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NYC 10001 - T: 212 23 9 2758, F: 212 239 2759 en Copyright 2008, Foxy Production Fri, 4 Jul 2008 00:31:03 -0400 Exhibition: BOBO'S ON 27TH <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 3 - August 1, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, July 3, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/1191"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/17/17227.jpeg" alt="Bobo Production Still, 2008" height="165" width="500" /></a> Bobo Production Still, 2008 <div class="exhibition-description">LINDSAY BEEBE MATT BERRIAN BOBO BRENT COWLEY LIZZIE FITCH JESSE GREENBERG BARKEV GULESSERIAN COLT HAUSMAN MILES HUSTON BRIAN MCKELLIGOTT ANNIE PEARLMAN BEN PHELAN PIFAS TED SEFCIK Curated by BOBO (PHIL COTE, NICK PAYNE, DREW GILLESPIE) For summer 2008, Foxy Production proudly presents Bobo's on 27th, a group exhibition masterminded by performance art band Bobo. A simultaneous video-linked exhibition is being held at their space, Bobo's on 9th, in the Italian Market area of Philadelphia. The two exhibitions, under the joint title Precious Delights, mark Bobo's on 9th's first anniversary. Both shows include works by Lindsay Beebe, Matt Berrian, Brent Cowley, Lizzie Fitch, Jesse Greenberg, Barkev Gulesserian, Colt Hausman, Miles Huston, Brian McKelligott, Annie Pearlman, Ben Phelan, PIFAS, and Ted Sefcik, many of whom have presented work at Bobo's on 9th since its inauguration last year. Ryan Trecartin is exhibiting at Bobo's on 9th only, making a installation for the space's front window. Bobo's on 27th includes painting, sculpture, sound, video and publications in a riotous mix of colors, styles and materials. Underscored by interests in figuration, the ready-made, deconstruction and assemblage, the artists are generating bold new methods, ideas and aesthetics. Their works draw influences from the Internet, art history, ecology, and emerging definitions of self and community, among many other sources. Bobo have written: "The appearance of the exhibition could be best described as a germed-up concept car interface, burnt and melting. This aesthetic reinforces our existing attention to the corners of rooms where bits of dead skin rest, where the dust mites reside, but also shows our interest in how the human mind is steadily cracking codes at the base of the natural Internet, allowing us to successfully reconfigure it and our perceptions of what is possible at microbiotic and galactic levels. The earth is evolving into a throbbing brain and Bobo is interested in exposing technology as nature and nature as a fully moldable interface." Bobo have created artworks, design features and framing devices to push the boundaries and expectations of the role of gallery, curator, artist, and viewer. Their designs are both sectional: membranal wall sculptures and oversized frames made from steel-wool surround works, and environmental: the floor of the gallery is covered in burlap (in reference to the floor designs for previous Bobo shows) and littered with trash-like artworks; the walls are covered in "advertisements" for different pieces in the exhibition; and a specially constructed jukebox plays curated music and sound. LINDSAY BEEBE (Farmington CT, 1982) presents One Nightmare, an intense oil and acrylic painting that is both disturbing and engaging. Framed by Bobo in a steel wool construction, it recalls Primitivism's vigorous brush strokes and exploration of dream, allegory, and myth. Beebe has recently had a solo exhibition at Bobo's on 9th, and has shown at Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York (2006); and Acme Gallery, New Orleans (2005). Beebe has performed with the Experimental People at the ICA Philadelphia (2006); Space 1026 Gallery, Philadelphia (2006); and at the New York Underground Film Festival (2005). MATT BERRIAN (Ridgewood NJ, 1983) has produced a vivid series of paintings in acrylic that wittily portrays edgy narratives of fantasy and power-play. With a fresh comic book style, they radiate passion, desire and violence. Berrian has had a solo exhibition at Bobos on 9th (2008) where he performed with the Embracists group. He exhibited his senior thesis show at University of Art, Philadelphia in 2006. BRENT COWLEY (Los Angeles CA, 1981) has constructed a series of wall pieces that functions as an alternative history of the exhibition. He has developed characters and products that imaginatively draw together the other works in the show, and has collaborated with Asher Penn on a publication for the show. Cowley has exhibited at Kyle Kessler Gallery, Baltimore MD; Planaria Gallery, New York (2005); and the Wight Gallery, Los Angeles (2001). He has performed with Experimental People in New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia. He has had a solo exhibition at Benson Hall, Providence RI; and has curated a group exhibition at Carr Haus Gallery, Providence RI. LIZZIE FITCH (Bloomington IN, 1981) presents a sculpture capturing a body within the throes of transformation. Simultaneously multiplying, deconstructing, and reconstituting, the work compellingly re-animates figurative sculpture. Fitch had a solo exhibition at Bobo's on 9th in 2007. She has exhibited at Luswarande 08 - Wanderland, Tillburg, The Netherlands (2008); and La Triennale di Milano, Italy (2007). She has exhibited in collaboration with Ryan Trecartin at Crane Arts, Philadelphia (2007); and QED, Los Angeles (2006); and has performed with the Experimental People in New York, New Orleans, and Cleveland. JESSE GREENBERG (Morristown NJ, 1982) has made wall-based sculptures that appear like otherworldly appliances. Fabricated from a wide range of materials, including expanding foam, latex, Mylar, silicone, rubber and wood, they incorporate "touchables", independent sculptural elements that can be handled by viewers. Greenberg had a solo exhibition at Bobo's on 9th in 2007. He has also exhibited at Okay Mountain Gallery, Austin TX (2008); Louisiana Biennial, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (2006); The Moore Space, Miami (2006); Good Children, New Orleans (solo) (2005). He has performed widely with the Experimental People. BARKEV GULESSERIAN (London, UK, 1979) presents a huge sculpture of a golden dog-like figure. Striking a Buddhist pose, it invokes humor, spirituality, and a nostaglia for children's TV. Gulesserian has had a recent solo exhibition at Bobo's on 9th (2008). He has also exhibited at Stairwell Gallery, Providence RI (2007); Benson Hall, Providence RI (2004); and Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence RI (2004). COLT HAUSMAN (Prague, Czech Republic, 1983) is exhibiting Independence Hall off the Wall, two acrylic paintings that seem to literally spring from the walls of the gallery towards each other. One depicts Philadelphia's Independence Hall, while the other appears to be its opposite's reverse side. Hausman had a solo exhibition at Bobo's on 9th in 2007. He has exhibited at Copy Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (2007); and Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York, NY (2006). MILES HUSTON (Cambridge MA, 1981) recalibrates found objects into witty assemblages. Like an odd shoe box, his illuminated geometric sculpture combines poetic writing with a central found athletic shoe. Huston is an MFA candidate at Yale University. He has exhibited at Lamontagne Gallery, Boston (2007); and has performed at the Contaminate Live Art Festival, Boston (2008); and the ICA Philadelphia (2007). BRIAN MCKELLIGOTT (Philadelphia PA, 1981) has produced a large painting on canvas, depicting writhing, intertwined bodies in deep blues, reds, and greens, among other colors. The painting, with its pointed individual sections rising from the wall, has been framed by Bobo in contoured, aerodynamic forms. McKelligott has exhibited at Waterfall Arts, Belfast ME (2008); Okay Mountain Gallery, Austin TX (2008); and QED Gallery, Los Angeles (2006). He has performed at the International Noise Conference XPP, Miami FL, (2006); and widely with the Experimental People. ANNIE PEARLMAN (Johnson VT, 1982) presents Nite Glide, an animation video with an uncanny narrative about people adrift in a cityscape. Completely originally generated, it includes her paintings as source material. It is shown on a screen in a corner of the gallery, surrounded by plastic shopping bags with their logos mysteriously washed off. Pearlman was included in the South Philly Biennial, Philadelphia PA (2008); Rivington Arms, New York (2008); Secret Project Robot, Brooklyn NY (2006); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2006); and Monkeytown, Brooklyn NY (2005). Pearlman has performed at Bobo's on 9th (2008 & 2007); and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Brooklyn NY (2007). BEN PHELAN (West Chester PA, 1982) has created luscious, fluid sculptural forms that seem to dynamically mutate their shapes and colors. One is illuminated from within, giving it an alien-like resonance. Phelan has performed at QBZ, New York (2007); and at Artists Space, New York (2006). He has exhibited at Carr House Gallery and Red Door Gallery, Providence RI (2004). PIFAS, The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, have produced a promotional brochure that resembles a student aptitude test. PIFAS is a cultural collective, think tank, and workspace, founded in 2006 by Richard Davis and Brandon Joyce. In addition to its involvement with music and visual arts -- such as recent solo exhibitions by Howard Kleger and Dearraindrop -- the Institute strives to be a new model of pedagogy and culture. Members, programs and calendar can be found at: <a href="http://www.pifas.net">pifas.net</a> TED SEFCIK (New York NY, 1982) presents Recent State, a powerful original audio work that mixes ambient music and spoken word. The work explores the dichotomy between attraction and disinterest. Sefcik has worked as an improvisational actor since 2003, first with Vaudeville Productions and since 2006 with RAXTSFK Productions. He has released the musical works: Rax (2002), AB (2005), and 3 (2007). BOBO - Phil Cote (Essex Junction VT, 1983), Drew Gillespie (Kansas City MO, 1982), and Nick Payne (Toronto, Canada, 1982) - started their band, artists' group and project space in 2007. For more information on Bobo and Bobo's on 9th see: <a href="http://www.boboson9th.com">boboson9th.com</a> Their music can be heard at: <a href="http://www.myspace.com/bobophiladelphia">myspace.com/bobophiladelphia</a> For further information on the exhibition or high resolution images contact Foxy Production: 212 239 2758 <a href="http://www.boboson9th.com/">Enter boboson9th.com</a> <a href="http://www.foxyproduction.com">Enter foxyproduction.com</a></div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/1191 Exhibition: NUL <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 15 - June 20, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, May 15, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/1188"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/16/16140.jpeg" alt="" height="385" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">SALVATORE ARANCIO ANDERS CLAUSEN DICK EVANS VALIE EXPORT SIMONE GILGES LARS LAUMANN NEDKO SOLAKOV Curated by DICK EVANS Foxy Production presents Nul, a group exhibition curated by London-based artist Dick Evans. Nul brings together seven European artists, including Evans, Salvatore Arancio, Anders Clausen, VALIE EXPORT, Simone Gilges, Lars Laumann, and Nedko Solakov, whose work relates in differing ways to loss, reduction or vacancy. Combined, the works in Nul produce an uncanny sense of dissolution. Salvatore Arancio's photo etchings depict bizarre natural phenomena in strange ancient landscapes. Collages of the old and new, they trade on the aesthetic pleasures of visual histories. They embody a fantasy of Gothic nothingness that is underscored by a surreal desire. Anders Clausen's sculptural heads on wooden pedestals elicit a curious familiarity, with their combination of the allegorical and the historical. His zombie-like figures have reduced their art historical references - to Jacob Epstein, Ben Nicholson, and Dieter Roth - to a humorous yet subtle amalgam. Dick Evans' Plexiglas boxes - titled by their dimensions - consider the possibility of absolute zero. These almost empty vitrines contain remnants of works that have been abandoned by the