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
971.255.5511

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

Mark Dagley, Final Sequence, 2007
Acrylic on canvas, 10 x 10 inches

April 22 – May 8, 2010
Floor Talk: Wednesday, April 21, 12noon

The Engine Room
Massey University
East End Block 1
Wallace Street
Wellington, New Zealand
T: 801 5799 x62170
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12-4pm
web site

MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce the group exhibition Escape from New York at The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, from April 22 – May 8, 2010.

Curated by Matthew Deleget, the exhibition surveys reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single small work, as well as an open letter to the local community of artists.

Escape from New York originated at Sydney Non Objective, Sydney, Australia, in 2007, and later traveled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008 and Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University in Melbourne in 2009.

Participating Artists:
Soledad Arias, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Bibi Calderaro, Mark Dagley, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Julio Grinblatt, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Steve Karlik, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Manfred Mohr, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Robert Swain, Li-Trincere, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

Also on view at The Engine Room: Collective Monochrome: Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery.

SUPPORT
MINUS SPACE extends a BIG THANKS to artists Simon Morris (NZ) and Billy Gruner (AUS) for traveling the exhibition to Wellington. Additional thanks goes to the staff of The Engine Room and Massey University for their support of the exhibition.

MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

Paul Henry Ramirez, BLACKOUT (installation view), 2010
Mural, paintings, relief, furniture & lighting
A Centennial Commission, Newark Museum, NJ
Photograph by Raymond Adams

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Reception 6-7pm, Program 7-8pm

Free, pre-registration required.
Call 973.596.6550 or e-mail: rsvp@newarkmuseum.org

Newark Museum
Billy Johnson Auditorium
49 Washington Street
Newark, NJ 07102
www.newarkmuseum.org
directions

Matthew Deleget will moderate a discussion with an international group of contemporary artists including Lenora de Barros, Paul Henry Ramirez and Don Voisine. The artists will talk about the legacy of constructivist abstract art as it relates to their work and explore why abstraction continues to be a vital mode of expression.

This panel discussion is presented in honor of Elizabeth Brady Richards.

Matthew Deleget is an abstract artist, curator and writer. He is the director of MINUS SPACE, a gallery and web site project devoted to reductive art in Brooklyn, New York.

Lenora de Barros is a poet and visual artist based in São Paulo, Brazil, whose work includes video, poetic performance, photography and sound installation. Having exhibited throughout Brazil and abroad, she is interested in exploring the abstract visual, aural and material signs of language.

Paul Henry Ramirez is a US artist noted for his signature style of fleshy and pop-inspired abstraction. BLACKOUT: A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez is a site-specific installation in which he has transformed the Newark Museum’s Charles Engelhard Court with abstract, biomorphic forms and playful, bold color.

Don Voisine is an abstract painter based in Brooklyn, New York. President of the New York-based American Abstract Artists group that was founded in 1936, he works with a visual vocabulary of pared-down geometric form to explore the possibilities of visual space within abstraction.

RELATED EXHIBITIONS
On view through 05.23.2010

Constructive Spirit
Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s – 50s
Constructive Spirit investigates the formative geometric abstract art movements of Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. This exhibition is the first to explore the conceptual connections and exchanges that existed between abstract artists from South and North America. Featured are more than 90 paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films drawn from the collection of the Newark Museum, along with loans from public and private collections and galleries across both continents. Artists include Alexander Calder, Joaquín Torres-García, Alejandro Otero, Gyula Kosice, Lygia Clark, Ellsworth Kelly, Geraldo de Barros and many others.

BLACKOUT
A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez BLACKOUT: A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez is a site-specific installation that allows viewers to experience painting as an environment that one can enter. Using the Newark Museum’s Charles Engelhard Court as his canvas, Ramirez employs his signature curvaceous biomorphic forms amidst a profusion of pop-inspired colors in dialogue with the Court’s distinctive Beaux-Arts architecture. BLACKOUT is the fourth and final commissioned project initiated to celebrate the Museum’s Centennial year.

For more information, please visit www.newarkmuseum.org.

Work by Lawrence Keny

March 17 – April 10, 2010

Gallery 128 is presents the exhibition, “Geometric Themes & Variations”, curated by the painter Gloria Klein. Klein’s idea and intention was to invite artists who work within a geometric format using different materials. Geometric Abstraction remains fresh, visually pleasing and conceptually challenging.

The artists were invited from Ms Klein’s past and present contacts and longtime friendships, so the exhibition is as much personal as it is thematic. Exhibitors Clark Richert, Richard Kallweit, Charles DiJulio and Fred Worden are the originators of Criss-Cross, a Colorado-based artists cooperative which was formed in the 1970’s. Klein and George Woodman, friends of Criss-Cross, showed quite often with this group.

Richard Kalina, represented by Lennon, Weinberg, and Betty Woodman, represented by Max Protech, participated in Pattern & Decoration exhibitions in the early seventies.

Kazuko, the director of Gallery 128, introduced Lawrence Kenny, Michael Ottersen and April Vollmer to Gloria Klein.

Joanne Mattera recommended Steven Alexander. Both Mattera and Alexander are part of Geoform, an international online curatorial project dedicated to geometric structure in contemporary geometric art, edited by Julie Karabenick. Michael Knutson, Scott Malbaurn, Bruce Pollock, Richard Bottwin and Gloria Klein are also represented here. Edward Shalala and Don Voisine are members of American Abstract Artists.

Together these 20 artists represent a cross section and continuum of the expression of geometric form in two and three dimensions, from mathematically conceived and rigorously rendered compositions to a looser, more intuitive approach to line, angle and curve.

