"Encounter" Exhibition
Zürcher Gallery
This event has ended.
The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become; becoming I , I say you.
All actual life is encounter.
The relation to You is unmediated. Nothing conceptual intervenes between I and You, no prior knowledge and no imagination; and memory itself is changed as it plunges from particularity into wholeness. No purpose intervenes between I and you, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur. - Martin Buber
The work is diaristic, humorously revealing a self-critical maker, irreverent yet aware of history, serial, playful, reliant on language. The work is weighted with symbols and soaked in poetry. Hard edges leak slightly; irregularity woven into severity. The work role plays.(1) The work implies the body, processes of scaring and healing. This work is compact, tightly knit. Paintings are coated in texture. They are worked slowly, considered and built over time. They are crusty layers of history. These paintings are not wordy; they are concise. They are concerned with a limited palette, with discerning color in a muddy palette. Oil on Oil on Oil---sculpted. Each work is to be considered individually, alone with its heaviness, one weight at a time. These paintings hope for measured, slow consideration.(2) The work is a world without characters, a space for characters to walk into, a mystical environment, a space with particular rules a viewer is forced to believe in, to abide by. The work references the place where it is made but it is in dialogue with practices outside of its realm. Anything can happen. Any material can be used to bring an idea to life. Posterity is not a concern; materials may rot, transform, grow a layer of moth, oxidize.(3) The work is staged, and each character is precisely placed within the space. Masks are meant to create anonymity, but it is through wearing masks that persons are revealed. The approach is improvisational, but the work hones in on a particular personal vision, and that vision is intimate, psychological, tragic and uncomfortable in a way that demands exploration, obliges the viewer to take her time. There is something timeless, continuous, a human trajectory.(4) The work is proportional to the body. It is an installation of texture and color. It begins by invoking the rules of painting and ends by becoming a painting one walks into. These are shrines and public halls, tents, nooks, private chambers. These are places to inhabit, injected with the colors of India, the Middle East, suggesting neon and precious stones. These are spaces to be used, with their hints of everyday objects—pillows, blankets, rugs—presented in a non-mundane light.(5) Breathing edited this work, which involves deliberately imperfect geometric shapes. Complex greys engage a white background in confident strokes. The freshness implies that there is only one chance to create the right amount of tension, the necessary thickness of surface, the precise angling of the shape. The drips are required neighbors to the decisive edge. The work arrives at the bare bones, paring down. Size engages human proportions; the work becomes relatable to the body. This is work of extravagant clarity aware of its lineage and with a sense of humor.(6) -Yevgenia Baras
(1) Joshua Abelow
(2) Yevgeniya Baras
(3) Avi Sabah
(4) Ralph Eugene Meatyard
(5) Fransje Killaars
(6) Amy Feldman
Joshua Abelow is an artist living and working in New York. He earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2008. In 2012, he had solo exhibitions at the inaugural Frieze New York art fair with James Fuentes, Famous Artist at Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels and Abelow Schmabelow at Brand New Gallery, Milan. He also published an artist memoir titled, Painter’s Journal, and organized ART BLOG ART BLOG exhibitions at Gallery Diet, Miami and One River Gallery, Englewood, New Jersey.
Yevgeniya Baras is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Yevgeniya has a BA and MS from University of Pennsylvania (2003) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Her recent exhibitions include: “Centaurs and Satyrs” at Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York, NY, “Materiality “ at Allegra LaViola Gallery, New York, NY, “Domesticities” at Bull and Ram, New York, NY, “Foreign Bodies” at Barbur Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel, “HIDE” at ADDS DONNA, Chicago, IL, and “Rich-oo-uhl, Rich-oo-uhl” at Jolie Laide, Philadephia, PA. Two and a half years ago, Yevgeniya co-founded Regina Rex Gallery in Bushwick, NY with a group of fellow artists. She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions at the gallery including “Texture.TXT” and “Letters not About Love”.
Amy Feldman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Feldman received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Rutgers University and exhibits her work nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Dark Selects, solo exhibition, Blackston, New York; Assembly, Edward Thorpe Gallery, New York; Aggro Crag, Bosi Contemporary, New York; Boundary Hunters, The Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University, Alfred, New York. Feldman is preparing for upcoming solo exhibitions at Gregory Lind Gallery, SanFrancisco and ANNAELLE Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. She has been awarded the Robert Motherwell Fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant, and has also received fellowships from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Fountainhead Foundation, The Henry Street Settlement at the Abrons Art Center, Yaddo, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Out New York, Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, NY Arts Magazine, Art in America, The Art Economist, Saatchi Online Magazine, and the Huffington Post.
Fransje Killaars is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam and was the assistant of Sol LeWitt (1984). She has participated in various exhibitions in Europe. Recent solo exhibitions include : Installation NONSTOP Tokyo, A-poc Aoyama the Miyake Issey Foundation, Tokyo, JAPAN (2004); Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2007) ; Prospekt 4, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, NL ; Figures Installaties, Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam, NL (2008) ; Figure, Colours First, de Expeditie, Amsterdam, NL (2011) ; Color at the Center, Bates Museum, Lewinston, Maine, USA ; Color at the Center, Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA (2013).
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (May 15, 1925 – May 7, 1972) was an American photographer from Normal, Illinois. He served in the Navy, studied pre-dentistry at Williams College (1943-44) and philosophy at Illinois Wesleyan University (1950). Starting 1949 Meatyard worked as an optician in Lexington. Meatyard was well read and deeply connected to a circle of poets and philosophers; he made photographs rich in literary allusion. Meatyard’s photography was deliberate, often staged, and searching for inner truths rather than ephemeral surfaces. Despite his self-proclaimed status as an amateur, Meatyard soon became known in serious photography circles. In 1956, his work was exhibited beside that of Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Edward Weston. Meatyard’s last project before his death was The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, a project based on the common snapshot album featuring friends and family all wearing masks.Photographs by Meatyard are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York; George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and University of Louisville Photographic Archives, Kentucky.
Avi Sabah was born in Ma’alot, Israel and currently lives and works in Tel-Aviv. He studied at Bezalel Art Academy, where he received his BFA, and he is currently a lecturer in the academy’s art department. Sabah has participated in various exhibitions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Switzerland. Sabah was awarded the Mozes Prize for young Israeli painters and the Award for young artists, Ministry of Culture, Israel. He is also one of the co-founders of Barbur, a gallery for contemporary and social art in Jerusalem.
Curated by Yevgeniya BARAS
Media
Schedule
from January 17, 2013 to February 24, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-01-17 from 18:00 to 20:00