artist, left to gather dust in a corner of his studio for a year. Hygiene products, wax, candles and dust produce landscapes of comic emptiness that are at once a portrait, an environmental calendar, and an image in negative of his studio. VALIE EXPORT's sculpture Dead People Don't Scream pointedly references an existential interpretation of nothingness, visualizing the experience of an emotion so extreme that a face becomes a terrifying vacuum. Her photographic series, untitled, presents stony figures intertwined with angular architectural structures, creating a dynamic tension between the construction of identity and its dissolution. Simone Gilges produces very particular and concise arrangements of photographs and objects. For Nul, Gilges places re-photographed images, fabrics, and found objects in enigmatic relationships with one another. She presents a constellation that is mysterious, monstrous, conjured and ethereal. The work's elements coalesce in a psychological scene of both curiosity and closure. Lars Laumann's Hatful of Cocteau is a screen-print of an article from an issue of La Liberation devoted posthumously to Jean Cocteau. It includes an image of a man with an illustration from the artist's publication Le Livre Blanc tattooed on his shoulder; the same image was also used on Morrissey's Hatful of Hollow album cover. Laumann's work focuses on how images and objects can act as both romantic connectors and empty ciphers. Nedko Solakov's Personal Parts drawings combine body parts with poetic writing about them, engendering strange insights into the human body as a whole. Simultaneously comedic, macabre and enlightening, they are dark fables about people reduced to their elements. Salvatore Arancio lives and works in London. He has exhibited at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2008); Bloomberg Space, London; Herald St, London (both 2007); and The Courtauld Institute, London (2006). Anders Clausen lives and works in London. He has exhibited at Hats Plus, London; Ibid Projects, London; and Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (solo) (all 2007). Dick Evans lives and works in London. He has exhibited at James Cohan Gallery, New York; and Maureen Paley, London (both 2007). Between 2001 and 2004 Evans spearheaded the curatorial project The Ship. He is represented by Maureen Paley, London. VALIE EXPORT lives and works in Vienna. She has exhibited widely since the 1960s. Recent exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, Moscow Biennale (both 2007), and a solo exhibition at the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (2003). VALIE EXPORT is represented by Gasser & Grunert in New York. Simone Gilges lives and works in Berlin. She has exhibited at Frankfurter Kunstverein (solo) (2005) and is a founding member of Honey Suckle Company (HSC). Exhibitions with HSC include Kunstverein Hamburg-Harburg, (2007) and Kunsthalle Basel (2006). She currently has a solo exhibition at Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin, where she is represented. Lars Laumann lives and works in Olso, Norway. He is exhibiting in the current Berlin Biennial and has shown at Maureen Paley, London; and White Columns, New York (solo) (all 2008). He is represented by Maureen Paley, London. Nedko Solakov lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. Solo exhibitions include Kunst Museum, Bonn (2008); Kunstforum, Vienna (2007); and the Kunsthaus Zurich (2005). Solakov is represented by Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin and Zürich. For further information or high resolution images contact Shinae Lee: 212 239 2758 Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/1188 Exhibition: POWER <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 23 - May 9, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, February 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/1186"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/14/14299.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">FIONA BANNER JAMES LEE BYARS GERARD BYRNE AMY GRANAT JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES GUILLAUME LEBLON GYAN PANCHAL MITZI PEDERSON FALKE PISANO ADAM PUTNAM Curated by BILL COURNOYER Foxy Production presents Power, a group exhibition where light is the common focus: electric light, black light, reflecting light, the sound of light, light sources. Drawing together a disparate group of artists, the exhibition holds a range of conceptual experimentations, ideas and practices under the spotlight. Fiona Banner's illuminated drawing, Nude Standing, exemplifies her explorations of the possibilities of language in art. The work engages with the history of painting, offering a wry critique of the male gaze and the female object. Her use of neon announces a bold statement on a conventional subject. Falke Pisano's photographic triptych, Rhythm in Space with Diamonds, brings to mind the words of Marcel Broodthaers: "Words in statues shine like diamonds." On a table lies a book with photographs of modern sculptures: As one gazes through a prismatic diamond down onto the sculpture Rhythme dans l`espace by Max Bill, one finds a chaotic interior. Gerard Byrnes' photograph, A country road. A tree. Evening., portrays a landscape of unnatural circumstance. Springing from an interpretation of Beckett's stage directions for Waiting for Godot, this uncanny work shines multiple stage lights of deep color onto a lonely countryside at night. Adam Putnam's magic lantern, Untitled (Blue Light), engages a corner of the gallery, making an argument for his idea that "the erotic rests not in the depiction of bodies but in the depiction of space." His use of light allows him to envelop the area in his desire to become one with the void. Jacqueline Humphries' black light paintings realize the idea of painting as a source of light: they literally radiate U.V. light. Her ingenious choice of medium transforms the gallery space, covering the viewer in a luminescent glow. The works, by displaying their inner workings and creating an immersive effect, both deconstruct and re-energize the viewer's experience of painting. Amy Granat's film, Chemical Scratch, was created by her literal assault on film material. The resulting abstract images produce a galactic-like experience of light and space, while the audio of her "damage" captures the "sound of light." Her physical interventions demonstrate the centrality of material transformation in her work, and its oscillation between construction and destruction. Mitzi Pederson's sculptures are made of commercially produced and easily accessible materials that are transformed into new and unfamiliar shapes. They act as agents of light, absorbing their environment while simultaneously grabbing the viewer's attention. In Hello Again, the metamorphic interactions of light with the work produce surprising inflections and perspectives. Gyan Panchal, like Pederson, uses industrial everyday materials, but his choices take on very different meanings. His works are inspired by an archaeology of abstract objects: the exploration of the origin of objects and of the relevance of abstraction today. In Gaern, the surface reflects light with a shiny vibrancy, while its frayed edges suggest decay. In Splei, Panchal uses primitive materials and markings that bring the work to the border of representation and abstraction. Guillaume Leblon's gouaches, "Les Succulentes", present plant varieties that can survive extreme temperatures and harsh light. Ironically, these images are designed to fade in the light: they are made with un-fast ink. Leblon's complex and nuanced work formulates striking visual binaries as if it is in dialog with itself. James Lee Byars' Slit Moon is a crescent shaped sculpture that resembles what astronomers call earthshine: "The reflection of light from the sunlit side of the earth unto the otherwise dark side of the moon." Made of Greek marble, it underscores his abiding concerns with contrast, with life and death, with the ephemeral and the enduring. FIONA BANNER is based in London. Her pencil on paper rendition of Nude Standing has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has exhibited internationally and is represented by Tracy Williams, New York and 1301 Gallery, Los Angeles. GERARD BYRNE is based in Dublin, Ireland. He has shown at Tate Modern, London and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is represented by Green on Red Gallery, Dublin and Lisson Gallery, London. AMY GRANAT is based in New York. She has exhibited at P.S. 1, New York, Centre d'art Neuchatel and is included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES is based in New York. She recently had solo exhibitions at Stuart Shave, London and NyeHaus, New York. She is represented by Greene Naftali, New York. GUILLAUME LEBLON is based in Paris. His solo exhibitions include STUK, Centre d'art contemporain, Belgium; and Kunstverein Dusseldorf, Germany. He is represented by Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris. JAMES LEE BYARS has had numerous international exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. His estate is represented by Michael Werner Gallery, New York and Cologne. GYAN PANCHAL is based in Paris. He recently exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and is represented by Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris where he recently had a solo exhibition. MITZI PEDERSON is based in San Francisco. She is included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and is represented by Nicole Klagsbrun in New York. FALKE PISANO is based in Amsterdam and Paris. She has exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Artists Space, New York. Her work is represented by Balice Hertling Gallery, Paris. ADAM PUTNAM is based in New York. He is included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has exhibited widely, including at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. He is represented by Taxter and Spengemann, New York. For further information or high resolution images contact Shinae Lee: 212 239 2758 Photographs © 2008 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/1186 Exhibition: MICHAEL BELL-SMITH <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 10 - February 16, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, January 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/1071"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/13/13216.jpeg" alt="" height="334" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">BOUNCING LIGHTS FOREVER, Michael Bell-Smith's second solo exhibition at Foxy Production, comprises a series of screen-based works that simultaneously establish and dissolve the sense of a digital sublime. Opposing features - flatness and limitless perspective, color and monochromy, motion and stasis, repetition and singularity - coalesce in visual fields that question the image's hold on truth. Bell-Smith's new work is very much concerned with contemporary image production, yet it recalls Romanticism's transcendent landscapes and early Modernism's struggles with form and content. Glitter Bend is a digital animation, depicting a cityscape at night, stretched across an arcing horizon, as if viewed from above the earth. The work minimizes landforms and features, leaving a stark, almost symbolic configuration of line, color and motion. Each twinkling light is a "handmade" GIF - a small motion file found everywhere on the Internet - that has been distributed using algorithms that fragment any electronic uniformity. Building Across From Glitter Bend, the reflection of Glitter Bend on the surface of a glass tower, is likewise a combination of still and moving elements that creates a compelling yet refracted whole. The grid of windows imposes a frame on the work that denaturalizes and abstracts one's grasp of a recognizable landscape, while never completely overpowering the vista's beauty. The two works together, placed one across from the other in the exhibition, produce an environment that is at once immersive and disorienting. Lighting Affects 1-3 is an animated triptych of light in motion. Depictions of light forms - lasers, fireworks, spotlights, lightning, and streetlamps - are redrawn from TV cartoons and then rendered by hand, frame-by-frame using drawing software, to produce composite moving images. These boldly dynamic elements never develop into a figurative