Leroy Lamis, 84, died Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010, in Austin, Texas. Mr. Lamis was a sculptor and long-time professor of art at Indiana State University. His Plexiglas sculptures, known for their geometric elegance, were exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and are in the collections of leading museums and private collectors.

Mr. Lamis was born in Eddyville, Iowa, and moved to Los Angeles during the depression. As a teenager, he worked at MGM studios in Culver City. He attended New Mexico Highlands University and received a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York. He married Esther Sackler in 1954, taught at Cornell College in Iowa, then moved to Terre Haute, Ind., in 1961, where he taught studio art and art history at Indiana State University until his retirement in 1988. In 1970, he was Artist in Residence at Dartmouth College. He was a fixture in the Wabash Valley art community and had exhibits at the Swope Art Museum, Indiana State University, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Lamis journeyed to New York City with his modern cubist sculptures in tow. He found immediate success with art collectors in New York, being invited to join the Contemporaries Gallery. In 1964, his sculptures were featured in the Whitney Museum Annual exhibit, and in 1965, Lamis’ pieces were selected to participate in one of the most important modern art exhibits of the era, The Responsive Eye at The Museum of Modern Art.

From 1965 to 1971 his sculptures were shown and sold by Staempfli Gallery in New York City, where he had three one-man shows. From 1968 to 1969, his one-man show toured throughout the country including exhibits at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, John Herron Museum, Indianapolis, Des Moines Art Center, La Jolla Museum of Art, and Tacoma Museum of Art. In total, his artworks were featured in over 100 individual and group exhibits around the world.

His works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection, Washington, the Albright-Knox Museum, and The Brooklyn Museum, and in the private collections of Seymour Knox, Howard Lipman, SI Newhouse Jr., Roy R. Newberger, Denise Rene, and Robert Sarnoff among other collectors.

(Source: TribStar.com, August 22, 2010)

Noel Ivanoff, Cut block (crate) painting 1
Acrylic paint on polystyrene form
mounted within a crate construction
795 x 345 x 435mm

August 14 – September 4, 2010

Noel Ivanoff’s formalistic painting practice has been marked by a sheer determination to innovate new possibilities in the language of painting’s surfaces and supports. His explorations into painting as sculptural constructions were first seen in the crate-like works in his exhibition Fabrication (Vavasour-Godkin Gallery, 2007) and the floor box paintings in Landing (Enjoy Public Art Gallery,
2008), and have now culminated in Skin Cradles (Two Rooms, 2010). They have an assertively quirky and animated three-dimensional presence, which Ivanoff achieves through confounding the conventions of cradling. The functions of strengthening, straightening, holding and protecting are shifted. The stretchers and crates remain holding devices, but the cradle becomes a system within
which the painted panels can be shaped under tension or the skins of paint are asked to conform to the elliptical hollows of polystyrene blocks.

With the Convex (stretcher) works Ivanoff first paints the panels vertically, using the process he formulated for his Digit paintings in 2009. He activates the paint by drawing his finger across the entire surface to create vertical parallel lines, while piling paint on both sides of the mark. With his purposely made set-squares, he controls this process so an overall consistency of finish is achieved
across the painting. The upright panels are then mounted into horizontal positions on their own stretcher constructions and bent into convex curves, forcing a spring-like state, so that the paintings present themselves under tension. An integral relationship occurs between the ploughed paint
application, the curvature of the panel, and the three-dimensional qualities emanating from the stretcher and wall.

These paintings have a multifaceted presence. The panels appear light, soft, rubber or plastic-like, ‘shifty’ and atmospheric in one moment, or heavy, solid, sharp and metallic, the next. After a longer look, you can feel somewhat uncomfortable, as you imagine the works springing forth, flying out at you or crashing straight down onto the floor, taking their ‘frail’ stretcher with them. The viewer is coaxed into an encounter around these works through the shifting sensations of weight, colour and material, creating the opportunity to reflect on the totality of these works and the space that contains them.

