The Suburban, Oak Park, Illinois

January 22 – February 26, 2012

We are delighted to announce the group exhibition MINUS SPACE at The Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois. The exhibition features artists Mark Dagley, Gabriele Evertz and Gilbert Hsiao, and is conceived around the ideas of confounding pattern, spectral color, shaped supports, and divergent painting methods.

THE SUBURBAN
Founded in 1999, The Suburban is an independently run artist exhibition space. We give complete control to the artists in regards to what they choose to produce and exhibit. Thus it’s a pro artist and anti curator site. The Suburban is not driven by commercial interests. It is funded within the economy of our household. Its success is not grounded in sales, press or the conventional measures set forth by the international art apparatus, but by the individual criteria set forth by the artists and their exhibitions. In this, The Suburban is more closely aligned with the idea of studio practice than that of the site of distribution.

–Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam

Gilbert Hsiao, Kreuzberg Jump, 2009
Acrylic on wood, 116 x 59 cm

April 27 – June 16, 2012
Opening: Friday, April 27, 6-8pm

A solo exhibition by Berlin and NYC-based painter Gilbert Hsiao.

With his work, Ted Stamm draws as much from a Minimalist, hard-edge legacy as it does from the randomness and arbitrariness of his own life.  Seeing as Stamm sought to “eliminate any physical boundary in time or space”[1] between his life and his work, we must look at the two as inseparable.  His sleek manipulations of baseball diamonds and high-speed trains offer a glimpse into some of his passions, and his Wooster paintings preserve specific spatial memories from his time in New York.

After the introduction of European painting via the Armory show, several American artists sought to represent the city of New York in a new modernist vernacular. Georgia O’Keeffe’s portrayal City Night, 1926 demonstrates the dynamism of a highly modernized city with angular lines and stark contrasts—similar properties evoke speed and urbanism in Stamm’s work.  Likewise, speed and mechanization played a prominent role in the philosophy of the Futurists; Giacomo Balla’s Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913, conveys the seemingly imperceptible velocity of a being in flight.

Throughout his work, Stamm routinely adhered to the language of Minimalism, even as other painters increasingly turned to new forms of figuration and Expressionism.  He began using shaped canvases in the mid 1970s with his Wooster series; this experimentation with the physical structure of painting certainly echoes that of Frank Stella, among others.  Stamm’s legacy of starkly angular canvases can also be traced in the work of Li Trincere—who knew him personally—Robert Mangold, Ruth Root, and Steven Parrino.

Stamm’s austere color palette of black and white—or raw canvas, at times—also remains a hallmark of his work.  The raw canvas in works such as his Dodgers series contrasts sharply with the deep black Stamm used; this contrast was also invoked continually by John McLaughlin, among other hard-edge painters.  Turning to the color black due to its association with “badness or unconformity and rebellion,”[2] Stamm also used the color on account of its ability to cancel out any appearance of subjective brushstrokes, thereby reinforcing the materiality and objecthood of the canvas that it marks.  The high density of the color black Stamm used, which at times was mixed with graphite to accentuate its textural properties, gave his paintings a sense of gravity, echoing the iron works of Richard Serra.  Stamm’s installation of the works close to the gallery floor only reinforced this connection.

Working in the 1970s in New York, Stamm was certainly aware of Conceptual and Fluxus art practices.  His Tag Pieces demonstrate a connection to Conceptual artists like On Kawara, but they ultimately reflect his desire fuse his life and his art.  For each Tag Piece, Stamm would glue a textile tag—presumably found in his studio—to a page in a notebook and have an acquaintance mark it as they see fit.  After this, Stamm would repeat the process himself in a second notebook, this time marking information such as the date and persons involved.  The ritual This recording of daily events is but one strategy in his efforts to link his work with happenings in his own life, something Stamm achieved throughout his entire body of work.

[1] Tiffany Bell, “Painting for the Future,” in Ted Stamm Painting Advance 1990, exh. cat. (Brookville, NY: Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, 1986), 5.

[2] Ibid., 7.

VIEWLIST is our online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. VIEWLIST exhibitions are experimental and usually thematic, and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. With VIEWLIST, we’ve created a venue that focuses exclusively on ideas, a kind of idealized curatorial space, where exhibition budgets, loans and acquisitions of art works, timelines, and all other logistics are set aside.

