Thomas Robertello Gallery

Thomas Robertello Gallery http://thomasrobertello.com/ contemporary art gallery Chicago West Loop en Copyright 2012, Thomas Robertello Gallery Thu, 17 May 2012 08:31:02 -0400 Exhibition: Sarah Hicks <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Earth is Blue Like an Orange</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 4 - June 2, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 4, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2295"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/49/49030.jpeg" alt="" height="368" width="500" /></a> <p>Sarah Hicks, <em>Black Membrane</em>, 2012</p> <p> ceramic stoneware, 20 x 9 x 9 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">SARAH HICKS </span>- The Earth is Blue Like an Orange<br /> May 4, 2012 through June 2, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday May 4, 6:00 - 8:00PM </p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present in its project space; Sarah Hicks - The Earth is Blue Like an Orange. </p> <p>In this exhibition of recent work, Hicks presents a floor to ceiling installation of signature ceramic and porcelain sculptures; richly colorful, masterfully glazed, and cartoonish in abstract elements. <br /> Cambrian in nature, the installation evokes a sense of playfulness and interpretive potential. The small scale sculptures celebrate their fragility through precarious placement and decorative forms. The artist's individual forms point toward objects of feminine pleasure and sea creatures primarily, but as a whole, their collective taxonomies create a complex and flourishing visual landscape. </p> <p>Sarah Hicks lives and works in Chicago. She received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in photography from the School of the Art Institute in 1999 and has exhibited work in many venues in and around Chicago. This is her third exhibition with the gallery.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2295 Exhibition: Laura Fayer <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Treasure</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 4 - June 2, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 4, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2294"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/49/49036.jpeg" alt="" height="563" width="450" /></a> <p>Laura Fayer, <em>Wisdom</em>, 2012</p> <p> acrylic and rice paper on panel, 20 x 16 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LAURA FAYER </span>- Treasure<br /> May 4, 2012 through June 2, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday May 4, 6:00 - 8:00PM </p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Treasure; an exhibition of new abstract paintings by New York-based artist Laura Fayer, May 4 through June 2, 2012. This is Fayer's third solo exhibition with the gallery. There will be a reception Friday May 4, 6:00 - 8:00 pm.</p> <p>Further developing her process of using handcrafted tools, stamps, and stencils to create minimalist-leaning abstract paintings, Fayer explores landscape more overtly in her current body of work. Her paintings draw on various structures and systems to produce a loose geometry with organic rhythms. Referencing architecture, aerial views of the landscape, and weather patterns, she also draws on memories of childhood years in Japan to create accumulations of deliberate yet gestural forms and systems. The layering of these marks vary in opacity, and undulate as systems within systems. </p> <p>Laura Fayer received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Hunter College in 2006 and a BA from Harvard University in Visual and Environmental Studies. Her work has been exhibited recently in New York, Denver, Boston, and Washington, <span class="caps">DC.</span> She attended artist residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell Colony, and received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2294 Exhibition: Mike Nudelman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Lookin' Out My Back Door</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 16 - April 28, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2293"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/47/47793.jpeg" alt="" height="377" width="480" /></a> <p>Michael Nudelman, <em>Heaven & Hell</em>, 2011</p> <p> ballpoint pen on paper, 11 x 14 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">MICHAEL NUDELMAN</span><br /> Lookin' Out My Back Door<br /> March 16 through April 28, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday March 16, 6:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Lookin' Out My Back Door: an exhibition of recent drawings by Chicago-based artist Michael Nudelman. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday March 16, 6:00 - 8:00PM and continues through April 28, 2012.</p> <p>Nudelman's work develops out of an ardently optimistic response to technological advancement and a casually philosophical conviction that reality is a multilayered, intangible illusion. Using ballpoint pen, Nudelman repetitively scans his hand over the surface of the paper building up thin layers of diagonal, feathery, slightly iridescent marks. This disciplined meditative process amplifies the disconnect between the physicality of the paper's marked surface and the illusionistic image that the marks create. Much like pixels on a screen, these ballpoint strokes create a veil through which the image can be seen. Source materials for these images are taken largely from reproductions of iconic paintings and photographs.</p> <p>The three drawings in the show are derived from original imagery: paintings by former astronaut Alan Bean, former cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, a painting by Wyland, and a photograph from an Apollo 8 mission.</p> <p>Born in 1985 in Smithtown, New York, Michael Nudelman received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in printmaking from Cornell University in 2007, and an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in Painting/Drawing from the School of the Art Institute in 2009. He has exhibited work in group exhibitions in Chicago at numerous venues including the Union League, Sullivan Galleries, Devening Projects, Julius Caesar, and Zrobili. He will have a solo exhibition in the gallery's main space in the fall of 2012.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2293 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The One Man Army Corpse</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 16 - April 28, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2046"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/48/48464.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JASON ROBERT BELL</span><br /> The One Man Army Corpse<br /> March 16 - April 28, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday March 16, 6:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The One Man Army Corpse: a solo exhibition by Brooklyn, New York based artist Jason Robert Bell. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday March 16, 6:00 - 8:00PM and continues through April 28, 2012. </p> <p>The One Man Army Corpse presents a highly charged alternative reality in which monstrous totemic paintings and assemblages act as temple guardians to a new sacred text written by Bell: The White Feathered Octopus. This science fiction novel is presented as an element within a sculptural installation. All of the works in the exhibit are directly inspired by this limited edition text, which seeks to describe the superimposition of the human mind upon reality.