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…”

March 12 – April 18, 2010

Christopher Henry Gallery is pleased to announce Friends in High Places , an exhibition of abstract painting and sculpture by seventeen contemporary artists, organized by participants Zach Needler and Adrian Ting.

Conceived as an organic interchange, Friends in High Places, explores the implicit connections within a community and takes as an article of faith that a fluid curatorial approach can yield a comprehensive catalog of practices and principles. The project began with a select number of artists who were asked to recommend artists they felt were making strong abstract work, who were then asked to make their own recommendations. The result is a show that while strikingly varied in form and professional experience reveals a common conceptual framework behind artistic tendencies and methods. Surprising synergies between the organic and the modular, the excessive and the minimal, and the intuitive and the formal are affirmed.

Friends in High Places features work by Ernesto Burgos, Angie Drakopoulos, Jason Duval, Jack Featherly, Elisa Lendvay, Michael Mahalchick, Chris Martin, Thomas McDonell, Douglas Melini, Zach Needler, Julie Phillips, Julia Rommel, David Shaw, Michael St. John, Jessica Stockholder, Adrian Ting and Tamara Zahaykevich.

Installation view at MINUS SPACE project space, 2009

Matthew Deleget: Where did the paintings in your exhibition at MINUS SPACE begin?

Douglas Melini: Well, you were actually involved in the dawn of the new work. As you know during the summer of 2007, I had just finished preparing work for your exhibition Machine Learning and as fate would have it, my studio flooded, destroying close to a year’s worth of paintings, most of which were set for your exhibition. For me it was a pretty traumatic event. You know, it’s one of those things that can result in a number of outcomes. One can retreat and become very angry or negative, maybe even bitter over something like this, or one can engage with it and make sense of the situation, create meaning out of it. And for me, my studio practice is way too valuable to let this type of event take me in any direction other than forward.

For years I’ve been interested in folk arts and crafts, and it’s played a significant role in my painting practice in some form or another for the last 12 years. When I began to think about making new paintings after the flood, I began to consider the idea of a talisman and how it might function in relationship to painting. At the time I wasn’t quite sure how it would function, but I knew that I was headed in that direction. Shortly after I finished the earliest versions of the paintings, I visited a friend down in North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I saw many barns in the countryside dotted with large geometric images and they actually looked close to the images that I was painting. Neither of us was sure exactly what these images on the barns represented, but I remembered the hex signs that the Pennsylvania Dutch had used as protective symbols for they’re barns and figured that they were being used in a similar way.

My studio practice has always been about letting personal events and experiences filter into my work in one way or another and I liked the idea of an abstract painting having talismanic powers. I know that the idea of a painting as a talisman may seem like a leap of faith or something, but making paintings requires a belief in something that’s not necessarily tangible. One has to have faith in the practice, a kind of focus or trust in the act of painting, hoping that it will all eventually lead somewhere. To be truthful things were happening in a very organic way and I was just trying to pay attention to everything. It all seemed to make sense to me. I guess that’s how the paintings for MINUS SPACE began.

Untitled (Abstract Painting No. 14), 2009
Acrylic on canvas with hand-painted frame
23 x 19 inches

Matthew: The new bilaterally symmetrical forms in your paintings elicit a fierce kaleidoscopic effect, a kind of folding, centrifugal space. Your paintings also feature a brand new element in your work — elaborate, hand-painted frames. All of the frames are restricted to two colors, and present diamond patterns on the front face of the painting and fine stripes on the sides. Tell me about them.

Douglas: Yeah, I wanted to create a space that was constantly moving back and forth, a space that was folding and unfolding, but I wanted it to also exist as an overall image. I thought about how a kaleidoscope works, breaking up and fracturing a space and I really wanted that sort of dynamic in the paintings. With the frames, the initial idea for them began organically as a result of the paintings damaged in the flood. Although the damage was throughout, the majority of it was on the sides. I had used this black gaffers tape to keep the sides clean, and apparently the tape has an ink in it which makes it black, and when the water hit it, it bled all over the sides. This damage made me think a lot about the sides of the painting, I guess you could say that a seed was planted, and because of this, I started to think of frames and what it means for a painting to be framed.

