EVERYTHING MUST GOMartin WongDec. 10, 2009-Jan. 31, 2010PPOW Gallery, NYC

http://www.ppowgallery.com/exhibition.php?id=51

Martin Wong
Everything Must Go

Curated by Adam Putnam

Full color catalogue available

December 10, 2009– January 30, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 10, 6-8pm


P•P•O•W is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Martin Wong, curated by Adam Putnam. Martin Wong, who died in 1999 due to an AIDS related illness, was born in 1946 in Portland, Oregon and moved to New York City in 1978. He received a degree in ceramics, but decided to become a painter when he was thirty years old. He first started exhibiting at the Semaphore Gallery in New York. Martin Wong's last exhibition at P•P•O•W was in 2000.

For most of his time in NYC, Martin Wong stayed nestled in the Lower East Side, enmeshed in the fabric of his neighborhood and the people around him. His work has traditionally been described as a document of that time in the 1980's and 1990's, capturing a moment in the history of the city marked by vacant lots, graffiti and a burgeoning club culture.

This exhibition presents an intuitive ramble through the estate left by this unique and visionary artist. It offers a glimpse into a private world populated by crumbling tenements, vacant lots, prisoners (with those burning eyes), closed gates (and open legs), downtown poets, hustlers, and if we are lucky, perhaps an off-duty Fireman.

Martin Wong wanders through an urban landscape and refashions it into something new. His paintings take us inward, through a hidden, alternative landscape of longing and deeply felt subjectivity. Following this logic of desire, a crumbled brick tenement can become laced with the erotic or a painting of a single cactus can carry all the restrained passion of an unmet gaze from a sexy stranger.

Also on view are several rarely seen photo collages on loan from The Fales Library archives as well as drawings and sketches. These photos are remarkable for the fact that they not only exist as source material for some of the larger paintings but also as a rare document of the long walks the artist would take in and around the Lower East Side.

The vacant lots have long since been filled in, but don't let the glass facades fool you. There is always the torn seam or frayed edge... you just need to know where to look.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full color illustrated catalog with an essay by Carlo McCormick.

On January 26th there will be a panel discussion tentatively based upon the themes of secret languages in the work of Martin Wong. The event will be hosted by the NYU Steinhardt School of Art and Arts Professions.

Adam Putnam is an artist living and working in NYC. His work has been exhibited at P.S.1, Art Statements Basel, the 2008 Whitney Biennial and most recently, at Taxter and Spengemann Gallery. In 2006 Adam Putnam, with artist Shannon Ebner, curated the show Blow Both of Us at Participant Inc.

Where is Home? Chinese Artists and Community — Artists Panel Talk moderated by Lily Wei Saturday, Dec. 12th at MOCA, NYC

Where is Home? Chinese Artists and Community

Location: MOCA 215 Center St. NYC

Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009
Time: 3:00pm-4:30pm

MOCA presents curator, essayist and art critic Lily Wei in conversation with the artists of "Here and Now: Chinese Artists in New York, Chapter II: Crossing Boundaries" about home, community and the artistic process.

Lily Wei, moderator

Artists:
Long-Bin Chen
Ming Fay
Shiyi Sheng
Zhang Hongtu


Moderator Bio
Lilly Wei is a New York-based independent curator, essayist and critic who contributes to many publications in the United States and abroad. She has written regularly for Art in America since 1982 and is a contributing editor at ARTnews.

New Website for INDAARInternational Network for Diasporic Asian Art Research

http://indaar.asianaustralianstudies.org/

Art by artists of Asian descent in countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States is a significant cultural production, both in historical and contemporary terms. INDAAR offers a context to internationalise research on diasporic Asian art in these countries and others.

AIMS:

INDAAR is an international network for researchers interested in comparative and transnational studies of diasporic Asian art.

The network facilitates opportunities for initiating transnational dialogues and generating collaborative research projects.

ABOUT:
INDAAR was initiated by the founding convenor Dean Chan and launched in 2009.

The founding INDAAR Executive comprises Dean Chan, Margo Machida, Alexandra Chang and Jacqueline Lo.

