2008


Dorothy Schultz

Outside Over There
Fourth Annual In the Country of Last Things exhibition
Curated by Emma Wilcox
September 27 – November 22, 2008
Opening Reception September 27, 7-10 PM

Alone and Together: Tintype Portrait Studio by Keliy Anderson-Staley
October 3 + 4th, 1-7 PM

Will Work for Food by KH Jeron
Bring a can of food to barter with robots. All proceeds to be donated to Newark food banks.

See images from exhibition

Please join us for Newark Open Doors

Artists:
Keliy Anderson-Staley, Mireille Astore, Martin John Callanan, Karlos Carcamo, Margarida Correia, Susan E. Evans,
Judith Hoffman, KH Jeron, Tamara Kostianovsky, Charles Huntley Nelson, Anne Percoco, Dorothy Schultz, Jeff Sims,
Peter Tuomey Jr, Tammy Jo Wilson

Shift
December 1-Febuary 2, 2008
Opening Reception December 1, 7-10 PM
Curated by Erik Guzman of Goliath Visual Space

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Large scale kinetic works by Erik Guzman, Federico Muelas and Meridith Pingree take over the gallery and can be operated by the public.

Outside Over There is an exhibition, as well as a food drive and a portrait studio. It is inspired by the signals traveling in the airspace of cities worldwide, and the ability of these signals to penetrate structures, by transmissions, codings and exchanges of ideology and consumer goods, interactions real and imagined, between more and less industrialized nations, including the cargo cult and the syndication of TV programming.

I will not show…family vacation footage, fields of moving color, or the birth of anything.”

-from See TV, by Susan E Evans

The impending end of nondigital TV has evoked for some class and cultural divisions within America. By repairing TVs with reed thatch from the NJ meadowlands, Anne Percoco suggests such divisions, as well as the complexity of a globalized economy. Charles Huntley Nelson’s video, Why Not on TV questions the presentations of African Americans on television in relationship to their actual history and present realities, and is narrated by an omniscient visitor who may be a space alien.

Jeff Sims explores the transmission of ideologies using an idiosyncratic standard of representation based on coffee cups. Judith Hoffmann’s life-size felt kitchen is a tribute to Claes Oldenburg’s wife, Coosje van Bruggen. Other tributes include Karlo Carcamo’s Mist, an installation created from 100 pairs of handcuffs in tribute to Eva Hesse, and Mireille’s video postmortem on the career of Egyptian singer and icon Leila Murad.

On the series


Dwell
Robert Lach
Project Room

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A nest colony constructed from scrap wood materials. Positioned in clusters, like great blue heron rookeries, and suspended in space these nests are set free from their usual constraints in nature. Lach is interested in what it means to create a home. The repetitive sound of “dwell” creates a mantra, the essential element for creating balance, peace, and harmony.


 Andrew Wilkinson

Peekskill Project
September 13- November 23, 2008
1701 Main Street, Peekskill, NY

Evonne M. Davis and Emma Wilcox are participating curators for the 2008 Peekskill Project at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Artists selected by Gallery Aferro to be among the 55 artists showcased throughout the town of Peekskill are:

Ryan Brown, Asha Ganpat, Vandana Jain, Pamela Phatismo Sunstrum, Ryan Schroeder, Ted Victoria, Andrew Wilkinson and Brian Wondergem

The Peekskill Project, a citywide site-specific exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary art, was launched in 2004 with the goal of bringing contemporary art out of the museum and into the community. The public arts festival presents a wide variety of painting, sculpture, photography, installations, video and performance art by national and international artists selected by a juried committee of renowned curators. Work by over 100 artists are selected from an elite curatorial committee which are sited in storefronts, parks, and in vacant lofts and lots around our city.

The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art will launch the fourth annual Peekskill Project 08, beginning the weekend of September 13 – 14, 2008 from 12-6pm with selected works and performances on display until November 23.

