More Thursday, July 10th , 2014 . . NYC

More  Thursday,  July 10th ,  2014 . .  NYC  81°F Clear

• Go With the Flow A group show of atomized paint July 10 - August 23, 2014 OPENING: Thursday, July 10th from 6-9PM   Adam Henry Austin Lee Brian Belott David Ostrowski Dennis Hoekstra Eric Cahan Evan Gruzis Greg Bogin Jesse Edwards Jessica Ciocci JIMJOE KATSU Keltie Ferris Michael Dotson Michael Staniak Rosson Crow Timothy Uriah Steele Trudy Benson Wendy White Zane Lewis The Hole is proud to present our summer exhibition in the main galleries, Go With The Flow, looking at the diverse and contemporary uses of sprayed paint. From aerosol to airbrush and further into the field of atomized paint, these artworks range from the slickly gradiented to the more surreptitiously sprayed, with a lot of flying paint in between. Atomizing paint is an approach often associated with the automotive world, industrial painting and products, even down to the boardwalk airbrush tee. The history of contemporary artists using spray is more limited; Surrealists explored the nascent technology, Kandinsky, too; and really not too much else went on in sprayed painting besides a 60s L.A. airbrush movement or Jules Olitski until the slick fabrication art of the 90s upsurge in industrial painting techniques. After digital technology made the world of images screenic and pixelated, gradients reappeared in painting as a mainly digital aesthetic with compressors the easiest way to achieve them in painting. Simultaneous to all this, of course, the 70s and 80s birthed graffiti culture, the single most impactful global image movement, and the world's cities have been covered in spray ever since. Besides the often-embarrassing graffiti art in galleries, this aesthetic mostly influenced painting from afar, with artists like Sterling Ruby borrowing the tools and vibe, or Barry McGee conceptually tackling the culture head-on with his animatronic tagger sculptures and huge fill-ins on museum facades. But the commercial and the graffiti are not the only two angles from which to approach sprayed paint and this exhibition looks at the diversity of uses it has for contemporary artists now. Since Tauba Auerbach turned her Deitch Projects Williamsburg studio into a spray booth back in 2009, the number of emerging artists I have visited whose studio was prophylactically plastic-ed over for atomized paint is staggering. The impulses to spray are manifold: Artists like Greg Bogin, Michael Staniak, Evan Gruzis, Eric Cahan or more emerging painters Timothy Steele or Zane Lewis favour the perfect color gradients possible only with spray. Getting the seamless tonal shift of a sunset across an artwork is the magic realm of sprayed paint where the eye can settle on no demarcation of color and moves over the surface with nothing to hold onto. Alien looking and anti-eyeball, sprayed gradients are the realm of the void--a non-space--and evocatively so. Artists like David Ostrowski, Adam Henry or Keltie Ferris use spray in a chunkier or more literal way to examine the properties possible in the hovering of color through atomization. Ferris creates depths and fogs in her paintings while Henry creates autonomous geometries hovering on a fresco-like white background. David Ostrowski’s painting is the most simple and rudimentary green spray sitting somehow both boldly and meekly on a big white expanse. Trudy Benson includes a painting that has both sprayed elements and painted elements in the shape of the Photoshop “spray tool” looking at what the semiotics of spray includes and how a computer suggests it. Austin Lee’s work remains almost entirely in the realm of the computer-generated image aesthetic--though all his paintings are handmade with airbrush--and the figures and settings are cartoonishly left-handed and humorously maladroit. Michael Dotson or Rosson Crow, Brian Belott or Wendy White use spray in works that are representational to selected and specific ends. Dotson uses spray in a digital way as a “gradient fill” where areas of the composition get a blast of color gradient to make a very screenic looking painting. Crow uses spray around her oil paintings of haunted-looking historical interiors to create a dreamlike atmosphere of hovering walls and furniture. Wendy White and Brian Belott here include sprayed and non-sprayed elements (a sweat sock, a photographic print, mirrored plexi) collaged together in hybrid compositions that perhaps ground the ethereality of spray in something tangible and recognizable. JIMJOE, KATSU and Jesse Edwards come out of public street spraying culture but make works that are not graffiti but tangentially relate: JIMJOE’s painting features the tail end and the barely beginning of two well-known graffiti writers’ "fill-ins", KATSU figured out how to program drones to carry spray cans and spray remotely: something very threatening to law enforcement but here in the realm of painting explores instead the technological mediation of painting. Edwards contributes an airbrushed ceramic television of semi-blurred-out Disney figures, emphasizing the rebirth of spray being tied crucially to