The Darkest Hour Is Just Before the Dawn Owen Mundy + Joelle DietrickIn The Country of Last Refuge
October 20-November 17, 2007
Opening Reception Saturday October 27, 6-9:30 PM
A Mashup curated by Emma Wilcox and Evonne M. Davis
Themes in exploration this year are geography, communication and violence. With illustrated color catalog.
The artists: Bami Adedoyin, Becca Albee, Scott Andresen, AWG, Ryan Barone, Michael Paul Britto, Lori Brown, Alexander Conner, Patricia Dahlman, Peter Feigenbaum, Asha Ganpat, Dana Hanmer, Travis Hanmer, Michael Itkoff, Katarina Jerinic, Maureen Kelleher, John Maters,Sarah McCann, Stephen McKenzie, Traci Molloy, Lucas Monaco, Owen Mundy + Joelle Dietrick, Leah Oates, Deborah Orloff, Joan Pamboukes, Mike Pare, Jean-Gabriel Periot, Elisa Pritzker, Sara Ross, Anne Schiffer, Calla Thompson, Joe Waks, Barbara Wallace, Michelle Wilson
Stoop, Michael Paul Britto
Normative Behaviors
Michael Paul Britto
October 20-November 17, 2007
Opening Reception Saturday October 27, 6-9:30 PM
New Media Room
Michael Paul Britto‘s solo show, Normative Behaviors, in the New Media room will premier new works and present video pieces most recently seen at Studio Museum of Harlem, Smack Mellon, and El Museo del Barrio. Britto says that he has “always been fascinated by the creativity spawned from not having, or being deprived. Ghetto Games explores such resourcefulness: the ability to modify one’s surroundings to be more conducive to one’s amusement.”
Opening Reception November 2, 7:30-9:30
Guest curated by Evonne M. Davis
207 Gallery NY, NY
See images from receptionAlicia Ackerman
Kathryn Allen Hurni
Manuela Paz
The Impossibility of Remaining, Paul Gabel
Pause
September 27-November 17, 2007
Opening reception September 27
Guest curated by Evonne M. Davis
Gallery The
343 Smith Street Brooklyn, NY
Gianluca Bianchino
Paul Gabel
Jesse Houlding
Beth Krebs
Jenny Hyde
5 Video Artists
A Meditation
Desire Street, Evonne M. Davis
Desiderium
September 8 – October 6, 2007
Opening Reception September 8, 2007 6-9 PM
Curated by Evonne M. Davis
Desiderium (n.)
Deep, unfulfilled longing. Yearning. Desire without hope
Anything desired; that of which the lack is felt; a want generally felt and acknowledged.
The end of Desire Street is the river, according to curator Evonne M. Davis. Unfulfilled desires- whether terminal or provisional- temporarily unite 29 artists, by transporting them together to a place of unassuaged need.
Les Ayre entombs a provocative collection of favorite objects in lead, preserving them, or perhaps denying herself further access. Norene Leddy will be offering the public the opportunity to try on “hacked” platform heels that feature an embedded LCD screen, GPS transmitters and an audible alarm. Their functionality is based on extensive interviews with sex workers, and can be viewed as an extended mediation on pleasure and danger. Dahlia Elsayed stares directly into the camera and states a series of desires for specific foods. This simple expression of wants is one of the most jarring inclusions in Desiderium. It is hard to meet her eyes.
Alicia Ackerman, Laura Amussen, Les Ayre, Leticia R Bajuyo, Gianluca Bianchino, Mona Brody, Suzanne Broughel, Gema Alava Crisostomo, Robert Dandarov, Steven Dressler, Kathy Goodell, Marion Held, Kathryn Allen Hurni, LJ Lindhurst
Lara Loutrel, Tami Lynn, William Mwazi, Kelly Pinho, Brian Stuparyk, Leah K Tomaino, James Vining, Susan H Wilson,
M Laine Wyatt
In the New Media Room:
videos by Dahlia Elsayed, Carolyn L Kane, installations by Jieun Kwon, Norene Leddy and Marina Shterenberg
In the Project Room:
Ana de Portela’s installation Slumber Party is the culmination of her three month residency at Gallery Aferro, featuring cement beds and linens.
