STOREFRONT

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION:

NEW year, NEW work, NEW space

January 2-February 7, 2010

featuring the work of artists we know, the artists we like,

and the artists we'd like to get to know better:

Roland Allmeyer   Bill Adams   Michele Araujo

Deborah Brown   Jeri Coppola

Judy Dolnick   Hermine Ford   Rico Gatson

Theresa Hackett   Arnold Helbling

Andrew Hurst   Norman Jabaut   Mary Judge

Justen Ladda   Ellen Letcher

Amy Lincoln   Mathew Miller   Jimmy Miracle

Brooke Moyse   Steve Pauley

Olivie Ponce   Kevin Regan   Mira Schor   Hilda Shen

Adam Simon   Austin Thomas

VIEW WORKS IN THIS EXHIBITION→

2ND EXHIBITION:

fog walks:

new sculpture by Norman Jabaut
and a work by Robert Rauschenberg

STOREFRONT (16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn) is pleased to present FOG WALKS: new sculpture by Norman Jabaut. On exhibition will be the artist's recent wall sculptures made of collected debris washed up on beaches and gathered from that which has been discarded on the streets. FOG WALKS references the wandering spirit these sculptures portray. This is the artist's first one-person exhibition which also includes the loan of a 1953 collage made at Black Mountain College by Robert Rauschenberg.

An opening reception for the artist, which also celebrate the new renovations to Storefront designed by Bushwick architect Corey Schneider,  will be held Friday, February 19, 6-10pm.

Born in Plattsburgh, Norman Jabaut has steadily found his way from the mountains of the Adirondacks to the streets of Paris and the churches of Northern Italy.  Aware of the impact of 'man on his environment,' Jabaut's work references the importance of landscape within the scope of industrial progression. Working primarily from his home in Rouses Point, Jabaut, much like Fernand Leger who summered there in the early 1940s, draws inspiration from the natural world reclaiming the industrial and vice versa.  His materials are collected from seashores and construction sites alike.

"The paintings by Leger, the combines by Rauschenberg,
and the shaped canvases by Hermine Ford are my guides
to a world  attached to texture, color, and simple forms."
-Norman Jabaut

STOREFRONT is pleased to announce the exhibition Please Jump Around Here, curated by Jessica Duffett. The exhibition focuses on local painters and sculptors whose works are in unique dialogue with the language of geometric abstraction.

Please Jump Around Here incorporates a broad range of visual mantras. References include imagery from ancient art, indigenous textiles and painting, shaker visions, Hudson River school painting, abstract expressionism and minimalism. However disparate these influences, all of the works share an unusual commonality: an affinity towards ritual process and sublime experience. The title, derived from a painting by EJ Hauser, encapsulates this sensibility in its literal command to the viewer.

Aberrant yet devotional, this group of works reconstitutes imagery and content from an expansive visual history. Now, as part of the lexicon of contemporary abstraction, ecstatic iconography is translated in an alchemic way to the viewer. Please Jump Around Here is a conversation about practice and ritual, and eliciting viewer's presence in their experience of the work.

Featured in Please Jump Around Here are works by Ariel Dill, Rico Gatson, Tamara Gonzales, EJ Hauser, Brooke Moyse, Ted O'Sullivan, Rebecca Potts, Nathlie Provosty, R&D, Christian Sampson and Mamie Tinkler.

STOREFONT (16 Wilson Ave, Bushwick, Brooklyn) is pleased to announce the two-person exhibition featuring paintings by Wayne Adams and sculpture by Jimmy Miracle opening with a reception for the artists on Friday, July 16 from 6-9PM.  A conversation with the artists will be held on August 1 at 5PM.

Wayne Adams fills canvases of layered paint then edits them down to their geometric essence.  Space is transformed-simplified-into lines and fields of color often hard edged yet definingly sensitive.

Jimmy Miracle makes sculptures that transform common objects like plastic boxes and empty drawers into sacred vessels adorned and elaborated by the strung threads.

Also on view in the back room: THE HOTEL: featuring works by Rahul Alexander, Cat Glennon, Ken Madore, Nesta Mayo, and James Reeder.

