Joe DeNardo, Untitled, mixed media collage, 18 x 22 in., 2008
Aaron Henderson, Motive, high definition video, 3 min, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

normal projects is pleased to announce the first in a series of quarterly two person exhibitions with work by Joe DeNardo and Aaron Henderson.

Joe DeNardo with Kevin Doria performs as GROWING. With performances at the New Museum, Swiss Institute, PS 1, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, DeNardo's context to contemporary art has been in collaboration. Here DeNardo expands with collage work derivative of endless landscapes and travel with stacking of memory, location, and placement. These made environments, precise and considered, touch on a duality of clean lines and situated architecture against the forest, desert canyons or landscape beyond.

Aaron Henderson examines motion and performance in Motive (2008). Filmed with University of Minnesota cheerleaders provides a historical reference to the sport as Henderson pursues the relevance of gesture. Motive flickers a linear shuffle; each of the eight cheerleaders creating a static, a visual blur or noise, though no actual sound is present in the piece. It features and capitulates the slight nuances of each cheerleader in each movement. Their apparent need and want to successfully align themselves, to be one, displays Henderson's notion of social and political ramifications of actions.

normal projects exhibits work on paper and video by emerging and established contemporary artists. This exhibition will be on view from September 12th - October 25th, 2008. There will be an artists' reception from 6-8p on September 12th. For more information, please email Emily Schroeder at normalprojects@gmail.com or call 917 312-8889.

###

www.normalprojects.info

hermitage beacon ny

hay chitown!

ode to john bartram

Nathaniel Dorsky - Hours For Jerome Part 1&2

This film was shot between 1966-1970 and edited over a two year period ending in July 1982. Hours For Jerome (as in a Book of Hours) is an arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life. These fragments of light revolve around the four seasons. Part One is spring through summer. Part Two is fall and winter.

16mm color. 45 minutes.

SCREENING AT HERMITAGE, beacon ny
SATURDAY (6.21) 9PM

2008 all known periennals existing (upstate new york garden)

podophyllum peltatum (mayapple)
vinca (periwinkle)-carpets of it
asarum canadense (wild ginger)
helianthus tuberosus (edible tuber, native)
aegopodium podagraria 'variegatum' (snow-on-the-mountain)
hemerocallis fulva (day lily)
dennstaedtia punctilobula (eastern hayscented fern)-endangered in illinois
various narcissus (paperwhites and daffodils)

Neo Rauch
Die Aufnahme,
2008, Oil on canvas, 118.11 x 98.43 inches; 300 x 250 cm
Image courtesy David Zwirner, NY


view
uptake
intake
record
entrance
recording
reception
taking up
inclusion
absorption
acceptance
admittance
initiation
affiliation
assimilation
accommodation
general acceptance
placement [in program]

2008 plant list

please excuse my improper text use for the latin and for not classifying shade and sun gardens. pre-existing plant list to follow.

geum chiloense (quellyon) 'mrs. bradshaw'(poppy)
lobelia x speciosa 'fan' blue
delphinium nudicaule 'laurin'
rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'goldsturm' (black-eyed susan)
sedum spurium var coccineum 'dragon's blood'
helenium 'dakota gold'
viola sp. (for some instant gratification with some color in the garden)
ceratostigma plumbaginoides (leadwort)
monarda sp. 'panorama' (bee balm)
heuchera 'melting fire'
heuchera 'black bell'
tiarella hybrid 'spring symphony' (foam flower)
aguilegia vulgaris Winky 'blue & white' (columbine)
corydalis flexuosa 'purple leaf'
dicentra eximia (native bleeding heart)
achilea millieflorum 'summer pastels' (yarrow)
anemome x hybrida **the deer have eaten this one
campanula sp. (canterbury bells/ bellflower)
gaura lindheimeri 'geyser white' **the deer have eaten this one
astible x arendsii 'rhythm & blues'