1938
August 11 + 18th, 2007, 8 PM
Instigated by Sebastian Patane Masuelli
Performance by American Watercolor Movement at 8 PM
1938 is a site-specific installation instigated by Sebastian Patane Masuelli with musical collective American Watercolor Movement. 1938 is also an original film created by Masuelli and filmmaker Michelle Mumoli. Jersey City-based American Watercolor Movement, consisting ofTom Barrett, Joe Centeno, Jason Cieradkowski, John Fesken, Mark Townsend and Brian Wilson, will be giving two live performances of”The Mustacio Suite,” a musical score to the film with lyrics based loosely on the Spanish Civil war. During each performance, Masuelli will play VJ, creating a new narrative for one night only. Artists contributing to the set include John Fesken, Jesse Wright, Pete Tuomey Jr, and Seth Godwin. The recruitment and involvement of an extended community of artists and musicians for the project constitutes a semi-ironic reference to underground resistance, not unlike Thelonious Monk’s 1968 Underground album.
Michelle Mumoli is a Newark born video artist most recently credited as associate producer on ‘8 Bit’ (a documentary about
video game artists) which premiered at MoMA last October. Her work has been shown at several galleries in the tri-state area, including theJersey City Museum and Newark Museum.
A recent reviewer wrote of American Watercolor Movement: “It’s hard to imagine this amalgam of junkyard technology, unabashed artiness,multiculturalism, and high theory coming from anywhere else” (but New Jersey.) Their songs have been described as “confusing, sleazy, foggy, threatening, decayed; usually sexy, sometimes dangerous, always alluring.”
Motivated by a self-described affinity for lost causes, Masuelli has assembled a ragged army of volunteers to create a strangely seamlessalternate world within Gallery Aferro’s Newark space. A ghostly aura of idealism and artistic production past hangs over the entireundertaking. One such ghost might be the cinematographer for 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive, an acclaimed but obscure film about post-war Spain. During production, the cinematographer went blind.
This press release is respectfully dedicated to him.
Youth, Conor McGrady
Someday This Will All Be (something else)
June 16-July 14, 2007
Opening Reception June 16, 6-9 PM
Curated by Emma Wilcox
On being a local. Locally or otherwise.
With essay by Tim Maul
In the New Media Room: Gianluca Bianchino, Jonathan Franco
See images from reception
“Cause when I look in his eyes/I can see it, paradise “ –The Jellybeans*
“It ain’t a mystery/Baby not to me.” –The Misfits**
Gallery Aferro presents 5 artists working from within the landscape genre. Someday This Will All Be (something else) is about being a local, locally or otherwise, about what agenda nostalgia might serve, and about remembering the view. The ruin, the home town, the block, the unofficial monument and the front yard all get the benefit of the long view, the last look, or the look backwards.
Tim Maul returned to his hometown of Darien CT to photograph an ice machine that is a stand in for a local monument. He writes: “It remains unchanged, except for paint jobs, since the early 60’s when my bicycle offered me freedom beyond my paper route. It has a superficial resemblance to some of Rachel Whitread’s work. It always had an illicit aura-boozy commuters picking up ice on the way home. As an adolescent I found this to be a ghostly transaction; I cannot recall seeing the machine serviced. Darien now is a bloated, self-satisfied real estate marvel and this machine, seemingly alone, has borne witness to change.” Maul also presents an original essay on the history of alternative spaces past and present, as seen through his experience as a NY artist.
Conor McGrady grew up in Belfast in the 70’s. His 4 x 8 foot renderings of the empty housing structures and neighborhoods are an unrelenting vision of past and potential violence, surveillance, and architectural control, and are done from memory alone. In some cases, the neighborhoods were designed with the help of military technicians. The work, according to McGrady, is not directly about Ireland, but about the ubiquity of conflict and oppression worldwide, and his aim is to raise questions relating to the control of space and boundaries
The proliferation of lush, large-scale photographs of ruins continues unabated. Dylan Chatain’s are notable for their vision of America as a landscape of hidden places, despite which (or because) there is no relief from the oppressive presence of other humans. Images of riotously overgrown greenery overtaking Staten Island- inaccessible by car until 1964–are dreamlike in their lack of obvious timestamp. Is this the past or the future?
Laurinda Stockwell’s diptychs have a similarly complex relationship with time. Rural subject matter that often functions as touristic fodder is reworked in her intimate and penetratingly honest images.
*The Jellybeans met in high school in Jersey City, NJ. By 1965, they had broken up.
**Lodi, NJ
Vacuum Memories #5 Merav Ezer
Our Man in Havana: The Vacuum Cleaner in Art
April 21 – May 26, 2007
Curated by Emma Wilcox
Opening Reception Saturday April 21, 6-9:30
Roomba Performance by Bobby Zokaites at 8
Performance by Asha Ganpat Just Like Mom and Dad’s! throughout
Illustrated full color catalog available, sponsored by Newark Art Supply, also an artist owned business
Merav Ezer, Eliza Gagnon, Asha Ganpat, Ganzblum, Richard Herzog, Jessica Lagunas, Valeri Larko, Maria Adelaida Lopez, Karen Margolis,James Morgan + John Bruneau, Toni Pepe, MaryJo Rosania, Karen Zalamea, Bobby Zokaites
One of the various definitions of the word vacuum is “a partially exhausted space.”
