Tables and Chairs Curated by Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker
Featuring the work of Justin Beal, Mario Correa, Kate Costello, Katie Grinnan, Aiko Hachisuka, Vishal Jugdeo, Lauren Lavitt, Allison Miller and Rebecca Morris with selected works by Alice Hutchins
July 1 - August 7, 2009 EXTENDED TIL 14 AUGUST Opening Reception: Wednesday July 1, 6-8pm
Originally this show was supposed to be about a moving truck going cross-country packed with art from Los Angeles. We'd invite a bunch of artists to contribute something and drive a truck around collecting pieces. When it was full, we'd drive eastward, show up in New York and put something together. This is basically what happened, minus the U-haul. "Tables and Chairs" brings together nine LA-based artists paired with selected works by Alice Hutchins. This show grew from associations in artworks that share an interest in abstraction, geometry, interaction, and dissolution.
Studios were visited and pieces were accumulated, withdrawn and incorporated back in again. Some works had been in our minds for a long time, a few offered from their resting places in studio corners. Perhaps this specific collection came about because of the camaraderie that is present when artists act as curators. As fellow artists, we enter into the studio with an understanding that it is also a place the artist lives. The works are (and are not) what they appear to be; straightforward yet slippery, a bit off kilter. Material directness and a sense of experimentation leads us paradoxically into interior spaces.. Each feels to be on the edge of falling apart, covering itself up, or disappearing altogether. These pieces are not quiet. They hide loudly and aggressively, like rainbow camouflage. "Tables and Chairs," the exhibition, feels awkward and private - a little too close to home.
In the front room is a selection of sculptures by Alice Hutchins. Spanning 40 years, Hutchins' magnetic works foster a certain intimacy and interaction. They can be rearranged into infinite variations and Hutchins, who lives among her works, is constantly shifting them. As written by Merrily Peebles, "An American based in Paris between 1950 and 1980, Hutchins began her artistic career as a painter at the age of 40. Critical to her artistic development was her inclusion in a group of avant-garde artists, musicians, and poets in Paris in the 1960s and her involvement in the Fluxus movement in New York City.. In 1967, Hutchins began experimenting with three-dimensional magnetic works and has since devoted her full attention to transformable, interactive work-a collaboration among the magnetic field, the art viewer and herself." (Magnetic Encounters, 2005)
-Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker
Alice Hutchins' front room section of this show was reviewed by the New York Times' Art in Review section on July 23rd.
This small selection of sculptures by Alice Hutchins is technically an appendage to the gallery's summer group show, an above-average mix of new art from Los Angeles. Fortunately, the organizers - Jedediah Caesar and Shana Lutker, both artists - have given Ms. Hutchins her own space in the front room. It's a rare New York appearance for Ms. Hutchins, a Fluxus-influenced artist born in 1916 who worked in Europe for decades and now lives in the Bay Area.
Ms. Hutchins trained as a painter, but for the past 40 years she has been making abstract metal-and-wood constructions with magnetic components. They change shape from show to show, and can even be reassembled by viewers (by request and with assistance from gallery staff ).
In "Group I Model K" (1968), tiny washers are clustered like barnacles around three tubular magnets. "Hex" (1976) is a sort of honeycomb, in which hexagonal forms stand on edge atop a round ferrite base.
In newer works, most wall-mounted, Ms. Hutchins arranges wires and chains on flat geometric supports. In "Nice and Easy" she uses a rod and frayed wire as a kind of needle and thread; in "Silence," a few inches of chain cling to a dark metal base like a trapped insect.
The interactive element makes the sculptures friendly, even toylike; at the same time, the knowledge that you're in the presence of a magnetic field keeps you at arm's length. KAREN ROSENBERG
Upcoming Shows:
JOANNE GREENBAUM: Hollywood Squares
front room- ELLIOTT GREEN: Personified Abstraction
September 10 - October 31, 2009 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10th, 6-8pm