or narrative whole, leaving the viewer in a kind of ontological limbo. In a similar sense, Starfields 1 and 2, a pair of four-screen works that play with the representation of movement through space, detach conventions from their original referents. A vortex-like action - with no destination in sight - is rendered with differing speeds, directions, effects and colors. In both works, Bell-Smith cannily undermines representational traditions, while investing in the visual pleasure they provide. Moving, Endless (Samples) is a series of still color gradations presented on digital screens. Not unlike an electronic Color Field painting, each work displays subtle but emotionally evocative shifts of color. They all incorporate pixelation - the patterning that lies beneath the surface of a digital image - as if subliminally revealing the inner-workings of the construction of an abstract sublime. MICHAEL BELL-SMITH (East Corinth, ME, 1978) lives and works in Philadelphia. He holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University, Providence, RI. Selected exhibitions include The New Museum, New York (2008); Hirshhorn Museum, DC (2008); Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois (2008); Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2007); MoMA, New York (screening) (2007); Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, TX (2007); The Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening) (2006); Tate Liverpool, UK (2005). Bell-Smith's work has been featured in The New York Times and Time Out New York, and online at Rhizome.org and Artnet.com. --- MICHAEL BELL-SMITH TALK + SCREENING: FEBRUARY 6, 6:30 PM Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York, presents an artist's talk and screening on Wednesday, February 6, 6:30 pm. Founded in 1971, EAI is the world's leading resource for video art and interactive media. EAI's core program is the international distribution of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, online resources, and public programs such as exhibitions and lectures. ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX (EAI) 535 WEST 22 ST. 5TH FLOOR NEW YORK NY 10011 t: 212 337 0680 f: 212 3370679 <a href="http://www.eai.org/eai/01_08_mbs_pr.html">www.eai.org</a> --- Please contact the Foxy Production for high resolution images or further information: FOXY PRODUCTION 617 WEST 27 ST. GROUND FLOOR NEW YORK NY 10001 t: +1 212 239 2758 f: +1 212 239 2759 <a href="http://www.foxyproduction.com">www.foxyproduction.com</a> Photographs © 2008 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/1071 Exhibition: HANY ARMANIOUS <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 11 - December 15, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, October 11, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/972"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/10/10394.jpeg" alt="" height="386" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents Year of The Pig Sty, Hany Armanious' inaugural New York exhibition. In Armanious' provocative work, perverse actions take place upon unexpected materials, resulting in enigmatic objects, scenes and associations. Like a pranksterish alchemist, he transforms the process of casting into a witty and symbolic practice. His detours and digressions through the fictional systems he constructs, paradoxically foster both confusion and engagement. Year of The Pig Sty is an installation with an internal logic that seems more elusive the longer the work is contemplated. The viewer is greeted with a shocking vista of filth and disarray: on closer inspection, the work resembles a wayward workshop, where strange organic objects are crafted from mud. A desperate struggle seems to have taken place to keep an outmoded artisanal practice going. The installation is a site where intense and delirious actions have taken place, where motives remain mysterious, and odd linguistic connections are forged. Recalling Beuys' interplays between textures and history, Year of The Pig Sty inventively interweaves materials and allegory; but unlike Beuys' work, the associations here are inconclusive, provisional, and likely to be misleading. How various parts of the installation relate to one another can be alternately elementary or elusive. Crocs, the lightweight therapeutic footwear made through injection casting, figure centrally in the work: in one area, a chaotic collection of Crocs, shoe molds, molded bacon, shoeboxes, socks, among other elements, poetically and humorously conflates therapy, consumerism, and failure. An oversized Styrofoam box, hand-carved and containing mud and oversized truffles made from soil and resin, is surrounded by muddy Croc footprints. A trough constructed from form-ply is filled with mud, as if waiting for pigs to return. Resembling an alien pod, a white Styrofoam box is fused with the sole of a Birkenstock and cast in resin. A doormat with hollows is used to mold circular bricks through the action of the muddy Crocs being wiped on it. The bricks are dried under a snooker table light with hydroponic grow lamps that resembles a descending spacecraft. The same bricks are braced together to form pottery pool cues; apparently the end-product of this wayward production line. The installation represents perhaps an artist's studio in throes of fervid activity. Messy, unformed, embryonic objects are in the process of objecthood, as if we are witnesses to the primal scene of creativity. Or has the habitat of the artist been terminally disturbed, the scene contaminated, the project abandoned? HANY ARMANIOUS (Ismalia, Egypt, 1962) lives and works in Sydney, Australia. He holds a BA in Visual Arts, City Art Institute, Sydney. Selected exhibitions include the City Gallery, Wellington (2007)(solo); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2006)(solo); Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2006); Busan Biennale, Busan (2006); Ocular Lab Inc., Melbourne, (2005)(solo); National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2005); Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, (2004)(solo); Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, (2002)(solo); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2001) (solo). Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/972 Exhibition: YUH-SHIOH WONG <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 6 - October 6, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 6, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/971"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/9/9765.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents "13 Ways Forever Expanding Compartments" by Yuh-Shioh Wong, a solo exhibition of new sculptural and painterly assemblages. Wong has produced a striking environment of contrasting figures, colors, materials, shapes and shadows. In the tradition of Franz West or Isa Genzken, she makes highly inventive connections between widely disparate elements in order to investigate the drive to create ideal forms. "13 Ways" highlights how the experimental nature of her practice - her playful mixing and matching of found and improvised elements - relates to the rich conceptual base of her ideas about impermanence, perception and visibility. The exhibition comprises a series of intricate sculptural works that juxtapose found objects with carved structures, and acrylic and oil paintings, some of which are placed on mirrored shelves.Wong's objects incorporate oil, burlap, Styrofoam, plaster,wood, seeds and copper, among other materials, in paradoxically studied yet improvisational ways. Her paintings, with their surprising association of forms: angular shapes jostling with flowing ribbons, bubbles, or the organic lines of twigs, evoke figures or scenes without completely defining them. Wong consistently suggests narratives that are never fully revealed or resolved with the intent of investigating the limits of visual recollection and representation. Bowerbirds (Flying Casanovas) is a birdhouse-like construction with a periscopic view that reveals a wooden bird within a fabric lined interior, while Ceiling to Sky (X-tra Blue) is a long staircase in miniature, fashioned from Styrofoam, stucco and ribbon. Both works have a dynamic theatrical resonance: they seem to allude to scenarios or events that may have just happened, or are just about to happen. Many of the works create holistic, expressive micro-environments that engage with an expanded sense of the natural world. The floor-based Lens Plant, an assemblage of a painting frame, potting mix, a lighted plastic orb, a rolled up drawing, and a flower-like construction with a lens at its center, seems - despite the heterogeneity of its ingredients - to be a portal to a secret inner universe. Wong's uncanny incorporations of unexpected elements seem to mine the subconscious for inspiration. She dramatizes materials through her treatment and placement of them. Textures and forms reverberate with lyrical power despite a deliberate economy of means. Candle-Holder Live-Forever, an acrylic painting resting on a mirrored shelf along with a single acorn, has ambiguous and unsettlingly visceral cross-sections of embryonic flora twirling out in different directions. The collage, Always Been Transitory and Corruptible, comprising acrylic paint and metal foil, hints at but never defines figures, sketching a non-linear narrative that tries to make sense of the forgotten, the unseen, or the unknown. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/971 Exhibition: SOLAR SET <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 12 - August 10, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, July 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/869"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/8/8647.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">MICHAEL BELL-SMITH OLGA CHERNYSHEVA TONY LABAT TAKESHI MURATA SIEBREN VERSTEEG Foxy Production presents Solar Set, a group exhibition featuring works by Michael Bell-Smith, Olga Chernysheva, Tony Labat, Takeshi Murata, and Siebren Versteeg. Solar Set refers to a box work by Joseph Cornell from 1958, where the artist collected and arranged solar statistics, spherical objects, and images of the sun, among other elements, to create an idiosyncratic universe in miniature. The exhibition explores the ways in which images, objects or events are collected and reconfigured within conceptually rich and critically resonant visual systems. Using diverse means, the works take popular cultural forms as their starting point to forge imaginative connections, evocative images, and unexpected metaphors. Michael Bell-Smith mixes original and appropriated imagery to produce iconographic, conceptual videos, installations, and prints. For Solar Set, he presents digitally rendered line tracings from the film Tron (1982), known for its break-through blend of live action and computer generated imagery. Depicting a cityscape, cyberspace, and workplace cubicles, he investigates the representation of space and perspective through a reinterpretation of virtual locations. Olga Chernysheva's films and photographs wryly scrutinize the post-Soviet experience. Her video March (2005) observes the pomp and absurdity of a nationalist celebration that includes boy guards, cheerleading pom-pom girls, and assorted local dignitaries in a searing and at times hilarious exposé of the ornamentation of power. It is Chernysheva's almost seamless mediation of the events recorded that gives the work its subversive power. Tony Labat's diverse practice, including video, painting, installation, sculpture and performance, repurposes cultural artifacts to produce provocative statements about contemporary experience. His Frankenstein Series (2007) comprises digital prints on canvas of earlier works that were constructed from found photographs. His remastered images of a Sikh Elvis, a comical Karl Marx, and an Yves Klein model, with their layering of appropriation upon appropriation, astutely examine the process of image production. Takeshi Murata's videos push definitions of figuration and abstraction to the limits. Using the digital pixel as his building block, he dissolves and re-constructs found film footage to produce compelling, almost sculptural moving images. His Untitled (Pink Dot) (2007) reconfigures ultra-violent action movie footage: at times he seems to aestheticize the