Dear Absolute Arts,

Lower East Side Printshop is pleased to present Everything Is Not All  
There Is with a reception for artists on Wednesday, July 18 from  
6-8pm. The exhibition will be on view at the Printshop from July 11 -  
September 9, 2012 and features recent prints and drawings by Lower  
East Side Printshop residents Shanti Grumbine, Naomi Reis, and Julian  
Wellisz.

We would appreciate if you could share this exhibition and opening  
reception with your community of artists!



Everything Is Not All There Is

Curated by Nicole Caruth

Exhibition reception: Wednesday, July 18, 6-8pm



Exhibition Dates: July 11 – September 9, 2012

Hours: Weekdays from 10am – 6pm, and weekends from 12 - 6pm

Free and open to the public



Lower East Side Printshop presents Everything Is Not All There Is  
guest curated by Nicole Caruth, an independent art writer and curator.  
The exhibition will be on view at the Printshop from July 11 –  
September 9, 2012 with a reception on Wednesday, July 18 from 6-8pm.


Digital technologies are making it easier all the time to share and  
receive information. Yet our constant circulating of data obscures  
messages as easily as we can deliver them. Artists have and continue  
to probe this daily deluge of stuff to reveal more about contemporary  
communication and experiences than might be discerned through any  
interface. Everything Is Not All There Is consists of recent prints  
and drawings by Lower East Side Printshop residents Shanti Grumbine,  
Naomi Reis, and Julian Wellisz. Collectively, they explore newspapers,  
blogs, software, and structural designs. They trace flows of data,  
unveil unseen narratives, decode systems, and sift cultural memes.  
Their works speak to the vitality of the print medium (i.e. the  
analog) alongside newer modes of communication.

Shanti Grumbine cuts and reconfigures pages of The New York Times to  
lay bare the newspaper’s structure and “the aggressive order of the  
grid.” Her latest project Score (an extension of her earlier series  
Kenosis) follows the life of a certain news story each day all the way  
through to its end. She removes the text and images with an X-Acto  
knife and all headlines and pull quotes are erased. This act of, in  
the artist’s term, “excising” implies that the content is irrelevant.  
It also calls to mind the so-called death of print resulting from new  
devices and apps. But Grumbine says that with this method she “makes  
space for what has been censored in media as well as what is lost in  
the translation of experience into words.” She then uses the cut  
objects as negatives for her screen prints. To the Score pieces she  
has added a medieval four-line staff and clef, alluding to music  
composition. “Each score can be interpreted and performed as a chant  
in which media content is translated into the repetition of sound and  
breath.”

For her Ad Screen Test series, Grumbine superimposes her cut newspaper  
grids onto full-page advertisements for luxury goods and name brands  
such as Cartier, Bacardi, and Saks. The effect is comparable to the  
thin shadows of Venetian blinds, suggesting something semi-private or  
thinly veiled. In this, Grumbine seeks to “highlight the subtle  
dialogue between content, viability and corporate funding in printed  
media and journalism in general.”

Naomi Reis eschews text too, favoring instead the celestial. Her  
Untitled drawings, which are based on a 3D modeling program, “imagine  
a journey through an industrial wasteland of outdated technologies— 
dirigible hangers, the interiors of oil refineries—viewed as if  
through the lens of an airborne surveillance camera.” Fine and  
spiraling white lines on black paper read like the Milky Way—a  
majestic constellation within an abyss. The Untitled drawings are a  
delicate confluence of “abstract and realistic space, analog and  
digital techniques.”

Reis also finds inspiration in the visionary Buckminster Fuller. In  
another suite of drawings titled Broken Geodesic Spheres she  
reproduces Fuller’s iconic structure for the Expo '67 Montreal World's  
Fair. “Fuller's geodesic forms look as if they belong on the moon…and  
continue to fire the imagination long after their utility has faded,”  
says the artist. Reis sketched the form with a lightness that makes it  
appear capable of orbiting off the paper. Yet, as the title implies,  
there are small breaks, errors, in her versions. In the context of  
this exhibition, Broken Geodesic Spheres embody many different ideas  
about digital systems and globalization, the architectures of the web,  
and to the unknowns of future technologies.

Julian Wellisz surveys bizarre images in the blogosphere in his  
series .TUMBLR. For each of these silkscreen prints, Wellisz copies  
images from a single blog, primarily using those of teenagers. “The  
images in my work have been and will continue to be reused, reblogged,  
and recycled thousands of times,” says Wellisz. “The imagery addresses  
how seemingly infinite digital access has contributed to the youth’s  
loss of innocence and embrace of the grotesque.” Printed in columns,  
with one image stacked on top of another, each piece feels something  
like an Exquisite Corpse wherein different streams of consciousness  
connect, oftentimes resulting in eerie compositions.



