#associated

Steven Charles’ “Things That Fell Out of My Pocket” has received a few mentions. 

Bushwick Daily: http://bushwickdaily.com/2013/05/sexy-nobsbos-guidethe-hottest-artists/

In ModernNYC’s weekly email:

We’re listed amongst the 24 Bushwick Open Studios “All-Stars” out of over 500 listings (as are Theresa and Jen, two of the co-directors of Associated)

May 31 - June 30, 2013

Opening Fri May 31, 7-10pm

Associated is pleased to present an unexpected body of painted and sculpted works by Steven Charles. Differing from his well known visual style, these works consist of a diversity of materials that span synthetic fur, pom poms, corks, food, knives, glitter, and seemingly endless layers of paint. Each piece, regardless of its material or visual content, pushes absurdity - either by way of its obsessive process or simplicity.  “Abstract painting is the most confusing dilemma I have ever encountered,” says Charles. Yet he has always been interested in creating problems; being surprised and confused by the events that unfold while making something are what motivate his dedicated painting practice. In more recent years, he has explored this same interest with materials other than paint, and continues to surprise himself, now with works as unexpected and uncharacteristically Charles as cork paintings, outsider-looking works featuring sunflowers and text, and black and white geometric paintings.

Yet the complexity and level of detail, made obvious in his small works on found wood, exhibit his unique and characteristic process aptly dubbed “targeting” by the artist. In his own words, “This is where a shape is filled in with a smaller shape leaving only the outer edge of the first shape showing. This process is repeated until the amount of shape being covered is reduced to the smallest part possible with the selected brush. Each painting begins to generate a logic unique to it’s own composition. Even though it’s obvious that I am making these paintings, the end results always educates me on what I’m doing. The impetus for this work is my optimism, although what I am optimistic about constantly escapes me.” These works evoke much of his previous, highly labor-intensive works, which at their longest reached 18 feet.

Charles has been an extraordinarily dedicated painter navigating the New York art world since 1996. He was born in 1967 in Birkenhead, England, and received his BFA from the University of Texas and a MFA from Temple University . He has exhibited widely in notable locations such as Marlborough Chelsea (NYC), Marlborough Madrid (Spain), Pierogi (Brooklyn), The Brooklyn Museum, and Galerie Zürcher (Paris), among others. He has received Pollock-Krasner and NYFA grants, and has been living and working in Bushwick, Brooklyn since 2010.

Open hours are Sat & Sun 1-6pm. Please email to confirm>> [email protected]

566 Johnson Avenue (entrance on Stewart), Brooklyn, NY 11237. Jefferson St on the L train.

Thick with Cold
Monica Haak, Matthew Shelley, Aaron Williams
March 22 - April 13, 2014
Opening Saturday, March 22, 7-10pm

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the   sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.”  - Immanuel Kant                                                                                 

Although we are increasingly removed from the landscape, both physically and psychosocially, the role it continues to play is central to our identity as living beings. Monica Haak, Aaron Williams, and Matthew Shelly explore the broad theme of “The Landscape” in a progressive distortion between actual depiction, fragmentation, and abstraction of ubiquitous imagery. By employing various technologies that mediate our experience with our surroundings, each artist depicts their experience of the world around them as a form of documentation, nostalgia, awe, escapism, and even satire.  

Haak describes her paintings as “manifestations of the mundane beauty of the overgrown outskirts of the city and the specific solitude they provide.” She creates scenes that might serve as places of quiet refuge, where time both stands stoically still yet seems to be receding beyond the viewers vision. “These pockets of nature are bordered by and defined against their urban surroundings but are peacefully abandoned.” She depicts these places where, despite a stoic stillness, one can sense the light and atmosphere constantly shifting.  For her, the images act as a refuge where time slows down enough to absorb the richness of subtlety in her environment.