violence with rhapsodic flowing fluorescent colors, while at others he creates a deep sense of foreboding with dark, leaden movements and a convulsive, blinking pink dot. Siebren Versteeg explores visual processes: he reprograms popular software, corporate design, and internet functionality with dynamic, often intricate results. For Solar Set, he has produced a site-specific wall montage of images randomly downloaded from Flicker, the online photo-library. This digital collage is itself constructed from hundreds of small photographs assembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. He also presents a series of black and white prints, generated from the results of a Google image search of the word "Satan" that have been fed into a drawing program. MICHAEL BELL-SMITH (East Corinth, ME, 1978) lives and works in Philadelphia. He holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University, Providence, RI. Selected exhibitions include: Hirshhorn Museum, DC (2008); Krannert Art Museum - University of Illinois, IL (2008); MoMA, New York (screening) (2007); Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (solo) (2007); LISTE, Basel, Switzerland (solo) (2007); Galeri F15, Moss, Norway (2007); Threshold Artspace, Perth, Scotland (2007); Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, TX (2007); The Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening) (2006); And/Or Gallery, Dallas, TX (two person) (2006); Vilma Gold, London (2006); Foxy Production, New York (solo) (2006); BankART, Yokohama, Japan (2006); RX Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2006); Glassbox, Paris (2006); PROJEKT 0047, Berlin (2005); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2005). OLGA CHERNYSHEVA (Moscow, 1962) lives and works in Moscow. She holds a BA from the Moscow Cinema Academy, Moscow and an MA from the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Selected exhibitions include: Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels (solo) (2007); Foxy Production, New York (solo) (2007); Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art (2007); Stella Art Gallery/Foundation, Moscow (solo) (2006 & 2005); Biennale of Sydney (2006); Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2006); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2006); Moscow Multimedia Center for Contemporary Arts, Moscow (solo) (2005); White Space Gallery, London (solo) (2005); Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005); The State Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, Russia (solo) (2004); State Historical Museum, Moscow (2004); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2004); Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2004); Russian Pavilion, 49th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2001); Kunstlerhaus Vienna, Austria (2001). TONY LABAT (Havana, Cuba, 1951) lives and works in San Francisco. He received both a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. His works are in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kunstmuseum, Bern; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Long Beach Museum of Art, California. Recent exhibitions include: Harris Lieberman, New york (2007); International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain, curated by Okwui Enwezor (2006-07); New Langton Arts in San Francisco (2005). He has also exhibited at MoCA, Los Angeles; MoMA, New York; and SFMOMA, San Francisco. TAKESHI MURATA (Chicago, 1974) lives and works in upstate New York. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. Murata's work has screened at MoMA, New York (2007), and he has exhibited at Gallery Sora, Tokyo (solo) (2007); The Reliance, London (solo) (2007); Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2007); Ratio 3, San Francisco (solo) (2006); Gladstone Gallery, New York (2006); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2006); Vilma Gold, London (2006); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2006); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn (2005), Deitch Projects, New York (2005); Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2004); Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York (2004); FACT Centre, Liverpool, UK (2004); the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2004). SIEBREN VERSTEEG (New Haven, CT, 1971) lives and works in New York City. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago (1996); and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2004). Solo projects and exhibitions include: Nothing Was, Max Protetch, New York, NY (2007); Untitled Film II, Bellwether, New York, NY (2006); determination, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL (2005); Siebren Versteeg, University Galleries Normal, IL (2005); Ulrich Museum of Art History and Being Here, Wichita, KS (2004); CC and Dynamic Ribbon Device, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2004); 12×12, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2003); CC, Ten In One Gallery, New York, NY, (2003). Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/869 Exhibition: DAVID NOONAN <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 31 - July 6, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, May 31, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/865"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/8/8181.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">David Noonan's latest solo exhibition at Foxy Production pits image against image in an evocative and at times unnerving meditation on the resonance of material and representation. Through the lens of found photographs, Noonan dissolves, repeats, and resituates images to explore memory, nostalgia, and association. The exhibition, comprising large multi-panel silkscreen canvases, a flat-planed wooden sculpture with silkscreened canvas, and a series of collaged paper works, intrigues and disquiets with its complex convergence of the mythic and the real. His multi-panel silkscreens intensely overlap images to create dreamlike scenes where narrative or formal meanings are illusive. They include geometric patterning, striped overlays, or diagonal thrusting arms that abstract and complicate the overall tableaux. By presenting the most stylized of images unanchored from their original context, he explores the workings of remembrance, connotation, and sentiment. He confronts nostalgia for the real, not through didactic deconstruction, but rather through the pleasure and pain of the imaginary: his highly mediated images reverberate with undetermined narratives that excite, disquiet, or charm. His sculptural piece, made from seven carved panels of wood and resting upon a woven seagrass mat, resembles an unfinished theatre set, depicting actors rather than a scene. Positioned like a Japanese screen, it has two characters: a woman repeated on five slats and a man on two. Both seem drawn from a long forgotten experimental drama: they have striped monochromatic costumes with corresponding high contrast make-up. While playing with recognition and fiction, the work's conflation of 2D and 3D and its fusion of the dramatic with the sculptural highlights the theatrical presence of Modernist sculpture and contemporary installation. Noonan's black and white collages place images of actors, engaged in robust, stylized performances and adorned in revealing experimental costumes, upon jarring backgrounds of avant-garde theater spaces. There is a vexing disjunction between performer and scene: mismatched figures and backgrounds disrupt the viewer's sense of scale and thwart their impulse to create narrative. Connecting to subterranean thoughts and feelings, beneath the layers of self-definition, Noonan elucidates the expressive power of the reconfigured, rerigged and repositioned. David Noonan recently had a solo exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and will participate in group exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin (opening June 28) and the Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands this year. A monograph on Noonan's work with a catalogue essay by Dan Fox will be published by Foxy Production this September. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/865 Exhibition: STERLING RUBY <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 27 - May 26, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/771"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/7/7357.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> STERLING RUBY, SUPEROVERPASS, 2007 Formica, wood, screws, glue, 88 x 132 x 48 in / 223.5 x 335.3 x 121.9 cm <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents SUPEROVERPASS by Sterling Ruby, an exhibition of provocative investigations of form, expression, and transience. Featuring a monumental architectural work in the main gallery and a salon of prints and collages in the back space, SUPEROVERPASS furthers Ruby's visceral deconstructions and reconstructions of dominant forms and systems. He subjects the institutionalization of the Modernist project to a form of assault through bodily gestures and semantic scramblings, destabilizing the idea of transcendence via abstraction. SUPEROVERPASS (2007) is a white geometric bridge-shaped sculptural work that fills the entire main space of the gallery: viewers are forced to walk under and through it. At first recalling a Robert Morris Minimalist sculpture, on closer inspection the work loses its perfectionist sheen and its claim to purity: its Formica surface is defaced and degraded with scratch graffiti and grime. Confounding expectations, it presents a Minimalist form contaminated by the collective expression of etched "tags," and the stains of wear, tear, and time. But rather than romanticizing the expressive, Ruby taps the collective anguish and emotion embedded within and regulated by systems of meaning and control. His Anti Prints (2007), a series of fluorescent Letterpress prints, read like protest signs gone awry. With perplexing phrases and images, they combine many of Ruby's most powerful motifs: drips, kilns, and spray graffiti. In parts cryptic, raw, architectonic, sexual, and nebulous, they wryly attack Minimalism, geometry and architecture, proposing a self-styled "amorphous law." Ruby's series of collages, with titles including Bandanas, Blood and Crips, Cal State Prison, and Gangs, refers to group articulations and structures that controvert legal and moral boundaries. Incorporating elements such as prison cells, gray rectangular blocks, patches of patterning, found images of transsexuals, and overlays of disturbing blood-like smears, they create a stirring vortex of signs underpinned by a threatening sense of disquiet. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/771 Exhibition: OLGA CHERNYSHEVA <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 30 - April 21, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 30, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/770"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/7/7411.