The Cut block (crate) paintings are wall works articulated by polystyrene blocks mounted within partial crate constructions. Several of the crate-panels are reformed to mount the blocks to the wall by acting as a shelf. Each cut to order form has an elliptical hole in its centre, which extends through the entire block to subtly intimate a cargo of fragile industrial forms or artworks. A painted area of flat orange covers 50% of these contrived expanses, with each work employing a different means of dividing these areas into half painted and unpainted surfaces. Quiet and intensely animated, the porous surfaces of the polystyrene seem to swallow immediate space, becoming wormholes to suck in the unwary. Drawn into viewing the insides of the painted holes from multiple angles, the viewer can revel in the magnetic pull into the elliptical volume and the seductive quality of orange surface after-glow and variations of white.

The freestanding Concave (crate) pieces consist of white painted panels mounted within partial crate constructions, bowed under tension to create an elliptical, concave curve that fits into the confines of each crate. These panels are pushed to great levels of tension by the balanced energy which presses them against their cradling supports. Sufficient opposing force counters the weight of the ‘roof’ above with a tension so palpable and intense that in any given moment these panels could burst out of their cramped quarters in a dramatic, Houdini escape.

These Concave (crate) works and the Cut block (crate) pieces suggest functional containers as well as a set of self-contained, painterly and sculptural elements. It is as if these works are their own packaging, storage, transport and display system, designed to be safely crated, moved and installed in an exhibition venue without any need of additional materials. This could suggest agency for each
audience by being reconstituted in relation to the physical characteristics of each environment and the tastes and interests of those installing the works. Ivanoff asserts that “While acknowledging their utilitarian context, they refer to the utopian optimism of modernist abstraction, but reconsider this language, a century on, as an echo that is somewhat airless, yet still serving a valid function in today’s visual culture.’’

Good point, and I believe that Ivanoff’s works do not echo some postmodern pastiche, they rise above the empty signifiers of postmodernism and are more about being enriched by, than simply referencing the history of art and utilitarian design. The works in Skin Cradles are a relevant contribution to the formalistic art of today, because they are anchored as self-sustaining objects, rich in their own materiality and physicality, not just stacked full of empty references. Berlin-based writer Diedrich Diederichsen praised the Formalism: Modern Art Today exhibition (Hamburger Kunstverein, 2005) for its alternatives to a “world choked with referentiality.” 2 I would like to believe that any of Ivanoff’s works for Skin Cradles would have sat nicely in that company. While certainly showing itself
to be aesthetically precise, Ivanoff’s formalism is guided by intuition, chance and play, which allows his works to come across as hopeful and, if not utopian, then as micro-utopian. By micro-utopian, of course Ivanoff’s works may be theorised via relational aesthetics, but in my opinion, it is the maverick, iconoclastic Richard Artschwager – whose practice has combined painting and sculpture to
create “categorical confusion” by conflating Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art – who is more relevant to the appreciation of Ivanoff’s goals. “Nothing is ever just one thing with Artschwager,” 4 and the same can be said of Noel Ivanoff’s work, in which the potentially austere tone of formalism has been reinvested with a finely calibrated sense of humour, vulnerability and the artist’s touch.

–Erich Ranfft, 2010

Film still with Julian Dashper

Starting August 26, 2010, on YouTube, you can view the film My Space, by Simone Horrocks & Richard Flynn with Julian Dashper.

Early in 2008, Dashper approached film makers Simone Horrocks and Richard Flynn, with the idea of collaborating on a film project. It was important to Dashper that we remain open to where the filming might take us, but together we agreed that the film in some way would be : ‘A meditation on the meaning of success and failure in an artist’s life’.

We filmed with Dashper between June and October 2008, as he travelled between Auckland, Sydney and Chicago. It was Dashper’s wish that my space would premiere on YouTube.

Installation view

May 29 – September 5, 2010

Red Blue Motion Totem is the meaningful name of Malene Landgreen’s current exhibition at Esbjerg Kunstmuseum in her home country Denmark. The installation was realised on the occasion and celebration of the 100th birthday of Danish painter Richard Mortensen. With her giant wall-paintings combined with mirrored columns Malene Landgreen pays tribute to the expressive work of the jubilee and created an optical illusion which dissolves the central perspective and splits the space into striking colour fields – one could call it ’3d-cubism’.

