"What is There?" Recent Works by Justin Baker and Danny Goodwin (with Scheduled Events) Through January 21

The key OOO difference between “what there is” and “what is there”, is the difference between knowing that there is an object and not knowing it. The first is a statement or conviction, the second is a question. The departure of OOO, as a study and movement, is identifying this difference. It simply states that we know there are spoons, organs, chairs, armies, planets and cocoa-beans: we just don’t know what they are. Our orientation of the thing – “what is there” – hopelessly grasps at them for one reason or another, and yet we never grasp the thing itself – the “what there is.”

--Robert Jackson, “WHAT IS THERE?” AN INTRODUCTION TO OOO AND ART (PART 1)”, Bad At Sports, January 22, 2013

Object Oriented Ontology, also known as “Speculative Realism”, occupies a new philosophical position in logical space, attempting to define a set of theses about all that is. According to proponents of “OOO” (as the cool kids dub the doctrine), objects are all that there is. And there are a lot of them. You’re an object; I’m an object; and all the crap between you and me, both living and nonliving, are objects. Under OOO, the conventional hierarchy of living matter vs. nonliving matter is effectively obliterated. Everything—people, potted plants, potholes, porn star posters, rolls of duct tape, and more—is an object that is scattered across the savannah of existence. All are equal and all are on the same plane, ontologically speaking.[1] This “weird realism” (as the founder of OOO, Graham Harmon terms it) is an apt way of thinking about the “stuff” of the Anthropocene. Much of the matter that is carved up into discrete objects, each with its own epistemological and ontological status, will continue to exist in the post-human, weird world of a radically altered climate long after we’ve managed to render ourselves extinct. By training their lenses on the objects and assemblages of the Anthropocene, photographers Justin Baker and Danny Goodwin offer a glimpse into an alternate, speculative reality of the World of Things.

Baker’s still-life images, made with an ancient 8x10” wooden view camera, invites the viewer not only to stare at the arrangements of quotidian ephemera he’s gathered and presented, but to space out, drift off, and dream. In fact, to test the elasticity of that metaphor, his work more precisely resides in the space between waking and dreaming—whether drifting off or coming to. The paradox of coming to grips with something by letting go more completely is laid bare—diagrammed, in fact. Just follow the easy-assembly instructions and add water.

For Goodwin, the object is currency, part of a systematic staging. His photographs translate our believability of objects into an imitation of, or detour into, what we think we see. Hand-constructed environments and objects impersonate their virtual counterparts and reveal the circular logic that undergirds much of the current popular fascination with 3D printing and the “internet of things.” The familiar checkerboard grid of a transparent layer in Photoshop, which is now more a signifier of empty space than actual empty space, represents more than a passive, benign background and in fact, serves as a segue to an interrogation of veracity, photographic or otherwise.


Events
Saturday January 7^th
Danny Goodwin will deliver a talk “ “Beginning the End: Picturing the Anthropocene”” at 7pm

Saturday January 21st
Conversation between Justin Baker and Danny Goodwin 5pm
Closing Reception 6-8

Justin Baker grew up in Greenwich, NY. Justin has an Associate of Applied Science from Sage College of Albany, a BFA from Purchase College and a MFA from SUNY Albany (where he studied with Danny Goodwin). His photographic and video work has been shown in several solo and group shows including Means, Motive, Opportunity, The Front, New Orleans, LA; Howdy Doody, Collar Works Gallery, Troy, NY; Selected Works, BCB Gallery, Hudson, NY; Abstracted Reality, Jeffrey Leder Gallery, LIC, NY; In a Country Without Maps, Collar Works Gallery, Troy, NY; Photographic Being, Jeffrey Leder Gallery, LIC, NY; Family Blood, Yates Gallery, Siena College, Loudonville, NY; VOX IX, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Trust In Me, Field Projects Gallery, NYC, NY; Faculty Exhibit, Teaching Gallery @ HVCC, Troy, NY; 34th Photo Regional, Opalka Gallery, Albany, NY; Historical Past, Collar Works Gallery, Troy, NY. Justin teaches digital imaging and web art and design at Hudson Valley Community College. He currently lives in Troy, NY with his wife Kyra, daughters Lola and Rona, cats Lulu and Lilly.