</p> <p>Each work presented employs unexpected fusions of abstraction, figuration, and the readymade to confront issues of portraiture, social ills, personal loss, sexual dynamics, metaphysics, and contemporary art making itself, with absurd humor and phantasmagoric abandon. The paintings induce Pareidolia; the psychological visual phenomenon of seeing human faces, by use of materials culled from the discarded ruins of consumerism intermixed with deeply sentimental objects of the artist and fetishes of a world gone wrong. The material and emotional rawness of the work marks a dramatic shift for Bell.</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, and performances have been exhibited in New York, most recently at Postmasters Gallery and the Fountain Art Fair, Boston, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many times in Chicago.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2046 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 27 - March 10, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2300"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/46/46614.jpeg" alt="" height="390" width="500" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>Unto the Ogdoad</em>, 2012</p> <p> acrylic, epoxy, collage, and digital ink pigments infused with the ashes of the artist's father on foam-core mounted on canvas, 26 x 22 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JASON ROBERT BELL</span><br /> The Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future<br /> January 27 through March 10, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday January 27, 6:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the sixth and final installment of Jason Robert Bell's year-long Tetragrammatron Archive: The Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future; an exhibit dedicated to the artist's recently departed father.</p> <p>The exhibit will consist of three works. First, an architectural model of the Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future's proposed headquarters, created from an inverted Empire State Building papercraft that was carried for 7 consecutive days by the artist in his "Man With The Empire State Building Performance."</p> <p>Also included is a new work from Bell's Metaphysical Painting series, "Unto the Ogdoad", which depicts the transmigration of the Artist's father's soul, to the next plane of existence in the Afterlife.</p> <p>And lastly a new video piece, "Oversoul Seven" revealing the Artist's father's complex esoteric belief system; presented as a series of cascading audio/video clips, it was created from the Artist's personal documentation archive.</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. His work is the by-product of a mystical journey that transcends media. He has shown his work withThomas Robertello since 2006.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2300 Exhibition: Jonathan Dankenbring <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Charlatan</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 27 - March 10, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2045"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/46/46565.jpeg" alt="" height="315" width="500" /></a> <p>Jonathan Dankenbring, <em>Resurrection Machine</em>, 2011</p> <p> Aluminum, Powdercoating, USB, 36 x 90 x 4 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JONATHAN DANKENBRING</span><br /> Charlatan<br /> January 27 through March 10, 2012<br /> Opening reception Friday January 27, 6:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Charlatan: a solo exhibition by Austin, Texas based artist Jonathan Dankenbring. Charlatan opens Friday January 27 at 6:00PM and continues through March 10, 2012. This is Dankenbring's first exhibition with the gallery.</p> <p>Using disparate forms, imagery, and media, Dankenbring explores iconography through the lens of personal history and highly speculative reformations, focusing on how our current culture may be perceived by future peoples. Through drawing, sculpture, and photography, resulting works range in development from artifact to hybrid structures, relying heavily on a minimalist design aesthetic. Tied directly to hyper-consumerism, evangelical ideals, humor, and fear, the artist hovers -- literally with a self-portrait -- in alien-like observation. By imitating, recording, and abstracting objects that reflect ideological information about their maker and audience, Dankenbring exposes the vulnerabilities inherent in our most cherished modern artifacts.</p> <p>The Viewing Station drawings consider the repurposed use of stadium structures as apocalyptic seating venues for the paranoid and faithful, sitting quietly awaiting input from above. In the work Or.ganic, the austere surfaces of a television are channeled, allowing for contemplation of the vast levels of propaganda broadcast through the iconic form. The artist's Resurrection Machine operates as a sidelined prototype from a bygone era, sleekly linking an ancient past's sacrificial table with an autopsy table and ridiculing the recent technology /mortality conundrum. Multiple smaller sculptures fetishize contemporary media and communication technology subverting recognizable forms: iPods, Sony walkman, iPhones. </p> <p>Jonathan Dankenbring (b.1981) lives in Austin, <span class="caps">TX.</span> He is a graduate of Indiana University's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in Sculpture (2009) and Kansas City Art Institute in Painting (2004). This is his first exhibition in Chicago.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2045 Exhibition: Samantha Bittman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Perceptual Notions</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 9, 2011 - January 21, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2044"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/45/45581.jpeg" alt="" height="490" width="500" /></a> <p>Samantha Bittman, <em>The Longest Distance Between Two Points</em>, 2011</p> <p> Acrylic on hand-woven textile, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">SAMANTHA BITTMAN</span><br /> Perceptual Notions<br /> December 9, 2011 through January 21, 2012<br /> Opens Friday December 9, 6:00-8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Perceptual Notions; an exhibition of new paintings by Samantha Bittman opening Friday December 9, 6:00-8:00PM. Bittman will present a range of work on handwoven textile, wood panel, and linen on view in the gallery through January 21, 2012.