Shelley pieces together the landscape using found photography gathered from books on environmental science, travel, and the American wilderness. Building on chance associations and formal connections, he develops a scenario that is a combination of his experience with the materials, the assemblage, and the landscape itself. His use of representational imagery of expansive landscapes paired with geometric color fields and sharp edges form invented realities, alluding to worlds of fiction. The interaction between the materials and subject matter and how they oppose one another, in regard to scale, is largely present in Shelley’s work.

Working in several different mediums, Williams’ work is guided largely by materials and their inherent qualities and utility, often using common elements like commercial posters and raw construction materials. He combines these concrete objects with more rarified ideas and strategies of fine art, questioning our received notions of traditional art making processes as well as the relationship between personal and broadly disseminated imagery. For this body of work, photographs of the sky were taken outside his studio and near the studios of DeKooning and Jackson Pollock in eastern Long Island, NY. Using the standard dimensions of typical portraiture (24 x 18 inches), he aims to reshape the common idea of space, implying a human portrayal. By bringing the color to the surface and creating opaque blocks of blue form, he makes photographs that operate alternately as space and solid, while also being tacit portraits of the studio process.

Monica Haak was born in Chicago, IL in 1983. She studied fine art and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Shelley received his BFA from the University of Oregon and his MFA from American University, D.C, and currently lives and works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Williams received his BFA from the Maine College of art and his MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has shown extensively in the United States. He currently lives and works in Queens, NY.

Monica Haak,“Albion II,” 2010, Oil on linen, 12 x 12 inches

Outside®
February 22 - March 9, 2014
Opening Sat. February 22, 7-10pm

Angela Beallor and Kate Sopko
AJ Nichols
Scott Marceau
Arthur Matuszewski
Ian McOmber
Gabriella Searles

PRESS RELEASE

       In 1972, Roger Cardinal coined the term “outsider art” as an English synonym for art brut, meaning “raw art" or “rough art”, a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art made outside of cultural boundaries. In the context of present-day art-making in the metropolitan area, “outsider art” still connotes a particular aesthetic that often relates to naivete and a freshness that is often absent from work made by “insider” artists. The work exhibited in Outside® does not exactly fit this mold; it has been created either with the idea of the outdoors in mind, for the sake of existing outside, and/or by a creative person whose work exists on the outskirts of the contemporary art world.

       Angela Beallor and Kate Sopko have been collaborating since 2011 on a series of site-specific fort installations. In December 2012, as artists-in-residence at Habitable Spaces, a homestead and residency in Kingsbury, Texas, they constructed Dragon-fort, a nest-like structure made of densely woven thorny vines (mesquite, huisache, greenbriar, etc.) that were gathered from the surrounding area. Dragon-fort returns to a form that Angela (as an eight-year-old) carved in the center of a thorn bush in rural Ohio. Presented in Outside® is a documentation of some of the building process. Beallor (b. 1979, Cleveland, OH) is a visual artist and writer. She received her MFA in Advanced Photography from Bard College-International Center of Photography and a B.S. in Photo-Illustration and journalism from Kent State University, and recently was awarded a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Sopko (1978, Cleveland, OH) is an author, collage and installation artist. She currently works with Cleveland’s permaculture education group Green Triangle, is a facilitator for City Repair Cleveland and an urban farmer active in the city’s local food movement.

       Scott Marceau, a photographer well known in the metropolitan area for his BMX and skate photography, has been documenting the environment and people within his surroundings since childhood. The works featured in this exhibition reveal his first remembered experience capturing moments with a camera - photographs he took during recess in fourth grade of children “ecstatic to be outside and away from the rigorous workload of the elementary school curriculum.” Marceau was raised outside of Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2009. He currently works for a London-based magazine as a photographer and writer, writes for a BMX website, scans negatives for a bicycle-based photography book, and edits a full-length DVD for an affiliated BMX crew.