Danny Goodwin is a native Texan, living and working in Albany, NY. His photographic, video and installation work has been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Jack the Pelican Presents, Art Resources Transfer, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Momenta Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, all in New York City, as well as the New Art Center in Boston, Massachusetts; California Museum of Photography in Riverside, California; Proposition Gallery in Belfast, Ireland; Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, D. C.; Penn State Altoona, Pennsylvania; Cartel Gallery, London, U.K.; Galerie Sans Titre in Brussels, Belgium; UKS in Oslo, Norway; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Goodwin is a 2005 Artists' Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). His publication credits include The Boston Globe, Influence Magazine, Details Magazine, i-D Magazine, Pierogi Press, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and The Albany Times Union. He is Associate Professor of Art and Head of Photography and Related Media in the Department of Art and Art History at the University at Albany, State University of New York.  He has previously taught photography and digital imaging at both Purdue University and the Cooper Union School of Art and received an M.F.A. in Combined Media from Hunter College in 1992 and a B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Art at the University of North Texas in 1989.

[1] Cole, Andrew. Those Obscure Objects of Desire: Andrew Cole on the Uses and Abuses of Object-Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism, Artforum, Summer 2015, pp. 318-23.



Images,

Top: Danny Goodwin, Duct Tape Decoy, 2014, Archival Pigment Print on Paper, ed of 4

Just Above: Justin Baker, Savanah, fern and rug, 2014, Archival Pigment Print on Paper, ed of 4

 LABspace was founded and is directed by the artist Susan Jennings. The gallery is dedicated to experiments in curation, exhibiting category-busting and/or materially surprising contemporary art, and hosting performance art, screenings, readings and music that push the boundaries of categorization, participation and/or experience.

LABspace is located at 2462 NY RT 23 just west of NY RT 22 in Hillsdale, NY. The gallery is open on Saturdays from 11-5. On special occasions we are also opened in the evening for scheduled events as noted. We are also open  by appointment via labspaceart@gmail.com

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE GALLERY WILL BE CLOSED FROM JANUARY 22nd THROUGH EARLY APRIL. PLEASE WATCH FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS.

For further information please contact labspaceart@gmail.com


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YAA (Young Albany Artists) Present "per vert (v. tr)" at LABspace December 9-11

 

LABspace and YAA (prounouced “yah”- a group of young Albany-based artist)  are pleased to present

\per-‘vert\ {v. tr.}.

1. Alter something from its original course, meaning or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended. Oxford English Dictionary

2. A group show exhibition of painting, drawings, sculpture, printmaking and animation

The verb “to pervert” is the organizing principal around this show. These artists are actively perverting standard uses of materials and subject matter, deteriorating form, playing with contortions of reality, and/or creating interdisciplinary, cross-media artwork. A reception will open the show on Friday, December 9th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Gallery Hours are Saturday December 10th from 11-5 and Sunday December 12 from 11-2.

Bugzdale begins with digital photographic self-portraits, which he then transfers to canvas. He works into the canvas with acrylic paint and modeling paste creating areas of pure abstraction alongside areas representation.

Jake Fallat perverts the use of traditional metal casting of busts and  portraiture along with animal organs collected from his day job as a butcher to create metal castes of grotesque imagery.

Kelsey Bzdyk paints on panel to open portals of perception of space and perspective. She creates geometrical grids which separate various imaginary patterns and universes.

Robert Houle asserts there is no such thing as representational art, therefore all art is an abstraction. Using intuitive mark-making he constructs figurative realism from an abstraction that changes focus depending upon scale.

Ariana Schrader-Rank contrasts perceptions using her work with printmaking, drawing, animation and other various media. By integrating dynamic relationships into her process the final outcome is one that is elaborate, yet subtle.