</p> <p>Bittman explores the ways in which perception is in constant flux by employing rigorous visual systems of assertive and contrary elements. While the non-woven paintings are visual systems akin to, and an extension of weave structures, the process of weaving, and the image/structure relationship inherent in a woven textile; all works point toward more complicated layers of cognition and experience. In decoding the material construction and strategies for building each painting, the viewer becomes aware that the logic present in the blueprint of each work breaks with the experience of viewing the work as a whole entity. The act of cognitively understanding how the painting is made acts as a foil to the viewer, pointing back to the viewer's own perceptual notions, and a conscious experience of that perception. There is no singular or fixed way to perceive the paintings' refractive breakdown of elements: logic, cognition, experience, and reality. </p> <p>The painstaking process of Bittman's own hand in making the paintings relates to the relationship a viewer often establishes with the work. The slowness and careful attention with which they are made demands time for engagement, particularly the hard edge paintings, painted without tape, and in the woven textiles themselves. A shifting of the viewer's physical proximity to the work may suggest new directions for observation and sensation, thwarting expectations and polarizing the viewing experience from moment to moment. </p> <p>Samantha Bittman (b. 1982) lives and works in Chicago. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011, graduated <span class="caps">SAIC</span>'s <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2010, and earned a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Recent exhibitions in Chicago include Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art: Bauhaus Now, Either/And/Both, threewalls, Zolla / Lieberman Gallery, and Hungryman Gallery. Her work is currently in Don't Get High On Your Own Supply, David Castillo Gallery, Miami, <span class="caps">FL.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2044 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Orpheus Terminals</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 9, 2011 - January 21, 2012</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2270"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/45/45589.jpeg" alt="" height="130" width="500" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>The Orpheus Terminal 1</em>, 2011</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the fifth installment of Jason Robert Bell's year-long Tetragrammatron Archive: The Orpheus Terminals. The exhibition in the gallery's project space opens Friday December 9, 2011, 6:00-8:00PM and continues through January 21, 2012. The Orpheus Terminals is an audio-visual digital archive of the artist's consciousness, including 10,000 panoramic photographs taken over the past four years and an accompanying soundtrack of binaural sound compositions.</p> <p>Presented as a video, the panoramic photographs comprising The Orpheus Terminals are quickly shot with a low-end panoramic feature on Bell's consumer-grade digital camera, capturing the way his mind works and his eye sees. The images chart his travels, triumphs, and the mundanity of daily life. The title Orpheus Terminals comes from a concept Bell's father shared in bedtime stories read to him as a young child. </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, and performances have been exhibited in New York, most recently at Postmasters Gallery and the Fountain Art Fair, Boston, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many times in Chicago.</p> <p>Technical Statement<br /> The Orpheus Terminals</p> <p>"Four years ago, I purchased a low end consumer digital camera to document a trip to France. To my surprise I discovered the camera had a panoramic feature.</p> <p>This wonderful setting allows the user to produce panoramas by taking three conjoined photos in quick order, in an abutting sequences, with a window of 20 seconds between each, to allow the photographer to align the subject in the viewfinder. When I was at the Louvre, testing out the feature, I noticed when the subjects were not correctly lined up, the camera would unexpected distortions in attempt to stitch the disparaging three images into a single panorama. Purposeful conflicts in light exposure between each click, radical shifts in the angle of the shot, and juxtapositions of the subject matter, created images that inexplicitly captured a profoundly poetic in-camera edited photo-collages. The limited pre-set time the camera's software, of each of the three exposures required an improvisational approach with often surprising outcomes, every panorama was a throw of the dice.</p> <p>I was able to fleetly produce dozens of images in a single session with the camera, the efforts compounded by cheap battery power and 1 Gigabyte of disk space as my only other technical limitations. <br /> I would lose myself in this process spending hours and countless Double As, each panorama revealed, another new possibility; everything was suitable for these experiments. Before long the photos were numbering in the thousands.</p> <p>Upon reviewing a session of images on my computer screen, I began creating new panoramas from discoveries in pervious panoramas, mixing all aspects of my existence, dancing together all my past artworks, life experiences, eclectic personal interests, and anything else I could get my feverous lens to gander. These letterboxed straits of visual information became a endless looping chain of ever changing self-generating imagery, It was as if my imagination was being encoded similar to a <span class="caps">DNA </span>sequence. I had created a back-up file of my weltanschauung, my way of seeing, the singular sensibility of my soul, if there is such a thing.</p> <p>Focusing on the surprising distortions discovered in process, I was able to create repeating motifs of recurring personas floating upon interplays of shadow, color, and light, that in total cross a threshold beyond understanding to create an experience that captures the infinite." </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell</p> <p>"A story my father told me: The Orpheus Terminals<br /> The ultimate goal of The Orpheus Terminal is the programming of imagery for living cybernetic computer terminals, culled from cloned materials from my brain, which will be placed across the earth, connecting various leylines with Quetzalcabbalahic diagrams of my own design. These terminals will be freely accessed by whoever wishes to use them at any point in time across the universe. The first images anyone will see will be these images of my visual understanding of the universe. The terminals will basically be given one directive: to help humanity live more meaningful lives, to help them to be Heroes, not Slaves.