Featuring a selection of major Seymour Lipton sculptures in context with
Charles Alston • Norman Bluhm • Beauford Delaney • Willem de Kooning
Jay DeFeo • Michael Goldberg • Adolph Gottlieb • Hans Hofmann
Lee Krasner • Norman Lewis • Conrad Marca-Relli • Boris Margo
Alfonso Ossorio • Richard Pousette-Dart • Milton Resnick • Charles Seliger
Alma Thomas • Mark Tobey • Jack Tworkov and Hale Woodruff

Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present a questionable low point in our program: Birth of a Legend, by nomadic artist Cameron Gray. Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz claim that “Cameron Gray is too big too fail,” and Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City asked for “more cheddar” with her order of Cameron Gray. Gray’s latest exploit serves up a Dionysian smörgåsbord of state-of-the-art digital technology, where kaleidoscopically bright palettes and hypnotic kitsch run rampant. With your senses utterly titillated and suitably doped, you‘ll discover his artistic touch is as light as his work is raucous; speed of play carefully calibrated, execution satirically dead-pan, and content spot-on HOT. Straddling the line between comfort and the disquietingly uncanny, Gray’s gargantuan installations flash, blink, twirl, and pulsate off the walls in utter pandemonium, culling visual and auditory white noise from the vast Internet in something akin to a holy art apocalypse. As Gray descends into the deepest realms of the web world, we can only look on and marvel at the chaos that we have created.
 
Frequently likened to the second coming of Koons and thoroughly rooted within postmodern sensibilities, Gray is an incredibly articulate forager of the irreverent. In I Was Made For Dancin’, All, All, All Night Long, Gray achieves near tantric nirvana, emblazoning a glossy, hollowed Leif Garrett poster with psychedelic patterns and prismatic forms; two all-seeing eyes flicking every which way as he sluggishly sings the work’s eponymous and utterly cheeky song. Acid Zen Garden imbues a glowing cherub figure and assorted fauna with Gray’s unrivaled knack for mischief. Like-wise, in Ice Cream for John Wayne, a duo of melting waffle cone treats take residence upon John Wayne’s dreamy visage. Not content to simply tear the ‘mask’ off such iconic machismo, Cameron spatters many a surrounding wall with fluorescent, glow-in-the-dark paint—effectively taking on Abstract Expressionist bravado as well.
 
A shaman of digital technique and reprographic means, Gray sets forth an alternate universe rife with under-auto black lighting and over-the-top pop, instinctively splaying nonsensical sights and sounds across an ambitious range of mediums: video collages chock-full of outlandish abstractions, including an all-encompassing 12 foot wide work comprised of 27 monitors; an epic 7-foot-tall pin bricolage in which 3,000 photographic images abut embedded 3-D video, spinning disco-lights, and utterly unrelated bric-a-brac; manipulated c-prints of classic American icons; and circular, Archimboldo-like smiley-face sculptures in which fake food is adhered to densely-patterned, wood-mounted table-cloths, with fake plastic ‘turkey dinners’ forming the eyes of one piece, and a glazed faux Jell-O mold its nose. Simultaneously chaotic, organic, orgasmic, and narcotic, Gray delivers the Cadillac of collage, the epitome of hyper-stimulation, and the ultimate state of transcendence – a meaningless yet tantalizing void, where nothing is sacred. Indulge yourself this summer in this orgiastic, optical feast and celebrate with us the 10-year anniversary of Mike Weiss Gallery.
 
Cameron Gray, Birth of a Legend.
 
Born in Geneva in 1980, Cameron Gray lives and works in London, Basel, and Los Angeles. Graduating egregia cum laude from Bruce High Quality Foundation University, Gray also holds no less than six degrees from such prestigious institutions as Yale, Columbia, and UCLA. Prior to his ascension into the upper levels of the art historical pantheon, Gray will have participated in two Venice Biennales, including the one to take place in 2015, and three Whitney Biennials, including those in 2016 and 2018. In 2012, Galerie Eva Presenhuber included his work in the seminal show I Wanna F*ck You But We‘re Just Gonna Cuddle, and one of Gray’s massive pin collages was a show-stopping success in The Gag Reflex is Mysterious at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2011. Grey‘s work is included in the Ludwig-Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany; the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT; and 17 other prominent collections. Cameron Gray is currently represented by Mike Weiss Gallery, David Zwirner, Thaddaeus Ropac, Sprueth Magers, White Cube and Pace Beijing, amongst others.
 