So, when I began to think and plan the new works, I imagined them with frames from the start. I knew I wanted the new paintings to function more like interiors and the frames really allowed me to achieve this, creating a border, a kind of viewfinder type of space, keeping the information on the inside. And you know, I really like the turtle. It’s a very interesting creature. The shell is obviously a protective layer, but it’s such a distinct part of their overall appearance. What would a turtle look like without its shell? Anyway, when I set out to paint the frames, I wanted a pattern that would repeat around it. I used a diagonal to divide the spaces, creating a triangular motif for the outside that I could use as an opposition to the information on the inside. And the bands on the sides are very important because they activate the sides, so that when you move around the object it remains visually active from all vantage points.

Detail of Untitled (Abstract Painting No. 13), 2009
Acrylic on canvas with hand-painted frame
23 x 19 inches

Matthew: I find it really compelling how you took what was in every sense a terrible, even tragic, incident involving your new work — works you never even had the opportunity to show publicly — and used it as an opportunity to challenge yourself and push your future work even further. In addition to the framing, your use of color in these paintings is moving in a new direction too. The works now feature iridescent for the first time, which appear to sit on top of your other colors, including metallics, fluorescents, gray values, pinks, turquoise blues, etc. How are you using color in these new works?

Douglas: My overall approach to how I think about color and what I want it to do in my paintings has stayed the same. I’ve always been interested in color in relation to the social and issues of taste, but my approach has never been a scientific one. It’s always been very intuitive. I’m influenced by everything that I see in the world and I try to incorporate my experiences into my paintings. I often use color as a way to translate those experiences, always hoping to create a unique and unusual chromatic space.

In my earlier work, it was more of a balancing act with the color. With the newer paintings, the color is much more paired down and my process for arriving at the colors in any one painting has changed. I spend a lot of time thinking about the individual colors that I’m going to use way before the painting starts. It’s a real process and I try to remain very focused during this time, meditating on color. Once I get a good idea of where I want to go, I start to make swatches of the colors I want to use, adjusting them accordingly. Some are mixed, some are layered, and some colors are straight out of the tube. It’s usually a combination of all three.

The patterns function like vessels. They carry the color. Each component of the pattern is a color and the combination of these different colored lines is going to make an overall hue, creating specific vibrations. I have to consider this and be very selective in order to achieve the look or feel I’m after. Needless to say, changes are often made and I try to remain as open as possible while constructing the painting to allow for the necessary color adjustments. I’m going for an overall feel, but there is a lot of experimenting to get to that place. Although it’s mostly intuitive, there is some applied science involved when arriving at certain colors. The metallic and iridescent paints are new additions to the work. I want the surfaces to become more activated and I like the way the metallics create a certain kind of surface depth, while the iridescent paint allowed for a shifting in color as you moved from side to side of the work, which I love.

Installation view at MINUS SPACE project space, 2009

Matthew: I want to pick up on a couple of interesting ideas you just mentioned. You describe your approach as less about science and more about intuition. Similarly, in previous conversations with you at your studio, you also described your paintings and your use of pattern as subjective, specifically in comparison with earlier Op Art precedents, such as Bridget Riley and Richard Anuszkiewicz. You described their use of pattern to me as coming from a more scientific or mathematical point of departure. I think many viewers commonly associate pattern painting with a kind of fundamental objectivity. Talk a bit about how you arrived at using pattern in your work. And do you think of yourself as a pattern painter?

Douglas: Patterning is a natural process of the world. In many ways patterning is part of our everyday life. As an example, I wake up every morning and experience a type of patterning within my own body. You know those patterns you experience when you rub your eyes in the morning? They’re actually an entoptic phenomenon called a phosphene. It’s considered a natural self-induced hallucination, and it’s the perception of light without light actually entering the eye. Sometimes it’s caused by pressure applied to the closed eyes.

I’ve been involved with patterning in my work for a long time, but I never consciously set out to investigate it in any specific way. It was something that I was always drawn to within my painting, something that seemed to keep coming up in different forms. There is math involved with my work, but it’s also intuitive, no specific formulas or anything like that. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. I guess I’m more specific about picking certain elements and then using them continuously in the work to try create a space. I do have some rules in place, but I think most artists set up some basic rules that they work from. To be honest, I’m not so sure that the artists you mentioned would be completely objective, just like my work is not completely subjective. But, I think what I do would be closer to alchemy than science.