<br /> The Knights Templar was an order of warrior priests that were active during the Middle Ages. After the Crusades, they were killed off by the States and Churches of Europe as heretics. This is believed to have happened because the Knights had gained a great deal of economic power. However, a number of myths and legends have developed around the Knights that are quite interesting. One of the charges against them was that they received their orders from a large disembodied head. The Knights also called themselves The Order of the Golden Fleece, making a direct connection between themselves and the Argonauts of Ancient Greece. Why is this of interest? The Knights were purported to have access to or be in possession of the Holy Grail (an artifact that can heal the sick/ raise the dead). Although it is commonly believed to be a chalice of some sort, the Grail has been depicted in all manner of forms and it is unknown what its true shape might be. The Golden Fleece is also a mythic artifact that could heal the sick. What if these two devices are one and the same? The Golden Fleece was supposed to be the hide of a magical flying ram that was sent to earth by Hermes to do the will of the gods. After its work was done, the ram was sacrificed to Zeus, but its skin was preserved and it was believed to heal the sick and return the dead to life. Orpheus was one of the Argonauts. He was decapitated by a group of feral women, but his head was said to remain alive to this day. Was it his head that dispatched orders to the Knights Templar thousands of years later? The Holy Grail, also called the Sangrail (blood stone), the Lucifer stone, and the Golden Fleece, could actually be myths that have a shared root with an ancient power source of extraterrestrial origin. The Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail could actually be mere containment vessels for this unknown element, which I call Element X, or Grailium. What if the Argonauts were an actual group of plundering adventurers that were exposed to this power source bestowing on them a number of beneficial mutations? Perhaps Orpheus was able to maintain some sort of animation after his body had been destroyed. His brain perhaps became able to produce a Grailium-rich enzyme.<br /> Imagine an element that's properties allow the human imagination to manifest itself in the physical world. This element could have come to earth in the far-flung past, before humanity was human in the very metros that crashed into the earth and caused catastrophic destruction of the environment, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs. There could have been an element that infused itself into the earth biosphere. The dinosaurs were killed off by the radiation because their brains were unable to adapt to the element's energy, but the mammals could. This beneficial radiation allowed mammals to become the masters of the earth, and is the very reason for the Human condition. Perhaps there was another smaller re-introduction of this element later, which caused Neanderthals to transmute into Homo sapiens. It is my belief that Grailium fosters a viable network with the collective human imagination. It causes all our hopes and dreams to come to life.<br /> Grailium could be the explanation for all unexplained phenomena on earth. When an individual is exposed to it in a high degree it could cause a quantum evolutionary leap to occur. Imagine if we were able to synthesize Grailium in a laboratory, expose it to cloned human brain cells, and use it to create living super-computer brains: The Orpheus Terminals. It is my belief that these devices would allow humanity to finally unravel the mysteries of life on this earth and beyond. The use and development of Grailium in technology would usher in the next step in Human Evolution. Humanity would once again have a working system of oracles. If we follow the Hermetic premise that God only exists within the human mind, this project would allow true communion to occur. At last some sort of dialogue with the higher consciousness would be possible, the word of God would be our own voice.<br /> To attain immortality for myself and hopefully all of humanity, I will have myself cryogenically frozen at the moment of my physical death in a Grailium Crystal Thought Pod, placed into a small solar, atomic, and/or Grailium powered rocket ship, and launched into deepest outer space. <br /> The ship, Bellerophon 1, will be equipped with a computer that will have vast archives on human culture and history as well as the history of earth and our solar system, plus as much personal information about myself as possible. There will be digital images of all of my artworks, writings, personal photographs, and belongings. The rocket will have detailed instructions written in a number of codes both numeric and languages, stating who I am, where I come from, and the fact that I would like whomever finds me to use their superior alien technology to restore me to life. To assist my alien benefactors, there will also be a great deal of human anatomy and media information within the ships computer.<br /> There are two schools of thought as to the possible nature of extraterrestrial life. Some people think that we should not be actively seeking out otherworldly life. They think that any race able to travel through the vast reaches of the cosmic void would be so powerful that they would view us as inferior and would not have a problem wiping humanity out of existence. The other group, which I am a part of, believes that any race to conquer the stars would need to have conquered their own barbaric natures to do so and could only be benevolent. Look at ourselves: the tiny baby steps that we have made into space have only come from positive benevolent efforts, actions for all humankind. Only by transcending our baser selves will we ever reach the stars.<br /> Due to the incredibly vast distances of space, humanity may have to toil for eons in order to reach other inhabitable planets, but if I am sent out into space as I have described, perhaps this toil can be cut short.<br /> Once my alien benefactors have revived me, I will act as a delegate for humanity, learning all I can, and beginning a relationship that will usher in a golden age on Earth. Using the aliens' unimaginable transportation technology, I will return to some distant future earth where I can shake hands with my great great great great great great grandchildren and help all humanity fulfill their dreams. We will become immortal, pan-dimensional, ethical super geniuses that will stand upon an equal ground with the gods of the universe. Every person will shine like a star in the heavens. When what appears to be the final barriers of the universe are before this future human, they will boldly cross it, and go onto what can never be conceived of, but will be experienced." - Jason Robert Bell</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2270 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Transmissions From The Outpost</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 21 - December 3, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 21, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2043"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/44/44990.jpeg" alt="" height="388" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>Outpost #1</em>, 2011</p> <p> Inkjet print, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">ADAM EKBERG</span><br /> Transmissions From The Outpost<br /> October 21 - December 3, 2011<br /> Opens October 21, 6:00 - 8:00 PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Transmissions From The Outpost; new photographs by Adam Ekberg October 21 - December 3, 2011. There will be an opening reception Friday October 21, 6-8PM. </p> <p>Transmissions From The Outpost further explores Ekberg's modus operandi; combining materials from the human world inhabiting natural and domestic spaces with highly nuanced uses of light. Among his influences, Ekberg cites his personal experiences as a hospice care-giver, analog radio transmissions heard from desolate locations, and watching a barn burn to the ground as a child. The resulting images transmit his activities and explorations, a life