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Peter Daverington

Peter Daverington Learn from the classics 2015

Iconophilia
September 9, 2015 – October 11, 2015

Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 7 to 9pm

 

Peter Daverington Learn from the classics 2015
[link to Press Release: English / 中文]

[view works in exhibition]

The Lodge Gallery is proud to present “Iconophilia,” an exhibition of new paintings by Peter Daverington on view September 9th through October 11th 2015.

The hand of an artist can transport us back in time to discover where we came from, or it can take us on journeys forward through dreams to places we never thought possible. In his most recent body of work, Peter Daverington seizes the big picture and presents us with the relics of an evolving world.

Harvested from the iconography of great masters, Iconophilia is an adventure through the historical cannons of western art. From the invention of oil paint right up into the graffiti tags and throw ups of old school New York street artists, Daverington plunders and appropriates from a vast archive of visual imagery. In the mix are the fading heroes of the late middle ages, such as Cimabue and Giotto, alongside repeated vignettes from the work of renowned American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt. Among the depictions of high and northern renaissance figuration and Hudson river landscapes, Daverington has woven his own iconography of checkerboards and floating geometries seamlessly into the balance. The result is a collection of riotous melodies that oscillate between artifact and artifice.

As a public meditation on his own future, the future of painting, and the future of western civilization, Iconophilia is also an investigation into the cycles of degeneration and renewal. The strange decayed and distressed cacophony of imagery, abstraction, and erasure in these paintings reflects a world in collapse or one that has already collapsed, perhaps several times over, only to be restored and revitalized so that it may collapse again for future generations. Daverington’s poetic reverence for bygone ages and his faith in the future of painting combine here to offer a glimpse of hope amidst the chaos.

As the artist explains, “My recent proclivity for subjecting the canvases to brutal forms of abuse and destruction with a power sander and graffiti is perhaps a subconscious response to the disintegration, ruin, and class warfare occurring within contemporary society. It’s worth pointing out that while these works literally depict the iconography of art history as destroyed and defaced, each painting has at least one area that has been lovingly restored.”

Peter Daverington is a painter and musician from Melbourne, Australia currently living and working in Beacon, New York. He completed his MFA at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and has held fourteen solo exhibitions since 2004. Peter has been commissioned to paint public murals in Argentina, Australia, China, Egypt, Germany, Guatemala and Turkey. He is the winner of a John Coburn Emerging Artist Award, Rupert Bunny Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, Australia Council for the Arts New Work Grants and a finalist in the Archibald and Sulman prizes. His work is held in numerous public and private collections. This is Daverington’s first solo exhibition in Manhattan.

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Elizabeth Livingston

Elizabeth Livingston, Night Fell oil on canvas 26 ”x 46” 2014

Night Fell

August 5, 2015 – September 6, 2015

Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 5th, 7-9pm

Elizabeth Livingston, Night Fell oil on canvas 26 ”x 46” 2014
[link to Press Release: English / 中文]

[view exhibition/artwork]

 

The Lodge Gallery is proud to present “Night Fell,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth Livingston, on view August 5 through September 6, 2015. 

Alfred Hitchcock and Johannes Vermeer both took great delight in peeling back veneers of suburban order to capture intimate moments, exposing the vulnerability of domesticated middle class life. Elizabeth Livingston’s most recent body of work evokes all the same cinematic emphasis on visual scrutiny, moments of false security, and entrapment by employing hyper-detailed patterns of juxtaposed fabric to adorn her subjects against stark planes of color and narrative light. There is a shared suspense in these voyeuristic moments, a sense of the quiet before the storm or the last rays of dusk light before night falls.

As Livingston explains, “[the paintings] are both safe houses and defenseless outposts about to be consumed by night.”

This ominous undercurrent of isolation is both palpable and intentional in her most recent work as well. In “Night Fell”, the title work of the exhibition, we glimpse a dim glow of light from the porch of a quaint two floor home that is both inviting and fragile, stable but vulnerable, and surrounded by the obsessive detail of the lush encroaching rural landscape.

As described in her own words, “In more recent work I’m pulling back from the figure, to focus on exterior views of a larger scene.  In these paintings, the figure is no longer visible, but a human presence is clearly felt through dimly lit windows. A small country home at dusk with the porch light on reads both as a safe house and as defenseless outpost against the dark woods surrounding it. The tension in this divergence, to me, is a reflection on how beautifully fragile our lives are.”

Elizabeth Livingston attended Yale University, where she received a BA in fine art in 2001 and an MFA from Boston University in 2006. Livingston has been included in numerous exhibitions in Boston, MA,  New Haven, CT, Fort Worth, TX, and New York City, among others. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming and recently closed a solo exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art. Her work has been widely collected throughout the U.S. and Europe. Livingston currently lives and works in New York City.

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Hannah Cole

Green Crates, acrylic on layered Tyvek, 40" x 60," 2015

Back to Earth

July 1, 2015 – August 2, 2015

Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 1, 7-9pm

Green Crates, acrylic on layered Tyvek, 40" x 60," 2015

[link to Press Release]


The Lodge Gallery is proud to present “Back to Earth,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Hannah Cole featuring a groundbreaking new series of hand-cut works.  

Cole is known for acutely observational paintings that depict concise fragments of her everyday surroundings. She has an uncanny ability to glean lyrical visual moments from otherwise mundane settings. Although her depictions of urban fixtures and studio debris approach hyperrealism in terms of rendering, there is a perceived emphasis on the abstract geometry defining the picture plane. Patterns and textures take center stage as context is cropped away and the ordinary transcends. 