Work by Gilbert Hsiao

November 12 – December 31, 2011

Gallery Sonja Roesch is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of work on paper by Gilbert Hsiao. The exhibition will open November 12, 2011 at an opening reception from 5-7pm, and close on December 31, 2011. Hsiao has been exploring the mechanics of visual perception since the 1980s. In his current works, light has become the subject, and these objects are meant to be experienced in changing light. There is not single optimal lighting situation; rather, the viewer’s experience of them depends on changing light and vantage points. The material or subject of the pieces are not as important as how they change reflected light.

This show will feature collages of perforated and layered materials. These are physical and visual filters that sift the light and color of the underlying layers. The pin-holed paper collages recall sparkling constellations, with small glimpses of the glittering paper underneath, by creating an effect of viewing light and color traveling from a great distance. Other works consist of meticulously layered stripes in tightly woven structures that create vibrating visual movement. The thicker, sponge-like constructions absorb direct light, intensifying and electrifying them. There is a visual “aha” moment when one views them from a distance, giving the sense of planets floating in deep space. Gilbert Hsiao currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany, after thirty years in Brooklyn, New York. He studied Art History at Columbia University before receiving his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently in Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany as well as in the United States, where he exhibited at P.S.1 in New York. Hsiao is a recent recipient of a fellowship in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and is represented in a number of private, corporate and public collections.

November 3-27, 2011

American Abstract Artists presents ABSTRACTION (Abstraction to the Power of Infinity), curated by Janet Kurnatowski. ABSTRACTION celebrates the perseverance of non-figurative and non-objective art, including the practitioners, pioneers and those currently working in the traditions of abstraction. This exhibition shows the recent work of 76 members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA), along with four guest exhibitors. The works exhibited span a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and digital computer art; vividly communicating with color, line, form and texture.

As one of the few artists’ organizations born of the Great Depression, the AAA was a pivotal force in the development and acceptance of abstract art in the US. The group’s continued vitality after 75 years is a testament to the power and reach of these non-objective art forms and points to an infinite future for abstraction…This exhibition is also a tribute to Will Barnet, an esteemed member of the AAA since 1954
and also the AAA’s first centenarian.

The artists included in the exhibition are:
Alice Adams, Steven Alexander*, Eve Aschheim, Martin Ball, Will Barnet, Dennis Beach*, Siri Berg, Emily Berger, Power Boothe, Susan Bonfils, Sharon Brant, Henry Brown, Marvin Brown, Kenneth Bushnell, James O. Clark, Mark Dagley, Matthew Deleget, Tom Doyle, Tom Evans, Gabriele Evertz, Kevin Finklea*, Heidi Glück, Vito Giacalone, John Goodyear, Gail Gregg, James Gross, Lynne Harlow, Mara Held, Daniel G. Hill, Charles Hinman, Gilbert Hsiao, Phillis Ideal, Julian Jackson, Roger Jorgensen, James Juszczyk, Cecily Kahn, Steve Karlik, Marthe Keller, Victor Kord, Irene Lawrence, Mon Levinson, James Little, Jane Logemann, Vincent Longo, Katinka Mann, Nancy Manter, Stephen Maine, Rossana Martinez, David MacKenzie, Creighton Michael, Manfred Mohr, Judith Murray, Sharyn O’Mara*, John Phillips, Corey Postiglione, Joan Webster Price, Raquel Rabinovich, Leo Rabkin, Ce Roser, Irene Rousseau, David Row, James Seawright, Edward Shalala, Babe Shapiro, Louis Silverstein, Robert Storr, Peter Stroud, Robert Swain, Richard Timperio, Clover Vail, Vera Vasek, Don Voisine, Merrill Wagner, Joan Waltemath, Stephen Westfall, Mark Williams, Jeanne Wilkinson, Thornton Willis, Kes Zapkus, Nola Zirin

Exhibition curator Janet Kurnatowsk is the owner and director of Janet Kurnatowski Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Since opening its doors in 2004, the gallery has maintained a strong focus on showing abstract art from emerging talent as well as mid-career and established artists. Special thanks to The Golden Rule Foundation for making this exhibition possible.

Installation view

October 4 – October 29, 2011

Curated by Mariangeles Soto-Diaz

Featuring works by Melanie Crader, Matthew Deleget, Anoka Faruqee, Michelle Grabner, Brent Hallard, John Hawke, Gilbert Hsiao, Pablo Manga, Thomas Martin, Leah Raintree, Claudia Sbrissa, Karen Schifano, Karen Schiff, Jessica Snow, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Robert Strati, Ann Tarantino.

