opening reception: Friday, June 1st, 6:00–9:00 p.m.

Abdolreza Aminlari and Drew Shiflett draw on traditions of minimalism, architecture, and craft to transport the viewer to a place of the imagination. For the exhibition at Storefront Bushwick, Aminlari exhibits pieces made with thread sewn on paper, Shiflett, a single, mixed-media sculpture.  The pieces exist as aesthetic objects but also function as meditations on one’s place in a specific culture or world that has both familiar and unfamiliar coordinates. The work is beautiful and mysterious, offering an entry into a poetic and exotic realm.

Abdolreza Aminlari explores ideas of cultural memory and identity, specifically the idea of “home” in relation to the Iranian Diaspora. His work examines the familiar and the unknown in the territory of the physical and the subconscious. In the Compositions, Aminlari uses thread and/or ink to draw and sew on paper, a process that allows chance and repetition to guide the outcome.  The blindness of the individual repetitive action is simultaneously absent-minded and full of concentration. The outcome takes the form of false landscapes, textured fields, and topologies that recall maps of geographies that never existed or are waiting to be created.  In the untitled series of gold thread drawings, the focus is more on the domestic.  The geometric shapes reference the patterns found in Persian rugs and miniatures, while the use of gold refers to the divine and ornaments for earthly pleasure.  Intense and ethereal, the drawings are like cosmic explosions.

Drew Shiflett’s sculptures are abstract in nature but reference landscape, architecture and textiles.  Mixed materials, such as handmade paper, cheesecloth, styrofoam and polyester stuffing are used to create textured, translucent surfaces.  Thin strips of cut paper layered with strips of sheer fabric produce a woven effect throughout each piece. The sculptures are the result of a cumulative process of layering and building linear and planar forms. There is a focus on line, light and texture, as well as form, transition and perception.

About the artists:

Abdolreza Aminlari is a Brooklyn-based artist. He received his BFA in 2002 from College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. He has exhibited his work nationally and Internationally, including at the Derfner Judaica Museum (NY), KVKM Kunstverein (Cologne), and a solo show at Spare Room Projects, in Bushwick, NY.  He was recently honored with a residency at SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2012.

Drew Shiflett lives and works in New York City, and is currently preparing for a solo exhibition of constructed drawings at Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City. She had solo exhibitions at Guild Hall Museum (East Hampton, NY); The Drawing Room (East Hampton, NY); Lesley Heller Workspace (New York, NY); Islip Art Museum (East Islip, NY); InterArt Center (New York, NY); White Columns (New York, NY); and Fashion Moda (Bronx, NY). She is the recipient of Artists’ Fellowship Awards in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts and in Sculpture from the New York Foundation for the Arts; a Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship Award in Sculpture from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation; and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Sculpture from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

In the project space:

Cosmology

“Cosmology” focuses on the work of four artists: Nancy Bowen, Matthew Mahler, Paula Overbay, and Lauren Seiden.  The artists use the vocabulary of abstraction to create mini cosmologies, windows into vast worlds beyond everyday reality. The work is controlled, skillfully executed, and full of visual pleasure.

Nancy Bowen is a mixed media artist known for her eclectic mixtures of imagery and materials in both two and three dimensions.  Born in Rhode Island, Bowen received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from Hunter College. Bowen has had over a dozen  solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe including the Lesley Heller Gallery in NYC, Annina Nosei Gallery in NYC, Galerie Farideh Cadot in Paris, the Betsy Rosenfield Gallery in Chicago, and the James Gallery in Houston. She has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Jentel Foundation and the European Ceramic Work Center among others. Bowen maintains a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and is a an Associate Professor of Sculpture at SUNY Purchase.

Matthew Mahler grew up in the suburbs of Long Island, New York.  He currently lives in Ridgewood, Queens, and maintains a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Matthew is the co-founder of Small Black Door, an experimental art space in Ridgewood.  His work has been exhibited recently at Klapper Hall Gallery at Queens College, the Rosenberg Gallery at Hofstra University, and in a two-person show at Camel Art Space in Brooklyn.