Your mom loves Cameron Gray’s work. Ask her, she told us so.

MINUS SPACE is delighted to present the exhibition Julio Grinblatt: Cielito Lindo. This is the Argentine-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s first solo exhibition in New York and it will feature a suite of unique, large-scale C-print photographs depicting the clear blue sky.
 
An ongoing project, Grinblatt’s Cielito Lindo series stresses how aesthetic notions are generated in relation to the photographic apparatus, in particular the photographic printing process. To create this body of essentially monochromatic photographs, Grinblatt articulated the following four-step premise:
 
1. I took a photograph of a clear sky.
2. I sent the negative to a professional color lab.
3. I asked the printer to print a beautiful sky.
4. Repeat from 2.
 
Julio Grinblatt (b. 1960 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally for the past two decades, including in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Belgium, Italy, and the United States.
 
In 2001, Grinblatt mounted the solo exhibition Uses of Photography at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has participated in group exhibitions at museums, such as MoMA PS1, El Museo del Barrio (both New York); Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA); Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art (Gainsville, FL); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain); Museum of Fine Arts (Brussels, Belgium); Amos Anderson Art Museum (Helsinki, Finland); and Museo de Arte Zapopan (Guadalajara, Mexico), among others.
 
Grinblatt’s work is represented in collections worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Houston, TX); Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR); Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL); Light Work Permanent Collection (Syracuse, NY); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (both Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Museum of Modern Art (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).
 
In 2012, Grinblatt co-curated the survey exhibition Notations: The John Cage Effect Today at Hunter College Times Square Gallery together with Joachim Pissarro, Bibi Calderaro, and Michelle Yun. The exhibition was discussed in-depth by writer Thomas Crow in Artforum’s Best of 2012 issue. Grinblatt is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College in New York, and he holds an MFA from Hunter College and BS from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
 
ABOUT MINUS SPACE

Now celebrating its 10th year, MINUS SPACE specializes in reductive abstract art on the international level. The gallery presents museum-quality solo and group exhibitions by pioneering emerging, established, and deceased artists at its Brooklyn gallery, as well as at other collaborating venues on the national and international levels.

Chloë Bass
The Bureau of Self-Recognition
May 31 - June 30, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, May 31, 6 - 9pm
 
Events:
Friday, June 14, 7pm: Book Launch Party + Artist‘s Talk
Friday, June 21, 7pm: Free Consultations Post Mortem
Sunday, June 23, hourly 3 – 6pm: Closing Performance
 
The Bureau of Self-Recognition is a single installation capturing the results of an long term conceptual project. From October 2011 through December 2012, Chloë Bass performed as the Bureau of Self-Recognition: a business designed to track self-recognition as a process. The project attempts to define the nature of the “daily” as either fully formed within us or as a social construct. Bass conducted various exercises (with herself, with single participants in one-on-one performances, and with larger groups) that used various standardized lenses (a therapist’s office, a bank, a restaurant) as strategies to identify and modify habitual behavior. Individual works within The Bureau of Self-Recognition include Practice of the Daily, Everyday Interiors, Free Consultations, The Bank of Self-Recognition, and Tea Will Be Served.
 
At Momenta, Bass will be presenting phase four of the project. Previous phases examined the theory, practice, and dissemination of the work. Phase four involves both an installation and live performances, allowing viewers to take part in the Bureau both as an art object and as a lived experience. The installation will showcase photo, video, and found object materials produced and/or collected over the course of the full conceptual work. Bass will track three routes through the installation that encourage different experiential outcomes for each viewer. The exhibit coincides with the release of the Bureau of Self-Recognition monograph, published by am i human Press.
 
Friday, June 14, 7pm:
Book Launch Party + Artist‘s Talk
To document some of the experiential work of the Bureau of Self-Recognition, Chloë Bass produced an artist’s book with Jessalyn Wakefield and am i human Press (Portland, Oregon). The book includes essays by Esther Neff and Eric Heist, images produced both by Bass and other project participants, and text by Bass and Wakefield. This event will feature a discussion with both Bass and Wakefield about the art of turning a conceptual performance project into a story, and the collaborative processes shared between performance and book-making. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
 
Friday, June 21, 7pm:
Free Consultations Post Mortem
From July - December 2012, The Bureau of Self-Recognition held a Free Consultations program: one-on-one performances between Chloë Bass and individual participants. These performances took the form of therapy sessions, during which each participant was asked a standardized set of questions and then asked to complete a simple mirror exercise. Following the initial session, each participant was assigned a personalized exercise, which he or she then conducted for 30 days, sharing the results with Bass.
 
