Featuring Paolo Bertocchi, Ernest Concepcion, Rachel Frank, Haegeen Kim, Fay Ku, Stephanie Lempert, Dulce Pinzón, and Adam Smith
Curated by Tricia YunJoo Paik
Exhibition Dates: August 4 through September 8, 2007
Closing reception: Saturday, September 8, 4-6pm
(part of Howl! Festival 2007 www.howlfestival.com)
“All creative people are empowered by an inheritance from the past, a gift that can only be repaid by dedicating a portion of our present labors toward the future.” – Created Commons, Lewis Hyde..
To reaffirm our commitment to this vibrant and historically significant multicultural neighborhood, Artists Alliance sponsors the Lower East Side Rotating Studio artist residency Program with artists chosen by a panel of outside artists, curators, and arts professionals. The artists selected are presented here in Working Space 07.
Paolo Bertocchi is an installation and performance artist whose work relates directly with the performer’s body, sometimes encompassing it or being manipulated by it. Mr. Bertocchi’s installations draw the audience in to question both the endurance of the performer/artist and outside cultural institutions. The performer’s gestures are slow, calculated and precise. In this condition the human being is at the same time both present and absent, man and object, in a circling of two extremes.
Ernest Concepcion‘s ongoing series “The Line Wars”. convey his commitment to perpetually create anything imaginable engaged in conflict. The images are based on the entertainments of childhood and adolescence: video games, action figures, strategy board games- always two forces opposing one another. Each panel encapsulates a single battle. When viewed together, they take on epic proportions. “The Line Wars” is a celebration of making impulsive, nonchalant drawings, as well as a highly personal journey into nostalgia and an homage to geekdom.
Rachel Frank is currently working on a series of large-scale animals sewn out of cloth and painted. Her work explores death and violence in one form or another. Ms. Frank often depicts animals such as wolves or horses that have characteristics or social organizations. This recent body of work explores both personal and public narratives.
Haegeen Kim works with graphite or colored pencils on paper depicting both faces and figures. Ms Haegeen’s recent series focuses on portraits of young artists mostly, living in New York. She begins by photographing her subjects individually, wearing their normal street clothes and posing naturally. She then draws the images in a straightforward manner, adding animals to amplify the emotion of the subject.
Fay Ku focuses on issues of socialization within a narrative framework. The images come from memory, imagination and stories. The works on paper are about the capacity to think and give public meaning to the private, imaginative inner world. Though the images may be fantastic and/or personal, they resonate because Ms. Ku’s view of the world and how she perceives it.
Stephanie Lempert questions and examines the different methods of communication and the various roles that communication plays in our society. By concentrating on the deconstruction of conversation and the analysis of the different methods depicting conversation, her work draws attention to the way in which various cultures interpret language. Ms. Lempert approaches her subject matter through object making, video and installation.
Dulce Pinzón has found inspiration for her photography in feelings of nostalgia, questions of identity, and political and cultural frustrations. Ms. Pinzón’s latest project “The Real Story of the Superheroes” comes full circle to reintroduce the Mexican immigrant in New York in a satirical documentary style featuring ordinary men and women in their work environment donning superhero garb, thus raising questions of both our definition of heroism and our ignorance of and indifference to the workforce that fuels our ever consuming economy.
Adam Smith creates large-scale dolls and places them in narratives that draw upon the available environment. The dolls are presented in an uncanny, in-between world that seems to run parallel to our own. They double as a foil for our own self-consciousness, comprising exaggerations of our flaws without our embarrassment over them. They are poised and collected with expressions indicating that they understand while withholding judgment.
This exhibit is sponsored, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and through the generous support of the following: The New York City Economic Development Corporation, The Greenwall Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the members of the Artists Alliance Incorporated.