Pierre Juillerat, B_76.5215, 2009-2010
Lacquer and acrylic dispersion on canvas
220 x 170 cm

September 2 – October 3, 2010

The solo exhibition alpha floor of Swiss painter Pierre Juillerat is a consistent continuation of the New Concrete and Constructive Art program by dr. julius | ap. Juillerat‘s work expands the range of the artists represented by dr. julius | ap with a strictly geometric painting position.

In most cases, Juillerat‘s paintings show stripe and line structures that are set on various image carriers with very high precision, always using his own and intuitively chosen specific set of colours. Due to the orientation to vanishing points lying far outside the image area, these structures often appear like detail views of larger, wider spatial contexts. Shifting these points may breake geometric laws, and the perspective effect even increases the impression of vast space.

Pierre Juillerat, born 1967 in Bern, has completed a degree in architecture ETH Zurich, pursued by a long career as an airline pilot. In parallel, he independently developed his geometric painting style, which combines impetus from both fields. The opposite of the firmly structured, geometrically planned and bright dynamic clarity in his work is evident.

Pierre Schwerzmann, painter and teacher of design, notes on this: “The human perception of the automated movement, as in instrument flight, the hostile environment of high altitudes, which provides colours with their icy cold temperature and causes the alloy of the materials, shape the work of Pierre Juillerat. The aluminum sheets designed for speed are taken from a decontextualisation of aviation; they are a contrast to the slowness of the act of painting. It is a serial production technology, which faces the primitive and unique action of the painter. His paintings attempt to exist outside their own borders. Colours flowing over the edges are transitional areas. Non-Existing and emptiness are just as decisive as the visible portions of the work. What we have here in front of us is a unique and specific vision of the void and the tension that comes from an apparent calm.”

The renowned art historian Matthias Bleyl, professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, writes about these works: “The constructive potential that the seemingly perspective painting by Pierre Juillerat contains, predestinates it for an expansion into real space, for which approaches in the draft stage already exist. His way of working, which also includes various rigid image carriers, like aluminum sheets or plexiglass panels, is well-suited for the production of three-dimensional, but at the same time picturesque objects. This step would be, given the recent development of his paintwork, very consistent, and probably it is just a matter of time before it is realized. Meanwhile, however, only the pictures remain with their seemingly complex nesting and broken spaces, which still reveal themselves as pure surface paintings.”

Works by Ahn Hyun-Ju, Eric Knoote, Wilma Vissers

September 4-25, 2010

Work by Richard Roth

June 27 – September 10, 2010

Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation, 1965-2010
Installation view

May 22 – October 16, 2010

Luce e Movimento (Light and Movement)
curated by Grzegorz Musial and Franck Marlot

Artists:
Martha Boto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Werner Graeff, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Julio Le Parc, Jozef Robakowski, Nicolas Schöffer, Jesus Rafael Soto, Gregorio Vardanega

With the newly organized space of Palazzo Donà, the Foundation presents objects and sculptures, as well as installations and films in which light and movement become essential elements of the composition. The exhibition, prepared in collaboration with Galerie Denise René, includes works by masters of kinetic art, shows the Avant-garde origins of the movement and its influence on the art of today. The viewer is a participant in the project. His presence triggers movement and the play of light enriching the work of art with the dimension of time. This constant change confers ineffable quality to the work of art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Italian and French with a complete photographic documentation, essays by Grzegorz Musial, Arnauld Pierre’a, Denise René, Andrzej Turowski, and biographical notes of the participating artists.

Richard Serra, Back to Black, 1981
1-color lithograph on Arches Cover paper
133.3 x 157.5 cm
Signed and numbered 19/20

August 26 – October 1, 2010

Melanie Crader, It all started when
I tried to paint a portrait (purse), 2010
From the series The Eula Project
Acrylic and silver leaf on panel
10 x 8 inches

September 2 – October 7, 2010

The O’Kane Gallery on the campus of UH-Downtown begins the fall season with Houston artist Melanie Crader’s solo exhibition, The Eula Project. Crader’s installation physically transforms the gallery into a facsimile of a domestic residence that begins the intersection of the present and a life lived decades ago. Upon the discovery of a box containing mundane objects found over 20 years after her grandmother’s death, Crader began exploring the similarities between their two lives. Utilizing the contents of the box as source material, The Eula Project explores the formation of an identity as it relates to space, aesthetics, gender, social class and memory.