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Isle of Sparks is Moscow-based Olga Chernysheva's inaugural New York solo exhibition. Chernysheva uses a range of media to produce expressive, penetrating artworks that take contemporary Russian experience as their theme. Her often unwitting subjects are observed negotiating a society in turbulence, where a common sense of a shared future has disintegrated. Her films and photographs transcend their documentary function to lyrically investigate the very fabric of individuality and self-sufficiency, and to expansively meditate on the role of the artist in a time of flux. The exhibition, comprising videos and selections from a number of photographic series, presents a broad range of work produced by Chernysheva in recent years. The Train (2003) is a remarkable video journey through the carriages of a Russian intercity train that recalls the early Realist cinema of Vertov. The stoic passengers and staff seem largely oblivious to the camera-person passing by them, walking toward the back of the train. The video is both an affecting window on contemporary Russia and a shrewd re-working of conventional film-making: the movement through the train and the encounters with different individuals mimic dramatic narrative structure. On Duty (2007) is a group of large black and white photographic portraits on matte paper of uniformed functionaries, who spend their time watching or, perhaps more to the point, solemnly doing nothing. Rather than merely satirizing them and their roles, Chernysheva is interested in capturing their ambivalent and ambiguous gazes. Waiting for the Miracle (2000) is a startling set of photographs of women's woolen hats taken from behind. Appearing like sea anemones or alien life-forms, these mundane objects are transformed into wondrous beings. As Chernysheva writes, "Usual, familiar images become mysterious and magnetic"; here the prosaic becomes magical. The Anabiosis (2000) photographic series documents people and plants completely wrapped up so they can survive outside in the depths of winter. Ice fishermen, covered totally in plastic to lock out the perilous cold, resemble frozen shrouds or incubators of pod-people. These initially disturbing images have a stark yet expressive quality that stylizes the human form. Windows (2007) is a multi-channel video work, comprising a series of screens of people videotaped through their apartment windows. We voyeuristically and compulsively watch as the inhabitants, oblivious to the camera observing them, iron underwear, argue, party, or feed their cats. These mini-dramas of everyday life, at times resembling soap opera, disturb our notions of how reality should "really" look. Anonymous (2004) is a two channel video work that captures two people outdoors in summertime. In Part I a middle-aged woman changes into her bathing suit in a crowded park to the voice-over of a instructor guiding women in sexual self-massage. In Part II a partly obscured, very drunken man attempts a life and death struggle to open a bottle of vodka. In both videos passersby seem largely oblivious to the main character, even though they are publicly exposing themselves in their different ways. Both videos end with an extreme zoom back, putting into perspective the microscopic size of the slice of life being witnessed. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/770 Exhibition: SURFACE WAVE <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 25 - March 24, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Sunday, February 25, 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/769"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/6/6684.jpeg" alt="" height="335" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">HANY ARMANIOUS MATTHIAS BITZER LOUISA MINKIN ULLA VON BRANDENBURG Foxy Production presents Surface Wave, a group exhibition of works by Hany Armanious, Matthias Bitzer, Ulla von Brandenburg and Louisa Minkin that taps into the tensions that lie just beneath the surface of textures, materials and forms. The exhibition explores the pressures that can erupt between abutting constructs, within the faultlines of abstraction, and in the straining for narrative. Sydney-based Hany Armanious produces installations and sculptural forms, as well as paintings and drawings. He consistently surprises with his deft working and reworking of objects, materials, and references in order to remodel the everyday in uncannily lyrical ways. In Surface Wave he presents a urethane cast of a piece of polystyrene that he found leaning against a security fence. The indentations on the polystyrene from the fence are clearly visible, creating a sculptural piece removed from yet directly revealing its source. Armanious also presents a series of wall rubbings, pieces of sandpaper with impressions from wall surfaces that resemble vistas of far-off solar galaxies. Karlsruhe-based Matthias Bitzer's paintings and drawings mix the abstract and the figurative, employing an aesthetic vocabulary that draws from the formal repertoires both of art-history and everyday culture. In Surface Wave, Bitzer presents a painting on raw canvas that combines geometric patterning with portraiture; a drawing on wood of ghostly ectoplasm (the spectral emanations from a medium during a séance) that ties the non-figurative directly to a narrative scene; and a lacquer on glass piece comprising a maze-like grid and series of letters that recalls Conceptual Art's critique of the image. London-based Louisa Minkin's work is concerned with the interface between painting and text, and between object and movement. She explores the inflection of historic and contemporary technologies upon painting practice, and how surfaces reveal their history through correlation, connection and leakage. In Surface Wave she presents a video of a painting in a museum, the only movement being the reflection on the painting of the shadows of viewers; a telescope rendered in walnut; a seemingly abstract black-and white print on metal that on closer inspection reveals the silhouettes of countless figures; and an abstract painting in muted tones that hints at organic forms. Hamburg-based Ulla von Brandenburg works in a variety of forms, including drawing, painting, film, video, installation and performance. She examines the ways in which meaning and significance can be articulated between the borders of media. In Surface Wave she presents the video Mi-Careme (2005), almost a tableau vivant where the only movement is a masked actor swaying in front of a still audience. Falling between action and stasis, the video sustains considerable tension in the way it suggests many possible narratives without allowing any to be be fully articulated. HANY ARMANIOUS (Cairo, Egypt, 1962) holds a BA in Visual Arts, City Art Institute, Sydney, Australia. Selected exhibitions include the Gallery of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (2007) (solo); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2006) (solo); Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2006) (solo); Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (2006) (solo); Ocular Lab Inc., Melbourne, Australia (2005) (solo); Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (solo) 2004); Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, Australia (2002) (solo); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2001) (solo). MATTHIAS BITZER (Stuttgart, Germany 1975) holds a BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. Selected exhibitions include Deutsche Bundesbank Collection, Frankfurt (2007); Galerie Iris Kadel, Karlsruhe (2005 and 2004); Kunstverein, Pforzheim (2004); Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (2003); KuttnerSiebert Galerie, Berlin (2003); 2yk Galerie, Berlin (2001). LOUISA MINKIN (Staffordshire, England, 1964) holds a BA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London. Selected exhibitions include The British School in Rome (2006);Beaconsfield, London (2005); Foxy Production, New York (2004); Five Years, London (2002); South East Arts Touring Exhibition, UK (2001). Awards and scholarships include The Abbey Fellowship in Painting, UK (2006); The Art Foundation Fellowship in Painting, UK (1994); The Midland Bank Award, UK (1990); The Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Netherlands (1989). ULLA VON BRANDENBURG (Karlsruhe, Germany, 1974) holds a BA in Scenography and Media Art from the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg. Selected exhibitions include exhibitions include Art:Concept Paris (2007); Produzentengalerie, Hamburg (2006) (solo); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006) (solo); Kunsthalle, Zurich (2006) (solo). Made possible with Art Concept, Paris; Iris Kadel, Karlsruhe; Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney; and Michael Lett, Auckland. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/769 Exhibition: NETWORKED NATURE <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 11 - February 17, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, January 11, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/659"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/6/6014.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">C5 FUTUREFARMERS SHIH CHIEH HUANG PHILIP ROSS STEPHEN VITIELLO GAIL WIGHT Organized by RHIZOME, affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art Foxy Production presents Networked Nature, a group exhibition that inventively explores the representation of "nature" through the perspective of networked culture. The exhibition includes works by C5, FutureFarmers, Shih-Chieh Huang, Philip Ross,Stephen Vitiello, and Gail Wight, who provocatively combine art and politics with innovative technology, such as global positioning systems (GPS), robotics, and hydroponic environments. In their work Perfect View, San Jose-based collective C5 reached out to the subculture of recreational GPS users, or geo-cachers, asking them for their recommendations of "sublime locales." The submitted latitudes and longitudes provided the guide points for a thirty-three state, thirteen-thousand mile motorcycle expedition by collective member Jack Toolin, who photographed the terrain at the given coordinates. The results, presented in triptychs, smartly subvert traditional representations of landscape and notions of the sublime. San Francisco-based collective FutureFarmers' Photosynthesis Robot is a three-dimensional model of a possible perpetual motion machine driven by phototropism - the movement of plants towards the direction of the sun. Their proposal that a group plants will very slowly propel a four wheel vehicle is a witty take on the pressing search for new forms of energy. New York artist Shih-Chieh Huang's inflatable installation, EX-S-S-TW, is inspired by everyday household electronic devices and his studies of physical computing and robotics. In this ingenious exploration of organic systems, he creates a dynamic circulation of electricity and air: a living micro-environment. San Francisco-based Philip Ross' Juniors are self-contained survival capsules for living plants. Blown glass enclosures provide a controlled hydroponic environment, where plants' roots are submerged in nutrient-infused water, while LED lights supply the necessary illumination. The artist has drawn on two culturally divergent traditions - Chinese scholars' objects and Victorian glass conservatories - that share the belief that nature is best understood when seen through the lens of human artifice. Virginia-based artist Stephen Vitiello's Hedera (BBB) unsettles our assumptions of what an appropriate soundtrack might be. The artist has constructed a sprawling vine installation with speakers hidden between the branches that quietly broadcast percussive sounds woven from the speeches and private conversations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Creep, by Oakland-based Gail Wight, is an hypnotic three screen time-lapse video of the growth of dyed slime mold. Separately edited sequences play alongside each other, cycling through a sequence of fluorescent color shifts. In her aestheticizing of the normally repellent, Wight creates an ode to the beauty of natural growth patterns. Networked Nature will run in conjunction with the College Art Association's annual conference in New York, February 14-17, 2007. A reception for CAA will be held on Friday February 16th at Foxy Production. <a href="http://www.collegeart.org/">www.collegeart.org</a> Networked Nature is organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator, for Rhizome. The exhibition will tour to the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, New York. Networked Nature is supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the College Art Association, the New York City Department for Cultural Affairs, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. A full-color catalogue will be published by Rhizome and available at the gallery. Rhizome is a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Its programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways - <a href="http://www.rhizome.org">www.rhizome.org</a>; <a href="http://www.newmuseum.org">www.newmuseum.org</a> Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/659 Exhibition: JIMMY BAKER <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 30, 2006 - January 6, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, November 30, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/537"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/5/5690.