       Arthur Matuszewski grew up in Rockaway Beach, then part of the true fringe of New York City. While living there he began to apprentice with master glassman Patrick Clark in the art of stained glass, completing many creative projects spanning restorations to original pieces. Though he left the beach for college at Brown University, and then a job in the world of business administration, he often returns and has just completed this original work both for himself and this show.

       Ian McOmber constructs sculptures out of wire, chains, and other materials he finds himself around in his Connecticut studio. He views his process of making as “sketching with [his] hands.” The objects he chooses to make are representative of his interests; bikes, cameras, fish, amongst others. McOmber studied Media Arts at Central Connecticut State University. He currently lives and works in Bristol, CT and is a videographer for Hanger Clinic, as well as a BMX and motorcycle enthusiast.

       AJ Nichols (b. 1986, North Carolina) builds objects that, at their core, serve the purpose of transporting people from one location to another, on the streets and in the elements: bicycles. But he takes the art of creating these simple machines to a unique level, catering to aesthetic and practical preferences of each client. Nichols built the bike in Outside® to fit the “Puerto Rican Schwinn Club style.” “It’s like Mad Max in the woods instead of the desert.” He studied Philosophy at Warren Wilson College and has been working in various automotive, mechanic, and bike shops, between North Carolina and New York, before moving to Bushwick with his wife and daughter and opening Harvest Cyclery.

       Gabriella Searles is a designer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in Graphic Design at FIT. She designs websites for a small studio in Williamsburg and spends her free time almost entirely on the internet.

Scott Marceau, “Andrew Jumping Off the Slide,” 1996, C-Print, 4 x 6 inches

Transitions v.2 
January 18 - February 2
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 18 7-10pm

Associated Gallery is proud to present our second installation of Transitions, a group exhibition selected from our open call. Please join us for our opening reception Saturday, January 18th, between 7-10pm. 

Featuring works by:

Rachel Grobstein
Tom Henry
Elizabeth Johnson
Leah Oates
Joseph Moore
William Niemeier
Jocelyn Shu
Sarah Zapata

For Immediate Release:

Apologies for the crappy photo, it’s hard to get everything in focus at that small scale! i wanted to make a piece that captured my feeling about impending ecological catastrophe using american consumer culture flotsam and jetsam (Grobstein) in other words, a nation that has hastily been converted from a socialist/communist state into a free-market capitalist economy (Henry). The societal desire for overly complicated technology that performs meaningless tasks is draining public interest in traditionally functional objects and rituals (Zapata). Created during a period of political instability and warfare, the text advocates harmony with nature according to outlined universal truths that address balance and transitions (Shu). The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence (Oates).

I make a mentally abstract space of competing realities, one where meaning is flattened as a sum of disparate thoughts or moments (Johnson). Simultaneously definite and ethereal, they offer a landscape of differing temperaments and spatial levels (Niemeier). An image of a frog in “camouflage” found on a wikpedia article is presented on a computer screen. It blends with its environment to a point of non-differentiation. The website as an encyclopedia written in ones and zeros. The computer as a machine for making copies. The photograph looks like a place that comes to look more like the photograph (Moore). Though essentially paintings, realized with spray paint and stenciled imagery, they are referred to as drawings because of the economical agility in their making (Niemeier).
…and I find this kind of “nonsense” relaxing (Johnson).

Please join Associated on Sunday January 5 for a closing reception. UPDATE: Due to the snow storm, Tom Warren is unable to make it to New York for the closing and to take portraits. We will still be hosting the closing reception from 1-6pm, please stop by if you haven’t yet seen the show!

Transitions v.1 (Like an Indefinite State)
Nov. 16 - Dec 1, 2013
Opening: Saturday Nov. 16, 7-10pm

Diane DiMassa

Associated is pleased to announce the first of a series of group shows evoking the theme of transition. Please join us on Saturday, November 16 from 7-10pm as we celebrate the opening of Transitions v.1 (Like an Indefinite State), featuring works by Michael Alongi, Diane DiMassa, Peter Hoffmeister, Shinto Imai, Robert Nava, Elizabeth Riley, Cecilia Salama, and Mika Yokobori.