Gifting Abstraction establishes an intimate economy within Soho20Chelsea gallery in which abstract objects have not yet turned into objectified commodities. The gift economy paradigm recognizes that there is value outside market forces, and that the gift renders forces and riches of its own. One of the perplexing aspects of the gift is that while its effect cannot be quantified, its intention is generally palpable: at its best, the gift generates a sense of interconnectedness. In this exhibition, artists’ labor stretches beyond the works themselves, as connective lines are symbolically rendered through the gifting process onto a relational dimension.

Gifting Abstraction questions the idea that abstract works are inextricably bound to the marketplace and therefore to a larger discourse of individualism. Abstraction has been construed as standing in direct opposition to the “relational aesthetics” theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.” Bourriaud implicitly pits object-based art practices such as abstract painting – which he associates with the notion of (failed) utopias – against what he calls “microtopia,” a provisional, DIY, relational approach to art.

Gilbert Hsiao, Dual, 2007
Acrylic on panel
32 x 32 inches

September 15 – October 29, 2011

30: A Brooklyn Salon has been organized to celebrate BRIC Rotunda Gallery’s status as Brooklyn’s oldest continuously operating contemporary art space and to offer a look back at the wealth of artists who shaped the character of our exhibition program over three decades. With work by some 50 Brooklyn-affiliated artists, the exhibition presents a diverse segment of the nearly 1,500 artists who have exhibited at the Gallery and contributed to BRIC’s history. 30 includes work spanning a range of media: painting, works on paper, sculpture, photography, video, and a site-specific commission on the gallery’s storefront by Jackie Chang.

With its breadth and dense installation addressing such varied themes as place, process, materiality, and abstraction, 30 evokes the contemporary art landscape of Brooklyn. The exhibition distinguishes BRIC Rotunda Gallery as an artist-centered space, where curatorial ideas are sparked by the art discovered in studios across the borough and in our registry, and where young artists have found a resourceful platform to present new work.

Artists featured in the show include:Leslie Alexander, Kamrooz Aram, A. Eric Arctander, Daniel Bejar, Francisca Benitez, Phong Bui, Joel Carreiro, Jackie Chang, Vincent Cianni, Amy Cutler, Blane de St. Croix, Elizabeth Demaray, Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson, Yvonne Estrada, Linda Ganjian, Anthony Goicolea, LeRoy Henderson, Gilbert Hsiao, Katarina Jerinic, Aaron Johnson, Eve Andrée Laramée, William Lamson, Kristin Lucas, Despo Magoni, Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Mary Mattingly, Marci McGuffie, Lori Nix, Patrick O’Hare, Alex O’Neal, Karyn Olivier, Carolanna Parlato, Dulce Pinzón, Jenny Polak, Larry Racioppo, Ray Rapp, Juan Sánchez, Charles Schucker, Dread Scott, Lizzie Scott,Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, Ward Shelley, Diana Shpungin, Peter Simensky, Micki Watanabe Spiller, Eugenie Tung, Adele Judith Ursone, Dale E. Williams and Randy Wray.

Work by Gilbert Hsiao.

June 23 – August 5, 2011

McKenzie Fine Art is pleased to announce its summer group exhibition, Sound and Vision. It will open with a reception for the artists on Thursday, June 23, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. and run through Friday, August 5, 2011. The exhibition will feature paintings and works on paper by four artists whose art is strongly influenced by music: John Aslanidis, Daniel Hill, Gilbert Hsiao, and Laura Watt.

Australian artist John Aslanidis creates complex, moiré patterned paintings in vivid colors. Overlapping concentric and wavy bands seem to rhythmically pulse and vibrate across his surfaces. The artist cites bass-heavy Dub music as an important influence, as well as ambient trance. He has frequently collaborated with musicians since the 1990s: not only does the painter play the saxophone but he was a member of Clan Analogue during the 1990s, a collective of sound and visual artists. Aslanidis will collaborate with sound artist Brian May in an upcoming exhibition in Berlin in September and is a participant this summer in a visual arts/music collaboration at Location One in New York.

Daniel Hill played the bass in bands as a teenager and later created experimental music by manipulating raw sounds into ambient sonic environments. He cites the influence of Minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and LaMonte Young, as well as the ambient music and ideas of John Cage and Brian Eno. Hill’s linear, obsessively patterned black-and-white paintings on paper are created in a manner akin to a musical performance: just as a musician plays a performance in time, Hill’s work is created line by line, slowly applied with a paint-filled squeeze bottle hovering just above the surface in a session of meditative concentration with little room for error. He notes that by “implementing an intentional synesthesia of sound and vision, my painting began to focus on the interaction of rhythmic, vibratory frequencies locked in a visual dance of pattern and structure. The sonic influence also became apparent in the work’s symmetry, which is directly related to the stereophonic phenomenon found in our natural hearing.”