“In all of my work, I’m interested in exploiting the tension between ‘observed’ and ‘abstract,’ and similarly, I enjoy playing with the expectation of reality by inventing where the viewer may not expect invention,” Cole explains, “My paintings are at once rooted in the unique experiences of my own life in Brooklyn, and in conversation with the larger history of American painting. I make every mark by hand, without shortcuts. This practice is one part meditation, one part Yankee work ethic.”

Cole’s most recent works push new ground by slicing through the surface. Meticulously hand-cut tyvek, paper, and canvas surfaces are layered and painted upon. Actual shadows are created and presented alongside painted shadows, furthering confusion between perception and reality. As a whole, the exhibition provides a portrait of the artist, challenging us to see what she herself sees, as she sees it.

 

Despite the common things that inspire her, Cole’s works are very much her own, and anything but ordinary.
– Evan J. Garza, New American Paintings

Hannah Cole is an American artist based in New York. Cole holds a MFA in painting from Boston University, a Post-Baccalaureate degree in painting from Brandeis University, and a BA in Art History from Yale University. Her work was shown recently at The Drawing Center and at Volta, Basel. Last year she had her first solo museum show at the University of Maine Museum of Art. She is currently working on an upcoming show for this fall at Boston University’s Sherman Gallery

 

 

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Heathen Fundamentalist

Laura Moriarty - The Vast Emptiness of Silent Glory

An Ode to Philip Guston

June 3, 2015 – June 28, 2015
Opening Reception Wednesday, June 3rd, 7-9pm

Artists: Paul Brainard, Dawn Frasch, Aaron Johnson, Laura Moriarty, Doug Parry, Leonard Reibstein, and Tom Sanford.

Laura Moriarty - The Vast Emptiness of Silent Glory

Underlying his iconic imagery and heightened sense of primordial time, beyond the movements between figuration and abstraction, there is a general optimism in the post-50’s work of Philip Guston. Behind each oddly described object there is a desire to like the world and discover little pleasures in the unfamiliar and sometimes darker recesses of reality. Guston’s post-50’s studio was a menagerie of masterful deconstruction and then obliteration of formal painterly concerns. It was through this transformation that he learned to navigate the difficult science of color and began to experiment with non-hierarchical configurations of order.

As an artist who was made famous for work that was stubbornly eccentric to the contemporary enthusiasms of his day, his style and unique voice have proven to carry some serious lasting power. But it was over forty years ago that Guston’s work transformed the world of painting. If legacy is built on the influence of future generations what sort of influence has Guston’s work had on the imagination of today’s studio artist? What has Philip Guston done for you lately? To answer this question The Lodge Gallery presents “Heathen Fundamentalist” on view from June 3rd through June 28th.

The Lodge Gallery, founded by Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele, is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

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Post Human Utopia

Lori Nix “Mall”

April 22 – May 31

Opening Reception Wednesday, April 22nd, 7-9pm

Artists: Sarah Bereza, George Boorujy, Kate Clark, Peter Daverington, Valerie Hegarty, Ryan McLennanLori NixJean-Pierre Roy, Ryan Scully and Doug Young.

Lori Nix “Mall”

[link to Press Release]

Will our ever-expanding footprint on the natural world lead to an ecological collapse and a mass extinction of the human race? Will it be our meteoric advances in the development of artificial intelligence that does us in? Perhaps a biochemical calamity or a nuclear war will be our undoing. There are a lot of dark scenarios in which the world might go on without us.

In his book, “The World Without Us,” Alan Weisman poses a fascinating thought experiment: if you take every living human off the Earth, what traces of us would linger and what would disappear? Will the footprint of humanity ever fade away completely or have humans so irrevocably altered the environment that the impact of man will continue to shape the earth’s landscape far beyond the days of our departure?

This Spring, The Lodge Gallery takes a unique look into a seemingly dystopian situation and contemplates the variable repercussions of our absence in Post Human Utopia, on view April 22 through May 31, 2015.

The Lodge Gallery, founded by Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele, is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

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The Copenhagen Interpretation

The Copenhagen Interpretation Lodge Poulsen

3/3 – 4/4
Opening reception Wednesday March 4th, 2015 from 7-9pm

The Lodge Gallery and Gallery Poulsen proudly present “The Copenhagen Interpretation,” an exhibition of 18 works in different media: drawing, painting, collage and photography.

Participating artists: Aaron Johnson (US), Alfred Steiner (US), Barnaby Whitfield (US), Christian Rex van Minnen (US), Daniel Davidson (US), Debra Hampton (US), Eric White (US), Isaac Arvold (US), Jacob Dahlstrup (DK), Jade Townsend (US), Jean-Pierre Roy (US), John Jacobsmeyer (US), Mi Ju (KOR/US), Mu Pan (TW/US), Nicola Verlato (IT), Rainer Hosch (AUT/US), Tom Sanford (US) and William Powhida (US).

 

The Copenhagen Interpretation Lodge Poulsen

[link to Press Release]

Denmark-based Gallery Poulsen is located amidst butchers, fishmongers and the vibrant nightlife of Copenhagen’s Meatpacking District. With a passion for traditional art on canvas and paper, Gallery Poulsen presents a strong team of contemporary artists, mostly Americans, who work in a significant artistic style, where the clean, the satirical and not least the reflective are the thematic common denominators.