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents The Captives, the inaugural New York solo exhibition of Cincinnati based artist Jimmy Baker. The Captives constructs a compelling imaginary informed by the relationship between war and technology. In this boldly figured mix of painting, sculpture, sound, photography and video, Baker grapples with the costs of progress. Implicating himself and his viewer, he rewires found objects and familiar scenes to produce a flux of emotion, doubt, and thought. Passaro's Flashlight, an installation comprising sculptural elements, video and a wall drawing, refers to a reported case of torture by a US contractor of an Afghan detainee. A flashlight, wedged into a simulated sandbank, acts like a pinhole camera; when peered down, it reveals footage of the turbulence in Iraq. The surrounding drawing, reminiscent of Heavy Metal symbolism, has a heraldic bearing that alludes to bloodlines and collective symbols, to violence and power. Baker here combines moral complexity with a visual force that recalls Hans Haacke's conceptual representations. Controlled Room is a matrix of flat-screen TV frames containing satellite photographs, gleaned from the Internet, of CIA detainment camps from across the globe. Evoking a war nerve center, the work acts as a document of sites of inhumanity, while also exploring the growing functionality of the Internet as a dynamic archive of human activity. The work places the viewer in conflicting positions: as voyeur, witness, and supervisor. In Ghost, a chilling audio sculpture, two transparent skeletal arms project from a wall, holding CD players. Each plays a disc with the silk-screened image of an abductee upon it. On one CD, Baker plays a Slayer song on drums, while on the other Eminem rages against war. Both tracks are overlaid with news reports of Slayer and Eminem's music being used in psychological torture sessions. Ghost deftly employs drama to figure the unspeakable. In Detonator, Baker places his first cell-phone in a vitrine, as if it were a holy relic. It is hung next to a recycling bin containing phones that appear to have been damaged in an explosion. The work darkly considers recycling and re-purposing, underlining the sinister potential of new technology. It uses a potent visual metaphor to explore the irony of dialogue breakdowns in an era of proliferating communication systems. The Prophets is a series of miniature portraits of leading Heavy Metal musicians arranged in a pentangle. Succinctly rendered in oil with resin coatings and composed in soft hues with flat backgrounds, Baker's intense works give 18th century portraiture a glossed-up digital feel. Each painting has an imperfect, dripping rubber frame that counterpoints the noble gaze of its subject. These fierce men, whose music so often speaks of violence and destruction, are given a beatific luster. Photographs © 2007 by Mark-Woods.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/537 Exhibition: VIOLET HOPKINS <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 20 - November 24, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 20, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/536"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/5/5150.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents Entoptically Yours, the inaugural New York solo exhibition of Los Angeles artist Violet Hopkins. The exhibition comprises three intricate cave scenes: large-scale works on paper rendered in colored pencil and ink. These visceral, carnal and emotive netherworlds recall tourist postcards, sci-fi book-covers, fantasy websites, or perhaps Blake's mystical illuminations. With incredibly subtle gradations of color, and masterful and complex depictions of light, Hopkins creates charged, phosphorescent landscapes. Her palette moves from rich magentas and bloody reds to acidic greens and luminous yellows caught within planes of deep blackness. Beams of light - explorers' torches? - give the caves' architecture their life. Objects and landscapes, rays and shadows, form and reform in dynamic configurations, suggesting internal organs, subterranean oceans, temples, or grand theatrical sets, anticipating a drama's commencement. Hopkins draws inspiration from the concept of entoptic phenomena, visual effects that result from stimuli from within the eye itself, such as patterns seen when the eyes are pressed closed, or psychedelic forms that result from fluids crossing the eye. Her works resemble entoptic "seeing", with their ambiguous light sources and hallucinatory structures. Hopkins' caves are meditations on perception and connotation. Over the ages, the cave has represented home, the womb, the void, and the unknown, and has been central to discourses on perception, art-making, and the subconscious. Tapping this over-determination, Entoptically Yours highlights the complex workings of the visual imagination, while unleashing a range of associations and recollections. For further information or high res images contact Chelsea Goodchild: 212 239 2758</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/536 Exhibition: ESTER PARTEGAS <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 7 - October 13, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 7, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/535"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/4/4657.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Saturated Fat, New-York based artist Ester Partegàs' second solo exhibition at Foxy Production, combines drawings on Mylar, collaged digital prints, a sculpture, and a mural, in an exhibition that cannily articulates tensions around consumption and excess. Partegàs is interested in the expression and resistance that somehow escape through fissures in an ever-hardening climate of scrutiny and control of public and private spaces. Taking the city street, its people, products and refuse as her starting point, Partegàs creates darkly gestural images that consider how ideas of individuality and collectivity evolve and devolve within the contemporary landscape. On entering the exhibition space, one is struck by super-sized chain links that destabilize one's sense of scale. The work mines Pop's witty heritage of amplifying everyday objects, while suggesting conflicting meanings: of banishment and unity, of confinement and incorporation. Partegàs sets in relief the complex relationship between object and sign: here the chain's irresolute symbolism of both control and connectivity. The chain motif is also used in a mural covering two walls of the space. With letters forming the word "barbarian", the work resembles an enormous, subversive charm bracelet. Strikingly linking the sculpture to the works on the walls, the mural appears to map the play of relations presented within the exhibition as a whole. Two large drawings from Partegàs` Barricade series lean against the wall. Drawn on layers of Mylar plastic, with pieces of colored paper between them, these complex works use trash as an edgy signifier of the struggle between the corporate and the corporeal. Among litter overflowing from trashcans, words form statements that seem to obliquely critique contemporary life, like a damning return of the repressed. Partegàs indicates that within our ever more supervised and restrained experience, it is in the rejected, the unclean, and the surplus that deposits of creativity, agency, and defiance can be discovered. A series of digital collages comprise black and white documentary style photographs of mid-city streets overlaid with spray paint and marker effects, and text from glossy magazine advertisements. The upper-bodies of people in the street are hidden by expressive graphic marks: drips and dots that create clouds of headless people, like collective alien life forms. Our eyes are drawn to their shopping bags, whose text and symbols resemble trademarked comments in displaced speech bubbles, while the collaged appropriated texts seem to dramatize their experiences of desire, fulfillment, and waste. For further information or high res images contact Chelsea Goodchild: 212 239 2758</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/535 Exhibition: JESSICA CIOCCI <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 6 - August 4, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, July 6, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/534"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/3/3865.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents P.E.A.C.E., Jessica Ciocci's inaugural solo exhibition. Vivid and disturbing, Ciocci's work explores the process of consumption through the examination of desire, incorporation and detritus. She appraises childhood as a time when individuals are psychically hardwired to consume, using a primitivist pig-like character as a primary motif to disarmingly critique the dynamics of demand, supply and surplus. Employing at times a junk-store aesthetic that revels in a world of bric-a-brac, the unwanted and hidden treasures, Ciocci delves into the psychology of our emotional attachment to popular symbols, characters and narratives. Key to her approach is a profoundly intuitive re-presentation of the all-too-familiar as the uncanny. A grandly-scaled fabric work combines everyday found textiles and repeated motifs, colors and patterning to produce an almost hypnotic effect that pushes figure and form to their limits. Together, diverse snapshot-like photographs - of Bart Simpson dolls, money blowing away on the street, a paper fish, an arm too close to the camera to be in focus - gel into a poignant, downcast whole. A series of collages, using fabric, paint, and found images of Barbie, pets and fairy tales, deftly explore the pleasures and terrors of the childhood experience. An animation-based print and a video use a flatness of texture and color, not unlike that of children's cartoons, to create bright semi-abstract character-scapes that are undercut by an almost claustrophobic disquiet. A large acid-hued knitted yarn piece, comprising a number of individual panels, appears to be a totem to the pig-like figure, to venerate it, or perhaps, acting like a gargoyle, to ward off its potential for harm. For further information or high res images contact Chelsea Goodchild: 212 239 2758</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/534 Exhibition: NOW, MORE THAN EVER <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 7 - July 1, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Wednesday, June 7, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/533"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/3/3355.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">OREET ASHERY JIMMY BAKER ALEX HUBBARD JOHANNES VANDERBEEK Foxy Production presents Now, More Than Ever, a group exhibition that uncannily and inventively reinterprets "appropriation." Oreet Ashery, Jimmy Baker, Alex Hubbard and Johannes Vanderbeek redeploy and re-contextualize original sources to produce insightful works that transcend their constituent elements. Oreet Ashery combines live art, video, photography, drawing and sculpture in a practice that pushes personal and political representations into previously unchartered territories. In Now, More Than Ever, she presents the Village Series, vivid digital drawings inspired by news reports. Their stylized realism plays with illustration and reportage to explore the limits of the news media and their stranglehold on political symbolism and image-making. Jimmy Baker explores bio- and sub-cultural systems in startlingly visual and original ways. Here he presents an unnerving painting of the lead singer of thrash metal band Nuclear Assault, an almost saintly portrait that projects a disarming innocence, and a customized "I-Pod" sound sculpture with a positive yet disquieting text that poses unsettling questions about our relationship to technological innovation. Alex Hubbard works in video, sound, and 2 and 3D media, exploring responses to social fragmentation and communal anxiety. Here he paints over and around fake "found" posters to create near-abstractions of revelatory vibrancy. His mark-making has an arbitrariness and flatness that strikingly counterbalances the depth of the posters laying beneath. Johannes Vanderbeek creates complex sculptural forms that articulate dramas and atmospheres through intriguing confluences of sign, symbol and figure. For Now, More Than Ever, he assembles degraded pages of Time magazine to create an imposing sculptural piece that appears ambivalently utopian. The original magazines are configured into a portal through which a peace symbol is formed, underscoring Time's view of power relations with a guarded idealism.