A native of southern Louisiana, Crader’s exhibit history includes Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, Women and their Work in Austin, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY. Her work has addressed the complex issues of identity and the feminine as it is packaged through predominantly consumer channels. Her clean, crisp, at times minimalist stylistic leanings bring focus to specific detail divorcing it from its original context. The Eula Project provides an examination of one identity revealed through such details.

Melanie Crader is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award. This grant is funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.

Marlene Sarroff
Disruptive Elements, 2010
Corrugated cardboard, paint

August 26 – September 4, 2010

The exhibition, Disruptive Elements, explores the dynamic interconnection between the striated surface space and the smooth surface space. When the smooth space is disturbed interrupted and ruptured by the intervention of cutting peeling and repositioning a process of change brings into being a striated space. The striated space becomes new territory, emerging and, developing a dialogue with the smooth. The smooth and striated space is found on the surface of corrugated cardboard which consists of several large black, rectangular and square works. These works are assembled together, some overlapping, like a cluster, strategically placed, and resting against the gallery wall. Several parts make up one complete work. They are connected although they can be separated or rearranged into other configurations and are capable of producing any number of effects. In the gallery space another form of disruptive elements emerges resulting from the way the works are placed, causing a sense disruption for the viewer whilst in the gallery space itself.

Marlene Sarroff’s work is concerned with materials and process. She uses very ordinary industrial materials and then sets about a process to manipulate them enough so as new work evolves, whilst at the same time, being true to the material. Previously, she has used soft, light materials such as bubble wrap and used a process of winding around. In Disruptive Elements mostly the material is hard and the process of cutting and peeling presents a bolder aesthetic. However, one work in the exhibition does continue the process of winding. White elastic is wound and stretched around a frame, completely covering it, and creating a contrast to the hard surfaced cardboard works. So the hard and soft creates a contrast of surfaces and continues a process used previously by the artist.

Factory 49
49 Shepherd St
Marrickville, Sydney, Australia

August 5-28, 2010

Geraldo de Barros, Pampulha, Sao Paulo, Brazil,
[From the Series Fotoforma], 1949
Silver gelatin, 29 x 28 cm
Edition 5 of 15, Print 2006

September 8 – October 6, 2010

David Thomas, Duration circle (Yellow), 2010
Acrylic on photoprint, 21 x 29.7 cm

August 12-28, 2010

Daniel Göttin, Untitled, 2008 (detail)
Adhesive tape on anodized aluminium

August 14 – September 29, 2010

August 13 – September 4, 2010

Installation view

August 14 – September 4, 2010

Works by:
Manfred Mohr, Josef Linschinger
Dora Maurer, Karl-Heinz Adler
Karl Gerstner, Vesna Kovacic

July 31 – October 30, 2010

Participating Artists:
Karl-Heinz Adler, Rita Ernst, Karl Gerstner, Hans-Jörg Glattfelder, Wolfgang Körber, Vesna Kovacic, Josef Linschinger, Dora Maurer, Manfred Mohr, Marcello Morandini, Axel Rohlfs

Richard van der Aa, Reasons to be cheerful:
Paris winter series no.13, 2009
Acrylic on paper, 19 x 24 cm

August 12-21, 2010

One of the streams in Richard van der Aa’s work of recent years is an ongoing series of paintings entitled Reasons to be cheerful. The Reasons to be cheerful paintings have been realised in a variety of forms and scales. From the tiny aluminium tablets which were shown throughout the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2006 as a part of the Out of Erewhon exhibition, to the bi-chromatic square panels exhibited recently at le Pavé d’Orsay in Paris, the “reasons” consistently underline the comprehension that, above all, a painting is an object to be appreciated in relation to others, and in the context of the physical space of the showroom.

At Factory 49 van der Aa is presenting a fresh incarnation of this series. The group of works on paper subtitled Paris winter series is a series of simple compositions utilising a limited palette of three colours: (grey, white and a dirty cream – the colours of Paris winter). The group of 25 small paintings can be read sequentially as each composition is born out of a formal adjustment made to the previous one. The emphasis is on relationships of form.
There is similarity and difference and a sort of visual logic at work, a sense that each painting is the natural extension of the system set up in the preceding pieces. Each one exists as a matter of course. Each one is a reason to be cheerful.