Don Voisine, Untitled (XX), 2010
Oil on Paper, 4 x 6 inches
Courtesy of McKenzie Fine Art, NYC

Curated by James Carroll of the New Arts Program, this three venue survey will feature Don Voisine’s work from 1988 to the present. Northampton Community College will showcase work from 1988 to 2006, in particular paintings on canvas and wood. Reading Area Community College will feature paintings on styrofoam and prints, as well as one diamond shaped painting. The New Arts Program will feature recent work.

Northampton Community College
Bethlehem, PA
March 1-31, 2010

Reading Area Community College
Reading, PA
March 1-31, 2010

New Arts Program
Kutztown, PA
March 19 – May 1, 2010

Kenneth Noland staining ‘Horizontal Stripe’
paper piece at the paper mill
Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, NY, 1978
Photographer: Lindsay Green

“I’ve followed other artists gratefully and I hope I’ve also followed my own path….sometimes along side other artists. I’ve also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist. I love art and I love the life of art and I only wish that the real life of art could affect social change in a good way and that the invasion of commercialism in art and the invasion of entertainment into all areas of our lives hadn’t brought some of the worst features of our culture into the realm of art.

—Kenneth Noland
“The Bennington Years” symposium, University of Hartford, March, 1988

I heard of Kenneth Noland’s death through a text message from my friend and fellow painter Don Voisine: Kenneth Noland RIP. This isn’t the sort of thing artists kid about, not Don’s idea of a practical joke; still, I clung to a small shred of doubt. Moments later, I googled Don’s exact words and found that Noland had indeed passed away. Well, I figured, at least he made it to his 85th year. Not a bad run, not a bad run at all. But it’s difficult to fathom: one of the last great colorists of the 20th century is no more…”

Don Voisine, Chemical Moment, 2009
Oil on wood, 16×17 inches

“Brent: Upon entering the gallery, your first show on the West Coast, San Francisco, Gregory Lind, immediately you become aware of all that is color. Oddly it is not the black that pushes its presence first. But like a good friend, faithful, the blacks unfold at a different speed, which require the intimate. If dark be the turbine then color is the outwardly expressive, and is the meter. In the exhibition space this is what travels across to us in calibrated splendor.

Don: Your response sounds similar to the reaction people have when coming to my studio for the first time. Having seen a painting or two in various group shows they would expect the studio to be a dark and perhaps foreboding place. Often the first words uttered are, “Wow, look at all this color!” I think this explains why salon style installations of my work have been done in a few exhibitions. It replicates the experience of seeing the work in the studio…”

Don Voisine, Seven-Zip, 2009
Oil on wood, 30 x 22 inches

November 4 – December 23, 2009

Gregory Lind Gallery presents a series of oil paintings on wood by New York artist Don Voisine, whose work is defined by its exceptional nuance, sophistication, and reductive visual aesthetic. Distinctively architectural in style, Voisine’s pieces consist of central expanses of overlapping rectangles or squares painted in black and set against white fields. These hard-edged forms are bordered top and bottom or left and right by vibrant bands of contrasting colors of varying width. While the surfaces of his pieces are smooth, they are also not entirely uniform, as the interplay between transparency and opacity manufactured by the variance of paint density is always at work with his visual planes.

Voisine’s pictorial planes connote a meditative self-containment that renders Voisine’s images almost sculptural and object-like. His aesthetic lexicon is one that is both formal and rigorous with its adherence to strict geometries, but it is also deeply refined and meditative in its evocation of empty or deep space, as well as movement. Voisine’s works are unvarnished and rectangular or square in shape, while the shapes within the paintings are also rectangular, square or rhombi. The works are composed on flat surfaces that offer no traditional perspective, thereby creating the illusion of endless depth. Despite Voisine’s restricted palette and compositional consistency, his work evinces an enormous amount of freedom within constraints, in facets such as weight, tone (in working with varying grades of color, such as matte charcoal black, deeper carbon black, and shinier black surfaces), direction, and spatial illusion.

Don Voisine attended the Portland School of Art and Concept Center for Visual Studies in Portland, ME. He received an honorary BFA from the Maine College of Art in 2000. His recent exhibitions include McKenzie Fine Art, New York; Icon Contemporary Art, Brunswick, ME; and Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn, NY. His recent group exhibitions include “New From Hamburg, New York, Berlin,” pp projects, Hamburg, Germany; “Planes of Abstraction,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME; “Escape from New York,” Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; and “Minus Space,” P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY. His work has been written about in The New York Times, Village Voice, and Chicago Tribune. Collections include Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, University of Richmond Museum, VA. He lives and works in New York.

November 6, 2009 – January 29, 2010

Participating Artists: Rolf Rose, Don Voisine and Susanne Jung.

 

Don Voisine, Buzz, 2009
Oil on wood
17 × 17 inches

“A week after the opening of his exhibit of a new group of paintings, which will be on view at McKenzie Fine Art Inc, located at 511 West 25th Street, till June 6, 2009, the painter Don Voisine visited the Rail’s Headquarters to talk with Assistant Art Editor Ben La Rocco, and contributing writer Craig Olson about his life and work.

Ben La Rocco: Lets talk about your early life in Maine.

Don Voisine: I was born in Fort Kent, Maine in 1952. Fort Kent is a northern border town on the western-most edge of New Brunswick just 10 miles from the Quebec border. The majority of townspeople are of Acadian descent and speak French, the principal industry is potato farming and lumbering. My father died when I was three and my mother never remarried. She worked two jobs to support and raise three kids. From the time we were ten we also worked part time and after school…”

 

May 8-29, 2009

RMIT University School of Art and Sydney Non Objective present contemporary non-objective practice from MINUS SPACE New York. A survey of reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Presenting a single work from each artist, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with RMIT Non Objective.  The exhibition originated at Sydney Non Objective in 2007, and later travelled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008.