</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/533 Exhibition: MICHAEL BELL-SMITH <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 27 - June 3, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, April 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/475"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/2/2889.jpeg" alt="" height="324" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents Michael Bell-Smith's awaited first solo exhibition, Focused, Forward. Bell-Smith mixes original and appropriated digital imagery to create idea-driven and highly crafted video. He collects digital images - from the earliest videogames to contemporary Internet files - to create video that investigates its own means of production. He makes the cell of the digital image, the pixel, apparent, and sets in relief the constituent elements of the moving image: tempo, perspective, frame, and figure. With destabilized narratives and endless loops; figure and gesture, rather than character and action; and 3D continually collapsing into 2D, his work disorients and enthralls. Evocative, lyrical, and astute, Bell-Smith's work investigates the increasingly mediated nature of everyday life. From the portrayal of war and tragedy as spectacle, to the existential effects of corporate architecture, Bell-Smith poses deft and difficult questions about representation, design, and information technology. He examines "progress" and the anxiety and pleasure it can engender in us all, as well as its centrality to Modernism and the experience of contemporary culture. His scrutiny of digital forms reflects and refracts our paradoxically controlled and controlling, gratifying and stress-inducing, encounters with the computer, the cityscape, and the world at large. Focused Forward includes projection, video sculpture, multi and single-screen video, and a digital print. Continue 2000 (2005) is a digital animation with minimal movement that poignantly combines childlike awe with a disturbing, apocalyptic landscape. Recalling Friederich's visions of a simultaneously beautiful and threatening natural world, the work keenly expresses the dread and wonder than can be inspired by the sublime. Shaped like a videogame console or war-room radar display, Birds Over The Whitehouse (2006) contains a simulated surveillance video that is at once playful and profoundly disconcerting. With a complex combination of light and dark notes, the work uses custom programmed software to allude to the contemporary political scene. Some Houses Have Pools (2006) is an aerial view of suburbia that unnervingly becomes obscured by Hokusai-like clouds and smoke from a house-fire. The work reflects upon uniformity and divergence within a formal examination of perspective, abstraction, and movement. Sparkler Set (2006) is a multi-screen video of virtual fireworks that wryly presents a spectacle that pushes the boundaries of the figurative. Up and Away (2006) is a beguiling video of landscapes and cityscapes rolling down past each other, at different speeds and with differing perspectives, to create a dizzying yet alluring fantasy of travel, place, and nature. Self Portrait, NYC (2006), both a portrait full of pathos and a humorous riff on the genre of portraiture itself, depicts a lone figure, frozen as city crowds stream by him. As day turns into night, the hubbub encircling him becomes increasingly manic and abstract. Proposal (2006) is an inkjet print of a Tower of Babel-like structure, where a multitude of colors and patterns come together to resemble a city contained in a single building.</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/475 Exhibition: FRANK HANNON, JACOB DAHL JURGENSEN, DAVID NOONAN <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 23 - April 21, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, March 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/395"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/2/2277.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Foxy Production presents recent work by Frank Hannon, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen and David Noonan, three London-based artists who examine interconnections between memory, performance, and ritual. Making the known seem uncanny, they mix references and genres to explore how common practices and codes can determine notions of self. Frank Hannon, in his first New York exhibition, presents My Name Is Milton, a sound-sculpture that on first glance resembles a tribal totem. Featuring monochromatic paper scales, and a recording of "Paradise Lost" read in a London pub, the work paradoxically evokes a contemporary but lost time, like a relic of the present. It considers how communal memory is maintained, and how personal stories inter-relate with accepted histories. Hannon also presents two collages, comprising layer upon layer of paper, canvas and paint, with historical images and the repeated scale motif. Creating a dialogue between abstraction and figuration, they express the tension between individual and group mythologies. Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, also in his first New York exhibition, presents a large geometric sculpture, comprising thin black strips of wood secured with twine and laced with multi-colored bunting. With an almost gravity defying lightness, the work resembles the skeletal remnants of an arcane public ritual. Simultaneously festive and dark, it alludes to the ways shared customs or protocols can bear upon the individual and shape consciousness. A smaller geometric sculpture, a kite-like tetrahedron constructed from wood, vinyl and string, recalls and re-contextualizes Buckminster Fuller's designs and his positivist belief in the social role art and technology. David Noonan presents a series of screen-prints on canvas of superimposed images that seem to have been gleaned from old drama magazines, and nature and history books. Exploring the experience of memory, Noonan dissolves image into image, like the over-determined symbols of restless dreams. The works suggest narratives of desire, violence, or celebration that have been filtered through the mannered representations of the theatre. These affecting and highly original mise en scènes can trigger a nostalgic response that is underscored by the formality of the individual images. Noonan constructs an emotional struggle between personal stories and imposed histories.</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/395 Exhibition: YUH-SHIOH WONG <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 16 - March 17, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, February 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/394"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/1/1920.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">Leftover Dots From Atoms And Constellations is Yuh-Shioh Wong's first solo exhibition at Foxy Production. Wong presents paintings that appear to contain trace elements from dreams or memories that form and reform to produce deeply affecting visions and experiences. Her work ruptures the relationship between form and content, and between figure and field, subtly destabilizing our understanding of painting. With shards of acid color, or subtle shifts of hue, her palette gravitates between the beautiful and the discordant. In places, her brush-strokes seem to assault the canvas, while elsewhere washes of color ebb and flow. In Wong's paintings, the figure is always in flux. Its boundaries seem caught within a struggle between abstraction and representation. The dynamic force of these relations elicits meanings that seem to gel and then dissolve within the field of the canvas. On studied reflection, her canvases begin to reveal moments of sentiment, humor, and drama. Hovering between landscapes and dreamscapes, they refuse conclusive definition, but their emotional charge and sensual pull is irresistible. Whether they be recollections of dreams, or unresolved memories of lived experience, they produce a mesmeric, almost cinematic experience of visualized imaginings, feelings, and responses. Wong has developed a striking language of representations, a repertoire of imagery that includes animal, plant and architectural forms. Her animal-like figures signify life in its most experiential mode. Without a sense of identity, history, or reflexivity, but with a transparency and purity of action, animals may illuminate the experience of the pre-symbolic, or the nascent consciousness of early childhood. There is a sensation of newness, of a time when images are first seen, before words can define meaning. Wong's bold palette may evoke the Fauvists, in particular Matisse and his experiments with representation through his use of bold color and dynamic brushstrokes. Her practice may also recall the composition and drama of Richard Tuttle's work, who, like Wong, seems to collapse the divisions between painting and sculpture, and whose sheer inventiveness confounds expectations of contemporary painting. Leftover Dots From Atoms And Constellations includes Living In Trees (2005), a painting that may initially appear abstract; however, with time, intriguing elements come to the fore. What may be eyes, ears, animals, fish, and buildings form part of an embedded narrative of conflict and resolution that begins take root. Cropped Forest With Yellow Leaves And Maybe A Cat (2006) also reveals its depth on considered reflection. One's first impression is of bold colors brushing up against more tempered tones, and powerful brush-strokes evoking drama and action. Again with time, the painting's details and subtleties appear, drawing the viewer into an emotional narrative that is more suggested than defined, like an incident half-understood and half-remembered from childhood. <a href="http://www.foxyproduction.com/artist/view/23">Images and bio</a></div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/394 Exhibition: JACOB CIOCCI <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 12 - February 11, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, January 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/312"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/1/1458.jpeg" alt="Jacob Ciocci, INSPIRATION SUPERHIGHWAY, 2005, installation view" height="332" width="500" /></a> Jacob Ciocci, INSPIRATION SUPERHIGHWAY, 2005, installation view <div class="exhibition-description">Inspiration Superhighway, Jacob Ciocci's first solo exhibition, inaugurates Foxy Production's new storefront gallery space in West Chelsea. A member of artist collective Paper Rad, Ciocci has assembled richly textured works that reflect upon the media's ever more sensually and psychically intimate connections with young people. Drawing upon his experience of growing up in the information saturated 1980s and 1990s, Ciocci presents narratives that are in essence existential quests, where characters seek meaning from cultural chaos. Inspiration Superhighway comprises a large cube installation containing a six-channel video and sculptural environment, three smaller video cubes, paintings with video elements, and drawings. The large cube contains a boy's bedroom with a shrine made from character toys, and six video screens that tell the story of the his struggle to leave the confines of his space. The narrative represents the child's attempts to make sense of the confusing and overly complex system he feels trapped within. In one of the smaller cubes, don't worry be happy: stressful mix, a remixed video of the popular 1990s song plays with added cartoon characters and animation effects. The soothing intent of the original song is underscored in the remix by a sense of tension and foreboding. The two other video cubes form a single piece, infinity wanderers, that appropriates characters from the 1980s children's fantasy film, The NeverEnding Story, into a new narrative structure. Each cube has one character trapped in an ultimately futile search for the other. Ciocci's paintings are collages of pop cultural objects, images and video, including GIFS downloaded from the internet. Like reliquaries, the works assemble fearful mementos of childhood: monsters who personify a child's fear of adulthood and the wider world. Reminding us perhaps of Cornell's boxes, Ciocci's collections offer a metaphorical passage back to earlier times, to a pre-adult period of imagination and questioning. With pen and spray-paint, Ciocci has created a number of vibrant works on paper that place mythic characters within fantasy fields of brilliant color. Clearly tapping into his work in the underground comic scene, he has produced provocative drawings that call to mind the bizarrely inventive and intricate allegorical landscapes of Bosch. Inspiration Superhighway may evoke Kabakov and his character-driven installations, where constructed environments suggest the struggles of the people imagined to inhabit them; except that Ciocci, drawing from popular entertainment, presents identifiable figures engaged in odysseys within the narratives or game-plays he creates. His detailed systems, constructed from our cultural detritus, present compelling mythologies that fall tantalizingly between the personal and the universal.