For the final evening of Cold Open Verse, films by Fiona Banner, Moyra Davey, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, and Gerardo Madera, a rare screening event presented by Blonde Art Books and Poet Transmit.

Screening at 8pm:
– Fiona Banner, ‘Mistah Kurtz – He Not Dead’, 2014 and ‘Phantom’, 2015 – two films produced for the publication, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. A work by Fiona Banner. Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin.
– Moyra Davey, ‘My Saints’, 2014. “Burn the Diaries” published by Dancing Foxes.
– Jibade-Khalil Huffman, ‘Working Title’ for the book “James Brown is Dead” published by Future Plan and Program, 2011
– Gerardo Madera, ‘Untitled Printer for Xavier Antin (test video)’, 2014, book and video by Gerardo Madera. “Printed at Home” published by Common Satisfactory Standard.

Outdoors!

Knockdown Center is pleased to announce a three-person show presented by John Furgason, Serban Ionescu, and Carlos Little: the first in a series of exhibitions destined for Knockdown’s outdoor boiler room structure. In this relic of a past industrial age, the three artists reappropriate themes of the classical temple in a dystopian ruin of enjoyment. The pavilion, a free-standing structure from an architectural tradition of luxury, power, and specifically pleasure, is juxtaposed with the etymology of “Maspeth,” meaning “bad waterplace.” This term comes from a native tribes’ name for the swampy region surrounding Newtown Creek. Contrasting the weathered texture of the space are a fresh body of works both familiar and abstract.

Furgason’s works transpose the geometry embedded in our culture into sculptures of everyday, engineered, cultural objects like pharmaceuticals, band aids, gun parts and drones. Removing practical function, he walks a thin line of representation and expression. His deadpan formal approach is countered by an emotive use of both lively and subdued color. Built like paintings from wood and stretched canvas, Furgason employs a handcraft mode of making the ‘American landscape of forms’, carefully positioning them like architectural elements in the temple.

Ionescu uses steel and canvas to present a group of works that modulate back and forth from abstraction to figuration, foreground to background. Hints of historical narrative, structures and figures emerge and are diffused over fields of color. The paintings appear to be the generator of forms and characters, providing the context for the planar, steel, alien-like characters that can be found throughout the pavilion. The steel sculpture works as a line when viewed on its edge, and a shape when viewed from other angles. Likewise, line becomes shape in the paintings, and both vibrate off the rain and steam-like backgrounds.

Little presents a series of sculptures made from building materials using tools found on any construction site. The bright, yellow freshness of exterior sheathing is adhered to dark, old growth lumber which is then crafted into feet, legs and other body parts. A section of wood flooring removed from an Upper East Side mansion serves as a pedestal while wood beams are carved into a temple altar of sorts. Little’s paintings on unprimed canvas and fabric are a playful use of color, line, geometry and rhythm with figures in profile visible through the line work. Like his brightly colored upper body sculpture, these characters are reminiscent of characters found on temple walls, residing in a cacophonous environment.

New York based artists Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish have taken interest in the relationships between an object’s outward appearance, and the object’s intrinsic material makeup — its ingredients list, its nutritional value, its metadata — and the potential for this material to embody FDA politics. So Much Dirt But Not Enough Soil utilizes materials like Miracle Grow, live active culture l. acidophilus, liquid THC, the introduction to Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (shredded and pulped), yellow #5, ginkgo biloba, Flavor Dynamics’ CHEF-ASSIST® Harvest Spice Flavoring, 3-methyl butanoic acid (the smell of body odor), crushed Adderall, aspartame, among others.

Part of Knockdown Center’s Ruin Series, the exhibition is held within the remains of a century-old stone building, which encompasses three separate rooms, one of which has no roof and is exposed to the elements. Soap wall pieces cast in relief, potentially lathered by rain and humidity, match one another in form, while their varied material makeups describe a society that tends to overprescribe and sanitize. A miniature war game terrain board suggests a terraformed mars. Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD) lamps act as light boxes to illuminate handmade watermarked paper. Dispensers filled with DIY plant food include ingredients like worm poop and Bud Lite Lime. And images that link Michelle Obama’s partnership with Subway and her White House garden initiatives are intermixed with Monsanto’s genetically modified alfalfa seeds deregulated by the very same Obama Administration, in handmade paper wall pieces.