our screenic culture. Jessica Ciocci’s multi-panel piece emphasizes the DIY and handmade aspect of spray through the repetitive stencil compositions, highlighting how a can of spray paint puts rapid color in the hands of everyone and is a powerful and democratic tool. Dennis Hoekstra exhibits a multi-panel painting where, using spray and other secret faux-finishing techniques, he can recreate the distressed and diverse surfaces of the streets on canvas. Above: Adam Henry, Untitled (tvptgd), 2013, synthetic polymers on linen, 67 x 51 inches For more information on each artist, images or press inquiries please contact Krysta@theholenyc.com BRUCE LABRUCE Obscenity July 10 - August 23, 2014 OPENING: Thursday, July 10th from 6-9PM The Hole is proud to present an exhibition in Gallery 3 by infamous Canadian artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce that will include the debut of his fragrance, Obscenity. In an exhibition of photography examining sexual and religious ecstasy as well as the unveiling of his fragrance, this will be his first solo gallery exhibition in America since 2010’s “Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project” at Peres Projects, Los Angeles. In LaBruce's own words: Obscene (adj.) 1590s, "offensive to the senses, or to taste and refinement," from Middle French obscène (16c.), from Latin obscenus "offensive," especially to modesty, originally "boding ill, inauspicious," of unknown origin; perhaps from ob "onto" (see ob-) + caenum "filth." What is obscenity? For me, the word may have a different connotation than the one affixed to it by genteel society. Over the years, when my films and photographs have been returned to me after exhibitions in international festivals or galleries, Canadian customs officials have frequently seized the works at the border and sent me a notification in their stead with the word OBSCENITY writ large, an X luridly slashed in a box beside it. To me, it has become a badge of honour. For one man's obscenity is another man's art. Or romance. Or sensibility. Or scent. Staring at OBSCENITY, eventually I came to realize that the word SCENT is contained with in it. And thus came the first inspiration to develop a fragrance of the same name. A fragrance in flagrant disregard of the pejorative insinuation attributed to the word. In flagrante delicto: caught in the very act of committing a misdeed or offense. In fragrance delicto! Exhibiting a collection of my photographs in Madrid 2012 at La Fresh Gallery--photographs that examined the delicate intersection between religious and sexual ecstasy--I first recuperated the word Obscenity as something sensual, erotic, and beyond the judgment of society or religion. Against storms of protest, the word for me transgressed its etymological origin as something offensive or filthy and became something transcendent: something mysterious, martyred, and carnal. Carnal knowledge is power. What does obscenity smell like? To explore this question, I had to consult an expert. Enter Kim Weisswange, perfumer extraordinaire. Meeting the formidable woman in the flesh in Hamburg, I explained to her my history with obscenity, and the feelings the word invokes in me. The synthesis of the religious or the spiritual and the sexual is a potent one, and requires a potent fragrance. I left this special olfactory alchemy to the expert. What does obscenity look like? For the bottle cap and design, I collaborated with my favourite jewelry designer, Jonathan Johnson, who had already made an Obscenity ring for me in conjunction with my photo exhibition. Mr. Johnson has an uncanny way of interpreting sexual and religious imagery to make them seem interchangeable, one and the same. Far from blasphemy, the "nun-sploitation" cap, mapped from a 3-D scan of the curvaceous body of his fiancé and muse Katja-Inga Baldowski, then perched on the hostia, the holy wafer placed lovingly on a tongue, is intended as a sincere tribute to the sensual throes of ecstasy that cause you to throw your head back and fix your gaze toward heaven, a gesture generally reserved for fervid prayer or orgasm. This is the essence of Obscenity. -Bruce LaBruce

  

  July 10th 7p-10p #8  357 W16th St rec room party rsvp rsvp@grooveshark.com 7:30pm - 11:00pm Show Map The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  New York E 82nd St at 5th Ave, New York,  New York  10028 Find Tickets Tickets Available www.metmuseum.org Join us as we celebrate summer at the eighth annual Young Members Party Members between the ages of 21 and 35 are invited to an unforgettable evening featuring cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, dancing, and private viewings of "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" and "The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham with Günther Vogt" (weather permitting). Music will be provided by the Chris Norton Extravaganza Band Attire is summer chic. Tickets: http://met.org/1kIMCLG Membership is required to purchase tickets, and there is a two-ticket limit.  Tickets will not be sold at the door

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