Exactly five years ago we started putting together a team of talented artists. Some from Near, but many from Far. In the search for the best, geography knew no bounds, and we found ourselves drawn to the glowing center of the contemporary art scene, New York City. In the corner of our meatpacking district in Copenhagen, Gallery Poulsen has taken that world in and it is now time to send our “The Copenhagen Interpretation” back to where it all began.

“The Copenhagen Interpretation”, which has been linked to the Danish physicist Niels Bohrʼs theories about the structure of atoms, contains in addition to its groundbreaking way of describing quantum physics also a great deal of persistence, geekiness and innovation. And that is precisely the three concepts which constitutes the strongest bricks of this show.

Influenced by the Danish writer H. C. Andersen we have started a journey in the name of inspiration as well. But apart from being on the lookout for taking home a lot of new ideas, we are mainly landed in Godʼs Own Country to give something of our own. We have left our home to besiege new ground and to show eighteen unique artists who transform the mundane into the fantastical.

Morten Poulsen / Gallery Poulsen

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Evie Falci

Voids and Invocations

Jan. 28 – Feb 28, 2015
Opening Reception: Wednesday Jan. 28, 7pm to 9pm

Evie Falci

It always begins the same way. The primordial void, the vast chaotic emptiness of pre-creation before time began. And then out of nothing the void is punctured and orders are formed around the developing architecture of creation.

This is the kind of language that ancient poets and contemporary psychologists like Manly. P. Hall or Carl Jung use to correlate alchemical symbolism with the development of the psycho-spiritual life of the individual. Here our unknown selves are the void and our consciousness is born from the void ex nihilo, ready to be formed by naturally occurring archetypal orders that are universal but result in multitudinous expressions of subjectivity.

It is also an accurate account of the ritualized studio practice of Brooklyn based artist Evie Falci. Using the language of esoteric symbolism and sacred geometry, Falci’s alchemical gold is definitively spiritual and her transmutation of metals occur in complicated geometric compositions of punk rock studs and pleather. She does not plan her paintings to a definitive degree before she begins. Instead, she taps into a type of shamanistic creative invention with a loose guide of esoteric rules and a personal symbolic order of geometries to guide each unique construction.

Here, in her first solo exhibition at The Lodge Gallery, Falci continues to explore the development of insight and intuition through the arrangement of symbolic imagery. Her most recent paintings of studs on pleather act as invocations meant to conjure allusions to the spirit world and, like totems, become activated access points to other unworldly dimensions. Cross referencing multiple cultural influences, including Islamic mosaics, ritual body scarification and tattooing, South American textiles, alchemical and esoteric symbols that span from India and the ancient Levant to fraternal enlightenment period hieroglyphics, she has built a composite visual language that is as deeply personal as it is accessible to a popular cultural audience. Harnessing the familiar appeal of popular materials such as denim and pleather, rhinestones and steel studs, her completed compositions are lush and tactile, mysterious and imbibed with magical incantations and divine presence that transform the superficial into the transcendental, and ultimately elevate the baser materials so that they appear to surpasses the sum of their parts.

Evie Falci (born 1985, Brooklyn, NY) is a 2007 graduate of the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland. She participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in 2011 – 2012. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions at various venues, including, Hudson, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, Feature Inc.,New York and Gallery Diet, Miami, and is part of Art in Embassies, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Her most recent solo exhibition Everything All Night was at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York in 2013. Falci continues to live and works in Brooklyn, NY.

The Lodge Gallery, founded by Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele, is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

evie-falci-lodge-gallery-ny

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Alterity

Curt Hoppe - Gal Friday - Studio View

January 9 – January 24, 2015

Opening reception January 9, 7pm to 9pm

 

The Lodge Gallery is proud to usher in the new year with Alterity, a group exhibition featuring works by Reuben Negron, Emily Burns, Curt Hoppe, Rebecca Goyette, Frank Webster and Ulrike Theusner.

Curt Hoppe - Gal Friday - Studio View

As individuals we choose to keep our personal obsessions with physical pleasure close to the vest, under the table and sometimes in the closet. As a society we are a lot bolder. We build our public fantasies on magazines, advertising campaigns and big budget films but inside we all long for a deeper connection to our true selves. Anyone who has dressed up for a masquerade or is accustomed to a uniform  knows the transforming effect that donning a costume can have. Useful as a largely positive mechanism for coping with social anxiety, we all dress up in our own self constructed costumes that mask our true selves in order to navigate the daily complications of our public lives. For some, the only way to explore more personal subjects such as desire, power, control and role reversal is to embrace an ulterior identity associated with a literal mask or costume to be donned as a shield of safety from judgement and public scrutiny. Sometimes these masks are literal and other times they are as subtle as an attitude or context. Each of us, in our own subjective way, learns to stitch together the necessary disguises we require in order to reconcile our pursuits of the baser instincts of human nature and to act out on our natural desires or secret fantasies. 

“People seldom change. Only their masks do. It is only our perception of them and the perception they have of themselves that actually change.” 

― Shannon L. Alder

 

 

 

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Art & Ephemera from 98 Bowery, 1969-89

Marisela La Grave's photograph David Wojnarowicz's drawings at Pier 34, 1983
December 19th – December 28th, 2014
Opening Reception Friday, Dec. 19, 6pm to 9pm

curated by Marc H. Miller

Marisela La Grave's photograph David Wojnarowicz's drawings at Pier 34, 1983

 
Opening Friday, December 19th, The Lodge Gallery is proud to present Art & Ephemera from 98 Bowery, 1969 to 1989. Every era creates its own type of art object. The multiples, political statements, and ephemera in this exhibition are representative of the deliberately transient quality and populist impulse of art in the 1970s and 80s. 