Participating Artists
Soledad Arias, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Bibi Calderaro, Mark Dagley, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Julio Grinblatt, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Steve Karlik, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Manfred Mohr, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Robert Swain, Li-Trincere, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn 

SUPPORT
MINUS SPACE is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts. Funding for this exhibition has been generously provided by the Golden Rule Foundation.

MINUS SPACE extends a heartfelt thanks to artists David Thomas and Billy Gruner for bringing the show to Melbourne!  Additional thanks to Daniel Argyle for his assistance.

 

 

 

Installation view
Photo: Matthew Septimus

Closes Monday, May 4, 2009

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible.

Exhibiting Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Sharon Brant, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Inverted Topology, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Juan Matos Capote, Salvatore Panatteri, Karen Schifano, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine & Douglas Witmer

PLEASE NOTE: Our exhibition in P.S.1’s Boiler Room space closed on January 26, 2009.

 

Don Voisine, Connection, 2007
Oil on wood, 17 x 26 inches

April 30 – June 6, 2009
Opening: Thursday, April 30, 6-8pm

McKenzie Fine Art presents an exhibition of new paintings by Don Voisine. The artist has participated in several group exhibitions at the gallery in recent years, including a two-person show with Mark Dagley in 2007; this will be his first solo outing at the gallery. A catalogue with an essay by Deven Golden will accompany the exhibition.

Voisine hails from Maine and has lived and worked in New York City for over three decades. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally since the early-1980s. His geometric oil on wood paintings can be described as straightforward and reductive: rectangular bands of black dominate the center, overlapping lighter fields of beige or white. The hard-edged forms are bordered by bright bands of contrasting color of varying width. In some instances the paintings are bisected to produce two fields of form and color that play against one another.

Using a strict geometric language, limited palette and consistent compositional format, the artist achieves a remarkable diversity within a narrow framework. For example, the central black areas in the paintings, rather than appearing monolithic, have a subtle yet rich variety of tones, weight, and illusion of depth or flatness, all achieved by employing directional brushwork and variations in surface finish. Voisine’s edges are taut and sharp, and there is an inner tensile strength expressed in the forms. Even in the emphatic diagonal movement in his Xs, there is a feeling of containment within the picture frame, and an implication of spatial depth. The scale of the works ranges widely, from small twelve-inch squares to long five-foot horizontals. The surprisingly bright color bands provide a rich contrast to the somber predominant blacks, and add weight and movement to the paintings. The playful colors can be inspired by a locale or an event, such as the yellow and green tones of Michelle Obama’s outfit worn on inauguration day.

Voisine’s paintings are notable for their nuance and sophistication, as well as their quiet drama. In his essay for the catalogue, Deven Golden notes:

“Geometric and flat as they are, and as counter-intuitive as it may be, it is clear that the painting’s dimensionality is striking, insistent, and multi-faceted. It is a dimensionality that resonates beyond itself, moving up from the black centers, evoking thoughts that are complex and deep as they are open-ended: what are the boundaries of the world around us, what are the limits of seeing, how does the infinite reconcile with our own finite existence.”

 

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6-8pm

Wine bar and hors d’oeuvres

Gary Snyder Project Space
250 West 26th Street
4th floor, between 7th & 8th Ave.
New York, NY 10001

for inquiries please call 646 325 4581

Tickets
$25 NOS Donor
$50 NOS Patron
$100 NOS Benefactor, includes
or more acknowledgment in 2009 catalogue

Raffle
Win a DAN WALSH work
Tickets: 1 for $30, 2 for $50, 5 for $100
All other works for sale $500 and under

Artists:
Andisheh Avini, Tanya Barr, John Beech, Marina Berio, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Eric Brown, Angela Cumberbirch, Mark Dagley, Christoph Dahlhausen, Stephen Dean, Matthew Deleget, Anne Deleporte, Gabriele Evertz, Manuela Filiaci, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Douglas Gordon, Daniel Göttin, Nora Griffin, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Steve Karlik, Tania Kitchell, Karl Klingbiel, Lluis Lleo, Rossana Martinez, Norman Mooney, Matt Mullican, Scott Ogden, Salvatore Panatteri, Jan van der Ploeg, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Judy Rifka, Gary Rough, Jackie Saccoccio, Karen Schifano, Kate Shepherd, Motoe Shiratori, Jason Silva, Melissa Staiger, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Ian Tyson, Don Voisine, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Dan Walsh, Rob Wynne, Michael Zahn & Harry Zernicke

* List in formation

Special thanks to Susan Madden, John Melick and Gary Snyder for their assistance.

If you are unable to attend and would like to make a fully tax deductible contribution,
please make check payable to Non-Objectif Sud send to:

Non-Objectif Sud
560 Lorimer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA

Non-Objectif Sud is a non-for-profit 501(c) (3), all financial contibutions are tax deductible
to the fullest extent of the law.

 

Linda Francis, Neutron Star, 2008
Oil on Wood, 72 x 72 inches

March 27 – April 26, 2009

Janet Kurnatowski presents the exhibition Linda Francis, Don Voisine, Joan Waltemath, Michael Zahn. This show takes a focused look at four paintings, each one emblematic of a practice whose commitment to the medium has been a specific force in the development of an individual oeuvre. What the works have in common is the creation of an aesthetic reality based on the processes of cognition where notions of literality are inverted, and used as symbolic referents. Whether objectified or implied, aleatoric or given, rational or irrational, the referent in each work operates as a portal through which the experience of thought leads to insight. Meaning is shifted away from the referent, and painting is neither defined by nor limited to the cultural phenomena that gave it body.

Francis, Voisine, Waltemath and Zahn have exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. Linda Francis’ last solo show, “Interference” was at Minus Space Project Space, NYC. Don Voisine’s next solo show will open on April 30th at McKenzie Fine Art in Chelsea. Joan Waltemath’s last solo show, “Torso/Roots” was at Galerie von Bartha, Basel. Michael Zahn’s solo show “Michael Zahn as Michael Zahn” was at Eleven Rivington, NYC.