Not unlike the consumer’s experience in the grocery store, where food products are accompanied by text listing ingredients and nutritional value (along with marketing copy), the art consumer is presented with language — title, date, dimensions, materials, a press release — that may reveal meaning illegible in the work itself. In the bread aisle, two loaves of bread may look nearly identical in form, but to the discerning consumer, their ancillary texts reveal two distinct products in support of vastly differing production methods, political economies, and consequences: one ingredients list reads ‘flour, water, yeast, salt’ while the other lists fourteen ingredients, more than half of which are names of chemical compounds. This ancillary text places the ethical burden on the consumer to make the right choice; rather than find an alternative to plastic, Poland Springs urges their customers to recycle their bottles. We’ve learned that the products we consume, whether food, drugs, or hygienic products, are defined not by what they appear to be but by what they are made of and how they are produced; they are intrinsically political. In the same way that we can no longer assume a wall piece is made of paint and canvas, we’re both burdened and enlightened by the text, or metadata, that accompany the objects that surround us.

Loney Abrams (b. 1986, Boston MA) and Johnny Stanish (b. 1983, Great Falls MT) both received their MFAs from Pratt Institute in 2013. They’ve been working collaboratively since 2014. Recent solo (collaborative) exhibitions include Gluteus Maximus at Java Projects in Brooklyn, and Polly wants a cracker and distressed denim from Forever 21 at Beverly’s in New York. Recent group exhibitions include Ashes/Ashes in Los Angeles, Regina Rex in New York, and Material Art Fair in Mexico City. Abrams and Stanish also run hotel-art.us, a curatorial initiative that installs temporary exhibitions in unlikely spaces for the purposes of generating documentation for online audiences. Their forthcoming solo exhibition at Sadie Halie Projects in Minneapolis opens October 22nd.

In Hito Steyerl’s timely essay, “In Defense of the Poor Image” she writes:

The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short: it is about reality.

The title, Event Horizon, refers to the point of no return, no looking back, a precipice, the threshold between space and non-space. The artists exhibited manifest these ideas both objectively and subjectively, using the concept of “landscape” as a subject or a place of action, theoretically or literally. Each artist is distinct in his/her use of media and strategies of representation, but all are concerned with the edge between the screen and reality, as a place of manipulation and interpretation.

By confusing the relationships between the hand and digital and physical space, Leah Beeferman’s works invent intricate in-between spaces which mirror the theoretical ideas of abstract physics. These works contribute to a larger, ongoing study of digital drawing loosely inspired by a theory in quantum physics which states that pure empty space is not empty and is, in fact, quite dense. As Beeferman integrates digital drawing practices with photographic material, laser-etching, or software such as After Effects, the work avoids true physicality. It remains primarily digital; residing between file and viewer experience, it mirrors the interpretation and subsequent imagining of scientific theory.

Jerstin Crosby’s work embodies a unique sense of otherworldliness derived from a combination of experimental animation techniques. The simple and hypnotic scenes are crafted from original footage, 3D models, and drawing. His approach to creating these process-laden videos balances the medium against the heavily coded content which it abstracts. The work, often dark and mysterious, engages an awareness, or anxiety perhaps, about our understanding of the “real” and “natural” world.

Steve Gurysh explores wild economies of objects, events, and digital artifacts to create new forms of alterity through physical and time-based media. While his process employs methods of research, interpolating the histories of material science, cinema, digital imaging and fabrication, illogical premises often drive his work towards inventive scenarios. Here, storytelling becomes active through a productive process, weaving mythological frameworks, historical narrative, and invented experience into potent objects and public interventions.

Travelling to remote landscapes and taking geological/astronomical events as found footage of the world, artist Elizabeth McTernan uses actions (or “non-vicarious encounters”), installation, drawing, lithography, sound, and storytelling to construct spaces that are both literal and literary. She creates a narrative structure for the reconsideration of perception, setting the curved horizon of landscape into tension with the square horizons of screens, speakers, documents, and images. Her art works navigate representational and conceptual rifts in the Earthling day-to-day, via direct bodily gesture in the liminal passage.

About the curator:
Jessica Langley (b. 1981, USA) is a multimedia artist based in NYC whose work considers place, landscape, and the sublime through the vernacular as well as popular iconography. She has exhibited her work internationally, and has been an artist-in-residence in numerous programs including Skaftfell Center of Visual Art in Iceland, Askeaton Contemporary Art in Ireland, the SPACES World Artist Program in Cleveland, and the Digital Painting Atelier at OCAD-U in Toronto. She was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship for research in Iceland, and earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. She the founding director of the Stephen and George Laundry Line, a site for public art in Ridgewood, Queens.

Curated by Ali Rosa-Salas and Dyani Douze.