Artists in this show include Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Marc Brasz, Colette, Thom Corn, Jane Dickson, Stefan Eins, Sandra Fabara (Lady Pink), John Fekner, Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Bobby G (Robert Goldman), Mike Glier, Group Material, Keith Haring, Curt Hoppe, Becky Howland, Baird Jones, M. Henry Jones, Lisa Kahane, Christof Kohlhofer, Marisela La Grave, Don LeichtDick Miller, Marc H. Miller, Richard Mock, John Morton, Tom Otterness, Phase 2, Bettie Ringma, Walter Robinson, Christy Rupp, David Schmidlapp, Arleen Schloss, Kiki Smith, Susan Springfield, Anita Steckel, Jehnifer Stein, Anton Van Dalen, Arturo Vega, Tom Warren, Robin Winters, David Wojnarowicz, Y Pants, and more.Jane Dickson / Kiki Smith / Charlie Ahearn - Cause Effect, Offset Poster, 1984

The website 98bowery.com tells the story of the downtown art scene in the 1970s and 80s as I experienced it living in the top floor loft at 98 Bowery. These were bleak years for New York marked by economic decline, crime, drugs, and in many sections of the city, a desolate landscape of abandoned buildings and rubble-strewn lots. But for the young artists living in the Lower East Side during one of its worse moments there was a silver lining: cheap rents, camaraderie, plenty of real-life inspiration, and a do-it-yourself ethos that made anything possible. To use the ironic phrase coined by artist Joseph Nechvatal, downtown was an “Island of Negative Utopia.”

As an artist, curator, and writer, I had a ringside seat for much of the action. Just down the street from 98 Bowery was CBGB where a revolution in music, art and style was unfolding. Art was no longer confined to traditional galleries. Graffiti and street posters covered the walls, and exhibitions were held in nightclubs and squatted buildings. With limited access to the commercial mainstream, artists made things for themselves and for their peers. Works were created quickly and cheaply for short duration theme exhibitions and artist-run stores. New formats emerged: performance, video and independent film. Much of the action that I knew centered around Collaborative Projects Inc. (COLAB), the loosely organized artist group that was responsible for the Real Estate Show (1980), the Times Square Show (1980), and the art spaces Fashion Moda in the South Bronx, and ABC No Rio Dinero on the Lower East Side.

Every era creates it’s own type of art object. Multiples, political statements, and ephemera are representative of the deliberately transient quality and populist impulse of art in the 1970s and 80s. This exhibition at the Lodge Gallery includes treasures that I acquired during that time, as well as vintage works that I have collected more recently for Gallery 98, the online store of 98bowery.com. In selecting the items, I have not held back. Many are masterpieces whose rich historical and aesthetic content rivals that found in more conventional art objects.

Marc H. Miller, 98bowery.com

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Les Fleurs du Mal

Ulrike Theusner & Paul Brainard

November 6th – December 14th, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6th, 7-9pm

les fleurs du mal

[link to Press Release]

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.
— Charles Baudelaire, Conversation, Les Fleurs du Mal

Like Charles Baudelaire in his controversial 1857 volume of poetry Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), Ulrike Theusner and Paul Brainard explore the dark meanders of the human mind, the immoral side of urban life and the gross lack of empathy that continues to mar western culture. The depictions of sexual perversion, corruption, and mental and physical illness, so prevalent in Baudelaire’s poems, find their contemporary reflection in the drawings by Theusner and Brainard, who wade through the popular cultural imagery of what on the one hand is our subjective personal experience and on the other – the universal human condition. The exhibition features 25 drawings, three of which are collaborative works, built on ideas explored through Theusner and Brainard’s conversations about the condition of today’s urban culture.

The ink drawings of Ulrike Theusner are based on William Hogarth’s famous etchings “A Rake’s Progress” and the photographs of Jerome Zerbe’s Book “Happy Times.” The drawings describe the decline of a rich heir over the course of eight chapters. The protagonist is a lethargic puppet, the heir to a rich merchant, who over the course of the story wastes all his money on gambling and prostitution, eventually resulting in his being sent to prison and later to a home for the mentally ill. It is not a moral commentary as originally intended by Hogarth, but a metaphorical description of today’s society. This lifestyle offers no satisfaction for the protagonist and he finally ends up in a psychiatric hospital, surrounded by histrionic monkey figurines in baroque costumes: humans behave like monkeys and monkeys behave like humans.

Paul Brainard’s works in Les Fleurs du Mal are made up of portraits of friends, family and people from his life, imagery from advertising, the internet, and American puritanical religious imagery. A common thread throughout the work is a dark and macabre sensibility that stems from existentialist and absurdist philosophy. Formally, the drawings are in a constant state of flux and the final image arrived at is one of many possible solutions.

The largest work in the show I sleep under a sky of extinguished stars, was inspired by Robert Kolker’s book “Lost Girls,” the story of the lives of the prostitutes who were all murdered by the “Long Island Serial Killer” and whose bodies were discovered in December 2010. This artwork is a posthumous portrait of Jessica Taylor, a prostitute who was murdered and whose remains were discovered in the spring of 2011. The case remains unsolved.

