"DOT.-DASH" Exhibition
The Gowanus Studio Space
This event has ended.
The exhibition’s internal, artist-driven curatorial structure echoes the ethos of The Gowanus Studio Space’s own greater mission and operation. Inherent in said structure are individual strands of artistic thinking like those brought by these previously unassociated artists; strands which fan and converge conceptually and physically at the studio.
Bill Abdale repeats for us an obscured recording. Through layers of silkscreened imagery, he presents an abbreviated visibility which privileges the surface and the messy nature of the medium more than the image itself. The replicated versions reference the parallel processes through which we individually understand mapped information or landscape surroundings.
Carl Ferrero combines silkscreen and lithography with nostalgic objects weighty with pop-culture past-lives. However, the immediacy in his print technique freezes them in time and space to be nothing but in the present.
Recognizing the myth inherent in representation, Hannah Bigeleisen slyly alters the surface of her geometric, minimal works on paper while simultaneously alluding to space and form. Combining print with photographic as well as real/embossed texture, these works are challenges in understanding multiple representations of space in one image.
Katie Merz’s cartoons are distilled into so-called “heiroglyphs” - a language of imagery rendered in generous line. Her combination of icons strikes upon the basics of being human (underpants, pencils, plants). Placing playful narrative on a utilitarian object like a raincoat, Merz inserts her work into the every-day.
Jennifer Schmidt’s packaging and commercial-style display plays on the lifetime of visual training we all receive through media and product design, but the reward for captured attention is poetic in acknowledging its tropes. Wrapped items force viewers’ staid discipline.
Jennifer Waverek renders found print design with the antique technique of photo gravure. The ancestor of photographic print, photo gravure finds uncanny romance and depth in the lines and blackness of graphic design from titles one might find on the bookshelf at home - The Joy of Sex; Crime and Punishment. Waverek’s digital prints meet us in our contemporary context, but similarly distill their subjects for further consideration.
The artists agree upon the deficiency of spoken language, and collectively their works quietly defer to visual communication. Referencing an alphabetical method whose visual representation corresponds directly to its audio form, the show’s title, DOT DASH, reflects minimal, efficient undercurrents in each of their work.
Media
Schedule
from January 25, 2013 to February 22, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-01-25 from 19:00 to 22:00