lived on the margins and in the shadows, reported back through analog means. Ekberg's simultaneous absence and presence further communicates a separateness and uncanny luminosity, challenging belief systems and questioning the unseen. </p> <p>Adam Ekberg's recent exhibitions in the past year include shows in Cork Ireland's Crawford Art Museum, Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm Sweden, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Seattle. This is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2043 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">I Believe in Harvey Dent or Three Months in Valparaiso</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 21 - December 3, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 21, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2261"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/45/45111.jpeg" alt="" height="624" width="432" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>Caveman Robot</em>, 2011</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the fourth installment of Jason Robert Bell's year-long Tetragrammatron Archive: I Believe in Harvey Dent or Three Months in Valparaiso. The exhibition in the gallery's project space opens Friday October 21, 6-8PM and continues through December 3, 2011.</p> <p>In Bell's fourth installment of the Tetragrammatron Archive, the artist poses riddles in the form of three sculptural assemblages; Caveman Robot, The City of Monumenta, and The Sword. Monumenta is home base for Caveman Robot, a fictional character created by Bell melding the primitive with the futuristic. Caveman Robot has been the subject of previous projects, comics, animation, object-making, and performances for Bell, but also represents a mascot for a stillborn multi-media million dollar Hollywood deal accompanied by an endless collection of related artifacts. It is a humble symbol for an artist confronting failure in an attempt to fully self-actualize, as experienced during a three month stint in Valparaiso, Chile. </p> <p>The sculptural objects each are in a delicate balancing act with nothing holding them together but gravity. So here we have the Hero, who had to act as a villain, the city that was both a dream and a nightmare, and the weapon, the active element that all people must take up if they wish to live within their own truth. The title I Believe in Harvey Dent or Three months in Valparaiso, comes from a promotional pin from the last Batman movie: Harvey Dent being the supervillain Two-Face, enemy of Batman. </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, and performances have been exhibited in New York, most recently at Postmasters Gallery and the Fountain Art Fair, Boston, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many times in Chicago.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2261 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Mystical Outlaw Rebel Baaddaasss Drawings</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 9 - October 15, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2238"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/45/45173.jpeg" alt="" height="550" width="360" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JASON ROBERT BELL</span><br /> Mystical Rebel Outlaw Baadaass Drawings <br /> September 9 through October 15, 2011;<br /> Opening reception Friday, September 9, 6-8PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the third installment of Jason Robert Bell's Tetragrammatron Archive: The Mystical Rebel Outlaw Baadaass Drawings. The exhibition in the gallery's project space opens Friday September 9, 6-8PM and continues through October 15. </p> <p>Bell continues to take figurative iconography in new directions with a series of mixed media autobiographical work hovering somewhere between real, imaginary, and delusional. Each personal memoir, an elaborate doodle of chivalry and romance depicts the artist as protagonist in a timeless narrative. Using cartooning as a method of accessing primordial human visual language receptors, each of these works is a puzzling narrative of gods, monsters, hobgoblins, and naked women, as well as the artist himself. </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, and performances have been exhibited in New York, most recently at Postmasters Gallery and the Fountain Art Fair, Boston, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many times in Chicago.</p> <p><span class="caps">MYSTICAL REBEL OUTLAW BAADDAASSS DRAWINGS</span>:</p> <p>Presented on rotating display in this exhibit is a complete compilation of the drawings created over the past year of Jason Robert Bell's life. Exhibited in their time-tested portfolio, the Mystical Outlaw Rebel Baadass Drawings Proper of 2011 present a set of 78 drawings as a singular collective object, an interactive sculptural experience available for perusal, study and preservation. All of the drawings not on view in the gallery are available for private viewing by appointment.<br /> The other three pieces in the exhibit are in keeping with the centerpiece of the show. Handsome Devil, a modest self-portrait, dealing with my need for some dental work. The ten-piece drawing installation, The Dying, Asterix the Gaul, is a study of the artist's own mortal body, set against the wall of this small project space but eternally resting upon the floor. Win, Involves Domineering ill Will!!!, is an artist book, created by defacing a copy of Brain Alfred's Millions Now Living Will Never Die!!!.<br /> All works in this exhibit are mixed-media on paper, 2011, signed by the artist.</p> <p>"In early memory, or a story I have told myself about myself, in the dark recesses of my education, across vast spans of time to the span across my child self, to the plastic molded desks of Rocket City Utopia's experimental kindergarten learning pods, sat a young boy and girl across from me, drawing.<br /> The boy was sketching a devil in a violet-red, that hateful second red, the real red crayon broken, a central casting Satan.<br /> The girl was drawing a rainbow by picking up all her colors in a pan-flute configuration. Both of these drawings were coming into being in unison, and upside down, a few feet before me. Another child, the boy that sat beside me, the one who would turn himself purple for a quarter, had given up on his drawing which only had a few lines crudely copied from a soulless motivational poster on the wall. I asked him if I could finish it. He sad nothing, but did nothing when I took the drawing away.<br /> I picked up my colors and made a right-side-up fusion of the two images: a Devil, based on the other boy's, but more monstrous with retraceable batwings and a pitchfork on fire, this Devil was created completely of rainbows, utilizing the method of the girl.<br /> I then carefully spelled out both their names: K-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y, and J-O-S-H-U-A. When it came time for each of us to stand up and present our drawings, I was the last one. Standing up at Mrs. Breedlove's request, I presented the drawing to the class. Kimberly was so upset that she vomited on Joshua, who in turn vomited on both their drawings. Leaving my Rainbow Devil Drawing an orphan. A singular creation on to itself.