Gilbert Hsiao’s irregularly shaped paintings contain intricately overlapped, repeating bands of color combined with metallics. Although each painting is limited to just a few colors, they are vibrant, rhythmic, and optically charged. Hsiao first heard Philip Glass’s Music with Changing Parts and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians in the 1970s; these seminal works have remained a constant influence since then. Hsiao remarks: “They are both long pieces consisting of densely layered, repeating motifs, but through the use of gradual and subtle transformation, shift and superimposition, they never get boring or predictable….the motifs, and their structuring resulting in the perception of countless new motifs, is what initially drew me to these pieces, and has been a recurring element in my painting.”

After attending a performance of the Broadway show Fela!, Laura Watt was inspired to revisit the African musician’s records, especially in the studio. Watt notes that, “Afrobeat, a complex fusion of jazz, funk, Nigerian highlife, and traditional West African music, keeps building groove on top of groove into a giant, polyrhythmic complexity. A sonic landscape is created.” In her paintings and drawings, Watt commences with a fairly staid linear pattern, and then creates eruptions in the structure, opening it up into a more complex space with orb and paisley forms bursting forth. Through an accretion of these forms, a structural profusion emerges out of a simple pattern.

Gilbert Hsiao, Dual, 2007
Acrylic on panel
32 x 32 inches

May 21 – July 15, 2011

Participating Artists:
Alice Adams, Babe Shapiro, Ce Roser, Cecily Kahn, Charles Hinman, Clover Vail, Corey Postiglione, Creighton Michael, Daniel G. Hill, David Mackenzie, David Reed, David Row, Don Voisine, Dorothea Rockburne, Edward Shalala, Emily Berger, Gabriele Evertz, Gail Gregg, Gilbert Hsiao, Heidi Gluck, Henry Brown, Irene Lawrence, Irene Rousseau, James Gross, James Juszczyk, James O. Clark, James Seawright, Jane Logemann, Jeanne Wilkinson, Joan Waltemath, Joan Webster Price, John Goodyear, John Obuck, John Pai, John T. Phillips, Judith Murray, Julian Jackson, Katinka Mann, Kenneth Bushnell, Kes Zapkus, Leo Rabkin, Louis Silverstein, Lucio Pozzi, Lynne Harlow, Manfred Mohr, Mara Held, Mark Dagley, Mark Williams, Marthe Keller, Martin Ball, Mary Obering, Merrill Wagner, Mon Levinson, Nancy Manter, Nola Zirin, Peter Stroud, Phillis Ideal, Raquel Rabinovich, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Richard Pugliese, Richard Stone, Richard Timperio, Robert Swain, Sharon Brant, Siri Berg, Stephen Maine, Stephen Westfall, Steve Karlik, Susan Bonfils, Thornton Willis, Tom Doyle, Tom Evans, Vera Vasek, Victor Kord, Vincent Longo, Vito Giacalone, Will Barnet

Werner Drewes, Praying Mantis, 1944
Etching

January 22 – March 30, 2011

The American Abstract Artists, formed in 1936, were drawn to Mondrian’s ideal of the “splendor of dynamic structure.” Despite many changes since then, the AAA has continued strong for seventy-five years, a testament to their belief that the abstract impulse can encompass diverse approaches and identities, influenced by surrealism, expressionism, and landscape painting. The historical portion of this exhibition is culled from the Johnson Museum’s permanent collection, supplemented by a juried selection of works chosen from among the current members of the AAA. The exhibition and catalogue were supported by the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation and the Cornell Council for the Arts.

Installation view

September 10, 2010

Participating Artists:
Dieter Balzer, Surya Gied, Geka Heinke, Veronike Hinsberg, Gilbert Hsiao, Pierre Juillerat, Jan Klopfleisch, Dirk Rathke, David Rhodes, Nikola Richard, Giles Ryder, Andreas Schmid, Elisabeth Sonneck, Tim Stapel, Bastian Vogel

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, Rene Rusjan, 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

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

Gilbert Hsiao, Quiet Fire, 2010
Acrylic on wood, 70 cm x 70 cm

June 10 – July 25, 2010

dr. julius | ap is pleased to announce Gilbert Hsiao: Light Noise, a solo exhibition of new paintings by the Berlin-based artist. Hsiao will present a suite of new acrylic paintings on irregularly-shaped wooden panels.