Paula Overbay’s work has been exhibited widely in galleries across the United States, including Jeffrey Coploff Gallery in New York; The Gallery at 38 Cameron in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and at Pulliam Deffenbaugh in Portland, Oregon.  She has been awarded residencies from the Ragdale Foundation and the MacDowell Colony.  Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times and Art in America. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Lauren Seiden was born in New York, New York in 1981. She received her B.A. in Painting and Drawing from Bennington College in 2003, and has been living and working in New York City since.  She was a recipient of the “AOL, Chuck Close 25 for 25 Grant” in 2010.  She has shown throughout the New York area and in London, Dallas, and Miami.  Her work has been featured in Satellite Magazine, ArtSlant, Assembly Journal, Chicago Art Review, ArtInfo, and AOLArtists.com.

opening reception: Friday, April 20th, 6:00–9:00 p.m.

Storefront Bushwick is pleased to present the work of Carol Salmanson and Stephen Truax in two solo exhibitions at the gallery from April 20—May 20th.

Carol Salmanson

Carol Salmanson works with light and reflective materials. Trained as a painter, the artist began using light and reflective materials eight years ago to take the spatial and color concerns of her painting into a different realm. Salmanson’s wall pieces harness light’s unique ability to touch both mind and feelings. Her work creates a sensation of depth, one that opens into mysterious worlds. The artist writes of her fascination with the material, “Light beams into you and envelops you. These very special qualities let me build emotional spaces that resonate with memory and experience.  By amplifying and radiating color outward, into and around the viewer, I can build atmospheres, using color, line, and form in a way that goes beyond painting’s two-dimensional limitations.” Salmanson’s large installations originate with the architecture of the sites they will inhabit. They are structural, concerned with the way that form, light, and reflected light merge to create a space that is artificial but not fictional: a stage set, lit from without and within.  In the small works, in contrast, the artist’s hand is visible.  There is both spontaneity and hand-drawn lines, even though they’re made from industrial materials such as LEDs, electronics components, plastics, and wire.  Like painting, the work is deeply personal. Painters have always talked about depicting light.  Today’s technology allows Salmanson to use light as medium as well as subject. In her of work, she brings new media into the context of the history of painting.

In the project space:

Stephen Truax

Stephen Truax’s Xena series proposes a paradox–that contemporary painting can be simultaneously self-questioning and sincere. This recursive stance occupies two contradictory positions: one, painting’s acknowledgment of its own history and emotional meaning and two, the impossibility that painting can be unselfconsciously meaningful in a contemporary context. The Xena series, 2010-11, are geometric abstract paintings in gouache and pencil on stretched and prepared paper, made by overlapping transparent layers of vibrant color. The compositions are bilaterally symmetrical and are drawn directly from ancient Roman mosaics, decorative wall painting, quilt patterns, and textile design. To make the work, the artist employs a unique process where areas of gouache are painted over hand-drafted patterns and then removed, leaving transparent layers of pigment stain in the prepared ground. The paintings have an impact disproportionate to their modest scale because of their striking beauty and enigmatic character. The paintings teeter on the edge of craft by referencing quilting and decorative arts, yet also recall classical spiritual or religious imagery. Although made with materials traditionally used in design and drawing–the hand-drawn pencil grid remains visible in the final image–these works are clearly paintings intended to test the boundaries of the medium. By isolating common symbols and archetypes from historical, sacred sources and representing them in new, self-consciously-designed works, the artist connects motifs of ancient art and architecture with the practice of painting today. The Xena series proposes a link between the belief-infused visual language of the past and self-conscious contemporary thought.

Carol Salmanson http://www.carolsalmanson.com/

Carol Salmanson is a Brooklyn-based artist working with light and reflective materials. She uses optics along with a variety of lighting technologies and reflective materials to create large installations and unique objects with light as both medium and subject. Salmanson says that her art “explores the energy embedded in subconscious perceptions and calculations, the things you see and know without realizing it.”