 

violent dreams

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MADNESS

Matt Rota - Madness

Curated by Lori Field

October 10th, 2014 – November 2nd, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, October 10th, 7-9pm

 

Artists include: Allison Sommers, Ben Coover, Chris Crites, Chris Hipkiss, Dawn Black, Hanna von Goeler, Hiroshi Kumagai, John O’Reilly, Judith Supine, Judy Rifka / Daniel Dibble, Kymia Nawabi, Lori Field, Matt Rota, Sharmistha Kar, Sibylle Peretti, Sokol Andrew, Stephen J M Palmer, Winston Chmielinski, Zoë Field

The Lodge Gallery is pleased to present Madness, a group exhibition curated by visual artist Lori Field. Comprised of almost two dozen works, the show brings together an exceptional collection of artists who question the nature of madness and its place in contemporary culture.

Matt Rota - Madness

While the title Madness is subject to a wide spectrum of subjective interpretations, the exhibition broadly plays on themes of melancholia and definitions of sanity, embracing socially controversial behavior and individual journeys through darkness and confusion. Is madness a chemical imbalance or is it a series of culturally adopted behaviors? What exactly is it that drives individuals and communities to the breaking point of madness? Who is responsible when a lapse in sanity occurs and is a little madness always a bad thing? If it is to be believed that the fine lines between genius and madness are drawn within cultural context then one man’s mad fundamentalist heretic is another mans holy martyr, one woman’s delirium tremens is a another woman’s shamanistic vision. As it turns out, it’s not as easy as it seems to define madness even within the broad interpretations of our shared colloquial vernacular.

From Dawn Black’s portraits of beauty queens, gun nuts, and terrorists, to Hanna von Goeler’s stripped down and ghost-like dollar bill paintings, Chris Hipkiss’s dystopian landscape drawing, and Judy Rifka’s flickering staccato insects, the visual images on view in Madness pick up where definable language fails us.

 

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Kent Henricksen

The Lesson, 2014, 16 x 20, Silkscreen and embroidery thread on canvas

Disharmony in Blue and Gold

September 5th, 2014 – October 5th, 2014
Opening Reception, Friday, September 5th, 7pm-9pm

The Lesson, 2014, 16 x 20, Silkscreen and embroidery thread on canvasThe Lesson, 2014, 16 x 20, Silkscreen and embroidery thread on canvas

[link to Press Release]

The sky is falling- or so it would appear in Kent Henricksen’s upcoming exhibition, Disharmony in Blue and Gold, at The Lodge Gallery.

Known for creating fraught environments that are both inviting and menacing, Henricksen’s work is the combination of opposing forces- the past and present, horror and absurdity, the comic and the tragic, high and low culture. The exhibition presents an immersive installation within midnight blue gallery walls glimmering with thousands of hand stenciled gold dots reminiscent of a mythic celestial heaven. Dark blue canvases hang directly on the stenciled walls where images of discord prevail. Throughout the gallery stoneware face jugs are ominously impaled upon golden stakes that seemingly thrust upwards from the floor.

Race and gender, power and conflict, these are just some of the transcultural archetypes Henricksen explores by manipulating images that are sourced from biblical illustrations, newspapers, old master prints and esoteric Hindu symbolism of the Trimurti (the creator, the preserver and the destroyer).  The thread and ink of his canvases are imbued with a complex ambiguity that pushes the images beyond any definitive cultural context. Juxtaposing illustrations of historical events with familiar contemporary images, Henricksen’s work invites you to step into a shamanistic world of non-linear narrative and mythic time. Each canvas is a silkscreened fable in gold ink and meticulously hand embroidered thread.

Henricksen explains, “Combining eastern ideas with western images- the large canvases are symbolic labyrinths of the cosmos.  The western images loosely represent the Hindu Trimurti- with a creator, a destroyer and a maintainer.  They are representations of a troubled world with disturbing human behavior- destroying the unknown, protecting or creating the familiar, and maintaining the balance of disturbance”

Also, included in the show is a new body of work based on sacred geometric patterns. Here Henricksen evokes the Sri Yantra in gold thread. Formed by nine interlocking triangles that surround and radiate out from the central (bindu) point and balanced against the familiar blue and gold celestial backdrop, we are presented with the symbolic womb of creation. It is the symbol of the universe as a whole and the reconciliation of the divine masculine and feminine principles, a process and philosophy not at all unfamiliar to western culture through illustrations of the chemical wedding in European spiritual alchemy.

Kent Henricksen is an American artist based in New York whose work explores race, violence and identity through sculpture, painting, drawing, and installation. Henricksen came to prominence in 2005 for his work in the MoMA PS1 Greater New York Show. His work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., The Fogg Museum at Harvard, and the Collezione Maramotti. Henricksen has shown internationally including Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, John Connelly Presents, New York, hiromiyoshii, Tokyo, Arario, Seoul, and Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin. Solo museum shows include Bass Museum Miami and the Contemporary Gallery of the Nassau County Museum of Art, New York.

 

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Tara de la Garza

Tara De La Garza Embracing Failure

Embracing Failure

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 28, 6pm – 9pm

Tara De La Garza Embracing Failure

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. -James Joyce

Tara de la Garza is Embracing Failure, throwing artwork to the flames, whiting out rejected proposals, videoing children attempting to wink, massaging a dead chicken, paying homage to a building imploding and street art painted over and erased. By consciously placing herself in a position of making mistakes the artist hopes for an opportunity to grow her practice in this unconventional manner.  By delving into destruction, De La Garza attempts to shake the ‘anaesthetization of information’ that was lamented by French theorist Jean Baudrillard.  By whiting out, pairing back and simplifying signifiers, she arrests the bombardment of signs that dissolve meaning.

