On June 21, Knockdown Center presented a full­ spectrum look at the automobile as our nation’s long standing symbol of manifest destiny and superfluous ingenuity. Set amidst three acres of parking lot, gallery, blackbox, and warehouse, M­aspeth’s World of Wheels took this undeniable American obsession to its illogical conclusion featuring an impressive array of high­ end custom and collectible cars in conversation with automobile­ inspired visual art. Complementing the landscape were the sights, sounds and smells typically associated with a state fair including: fried things, metal/psych rock bands, burnt rubber, sledge hammers hitting steel, charcoal grills, pirate radio and more!

An exhibition curated by the collectively run gallery, Regina Rex.

Taking on the notion that living quarters, work places, or exhibition venues such as the Knockdown Center could have their own agency and voice, James Cordas, Leeza Meksin and Jeff Williams worked with the building to generate works specifically for this occasion. Jeff Williams’ undulating wall piece made from expanded metal flocked with nylon fibers spaned a fifty foot wall, slipping from manmade material into the realm of natural phenomenon—a process that could be seen to mirror the building’s own arc over time. Leeza Meksin stretched sheer fabrics across an isolated section of the architecture, interrogating the structure by highlighting its mutability and permeability. James Cordas used the wind power from an industrial strength fan found on site to generate work that accepts the unpredictable character of the light, sound and body of the cavernous space. Together, the works featured in House, What is Your Crime? spoke to the possibility for placing authorship and active willpower in the hands of the building itself while in dialogue with its artists and inhabitants.

¹The title is borrowed from a line in the poem “House & Bernadette” by Bernadette Mayer from the book Scarlet Tanager. In this poem, the poet holds a conversation with her apartment. The poem begins with the question: “B: House are you anyone who could be doing anything at this moment? Are you a boy watching train tracks in the past standing in a big yellow field?”

Negative Space featured five artists whose works reference the domestic environment. Through various media, the artworks in this exhibition explored the temporal and spatial intervals between humans and the objects that most closely surround them; as the viewer encountered references to the emotional and psychological space of home, they were placed in stark contrast to the Knockdown Center’s vast industrial space. The artworks situated the viewer in a contemplative space, at once personal and claustrophobic. The comfort and security of home was juxtaposed with raw open space. This exhibition explored how works depicting the domestic can simultaneously convey an emotion of feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Jeremy Coleman Smith carefully built a 12 x 12 x 8 foot room in which interior paneling was made from hand-cut cardboard and exterior siding was formed out of soaked and embossed Stonehenge paper. Rachel Higgins exhibited two works, both read as domestic objects gone awry. Her sculptural work is often performative and participatory, bringing an unexpectedness to familiar objects. Cait Carouge’s large-scale photographs are unsettling and explore the uncanny in domestic interiors. Lauren Gregory turns the process of painting into an animation and creates a narrative that locates the viewer at home on the couch, comforted by face-painted pillows. Kevin Frances also uses a narrative form in his three Japanese woodblock prints, telling a story of a young woman moving into a new apartment.

In conjunction with the exhibition was a dinner event by Eric May, Chef and Founder of the Piranha Club, an artist-run underground supper club that was launched out of the Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center in Chicago. Eric teamed up with artist Paul Anthony Smith in a long-anticipated culinary throw down to present an intimate dinner on Saturday, March 28.

Curated by Stacie Johnson and Gabrielle Garland

image: Kevin Frances, “Lucas’s Clothes (3),” 28x14x6 in, Ceramic, pigments, acrylic varnish. 2014.