Her most recent installation, Park Lights, was presented by Smart Spaces in the windows of 254 Park Avenue South in New York City. Solo exhibition venues include Mixed Greens Gallery, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Saint Peter’s Church, and PS 122 Gallery in New York City, and Gallery Ju-ichi Gatsu in Tokyo. Salmanson has recently participated in the following group exhibitions: Dumbo Arts Festival (2010); Resplendency, East/West Project, Berlin (2010); Incandescent, 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York City (2008); Trellis: A Sculpture Survey, Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Newark (2008); Host, Soap Factory, Minneapolis (2007); Corpse of Time, Galeria Janet Kurnatowski, Brooklyn (2007); and The Raw and the Cooked, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2006). Her exhibition at Storefront Bushwick will be followed by a solo exhibtion at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in 2013 as well as a group exhibition curated by Karin Bravin at Lehman College in the Bronx in the fall of 2012.

Stephen Traux http://stephentruax.com/

Stephen Truax (born 1985 Glenview, IL) is an artist, writer, and independent curator, living and working in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. In 2011, he co-organized Portal, a series of five communicating exhibitions between Sydney, Beijing, and New York, with Sydney-based curator Janis Ferberg. His work, which includes painting, sculpture, photography, and digital prints, has been included in over twenty curated exhibitions in New York, Miami, Rome, and Kolkata. He earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007, lived and worked in Rome from 2005 to 2006, and traveled to India in 2007.

March 16 – April 15, 2012

Two consistent themes in Kirk Stoller’s work are connection and support. He builds sculpture using found wood, plastics, and other elements divorced from their original intent. He fuses the worn states with new, clean, glossy surfaces: the narratives that arise when things are placed on or near one another reflect how the artist makes sense of the world. All life is a collection of small precariously placed pieces that rely on each other for strength, in actual form or through a labyrinth of memories. Stoller’s foundation is in painting, though he works and understands the world through a sculptor’s lens. His work echoes this tension, as he continues to be intrigued by the space that exits between the two mediums, both in the physical sense and through the myriad possibilities that are inherently distinct to each. He uses an interdisciplinary approach to push the boundary, while highlighting desired issues that can only be deciphered when the two are combined.
With still standing…sort of, Stoller furthers his exploration of the frailty of life. By creating works that seem to just barely remain upright or intact, he taps into the inner strain of life in our “post” recession world. Each piece has a central solidity that somehow resists the general degradation of the forms and allows them to remain standing (or hanging) despite the visual lean to the contrary.

Kirk Stroller http://www.kirkstoller.com/

Kirk Stoller was born in Oregon and was raised on a small farm outside of Portland. He received his BA in French Language from Portland State and his MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley.  His work was recently exhibited at Mary Ryan Gallery in New York,  Galerie Axel Obiger in Berlin, and Romer Young Gallery in San Francisco. It has been reviewed in the SF Chronicle, City Arts, and Shotgun Review. Stoller was the 2010-2011 recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Residency in New York, and was also a studio resident at the MacDowell Art Colony in 2008 and Headlands Center for the Arts from 2004-2007. He maintains a studio practice in Brooklyn, NY, and in San Francisco, CA.

In the project space:

Knickerbocker Mini Maw

March 16 – April 15, 2012

opening reception: Friday, March 16, 6:00–9:00 p.m.

featuring: Brent Owens, Rachael Morrison,
David Pappaceno, &  Don Pablo Pedro
curated by Brent Owens

