microwave, eight Group Exhibition Josee Bienvenu Gallery 529 West 20th St, 2nd floor (between 10th & 11th Avenues), New York, NY 10011 June 30, 2011 - September 3, 2011
Todd Norsten, 2011, Untitled, Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Formally, what the sixteen artists of microwave, eight
have in common is the use of grids or grid-like structures in creating
works of detailed complexity. The grid can be seen as a means of
arranging sensory and abstract experiences into a system of information
that the human mind can absorb and understand. In this light, a
traditional painting can be defined as a locus of visual and tactile
data contained on the surface of a tabular rectangle.
A
ledger is a grid format that arranges information in rows and columns,
but Jill Sylvia’s scrolls of vertical ledgers, which she has minutely
cut by hand, record nothing but space. They are, however, as painstaking
in their non-detail as any list, say for example William Powhida’s
catalog of criticism hanging on the same wall. But Powhida’s lists
contain more palpable information and demand a different kind of
scrupulous attention. His bullet-point rows (Hope and Less, 2011), drawn in graphite, provide a trompe l’œil
representation of a notepad outlining the pros and cons of the art
world/market. He’s a critic as much as a player in it, drawing awareness
to what indeed are the few good things and the very many shortcomings
of that strange society of mostly non-artists (a fact he rightly points
out).
Todd Norsten’s two Untitled
oil paintings echo Powhida’s pairing of positive and negative. Though
employing minimal color and touch, Norsten’s work inhabits the modest
canvas with as much sensuous information as he can relay with only a few
bands of blue or just a pale yellow “X” on a white ground.
Drawings
by Lauren Seiden, Clément Bagot, and Gustavo Diaz use serial
markmaking, creating luscious surfaces of lines on paper or mylar that
mimic maps or computer systems. These drawings act more like obsessive
doodles but there’s no denying their visual appeal.
Curtis Mann's large photographic work, Sieve,
combines fractured rectangular views of a desert landscape, the expanse
of sand below appearing like an abstract pattern of drips. A closer
look reveals little vignettes within the drips, suggesting the narrative
spaces of comic books.
~Aldrin Valdez
William Powhida, 2011, Hope (left) Less (right), detail, Graphite and watercolor on paper, Diptych, 11 x 14 inches each
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