Presents:

Yuka Otani

February 10th – March 11th, 2012
Weekends only: 1 – 6 pm or by appointment
Opening reception: Friday, February 10th, 6 – 9 p.m.
Location: 722 Metropolitan Avenue 2nd Fl., Brooklyn NY 11237
Directions: L – train to Graham Avenue

In the Project Space Yuka Otani will be showing a new installation inspired by “Hojoki”, an essay by Chomei Kamono: a Japanese 13th century poet who expresses the sense of mujokan(impermanence) during the medieval age of wars and disasters.

Bio:
Yuka Otani’s sculptures and installations incorporate transparent and fluid materials such as glass, water, melted sugar and light to invoke a shift in a viewer’s perception of physical and cognitive spaces. The vulnerable materials change their appearance over time, thereby simultaneously emphasizing both presence and absence. Her work has been featured in venues including Museum of Art and Design, Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Wight Gallery at UCLA.

First Truth

February 10th – March 11th, 2012
Weekends only: 1 – 6 pm or by appointment
Opening reception: Friday, February 10th, 6 – 9 p.m.
Location: 722 Metropolitan Avenue 2nd Fl., Brooklyn NY 11237
Directions: L – train to Graham Avenue

Artists: Gina Beavers, Megan Hays, Sara Hubbs, Janelle Iglesias, Sara Jones, Siobhan McBride, Danielle Mysiliwiec

curated by Sara Hubbs and Sara Jones

The artist who sets out to examine or establish a truth sometimes runs into the bigger truth that came before it: that what one wants to accomplish may be fleeting and may possibly be unaccomplishable, or that what one creates will transform into an unforeseen thing between the time it is conceived and the time it is completed. This first truth takes the form of gaps and inconsistencies that erupt when attempting to tell a story, remember a vision, or attempt to follow a rule, and it is fueled by unreliable memories, unraveled experiences, and inexplicable imprecisions. It can be fought against, accepted, ignored, or even embraced, but the first truth — which can also be called the first anomaly or the first disappointment — emerges through the work whether it is intended or not. The artists in this exhibition intend and do not intend, but  nevertheless communicate, this first truth in a variety of ways.

Gina Beavers labors to recreate images and scenes from an experience that passed by with no documentation, leaving no physical reference except for the impression in her memory. Setting herself up for an impossible task, she nevertheless feverishly tries to stick so very closely to an exact replication of a memory of an experience that she inevitably fails.

Megan Hays’ attempts to anthropomorphize states of longing, loneliness and vulnerability and define the forms that exist in these intra-personal states. Glaring, bound, and excreting, these strange forms of life announce and assert their vulnerability and their inadequacies.

Sara Hubbs’ sanded drawings are the mark and the un-mark. Through the process of addition and subtraction, the work is left to feel unfinished or undone–suspended somewhere before or after the illusion.

Janelle Iglesias’ curiosity lies in the fluctuating value and meaning of objects and their materiality when displaced from their source. Severed from a previous utilitarian or emotional function, she’s interested in how they can be reused and reappropriated in new contexts.

Sara Jones’ paintings capture the slippage between the accurate representation of a calamity and its role in a larger framework of disaster. Her work often depicts the intimacy of physical or emotional aftermaths, and uses a variety of materials to describe the rift between personal experience and collective memory.

Siobhan McBride creates cinematic narratives with gouache and paper that depict a disjointed alternate reality, a fantasy and an escape. Culled from memory, photos, and clips from magazines, the works are both loose diagrams for understanding events from the past, and strange prophetic puzzles to decode experiences yet to be known.

Danielle Mysliwiec abides by a strict rule-based process of working that in itself forms its own narrative. As the materials pass through this process the perception of the piece is literally and figuratively changed. The shapes shift and open to new associations where the weaving seems to gently hug an unidentified form or express an energetic quality. By virtue of the process used in creating these pieces, “perfection” is unattainable.

(image: Siobhan McBride, Fruitcake Weather 2, gouache on paper, 2011)