Knickerbocker Mini Maw is a curatorial extension of artist Brent Owens’ Knickerbocker Maw, an online store-style project presenting small-batch series of objects that explore the novelties and commerce of Bushwick’s Knickerbocker Avenue. The imagery and the pricing of these objects are inspired by the bargain-blasting bustle of Knickerbocker.
In 1809, Washington Irving published “A History of New York” under the pseudonym Deidrich Knickerbocker. A long-winded satirical text, the book presents the lamentations of a fictitious Mr. Knickerbocker at the passing of the genteel Dutch colonial society and mannerisms that he once enjoyed to a modern age marked by fewer scruples, of “degeneracy and refinement.” Knickerbocker takes great liberties in conveying to his devoted reader the story of the invasion and eventual takeover of Manhattan and its surroundings by “the Yankee Race,” which culminated in the change in the name of our city from “Nieuw Nederlandts” to New York along with a change in governance. The name Knickerbocker has since become emblematic of many things New York, most famously becoming the namesake of the New York Knickerbockers, or Knicks, and of course, of Bushwick’s Knickerbocker Avenue, now the shopping hub of the neighborhood. Since Irving’s time, and indeed before, New York City itself has become synonymous with transition, playing host to an ever-changing cast of social groups, and accompanying cycles of economic decline and subsequent gentrification.
As Bushwick braces itself for another such transition, Knickerbocker Maw is a project with the aim of harnessing something of the glaring and grotesque collision of social spheres that pervades the neighborhood, and in the process, having a bit of fun with that classic New York situation, the conflict between hustling and holding on, in the Knickerbocker fashion.
With Knickerbocker Mini Maw, Owens has invited artists Rachael Morrison, David Pappaceno, and Don Pablo Pedro to join the project. The four Brooklyn artists, with very different approaches to object making and a shared familiarity with Bushwick and Knickerbocker Avenue, will present small series of objects based on the conceptual criteria of Knickerbocker Maw. The artists will explore, in their own stylistic and formal terms, the vast stimuli of Knickerbocker Avenue and its commerce. The objects, or products, created will be presented in the rear gallery space of Storefront Bushwick as a pop-up shop exhibition. The pop up shop, a growing trend within the upper echelons of the commercial art world that reflects a new market strategy in changing economic times, will be presented here in Bushwick fashion. With an emphasis on financial accessibility that seems a fleeting notion as Bushwick changes with the times, Knickerbocker Mini Maw will be the art pop-up shop that offers works at bargain prices, true to the commercial form of Knickerbocker Avenue.

Brent Owens http://www.brentowens.net/

Brent Owens was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1980. He received a BFA in Sculpture from Winthrop University in 2003 and has been living and working in Brooklyn, NY, since. He exhibits regularly at English Kills Art Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He has shown throughout the New York area and in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, including at Invisible Exports in New York and This:Los Angeles, in Los Angeles. His work has been written about in The New Yorker, The L Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Bushwick BK.

Rachael Morrison http://www.eyeheartbrains.org/

Rachael Morrison is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and a librarian at the Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, on BBC1, and in exhibitions and screenings at Anthology Film Archives, White Box, and Esopus Space. Morrison is currently in residence at Harvestworks in New York.

David Pappaceno http://davidpappaceno.com

David Pappaceno was born in Hartford, Ct in 1975. After switching majors from physical therapy to fine arts, David received his BFA from Boston University, where he was also a member of the wrestling team. After finishing his MFA in Boston, David eventually moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he currently lives and works. He has shown his work in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City including solo shows at Work Gallery in Brooklyn and Green Street Gallery in Boston.

Don Pablo Pedro http://www.pedroproducts.com/

College dropout Don Pablo Pedro has shown at Pandemic Gallery, Mighty Tanaka Gallery, and English Kills Art Gallery. He has been featured in Juxtapoz, Animal New York and The L Magazine.

February 10 – March 11, 2012

opening reception: Friday, February 10th 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Martin Bromirski was born in Bennington, VT in 1968.  He received his BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. He subsequently lived in Albuquerque NM, Korea, many years in Japan, Richmond VA, and since 2007 has worked on a farm in upstate NY’s Washington County. Martin’s solo exhibitions include shows at The Philadelphia Art Alliance (PA), Marlboro College (VT), The University of the Arts (PA), ADA Gallery (VA), John Davis Gallery (NY), Wildlife (NY), and most recently Joshua Abelow’s Art Blog Art Blog (NY).