This first solo show in New York is the culmination of two years work, created in her adopted city of San Francisco but thematically very much with its heart in New York. A burning painting relates to an event in 2012 where New York artists met in the Philadelphia countryside to destroy they’re past failures. Two ‘projection paintings’, an inter-play of film and painting designed to challenge and transcend the boundaries of the canvas and surface, meld to create new narratives related to destruction and rebirth.

Another series of works include the “Erased” paintings which both reference the tagging cover ups that the artist was noticing in San Francisco but more pointedly the wholesale erasure of the work on the 5 Pointz building in Long Island City, an icon of street art. Transcribed onto the erased surface are a direct translation of images from that site.  Aesthetically influenced by Belgian artist Luc Tuyman’s muted palette, the works are built up in layers or glazes much like a renaissance painting. These detailed works become the antithesis of what they document.

Also in this exhibition will be a quirky, single-channel piece entitled Chicken Massage.  In this work, the hands of the artist can be seen vigorously massaging a truncated chicken carcass (one readily purchased from the supermarket for dinner time consumption) in a manner not unlike the treatment of live human flesh at a ‘day spa’ setting.  Originally exhibited at Chashama’s alternative, store front space in Harlem the site-specific work was created as a response to the live chicken store next door.  Aired on Comedy Central this piece has received more than 12,000 hits on YouTube.

De La Garza’s work is idiosyncratic, unified not by medium or subject matter, but instead by something much less tangible – curiosity.  As can be seen through the diverse array of artworks in this exhibition, each piece is but a portal through which a viewer may encounter an alternative perspective.  In this sense, nothing here is random or a mistake, but an opportunity to explore the world in a less conventional manner.

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Sirikul Pattachote

The Second Life of Flowers

July 17 – August 10, 2014

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 17, 7pm to 9pm

little amadeus sirikul pattachote

Little Amadeus, 2013 – watercolor and pencil on paper

[link to Press Release]

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Flowers have two lives.  The first is all natural. From the seed to the stem into blooming petals, all it takes is the right dirt, a little rain and some sunshine to make the magic happen. Once the magic happens, most flowers push out their colors and shake their anther until season’s end when petals begin to wilt and fertility organs cease to function. Shortly thereafter the flower dies. But, some flowers are fated to a different end and are plucked or cut down in their prime to live a second life with a second purpose.

Humans have been gathering bouquets and arranging cut flowers for as far back as history records. Beyond culture and time we use the exchange of flowers to express our most intimate and passionate experiences. From birth to love and death we comfort and celebrate ourselves with the arrangements of various botanicals. Each exchange loaded with a memory or a sentiment that is forever bound to a simple flower that carries the symbol.  It’s no wonder then that we regard the flowers that we associate with our intimacies and our passions to be as precious to us as our memories.

Alas, as our own lives run their course and expire, so too does the second life of a flower. The brittle decomposition of a flower at the end of its purpose is a slow and lonely, bittersweet journey. We can use words like this to describe the action because it is so familiar to our own human experience. Just as the flower serves its purpose we serve ours, we both flourish in the sunshine and grow uniquely beautiful before we leave our legacy and drop our petals along the path to becoming a memory.

This summer The Lodge Gallery is proud to present The Second Life of Flowers, a collection of recent paintings by Sirikul Pattachote, on view July 17th through August 10th, 2014.

Sirikul Pattachote  is a Thailand-born New York artist and earned her BFA from Silipakorn University of Art and Design (Bangkok). Her artwork is inspired by nature, where she draws upon memories and the experiences of her surroundings in everyday life. The ephemeral quality of life and matter is a central theme in her work. Through her paintings, she attempts to record and preserve certain memories and impressions that highlight the potential good that lies in everyone and everything. Sirikul has exhibited extensively in Southeast Asia and New York.

 

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MATING SEASON

June 5, 2014 – July 5, 2014

Opening Reception: Thursday June 5, 7pm-9pm

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George Boorujy, “Passenger 3,” 2013, ink on paper, 38″ x 50″

[link to Press Release]

This Summer The Lodge Gallery celebrates the season of fertility with “Mating Season,” an exhibition of work inspired both by natural history and everyday life. 

Artists include: Lina Puerta, Juan Fontanive, George Boorujy, Maxi Cohen, Leif Solem, Monique Mantell, Brian Adam Douglas, Anita Cruz-Eberhard, Sirikul Pattachote, Sarah Bereza, Liza BéarRyan McLennanHerb Smith, Frank Webster and Tiffany Bozic.

Curated by Keith Schweitzer & Jason Patrick Voegele.

According to our best collective fossil evidence, something astonishing happened during the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous period that transformed life as we know it. About one hundred and fifty to one hundred and thirty million years ago the first flower bloomed and the first birds took flight. The process by which the multitudes of various bird species and flowering plants would come to populate every inhabitable region of the earth is epically slow. We know that almost immediately after the first flower blossomed, the birds of that time, along with other small animals and insects, became enamored with the sweet smells and free lunch. They quickly became the beneficiaries of a symbiotic relationship that continues to this day. This relationship can be roughly defined as a food for sex program, wherein the flowering plant offers the bird a tasty reward in exchange for carrying out the process of transporting reproductive pollen to fertilize plants of the same fruit on the other side of the garden. As in modern times, competition for services drove adaptation and diversification of the species. By the time humans arrived on the scene, flowering plants had flourished to become the dominant vegetation of most terrestrial ecosystems and subspecies of geographically specialized birds had unfolded into countless assortments.