But as in forensics, where a milligram of dust can contain a complex narrative, 14 artists have made visible the hidden significances of a minor player in mostly domestic dramas: the vacuum cleaner. For the artists, this significance may be political, scientific, nostalgic or simply perverse.
Dedicated to James Murray Spangler*, an amateur inventor/department store janitor whose chronic lung problems may have inspired him to design the modern portable vacuum cleaner, the exhibit was in turn inspired by the work of Columbian-born Maria Adelaida Lopez. Lopez’s “dust houses” are replicas of those of her former employers from her grad-student/housecleaner days, made from the dust of vacuum cleaners. The artist has stated that her work is for “all the other Marias.”
The recurring nature of dust and dirt as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation is an underlying theme for many of the artists below. Eliza Gagnon will be presenting a video edited from interviews she did with an astonishing range of Americans on various aspects of dust and cleaning, including 9/11 dust, cleaning and sex, cleaning and race, and favorite cleaning product smells. Like many of the artists, Merav Ezer’s work is informed by her experiences as an emigrant from her country of origin. Using a vacuum, she creates molds of personal objects such as cigarettes and high heels, preserving them.
Bobby Zokaites rebuilds Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners for the function of painting. The algorithm that the machines use to vacuum rooms then becomes visible. The Roombas will be painting at the opening, petting is allowed.
* Without money to develop his invention, James Murray Spangler sold his patent to his cousin’s husband William Hoover in 1908.
A Thought Experiment
The One Frame Cinema of the Unknown
New Work by Jesse Houlding
March 3, 2007- April 7, 2007
Opening Reception March 3 2007, 6-9:30 PM
“The One Frame Cinema of the Unknown is a series of installations that use light and other natural phenomenon to explore perception and the
construction of meaning. By creating a relationship between the visible and the invisible, I explore the boundary between the known and the
unknown.” –Jesse Houlding
Using a 200-foot long sweep of black paper, light and thousands of pinpricks, Houlding will recreate the Aurora Borealis on Gallery’s Aferro’s second floor project space. He will be exhibiting cyanotype “light drawings,” one of the oldest and simplest photographic processes. His drawing implements for these were a magnifying glass and the sun. Large-scale “magnet drawings” created by moving iron filings across paper with a magnet will also be on display. The disarming simplicity of the materials used in the installation is matched beautifully with the complexity of what is evoked by the finished work.
This exhibit is the first in a planned series of cultural exchanges between Newark NJ and Oakland CA.
Jesse Houlding recently received a master’s degree in printmaking from San Francisco State University, after undergraduate studies in studio art at Carleton College. He has been a resident artist at Kala Art Institute since 2001, and has exhibited his films, prints and installations widely around the Bay area. Recent exhibitions include Some Assembly Required, and The Ghost Show, as well as the annual exhibition of the San Diego Art Institute Museum of the Living Artist. He was invited by Gallery Aferro to cross the country for a solo show after his contribution to 2006’s In Light generated widespread delight, periodic confusion and contemplative musings amongst visitors to the show.
1970 Poster superimposed on a newspaper
Displayed across homes and stores in the United States during the FBI search for Angela Davis.
Black Rock:
The Metamorphosis of Home from Isolation to Connection Task Force
January 27-Febuary 24, 2007
Curated by Noelle Lorraine Williams of Reborn and Kevin Darmanie
Opening Reception Saturday January 27, 7:30-10:00 PM
Performances at 8:30 by Shaka Zulu Overdrive, Maurice Chesnut and Nadine LaFond of Swampedelica
Hosted by Jerry Gant
Artists:
Jamyla & Pete Bennu, Maurice Chesnut, Lowell Craig, Rob Cruz, Easton Davy, Asha, Ganpat, John Fredericks, Jerry Gant, Darrell Goza, Tamara Harris, Nadine LaFond, Kagendo Murungi, Ibou Ndoye, Wura Ogunji, William Oliwa, Veruska Outlaw, Dread Scott, Shaka Zulu Overdrive, Ade Tugbiyele Sedita, Aqueelah Shaheed, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Nyugen E. Smith, SDNicholas, Joya Angola Thompson, Mary A. Valverde, Bisa Washington Jesse Wright
Countries, Territories and Commonwealths Represented in the Show:
Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, Nigeria, Haiti, Rome, Senegal, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Kenya, United States