 

 

Rachel LaBine is a Brooklyn-based painter, originally from Grand Forks, North Dakota. She received her BFA from RISD in 2010. In New York she has shown at StandPipe Gallery, Curbs & Stoops, and with the G-Train Salon.

 

Elizabeth Riley: A long time New Yorker, Elizabeth Riley graduated from Barnard College and received an MFA from Hunter College. Her videos have appeared in screenings at home and abroad, including a two person screening at Creon Gallery in New York City in 2011, as well as venues in England, Madrid, Copenhagen and Berlin. Her three-dimensional work, most recently sculptures/installations including embedded video elements, has appeared in galleries and alterative spaces, renegade and pop up shows. She had a solo show at Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Newark, in 2010, and has been a guest host for the Studio Salon series, curated by David Gibson, in 2011. Her art has appeared at Sugar in Bushwick, NY Studio Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, PS 122, Nurtureart, and the Pool Art Fair in New York and Miami, the Art Now Fair, NY and Artropolis, Chicago. She has been honored with eight artist residencies, most recently the SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2011, and the Fall Residency at Ox-Bow, in Michigan, in 2009. She was chosen for the Aljira Emerge Program, 2001.

January 1–February 5, 2012

opening reception: Sunday, January 1st, 1:00–4:00 p.m.

Please join us for a New Year’s Day brunch at the gallery.

Halsey Hathaway http://www.halseyhathaway.com/

Halsey Hathaway was born in Buffalo, NY in 1980.  He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, his MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY and was awarded the Tony Smith Award from Hunter College. Halsey Hathaway is a 2010 fellow in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts.  He has exhibited throughout the New York City area including, Eleven Rivington, Roebling Hall, Silver Shed, The Painting Center, Stand Pipe Gallery, The Bronx River Art Center, and Casey Kaplan Gallery.  Halsey ‘s work has been mentioned in The New Yorker, Useless, Time Out New York, and Array Magazine.

Gary Petersen http://garypetersenart.com/

Gary Petersen is a native New Yorker. He holds a B.S. degree from The Pennsylvania State University and an M.F.A. from The School of Visual Arts. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey and was awarded a studio at The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, Space Program 2010-2011, in Brooklyn, New York. Past awards have included The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Painting Fellowship Award for 2011, 2002, 1993 and the Visual Arts Fellowship Award , Edward F. Albee Foundation, 1988. His work has been exhibited widely in New York City and throughout the United States. He has had solo exhibitions at Michael Steinberg (New York), 2005; Fusebox (D.C.), 2004; Genovese/Sullivan Gallery (Boston), 2002 & 1999; White Columns (New York),1992 . Recent past group shows have included Lori Bookstein Gallery, Allegra La Viola Gallery, The Painting Center, Sue Scott Gallery, Bronx River Art Center, McKenzie Fine Art, Janet Kurnatowski, Lohin-Geduld, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Triple Candie, Plus/Ultra (Winkleman) Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun, Diverse Works(TX), Newark Museum and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition in 1993. Upcoming group shows include Edward Thorp Gallery (New York), McKenzie Fine Art (New York) and Storefront Gallery (Brooklyn). His work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Sun, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Partisan Review. He currently has a studio at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Studio Center, in New York City.

 

In the back room:

Paintings by Rob de Oude http://www.robdeoude.com/

Dutch native Rob de Oude lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY. He has been educated at the Hoge School voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam (NL), in painting, sculpture and art history and has followed the Graduate program for painting at S.U.N.Y. Purchase, NY, as part of an educational exchange program. de Oude has shown in the Netherlands, the US and France. He has participated in Red Dot and Fountain Art Fairs in New York and Miami, Slick Art Fair in Paris and has, amongst others, been featured in the NY Post, L Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Artnet Magazine and NYArts Magazine.  As founding member, de Oude is the current gallery director of Camel Art Space in Brooklyn, NY.