Richard van der Aa was born in New Zealand to Dutch parents and has lived in Paris since 2005 after spending 15 years in Sydney.

Installation view

July 31 – August 21, 2010
By appointment

Sara Schnadt is a Chicago-based performance/installation artist. Raised on an international commune in Scotland, an ‘alternative’ context which considered itself as a social experiment outside of conventional culture, she spent formative years understanding herself as an outsider, an observer. Since moving to the United States in 1986, Sara has become fascinated with the unifying rituals and values that are common threads in contemporary western culture, and has made work that frames and resonates with those common threads.

Formally, Sara makes performance and installations that use task, found objects, interactivity, projection, and movement derived from common gestures. Her work creates environments that shift the audience regularly from spectator to participant as the performer constantly moves between pedestrian and more stylized or evocative activity and the viewer negotiates spacial immersion in the work.

Works often take shape as installations and live activities that translate data visualizations of large quantities of socially-resonant information into material, gestural and poetic form.

Network, Domestic Intervention

Since November 2009, site-specific versions of Network have been created in Chicago for an unused store front downtown and a gallery space at Hyde Park Art Center. For What it is, a version of Network will be created to inhabit the entire house that is the project space and artists’ live-work space and extend out into the garden.

Visualizing the idea that we simultaneously live in a real and virtual world, and that the virtual is infinitely expansive, Network uses large quantities of electric yellow twine (tied in patterns based on both social network structures and Internet network infrastructure) to suggest a virtual network landscape cutting through an otherwise ordinary space.

Artists/curators/residents Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes will also live with the work in their home for a month, negotiating their routines around it. A series of photographs will document their activity for the project catalog.

Sara Schnadt is a Chicago-based artist working in new media, installation and performance art. She has shown her in work in Chicago at Hyde Park Art Center, Pop-Up Art Loop temporary gallery series, 12×12: New Artists New Work at the MCA Chicago, Looptopia, the Site Unseen Performance Festival, Balloon Contemporary, and at Antena Gallery. National and international shows include Exchange Rate public projection series in LA and New York, Upgrade! – Chain Reaction in Skopje, Macedonia, CINEA Paris, FreeManifesta in Frankfurt, and the Busan Biennale in Busan, South Korea.

View more installation photos here.

Sol LeWitt, 2 Part Composite, 1971
Serigraph edition 59/60
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1972

August 7, 2010 – February 27, 2011

Although wall drawings represent the foundation of his practice, Sol LeWitt’s works on paper, sculptures, artist’s books, and writings on Conceptual art were equally important to his oeuvre. Perhaps the artist’s most radical gesture was to transport the image from a confined two-dimensional surface (the paper) onto an expanded architectural field (the wall), imbuing it with a sensitivity to site and space. However, these other aspects of his practice, particularly his prints and drawings, consistently formed a parallel vein.

This exhibition in the Clifton Hall Link complements the forthcoming installation of the artist’s graphite wall drawing on the museum’s staircase. Consisting of a range of works on paper and books by the artist in the Gallery’s Permanent Collection, as well as ephemera and other materials, it will provide additional context for the wall drawing and reflects the museum’s longstanding interest in collecting works in depth by this seminal artist.

Julian Dashper in New Caledonia, July 2008

August 7 – September 4, 2010

MINUS SPACE is honored to announce the memorial exhibition Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life. The exhibition marks the one-year anniversary of the New Zealand artist’s death and it will feature a single work by Julian entitled Future Call, as well as written tributes to him by more than 70 artists internationally.

Julian Dashper is one of the most significant reductive artists of his generation. He was one of MINUS SPACE’s earliest international collaborators and supporters, starting around the time of our inception in 2003. Julian has had a core presence in our project ever since. Renowned for his generosity to others, he was highly esteemed both as an artist and individual, and is dearly missed by his family, friends, and the community of artists. As evident in the written tributes to him by artists to be included in the exhibition, Julian’s practice extended well beyond the walls of his studio. He was a “husband, father, friend, partner, collaborator, teacher, mentor, and advocate”. His life and work directly impacted hundreds of artists and others around the globe. His influence and legacy will continue for many years to come.

For Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life, MINUS SPACE will present Julian’s work Future Call consisting of a single telephone installed in the gallery that is periodically called from New Zealand, which is 16 hours ahead of New York City, only to be left ringing and unanswered. Traditionally completed by Julian, Future Call will be performed throughout the exhibition by Julian’s wife, artist Marie Shannon.

In addition, more than 70 artists and other individuals from around the globe contributed texts to the exhibition, including personal notes, memories, anecdotes, criticism, correspondence, poems, and elegies:

Soledad Arias, Marcus Bering, Channa Boon, Ralf Brög, Henry Brown & Millicent Borges Accardi, Mary-Louise Browne, Vicente Butron, Melanie Crader & Mick Johnson, Christoph Dahlhausen, Kasarian Dane, Judy Darragh & Rosanna Albertini, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget & Rossana Martinez, Ali Duffey, Daniel Feingold, Linda Francis, Alicia Frankovich, Zipora Fried, Andrea Gaskin, Daniel Göttin & Gerda Maise, Michelle Grabner, Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery, Vaughan Gunson, Jenny Halliday, Lynne Harlow, Miriam Harris, Gilbert Hsiao, William Hsu, Simon Ingram, Kyle Jenkins, Ian Jervis, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, James Juszczyk, Steve Karlik, Mark Kirby, WJM Kok, Keira Kotler, Elodie Lesourd, Stephen Little, Joshua Lux, MariaMaria, Jackie Meier, Moreno Miorelli, Dane Mitchell, Victoria Munro, Geoff Newton, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Salvatore Panatteri, Carrie Patterson, Nathan Pohio, Gwynneth Porter, Mel Prest, Linda Roche, Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Erik Saxon, Karen Schifano, Marie Shannon, Sandra Smith, Barbara Strathdee, Clary Stolte, Robert Swain, David Thomas, Mandy Thomsett-Taylor, Tilman, Jan van der Ploeg, Machiel van Soest, Erica van Zon, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Isha Welsh, Marcus Williams, Emi Winter, Rachael Wren, Patricia Zarate, and others.

Fittingly, Julian Dashper was born on February 29, 1960 (leap year day). During his career, he mounted more than 140 solo exhibitions of his work worldwide, including in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2001, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to be an artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. A 25-year retrospective of Julian’s work, entitled Midwestern Unlike You and Me, curated by Christopher Cook and David Raskin, traveled the United States during 2005-2006, making stops at the Sioux City Art Center, IA; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, NE; and Ulrich Museum of Art, KS. Julian’s work was included in our comprehensive group exhibition MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in NYC in 2008-2009. Julian died on July 30, 2009, and is survived by his wife Marie Shannon and their teenage son Leo.

SUPPORT
We would like to thank artists Marie Shannon, Victoria Munro, and Jan van der Ploeg for their tremendous assistance in organizing this exhibition. We would also like to thank all of the artists who contributed heartfelt texts to the show. MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

PRESS
Summer Group Shows, by Robert Shuster, Village Voice, August 25, 2010
Julian Dashper: It Is Life at MINUS SPACE, by Tana Mitchell, PROCESS Blog, August 18, 2010
Julian Dashper (1960-2009): It Is Life at MINUS SPACE, James Kalm Report, August 8, 2010
A Must-See, Artlog, August 7, 2010
Artlog’s Top Art & Culture Picks, Huffington Post, August 4, 2010
Be Prepared to Go With the Flow, by Adam Gifford, New Zealand Herald, July 31, 2010

MINUS SPACE
98 4th Street, Buzzer #28
Brooklyn, NY 11231
> directions

Melanie Crader, Sky Blue Doily…I only keep the formal ones…
later throwing them away…I realized that I was curating my trash…, 2008
Enamel and hand cut paper
12 x 12 inches

July 29 – September 9, 2010

Melanie Crader
A native of Louisiana, now residing in Houston, Crader explores fashion, gender, social class and identity. This body of work, which she has named Take Away Project, offers a series of printed stories which viewers are encouraged to take with them. Crader believes stories change from teller to listener, thus creating a fractured narrative, giving each story a life of its own.