This network is a special project of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN) and established in association with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project entitled “Being Asian in Australia and the United States”.

INDAAR is also supported by the School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University, Australia.

INDIGO: New works by Shelly Jyoti and Laura KinaBaroda, New Delhi, Mumbai — India

INDIGO: New works by Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina

Baroda, New Delhi, Mumbai – India

“Not a chest of indigo reached England without being stained with human blood”, an Englishman in the Bengal Civil Service is said to have commented. In the 19th century, Bengal was the world’s biggest producer of indigo but today, the deep blue color of indigo is synthetically created in a lab and is associated, in the West, with blue jeans more than its torrid colonial past. But indigo holds a sustained presence in the post-colonial identity of India.

Employing fair trade embroidery artisans from women’s collectives in India and executing their works in indigo blue, Indian artist SHELLY JYOTI and US artist LAURA KINA’S new works draw upon India’s history, narratives of immigration and transnational economic interchanges.

Shelly Jyoti’s Indigo Narratives utilize traditional embroidery, embellishments, and azrak resist dye techniques along with heritage symbols belonging to traveling ethnic communities who settled in coastal Gujarat while Laura Kina’s Devon Avenue Sampler series focuses on a contemporary Desi/Jewish community in Chicago, IL.


Shelly Jyoti works in the exhibition and bio:
http://www.shellyjyoti.com/indigo_works_in_exhibition.htm
http://www.shellyjyoti.com/about_us_biography.htm

Laura Kina works in the exhibition and bio:
http://www.laurakina.com/newwork.html
http://www.laurakina.com/statement.html

Catalogue Essays:
Murtaza Vali - The Dye That Binds : Indigo Iconographies -- http://www.shellyjyoti.com/indigo_murtaza_vali.htm
JohnyML - Indigo Inscriptions -- http://www.shellyjyoti.com/indigo_inscriptions_johnyml.htm
Michelle Yee - Moving Materials : Reclaiming Histories Of Migration -- http://www.shellyjyoti.com/indigo_michelle_yee.htm




Indigo: New Works By Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina
Preview Red Earth Gallery Baroda, Gujarat
December 15-16, 2009
Reception: December 15, 2009 5:30-8:00 pm, artists will be present
Red Earth Art Galleries Pvt. Ltd.
ABS Towers, Old Padra Road Vadodara, India 390007
Tel: 91 265 3201526
http://www.redearthgalleries.com/

Indigo: New Works By Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina
India Habitat Centre New Delhi
December 22-28, 2009
Opening Reception: December 23, 2009, 5:30-9:00 pm, artists will be present
Open Palm Court Gallery
India Habitat Centre Lodhi Road
New Delhi, India 110003
http://www.indiahabitat.org/

Indigo: New Works By Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina
Nehru Art Centre
January 12-18, 2010
Opening Reception: 12 January, 5:30-8:00 pm, Shelly Jyoti will be present
Dr. Annie Besant Road Worli, Mumbai, India 400018
Tel: 91 22 2496 4676-80
Fax: 91 22 2497 3827
http://www.nehru-centre.org/artgallery.html

Forum for Contemporary Theory
Laura Kina Artist Lecture - “Diaspora on Devon Ave: Stitching South Asian/Jewish Intersections”
Shelly Jyoti Artist Lecture - “The Politics of Indigo: Revisting India’s Torrid Colonial past”
December 31, 2009 4:00 pm
Centre for Contemporary Theory and General Semantics
C-304 Siddhi Vinayak Complex
Framji Road, Baroda-390 007
Gujarat, India
Tel (0265) 2338067
http://fctworld.org

The New York Foundation for the Arts Annual Benefit Honoring Yun-Fei Ji & Anita Durst

SAVE THE DATE

February 25, 2010
6:30 - 9:00 pm

The New York Foundation for the Arts

Annual Benefit

Honoring

Yun-Fei Ji

1999 NYFA Fellow in Printmaking

&

Anita Durst

Artistic Director, chashama

The James Cohan Gallery
533 West 26th Street

Between 10th and 11th Avenues

Kenji Hirata and Ryan McLennanat Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC

Image: Kenji Hirata Gesture Without Motion Acrylic on canvas 2009

	Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC
	October 17 - November 14 2009
	548 W 28th Street 3rd Floor

Description

Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present 'The Way Out is the Way In', an exhibition of new paintings by the New York-based Japanese artist Kenji Hirata & 'The Strain of Inheritance', an exhibition of new mixed-media works on paper by the Richmond, Virginia-based artist Ryan McLennan.


Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present The Way Out is the Way In, an exhibition of new paintings by the New York-based Japanese artist Kenji Hirata. This is Hirata’s first solo show with the gallery.

Inspired by billboards, Southeast Asian signage, and the pop-cultural legacies of Futurism and Superflat, Kenji Hirata’s unique form of hard-edged abstraction celebrates the dynamic interplay of color and form. These small-to-medium-sized, acrylic-on-canvas works explode with the artist’s vocabulary of spaceship forms, overlapping organic lozenges, and stair-step effects, all activated by Hirata’s signature color-wheel gradations of complimentary hues. Eschewing overt statements, Hirata engages in a pure, personalized form of visual play. In his exuberant experimentation with bright color, form, and the suggestion of action, the artist enacts a childlike fantasy of free movement between states of being and imagination.

In Gesture Without Motion, the central image of whirling star shapes is made dense and frenetic with a shower of tiny boomerang forms in white and a stroboscopic staccato of overlaid, repeating edges in value-graded hues. The Way Out is the Way In contains Hirata’s zippy, elegant spaceship forms that suggest a hybrid of Verne’s Nautilus and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Here, the central image is even more abstract and diffuse, hovering in lovely contrast to the surrounding, shimmering “cloud” gradations of white and gray.

Kenji Hirata is a member of the Barnstormers collective, a group of New York/Tokyo-based artists who create large-scale collaborative paintings, films, and performances. The group formed in 1999 after a pilgrimage to the rural town of Cameron, North Carolina, where they painted barns, tractor-trailers, shacks, and farm equipment, and return often to paint new murals. A work by Hirata is featured as the cover of the book Envisioning Diaspora (Timezone 8, 2009), which discusses the post- ’90s wave of New York-based, Asian-American art collectives, including the Barnstormers.

Born in 1968 in Nagasaki, Japan, Kenji Hirata currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Solo exhibitions of his work include: Crystallized, Contemporary Art International, Hamburg, Germany (2006); Token 0.02, Arcus Projects, Tsukuba, Japan (2005); and Indivisible x 4, Reed Space, New York, NY (2005).. Selected group exhibitions include: SITEings, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, North Carolina (2007); Ten, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (2005); Beautiful Losers, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (2004); Dream So Much 02, Asian American Arts Centre, New York (2003); and No Condition is Permanent, Smack Melon, Brooklyn (2001).


Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present The Strain of Inheritance, an exhibition of new mixed-media works on paper by the Richmond, Virginia-based artist Ryan McLennan. This is McLennan’s first solo show with the gallery.

McLennan employs acrylic and graphite in this suite of medium-to-large paintings, each one contributing to an austere allegory on the state of the environment. In this jaundiced view of natural “inheritance,” the environment is reduced to sparse, worn-out remnants – once-majestic trees are gnarled trunks, overtaken by vestiges of bear-shaped topiary. Animal skulls are lashed to bare branches with these spindly vines, harbingers of doom for the moose and elk that wander through the haunted tableaux.

The fact that we so readily comprehend these intensely allegorical images is evidence of how deeply we fear and identify with the plight of the environment. Like the work of Walton Ford, The Strain of Inheritance evinces the competing interests surrounding the use and conservation of natural resources. Though McLennan shares Ford’s level of intricacy and beauty, his work contains a broader range of attitudes and critiques.

Work Ethic, for example, depicts several moose lashed by topiary vines to a tree trunk, circling aimlessly. The single moose of The Storyteller, with one leg missing and an antler of scavenged bones, gazes stoically at the viewer. Similarly, the ox of The Widower appears resigned to the topiary vines creeping down its back, the telltale skull of a dead animal nearby. (The artist has cited portrait photography masters Edward Curtis and Seydou Keita as poignant influences.)