August 6-August 22, 2010

Opening: Friday, August 6, 6 - 9 PM

STOREFRONT (16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn) is pleased to announce the opening of On Display, a three-person exhibition curated by Hrag Vartanian featuring paintings by Sharon Butler and Cathy Nan Quinlan with sculptural objects by Joy Curtis.  An opening reception for the artists will be Friday, August 6 from 6-9PM. A full-color catalogue with essays by Butler, Curtis, Quinlan, Vartanian accompanies the exhibition.  Storefront is open weekends 1-6PM or by appointment by calling 646-361-8512.

On Display offers three challenging new perspectives on abstraction. Each artist employs familiar forms, but in different and idiosyncratic ways. Their work thus embodies an inventive and wide-ranging exploration of crucial elements of visual language: framing, illusion, and ultimately imperfection.

Sharon Butler's paintings embrace the slightly off-kilterl, the not-quite-right, the un-straight line, discordant color, and awkwardly placed shapes. "Uncertainty and doubt are central to my painting practice-I've learned to respect the tentative and contingent." Butler blogs at Two Coats of Paint,  writes for The Brooklyn Rail, and is a professor in the art department at Eastern Connecticut State University. She divides her time between New York City and Mystic, her hometown in Connecticut.

Joy Curtis' sculptures explore bad form and anxious psychological space. The familiar, the irrational, the discarded, and the imperfect particularly intrigue her. Her recent solo shows include exhibitions at Klaus Von Nichtsaggend, and "Amphibological Displays" at HQ, both in Brooklyn, NY. Curtis' work has been in many group exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles, including shows at CRG, Lehmann Maupin, Triple Candie, and Workspace.

Cathy Nan Quinlan's paintings crosshatch, separate and reintroduce pictorial space. "Every so often, standing at the easel, I say to myself, about myself, 'She paints like an angel.' Slightly more frequently, I think the painting is shit and say, like Faust, 'I am a wretched fool and still no wiser than before.'"  Quinlan is a passionate cook, founder of The Temporary Museum, author of The Platonic Solids, sometime art critic  (The Brooklyn Rail and Artcritical) and co-writer with Su Friedrich of the film Hide and Seek (1996). Quinlan lives in Brooklyn.

Hrag Vartanian is a Brooklyn-based writer, blogger, and cultural worker. He edits the art blogazine Hyperallergic.

 ALSO ON EXHIBITION IN THE BACK ROOM:

IN PIECES / NEW COLLAGE:

featuring works by Michele Araujo, Paul D'Agostino, Theresa Ganz, Sarah Hardesty, and Ellen Letcher.

STOREFRONT (16 Wilson Avenue) is pleased to announce String Theory, an exhibition that features the work of five artists working in fabric, string, and yarn. The exhibition presents a variety of approaches including conceptual, feminist, process, and installation. The exhibit features installations by Theresa Hackett, Elana Herzog, Brece Honeycutt, Ellie Murphy and Drew Shiflett. The opening reception for the exhibition is Friday, August 27, from 6-9PM.  The show continues through Sunday, September 12. Storefront is open weekends 1-6PM or by appointment by calling 646-361-8512.

 Theresa Hackett's "Thread Drawings From 1991" are influenced by Lucio Fontana and his use of obsessively punctured wood. Rough and animated, these framed "drawings" are made from pieces of Italian paper stitched together with a sewing machine. Theresa Hackett has had several one-person shows in New York and has shown widely throughout the United States and Europe.  Her work has been included in the Weatherspoon Art Museum 40th Anniversary Art on Paper.  She is a recipient of 2009 NYFA grant and a Fountainhead residency in Miami, Florida.

Elana Herzog is best known for installations in which textiles are aggressively stapled to wall surfaces and then deconstructed to produce residual drawings that consist of metal staples, shredded fabric and perforated gypsum. Elana Herzog lives and works in New York City, where she is represented by LMAK Projects. Her first solo show at LMAK will be in March 2011. Upcoming group shows include The Jewel Thief, at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York, and Art on Paper 2010 at the Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina. Herzog has a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from Alfred University. She is the recipient of the 2009 Anonymous Was A Woman Award and the 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award.