This discussion invites the participants in these performances to share their experience of working with Chloë Bass in a process both intimate and distanced. The conversation will be moderated by Esther Neff.
 
Sunday, June 23, 3 - 6pm:
Closing Performance
For the third and final event associated with the Bureau of Self-Recognition exhibit, Chloë Bass will reprise the private performance offered for the opening. In this performance, Bass will take on the docent's role and lead visitors through a guided tour of the exhibit. Tours will be offered on the hour, and will last for approximately 30 minutes.
 
Chloë Bass is a Brooklyn based performance and conceptual artist. She has received commissions from the Culture Project’s Women Center Stage Festival, the Bushwick Starr’s Bushwhack Festival, and 3rd Ward’s Moviehouse, and residencies from POGON (Zagreb, Croatia) and D21 Kunstraum/5533 art space (Leipzig, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey). Recent artistic work has been seen at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Exit Art, Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, ITINERANT Performance Festival, Glasshouse Project, Panoply Performance Laboratory, SCOPE Art Fair, Fountain Miami, Agape Enterprise, and the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City. Bass received her MFA (Performance and Interactive Media Arts) in 2011 from Brooklyn College and her BA (Theater Studies) in 2006 from Yale University. For more information: chloebass.com.

For Immediate Release
 
Geoff Chadsey
Angela Dufresne
Vera Iliatova
Jake Longstreth
Marcial Ramos
Cynthia Talmadge & Kevin Zucker
Craig Taylor
Andrew Witkin
Alexi Worth
 
June 20 – July 26, 2013
Opening reception: Thursday, June 20, 6 - 8 PM
 
slap that cunt • autumn • failure • cars • fear • cages • ephemerality • shadows • chaos • duality • escape • violence • hotels • the subconscious vs. the self • breakage • cocaine • redemption • pornography • honesty • the periphery of society • Armani • not giving a shit • loneliness • transcendence • alcohol • grit • sex • killing • insomnia • glamour • aggression • morality • voyeurism • darkness • deceit • narcissism & superficiality=tools for avoiding intimacy • I’m dripping • anxiety • ego • let’s disappear • beauty • relief • night • anger • obsession • the road • prostitution • style • self-destruction • dreams • loneliness • starting over • trash • escape • light • perversion • a man alone in a room • sex is not about sex • guns • mood • Pandora’s box • disconnect • flesh • suicide • sacrifice • instability • decay • isolation • let’s fuck • redemption through violence • homosexuality • writing • Mercedes • alienation • mirrors • blood • taupe • guilt • vanity • revelation • defiance • depression • decadence • discovery • self-reflection • venetian blinds
 
"What fascinates me are people who want to be one thing but who behave in a way contradictory to that. Who might say, ‘I want to be happy, but I keep doing things that make me unhappy.” - Paul Schrader
 
- Katherine Kennedy and Monya Rowe, 2013
 
Curated by Monya Rowe Gallery
 
Katherine Kennedy is the singer for Autodrone and is currently studying Russian Language and Culture at Columbia University, New York.
 
Gallery summer hours
June: Tuesday – Saturday, 11- 6 PM
July: Tuesday – Friday, 11- 6 PM
August: Closed
 
For more information or images please contact the gallery at 212 255 5065 or info@monyarowegallery.com
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Aaron Williams tends to work with cheap, fallible materials like book pages and posters, interested in the populist, stock imagery that has very little physical value but maintains great cultural and emotional currency. While examining the differences between a hand-made mark and a photographic image ( particularly one that has the popular appeal of a music or film star ) they become abstracted images: “ideas of portrait” rather than an actual portrait.
In this sense a famous picture of the Alps exists as an idea of a landscape rather than a singular, personal record of an experience. This critical distance allows the artist to move more freely in manipulating the imagery and also opens up questions and unexpected visual directions in the studio.
Working at the intersection between image and material; the space between the emotive capacity of the image and the physical reality of the paper and printing process, Williams questions the validity and reality of the images he works with, particularly in light of them being so broadly disseminated.
 