Almost theatrical in their presentation, these images resemble stage settings or photo shoots, as though the animals are playing for sympathy. This gallows humor diffuses the sanctimony of today’s conservation rhetoric. Yet beyond references to the environment, McLennan suggests that the roles and work of society are built on little more than narratives of class, myth, and taboo, which turns out to be enough.

Born in 1980, Ryan McLennan received a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University. Solo exhibitions of his work include: Lottery, Walker Contemporary, Boston (2009); From Fur to Bone, Kinsey/Desforges Gallery, Los Angeles (2008); and New Works, ADA Gallery, Richmond (2007). Selected group exhibitions include: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 31 Grand, New York (2008); Anonymous III, Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, DC (2007); and Repressed-Works on Paper, Gallery 5, Richmond, VA (2006). He is a recipient of the 2008-09 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and was featured in the 2008 Mid-Atlantic issue of New American Paintings.

Paper and Process 2Art Projects International, NYC

Press release:
Paper and Process 2
November 6 - December 19, 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, November 6, 2009 6-8pm
Art Projects International, 429 Greenwich Street, Suite 5B, New York, NY 10013 [directions <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/info/> ]

Paper and Process 2 is API’s second exhibition exploring artists’ widely varied uses of paper as medium. Historically storied, paper also sets itself apart as one of the most vital and flexible mediums used in contemporary art. The artists of “Paper and Process 2” have each spent significant portions of their careers exploring paper’s potential and include Jean Shin, Tchah-Sup Kim, Jian-Jun Zhang, In-Hyung Kim, Richard Tsao, and IL Lee.

Jean Shin uses digital embroidery on paper to create the triptych “Celadon Threads.” The two side panels of this work capture in thread patterned fragments of celadon pottery. Similarly, the central panel shows whole in stitched outline pottery shapes of the type from which Shin collected broken pieces to create her mosaic wall work “Celadon Remnants,” a public commission by the New York MTA Arts for Transit.

Tchah-Sup Kim works with crisscrossing fine lines in his etching “Between Infinities” to create an abstract field of subtle variation. This elongated horizontal field, or band, reveals organic looking irregular forms at the far left and right of the band, like fine grained woodwork becoming unexpectedly unfinished and gnarled at edge, or, perhaps, like meticulously cultivated lands hemmed in by rugged coasts. Kim’s approach to abstraction comes out of works like “Triangle” of the same period--a highly detailed etching of rocks in a river bed--which explores the potential of mark making on paper through realism. The accurately depicted river rocks are a seamless construction created, as is the abstraction of “Between Infinities,” by contrasting bold abstraction with the most ephemeral of delicate lines and allowing the unmarked paper to act as the conveyance of light.

Jian-Jun Zhang’s photographs’ of his “Vestiges of a Process” series acknowledge their paper support--“rough” paper is used to hold the image and draw attention to itself. Further, the images in this series of Shanghai Shi-Ku-Men architecture, a blending of European and Chinese styles from the 20’s and 30’s, are stamped with official looking red markings that read “tear down.” Once existing in consort with real buildings marked for destruction, now--that the buildings are gone--Zhang’s art works are the most real thing left even as they announce themselves as only paper. It is this paper’s interplay with the real that points to the fluidity between idea, thing, document and memory.

In-Hyung Kim uses the textures of paint and graphite to give life to the texture of paper’s surface. Her expressionistic rendering of natural forms and light-touch give a freshness to her work that suggests each piece of paper has just been marked moments before the arrival of the viewer’s gaze. In these powerful, small format works, under ten inches square, a bird or plant may be featured or as in “Untitled 1707” the confident brushwork and bold marking bring fundamental form into action.

Richard Tsao saturates paper with purples, reds and other rich hues in a multistep monotype process. Found items from nature, such as leaves, provide a starting point to create bold silhouettes or barely discernible vegetal forms. Captured on paper, in dramatic inter-plays of contrasting values and bold color, pigment seems yet in dynamic motion.