As we make our way through the early stages of the twenty-first century more than half of the world’s human population has come to inhabit a landscape of ever expanding urban sprawl.  As mankind increasingly alters the global landscape, new adaptive shifts have begun to take place, once again forcing the transformation and evolution of indigenous species. Successful city birds often exhibit the most spectacular displays of natural selection with a unique behavioral plasticity. With all the typical urban feasts and hazards to contend with, city birds have developed a fearless equilibrium with their human counterparts. For example, feral pigeons, originally bred from the wild rock dove, find the ledges of buildings to be a suitable substitute for sea cliffs and are abundant in towns and cities throughout much of the modern world.

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Frank Webster : 
MARGINS

Hotel and Tree in Winter 2013 acrylic on canvas 30" x 40"

May 15th, 2014 – June 1st, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, May 16th, 7-9pm

Hotel and Tree in Winter 2013 acrylic on canvas 30" x 40"

Hotel and Tree in Winter, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 30″ x 40″

[link to Press Release]

The Lodge Gallery proudly presents “Margins,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Frank Webster. Webster’s paintings depict post-industrial landscapes drawing on the aesthetic traditions of minimalism and realism. Summoning a sense of apocalyptic abandonedness, Webster’s compositions pair high-rise buildings with similarly scaled trees, liken barbed-wire fences and electrical wires to the creeping vines that entwine them, and present an urban ecosystem curiously devoid of inhabitants.

Grounded in reality, the paintings abstract the ordinary: the everyday world is made transcendent and strange, imbued with an ethereal and melancholy beauty. The sharp juxtaposition of built environments and romanticism are evocative of the moment in which we find ourselves presently. His work contemplates the paradox of this co-existence.

Webster’s conveyance of physical and psychological isolation conjures the despair of Hopper’s solitary figures in spare settings, an impression reinforced by Webster’s palette of subdued grays, blues and yellows. The austere depiction of architecture echoes the deadpan cool of Ed Ruscha’s paintings of buildings, minus the ironic humor.” – Amanda Church, Art in America

Frank Webster is a painter who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Webster received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Webster is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pollock Krasner and the Golden Foundation Individual Artist Award. He has shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York at Blackston Gallery, Storefront Bushwick, Sara Meltzer Gallery and White Columns, among others. He has been awarded residencies at The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, PS 122, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Ucross Foundation, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Ragdale Foundation and The MacDowell Colony.

 

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NO CITY IS AN ISLAND

John Ahearn, Shelter Kid

April 10th, 2014 – May 11th, 2014

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 10th. 7-9pm

John Ahearn, Shelter Kid

 

non-curated by Keith Schweitzer & Jason Patrick Voegele with the following artists:
John Ahearn, Charlie Ahearn, Jody Culkin, Jane Dickson, Stefan Eins, Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Bobby G, Mike Glier, Becky Howland, Lisa Kahane, Christof Kohlhofer, Justen Ladda, Joe Lewis, Ann Messner, Richard Miller, Tom Otterness, Cara Perlman, Judy Rifka, Walter Robinson, Christy Rupp, Teri Slotkin, Kiki Smith, Seton Smith

On Dec 31st, 1979, a group of artists in downtown Manhattan mounted a now historic exhibition, “The Real Estate Show,” in response to grim economic conditions facing tenants in New York. It was a confrontational and illegal exhibition, held without permission in a vacant city-owned building, with aggressive political messages that ignited controversy and galvanized city officials, news media and artists alike.

This group, Collaborative Projects Inc (Colab), focused on theme-centered exhibitions with a spirit of openness, experimentation, and minimal curatorial interference. Within this context, “No City is an Island” asked former members of Colab to respond to the exhibition’s title as a theme around which to contribute work. Dialogues were rekindled and themes were revisited or reinterpreted. As each artist has evolved over time, so has the city itself. With a range of works transversing 35 years, “No City is an Island” revisits the zeitgeist of a New York City long bygone, compares and contrasts the artists and urban realities of then with now, and honors one of the most influential art organizations in New York City’s history.

The exhibition is part of a multi-venue celebration of Colab and revisitation of “The Real Estate Show” with “The Real Estate Show, Was Then: 1980” at James Fuentes Gallery (April 4 – 27), “RESx” at ABC No Rio (April 9 – May 8), “No City Is An Island” at The Lodge Gallery (April 10 – May 11), and “The Real Estate Show, What Next: 2014” at Cuchifritos Gallery (April 19 – May 18). It is also a component of next month’s inaugural Lower East Side History Month, which will now be observed each May with over 60 Lower East Side organizations currently participating.

 

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Doug Young : “Trace Evidence”

Doug Young - Mission Control

February 28th, 2014 – March 22nd, 2014

Opening Reception: Friday, February 28th, 7-9pm

Doug Young, Mission Control, reverse painting on glass, automotive paint, 49" x 49"

[link to Press Release]

The Lodge Gallery proudly presents Trace Evidence, a solo exhibition of paintings by Doug Young.

