“Avant-Grave” Exhbition

“Avant-Grave” Exhbition

TSA

This event has ended.

Curated by William Crump

Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York present Avant-Grave, a group exhibition curated by artist William Crump, featuring artists Stacy Fisher, James Hyde, Ryan Lauderdale, and Lauren Seiden. The title of this exhibition suggests a loose play on the French term Avant-Garde, which dominated Europe and the Americas during the early 20th century. With the art world shifting away from Europe in the mid 20th century the term faded away, or rather died, for various reasons. Following Abstract Expressionism and later Pop Art, the notion of the Avant-Garde and its desire to shock and invent seemed by then irrelevant, if not dated. Who needs radical when you can have irony? When used today the term has merit for the sheer connotation it holds; often still used casually to describe artists whose work is forward thinking or who break new ground. For better or worse, the term has remained part of our lexicon. With this in mind, the works in Avant-Grave revisit the ideas behind the term.

It is through this lens that these four artists, each of whom are not beholden to any specific genre, continually explore the periphery of modern art in their work while challenging themselves through the use of quotidian art making materials. By means of a rigorous studio process and a considered outcome each artist repurposes, reconsiders, and stretches the current definition of painting and sculpture.

Though the title includes the term ‘grave’, the exhibition does not embrace mortality or death. Instead it concerns itself with rebirth and renewal. Through focusing on materials and imagery that is less ironic and narrative driven and by mapping out uncharted territory through constant exploration, these four artists allow for constant renewal and reinvention in their work.Lauren Seiden says of her work, “I’m interested in the relationship between transformation and time by way of process and materiality. Through an intuitive and intimate layering of graphite, I test the conventions of drawing by breaking down or building up the surface in order to transform these materials into a physical, textural and structural form.” Regarding his work and process

Ryan Lauderdale states, “My work is an attempt to capture and bind haunted, abandoned styles from the past which I encounter online. The studio/wood-shop becomes a place to then sublimate those findings into physical manifestations, mannerist forms that could only exist today with the aid of archival hindsight.” James Hyde commenting on his work for his solo exhibition at Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles, “I think what is essential for painting to become real and vibrant is for it to embrace some form of otherness. With more traditional paintings it’s drawing that is this Other, but it could be poetry, landscape, ideology or sculpture. It is through taking up these others that painting can develop perspective and become real in itself. In this group of works photography is the “other” that defines them as painting; that allows it to become painting.” Stacy Fisher on describing her current body of work, “My work is about how we engage with objects in the world. It asks more questions than it answers. The language of abstraction interests me because of how open-ended it is. I like thinking about what triggers meaning, how far you have to go to achieve it, and how close it often is. The properties of sculpture I find most intriguing are its materiality and its placement. My recent paper constructions are a continuation of this interest in a more flattened realm.”

Media

• Installation

ADVERTISE ON NYAB