Brece Honeycutt makes history-based drawings, sculptures and installations. Her installations have been placed in exterior locations including university campuses, historical houses, non-profit spaces, inner-city parks and in office buildings, museums and galleries. She collaborates and works with the National Park Service, students, historians, gardeners, non-profit organizations, poets, dancers, interpreters, government departments, libraries and senior centers. Honeycutt received an undergraduate degree in art history from Skidmore College and a Master's degree in sculpture from Columbia University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, and at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. She works with Norte Maar, Brooklyn, NY, and Susan Conway Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. She lives in Sheffield, MA and New York, NY.

Ellie Murphy began making large yarn sculptures after having a child and moving into a house. The work is about the relationship between personal, domestic and cultural nostalgia. She combines references to doll hair, crafts, folk motifs and Americana from her 1970's childhood in Kansas with aspects of modern, conceptual, multicultural and feminist art. She sees interdependence between the multiplicities of cultures in our world and uses the process of braiding as a way of playing with the unintended and humorous connections between them. Murphy has a BFA in sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Yale University. Most recently her work has been shown at the Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont; Artists Curated Projects, Los Angeles, California; and at Privateer Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Drew Shiflett refers to her work as constructed drawings or compressed sculptures.  In her recent body of work there is an emphasis on drawing, but the pieces are a combination of drawing, relief and sculpture. Her work is abstract while referencing architecture and textiles, and it is the result of a cumulative process of layering and building linear and planar forms.  A woven, translucent effect is created through the use of handmade papers, pencil and ink lines, watercolor wash and conte crayon. Shiflett received her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at The Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, MD.  She is represented by Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City and The Drawing Room in East Hampton, NY, and is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in 2011 at the Guild Hall Museum of East Hampton.  She is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships -- Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts (2009) and Sculpture (1990). She also received the Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (1993) and a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Sculpture (1992).

STOREFRONT is located at 16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11237. Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00-6:00PM or by appointment by calling 646-361-8512. The gallery will be open Labor Day weekend.

DIRECTIONS: L train to Brooklyn, Morgan Avenue Stop. Walk four blocks on Morgan to Flushing Avenue. Cross Flushing Avenue to Wilson Avenue. The gallery is located between Noll and George Streets.

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READ THE REVIEWS:

AUSTIN THOMAS: drawing on the utopic, by Mario Naves (CITYarts, Oct Issue, 2010)

AUSTIN THOMAS: drawing on the utopic, by Thomas Micchelli (Brooklyn Rail, Oct Issue, 2010)

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STOREFRONT (16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn) is pleased to open its fall season with AUSTIN THOMAS: Drawing on the Utopic.  This exhibition features new collage and text pieces by the artist. An opening reception for the artist will be Friday, September 17 from 6-9PM.  Storefront is open weekends 1-6PM or by appointment by calling 646-361-8512.

Austin Thomas' collages are deceptively delicate studies. Sometimes caught in the act of unfolding against or through the gridded skin of a graph paper background they explore enduring thoughts about the speciation of drawing and sculpture.

Thomas' varied performative actions and artworks may be broadly described as delineating and creating 'social sculpture.' In homage to Joseph Beuys's famous formulation and the idea that social systems add up to (or can be rearranged to constitute) one great work of art.  Her 'practice' has included Perches (hybrid sculptural/architectural objects around which events are created); an artist-run gallery in Bushwick; a traveling El Camino that provided a moving space for lectures about art; and many other public actions that have created spontaneous communities around art, discussion, and most recently a fresh air camp for kids and adults.

Thomas' text pieces punctuate this varied practice by adding a relational narrative of overheard public conversations.  These works appear to fall apart just when they begin to fall together-they're sketches of the way life is, as organisms (like us) negotiate their desires across the permeable borders of being.

In a recent blog post Thomas writes, "Next up, experiments in and with new and different, reformed, informed and all encompassing forms of selfhood (folded, presented, performed, baked, butted, and drawn crooked)."

