October 13 - November 12
Talk to the Land, as its title implies, is an exhibition featuring work that addresses the landscape in a conversational manner. This mainly photo-based show is made up of images and objects that require the artists (and their audience) to look at the world around them and find footing amongst shifting landscapes that range from the day-to-day to the more ethereal terrain of memory.
Since May 20, 1994, John Miller has been taking photographs between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m. What links all these together is not a particular subject or event, but rather the time of day Miller shot them. Miller chose this two-hour period because it is his least favorite time, especially as inflected by the Protestant work ethic where the demand to work conflicts most sharply with the desire to rest.
Shannon Ebner, Michael Vahrenwald and Jakob Kolding work with billboards and
roadside signage in various ways. Picking up where Dead Democracy Letters
left off, Ebnerçs new series Thoughts on a Contemporary American Feeling
reconsiders the sculptural and linguistic possibilities of the billboard.
Working on a smaller scale, Ebner embraces the billboard as a readymade site
where language and form merge and flatten themselves into one hieroglyphic
plane. Vahrenwald photographs the decomposition of destroyed roadside billboards,
focusing on their enigmatic yet harmonious reclamation into nature. Kolding's
series of untitled posters deal with planning and use of public and private
space, posing direct questions, such as "Who uses the space? What is it used
for?" Posters will be available for viewers to take away from the exhibition.
Wohnen Mit Verkehrsanbindung, (closely translated as "living with
transport connection") from 2001, is documentation of an intervention by Michael
Sailstorfer, shown here in the form of a slide projection. Eight different
slides are projected, one interior and one exterior shot of four bus shelters
in the Bavarian countryside. Sailstorfer furnished the shelters with a bed,
kitchen, table, chair, toilet, electric and water supply, installed doors,
and used a lawn mower to cut the high grass around them. All four shelters
where open and furnished for one week.
Some artists in Talk to the Land have chosen to converse sculpturally.
Sara Greenberger's Is This Thing On? is a double-sided portable brick
wall: one side has a microphone and spot-light and the reverse side is painted
white like the wall of a downtown loft, with a modest drawing of a photograph
of Carol Burnett. Accompanying the wall is a recording of a night club audience
extracted from the interstitial moments of a joke by Lenny Bruce. Elise Ferguson
contributes a room-scale folding structure that incorporates hand-cast urethane
tiles to create an optically rich sculpture that is imposing, tactile and
architectural. The work is a series of reflections on interior space, abstraction
and the flexible nature of perception. From a larger collection of objects
made of paper, Rachel Foullon has selected four sculptures including a miniature
house raised on stilts, and a life-size silver ring. All of the objects are
"exact" replicas of unusual findings by the artist, her friends, or family.
Shifts in scale and material transformation contribute to the objects on display
equally unusual psychological dimensions.
Moved by the limitations of the photographic medium, Riffs on Real Time
is a body of work exploring concepts of time, space, and physicality. Through
the use of everyday materials reconfigured and re-photographed on the ground
of the spaces where these fragments actually exist, Leslie Hewitt presents
distilled moments ripe with anticipation.
Talk to the Land is the second group exhibition in Etc.,
an exhibition and event series arranged by Matt Keegan. Please join us on
October 15th from 4-7pm for an event entitled Town Meeting organized
by Ei Arakawa. Please also visit the gallery on Saturday October 22nd for
an afternoon-long (looped) screening of Aleksandra Mir's video Organized
Movement. More events TBA. The exhibition will be on view from October
13th ‘ November 12th, 2005. A reception will be held on October 13th from
6 - 8 PM at 558 West 21st St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.
