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Catalog of the exhibition curated by Jamillah James and featuring artists: Lisha Bai, Leah Beeferman, Ethan Greenbaum, Elisa Lendvay, Demetrius Oliver, Allyson Vieira, and Joe Winter. The Order of Things considers the shift in our relationship to the universe in light of recent apocalyptic predictions. An acute awareness of time, as some wait with baited breath for “the end”, engenders a special attentiveness to space, materiality, and objecthood, with smaller details emerging and becoming foregrounded.
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The LongestShow Title
of the Universeis Here
Annalisa PerazziKim Jong Il
Ronald ReaganMatt Kleenex
Ramon EsquivernaLaetitia Ann-Saedler
Camilla Perowski-WittgensteinEdo Udo
Rachel Minnesota
Curated by:Franklin Delano and
Eric Sutherland
From April 26 to May 28, 2012Opening Reception: Friday, May 28, 7-9 PM
NURTUREart Gallery56 Bogart St., Brooklyn, NY 11206
The Order of Things
Lisha Bai
Leah Beeferman
Ethan Greenbaum
Elisa Lendvay
Demetrius Oliver
Allyson Vieira
Joe Winter
From January 4 to February 1, 2013Opening Reception: Friday, January 4, 7-9 PM
NURTUREart Gallery56 Bogart St., Brooklyn, NY 11206
Curated by Jamillah James
The Order of Things
by Jamillah James
The Order of Things considers the shift in our re-lationship to the universe in light of recent apoc-alyptic predictions. An acute awareness of time, as some wait with baited breath for “the end”, engenders a special attentiveness to space, ma-teriality, and objecthood, with smaller details emerging and becoming foregrounded. The art-ists in this exhibition use a nearly scientific ver-nacular, either through their own experimental studio practice, or in how they visualize and aes-theticize the passage of time. They are address-ing cosmological hierarchy from the bottom up, reiterating the impulse of subjects to understand their existence and the world through objects.Lisha Bai uses sand and Plexiglas to form col-umns and leaning slabs, referencing the visual language of Minimalism and more directly, the hourglass, the classic marker of time. Bai’s inten-sive manipulations of her material leave little to chance. The collection of pink, blue, and violet grains contrast with the vast expanses of dark-ness, creating the illusion of bands of refracted light or celestial bodies in the cosmos. Leah Beeferman studied science for a number of years before becoming an artist. Beeferman creates animations, laser cut etchings, drawings, and installations with geometric renderings of data culled from various scientific journals. When taken out of context, the resultant images ap-pear as particles floating in the ether. On a recent
residency in the Arctic Circle, Beeferman made a field recording of her explorations of the ter-rain in isolation. Sounds of water gurgling, wind howling, and some moments of relative silence comprise a sonic record of the unusually harsh, mostly uninhabited sublime landscape. Ethan Greenbaum uses a combination of pro-cesses to make large scale reproductions of forms we encounter and mostly overlook on a daily basis. Greenbaum is particularly interest-ed in architecture and landscape; he walks and bikes around parts of the city, photographing surfaces--particularly crevices, sidewalks, and foundational materials--reinforcing that percep-tion is governed primarily by the body’s relation-ship to space and the objects within it. Elisa Lendvay’s small, hand built sculptures made of wire, clay, plaster, junk and other found ma-terial have the appearance of being unearthed from another time. Lendvay sometimes refers to them as “thoughtforms”, which are tradition-ally understood as the physical manifestations of mental energy and intent. Those objects are sometimes used in magic, a practice that falls outside of the realm of perception and runs counter to theology, science, or other explana-tions of the workings of the universe. In her in-terdisciplinary practice, Lendvay is interested in the quasi-spiritual relationships we form with en-vironments and objects and the lives and value
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Lisha Bai: Untitled (sand rotation), 2012. Sand and Plexiglas, 81 x 30 x 1inches.