 From the start of life, we begin to die; Transition between parent and child, or one force to another (Shinto Imai), a blue tarp as a metaphorical dividing line between self and other (Elizabeth Riley). By spending time with them and taking pictures, I feel that I’ve been able to participate in something meaningful – a relationship with each – which is something that can’t be overlooked (Michael Alongi). I could not see the image on this, and carefully washed the mud off, to have a portrait emerge… (Diane DiMassa). I choose to use biomorphic images as a metaphor for social hierarchy, as well as human cells, body parts, or organs as for an individual or a collective functionality within an organism or culture (Mika Yokobori). The fluidity of borders which change according to government policy and conflict, but which can also provide a people with sovereignty (Peter Hoffmeister) is a narrative of the integration of the body and an individual’s psychological states with the city (Elizabeth Riley). In the process of streaming ideas and imagination onto canvas or paper, I become an observer and a single component of my own social environment (Mika Yokobori). The words transcend into the mind, hopefully to a somewhat familiar place of an emotional loopty loop that can occur during a tear-jerking argument (Robert Nava). It definitely begs for an archeological explanation, as it is a sort of enigmatic object that feels like something you can’t quite identify (Peter Hoffmeister)… A mold that has tiny nodules which create a sort of binary-code onto the iridescent latex when it dries (Cecilia Salama). Finally, the text piece, I feel, is left for the mind to handle, in the flow of a circular conversation (Robert Nava).

Open hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 1-6pm and by appt. Email to confirm.

You Are My Sunshine

A Group Show of plant-based art and artist /gallerist-owned plants

September 21 - October 13, 2013

Opening Saturday September 21, 7-10pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Associated is pleased to announce our first fall exhibition as a group show that juxtaposes the onset of autumn with the struggle for life. Please join us for an opening reception on Saturday September 21st at 7pm as we celebrate this miracle.

You Are My Sunshine will transform the gallery into an menagerie of greenery, a literal and metaphorical portrayal of the seeds of creation coexisting with, and within, the lives of artists. Some of the pieces on display are deliberate pieces of finished artwork that either incorporate or have been directly influenced by plant-life. Others serve to bring joy into the daily lives of artists who are feel subjected to a lack of accessible foliage in the city, perhaps conjuring a sense of nostalgia for those raised in abrasively urban environments.

Indeed, some participating artists have deep emotional connections to their plants. Multi-media artist Glenn Wonsettler, for example, describes is attachment thus, “My plant was given to me as a small stem with a few leaves in a glass of water by a person I was deeply in love with on the day we decided that, because of circumstances outside our control, we could no longer be together. I keep it in a ceramic bowl I made in 1998 that is decorated with a cat chasing a mouse who is after some cheese.” Hannah June, an industrial designer, by contrast makes work which merges functionality with beauty and incorporates her interest in biomimicry via living plants. Ellie Irons salvaged a clipping of an Asiatic dayflower, which grows spontaneously in NYC but is native to Northeast Asia, from a weed trimmer on Wilson Avenue, and it has begun sprouting seeds that she will use to generate a new crop of the plant when the local population dies off this winter.

You Are My Sunshine will  feature works and plants by: Abdolreza Aminlari (Jackie Klempay, Bushwick), Haruka Aoki, Marco Antonini (NurtureArt), Liz Atzberger (Airplane, Bushwick), Margot Bird, Ryan Brennan, Alta Buden (Harbor, Bushwick), Cameron Blaylock, Barbara Campisi, Courtney Childress, Theresa Daddezio (Associated, Bushwick), Arielle Falk (Auxiliary, Bushwick), Lacey Fekishazy (Sardine, Bushwick), Enrico Gomez (Parallel Art Space, Bushwick), Jen Hitchings (Associated, Bushwick), Peter Hoffmeister, David Horvitz, Julian Jimarez-Howard (Associated, Bushwick), Ellie Irons, Hannah June (CSA+D), Jackie Klempay (Jackie Klempay, Bushwick), Clinton King, Eleni Kontos, Amy Lincoln, Christine Mahoney, Mary Martin, Kristen McWharter, Paul Nicholson, Andrew Ohanesian, Keri Oldham (Field Projects, NYC), Brent Owens, Joey Parlett, Rachel Philips (Parlour, Bushwick), Joshua Rayner, Naomi Safron-Hon (Slag Gallery, Bushwick), Jessica Sanders, Magdalen Wong, Glenn Wonsettler, Seldon Yuan.