<br /> All of my drawings are the bastard children of this Rainbow Devil..., My drawings are of monsters, creating monsters by monstrous means, from unexpected materials and methods. These drawings to invoke moments from my everyday life, my domestic activities, my romance with my wife, my memories of the long and recent past, frenetic musings, nightmares, wastelands, and everything else and the kitchen sink, oh, and nothing at all as well.<br /> Every drawing I have made since that first drawing, every fusion of what other's bring forth, what chance offers up to me, is merged into a Thing That Never Was, that might have the same power as that first and greatest creation.<br /> A drawing that actually will have a powerful effect on <span class="caps">YOU, </span>and recreate that moment when I became fully aware of the raw power of art." - Jason Robert Bell 2011</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2238 Exhibition: Bret Slater <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Mutinous</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 9 - October 15, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2042"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/45/45185.jpeg" alt="" height="323" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">BRET SLATER</span><br /> Mutinous <br /> September 9 through October 15, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday, September 9, 6-8PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Mutinous; a solo exhibition of new paintings and abstract constructions by Dallas based artist Bret Slater. The exhibition opens September 9 with a public reception 6-8PM and continues through October 15, 2011.</p> <p>Slater's work combines the simplest forms, tools, materiality, and colors found in the manufactured environment with the friends and villains who create and occupy that space. Cartoonish absurdity and the personalities of Slater's cast of fictional characters mix, resulting in a range of faceless countenances. Through a hapless comedy of errors, Slater's transformations result in a space where Ren and Stimpy, Blinky Palermo, office supplies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robert Ryman, Home Depot, Richard Tuttle, Looney Tunes, and Piet Mondrian get jumbled up. The resulting new objects resemble portraits of buck-toothed bullies, manila folders, and pirates: all harmless fools devoted to their creator's brand of abstraction. </p> <p>Bret Slater graduated the Meadows School of the Arts at <span class="caps">SMU,</span> Dallas, TX with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>earlier this year. Previously, he graduated the School of Art + Design at Purchase College, <span class="caps">SUNY,</span> Purchase, NY with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in 2009. This exhibition appears in the September issue of Modern Painters magazine's survey of the 100 Best Shows this season internationally, and marks Slater's first solo gallery exhibition.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2042 Exhibition: Patrick Berran <div class="exhibition-subtitle">One Must Eat the Other</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 27 - August 14, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2041"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/42/42894.jpeg" alt="" height="317" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">PATRICK BERRAN </span><br /> One Must Eat the Other<br /> May 27 through August 14, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday May 27, 6-8PM <br /> <br /> Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present One Must Eat the Other; recent abstract paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Patrick Berran. This is his second solo exhibition with the gallery. </p> <p>The hungrily pigmented free-form vocabulary that has become Berran's abstract painting process resolutely unifies the tension between surface and image. Highly refined surface skins dissolve into transparency and are overtaken by chaotic imagery. Pulsating nebulae lurk everywhere and adhere to the surfaces, forcing indeterminate spatial interpretations. Sublimely tinted and seductively tactile, Berran's recent paintings assert themselves as reinvigorators of the medium. </p> <p>Patrick Berran is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting and printmaking in 2002 and Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006. In 2005 he received a <span class="caps">GRAF </span>travel grant from Hunter College and completed a two-week study in Berlin, Germany under the contemporary artist Franz Ackermann. From 2004-2009 Patrick was the lead vocalist in the punk band ¡Apeshit!, touring internationally as well as the United States. ¡Apeshit! performed during the 2006 Whitney Biennial as part of Rirkrit Tiravanija's Peace Tower. He has exhibited his work at numerous venues in NY and the <span class="caps">US, </span>most notably Playing Fields at Indiana University and Informal Relations at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and at Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago. In 2009 Patrick founded the project Mother Chorizo, functioning as a record label and book publishing company. In addition to painting, Patrick is creating several prints through Haven Press in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2041 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Tetragrammatron Archive - Installment 2 - Zero Paintings</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 27 - August 14, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2199"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/42/42389.jpeg" alt="" height="721" width="432" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>Adam</em>, 2011</p> <p> mixed media on burlap, mounted on wood panel, 18 x 13.5 x 4 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JASON ROBERT BELL</span><br /> The Tetragrammatron Archive - Installment 2 - Zero Paintings<br /> May 27 through August 14, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday May 27, 6-8PM </p> <p>Continuing with Jason Robert Bell's year-long project The Tetragrammatron Archive in Thomas Robertello Gallery's new micro gallery, the artist presents Zero Paintings: three new painting/sculptural hybrids. These works are experiments to invoke and deflect pareidolia, the phenomena by which we imagine faces in random arrangements of objects, forms, and patterns. All of the objects that have found their wayward ways to these canvases are something of great emotional value to the artist: tokens of lost loves, gifts from long distant friends, unfinished diagrams for back burner projects, and debts. Each momento mori, imbued with hope and fear is presented as a mask of God, created out of nothing but a pile of trash, with gravity and drying speed being the final designers. <br /> <br /> Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, sculpture, experimental films, outdoor installations, and performances have been exhibited in New York, most recently at Postmasters Gallery and the Fountain Art Fair, Boston, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many times in Chicago.