For more than twenty years, Hsiao has explored the mechanics of visual perception. His paintings of the past decade are characterized by their use of intricately overlayed, exacting stripes of color. Hsiao’s new paintings on view at dr. julius | ap highlight his recent adoption of shaped wooden panels. The shapes created an active, continuously shifting surface, with no traditional sense of top or bottom, left or right. Hsiao new paintings seem to simultaneously defy both the eye and one’s sense of gravity.

In making his work, Hsiao uses two crucial tools: masking tape and an industrial paint sprayer. His palette is broad and leans toward the industrial, often utilizing metallic, fluorescent, and iridescent colors. Unlike much reductive, pattern-based painting, however, Hsiao approaches his practice spontaneously and makes each painting intuitively. In other words, Hsiao’s paintings are not executed according to a predetermined plan, but rather are the sum of a series of improvised decisions.

After 30 years in Brooklyn, NY, USA, Gilbert Hsiao (b. 1956, USA) now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, and Germany. He recently mounted solo exhibition at Gallery Sonja Roesch (Houston) and MINUS SPACE (Brooklyn). Recent group exhibitions include P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA (New York), McKenzie Fine Art (New York), IS Projects (Leiden, The Netherlands), Sydney Non Objective (Australia), and Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung (Bonn). Hsiao was awarded a Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2008. His work is included in a number of public, corporate, and private collections worldwide.

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!

Installation views

Participating Artists:
Douglas Allsop, Dieter Balzer, Rafael Barrios, Michael Burges, Freddy Chandra, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Carlos Estrada-Vega, Brad Howe, Gilbert Hsiao, Jae Ko, Hans Kotter, Camill Leberer, Milen Miltchev, Manfred Mohr, Dany Paal, Jürgen Paas, Frank Piasta, Regine Schumann, Kane Shimoosake, Klaus Staudt, Gaby Terhuven, Wolfram Ullrich, Achim Zeman

September 12 – October 31, 2009

Gallery Sonja Roesch announces a solo exhibition of recent work by Gilbert Hsiao, featuring perceptually-based abstraction painted on shaped wooden panels. Hsiao has been exploring the mechanics of visual perception since the 1980s. The viewer perceives oscillation through the illusion of a continuous wave produced by the physiological experience of space and movement. Meticulously layered stripes in tightly woven structures create a musical rhythm and repose.

“Shape/Anti-Shape” showcases Hsiao’s recent exploration of the use of irregularly shaped supports as a means of organizing pictorial space. The result is a continuously moving surface, which is reinforced through the shape of the painting. Metallic and fluorescent paint is applied with a vintage compressorless sprayer, creating a textured surface that makes these paintings an absorbing experience whether viewed close up or from a distance.

Gilbert Hsiao currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany, after thirty years in Brooklyn, New York. He studied Art History at Columbia University before receiving his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently in Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany as well as in the United States, where he exhibited at P.S.1 in New York. Hsiao is a recent recipient of a fellowship in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and is represented in a number of private, corporate and public collections.

Work by Gilbert Hsiao

August 1-30, 2009

July 31 – August 29, 2009

MINUS SPACE is pleased to announce our summer group exhibition Open House for Butterflies featuring work by seven international reductive artists.

Participating Artists:
Justin Andrews (Melbourne, Australia)
Hartmut Böhm (Berlin, Germany)
Michelle Grabner (Chicago)
Daniel Göttin (Basel, Switzerland)
Gilbert Hsiao (Berlin, Germany / NYC)
Victoria Munro (NYC / Auckland, New Zealand)
Karen Schifano (NYC)

We are also delighted to announce our new flatfiles and bookstore. Our flatfiles feature works by select reductive artists working around the globe, including drawings, prints, photographs, works on paper, editions, and multiples. Some paintings, sculpture, and design objects are also available. Our bookstore features dozens of publications on reductive art and ideas on the international level, including artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, journals, ephemera, and select vintage books.

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!

Brent Hallard, Spa-t_kiss, 2009
Japanese acrylic resin on plastic paper,
mounted on layers (white-grey-white) of corrugated plastic

June 6 – July 5, 2009

IS projects is pleased to announce a new project entitled Kosmos, featuring a selection of work by artists working with light and space: Brent Hallard, Jose Heerkens, Gilbert Hsiao, Caroline de Lannoy, and Giles Ryder.