Ryan Brown invites the public to join him at St. Mary’s Catherdral in Peekskill, NY for 72-hour continual physical movement. Live sound provided. All are welcome, starting on September 12, at noon.


 Stephanie Metz

Biological Imperative
June 14-July 26, 2008
Opening Reception June 14, 7-10 PM
Curated by Emma Wilcox
Main Gallery and New Media Room

Screening July 12, 3 PM
WAX, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

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“…regarding a near future when objects that are partly alive and partly constructed exist, and when animal organs will be transplanted into humans. What kind of relationships we will form with such objects? How are we going to treat animals with human DNA?” – The Tissue Culture & Art Project

Artists:

Andrea Aimi, Brandon Ballengée, Michael Betancourt, Ana Black, David Blair, William Brovelli,
Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann, Elio Caccavale, Sean Capone, Steven Dressler, Eva Drangsholt, Tagny Duff,
Aganetha & Richard Dyck, Lucia Fabio, Asha Ganpat, Daphne Gerou, Nora Herting, Verena Kaminiarz, Jennifer Mazza,
Jillian McDonald, Stephanie Metz, Lydia Moyer, Roger Sayre, David Sherry, Laura Splan, Brian Spolans, Ajla R. Steinvåg,
Naoe Suzuki, Delmira Valladares, Maria Wallace

Structured around what the Tissue Culture and Art Project has called “cultural perceptions of life,” Biological Imperative freely mixes ideas of partial personhood, the possibilities of regeneration, multiples, fecundity, the semi-living, and the undead (things that just won’t die.) The exhibition posits linkage between disparate references such as (but not limited to) the undying popularity of the zombie genre, rabbit imagery, pirate radio and bioethical quandaries.

Elio Caccavale’s MyBio Dolls are educational dolls informed by consultation with bioethicists, symbolizing possible biofutures, and allowing children to imagine narratives for scenarios such as human/animal organ transplants. Brandon Ballengee’s drawings of deformed frog specimens collected throughout the world also create a sense of the unfamiliar: some frogs have too many limbs, some too few. In Jillian McDonald’s two-channel installation in the new media room, Zombie Loop, zombie and survivor are somehow the same, referencing the genre’s implied life cycle. The endurance of radio signals in the atmosphere links Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann’s video work, Radio City to the theme of the undying. The piece is a record of journey via boat to an abandoned sea fort used by pirate radio transmissions in the 60’s. After an altercation that left one broadcaster dead, his wife rowed to sea and played “Strangers in the Night” as a memorial. CLM mimicked this action in 2006, playing the same song at high volume over the open water. The fecundity or productivity of animals, namely rabbits and bees, inspired other works in the exhibition, such as those by Aganetha Dyck with Richard Dyck, and David Blair. Dyck’s Hive Scans are large-scale color prints made in collaboration with bees, via a scanner introduced into a beehive. David Blair’s full-length filmWAX was created over 6 years with footage shot on site at actual nuclear testing facilities in the US, flight simulation software and archival footage. The convoluted story concerns a beekeeper’s transformation upon discovering that his bees communicate between the living and the dead, and raises questions as to the collective and individual value of life.

25% of artworks in the exhibition contain rabbit content.


Wall Drifts
Gianluca Bianchino

Project Room

Wall Drifts is a series of ongoing large scale graphite drawings on banner canvas. The work is the result of superimposing two distinct images that in their nature appear to be static. One is the ghost image of a brick wall. This is achieved by rubbing graphite onto a canvas taped on a brick wall. The other is a loosely drawn succession of forms that resemble the shapes of continents or celestial bodies such as nebulas.

The brick wall pattern is a recurring theme in Bianchino’s work, derived from his fascination with architecture and vivid childhood memories of Paterson, New Jersey, when his parents both worked in the famous red brick mills located in the historical downtown. The series began in late 2007 as part of a body of work developed during his residency at Gallery Aferro.


