Category: Main

Voids and Invocations

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

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. 

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.

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

 

Ulrike Theusner & Paul Brainard

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

[link to Press Release]

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Embracing Failure

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

“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.

The Second Life of Flowers

July 17 – August 10, 2014

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

Little Amadeus, 2013 – watercolor and pencil on paper

[link to Press Release]

[view Available Works]

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.

June 5, 2014 – July 5, 2014

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

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 Béar, Ryan McLennan, Herb 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.