Douglas Melini and his brother, circa 1977

I’ve always been interested in the way patterning is used in quilting and I attempt to achieve that quality in my work. I also like the way that the pattern allows me to keep the color in my paintings organized. Like I mentioned earlier, they’re vessels. You know an interesting thing happened to me regarding the pattern I use in these newer paintings. When I began considering how I wanted these paintings to function, I knew I wanted to eliminate all of the other patterns I was using in the older paintings and focus on just one. The grid pattern I am using was immediately my choice because of its versatility, but this pattern somehow seemed significant in a peculiar way. Sometimes in the beginning, we don’t always know why we initially respond strongly to certain things. Well, several months after I had finished the first couple of paintings, my mom sent me this box of photos from when I was kid. As I’m going through the box, I see this photo of me and my brother in our bedroom, and I was blown away by the wall paper, because it’s almost the exact same pattern that I am using in these paintings. I mean I went to sleep and woke up to this image for the first thirteen years of my life, so it makes sense that it would have burned into my mind. It was definitely information that had been absorbed prior to me using it in my paintings, and truthfully I liked the fact that I had this personal connection to the image.

As far as whether I consider myself a pattern painter, no I never have, I like things to remain more open, and specific labels really prevent that. I’ll leave the whole boxing and categorizing thing to someone else.

Douglas Melini’s exhibition It Flows Over Us Without Meaning continues at MINUS SPACE project space through December 5, 2009.

Douglas Melini, Untitled (Abstract Painting No. 14), 2009
Acrylic on canvas with hand-painted frame
23 x 19 inches

October 24 – December 5, 2009

MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce a new solo exhibition by Brooklyn painter Douglas Melini. Douglas will be exhibiting a group of new acrylic on canvas paintings with hand-painted frames. Known for his use of densely visual patterns, Douglas’ new work continues his decade-long investigation into pattern and color. In contrast to his previous work, which utilized asymmetrical all-over fields of pattern, his new paintings elicit a kaleidoscopic effect and feature single, bilaterally symmetrical forms constructed from juxtaposed grid and stripe patterns.

His new paintings also feature a new visual element not present in his previous work: elaborate, hand-painted frames. Douglas views the frame and painting in his new work as a single object. Resembling a frieze, the painted frame defines the outside perimeter of the painting, acts as a viewfinder for the forms depicted in the painting, and enables the painting’s surface to function as an interior space.

Douglas Melini has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, White Columns, Danese Gallery, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, Southfirst (all NYC), Gallery Sonja Roesch (Houston, TX), Richard Heller Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), Rocket Gallery (London, UK), DaimlerChrylser Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), and Illeana Tounta Gallery (Athens, Greece), among others. In 2008, Douglas was awarded a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work has been featured in the New York Sun, New York Observer, Artnet Magazine, Mallorca Magazin, and P.S.1 Newspaper, and included in corporate and private collections worldwide, including The Daimler Collection, The Progressive Corporation, The Phillip Schrager Collection, and Wellspring Capital Corporation.

In addition to his artistic work, Douglas has also curated several exhibitions over the past several years, including The Difficult Shapes of Possible Images at ZieherSmith Gallery in New York (2007) and I Can Read in Red, I Can Read in Blue, I Can Read in Pickle Color Too, a VIEWLIST project for MINUS SPACE (2009). Douglas holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, CA, and a BA from the University of Maryland, MD.

TEXT
Douglas Melini: In Conversation, by Matthew Deleget, November 2009.

PRESS
Brooklyn: MINUS SPACE & Tompkins Projects, KCLOG, November 19, 2009

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

MINUS SPACE
98 4th Street, Buzzer #28, Brooklyn, NY 11231
between Hoyt + Bond | Carroll Gardens / Gowanus
Hours: Fridays & Saturdays, 12-6pm
Directions

Our third viewlist exhibition is conceived by New York painter Karen Schifano.