Bettina Martin creates figurative abstractions of the female form that look fragmented, almost like stained glass. Martin,  a tattoo artists by trade, is concerned with the role of women in the tattoo industry and the concept of female body modification.  However this work perverts rather than convert by appropriating the tattooed female figures and classical representations of women, as well as tattoo flash sheets (pre drawn designs for the mainstream use in tattoo shops) and through the use of Photoshop Martin creates a corruption of the classical.

Melissa Flagler paints awkward and clichéd snapshots her moments of voyeurism that encounters of other people’s interactions. Actual happenings, remembered or recorded become her subject, commenting on the quirks of society and actors. Using oil paint, she emphasizes the figures and removes or negates their setting.

LABspace was founded and is directed by the artist Susan Jennings. The gallery is dedicated to experiments in curation, exhibiting category-busting and/or materially surprising contemporary art, and hosting performance art, screenings, readings and music that push the boundaries of categorization, participation and/or experience.

LABspace is located at 2462 NY RT 23 just west of NY RT 22 in Hillsdale, NY.

For further information please contact labspaceart@gmail.com


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BEDFELLOWS, a Group Exhibition Full of Strange Characters at LABspace Oct 15-Dec 3

BEDFELLOWS, a group exhibition of photography, painting and sculpture that pushes notions of figuration, to open at LABspace LABspace is pleased to present BEDFELLOWS, a group exhibition including works by Eric Aurandt, Dan Devine, Francine Hunter McGivern, Frau Kolb, Ola Manana, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Guy Walker and Oliver Wasow. The show opens Saturday October 15th with a reception from 3-5pm at the gallery in Hillsdale, NY. The show continues through December 3rd with gallery hours on Saturdays from 11-5 and by appointment.   Each of these artists creates strange and compellingly unusual characters with their chosen media. Eric Aurandt sculpts and draws lumbering men who are at once appealing and nearly grotesque. Dan Devine makes photographic portraits of sheep that he combines with a security camera creating a somewhat confrontational situation in which the viewer seems to be surveilled by the wooly animals. Francine Hunter McGivern collaborated with the photographer Kevin Higgins to create black and white photographic portraits of Hunter McGivern performing while hanging in a net body sock. Frau Kolb paints group portraits of her family members. Ola Manana paints strange and mysterious figures culled from her dreams. Cindy Sherman photographs strange beings she creates with props, Laurie Simmons sets up doll figures in front of rear screen projections of tourist destinations around the world, Guy Walker makes plastic fresco totem  figure sculptures. Oliver Wasow photographs interesting people in his life in his green screen studio and later adds landscapes as backgrounds. LABspace was founded and is directed by the artist Susan Jennings. The gallery is dedicated to experiments in curation, exhibiting category-busting and/or materially surprising contemporary art, and hosting performance art, screenings, readings and music that push the boundaries of categorization, participation and/or experience. LABspace is located at 2462 NY RT 23 just west of NY RT 22 in Hillsdale, NY. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5p.m., and by appointment via labspaceart@gmail.com. For further information or high resolution images please contact labspaceart@gmail.com http://labspaceart.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/LABspace/620894894642447?fref=ts Photos: Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 1992, Cibachrome Eric Aurandt, My Darling, 2014, Spray paint and acrylic on canvas  Francine Hunter McGivern with Kevin Higgins, Muse #2 (a performance document photograph), 1982, black and white photograph Oliver Wasow, Ian, 2014, Digital Print

Alternate Gravity: New Work by Nicole Cherubini, Meg Lipke and Patrick Purcell

LABspace is pleased to present Alternate Gravity, a 3-person installation of new works by Nicole Cherubini, Meg Lipke and Patrick Purcell .  The show runs from Thursday August 11^th  through Saturday, October 1^st  There will be  a reception for the artists on Sunday, August 14^th from 5-7pm

All the artists divide their time between Columbia County and in/near New York City and conceptually challenge notions of craft and materials and function in their work.