Young’s reverse paintings, rendered on the underside of thick glass with automotive paints, are investigations of places and objects that are familiar to us yet feel foreign. The subjects in many of Young’s paintings are iconic rooms and objects associated with bustling activity. The spaces are presented devoid of people and out of context; the empty set of television’s The Price is Right, NASA’s Control Room, and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider are captured in rare moments of inactivity. We are left with an opportunity to examine these rooms and objects closely, to inspect the complex details offered within them, and through this process garner a greater understanding of their purpose and the people, out of frame, who put them to use.

Young also depicts objects of historical or personal significance that are captivating in their graphic qualities, starkly and consciously superficial, attractive yet repelling. Abraham Lincoln’s soiled death pillow is presented alongside portraits of a stained bathtub, an open filthy refrigerator, and a previously frozen TV dinner.

The imagery is evocative of childhood wonder and curiosity, yet haunting and resonant of the out-of-body. Ensconced in monumental, graphite-finished wooden frames, each painting boldly invites our attention. Collectively, all of the works presented in Trace Evidence arouse our sense of mystery and tempt us to conduct our own thorough investigative analysis of the artist’s intention.

Doug Young has exhibited widely in New York and Chicago. He holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995) and an MFA from Pratt Institute (1997). These images mark a departure for Young, for he has worked primarily as a sculptor during the last decade. But in line with his penchant for Americana, his reverse paintings on glass evoke time-honored traditions in the folk arts and old Hollywood. In 2001 he was awarded by the Guinness Book World Records for the longest nonstop banjo performance in history—24 hours total.

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A Human Extension

Reception: Thursday February 6th, 7-9pm

Exhibition: February 6th – February 16th, 2014

curated by Amy Berger 

Artists Include: Isaac Arvold, Erik Benson, Julie Elizabeth Brady, Paul Brainard, Monica Cook, Melissa Cooke, Peter Drake, MaDora Frey, Jane LaFarge Hamill, Aaron Johnson, Christian Johnson, Michael Kagan, Karl LaRocca, Francesco Longenecker, Daniel Maidman, Lindsay Mound, Reuben Negron, Javier Piñon, Colette Robbins, Jean-Pierre Roy, Michael Schall, Kristen Schiele, Andrew Smenos, Melanie Vote, Frank Webster, Eric White, Barnaby Whitfield, Mike Womack

Inspired by the Designs of Jacqueline Popovic / Jankele

The Lodge Gallery presents an exhibition of new work exploring the relationship between fine art and fashion through a celebration of the accessory. Inspired by the organic and geological accessory designs of Jacqueline Popovic, A Human Extension features twenty-eight artists who have adapted the direct designs, production materials or visual spirit of Popovic’s celebrated Jankele collection into a body of work that investigates the challenging and curious marriage of fashion and art at the dawn of the 21st century.

A Human Extension is an attempt to re-conceptualize the fashion accessory as both sculptural and utilitarian. It is a chance to revisit ideas and philosophies that have long been explored by artists such as Vanessa Beecroft. Alexander McQueen, and Nick Cave who investigated the art/fashion relationship in unique and alternative contexts. Inspired by these ideas and in the context of Jankele’s designs, the artists of A Human Extension are pioneering influential new ideas about the role of fashion in contemporary visual culture.

Artist Julie Elizabeth Brady explains “Fashion is always on my mind when I am coming up with an idea for a painting, but first let me define what ‘fashion’ means to me. Fashion often implies something that is “of the moment” and stylish, but the fashion that captures my attention are pieces that are objects of beauty, new and old, that start a conversation.”

Effectively, all of the artists featured in A Human Extension are developing physical structures that are capable of extending the inner self beyond the confines of the material body. An inspired concept that has driven the philosophy of Jankele’s designs and the central theme around which she has become a muse to this group of artists.

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Levan Mindiashvili : BORDERLINES

BORDERLINES, Levan Mindiashvili

January 16th, 2014 – February 4th, 2014

Opening Reception: Friday, January 17th, 7-9pm 

BORDERLINES, Levan Mindiashvili

[link to Press Release]

 

The Lodge Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in the United States of works by Levan Mindiashvili.

Levan Mindiashvili has been making work about urban landscapes that inform our sense of identity and the intimate connections we make with the spaces we inhabit since 2012. In 2003 he graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (Republic of Georgia) and the same year started intensively exhibiting his works in Europe. From 2008 – 2012 he lived and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he received his MFA from the National University of Art of Buenos Aires

Mindiashvili’s new series, entitled Borderlines, is a study of his reflections on cities as both public and private meeting points. Originally conceived in Buenos Aires, this recent body of work explores the artist’s personal and collective experiences with the architecture and public structures of New York, where he is currently based. It is through his renderings of reflections amongst monumental objects, combined with a uniquely subjective reinterpretation of urban stimulation/inundation, that he reveals his complex and evolving personal relationship with the city.

Borderlines is an investigation into the sediment of his global experience, the invisible realities that have been burned into his subconscious country by country, city by city, block by block. “Generally, architecture most clearly defines and reveals the changes in our contemporary world, in our approaches and common visions,” says Mindiashvili.

His new work depicts distorted, almost abstract fragments of old architecture reflected on new, transparent surfaces or seen through them. “I perceive them as maps of consciousness of the contemporary world with its migrations, gentrification, identity and social issues,” the artist explains, “I want to trigger a dialogue about recent history.” The idea that a personal history is valuable and that the reflected perception of each individual dictates the overall substance and spirit of the larger urban landscape is deeply rooted in his intentions.