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of objects beyond visual fancy. Demetrius Oliver reveals a fascination with outer space, the romanticized final frontier. Over the past few years, Oliver has made a series of paint-ings on paper, using the broken spines of umbrel-las and spray paint, the action leaving behind ab-stracted impressions resembling constellations. Telescope (2008), made from a configuration of 48 stacked buckets. The other component, a slide projector, was once a popular visual aid for science lecturing now nearing obsolescence. A slowly rotating image of an ocean’s tide is pro-jected inside of the buckets; tides are caused by the Sun and Moon’s force of gravity and the Earth’s rotation. With each click of the projec-tor, Oliver alludes to this cosmic and temporal phenomenon.Allyson Vieira’s “Torso” series of sculptures are accumulations of debris from her studio stratified in plaster, investigating what Vieira has referred to as “geologic time”. Vieira keeps a collection of empty buckets around her work space, using them for mixing plaster, holding and carrying objects and waste disposal. After she has filled the bucket, she pours excess plaster from other projects into the bucket, each bucket becoming a time capsule of her process. Finally, the work of Joe Winter demand atten-tion to minute changes on the part of a viewer. He allows invisible forces—sunlight, gravity, and so forth—to determine the outcome of the work and act upon the surfaces in a carefully protract-ed manner. Winter embeds these “experiments” within an aesthetic informed by institutional spaces such as offices and classrooms. Here, Winter uses a fabricated office file sorter as a receptacle for colored construction paper, onto which he places custom-cut glass, which acts as
both a paperweight and a conduit for near-pho-tographic exposure. The naturally faded prints are then displayed on cork bulletin boards typi-cally used for the display and collection of infor-mation.The exhibition borrows its title from the text by Michel Foucault, but is more interested in the use of the phrase as it predates the text. Most manners of existence are stratified in one way or another—the distribution of power and agency touches upon all systems of order. This exhibi-tion engages the primary, phenomenological re-lationship between subjectivity, perception, time and space with work unified by a scientifically-informed aesthetic, examining banality and the existential in equal parts.
Lisha Bai: Calendar (December), 2010. C-print, 20 x 30 inches.
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Leah Beeferman: 12012280v1, 2012. Laser etched Plexiglas, Formica table, sound, installation dimensions variable (Table dimensions: 120 x 24 inches). Image credit: Pierre Le Hors.
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Leah Beeferman: Untitled (video still), 2010. digital animation with sound.
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Leah Beeferman: 12012280v1 (detail).
Ethan Greenbaum: Back Up, 2012. Direct to substrate print on vacuum formed plastic, 40 x 44.75 inches (framed).
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Ethan Greenbaum: Peel, 2012. Direct to substrate print on vacuum formed plastic, 79 ¼ x 54 ¼ inches (unframed).
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Elisa Lendvay: Bulletin, 2012. Plaster, wood, metal, acrylic paint and medium, 20 x 20 x 3 inches.
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Elisa Lendvay: Four Clusters. 2010 - 2011. Mixed media, found material with papier mache. Each approx 12 x 4 x 3 inches.
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Demetrius Oliver: Azimuth, 2012. Enamel and graphite on paper, 70 x 51 inches.
Demetrius Oliver: Telescope, 2008. 48 plastic buckets, slide projector, 80 slides in continuous loop, digital c-print, dimensions variable (telescope: 154 x 48 inches; digital c-print: 18 7/8 x 25 inches).
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Allyson Vieira: Torso (Decadent), 2012. Mirror, plaster, Plaster Weld, chalk, wax, urethane, gloves, and blades, 15 3/4 x 47 1/4 x 13 inches. Image courtesy Laurel Gitlen gallery.
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Allyson Vieira: Torso (Archaic), 2012. Mirror, plaster, urethane, gloves, and cups, 15 3/4 x 47 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches. Image courtesy Laurel Gitlen gallery.
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Joe Winter: Model for a history of light (revision), 2010. Felt letterboard sign, desk lamp with CFL bulb, portfolios of UV-faded construction paper prints, dimensions variable.
Joe Winter: Model for a history of light (void), 2010. Wood, UV-proof glass with circular hole, pushpins, sunlight, 24 x 32 inches.
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NURTUREart Non-Profit Inc. is dedi-cated to nurturing contemporary art by providing exhibition opportunities and resources for emerging artists, curators, and local public school students. The unique synergy between NURTUREart’s programs generates a collaborative envi-ronment for artistic experimentation. This framework, along with other far-reaching programming, cultivates a supportive ar-tistic network and enriches the local and larger cultural communities.
NURTUREart Non-Profit Inc. is a 501(c)(3) New York State licensed, federally tax-ex-empt charitable art organization founded in 1997 by George J. Robinson. NURTU-REart is funded in part by The Andy War-hol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bar-clays, City Council Member Diana Reyna, City Council Member Stephen Levin, the Greenwall Foundation, the Greenwich Collection, the Harold and Colene Brown Foundation, the Laura B. Vogler Founda-tion, the Leibovitz Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Department of Education, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Founda-tion and generous individuals. It receives legal support from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.
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NURTUREart Sponsors:
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual ArtsCity Council Member Diana Reyna
City Council Member Stephen LevinThe Durst Family Foundation
The Greenwall FoundationThe Greenwich Collection, LTDThe Joan Mitchell Foundation
The Harold and Colene Brown Family FoundationThe Laura B. Vogler Foundation
The Leibovitz FoundationLily Auchincloss Foundation
Milton and Sally Avery Arts FoundationNew York City Department of Cultural Affairs
New York City Department of EducationNew York State Council on the Arts
No More PovertyUrban Outfitters
WNYC Star InitiativeThe Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation
Many generous individuals
Thank You:
Brooklyn BrewerySociete Perrier
Printing For LessVolunteer Lawyers for the Arts
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