</p> <p>Statement from the artist:<br /> " There is an Indian legend that at a certain time in the life of a young man he is given a dream in which he sees a mask, and when he awakens he must set to work carving a real mask in that dream image. This is the mask he must wear into battle in order to be victorious. It was as if Joe Buck had had such a dream, and his life was given over to the carving of the mask." - James Leo Herlihy, Midnight Cowboy</p> <p>These works are experiments in invoking Pareidolia--the phenomena in which we imagine faces in random arrangements of objects, forms, and patterns. You the viewer are creating what you desire to see in the arrangements I have created. Each assemblage at once forms and negates any actual image. Eyes, mouths, noses, beards, cheekbones, and other facial characteristics appear to emerge from the works. However none of them are anything more than an arrangement of various found objects. Who or what you see is up to you, not I.</p> <p>" I have placed a mark of my own design, to take the space of nothing in factors of ten to the infinite." - Al Khwarizmi</p> <p>These works were created to explore my fascination with the Islamic taboo against depicting images -- particularly the human figure and most importantly the Prophet Mohammed himself - and its correlation with our societal prohibition against revealing the lack of any real value associated with our currency. The economy is just as vastly immaterial as any deity or prophet, yet we are constantly attempting to visualize it in the form of money. It is the face of terror that is at once real and a complete illusion.</p> <p>As I worked on these pieces, the images, faces, characters, and all-to-human dramas that began to appear before me, became clear and connected. My personal debts to institutions such as Capital One, the <span class="caps">IRS, </span>and my self-sacrificing art dealer (which, are all fair debts, that I amassed in my attempts to live a survivable life of some sort), these debts, all seemingly never ending and ever increasing, have become the deities of my life. These are the faces I see when I close my eyes.</p> <p>The unimaginable greenbacked Leviathan that was once Alexander Hamiliton, being held for ransom under the Pentagon, is the God, "In God We Trust", the Ponzi scheme Shell Game called the Economy, All my debts, all of yours, They are the Mask of God, The Face Behind the White Burning Veil at Twilight, and simultaneously nothing but a pile of trash. You, the Eye of the Beholder, the Rooster Angel whose crest brushes the vault of heaven, see what you choose to see, holding a jewel in the place of a grain, and casting it out as garbage.</p> <p>"Those who create images of life, would be punished on the Day of Resurrection and it would be said to them: Breathe soul into what you have created. When they fail they will be thrown into the abyss." - Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell, 2011</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2199 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Tetragrammatron Archive - Installment 1 - The Bergdorf Goodman Beaver Catalog</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 1 - May 21, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 1, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2040"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/39/39739.jpeg" alt="" height="640" width="465" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>Franklin's Bride</em>, 2011</p> <p> ink, raw pigment, spray enamel, collage, and liquid paper on printed page, infused with epoxy, 12 x 9 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery's new space will include a tiny 4 × 6-foot micro gallery. This small project space will be devoted to a single artist for one year at a time, much like a small residency. Artists, curators, academics, writers, collectors, and the general public are invited to explore in depth the work, process, and practice of one artist throughout the entire year through the presentation of small work, video, written material, drawing, and other archived materials relevant to the artist's interests. These presentations will change in coordination with the exhibition schedule in the gallery's main space. This unique offering will allow for greater length and depth of exposure to the work of one artist, culminating in a solo exhibition at the end of the year-long process. The first such project of this nature will be devoted to Jason Robert Bell: The Tetragrammatron Archive. Bell's first installment includes the collaged debasement of a Bergdorf Goodman catalog. Turning the gorgeous models into creatures of darkness, subverting the rich and creating comic book recession art are among the ways Bell casts his limitless characters and figures. </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art, with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting in 2000. His ongoing experiments in translating metaphysical concepts into expressive visual and poetic communications will be featured for the next year at Thomas Robertello Gallery as The Tetragrammatron Archive. Bell's paintings, drawings, experimental films, sculptures, graphic works, internet pieces, outdoor installations, and theatrical performances have been exhibited and performed around the world.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2040 Exhibition: Peter Allen Hoffmann <div class="exhibition-subtitle">When the Cathedrals Were White</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 1 - May 21, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 1, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2039"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/39/39759.jpeg" alt="" height="359" width="360" /></a> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann, <em>The Sea The Sea</em>, 2010</p> <p> oil on linen, 12 x 12 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">PETER ALLEN HOFFMANN</span><br /> When the Cathedrals Were White<br /> April 1 through May 21, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday, April 1, 6-8PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is delighted to present When the Cathedrals Were White; new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Peter Allen Hoffmann. This inaugural exhibition in the gallery's new location at 27 N Morgan St. is the artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery.</p> <p>The title of Hoffmann's exhibition is taken from the book by influential French modernist architect and designer, Le Corbusier; When the Cathedrals Were White. Perhaps most notable among Le Corbusier's influences found in Hoffmann's work is the idea of Reflection. Reflection as mirror to the artist and viewer, as memory, as spatial gaming within the picture plane, the play of light and water, and reflection as measurement of time taken to engage with the work itself. </p> <p>Literal and metaphorical references to the idea of reflection abound in Hoffmann's small scale, mostly 12 × 12" square paintings. The imagery contains numerous references to landscape, abstract, and still life painters including Courbet, Albers, and others. These influences are combined with representations of landscape painted from memory, including images from Islesboro, Maine where the artist often works during the summer. Together, these sources combine to form an intimate amalgam of disparate imagery. Hoffmann's meticulous process succeeds in slowing down the viewer's eye by subtly revealing layers in the work. Hoffmann's work dissolves whatever boundary might exist between viewer, art object/image and everything else, leading one toward windows and measurements of time.