Programming:
August 6: Opening reception, 7 – 12am
Join us for the show’s opening reception, with live performance by Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, a flag raising for MALAXA, music by SHYB0I, hosted by KUNQ

August 13: MAMI Market 12 – 7pm
Local designers and artists take residence at Knockdown Center for day-long market place, along with DJ sets, performances, workshops

August 20: P2P 7pm
Performance collaboration between sound artist Dyani Douze, new media artist Salome Asega, and world champion Floyd Little Double Dutch Team

September 3: FAKE ACCENT Presents: RUDE GYAL 8pm
MAMI’s closing party will be a Labor day weekend Caribbean fete hosted by arts collective FAKE ACCENT
LAST DAY TO SEE THE EXHIBITION!
About the artists:

Salome Asega is a Brooklyn-based artist and researcher whose practice celebrates multivocality and welcomes dissensus, using interactive installation and odd wearables. She is assistant director of POWRPLNT digital art collaboratory, co-host of Hyperopia: 20/30 radio, and one half of CandyFloss, a duo of creative technologists. Asega received her MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons and her BA in Social Practice from NYU. 

Nona Faustine is a photographer, visual artist, and Brooklyn native. She graduated from the SVA and received her MFA from the International Center of Photography at Bard College. Faustine’s photography explores the intersection of race, identity, womanhood, and representation in the 21st century. She gained widespread acclaim for her photo series “White Shoes,” in which she photographs herself in New York City sites which were central to the slave trade, nude except for a pair of white shoes. Faustine recently exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, participated in a residency at the Baxter Street Camera Club and was awarded a Director’s Fellowship at the International Center for Photography.

Doreen Garner is a Brooklyn-based artist born in Philadelphia, PA. Her current research project centers on the history of the black female body in medicine, and dynamics of race, sexuality, pathology, and fetishism. Garner is co-host of #trashDAY on Clocktower Radio and was recently a studio resident at Abrons Art Center and Pioneer Works. She holds two degrees in glass sculpture: a BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an artist living and working in Harlem via Okinawa, Japan whose practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture and music using satire and whimsy to examine how our environments shape us.  She is currently an MFA candidate at SVA and has presented work at MoCADA, Skylight Gallery, Free Candy, and FLUX Fair.

MALAXA is a Johannesburg (occupied Azania) and Tel Aviv (occupied Palestine) based collective spearheaded by new media artists Tabita Rezaire and Alicia Mersy, whose work explores decolonial aesthetics and political resistance through digital culture, art, documentary and fashion.

Rodan Tekle is a digital artist, animator, video editor, and art director living and working in NYC via Sweden and Eritrea. Her work examines the screen environment within the African diaspora through motion and graphic design, 3-D rendering, and game engine based design. She received her BA in Performance Art Production from Malmö University and her MFA in Computer Art from SVA.

About the curators:

Ali Rosa-Salas is an independent curator from Brooklyn, NY. She has curated exhibitions and produced public programs for AFROPUNK, Barnard Center for Research on Women, Danspace Project, MoCADA, TOP RANK Magazine, and Weeksville Heritage Center. Her collaborations with Salome Asega, Chrybaby Cozie and Dyani Douze have been supported by AUNTS with residencies at the New Museum and Mount Tremper Arts. Her writing on dance and performance has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, The Dance Enthusiast, New York Live Arts Context Notes, among others. Ali is currently an MA candidate at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.

Dyani Douze is a Brooklyn-based DJ and multimedia artist working in sound art, music production, film editing, directing and curatorial projects. She has presented her work at AFROPUNK AFTER DARK, ALL GOLD Listening Room at MoMA PS1, Danspace Project, and Performa 15 among other venues. As a member of the New Negress Film Society, Dyani has most recently presented her films at Indiana University Cinema, Made in NY Media Center, South Dallas Cultural Center and Cooper Union as part of a series presented by Black Radical Imagination.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed; rather, it changes form…

This curatorial experiment will present 23 artists’ personal artifacts exposing small natural take-aways from a creative’s beloved landscape.

The suspended installation will showcase small physical remnants of a single journey, or moment in time, which an artist wanted to remember and take away, as opposed to the carefully crafted work they usually complete to show the public. Through these remnants, the artists willingly share their inspiration, intention and momentum with participants.

Viewers will be invited to explore and bask, if you will, in the echoing auras that these talismans cast.  There is a recreating of sacred space for each object, which ultimately has an intimate value to the artist, alongside their manufactured conception.

Just as chest x-rays of Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly’s glasses, Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels or Andy Warhol’s wig were sold at auction for a significant price tag, could these talismans of established artists become a valuable collector’s item? Or are these geographical remnants truly priceless? We invite you to discover the energy transactions.

Organized by Elijah Wheat Showroom (Liz Nielsen and Carolina Wheat)