Bulletin Board: Inspiration Information*
Thoughts on Inspiration
Conceived by Karen Schifano

The word “inspire” (originally meaning “to infuse with breath”) is a verb, but can also transform itself into a noun or adjective. It’s very active, and yet also implies being receptive, even demands openness, a readiness to receive, and a sharpening of perception and awareness. From one thing, there is a direct connection to another thing, a kind of touch that is nurturing, rich and full of promise. Potential becomes realization; we wake up rejuvenated, re-energized, and ready for action.

This group of inspirational flotsam and jetsam from our homes and studios is incredibly varied, running the gamut from a poetic quote to the restoration of a house, from the image of a computer desktop to strips of colored tape on a wall. In some instances, there’s a surprising leap from the image seen here to the finished work, in others there is a clear and recognizable relationship. I hope that as you are intrigued by an image, you will click on it to reveal the caption or thoughts of the artist, and then go to the individual websites linked to each name. Through a dialogue about how the mysterious process of getting from A to B or even Z unfolds for each of us, new avenues of search can open up, and we can be re-inspired by this “Inspiration Information”.

* by Shuggie Otis

Participating Artists (left to right, row by row):

Stephen Maine | Richard Bottwin | Paul Corio

Joanne Mattera | Kevin Finklea | Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery

Linda Arts | Erik Saxon | Henry Brown

Rory MacArthur | Melanie Crader | Matthew Deleget

Daniel Argyle | Li-Trincere | Chris Ashley

Linda Francis | Sylan Lionni | Shinsuke Aso

Douglas Melini | Brent Hallard | Lynne Harlow

Guido Winkler | Michael Zahn | Karen Schifano

Lynne Eastaway | Daniel Göttin | Simon Ingram

Daniel Feingold

Our first viewlist exhibition is conceived by Brooklyn-based painter Douglas Melini.

I Can Read in Red, I Can Read in Blue, I Can Read in Pickle Color Too
Conceived by Douglas Melini

Trying to make sense of color can be so difficult. I guess a big reason is that there has been very little written about it to help us out. I’m always grouping my experiences, and ideas about color together; making lists of my thoughts, categorizing them, hoping that somehow this process will help me achieve a better understanding of what color means to me.

Some of those meditations are about the relationship between color and humor, and that sense of playfulness that can happen with color, shape, and space. For a long time now, I’ve had this theory that the way we look and think about color has been influenced by the late Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss. For those of us born after the 1950s, Dr. Seuss books became one of our first formal encounters with color.

For me, it was the first time I began to assign meaning to color. The words, shapes, and feel of color in those books all seemed wrapped up together and functioned as a whole.  As a kid I would often open those books just to breeze through the images. That excitement is something I have never forgotten. Sometimes when I see certain works of art I feel like I am having that experience all over again.

For the last 12 years or so, I’ve made mental notations of artworks that fall into this space and this group of images is a collection of those thoughts, a representation of those experiences.

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

Douglas Melini, A Sensible Ecstasy, 2008
Acrylic on canvas / acrylic on wood, 181×115 cm

November 20, 2008 – January 10, 2009

While Mondrian strived to finish his last work, Victory Boogie Woogie, endlessly repainting over the surface of the canvas, he realized that the end of WWII might have been at hand, but that his own war with geometric abstraction was to continue, its fierceness unabated. The sense of disquiet and confusion generated by developments on the scene of 1944 politics was such that the painter would not manage to finish the work, or provide an answer to the question of the grid, leaving instead the battle to be fought and won, or lost for that matter, by artists in the next generation.

As I began to recruit the ‘fighters’ that would take part in ME(N)TAL, I decided that they would have to come from places where the political and economic fabric of society has unequivocally been disrupted, so that they would be familiar with a sort of ‘do-or-die’ strategy. Only then would they be worthy of recruitment into this elite corps. Of course, the irony of the whole endeavour is, precisely, that these artists have been nurtured by technology and digital media (in other words, media based on the notion of the network), even though this may not be readily apparent in their (com-)plex-like (com-)positions. Not even the most die-hard of dreamers can any longer hold on to the illusion of freedom/autonomy, which was proven to be just that as early as 1930, when the newly invented electronic microscope showed the human brain to be a hyper-network of neurons and synapses, subsequently called (rather humorously) the ‘autonomic nervous system’… How can one then disentangle oneself from such a ‘mesh’ as an artist?

