Rhombus Space Presents "Heavy Metal" Featuring Artwork by MaDora Frey, Tom Kotik, Robbii, Alexa Williams, and Ward Yoshimoto.

Rhombus Space presents Heavy Metal, an exhibition featuring artwork by MaDora Frey, Tom Kotik, Robbii, Alexa Williams, and Ward Yoshimoto.
Curated by Katerina Lanfranco

Exhibition Dates: April 10 - May 3, 2015

Reception: Friday, April 10th, 6-9 PM

183 Lorraine St, 3FL #33 Brooklyn, NY 11231

The artists in "Heavy Metal" examine concepts of metal as a material, alchemy, and music. Their artworks are both heavy and defiantly light. Non-traditional and often industrial materials are used to create artworks that transcend the original nature of their materiality to form engaging and unexpected sculptures, paintings, and art installations.

Robbii’s shrine-like assemblages bring a redemptive quality to otherwise humble, old, and discarded materials like machine parts, aged wood, and rusted metal. Yoshimoto references his roots in the industrial suburbs of L.A. that polarized his Japanese heritage and plastic Americana, in his suburban folk art metal sculptures and drawings. Williams represents urban and industrial space through concrete and sheet metal paintings that suggest landscape while being formal abstractions. Kotik makes activated monochromes that investigate the relationship between sound, architecture, and Minimalism. Frey’s work synthesizes idyllic nature and city grit with urban elements such as glass, asphalt, and concrete – taking on the sinewy, geometric chaos of the natural world.

The artists in “Heavy Metal” embrace the power of transforming humble media in their work, to create stunning works that make us reconsider our daily aesthetic and even spiritual experience, in urban and industrial spaces.

MaDora Frey is a New York based artist with an MFA from the New York Academy of Art (and studied art in Florence, Italy). She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally with solo shows in Seattle, WA and in NYC. Frey is the recipient of several grants and awards including: the Ford Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and Prince of Wales Fellowship (Normandy, France). She has been awarded a 2015 artist residency at the Quarry at Marble House Project.

MaDora Frey, Kaleidoscope #500 (Space for One) 2013. Mirrors and mixed media, 12 x 22 x 12”

Tom Kotik is a New York based artist with an MFA from Hunter College. His work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Smack Mellow, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Sculpture Center in New York, the Prague National Gallery in the Czech Republic, and at the Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Spain. He is the recipient of many awards and residencies in New York. Kotik has an upcoming solo show opening in June at the Leslie Heller Gallery in NYC.

 

Tom Kotik, Untitled (Red), 2011. Altered Ibanez DT 350 guitar, spray enamel, 24.5 x 15.5 x 6”

Robbii is a New York based artist with a BFA from Parson School of Design. He was inspired to become an artist by his father who was a commercial artist for over 70 years and taught him the value of good work, and by insight sharing identical twin brother who is a rocket scientist working for NASA.  Robbii has shown at numerous galleries nationally, and has had solo shows at Gallery Juno, NYC and at the Earlville Opera House, Earlville, NY.

Robbii, Measure in C. Mixed media, 12.5 x 8 x 5”

Alexa Williams is a New York City native, based in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited extensively in NYC, with solo shows at Gallery Brooklyn, Giacobetti-Paul Gallery, Schaefer Landing, and Greely Square Gallery. She is the recipient of artist residencies and fellowships including from the Vermont Studio Center and The Cooper Union. Post art school, Williams lived in Spain in order to paint near the sea, and developed her “Horizon” series.

Alexa Williams, Suzuki Reaction, 2014. Chalk and graphite on steel and concrete, 18 x 24”

Ward Yoshimoto is a New York based artist with an MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. Yoshimoto exhibits his work extensively nationally and internationally with solo shows in California, NYC and Paris, France. He has received several awards and residencies including, the MacDowell Colony, Governors Island, as well as from Brooklyn College and Bard College. He is also a founding member of ICOBA – a conceptual art group exploring institutional critique of the art world active in NYC and Paris, France.

 

Ward Yoshimoto, Drop Everything, 2014. Hardware cloth (metal wire), Krylon, and acrylic, 21.5 x 14 x 2.5”

Rhombus Space Presents "Post Partum Party" Featuring artwork by Monica Carrier, Sydney Chastain-Chapman, Marni Kotak, David Lukowski, Qiana Mestrich and Hugh Walton. And book/book art works by Alana Capria, Katherine Keltner, and co-editors Qiana Mestrich & Michi Jigarjian.

Sydney Chastain-Chapman, Heirlooms, 2014. Acrylic and glitter on canvas, 20x20” and 24x24”

Rhombus Space is pleased to present Post Partum Party, an exhibition featuring artwork by Monica Carrier, Sydney Chastain-Chapman, Marni Kotak, David Lukowski, Qiana Mestrich and Hugh Walton. Featuring books by Alana Capria, Katherine Keltner, and co-editors Qiana Mestrich & Michi Jigarjian.

