum volume) - a site-specific sound installation by a New York based artist Tom Kotik. Megan Foster, in her new body of work, continues to explore the theme of hollow “housescapes”, trying to elicit subtle yet uneasy feelings from the spectator. Tom Kotik continues to explore the dynamics of power and repression, expressed through music, architecture and minimal forms. OUT (maximum volume) - an interactive sculptural installation is a soundproofed minimalist box. By opening the lid of box, a loud torrent of musical sound is unleashed into the gallery space.
Focusing on the American suburban experience, Megan Foster omits the figure from the canvas, leaving vacant interiors to stand out as a sign of something hidden. By depicting parts of households that are familiar to us such as the empty couch, the messy bathroom or the wrecked kitchen one can not help but ask what lies beneath these sunken scenes.
The viewer is forced to fill in the blanks and answer the question: “What exactly is going on here?” Through the paintings the artist makes a journey into the troubled heart of American suburbia via a mix of architecture and design, sterile mediated images and domestically constructed televisual scenes.
The work of Megan Foster raises key contemporary issues such as displacement, abandonment, suburban sprawl. The canvas becomes an arena for hidden lives and secret unacknowledged longings.
Megan Foster is a recent graduate of Columbia University with an MFA degree and a BFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design. She is a recipient of many distinguished awards, including LeRoy Neiman fellowship from LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University, G.W. Hodge Ritchie Award for Excellence in Printmaking Division of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, John A. Chironna Endowment Fund Division of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Robert Gore Rifkind Scholarship sponsored by the Pont-Aven School of Art, Los Angeles, California.
In 2004 her work was included in the Liverpool Biennial – Independent section and “Domestic Odyssey” at the San Jose Museum of Art.
In OUT (maximum volume), Tom Kotik continues his dialogue with music to emphasize a sense of unleashed repression - the psychological - and its intangibility, something he experiences while playing in his rock and roll band. "We all contain sides of ourselves that long to be revealed, but usually choose the safest appearance. My work explores these tensions between image and desire", Kotik writes in his statement. His work purposefully avoids narrative; it is a powerful combination of absence and highly structured presence.
Tom Kotik is a graduate of Hunter College with a MFA degree in Sculpture (2004) and NYU with a BS degree (1993). Most recently, Tom has exhibited at Miami Museum of Science, Sculpture Center and Socrates Sculpture Park in LIC, NY.
Tom is currently a resident at the LMCC studio program, NYC and plays music with his "Mighty High" band.
IMAGE
Megan Foster
Outre, 2004
acrylic on canvas
45x55 inches
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