About the Artists
SHANTI GRUMBINE (b. 1979, Rhinebeck, NY; lives and works in New York,  
NY and New Paltz, NY) received her MFA from the University of  
Pennsylvania, BFA from the School of the Art institute of Chicago, and  
studied at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. Select group exhibitions  
include Soapbox Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Kleinert/James Art Center,  
Woodstock, NY; and MagnanMetz Gallery, New York, NY. Forthcoming solo  
shows include A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and Muroff Kotler Gallery,  
SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY.

NAOMI REIS (b. Shiga, Japan; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) received  
her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and BFA from Hamilton  
College. Select exhibitions include Yes Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; Park  
Ave Armory, New York, NY; Exit Art, New York, NY; and Metro Pictures,  
New York, NY. She has participated in several residencies and received  
the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, Millay Colony  
Residency Award, and the Vermont Studio Center Award.

JULIAN WELLISZ (b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in New York,  
NY) earned his BA from Wesleyan University and is at the start of his  
career as a practicing artist. Exhibitions include Crossroads Alumni  
Art Show, Los Angeles, CA and Wesleyan Alumni Art Show, New York, NY.

About the Curator
NICOLE CARUTH is an art writer and curator based in Brooklyn. Her  
writing has been published by, among others, the Studio Museum in  
Harlem, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Phaidon  
Press, ARTnews, C Magazine, Gastronomica, and ArtPrize.org. In  
addition to writing for her own blog, Contemporary Confections, she  
regularly contributes to the PBS affiliated blog Art21, where she  
published her food + art column Gastro-Vision.

Caruth’s past curatorial projects include With Food in Mind, Center  
for Book Arts, New York (2011); Burning Down the House: Building a  
Feminist Art Collection, Brooklyn Museum (2008-2009); and Near Sighted— 
Far Out, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center (2008).

Taking the title from her 2011 exhibition, Caruth recently founded the  
organization With Food in Mind, which develops and supports projects  
at the intersection of visual culture, food studies, and social  
change. The first initiative of With Food in Mind is Artists in the  
Kitchen, both an artist residency and afterschool program for youth  
from underserved communities.


Lower East Side Printshop's programs have been supported in part by  
public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State  
Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department  
of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Private  
supporters have included: Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Milton and  
Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Greenwall  
Foundation, Jerome Foundation, New York Community Trust - Edward and  
Sally Van Lier Fund, PECO Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the  
Visual Arts, and our generous patrons and members.



This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York  
City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City  
Council.



This program is made possible with public funds from the New York  
State Council on the Arts, a state agency.



Special thanks to our Patrons:

Akua Water-based Inks, Laura and Lloyd Blankfein, Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn  
and Gary Cohn, Deutsche Bank, Peter Ezersky, Susan and Eddie Falk,  
Courtney Finch Taylor, Michael and Laura Fisch, Charlotte Ford, Cheri  
Friedman, ICAP / John Nixon, Martin and Shelley Kaufman, John B.  
Koegel, Esq., Stacey and Curtis Lane, Stacy and John Louizos, Jill and  
Thomas Marino, Newmark Knight Frank/Jeffrey Gural, Jane Nixon, Andrew  
Charles Porter, Carla and Tim Porter, Jane Dresner Sadaka and Ned  
Sadaka, Mary and David Solomon, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Volusion,  
Inc.



We thank our volunteers, friends, members, and patrons for their  
dedication, support, and generosity.

###










Image details:

Shanti Grumbine
Ad Screen Test, Bacardi, 2012
Screenprint on newspaper
22" x 12" image and sheet

Naomi Reis
Broken Geodesic Spheres #1, 2010
Graphite on paper
22" x 30"

Julian Wellisz
Self Portrait  (Lindsay Lohan), 2012
Screenprint
22" x 30" image and sheet


Jocelyn Scudder
Programs Assistant
Lower East Side Printshop, Inc.
306 West 37th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10018
t 212-673-5390 ext 10
f 212-979-6493
info@printshop.org
http://printshop.org

EDITIONS '12
Exhibition Opening and Catalogue Launch: Thursday, May 10, 6-8pm
On view through July 8, 2012

The Printshop's latest editions by artists Hong Seon Jang, Jennie C.  
Jones, Darina Karpov, David Kramer, and Enoc Perez with a catalogue  
essay by renowned print expert Roberta Waddell.