 

Installation in cafe space

Exhibition in cafe space continues until May 2009.

(Boiler Room exhibition closed on January 26, 2009.)  

 

MINUS SPACE
Curated by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
A Museum of Modern Art Affiliate
Long Island City, NY  

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

Participating Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Marcus Bering, Hartmut Böhm, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Henry Brown, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Mark Dagley, Julian Dashper, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Simon Ingram, Inverted Topology, Kyle Jenkins, Mick Johnson, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Lotte Lyon, Gerhard Mantz, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Douglas Melini, Manfred Mohr, Salvatore Panatteri, Dirk Rathke, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

Ongoing Performance
Bibi Calderaro: PRESENT
Thursdays, 1-4pm, and Saturdays, 12-3pm, in the P.S.1 Cafe

 

Exhibition poster

October 19, 2008 – May 4, 2009

(Daniel Göttin’s ceiling work in the cafe continues through summer 2009)

We are delighted to announce our exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. P.S.1 is one of the oldest and largest non-profit arts centers in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art.

The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary.

We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible.

Participating Artists
Soledad Arias, Shinsuke Aso, Marcus Bering, Hartmut Böhm, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Henry Brown, Vicente Butron, Bibi Calderaro, Melanie Crader, Mark Dagley, Julian Dashper, Christopher Dean, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Eastaway, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Daniel Göttin, Julio Grinblatt, Billy Gruner, Terry Haggerty, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Simon Ingram, Inverted Topology, Kyle Jenkins, Mick Johnson, Steve Karlik, Sarah Keighery, Andrew Leslie, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Lotte Lyon, Gerhard Mantz, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Douglas Melini, Manfred Mohr, Salvatore Panatteri, Dirk Rathke, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Tilman, Li-Trincere, Jan van der Ploeg, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

Ongoing Performance
Bibi Calderaro: PRESENT
Thursdays, 1-4pm, and Saturdays, 12-3pm, in the P.S.1 Cafe

Interview
MINUS SPACE: The Art of Reduction, by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Newspaper, Fall/Winter 2008

Press / Blogs
Drunkard’s Walk vs. PMU, Ethan Ham blog, December 18, 2008

MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA, Abstract Contemporary Art Blog, December 18, 2008

Top Ten 2008, by Jerry Saltz, Artnet Magazine, December 15, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10)

The Year in Art: The Top Nine Shows (and One Event), by Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, December 7, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10)

Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery and P.S.1, by Paul Corio, November 16, 2008

Interview with Simon Ingram / MINUS SPACE exhibition at P.S.1, New York, Vernissage TV, November 10, 2008

MINUS SPACE, by Eva Lake, November 10, 2008

MINUS SPACE at P.S.1, The James Kalm Report, November 2, 2008

Update, Henri Art Magazine, November 1, 2008

Reductive Art at P.S.1, by Jon Meyer, October 25, 2008

Gallery Credits
Hartmut Böhm courtesy of Bartha Contemporary, London, UK
Richard Bottwin courtesy of Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn, NY
Sharon Brant courtesy of Elizabeth Moore Fine Art, New York, NY
Melanie Crader courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Mark Dagley courtesy of Abaton Garage, Jersey City, NJ
Julian Dashper courtesy of Esso Gallery, New York, NY
Matthew Deleget courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Gabriele Evertz courtesy of Ober Gallery, Kent, CT
Daniel Feingold courtesy of Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, Sao Paolo, Brazil
Kevin Finklea courtesy of Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY; Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Daniel Göttin courtesy of Hebel_121, Basel, Switzerland
Julio Grinblatt courtesy of Ruth Benzacar Galeria de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Galeria Baro-Cruz, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporanea, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Terry Haggerty courtesy of Andreas Grimm Gallery, New York, NY
Lynne Harlow courtesy of Cade Tompkins Editions, Providence, RI
Gilbert Hsiao courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Andrew Huston courtesy of Elizabeth Moore Fine Art, New York, NY
Simon Ingram courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
Mick Johnson courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Steve Karlik courtesy of Anita Schwartz Galeria de Arte, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Andrew Leslie courtesy of Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia; John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
Sylvan Lionni courtesy of Freight + Volume, New York, NY
Lotte Lyon courtesy of Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
Rossana Martinez courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX
Manfred Mohr courtesy of Bitforms Gallery, New York, NY
Dirk Rathke courtesy of Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX 
Analia Segal courtesy of DPM Gallery, Miami, FL; Guayaquil, Ecuador
Tilman courtesy of CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art, Brussels, Belgium
Jan van der Ploeg courtesy of Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Don Voisine courtesy of Abaton Garage, Jersey City, NJ; McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY
Michael Zahn courtesy of Eleven Rivington, New York, NY

Additional Credits
Poster & Flash Animation: Level Design Studio

 

 

 

 

Don Voisine, Delayed Green, 2007
Oil on wood panel, 32 x 63 inches

July 12 — August 9, 2008

 

Don Voisine, Standard, 2007
Oil on wood, 11 x 11 inches

June 13 — August 2, 2008

Thomas Robertello Gallery presents Unpainted – Recent Abstract Painting. Participating artists include Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee, Stephanie Serpick, and Don Voisine. Each artist in this group exhibition proves that abstract painting can continue to provide a vital and necessary voice, visually, conceptually, and aesthetically. Expanding boundaries and defining what a painting can be, the artists reveal that beauty, purity of concept, design, intelligence, and visually compelling treatment of the medium have much to offer in the present.