vintage bonnet - yes, hand knitted by me.
image christian toscano

i do wonder what native plants are like in the midwest, and what prairie rooftops look like. i am more used to swamp and woodland areas. native to the hudson valley region just north of new york city, the hills and valleys and old mountain ranges are the back drop to my memories. sustainability, eco-awareness, organic or 'eat local' advantages are new terminology, but being from such an overwhelmingly beautiful region, some of these 'new' values have been centered in me for such a long time. there was no other option, corn is only purchased from the farm stands, tomatoes are only delicious in september, onions are harvested in pine island, black dirt region. apples were hand picked from the local orchards. strawberries too, when i was younger, jammed, canned (i just found those old ball jars last weekend). deer will always eat your plants, as well as the rabbit (dont fight it, grow what they dont like-hence me never know that hostas had long stalks and light purplish flowers). im trying to quickly remember all the things i am so used to doing, alas, i dont think you can just spontaneously remember them. they are simply apart of who you are (and not to say change is not possible). i admit, i didnt grow up in a suburban neighborhood; i grew up in the woods. and there were times when i was young that i hated that notion. there was no lawn in the front of the house. Suburban, commonly referred to as 'American', ideals regarding homes allude me; it does interest me, similar to how foreign countries interest me.

sometimes i think im in love with painting.
thank you, frank o'hara. me too.

the apartment gallery is becoming invariably the most interesting 'space' to see emerging and even established artists. void of the obvious and overt there-to-be-seen attitude toward 'hot' galleries, the physical space and work makes it experiential for viewer and for artist.

london --> hotel (the early years)
brooklyn --> AM Richard Fine Art
vancouver --> the apartment

wayne higby, winter inlet landscape, 1975
image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

my position at the MET has finally crossed over with my past.

Curators [museum curators] have about the most complicated and daunting job in the art world; they are pulled apart by pressures to raise money, write, hunt out hot new artists and oversee acquisitions, while organizing shows that attract the public. Their value and responsibilities seem less and less appreciated by trustees, who are experiencing their own kind of pressures. Jobs and budgets are at stake. These are expensive shows; don’t make waves.

Biennials need to be laboratories, not annual reports. And the world is far too full of interesting artists for shows like this to be drawn from such a small and known gene pool. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; it reduces the capacity for risk and dulls the imagination.

Roberta Smith, "An Alien Sighting on Planet Pittsburgh," NY Times, Friday May 9, 2008

maybe like a what's in store


image courtesty of moti hasson gallery, ny


image courtesy of guild & greyshkul, ny


image courtesy of kris


and a little further down the line


image courtesy freight + volume, ny

maybe like a week in review...


hermitage, beacon new york
image courtesty of jon


bridgeport, chicago
image courtesy of mairead

instead i went to the hessel. second thoughts by the first year graduate students remarking on a higgs exhibition entitled, Exhibitionism (October 20, 2007 – February 3, 2008) rooms re-entilted by crossing out original names, reconfigured. easy example, the unmonumental room, with a few john bock paper collages and some saul fletchers, and you get the idea. the next room over, a low hanging 5x5-ish photograph of a bed, horizon line and chroma, distinct. thought it a sarah jones. is instead, one of her students. second thoughts on this becomes an art historical conversation. the practice of art schooling dating back was taught by copying. today, still, students come into the Met or the Louvre and set down easels and study the masters, as did Cezanne with Poussin's works. in contemporary art, is this still acceptable? i would say no. its too tense a market. art school focuses on the individual as does contemporary society. As Roberta Smith highlights in an August 19, 2005 New York Times review, "...the challenge facing any young artist, which might be put bluntly: if you're not after some sort of originality, get out of the kitchen."


Sarah Jones
The Consulting Room (Couch) (XXI),1998
c-type print mounted on aluminum
59 x 59 inches
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, NY

ny times article entitled 'what darwin saw out back' by cornelia dean.

i have plans on seeing this exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bedford Park, Bronx soon and will replace text with review.

quite simply, i have been longing to return.

new books on the bookshelf

christy's a little lark has new designs out

and

my first work-in-progress website

jackson stanley is so handsome, i must say, especially wearing a cardy...
thanks amy!


thank you claire and albion, baby e is most adorable!

if obstetricians have their wall of babies,
then i have my blog..."kickin it in my gear"

like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of my life...i sometimes rejoice in my release and many times heartingly miss anton kern (gallery)...yesterday was poignantly one of those times. would they say the same? it is a hard question to ask, if one is uncertain of the answer. i may return and delete this, or i may be happy enough to allow it to live in cyber space, for certain, only time will tell.




taking directly from the press release (prof. christoph, i presume):
Moving away from the material purity of his former work (and the neo-formalism debate about contemporary art practices in relation to those of earlier avant-garde movements), he now emphasizes the distressed character of the materials and its fragility in a kind of romanticism of material concreteness. He thereby moves closer to the historic works of Alberto Burri and away from Blinky Palermo’s clarity. The coarseness of the materials, the cracks and holes, the informal, stitched-together look of the color fields, and the properties of the muted harmonious tones create a radical frailty and tattered grace that become highly evocative and speak directly to issues of aesthetic withdrawal and the state of material.