Katy Heinlein
By creating simple and theatrical sculptures, Heinlein generates interplay between gravity, tension and movement. She uses cloth as her medium because it can be both vague and suggestive, as well as partially revealing. Her work is about mystery and obscurity, the seen and unseen.

A painting in progress at Douglas Melini’s studio

“PR was introduced to the paintings of Douglas Mellini from The Difficult Shapes of Possible Images, the 2006 show he organized at ZieherSmith, that was a collective preview of some of the most interesting NYC-based artists working with abstraction today. We dropped by his Bushwick studio earlier this summer to talk painting and gain some perspective into his working process…”

Daniel Hill discusses his work with Melville House curator, Jim Osman and moderator, Matthew Deleget, co-founder of MINUS SPACE on the occasion of Hill’s exhibit, Print, at Melville House Gallery on June 9, 2010.

Print is an exhibition of Daniel Hill’s recent digital prints that use photography, painting and printmaking to investigate surface and light and their role in the formation of images. The work is a meditation on the nature and meaning of the digital print in the context of the perplexing network of abstraction, illusion and representation.

Daniel Hill has been exhibiting in New York City for over 30 years. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He has been the recipient of a fellowship in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts and a project studio residency at Painting Space 122 here in New York. He is a member of American Abstract Artists and is an Assistant Professor at Parsons The New School for Design.

Works from the 25 – 25 IS (2010) on the floor at SNO
(l to r, t to b) Tilman, Tallman, Heerkens, Hallard, Hsiao,
Arts, Voskuil, Winkler, Andrews, Roux, Dahlhausen,
Van Der Graaf, Deleget, Van Der Aa

August 7-29, 2010

Solo Installations
Guido Winkler & Iemke van Dijk

25 -25 IS Box
The 25 – 25 IS box contains work of 25 artists at 25 x25 cm. The edition consists of 75 boxes. Available at 395 EUR / 575 AUD. Participating artists include: Justin Andrews, Linda Arts, Chris Ashley, Sanne Bruggink, Christoph Dahlhausen, Matthew Deleget, Rene Eicke, Billy Gruner, Brent Hallard, Jose Heerkens, Gilbert Hsiao, Arjan Janssen, Sarah Keighery, Alexandra Roozen, Leopoldine Roux, Giles Ryder, Clary Stolte, John Tallman, Tilman, Richard Van Der Aa, Iemke Van Dijk, Jasper Van Der Graaf, Henriette Van ‘t Hoog, Jan Maarten Voskuil and Guido Winkler.

IS Group Show
Participating artists include: Jose Heerkens, Henriette van ‘t Hoog, Arjan Janssen, Jasper van der Graaf and Jan Maartin Voskuil

Installation view of James Hyde, Stuart Davis Group
Pierogi / The Boiler, Brooklyn, NY, 2010

James Hyde with Phong Bui

David Reed In Conversation with Phong Bui, by Phong Bui

Donald Judd and 101 Spring Street at Nicholas Robinson Gallery, by Phong Bui

Steve Karlik, Flip, 2010
From the Tension and Compression series
Glass sheets with enamel paint
18 x 48 x 1/4 inches

August 1-22, 2010

Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space
Pacific Northwest College of Art
Main Campus Building
1241 NW Johnson Street
Portland, OR 97209

M5 explores the intersections and mutual interests of five artists who have exhibited at Brooklyn’s MINUS SPACE: Don Voisine, Patricia Zarate, Steve Karlik, Nancy White and Rossana Martinez, combined with two of the Northwest’s most historically relevant abstract practitioners Francis Celentano and Mel Katz.

“The connection between these artists is direct since Katz was once Karlik’s professor and Celentano is a pioneer of the Op Art movement first coined in the 1960s, though perceptual art has existed prior and since. Also, since so many Portland artists are interested in these ideas surrounding minimalism, perceptual and reductive art practices I felt it was valuable to expose these two groups to one another,” says Jeff Jahn, curator of the exhibition.

MINUS SPACE is an international web platform, itinerant international curatorial program and Brooklyn alternative space who in 2008 had its five-year retrospective at P.S.1. Curator Jeff Jahn is co-founder of PORT, an online catalyst of critical discourse focused on contemporary art in Portland. Jahn is a curator, cultural historian, critic and artist who has been published and exhibited internationally.