ALSO, ON EXHIBIT IN THE BACKROOM:

PORTRAITS: new work by Leslie Alexander, Deborah Brown, KK Kozik, Amy Lincoln, Rebecca Litt, Matthew Miller, Mira Schor, Peter Schroth, John Silvis, Mary Jane Ward, Brenda Zlamany, and others.

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STOREFRONT is one of Bushwick's leading gallery's presenting both emerging young talent and established historically significant artists. Its exhibition program has been the featured in ARTNET MAGAZINE, THE CITYist, TIME OUT NEW YORK, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, NEW YORK PRESS, NEW YORK POST, THE NEW CRITERION, L MAGAZINE, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, WNYC, and written about locally including BUSHWICKBK, GREENPOINT GAZETTE, WILLIAMSBURG GREENPOINT NEWS + ARTS.

HOURS:          Weekends 1:00-6:00PM or by appointment 646-361-8512.

DIRECTIONS:  L train to Brooklyn, Morgan Avenue Stop. Walk four blocks on Morgan to Flushing Avenue.

                         The gallery is located on Wilson Avenue between Noll and George Streets.

BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN—Storefront is pleased to present an exhibition of new works in collage and assemblage by Andrew Hurst. An opening reception for the artist will be held in conjunction with WORK THAT BEAT: Bushwick Art Spaces Stay Open Late on Friday, October 22, 6-10PM.  For more information about Andrew Hurst and Storefront please call (646) 361-8512 or visit www.storefrontbk.com

Andrew Hurst is a multimedia artist, performer, and musician whose activities have placed him at the center of the NYC underground community. A fixture in the Bushwick art scene, Hurst has created a wide variety of handmade materials and ephemera largely in the form of musical recordings, posters, and memorabilia for over a decade. As a result, Hurst's rare works in collage and assemblage combine his illustrious performance and theatricality.

The art of Andrew Hurst is entrenched in the manipulation of matter: collage is a means for the artist to navigate emotional landscapes and expressive territories that border the subconscious. By utilizing an array of materials continuously accumulated and strewn about in his small studio, Hurst creates visual and textural eccentricities that provoke a dissection of his own perceptual and spiritual condition. These assemblages tear at the idea of self-reflection, functioning as shards of mirror, examining the internal and external forces that invade and imbue the constantly evolving perception of self and surroundings.

Hurst has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has performed in many of NYC's top venues including Issue Project Room, Abrons Art Center, Downtown Music Gallery, Collective Unconscious, Pocket Utopia, Roebling Hall, and the X Initiative among others. In 2004, he self published his first chapbook of poems Poltergeist Directory. In 2006, Hurst was commissioned by Saatchi & Saatchi to compose music for The Award for World Changing Ideas, culminating in the CD entitled Eleven. Hurst has most recently completed his first series of video works, entitled Motion Pix Vol. 1, which premiered in October 2009 at English Kills Art Gallery.

Hurst lives and works in Brooklyn with cameras, glue, and tape recorders.

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STOREFRONT is Bushwick’s leading gallery presenting both emerging young talent and established historically significant artists. Its exhibition program has been the featured in ARTNET MAGAZINE, CITYarts, THE CITYist, TIME OUT NEW YORK, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, NEW YORK PRESS, NEW YORK POST, THE NEW CRITERION, L MAGAZINE, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, WNYC, and written about locally including BUSHWICKBK, GREENPOINT GAZETTE, WILLIAMSBURG GREENPOINT NEWS + ARTS.

HOURS:  Weekends 1:00-6:00PM or by appointment 646-361-8512.

DIRECTIONS: L train to Brooklyn, Morgan Avenue Stop. Walk four blocks on Morgan to Flushing Avenue. Cross Flushing Avenue to Wilson Avenue. The gallery is located between Noll and George Streets.