Sergej Jensen, Untitled, 2008

thank you, or simply, it was meant to happen, that i went to see zach play a few songs with alfra, in beacon ny. and i met a great person named john who likes poetry, and has a collection of poetry books, rare and categorized by school, coast, and/or press. john showed me a mimeo of a project james schuyler and fairfield porter created.

it felt something like this, but one should see for themselves

Sunday (by James Schuyler)

The mint bed is in
bloom: lavender haze
day. The grass is
more than green and
throws up sharp and
cutting lights to
slice through the
plane tree leaves. And
on the cloudless blue
I scribble your name.


Fairfield Porter (1907-1975)
Girl Reading Outdoors, 1963
oil on canvas
45 x 40 inches

Romantic aesthetics speaks a great deal about the complexity, inexhaustibility, infinity of meaning in the work of art. This talk has very real ideological function, because "complexity" never means heterogeneity or plurality of meaning. Quite the opposite. "Complexity" and "unity" go together in the classical-romantic aesthetic. Coleridge puts it this way: "the Beautiful, contemplated in its essentials, that is, in kind and not in degree, is that in which of the "organic" work of art as a unified totality are simultaneously ideological limits. When these limits, art constitutes itself as an "infinite continuum of reflection" (Friedrich Schlegel). In other words, every artistic text is understood to contain a wealth of meanings, "connotations" as opposed to "denotations," that can elicit a possible endless and variable series of interpretations. In the American context, W.K. Wimstatt states the point this way: "Each reader will experience the poem is like a stone thrown into a pond, into our minds, where ever widening circles of meaning go out - and this because of the structure of the story." We fail to understand the true nature of the romantic concept of art if we believe, as one recent book states, that "conventional criticism aims at a closure of the troubling plurality: it aims at an interpretation, fixing a meaning, finding a source (the author) and an ending, a closure (the meaning)."

The Theory of the Avante-Garde, Peter Burger, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis


Last night, I had the pleasure to listen to panel of speakers (Fritz Haeg, Dolores Hayden, Frederick Kaufman, Shamim Momin & Paul Holdengräber) at the New York Public Library on Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates projects. Holdengräber defined the avante-garde as military action. That definition stuck with me. The powerful and unifying forces of changing a community's opinion, regardless of whether or not they are ready for it...Listening to Dolores Hayden speak was fullfilling in a way not easily described. When you remember the track that you are on, and you are inspired by what this Yale professor and author of numerous interesting books on suburbia, and art, and feminism...I felt I made sense. My lineage, my experiences, my goals - it is awkward to put so much on one experience, on one woman's words, but I know I am in the right direction. And I wanted to as modestly as possible express how much I enjoyed seeing this panel.

Tonight:

Viola lanceolata (swamp violet, white bog violet)
in celebration of my cousin's twins, ian and violet.
(sweaters i knitted for them to follow)

in this particular order, i saw these shows


“Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century,” New Museum


"Dibenkorn in New Mexico," Grey Art Gallery, New York University


"Pricked: Extreme Embroidery," Museum of Art & Design


"Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now," Museum of Modern Art


"West of the Moon," Little Cakes Gallery

In Philip Guston Talking, he wrote/spoke,

"I think that probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible. I think that's the most powerful and ath the same the most archaic urge that has endured for about 25,000 years...

...I live out of town, and driving down to New York City I go down the West Side Highway. There are all these buildings that look as if they are marching. You know, by painting things they start to look strange and dopey. Also there was a desire, a powerful desire though an impossibility, to paint things as if one had never seen them before, as if one had come from another planet. How would you paint them' how would you realise them? It was really a tremendous period for me. I couldn't produce enough. I couldn't go to New York, to opening of friends of mine like Rothko, de Kooning, Newman. I would telephone Wester Union with all kinds of lies such as that my teeth were falling out, or that I was sick. It was such a relief not to have anything to do with modern art. It felt as if a big boulder had been taken off my shoulders."