Since its founding in 1909, Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) has become a leader in innovative educational programs that connect students to a global perspective in the visual arts and design. In addition to its nine Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, PNCA offers graduate education with an MFA in Visual Studies, as well as an MFA in Applied Craft and Design developed in collaboration with Oregon College of Art and Craft.

PNCA is actively involved in Portland’s cultural life through exhibitions and a vibrant public program of lectures and internationally recognized visiting artists, designers and creative thinkers. With the support of PNCA+FIVE (Ford Institute for Visual Education), the College has a partnership with the nationally acclaimed Museum of Contemporary Craft. For more information, visit www.pnca.edu.

Press Contacts:
Leslie Miller
External Relations Specialist
Pacific Northwest College of Art
lmiller@pnca.edu
503.821.8959

Becca Biggs
Director of Communications and Public Programs
Pacific Northwest College of Art
bbiggs@pnca.edu
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SUPPORT
MINUS SPACE extends a heartfelt thanks to artists Jeff Jahn and Steve Karlik for their tremendous work on this exhibition. Our additional thanks goes to the staff of the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space, Pacific Northwest College of Art, for their assistance.  MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

PRESS
Interview with Jeff Jahn, ArC: Art & Concept blog, August 19, 2010
First Thursday Picks August 2010, PORT – Portland art + news + reviews, August 3, 2010

Christoph Dahlhausen, Study for intervention, 2010

July 31 – October 31, 2010

Curator: Lesley Harding

This project by Christoph Dahlhausen (Germany) and David Thomas (Australia), their second collaboration, takes the form of a series of minimalist and subtle interventions in the transitory spaces and often overlooked zones at Heide.

Employing a range of materials—paint, mirror, reflective metals, vinyl, colour and light—within the site and architecture of the Museum, the artists encourage active looking and engagement and connect experiences of the exterior and interior, nature and culture, macro and micro. They also pose questions about how perception is affected by time, space, light, movement and materiality.

Click to read complete panel discussion

PowerHouse Presents… Resource: Where Abstract Art is (From) -– a virtual panel moderated by Rossana Martinez, founder and curator of Minus Space, and organized by the curators of Source–Susan Ross and Melissa Staiger. Source completed its run at The Halls at Bowling Green on May 28th. The show presented a mix of seven artists: Glen Cunningham, Mark Dagley, Laura Fayer, Molly Herman, Lori Kirkbride, Ben LaRocco and Rachael Wren. While each has a practice that fits neatly under the umbrella of “abstraction”, the breadth of their styles and influences ultimately explodes any attempt at easy categorization.

Rossana Martinez: Allan Kaprow said, “The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.” Guide us through a day when you find inspiration and time to create.

Molly Herman: Ideally, a painting day for me will begin by practicing yoga to get focused. Then, on my walk to the studio, I may notice the morning light on a bright bodega awning, or maybe a neon sign glancing off brick walls or lighting the water, etc. In Brooklyn, I’m always aware of the landscape’s broken grid — the incidental architecture shaped by time, human hands and nature.

In my studio, I think about building a painting. I conceive a painting while painting. I turn the canvas and often work on the floor. I stain, brush, stipple, scrub and trowel the paint. The paint stroke is a visual and rhythmic measurement (of the hand and body) with a logic that the painting is built upon, layer by layer. Color creates space and rhythm. some colors are deeply stained into the canvas, but appear to pop forward because of their saturation, other colors are painted in thick impasto and come forward as texture. In a way my painting process is like moving to remember or to conjure an impression of a glimpsed moment.

Laura Fayer: I have a live/work space so the line between my art and my life is truly fluid and indistinct. I live with my art. I might be passing through the studio into another room when I think of a mark that should be made, or glimpse a patterned piece of paper that I suddenly realize should be collaged onto something else. I allow those realizations to happen in a fluid way and act on them even if my original intent in crossing through the room was not to work on a painting.

Ben LaRocco: Well, I think Kaprow is right. My studio is next to my kitchen and sometimes I eat tuna sandwiches while I paint…