</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/312 Exhibition: OVERAWE <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 15 - November 19, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, October 15, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/307"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/1/1688.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">SARAH DOBAI RUTH MACLENNAN ESTER PARTEGAS Foxy Production is pleased to present Overawe, a three-person exhibition of sculpture, video, and photography. Overawe engages with a corporate world of obfuscation and spin, one that can produce disillusionment countered by a persistence of the belief in the "American Dream." With a complexity of materials and approaches, Sarah Dobai, Ruth Maclennan, and Ester Partegàs home in on the structure of desire and the effects of the relinquishment of personal agency. The works draw the viewer into conflicting positions, inviting one to play the role of an implicated, judgmental interlocutor. Sarah Dobai's photographs, "A Cloud of Yellow Dust" (2005) and "The Revoked License" (2005), present characters tightly framed within cars. An interior shot of a lone male character in a confined space is juxtaposed with an exterior shot of a female character leaning out a window, producing a stirring image of speed and consumption. Dobai conjures a charged atmosphere of insatiable desires, recalling the work of mid-Century American writers, such as Raymond Carver and Tennessee Williams. Ruth Maclennan's video, "Dialogue #3 (That's not for me to say)" (2002), explores the suppressed desires behind the uniform face of big business. Depicting a closeted world in turmoil, Maclennan suggests a narrative that then fails to unfold. Drawing on sources including the emptied-out dialogue of Beckett, courtroom dramas, corporate training videos, and video art, "Dialogue #3" enacts a dislocation between meaning and image, and between a character and the performance they are caught up in. Ester Partegàs presents "Life is Tremendous" (2005), a sculptural simulation of an advertisement stand. The sculpture's enameled structure, made of wood, text, and paper, is supplemented by handmade trash sitting in a flower basket. While the mismatch between the upbeat, over-the-top advert and the austere structure and dark tones of the stand suggest the failure of corporate intent, Partegàs also suggests unforeseen spaces of personal agency and appropriation. Sarah Dobai (London, 1966) holds an MFA from Vancouver University of British Columbia, Canada. Selected exhibitions include: 1000,000mph, London (2005) (solo); Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich, Germany (2004); Bard College, Centre for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2003); Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2002); Artists Space, New York, USA (2002) (solo); Arnolfini, Bristol, toured to Cornerhouse, Manchester (2002) Entwistle, London (2001) (solo) Lombard Fried Gallery, New York (2001). Ruth Maclennan (London, 1969) holds a BA from Edinburgh College of Art, and an MA from Trinity College, Cambridge and an MA from Goldsmith's College, London. She has exhibited widely, including: the Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, Australia (2005); Kulturhuset, Stockholm (2003); Artspace, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (2003); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, England (2002); Nadiff, Shibuya, Japan (2002); Kunsthalle, Vienna (1998) (with Szuper Gallery); Kojimachi Gallery, Tokyo (2000); Gallery le Deco, Shibuya, Japan (2000); Gallery SL, Perm, Russia (2000); Uppsala International Biennale, Sweden (2000); ICA, London (1999) (with Szuper Gallery). Ester Partegàs (La Garriga, Barcelona, 1972) holds a BFA from the Universitat de Barcelona and has completed postgraduate studies in Multimedia at Hochschule der Kunste. Selected exhibitions include: SculptureCenter, Queens, New York (2005); Telefónica, Madrid (2005); Centre Cultural de La Caixa, Lleida, Spain (2004 traveling in 2005); PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY (2004); Salina Art Center, Salina, KS (2004); Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona (2003) (solo); Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY (2003) (solo); Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX (2002) (solo); and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York (2002). Partegàs is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Sculpture. OVERAWE is curated by artist Ruth Maclennan. For further information or high resolution images, please contact Michael Gillespie or John Thomson: t 212 239 2758 - info@foxyproduction.com</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/307 Exhibition: DARE #3 <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 11 - October 11, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Tuesday, October 11, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/337"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/1/1813.jpeg" alt="production still" height="333" width="500" /></a> production still <div class="exhibition-description">DARE #3: WYNNE GREENWOOD and K8 HARDY Curated by Lauren Cornell Foxy Production is pleased to announce New Report, a performance by Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy. For the third edition of The Dare Series, Greenwood and Hardy present a live newscast from the feminist TV news station, "WKRH - Pregnant with Information." As Henry Irigaray (Hardy) and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Greenwood), the artists stage reports on subjects that might not otherwise be considered newsworthy, including their friends, their bodies, their anxiety, the closing of a feminist bookstore, random acts of dancing, and an evening bath. These "breaking reports" are broadcast live to the newsroom for comment, and then out to their studio audience. While exploring the nature of news as we know it, its parameters and its packaging, New Report delves into underrepresented spaces, crises and histories. K8 Hardy (1977, Fort Worth, TX) holds a BA in Film and Women's Studies from Smith College, and participated in the Studio Division of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. She is a founding editor of the queer feminist art journal, LTTR. Selected exhibitions include Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2005); The Kitchen, New York (2005); Art In General, New York (2004); Cubitt Gallery, London (2004); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2003); Centre National d' Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2002). Wynne Greenwood is an artist who lives between New York, Washington and California. In 2000, Greenwood founded the band Tracy + the Plastics, in which she plays all three band members, singing live as Tracy while interacting with the other two members (Cola on drums/ Nikki on keyboards) on a video screen. The band tours often, performing at a range of venues that has included Harvard University, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, queer discos, made up art spaces, and the Whitney Biennial (2004). At The Kitchen this past winter, Greenwood collaborated with Fawn Krieger to install a larger than life living room that set the stage for the performance, ROOM. Her other work includes single channel video, video collaborations with artist K8 Hardy, and music projects with Sally Scardino. The Dare Series, a program of new performance curated by Lauren Cornell.</div> http://foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/337 Exhibition: AUTONOMY <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 8 - October 8, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 8, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM</div> <a href="/exhibition/view/272"><img border="0" src="http://foxyproduction.com/static/dyn-images/1/1283.jpeg" alt="" height="280" width="400" /></a> <div class="exhibition-description">AARON CURRY NATHAN HYLDEN BRETT LUND STEPHEN G. RHODES MELANIE SCHIFF Curated by STERLING RUBY Foxy Production is pleased to present "Autonomy", a group exhibition that engages with Modernism's legacy in playful and yet substantive ways. The artists astutely incorporate montage, primitivism, formalism and abstraction to produce heterogeneous and mischievous interpretations of the movement's historical and aesthetic autonomies. Melanie Schiff's photograph, "Untitled" (2005), at first reveals the ethereal beauty of reflecting rays of light. On further contemplation the everyday elements of its composition become apparent: a light source refracts through a plastic CD cover placed upon an industrial carpet. The work's abstract nature is underscored by the prosaic elements of its composition. "Untitled" smartly critiques Modernism's spiritual quest for the sublime by highlighting another of its strategies: its introduction of the readymade into the art system. Stephen G. Rhodes presents "Cartesian Omelette Catcher: after Beckett" (2005), an open modular structure that acts as a darkly comic "dreamcatcher", the device the Chippewa people use to catch nightmares. In Rhodes' work, a rubber chicken, frying pan and eggs are caught within a charred LeWitt-like grid; the traces of a disturbing dream are contained within a Modernist construct. By placing what could be props from an absurdist drama within a degraded Minimalist sculpture, the work wittily highlights Modernism's struggle with representation. Brett Lund's "Matriculator" (2005) is a black wooden pillar in two parts. The top section seems to merely rest upon the base section, which is itself propped up by a small wooden wedge. Like a Barnett Newman sculpture in need of attention, the tower seems a little unsteady and its wedge may not be helping matters. Lund has created an imposing work that critiques attempts to purify form while managing to possess a radical, formal beauty. Tension is produced by the possibility of accidental actions undermining the work's Minimalist integrity. Nathan Hylden presents "Mirage" (2005), a black and white striped painting juxtaposed with a small image of a similarly striped bikini on a woman's body. The reproduced image cheekily undermines Minimalist conventions, while conversely returning one's attention to the elemental structure of the painting. This combination wryly eyes Minimalist claims to autonomy and separation by highlighting its hardwired relationship to its opposite, the represented figure. Hylden comments on absolutism by alluding to the Purist's inevitable contamination by the wider world. Aaron Curry presents "Forced into a depiction of evidence from Boccioni's can (beans)" 2005), a mixed-media sculptural piece that integrates a variety of references and media: its rounded interlocking form and negative spaces recall the classically Modernist sculptures of Hepworth or Moore, while its flat planes seem to evoke Calder. Its use of twine, bead and carved wood add a primitivist note, while its incorporation of a Jessica Simpson poster and the day-glo sheen of its fluorescent resin finish point to Pop and the 1960s. The title refers to the Futurist Boccioni's struggles with the need for representational "evidence." These disparate elements fuse into an intense yet open work that contemplates art's traditions while generating contemporary metaphors about the role and reception of art practice. Aaron Curry (1972, San Antonio, TX) holds a BA from th