 

2008 Artists’ Fellowships
New York Foundation for the Arts, NYC

Gilbert Hsiao
Painting Fellowship

Gilbert Hsiao
Encounter, 2006
Acrylic on wood panel
30 inches diameter

 

Douglas Melini
Painting Fellowship

Douglas Melini
Tight Resemblances, 2005
Acrylic on canvas
26 x 22 inches

 

183rd Annual Invitational Exhibition
National Academy Museum, NYC

 

Edward Shalala
Leo Meissner Prize in Graphics

Edward Shalala
Untitled: String as Painting in Nature, 2006
Photograph

 

Don Voisine
H. W. Ranger Fund 
Purchase Award

Don Voisine
AVA, 2006
Oil on wood
50 x 40 inches

May 24 – June 7, 2008

H29 presented Words Fail Me, a group exhibition featuring artists Steve Karlik, Li-Trincere & Don Voisine. The exhibition was curated by Matthew Deleget, artist and co-founder of MINUS SPACE in Brooklyn, New York.

Abstraction has a tenuous relationship with language. It often eludes description. Words Fail Me included three New York City-based painters, each of whom contributed one painting to the exhibition.

 

Installation view (left to right):
Li-Trincere, Steve Karlik & Don Voisine

 

Don Voisine, Argyle – Green, 2008
Oil on wood, 16 x 16 inches

April 2-26, 2008

This group show was curated by Rose Marie Frick, and features work by artists for whom she has had an enduring interest. As an independent consultant and curator, and owner of the Frick Gallery in Belfast, Maine, she has carefully observed the artists in this show for several years.

Abstract artist and musician Mark Dagley has been working in New York and Europe for over twenty-five years. Drawing from various postwar art movements and developments: Op Art, Washington Color School, Monochrome Painting, as well as European modes of art making, such as Support/Surface and Radical Painting, Mark has created a diffuse, yet particularly American body of work.

Last spring Mark retrieved a group of paintings he had in storage at his parents’ home in Washington, D.C. Although dating from 1986-87, the paintings look to me as if they could have been done yesterday. The paintings do not look like historical pieces, reflective of a specific time, and they would not look out of place in a gallery today. I’ve found in them pop associations to video game, skate board, and surf cultures, though they still preserve a tie to the aforementioned precedents.

 

DV: Let’s go back a bit… Mark, you studied at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C. Did you study with any of the Washington Color people: Leon Berkowitz, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring?

 

MD: I was at the Corcoran during spring and summer of 1975, taking night and weekend classes in color theory and painting, while still attending high school. Raymond Wilkins, my art instructor at Oakton H.S., suggested these classes, since my interest in painting and sculpture went beyond what he was teaching. So they let me in. Maybe he pulled some strings. I don’t know.

 

Ed McGowin, Children, 1969
Vacuum formed plexiglass, 10 modules, each 4 foot radius

I took classes with Ed McGowin, whose early vacuum form plastic pieces still look good, and with Lowell Nesbitt, when he was available. They pretty much let me do what I wanted after the first few weeks. I was painting geometrically, more or less, from the beginning f my studies. Not much has changed with my work since then.

I was very grateful–and relieved–that not only Wilkins but the Corcoran instructors had taken me seriously, even though I was only seventeen. They showed me a lot of valuable techniques and studio practice: from cleaning brushes to stretching large canvasses, to using masking tape and architectural templates and tools. Most importantly, I was taught how to apply acrylic and oils in different consistencies to get the effects I was seeing in the work of the D.C. color painters.

My teachers also pointed me to the essays, books and magazines that any young artist should be familiar with. I was brought up to speed fairly quickly, shown that this was a real profession with a living history.

Leon Berkowitz was chairman of the Corcoran’s painting department at that time. Gene Davis, who was quite a star then–about as big as a D.C. artist could be–was there too. Anne Truitt was still alive. Sam Gilliam and William De Looper were quite well known. Even as a student, it was clear to me that a great moment in painting had just passed in the city. Morris Louis had only died a dozen years previously. Color Field was still very much in the air. It was the official party line, so to speak.

 

Color Field Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington D.C., Anne Truitt 17th Summer (left), Paul
Reed #1D (center), Gene Davis Wall Stripes No.3 (right)

P Street was still the center of the D.C. art world then. The Henri Gallery, located there, had a Thomas Downing or a Gene Davis on the walls up until its closing, in the mid-90s. It was run by an old school grand dame who called herself Henri, pronounced with a French accent, though she otherwise sounded–and most likely was–completely American. Things were still 60s cool then, or at least she was. She wore sunglasses and fabulous baubles at all times of the day. I finally introduced myself to her about fifteen years ago and told her about my teenage trips to her gallery. She ended up taking some of my paintings on consignment, but died shortly thereafter. She left her vintage glove collection to my wife, a fellow glamour gal for whom she’d developed a fondness.

 

DV: You also studied at the Boston Museum School. The Museum of Fine Arts regularly held major exhibitions of the Color Field artists. As an art student in Portland, Maine in the early 70s, I would come down to Boston on field trips and see Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Ken Noland, Jules Olitski, or Larry Poons at the MFA, as well as Joan Snyder’s stroke paintings and Katherine Porter’s early zigzags at the galleries.

 

MD: Yes, I did attend school there for a short while. I have to say that it was, in many ways, a grave error. The dialogue with working artists that I had experienced in D.C. was sorely lacking. While Professors Natalie Alpert and Sandi Sloan showed some enthusiasm for the dozen of so geometric paintings and the selection of wooden reliefs that my father had helped me transport in a U-Haul trailer, there was little other interest in Color Field or geometric painting at the Boston Museum School.

 

Mark Dagley
Planks, 1975
Wood, 23 X 38 inches

I couldn’t accept the school’s empty academic formalism. It seemed, in this environment, that painting as I had known it had been played out. Though I appreciated their positive feedback, I found Alpert’s paintings overly fussy and precious, and Sloan’s work at the time wasn’t very compelling to me. I missed the intrigue, the eccentricity, the cut and dry quality that is particular to the best of the D.C. painters.