Exhibition Dates: November 21 – December 14, 2014 Reception: Friday, 11/21, 6-9 PM 

Post Partum Party is an exhibition of works by artists whose additional role as parents becomes a creative fulcrum that informs their work at times consciously and intentionally, and at other times sub-consciously and intuitively. The artists in this exhibition explore the fertile territory of the changing parameters and boundaries that come with having to parent children while being active studio artists in NYC. What the work makes evident, is that instead of mourning the loss of self-sovereignty and individual autonomy, these artists embrace their multifaceted lives and push up against the parameters of being parents to make provocative, profound, and fearlessly honest artwork.

Qiana Mestrich and Marni Kotak reference their own biography through a documentary approach. Mestrich uses beautiful color and composition in her photographs that juxtapose critical concepts, while Kotak turns herself into a vessel through performance art and shifts taboo/private experiences into empowered events. David Lukowski employs humor in his sculptures to explore the concept of early language acquisition and the creation of complex compound ideas from simple base words that often reveal frustration, wit and accidental poetry. Sydney Chastain-Chapman and Hugh Walton mine their personal memories. Chastain-Chapman’s paintings reflect a psychological realism where a dream-like logic takes over to investigate eternal cycles of birth/life/death. Walton’s video art and extracted stills fluctuate between private and universal content; his work exposes societal mixed messages, while unearthing childhood trauma. Monica Carrier’s meditative, abstract, playful black ink drawings move between organic pooling and fine brushwork inviting the viewer to witness the emergence of faces and forms that grow out of her intuitive and process-based work.

Art by (clockwise from top left): David Lukowski, Monica Carrier, Sydney Chastain-Chapman,
Qiana Mestrich, Marni Kotak, and Hugh Walton

Monica Carrier lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her MFA from Hunter College, where she was awarded a grant to study architecture in India. Carrier has had solo shows in NYC and Denmark. She is an active member of tART and is on the Arts@Renaissance Advisory Board.

Sydney Chastain-Chapman lives and works in Nyack, NY. She earned her BFA from Cornell University and MFA from Hunter College. She has been represented by Kravets|Wehby Gallery in New York City since 2004. Her work has been shown in numerous solo, two-person, and group exhibitions in New York City, Long Island, Los Angeles, London, and Paris.

Marni Kotak is an NYC artist who makes multimedia works and is recognized for her “Found Performances”, or works based on daily activities, experiences, or accomplish-ments. In 2011, she received international attention for her durational performance “The Birth of Baby X”, where she gave birth to her son Ajax in a NYC art gallery.  

Qiana Mestrich is a visual artist, writer, and founder/blogger of Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography History (est. 2007). Mestrich earned her MFA from the International Center for Photography-Bard College. She exhibits her work nationally and currently has a solo show, Inherited Patterns, on view at the Mid-Manhattan New York Public Library.

David Lukowski lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been shown in New York art spaces including Klemens Gasser and Tanja Grunert, Inc., helper, General Practice, and ruSalon. And he has shown his work in San Antonio, TX at Sala Diaz. He is a founding member of the collective Jack Roy.

Hugh Walton lives in Brooklyn, NY. He exhibits his work internationally. Walton had a recent solo show at the Blair Academy Romano Gallery, and a critically received debut solo show with Clementine Gallery. His work has been exhibited at The Andy Warhol Museum, CANADA Gallery, Rush Arts Gallery, among others.

Books:

Books by (left to right): Alana I. Capria, Katherine Keltner, and co-editors Michi Jigarjian and Qiana Mestrich

Alana I. Capria is the author of the story collection Wrapped in Red (Montag Press, 2014), the novel Hooks and Slaughterhouse (Montag Press, 2013) and the chap-book Organ Meat, Killing Me (Turtleneck Press, 2012). Capria earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and resides in Northern New Jersey with her husband.

Wrapped in Red is a feminist horror reimagining of traditional fairytales. The stories examine the body, birth, death, and sex interwoven in a fantastical world of putrid forests and dilapidated factories.

Katherine Keltner is a New York based artist. She earned her MFA from American University. Her work has been exhibited at The American University Museum / Katzen Arts Center, Muriel Guepin Gallery, Jamaica Center for the Arts, Max Protetch Gallery, and Creative Time. Keltner presented her paper “Multiplicities from Motherhood” at the 2013 NWSA Conference.

One Year: Somewhere in Between (a Life in 365 Days) is a self-portrait as mother through a compilation of images of her daughter’s daily rest combined with email fragments revealing dichotomous feelings about motherhood, resulting in a limited edition artwork.

Edited by Michi Jigarjian and Qiana Mestrich, How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood, is a diverse collection of responses about the logistics of balancing art making and motherhood; the need for creative space; and how having children impacts creativity – written by contemporary artists embracing their concurrent roles of mother and artist.