The Diebenkorn show is an important show for me to see. There wont be many words to describe what you one must see in person. I thought was I just happy, were the paintings making me happy? And then I thought of his "Knife and Tomato" painting. Enough said.

Diebenkorn aptly found a way of painting while in graduate school in New Mexico. This retrospective is all his paintings and drawings created during this seminal period in his work. The space, expansive and stacked, found in the large canvases are peculiar, marking making drawn swiftly and ultimately considered, as the paintings show its many decisions and layers. and I wonder, could these paintings have existed if not in New Mexico? Of course not, but Diebenkorn's decision to leave New York, disassociating himself from the New York School and painting honestly, has me thinking. Clearly, Diebenkorn's palette lends us to declare that he remained correct, and the paintings prove to be so.

City design that incorpoarate urban farming on residential lots (in many regions, the only prime agricultural land that is left is in backyards) or community plots, preserves farmland at the urban edge, and provides in-town farmer's market can reduce the energy footprint of eating. Similar attention to other urban systems and their complex interactions can reduce catastrophic impacts on resources and communities that are continents away.
In many cases, the footprints of resources like energy, food, and building materials have such obscure interconnections that they seems to be impossible to unravel. The challenge to city makers is to uncover and apply hidden connections to reduce footprints of human habitation.

Design for Ecological Democracy, by Randdolph T. Hester, MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-08351-5

More Pleasant Adventures
Installation View
photo credit : Dawn Blackman

Landscape (or the formatting of paper in a printer)

Dawn Blackman (Brooklyn)
Colin Brant (Brooklyn/Vermont)
Kristopher Benedict (Brooklyn)
Marcus Civin (Los Angeles)
Luke Dowd (London)
Dan Fischer (Bay Shore, NY)
Lydia Moyer (VA)
Adam Padavano (NJ)
Hendrik Krawen (Berlin)
William stone (NY)

Within forces of new technology and preservation of society and its relics in a naturalized landscape, a parallel and a disconnect exists between the natural and the created. This proposal for exhibition examines the ends of both extremes, romanticism in the landscape as represented by painting, work on paper, sculpture, and new media.
Environmental Conservationists / Forresters / Pioneers set forth the rules of the land designating where and how the future generations will interact with nature and the natural environment. Environmental politics is not new terminology, first instilled in American politics before Westward Expansion, marking off national treasures in the splendor of the natural landscape in the form of National Parks. The first instinct and reactions to finding the land was to keep it intact for future generations. It is valuable to point
out that these first environmentalists threw up red flags to even putting in service roads, noting once a footpath had been notched, the path would subsequently widen.

Anne Whiston Spirn writes in The City as a Garden, "The city must be recognized as part of nature and designed accordingly. Cities, their suburbs and countryside must be viewed as a single, evolving system within nature, as must every individual park and building within that larger whole. The social value of nature must be cultivated, like a garden, rather than ignored or subdued."

This is Romanticism, however, not utopian.

As a growing and moving society, we are overwhelmed with technology, invention and idea. Preservation becomes standardized adding of more rules, and perhaps it maybe less impactful. The system in place may not be even understood by fellow man, the unpracticing, unlooking, industry heavy individual. He longs to leave the city, bring the city with him, and breathe the fresh air and carefree with the kids. He uses nature and the city uses him. He is a tool and nature becomes a tool for him; meditation spot or something to look forward to.

This is our technologically advanced society.

Setting forth with new media, Lydia Moyer explores Romanticism and depiction of landscapes with looping video feeds that could aptly be moving paintings. Hendrik Krawen fastidiously paints industry, pollution, and the human impact on and into the landscape. Dan Fischer’s work is art historical, as well as Romantic, as he once described to me as “graphite dreams.” Luke Dowd’s Gem Collection, work on paper, represents the romantic and societal valued appeal of mineral and stones with use of spray paint. Kristopher Benedict’s paintings are vivid and poignantly psychedelic in chroma. They are urban yet provincial in an early series entitled “Park Paintings.” Dawn Blackman and Adam Padavano’s works both descriptively add to the landscape as the
depictions of the society, the individuals who embark and interact with these variable landscapes. Blackman explores dualities, as Adam depicts leisure and activity within the characters environment. With just glimmers of human presence in painted landscapes, Colin Brant’s paints the most desirable conditions for the Romantic. They remain desolate yet full of
nature, without a human presence, except perhaps in their corners. Like Westward Expansion, the human impact upon the landscape perceived, but the paintings require much exploration.