 

Gene Davis
Red Dog, 1961

It was big news when visiting artists like Alan Sonfist or Nancy Holt would arrive on campus. The students were supposed to assist them with a project, get some hands-on with a “pro.” I was the only one who helped Alan make 8-foot-high compost heaps in the school courtyard out of wet autumn leaves, lunchroom garbage and dog shit. I don’t think he liked the Museum School much after that. Neither did I. Guess I should’ve enrolled in the course they called “Winning!”

Didn’t receive much, if anything, in terms of practical advice. After being told by instructors whose work was provincial at best, artists without any professional experience, that I would have to begin again–”Slow down a little, kid”–I went my own way, moved my art materials out of the student classrooms and started painting in my studio apartment. I never went back to the painting department, or showed anyone my geometric work again…until I moved to New York in 1979.

The winter of ‘76 was so cold that the water in my toilet bowl actually froze. That’s when I started to plan my escape to the Big Apple.

 

DV: You are also very active as a musician. While in Boston, you were in an art rock post punk band, The Girls, which released a single produced by David Thomas on Pere Ubu’s own Hearthan label. Later, after you moved to New York, you formed a blues-based punk avant garde noise band, Hi Sheriffs of Blue, which also had an acclaimed underground reputation.

 

MD: Luckily the Museum School had a small electronic music studio with a few decent synthesizers and some other good gear. I hung out there with the other misfits, stoners and rock & rollers. At least they understood that the place was a total drag. I also discovered the photography and video studios, and the performance department, where all the cute arty girls were hanging out. That’s where I learned about Acconci, Beuys, Nauman, the Velvet Underground, Kraut Rock, Eno.

I started going to the New England Conservatory of Music whenever John Cage gave a talk, also to MIT, which had the best videography department in town. Between 1976 and 1979, I met many of the artists and musicians I would later run into in the East Village: Pat Hearn, Mark Dirt, David Bowes, Nan Goldin, Jack & Dan Walworth, John Miller, Peter Dayton.

We would check out parties and events over at Massachusetts College of Art, which was only a few blocks away. That seemed more like the Corcoran–you know, a real art school. I remember being impressed that you could buy art supplies right on campus. No such luck at the Museum School. And Mass Art had an actual stage, a sound system, lights–the whole works. Many of the instructors were professional artists, like Peter Campus and Don Burgy. We would take our videos over and do performances there. Peter Campus would show his latest work along with the students.

By 1976 punk rock had entered everyone’s radar. I had seen Daved Hild, a classmate in electronic music lab, perform at the Museum School in gessoed clothes and white sunglasses with a woman named Pseudo Carol. Since I played guitar, I asked if I could join them. They said yes, but our band days were quite shortlived. Pseudo Carol moved on, and, after playing out a while as a duo, Daved and I set out to find some artists who wanted to start a Captain Beefheart/Kraut Rock type of group. Robin Amos became both our synthesizer and bass player, which wasn’t terribly convenient. We realized we needed a fourth on bass. Daved mentioned a guy named George, who was bringing his guitar to the T-shirt factory they worked at: a really good classical guitarist, funny as hell. A few weeks later, George Condo was in. We chose the most awful name we could think of that still sounded punk: The Girls.

 

The Girls, circa 1978
From left to right: Mark Dagley, George Condo,
David Hild, Robin Amos
Photo: Margie Politzer

David Thomas heard us perform about a year later and brought us to Cleveland, into the same studio Pere Ubu worked out of. He produced our only single, which he released on his Hearthan label in the spring of 1979. By November of that year, the band had dissolved.

George Condo and I left Boston for New York on an Amtrak train in late December with maybe $400 between us. After getting set up in the East Village, we started another group called Hi Sheriffs of Blue, modeled after the 1950s electric blues bands from Chicago and Detroit. We tried to play not only hard electric blues but punk, fake jazz, funk and rap. We were together for about three years.

 

DV: You continue to make original and uncompromising music today, often combining slide guitar and electronic effects with fractured rhythms. How does your music feed your visual art making and vice versa?

 

MD: I’ve been a musician since childhood. We always had a piano in the house, and music lessons were required from day one. I started playing the guitar when I was around eight years old. I was in garage and surf bands with my brothers in grade school, and then during high school in folk, rock and blues bands.

I try to keep whatever I’m involved with musically a little primitive, very clean and simple, but I don’t know if my art really informs it that much. The things I’m interested in doing with painting just don’t apply to my music. I have no problem with the formalist viewpoint: a separation of the arts may be a good thing.

 

DV: The paintings you are showing at MINUS SPACE were exhibited at Tony Shafrazi’s in 1987. What was going on in the art world at the time you made these? How do you think this body of work related to Neo-Geo or other painting trends going on in New York at the time? Can you tell us about when and where they were made and how you arrived at this particular look?

 

MD: Well, by 1981 or ‘82 it was pretty clear to anyone living in the East Village that we were in the midst of some sort of art boom. Condo’s career took off, and by 1984 he was selling out shows with Pat Hearn, who we both knew from Boston. Soon after, he moved to Europe, where he enjoyed even greater success. Things were happening really fast, at least for him and many, many others.

As for me, it was difficult making contacts, meeting artists who did the sort of work I was interested in. I visited André Emmerich Gallery (which is where I thought I belonged) frequently, always with slides in tow, though I never had the nerve to show them to anyone. Finally, at an East Village exhibition, I saw a red monochrome painting by Olivier Mosset. It was tough and uncompromising, and it was one color. This I understood.

 

Olivier Mosset
Untitled, 1970
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

I introduced myself to Olivier, who then introduced me to Steven Parrino. I ended up sharing a studio space with Steven for seven years.

