Bill Saylor "If fantasies came by the gallon, this baby could run forever..."
June 5th through July 11th, 2009 Opening Reception, June 5th, 6-8pm
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Bill Saylor.
For this exhibition, Saylor continues to meld together a profuse and varied imagery of the mechanical and the organic, high and low, sublime and ludicrous, which results in an intoxicating hybrid. Frenetic environments arise from the artist navigating freely between gestural brushwork, alternatingly rough and detailed drawing, text, collage, and incongruous sculpture that is meant to be considered as a whole.
Saylor often begins with notational drawings that have evolved into a highly personalized shorthand and anchoring force for his paintings and sculptures. In the canvases, superficial links to an abstract expressionist past are in evidence, however, in the artists hand, the confrontational machismo that ab-ex was known for, is subverted through unlikely juxtapositions, humorous text and collages. There also seems to be a continuing effort to re-code the visual bombardment of contemporary city life into a dialogue with gestural painting. For all the initial chaos that is recorded by the eye however, a teetering cohesion emerges.
In the past, Saylor's work has been described as being tuned in to a particularly American iconography. With this in mind, in his new sculptures, Saylor is in effect memorializing an imminent "dinosaur," the V8 high performance engine. These striking relics have been transformed into colorful pop-elegies for a soon to be bygone era, while offering a glimpse to a potential future, mutating forms into a playful and eloquent mechanical/biological amalgam. As the title suggests, "if fantasies came by the gallon, this baby could run forever...
Bill Saylor has exhibited internationally and has been included in such shows as The Peanut Gallery, curated by Joe Bradley, Journal Gallery, Brooklyn NY, Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies, Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, CA., and Contemporary Painters; curated by Alex Katz, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME. He has recently been selected for the Chinati Foundation artist residency in Marfa TX. He lives and works in NYC.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.
Leo Koenig Inc. 545 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212.334.9255 Fax: 212.334.9304 www.leokoenig.com
Anke Weyer Adrian Meraz Blind Buzzard, June 5th thorough July 11th, 2009 Opening reception Friday, June 5th, 6-9 pm
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of our new space PROJEKTE. Located right next door to Leo Koenig Inc., PROJEKTE will allow us to present focused exhibitions by artists outside our own roster. The program will include invitational and curated projects, performances, select readings and lectures. PROJEKTE is pleased to announce as its inaugural exhibition, a two person show of works by Adrian Meraz and Anke Weyer entitled Blind Buzzard.
In native American lore, Buzzards help to construct and purify the world and they are universally seen as an adroit and efficient scavenger. Blind Buzzard on the other hand, evokes a comic/tragic familiar whose skill set could be hampered or surprisingly enhanced by a distinct disadvantage.. A parable for absurdity and incongruence, Blind Buzzard extracts grace from disorientation.
Adrian Meraz' impossibly delicate sculptures defy their foundation. Evoking a complexity that reaches beyond the simple materials that he has used, the structures seemed to have willed themselves into being. Popsicle sticks, toothpicks balsa wood, cardboard and string are wrought into precarious edifices. Meraz works address the immovable constructs of materiality while considering the tenuous and fragile nature of that materiality. Meraz states "I am interested in the simplicity of materials as an aggregate for meta-history, subtext, a channeling device, a monster language. Each piece, in some ways, is a bastard community constructed to engage a more mental navigation via its smaller spacial makeup. I am interested in the work as a set of images that the viewer "maps," and how this navigation within the object explores liminality." Adrian Meraz holds a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale School of Art, Department of Sculpture. He has had a solo exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and was awarded a California Community Fellowship. Adrian Meraz lives and works in NYC.
Anke Weyer will present ink washes of wolves and nocturnal birds. While known for large, brooding abstractions, Weyer has been making these more intimate works for over a year now in a continuing series called "Night Roamers." This series, represents a respite from daylights harsh and predictive rigor. The ink washes came into their own, feral and ephemeral creatures haunting desolate landscapes. Slowly, Weyer began to see the works as a whole. "Night is the place where perceptions are challenged, and changed "says Weyer.. They are images of a possible journey, a chance encounter, following a stranger into an unknown place. Anke Weyer is a graduate of the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste, Staedelschule, Frankfurt Germany and is represented by Canada Gallery, NY. She lives and works in NYC.
PROJEKTE will be open by appointment on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 10-6 pm Thursday through Saturday. For more information or visuals, please contact us at 212-334-9255 or via email at info@leokoeonig.com.
Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte 541 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011 Tel; 212.334.9255 Fax; 212.334.9304 www.projekte.leokoenig.com