IL Lee presents white forms in a field of blue ballpoint lines. The white ground of the paper and the inked surface are distinct yet of equal weight. Through labor the ink becomes the paper and a modulated yet cohesive surface tension is created. Further, in the work “SW-096,” Lee uses tape to block out white forms and disrupt the viewer’s appreciation of his craft. The flowing lines of his pen become contrasted with the abrupt white edge created by the removed tape. Lee wants to announce the artifice in his process. The taped line creates a rupture in his masterly technique to snap the viewer awake, to remove seduction, to have the viewer consider anew ink, paper, light, form.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Jean Shin <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/Jean_Shin> was born in Seoul, Korea. She lives and works in New York. Recent solo museum exhibitions include: Jean Shin: Common Threads, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2009); Jean Shin: TEXTile, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2006); and Projects 81: Jean Shin, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004). Select group exhibitions: Second Lives, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2009); RED HOT, Museum of Fine Art, Houston (2007); One Way or Another, Asia Society Museum, New York (2006); Make it Now: New Sculpture in New York, Sculpture Center, New York (2005); Counter Culture, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2004); and Open House, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2004). Selected collections: Museum of Modern Art, NY; Chase Bank, NY; Citicorp, NY; New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; Asia Society and Museum, NY; and Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA.

Tchah-Sup Kim <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/Tchah-Sup_Kim> was born in Yamaguchi, Japan. He lives and works in New York and Korea. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: the Lee In-Sung Award Exhibition, Mesena Hall, Daegu, Korea (2009); Lee Jung-sup Artist Award Exhibition, Chosun Daily Newspaper Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2003); a retrospective Kim Tchah-Sup's Odyssey, Marronnier Art Center, Korean Culture & Art Foundation, Seoul (2002); and a group exhibition A Decade of Transition and Dynamics, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon, Korea (2001). Selected collections: Museum of Modern Art, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Library of Congress, DC; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; and Chase Manhattan Bank Art Collection, NY.

Jian-Jun Zhang <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/Jian-Jun_Zhang> was born in Shanghai, China. He lives and works in New York and Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include: History in the Making: Shanghai 1979-2009, Shanghai, China (2009); Butterfly Dream, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2008); Towards Abstraction, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2008); The 5th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2004); Jian-Jun Zhang: Mountain and Water, Art Projects International, New York (2003); Zhang Huan, Weihong and Jian-Jun Zhang, Diverseworks, Houston (2003); and Fourth Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2002). Selected collections: Uli Sigg Collection, Switzerland; Genentech, CA; JP Morgan, Hong Kong; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; and Frederick R. Weisman Foundation of Art, CA.

In-Hyung Kim <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/In-Hyung_Kim> was born in Seoul, Korea. She lives and works in Paris. Select exhibitions include Undergrowth, Art Projects International, New York, NY (2003); Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea, The Korea Society, New York (2003); New Artists 2000, International Kunstmesse Kongresshaus, Zurich, Switzerland (2000); Figuration Critique, Du Toit de la Grande Arche, Paris, France (1998); and Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea (Window Installation, 1997).

Richard Tsao <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/Richard_Tsao> was born in Bangkok, Thailand. He lives and works in New York. Upcoming and recent exhibitions include: Paknam-Mouth of the River, H Gallery, Thailand (2010); Flooding, Art Link, Seoul, Korea (2008); Flood, Chambers Fine Art, New York (2005); Paper and Process, Art Projects International, New York (2004); Portraits, 100 Tonson Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand (2004); and The Inverse Mirror, Chambers Fine Art, New York (2003).

IL Lee <http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/work/tag/IL_Lee> was born in Seoul, Korea. He lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: IL LEE, Gebert Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM (2009); IL LEE, The Vilcek Foundation, New York (2008); Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2007); Il Lee: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2007); Il Lee: Ballpoint Works 1980-2006, Art Projects International, New York (2007); Paris/New York: Il Lee, Galerie Gana-Beaugourg, Paris, France (2005). Selected group exhibitions: On, Of or About: 50 Paper Works, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX (2009); NextNext Art, BAM, New York (2004); and Open House, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (2004). Selected Collections: San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwachon, Korea; and the Total Museum, Seoul, Korea.


For more information please visit www.artprojects.com <http://www.artprojects.com> or contact 212-343-2599 or api@artprojects.com