Around the same time–1985 or 1986–I met Alan Uglow, Li Trincere, Max Gimblett and Barry X Ball. We did a fine group show at The Mission Gallery in the East Village. Soon after that I was in another group show with Olivier and Bill Beckley at Tony Shafrazi’s gallery. Tony offered me a two-person exhibition with James Nares the same year. As he was doing brisk sales with my work, I guess he felt comfortable enough to offer me the entire gallery. I had my first solo exhibition there in September 1987.

While preparing for that show, I knew I would have to pull out all the stops, treat art like a full-time job. I was at the studio by 9 a.m. every day, building my own shaped canvases, working with enamel paints, fiberglass, stainless steel sheets and whatever scraps I could afford from the surplus shops on Canal Street.

I started to experiment with surfaces, polishes and varnishes. I tried buffing and sanding different types of paint, but had trouble achieving the desired result. I wanted to make something that had a surface like a custom car, a surfboard, or a piece of lacquered furniture. I craved a California fetish finish, like a John McCracken sculpture, but I wanted it on a painting. It also had to be a shaped canvas that was informed by classic geometric painting. Most importantly, it could not look the least bit cynical. This was a tall order.

My carpentry skills at the time were primitive at best, plus I had no real tools or workspace. I realized I needed to up the production level to get the results I envisioned. After a few weeks of material trials, I ended up finding the polymer resin material that restaurant and bar owners use to coat the tops of tables. It worked perfectly, drying to a sleek mirrored surface. I then found a good carpenter who could make the shapes exactly as I wanted, down to the smallest detail.

 

Mark Dagley, Work in process, 1987

I would plot the shapes out on graph paper, then make a small cardboard maquette. A few of the designs were anthropomorphic, but most were non-referential. Color decisions were sequential, sometimes random. I worked on the cardboard maquettes until the finished wooden structures returned from the carpenter.

After finishing three or four of these works, I realized I needed quite a bit more space. I ended up subletting William Burrough’s Bunker on the Bowery from John Giorno during the summer of 1987 and was able to complete the entire exhibition there.

 

Mark Dagley, Studio view, The Bunker, 222 Bowery, August, 1987
Photo: Beth Phillips

DV: Op Art has been getting a lot of renewed interest and visibility lately. Recent museum and gallery exhibitions have thoroughly surveyed the movement, from its quasi-scientific origins in the 60s, through its Post-Structural deconstruction in the 80s, to its current incarnation. You participated in Post-Hypnotic, a 1999 traveling exhibition exploring the resurgence of optical effects in the work of an international group of artists. When did you begin using Op phenomena as a model for making new paintings? How does it  continue to generate new work?

MD: After the Shafrazi exhibition, I took a temporary studio in Cologne, Germany to prepare for an exhibition at the Hans Strelow Gallery in Düsseldorf. I painted stripes and dots on unprimed canvas, something I’d done a decade previously. I also started to make my own stretchers again.

 

Mark Dagley, No Title, 1989
Acrylic on unprimed canvas
Collection: Foundation Prini

I produced the dot paintings by standing on a ladder over the canvas, which was rolled out on the floor, and letting the thinned paint rain down on it: This produced an unintentional moiré effect. Though I found the results quite interesting, I never really pursued their implications, but I guess my involvement with Op Art started there.

After working through a series of eccentric handmade shaped canvases and a group of torqued monochromes (which I exhibited in New York, at Stephanie Theodore Gallery, following a second show with Strelow), I attempted to locate areas of surface and support that had been overlooked in painting. I wasn’t terribly excited by the properties of paint, as were many of the abstract and geometric artists I met in Germany. I had developed more of an affinity with Blinky Palermo, BMPT, the Zero Group and Concrete Art.

 

Mark Dagley, Radical Structures
Kunstverein St.Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
21 August – 26 September 1993

The material qualities of the paint and its application became perfunctory for me. I really wanted that impersonal look, but, paradoxically, I wanted to achieve it painting by hand. Simultaneously–around 1990–I reduced my palette to red, yellow, blue, black and white. This was a little scary at first because, all the sudden, my work began to look like Mondrian knock-offs. But I could see ten or twenty paintings into the future, and I knew they’d never been done before, that this was unexplored territory.

I called these works Primary Sequences, as they were comprised of just that: a 12-inch red square, placed next to a 6-inch yellow square, then, next to that, a 3-inch square of blue, and so on. This led to a whole series of paintings based on sequences and systems. But one thing I felt was missing, or discarded from the foundation of 20th-century geometric art, was classical perspective, so I also started doing one-point perspective line paintings in primary colors. I immediately noticed that they had an optical effect. They reminded me of Raymond Loewy’s Shell logo and the shopping mall supergraphics I grew up with.

 

Raymond Loewy
Redesigned Shell logo, 1967

In 1995, after completing dozens of single-point perspective line paintings, I turned my attention to the dead center of a square canvas. My Corcoran training came in handy here. I began tracing dots in pencil with a circle template, as one long, spiral string. I started with the smallest hole that a pencil point would fit into, figuring I’d trace dots up to 1.5 inches. I don’t think I ever got that far.

It seemed that the drawing more or less made itself. After about a week, I had filled a 74 x 74 inch canvas completely. Then I painted the dots in: red, yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue… I knew from the start that there would have to be three of these paintings: one in primary colors, one in secondary, and one in black, white and gray. I still have to complete the one in secondary colors. Though they’re not difficult paintings to make, they’re extremely time-consuming.

Funny, I never set out to make Op Art. As far as my work is concerned, I much prefer the term systematic painting. The opticality is just the sexy part, the by-product of the real issue at hand, which is structure.

 

DV: Lastly, tell us about Abaton Book Company, which you run with your wife Lauri Bortz.

 

MD: I had my own record label, Tweet, for a brief time during the early 80s, and Lauri ran an independent film company and a small theater troupe in the late 80s, early 90s. We met in 1994, through George Condo, and launched Abaton Book Company in 1997, with a volume of Lauri’s one-act plays.