Curated by Dimitrios Antonitsis, participating artists include Michael Bevilacqua, Torben Giehler, Doug Melini, Shoplifter, Daniel Subkoff and Mika Tajima.

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

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

An exhibition examining pattern painting in the information age, featuring four NYC-based artists Henry Brown, Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsiao & Douglas Melini.

The title of the exhibition, Machine Learning, is inspired by a part of artificial intelligence concerned with the development of algorithms that allow computers to “learn”.   Machine learning recognizes patterns within massive sets of information and has a wide range of real-world applications, the most ubiquitous of which is the Internet search engine.

The exhibition Machine Learning examines the relationship between abstraction and the information age, and presents four artists making new forms of pattern-based painting. The exhibition raises multiple questions.  How has abstraction responded to the irresistible siren call of the Internet?  How has abstraction digested the appearance, logic, and behavior of the Internet?  And finally, with every conceivable kind of information now available at the click of a mouse, what are contemporary abstract artists’ core concerns?

The exhibition originated at The Boyden Gallery, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, MD in September 2007, and then traveled to The Painting Center, New York, NY in December 2007. A color catalog accompanies the exhibition.

SUPPORT
Machine Learning is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.  The exhibition, tour, and catalog are made possible by grants from the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Foundation, The Golden Rule Foundation, and Louise & Anne Abrons Foundation.

PRESS
Machine Learning: Reductive artists get to the point, by Olivia Flores Alvarez, Houston Press, March 9, 2007
The Front Row: Machine Leaning at Gallery Sonja Roesch, Interview with Henry Brown, Matthew Deleget & Gilbert Hsiao, Houston Public Radio (KUHF.FM), April 24, 2008

An exhibition examining pattern painting in the information age, featuring four NYC-based artists Henry Brown, Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsiao & Douglas Melini, with a special project room installation by Michael Zahn. 

The title of the exhibition, Machine Learning, is inspired by a part of artificial intelligence concerned with the development of algorithms that allow computers to “learn”.   Machine learning recognizes patterns within massive sets of information and has a wide range of real-world applications, the most ubiquitous of which is the Internet search engine.

The exhibition Machine Learning examines the relationship between abstraction and the information age, and presents four artists making new forms of pattern-based painting. The exhibition raises multiple questions.  How has abstraction responded to the irresistible siren call of the Internet?  How has abstraction digested the appearance, logic, and behavior of the Internet?  And finally, with every conceivable kind of information now available at the click of a mouse, what are contemporary abstract artists’ core concerns?

The exhibition will later travel to Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, TX.  A catalog accompanied the exhibition.

SUPPORT
Machine Learning is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.  The exhibition, tour, and catalog are made possible by grants from the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Foundation, The Golden Rule Foundation, and Louise & Anne Abrons Foundation.

PRESS
Intelligent Design, by John Goodrich, New York Sun, December 27, 2007

An exhibition examining pattern painting in the information age, featuring four NYC-based artists Henry Brown, Terry Haggerty, Gilbert Hsiao & Douglas Melini.

The title of the exhibition, Machine Learning, is inspired by a part of artificial intelligence concerned with the development of algorithms that allow computers to “learn”. Machine learning recognizes patterns within massive sets of information and has a wide range of real-world applications, the most ubiquitous of which is the Internet search engine.

The exhibition Machine Learning examines the relationship between abstraction and the information age, and presents four artists making new forms of pattern-based painting. The exhibition raises multiple questions. How has abstraction responded to the irresistible siren call of the Internet? How has abstraction digested the appearance, logic, and behavior of the Internet? And finally, with every conceivable kind of information now available at the click of a mouse, what are contemporary abstract artists’ core concerns?

The exhibition will later travel to New York and Houston. A color catalog accompanies the exhibition

SUPPORT
Machine Learning is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts. The exhibition, tour, and catalog are made possible by grants from the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Foundation, The Golden Rule Foundation, and Louise & Anne Abrons Foundation.