Aaron Williams was born in Rhode Island and holds a BFA from the Maine College of Art and an MFA from Rutgers University. His work has been included in venues throughout the United States, including Bill Maynes, Max Protetch, Lu Magnus and Stephan Stoyanov galleries (NYC), Howard House (Seattle) and Rosenwald- Wolf Gallery (Philadelphia). He has had solo shows at Baumgartner and Max Protetch galleries in New York as well as at OH+T gallery in Boston. He has received reviews in the Boston Globe, the NY Times, the Seattle PI and L Magazine in addition to several online sources. Upcoming shows include the Portland Biennial at the Portland Museum (ME) and a solo show at LaMontagne Gallery in Boston in the fall. Aaron Williams lives and works in Queens, NY.

Munch Gallery is pleased to announce two solo exhibitions.
 
‘I Believe in Death after Life’ by Morten Hemmingsen (DK)
‘Summer Home Collection’ by Jeffrey Owen Ralston (US)
 
Both artists will be present at the Opening Reception Saturday, June 1 from 7-9 pm.
 
MORTEN HEMMINGSEN – I BELIEVE IN DEATH AFTER LIFE
Hemmingsen’s approach is not without humor, when he takes on the substantial topics of life and death. It’s not the loud slapstick humor, but a quiet subtle one that might make you chuckle, but there is often more at stake, an underlying thoughtfulness and sincerity. The exhibition contemplates our final destination, and invites the viewer to engage and reflect, but the artist himself has a significant view on life, and the aftermath in particular, which is expressed across multiple media.
 
With puns and play, Hemmingsen creates his iconic blue/white banners. Carved in wood but ceramic in appearance, they draw references to the tattoo and Danish/Dutch porcelain traditions. It’s an illusion of fragility paired with quirky lines and images. The banner with the exhibition title ‘I Believe in Death after Life’ emphasizes that life should be lived here and now - there is no “on the other side”. This is the artist’s conviction, and it is not the only work of art where Hemmingsen battles religious beliefs. Similar sentiment can be seen in the monochrome inverted black cross, with the carved text ‘Good God’. A work that attracts the viewer with its immediate exquisiteness, but behind the superficial glossiness the message appears cynical and questions the construction of our lives, and the faith in redemption. Death on the other hand becomes very tangible in the series ‘Victim’ where the remains of dead animals are explored – a dissected frog, a dismembered horse, an canidae autopsy.
 
Besides wood cuts carved with one-liners or illustrated with every day objects, the exhibition will also present some of his other work; paintings made on the back of vintage school posters along with selected gouache work. This is Hemmingsen’s second exhibition at Munch Gallery.
 
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JEFFREY OWEN RALSTON – SUMMER HOME COLLECTION
It’s a typical morning. I am sipping tea, flipping through a CB2 catalogue, and listening to HGTV’s ‘Design on a Dime.’ I’m dressed and ready for a day trip to Ikea. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but just feel like browsing. My cart fills fast with random and perfectly matching objects. They all make so much sense to me. I’m back home and anxiously unwrap the packaging. I’m disappointed. Nothing seems to be how I imagined; nothing matches anymore. Everything is too small to fit anything into, and everything looks really cheap. I get a spoon for my ice cream and click the remote. There is a commercial on the television for Cindy Crawford’s Home Collection. I feel like Cindy is looking directly at me as we both lay on the sofa. I notice how flawless her collection is, how perfectly relaxed she is, and then I ask myself, “Why does she have a home collection?” I want my own home collection.
 
I created a Summer home collection that demonstrates the harmony of a curated store display. The items have a close relationship to one another, undisturbed and in unison. However, this is easily interrupted when an object leaves the group. A person once told me “The painting is only yours until somebody else sees it.” The same goes for this show, only re-phrased, “The home collection is mine, until somebody takes something from it.”
 
‘Summer Home Collection’ is made with household trash bags and disposable plastic tablecloths, a medium that is usually used in my work. Although I have always been attracted to it’s aesthetic qualities, I feel that I should recognize that the plastic used for this installation has a much deeper voice than times before. Its semi-gloss appearance along with it’s cheaply produced and disposable history resembles the manufactured merchandise found at many retailers. Beautiful in the context of a gallery or showroom, the plastic becomes nearly trash when taken home.