Cherubini (b.1970, Boston) has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad, most recently at Samson Projects in Boston and at Retrospective Gallery in Hudson, NY.  Lipke (b.1969, Portland) has exhibited paintings and painted objects most recently at Freight and Volume in New York and with Jeff Bailey in Hudson. Purcell (b. 1969 St Louis was trained as a potter and makes wheel thrown objects that conflate sculpture and functional ceramics. Purcell has throughout the United States. A recent exhibition at Dodge Gallery in New York had him marked as a “trend to watch” in Art News. 

Sea glass and cloth washed up on the shore; 
polished in your pocket
expanded and sewn.

Vessels that withstood 
gravitational pull returned. 
Six-sided silica, water, stone.
Coded remnants become newly entire
crossed atoms, functions, redrawn
the inside of the world
known, realigned, unknown.

-Meg Lipke

When you investigate the matter further it will be found that the quartz crystal in the mountains was formed with the help of silicic acid at a specific time when our Earth’s development was under the general influence of etheric and astral forces. That is when you will see such etheric and astral forces emanation form the area around the Earth and working to help build up the quartz crystals in the silica. You can find them everywhere out in the mountains- those wonderful quartz crystals, six-sided constructions. What you see in those quartz crystals is the same as you will see in the bee cells in the beehive, except that these are empty chambers at first. The bee extracts from the plant the very substance that was once there to help create the hexagonal quartz crystals. The bee extracts this from the flower and within its own body creates replicas of the quartz crystals. What happens between the bee and flower is similar to what once happened out there in the macrocosm.

-Rudolph Steiner

Jon Piasecki’s outdoor sculptures will be featured in the courtyard.

LABspace was founded and is directed by the artist Susan Jennings. The gallery is dedicated to experiments in curation, exhibiting category-busting and/or materially surprising contemporary art, and hosting performance art, screenings, readings and music that push the boundaries of categorization, participation and/or experience.

LABspace is located at 2462 NY RT 23 just west of NY RT 22 in Hillsdale, NY. Gallery hours are Thursday and Friday from 1-5 and  Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5p.m., or by appointment via labspaceart@gmail.com.

Images: Meg Lipke, Holes in the Ocean,2016, muslin, plaster, fabric dye, acrylic, polyfil and cement
Nicole Cherubini, There is a Fountain, 2016, ceramic
Patrick Purcell, Tall Pitcher, 2016, porcelain, steel, paint

For further information or high resolution images please contact labspaceart@gmail.com


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Jon Piasecki Outdoor Sculptures and Indoor Paintings

Sculptures by Jon Piasecki 

Jon Piasecki "Boat, 2013" black locist, fossil beach blue stoen and paint, 51 x 76 x 7"

Jon Piasecki "Granite Post with Drops, 2016" granit, shist and hardware, 67 x 4 x 6 1/2"

Jon Piasecki, "Nanu, 2014" black locust, concrete, steel, steel cable and hardware, 65 x 21 x 10"

Wood Paintings by Jon Piascki

"Herring" by Jon Piasecki

Installation Shot of Stone Paintings by Jon Piasecki

Jon Piasecki Columns, Jennifer Johnson platter, Tom Nicol 

Wood and Stone Paintings by Jon Piasecki

 

 Stone Paintings by Jon Piasecki

Jon Piasecki's solo show at LABspace in Hillsdale, NY (June 9 - July 2, 2016) included two bodies of work. Dramatic, eerie and animistic exterior sculptures made of black locust, granite, marble, lime and wire, some monumental next to others rather discreet; some hanging from trees reminiscent of the mysterious and frightening talismans that appeared in “The Blair Witch Project,” were shown in the courtyard of the gallery. Simultaneously, geometric abstract paintings made of carved stone, cut wood and enamel paint occupied the interior gallery. Though Piasecki has shown his work extensively at such venues as Essel Museum in Austria, Chesterwood, The Dutchess Country Residence, The Fendi Flagship Store and at the American Academy in Rome Italy and has had his sculptures commissioned by collectors of large outdoor pieces, this is very unique body of work was his first solo exhibition in an art gallery.