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NOVEMBER 19-DECEMBER 19, 2010

opening reception: Friday, November 19, 6-9PM

STOREFRONT (16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn) will present new works by JUSTEN LADDA in an exhibition titled 7 MIRRORS AND A NOSE.  The exhibition marks the first solo exhibition in New York of the artist's work in nearly a decade.  The opening reception for the artist is Friday, November 19 from 6-9PM.  Storefront is open weekends 1-6PM or by appointment by calling 646-361-8512.  For more information visit www.storefrontbk.com

Justen Ladda has been an iconic figure on the New York art scene since the late 1970's and has developed several distinct bodies of work over the last three decades. He first exhibited his work - a painted installation titled 'square times' at the seminal Times Square Show in June 1980, and in 1981 painted 'THE THING' and 'book burning' in the underground auditorium of the abandoned PS37 in the South Bronx. In 1986, his work 'art, fashion and religion' was featured in The Museum of Modern Art's project room. Since then Ladda has exhibited in prominent group exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally. Among the concerns in his work are the idea of illusion, transformation, integration, and 'look'.

The mirror pieces on exhibit at STORFERONT continue the artist's fascination with the mirror, one he has been exploring in installations, sculptures, paintings and photography since 1980.

     "The mirrors in the show are either ellipsoidal or round and on red cedar wood. I select the lumber and cut and join it to combine wood grain patterns that have a certain character. I then stain and paint the panels with iridescent inks, raw pigments and metal compounds and coat them with a clear resin that gives them a mirror-like finish. The reflections are faint and tinted by the colors of the mirrors. I like the idea of a mirror with wood grain, because each ring or line of the wood represents a year."

Also on exhibit at STOREFRONT is a sculpture titled, 'white nose,' (2008) from a series of sculptures of noses based on that of the opera singer Maria Callas which evolved out of an earlier body of work of women's crystal dresses and corsets.

The noses are constructed in layers of different fabrics and batting over stainless steel wire frames and are covered in fashion fabrics that have been draped and sewn to fit the noses like gloves. The 'white nose' is finished not in fabric but in polyester batting.

     "I like the transformative aspects of fashion and glamour and the distortion of the body, which to me border on the magical.  After the dresses I made a series of corsets, which were based on historic models and originally existed to fashion the female body and mold it to conform to the beauty ideals of certain periods. I think that garments as well as types and colors of fabrics create character - at least of a temporary, superficial kind.

     "The interest in the nose came out of a long fascination with portraiture and the idea of 'character'. I believe that in portraits it is the nose that centers the face, 'sets the tone' and gives it much of its character I see a connection between the corset which functions to create a shape that 'anchors' and defines the look of a garment and the nose, which 'anchors' the face: both give character to their respective hosts. Subtle changes in either will change the larger picture."

In 2008, Ladda completed his latest public art project at the Allen Street Mall on the Lower East Side just south of Delancey Street.  It was done in collaboration with the NY Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Transportation. The design features Chinese scholar rocks, plantings, benches and paving stones and incorporates the artist's unique sensibilities. It is still evolving and will get a major make-over in 2011.

Justen Ladda's work is represented in the following public collections: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The New York Public Library, New York; The Alex Katz Foundation, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Tempozan Temporary Museum, Osaka, Japan; and The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore.

The artist's web site is: www.justenladda.com

ALSO, ON EXHIBIT FROM THE BACKROOM @ STOREFRONT:

SCIENCE FICTION: a group exhibition featuring new work by Nancy Bowen, dNASAb, Ben Godward. Meg Hitchcock, Jeff Hoppa, Linda Herritt, Marjorie Van Cura, and Letha Wilson.

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STOREFRONT was started by Jason Andrew and Deborah Brown.  It is Bushwick's leading gallery presenting both emerging young talent and established historically significant artists. Its exhibition program has been the featured in ARTNET MAGAZINE, THE CITYist, TIME OUT NEW YORK, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, NEW YORK PRESS, NEW YORK POST, THE NEW CRITERION, L MAGAZINE, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, WNYC, and written about locally including BUSHWICKBK, GREENPOINT GAZETTE, WILLIAMSBURG GREENPOINT NEWS + ARTS.

HOURS:             Weekends 1:00-6:00PM or by appointment 646-361-8512.

DIRECTIONS: L train to Brooklyn, Morgan Avenue Stop. Walk four blocks on Morgan to Flushing Avenue. Cross Flushing Avenue to Wilson Avenue. The gallery is located between Noll and George Streets.