I’d always wanted to produce limited editions and artist books. Knowing so many interesting artists made it a natural move. We released a boxed set of twenty-five artist booklets called The Five and Dime, in celebration of the new millennium. Titles by Alix Lambert, Judith Fleishman, H.D. Martinez, Steven Parrino and me followed.

We expanded Abaton, adding a record label in 1999, which features singer/songwriters Marianne Nowottny, Julia Vorontsova, and Corbi Wright; jazz chanteuse Devorah Day; Indian classical singer/musician Veena Sahasrabuddhe; punk bands Shell, The Girls and Fuzzy Wuz She.

In 2003, we converted our garage into an art gallery, aptly titled Abaton Garage. We’ll be launching season five with a photo exhibition by Alix Lambert. There’s usually live music at Abaton Garage openings, mostly by artists on our label. And lots of food. Lauri always cooks up a storm.

 

Don Voisine is a Brooklyn-based painter and President of American Abstract Artists.

 

 

Don Voisine, Poised, 2007
Oil on wood, 20 x 20 inches

January 10 — February 9, 2008

Geometric Abstraction examines the variety and multiplicity of sources and expression in the work of six artists, all working with abstract geometric forms: Chris Gallagher, Kim MacConnel, Shari Mendelson, Ann Pibal, Jennifer Riley & Don Voisine.

 

Abaton Book Company releases it newest limited edition, a 7-inch lathe cut recording entitled Every Room (for 16 saxophones) by Ben Miller’s Nebrellim Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra.  Produced in a limited edition of 30 copies, each sleeve features two graphic images, (cover sleeve and insert) by MINUS SPACE artist Don Voisine.

 

September 8 — October 8, 2007

Sharon Brant, Untitled, 2000 
Enamel on canvas under handmade glass, framed, 24 x 24 x 2.25 inches

Curated by Kat Griefen, Director of AIR Gallery, from the membership of American Abstract Artists, the artists in Material Matter affirm the group’s openness to difference, both in form and theory, and its non-party line approach. Here, the organization’s legacy is manifested in the artists’ use of unlikely materials or use of traditional materials in unlikely ways. In itself, each work holds a multiplicity of meanings. Some challenge an aspect of American culture that privileges the answer over the question. Some choose the means over the ends. Each work is literally or figuratively open ended, subscribing only to its internal logic and suggesting one important aspect of abstraction’s currency – its potential to counter-balance the dogmatic.

The 22 artists in the exhibition are Alice Adams, Sharon Brant, Susan Bonfils, James O. Clark, Matthew Deleget, Gail Gregg, Lynne Harlow, Phillis Ideal, Marthe Keller, Stephen Maine, Nancy Manter, Rossana Martinez, Creighton Michael, Ray Oglesby, John Phillips, Lucio Pozzi, Leo Rabkin, James Seawright, Edward Shalala, Clover Vail, Rob van Erve, and Don Voisine. Works on view cover a range of mediums including painting, video, installation, and sculpture.

 

Installation view of works by Don Voisine

June 24 — September 24, 2007

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents the first of an ongoing series, Orpheus Selection, inspired by the museum’s unique basement boiler room and the classical myth of Orpheus, the bard who attempted, unsuccessfully, to rescue his bride Eurydice from the underworld. Like the poet’s descent into hell, Orpheus Selection: In Search of Darkness is an exploration into the unearthly and unknown, where both abstract and figurative works are charged with unsettling energy. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, installations, sculptures, video works, and photographs by an intergenerational group of artists who are primarily based in the United States. Curated by Phong Bui, the exhibition includes MINUS SPACE artist Don Voisine.

August 3 – September 2, 2007

A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single work, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with Sydney Non Objective.

Participating Artists:
Soledad Arias, Richard Bottwin, Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, Bibi Calderaro, Mark Dagley, Gabriele Evertz, Daniel Feingold, Kevin Finklea, Linda Francis, Zipora Fried, Julio Grinblatt, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Andrew Huston, Steve Karlik, Daniel Levine, Sylvan Lionni, Rossana Martinez, Juan Matos Capote, Manfred Mohr, Karen Schifano, Analia Segal, Edward Shalala, Robert Swain, Li-Trincere, Don Voisine, Douglas Witmer & Michael Zahn

> SNO 30 Catalog

SUPPORT
Escape from New York is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.  Funding has been generously provided by The Golden Rule Foundation.

 

 

 

Letters

Soledad Arias > view letter

Richard Bottwin > view letter

Sharon Brant > view letter

Michael Brennan > view letter

Bibi Calderaro > view letter

Mark Dagley > view letter

Gabriele Evertz > view letter

Daniel Feingold > view letter

Kevin Finklea > view letter

Linda Francis > view letter

Zipora Fried > view letter

Julio Grinblatt > view letter

Lynne Harlow > view letter

Gilbert Hsiao > view letter

Andrew Huston > view letter

Steve Karlik > view letter

Daniel Levine > view letter

Sylvan Lionni > view letter

Rossana Martinez > view letter

Juan Matos Capote > view letter

Manfred Mohr > view letter

Karen Schifano > view letter

Analia Segal > view letter

Edward Shalala > view letter

Robert Swain > view letter

Li-Trincere  > view letter

Don Voisine > view letter

Douglas Witmer > view letter part 1 / letter part 2

Michael Zahn > view letter

 

 

Installation views

May 11 — June 9, 2007 

Inspired by a line of text by Robert Smithson, this exhibition features MS artists Linda Francis and Don Voisine.  The show is curated by artist and writer Ben La Rocco.

 

Works by Li-Trincere & Don Voisine (left to right)

March 9 — April 8, 2007

A group exhibition featuring works by MINUS SPACE artists Li-Trincere and Don Voisine.