The exhibition would also be represented with writing, in form of poetry or prose, in sculptural form by Marcus Civin. As he writes, “I was raised next to an orchard, next to an abandoned military base. I would ride my BMX and tilt my head back to look straight up. There was no need to look forward; my wheels—sewing seeds like tractor pulls—knew the dry cracked passages.
Evening. Stars starting. And, could almond trees be that tall?” in a work entitled Painting. His allegory is deep within art and landscape. William Stone also works within sculpture exploring found objects, using timber and wood, lightly playing with language and materiality. Stone also appropriates and modifies found landscape paintings.

Viably all artists represented in this proposed exhibition have a connection to my professional and private life. Some are friends, some schoolmates, a past professor, and two represented by gallerists whom I professionally admire. As Kenneth Koch was once quoted, "One of the most wonderful ways in the world to be with someone's sweetness and brilliance is to collaborate with that person...I like collaborating the way people like drinking.Collaborating was making a game out of social life."


john muir and theodore roosevelt

green for all

sustainable south bronx

'green' development in economically deprived neighborhoods

please join me for some warmed apple cider and good friends from 8-10p at secret project robot.

Secret Project Robot Presents
Field reckHorde + More Pleasant Adventures


drawing by Sarah Morgan

January 19th - February 10th, 2008
Opening Reception Saturday January 19th 8 to 10pm

Secret Project Robot is pleased to announce Field reckHord and More Pleasant Adventures. Two separately curated shows which both draw from the imagery of dreams, urban decay, and representation. They focus on the concept of meaning and explore the ability to transcribe memory in a modern landscape distracted by the by-products of an overproductive system.


More Pleasant Adventures
A group show organized by Emily Schroeder
With Dawn Blackman,Sarah Morgan, Adam Padavano

More Pleasant Adventures suggests new representation in landscape: in notion, in dream, in memories. Each artist deals with elements in nature (urban and otherwise) and fictional environments. The artists create their own language and criticism, defining memories, defining dreams. Delineating from the real, representing person place and thing, this show aims to portray a sense of what we may be missing, what we
may long for, and historically what may have been portrayed as true.

The space to be built would comprise of all the things architects, urban planners, and artists approach intrinsically: abandoned buildings and general leftovers, re-executed in installation.

Dawn Blackman uses the tradition of drawing to depict her relationship to and understanding of memory. Speaking specifically in twos, an interesting duality transpires in her works on paper.

Sarah Morgan's sculptures take elements from the environment in which they are constructed, arranging items and objects found in everyday life. Their tactile quality speak to the idea of dimension in both the literal and dreamscape.

Adam Padavano uses the process of artistic production as a path to the discovery of memories and dreams, and the development of new characters and environments.

Emily Schroeder looks at art to represent and reference specific locations and time periods, creating a fictional history parallel to her own. She melds fundamentals of representation and abstraction into a narrative form- creating a new place or placement.


Field reckHorde
An Installation by Ben Wolf

This site specific installation is inspired by the unique space of Secret Project Robot. It is a spontaneous retrospective of studio processed works inspired by the artist’s private collection of sticks, pigeon feathers, foam, wood, paint,
paper, pulleys, strings, ropes.

Surveying the Field
Field reckHorde submerges into the artists influences from the physical world. From exploring derelict structures reclaimed by nature.

Less reck.
The process of destruction for construction. To create a new arrangement the artist will destroy and deconstruct some of the elements that were pre-created allowing them to transcend their original mass production.

My Horde
Collect, accumulate, and use before it has a chance to get dusty. Since the installation process is entirely spontaneous, the artist collects a mass of supplies from which to pick and choose.

Secret Project Robot
210 Kent Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
secrets@secretprojectrobot.org

an upcoming trip to PORTLAND OR reminded me to post these new tags!

thanks wolfy!

at the height of the 1960's avant-garde glamour, collaborating on a work of art became known as a "happening"

"One of the most wonderful ways in the world to be with someone's sweetness and brilliance is to collaborate with that person...I like collaborating the way people like drinking. Collaborating was making a game out of social life...Poetry was like stolen kisses - you could do it fast."

- Kenneth Koch