 Tori Purcell, Race Rubric

Theory and Practice 
April 19-May 17, 2008
Opening Reception April 19, 7-10 PM
Curated by Evonne M. Davis
with illustrated full color catalog

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“…There are no countries now….” From artist Alan Bigelow’s When I was President

Theory+ Practice is an acknowledgement, interrogation and fete of the void between what the world could be and what it is. Web artist and writer Alan Bigelow’s piece, When I was President is an interactive projection that details a presidency ended by a suicide bomber: “a high school teacher from Des Moines.”

She said it was the only way to make the world right again.”

Site-specific sculptural works by Brian Wondergem include a 15-foot high Ferris wheel built exclusively out of ladders, suggestive of both an extreme pragmatism as well as yearning for escape.

Artists: Andrew Leo Baron, Alan Bigelow, Deric Carner, Robert Ladislas Derr, Nisha Drinkard, Katarina Jerinic, Darren Jones, Tracie Lee, Paula McCartney, Tori Purcell, Stephanie Standish, Alina Tenser, Matthew Verdon, Brian Wondergem



If So, Then So!
Kevin Darmanie
Project Room
April 19-May 17, 2008

A solo exhibition of 07 Aferro Studio resident Kevin Darmanie‘s series of oversize comic pages that each functions independently but can also be read as part of an ongoing narrative. The series features an alter ego, “Kedar” between Trinidad and a minutely observed city not dissimilar to Newark, caught between neglect and gentrification. The highly politicized narrative within a narrative of contemporary urban life follows an artist who closely resembles Darmanie, working on a block that closely resembles Market Street between Washington and University.


 Carts and Waggons, Gunter Puller

Networked
April 17- May 17, 2008
Curated by Donna Kessinger

New Media Room

The world of networked art is expansive and constantly evolving daily with new technology and applications.

Networked is an effort to take into consideration both literal and physical interpretations based on an open call for networked art on a local and international level. This small group survey is an attempt to look at the manifestation of net-based interactive projects, and physical attempts to escape from virtual realities, resulting in work with a more personal connection – going back to an idea of networks having to do with people and the way we live and work, both alone and in community.

Submit or accept a dare with The Coalition for Daring Behavior, or hear Disembodied Voices  by Jody Zellen

Artists: William Brovelli, Doris Caçoilo, Beatrice Coron, The Coalition for Daring Behavior, Sean Hovendick, Visakh Menon, William Oliwa, Gunter Puller, Katherine Sweetman, Amanda Thackray, Michelle Wilson, Jody Zellen 

Donna Rae Kessinger is a video artist and independent curator. She was the Installation Coordinator of the Greater New York Show, 1999, at PS1 Contemporary Art Center. She produced the Collaborative Arts Projects (CAP), Bronx Museum of the Arts, emerging artist residency program with Eathon G. Hall Jr., Director of Education; as well as developing curatorial, education and public programs for Aljira, a Space for Contemporary Art, including the acclaimed Young Curators program. She was on the BRIO panel for video in 2007. Most she recently co-developed and produced the PS1 Wack! Soho walking tour and interactive media map with Mary Beth Edelson and GAIA Studios. She is currently curating a video event, and community based Art show called: Walking Bedford Avenue with eyewash Gallery Director Larry Walczack, Spring 2008. Her media work les biens inc, has been cloned into Rhizome’s Artbase, and has been screened at the Jersey City Museum of Art.


Sponsors of the exhibition and catalog:

 

 


 Yellow Stair, Meridith Pingree

Shift
December 1-Febuary 2, 2008
Opening Reception December 1, 7-10 PM
Curated by Erik Guzman of Goliath Visual Space

See images from exhibition

Large scale kinetic works by Erik Guzman, Federico Muelas and Meridith Pingree take over the gallery and can be operated by the public.


Shift/Remix

This show is in conjunction with Shift, and includes installation artists working with similar ideas.

Artists featured: Jose Carlos Casado, Lishen Chang, Alexi Chisler, Derick MelanderYuko Oda and Kai Vierstra.