You Are My Sunshine

September 21 - October 13, 2013

Opening Saturday, September 21 7-10pm

An exhibition of artists’ plants and plant-based art from the Brooklyn art scene and beyond.

Hot Mamas

Caroline Falby, Rachel Hayes, Sharon Horvath

July 20 - August 18, 2013

Opening Saturday July 20, 7-10pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Associated is pleased to present a three person show featuring works by Caroline Falby, Rachel Hayes, and Sharon Horvath. All three artists share two, or maybe several, common threads amongst their lives - the act of creating artwork, and of having created life, as mothers. Each has taken their own unique aesthetic approach to art making, and with vastly different materials, but have all juggled sustaining an artistic practice while maintaining and nurturing a family in New York City over the years.

Sharon Horvath creates dreamlike paintings, primarily on paper, with pigment and polymer that she mixes herself. Her imagery balances the serene with the naive, consisting of objects such as rocking horses, baseball fields, complex and ambiguous netted structures, and starry nights. Only occasionally do her subjects allude  to experiences of maternity in an overt manner, but they often hint at domesticity, and always intimacy.

Caroline Falby, by contrast, often creates works that reflect her position and responsibility as a mother.  She uses many media to transgressively question the seemingly absolutist authority of our social structures and especially parenthood.  Often employing dark humor, she draws frequently on fables and apocryphal tales from many cultures to undermine and highlight the failures in our own.

In the objects that Rachel Hayes creates, she seeks to find a natural balance between fragility and power. Her work functions on a multitude of levels; as an object of beauty, as minimalist sculpture, as architectural divide, as abstract painting, or even as a massive stained glass patchwork quilt.  She applies various materials such as glass, fabric, plastic, paint, wire, and light gels that cast colorful, dynamic shadows onto the surrounding environment.  Within her process, she employs techniques evocative of basketry and sewing to build forms that are often related to the “feminine.” Such techniques are offset however, by the color and scale, creating a dichotomy between craft as it relates to the feminine and architecture’s masculine connotations.   

Horvath received her BFA from Cooper Union and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, and has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is currently pursuing a Fulbright US Scholar Grant in India, studying the Ragamala genre of Indian miniature painting.  She has received numerous fellowships and awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, The Rome Prize, and two Pollock-Krasner foundation grants. She is currently an Associate Professor of Painting & Drawing at Purchase College, SUNY.

Falby received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Hunter College. She has exhibited widely throughout  New York  including shows at NURTUREart, The Drawing Center, the Queens Museum, and the Bronx Art Space.

Hayes received her BFA from Kansas City University and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has attended numerous residencies such as the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation (NY), Roswell (New Mexico), amongst others, and has exhibited widely throughout the US, and has been commissioned for many public art projects.

ASSOCIATED 566 Johnson Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11237 Buzzer #27/#28

http://associatedgallery.tumblr.com///[email protected]

By appointment only, buzz #28 to see if someone is there / or please email to confirm

Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy of Gorky’s Granddaughter interviewed Steven Charles during his show at Associated. Watch the video here: http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/06/steven-charles-at-associated-gallery.html

Painter’s Table also mentioned the video on their blog: http://painters-table.com/link/gorkys-granddaughter/steven-charles-associated-gallery