Piasecki is a 2004 Prince Charitable Trust Rome Prize Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.  In 2011 Piasecki won the top international award for Landscape Architecture, beating major international firms for his large outdoor sculpture commission “Stone River” at The Dutchess County Residence in eastern Dutchess County, NY (Orion Magazine published this video on Stone River https://orionmagazine.org/article/stone-river/) His work has been published and internationally in dozens of publications both in print and online.  He received his MLA from Harvard Graduate School of Design and his BS at Cornell. University. Piasecki lives on WiseAcre Farm in West Stockbrige MA with his wife Kristen where he raises pigs, sheep and chickens in addition to creating his stone  and wood sculptures and paintings on the grounds.

CHOW at LABspace July 6-August 7, 2016

Tracy Miller "Milk Glass," 2016 and Elaine Tin Nyo "This Little Piggy Lasse Week One," 2016

Jennifer Coates "Pancakes," 2015 and "Nachos," 2015, Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 and "Untitled," 2016 and Tracy Miller, "Milk Glass," 2016

Tracy Miller "Honey, 2016", Steve DiBenedetto "Untitled" and Mike Geno "Seastack, 2016"

Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 and "Untitled," 2016 

Tracy Miller, "Milk Glass," 2016

Jennifer Coates "Strawberry Eclair Popsicle," 2015, "Pancakes," 2015 and "Nachos," 2015,

Mie Yim "Martha Stewart Paint Chip Food Pastel Series," 2015, Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 

DG Krueger "Homemade Chocolate Covered Sex Polaroids." 1997 and Compost #1 (Repurposed Pixels) 2016

DG Krueger "Homemade Chocolate Covered Sex Polaroids." 1997

Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 and Elaine Tin Nyo "This Little Piggy, Lasse Week One" 2016

Tracy Miller "Milk Glass," 2016, Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 and Elaine Tin Nyo "This Little Piggy, Lasse Week One" 2016

Tracy Miller "Honey," 2016

Steve DiBenedetto "Untitled"

DG Krueger "Fish in Three Parts," 1997

Michelle Segre from "Driftloaf" series, 2015 and 2016 and Tracy Miller "Milk Glass," 2016

Carl D'Alvia, all Untitled 2016

Laurie Simmons, "Walking Petit Four" 

Laurie Simmons "Walking Petit Four" and Elaine Tin Nyo "Je Fais un Voeu," 2016

Mike Geno "Seastack," "Eidolon," and "Simply Artisan Reserve Blue Cheese," all 2016

Jennifer Coates "Strawberry Eclair Popsicle," "Pancakes," 2015 and "Nachos," 2015, Carl D'Alvia "Ziggy," 2013, "The Island," 2013 and "Untitled," 2016 

Laurie Simmons, "Walking Petit Four" 

Mie Yim "Martha Stewart Paint Chip Food Pastel Series," 2015

CHOW

It is no surprise that artists are food lovers and, often, creative entertainers and chefs. Picasso and Monet were celebrated for their dinner parties full of color and flowing wines. Food and art go together like bread and chocolate, and artists who have mastered cooking are a very special breed of bon vivant. 

Jennifer Coates conflates paint with cooking sauces, Carl D’Alvia makes sculpture using a pasta making machine, Steve DiBenedetto's color pencil drawing of a crouton bag references ingredients used in the kitchen, Mike Geno exquisitely paints cheeses with oil paints so gorgeously that one nearly hallucinates cheese smells in place of the linseed oil of his paint. DGKrueger dips polaroids made during intimate times with his partner in chocolate, Tracy Miller paints luscious and celebratory scenes of cake-laden tabletops, Elaine Tin Nyo documents the raising, creating and sharing of food, Michelle Segre uses bread as a sculptural medium, and Mie Yim uses pastels to draw food on Martha Stewart paint chips. 

LABspace is located at 2463 NY Rt 23 in Hillsdale, NY just west of NY Rt 22. Hours are Thursday and Friday 1-5, Saturday 11-5 and by appointment via labspaceart@gmail.com.