</p> <p>Hoffmann's paintings contain a multitude of elements comprising an enormous measurement of time contained within a very small scope. Each element requires a deliberate action signifying the completion of a step in his process of resolving the painting. While the brush work is obvious, the paintings are completely devoid of gesture, and resolve their identities completely. The compression of time in each work prolongs the attention span of the viewer, and the artist's own editing process upturns the viewer's perception of amount of time taken to create and understand the work. Even the specificity of their point in history is elusive. </p> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann (b. 1979 Philadelphia, PA) lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> His work has been exhibited in New York at The Painting Center and Freight + Volume Gallery, Galerie Open in Berlin, The Wexford Art Centre in Ireland, and in Chicago at Thomas Robertello Gallery .</p> <p>Thomas Robertello, Director<br /> Thomas Robertello Gallery<br /> 27 N Morgan St<br /> Chicago, IL 60607<br /> tr@thomasrobertello.com<br /> 812.345.1886<br /> www.thomasrobertello.com<br /> Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 12-6</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/2039 Exhibition: Barbara Koenen <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Oasis</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 10, 2010 - January 29, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 10, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1986"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/38/38302.jpeg" alt="" height="606" width="360" /></a> <p>Barbara Koenen, <em>Silk Road War Rug 1 of 3</em>, 2006</p> <p> spices on canvas, 68 x 35.75 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">BARBARA KOENEN</span><br /> Oasis<br /> December 10, 2010 through January 29, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday December 10 5-8PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present three prints by artist Barbara Koenen, in the gallery's project space, December 10, 2010 through January 29, 2011.</p> <p>In 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan, Barbara Koenen began recreating Afghani war rugs in public performances. Afghani war rugs were first created in the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. That occupation was chronicled by tribal carpet weavers, primarily women, who began to incorporate images of weapons into traditional floral, animal, and geometric patterns. Subtle at first, the military iconography eventually dominated these unusual textiles, erasing all but the most incidental remnants of centuries of previous motifs.</p> <p>Koenen was moved by the tragic nature of this cultural and aesthetic phenomenon, and wanted to feel what it was like to create something so brutal. Adopting the practice of the Tibeten Buddhist monks who make elaborate sand mandalas that they later destroy, she constructed war rugs much like mandalas made from loose spices and seeds. Taking up to 6 days to complete, the colorful and fragrant installations exist only temporarily. Once complete, they are left on display, vulnerable to accidental or deliberate intervention by passers-by. Some installations have actually been actually been walked on, and footsteps reveal the impermanence of the seemingly realistic carpet.</p> <p>The three prints in the exhibition are monoprints made by fixing the remaining spices from one installation to cloth with clear medium. The prints retain much of the color and aroma of the rugs, as well as the pattern of footprints and other incidents that the installation endured. The first print is a rather true depiction of the rug, while the second and third pressings produce significantly faded, and increasingly abstract imagery. </p> <p>Barbara Koenen lives and works in Chicago, <span class="caps">IL.</span> Her extensive list of solo and group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Art Chicago, and the Chicago Cultural Center.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1986 Exhibition: Lilly McElroy <div class="exhibition-subtitle">2009 Was a Rough Year</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 10, 2010 - January 29, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 10, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1862"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/38/38700.jpeg" alt="" height="267" width="400" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LILLY</span> McELROY<br /> 2009 was a rough year.<br /> December 10, 2010 through January 29, 2011<br /> Opening reception Friday December 10 5-8PM </p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Internet meme Lilly McElroy in her second solo exhibition with the gallery; 2009 was a rough year, December 10, 2010 through January 29, 2011. In response to last year's collective frustration, the artist has been soliciting images, stories, and jokes from friends, strangers, and anyone who wishes to take part in a group cathartic experience, by emailing them to her through a website created for the project; www.aroughyear.com. They may do so anonymously if they wish. </p> <p>The installation will transform the gallery into a sketchy comedy club, bar, church hybrid. The exhibition will consist of a stained glass window memorializing the hardships endured in 2009, projected images provided by sufferers depicting a range of painful experiences, a video of the artist performing stand-up at comedy clubs in New York, and a hopper used to harvest the worst experiences and favorite jokes of gallery visitors. Many of the worst natural disasters, personal tragedies, financial hardships, and medical issues are represented. Images of husbands and their lovers caught on spy-cam, tumors, dilapidated housing, letters of rejection and the like form a composite experience meant to bond and relieve the pain of the many people who survived their own personal hell in 2009, and beyond. </p> <p>As with many of McElroy's projects, aroughyear.com seeks to establish connections with strangers by reaching through the awkwardness of social ceremony and provide a meaningful gesture that is sincere in its empathic and healing simplicity. Prior projects include "I throw myself at men." - a series of photographs depicting the artist literally throwing herself at men in bars. Her 2004 video The Square - After Roberto Lopardo is currently being exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. McElroy lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1862 Exhibition: Sarah Hicks <div class="exhibition-subtitle">New Work</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 22 - December 4, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1861"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/38/38323.jpeg" alt="" height="270" width="360" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">SARAH HICKS</span><br /> New Work<br /> October 22 through December 4, 2010</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of ceramic sculpture by Chicago-based artist Sarah Hicks October 22 through December 4, 2010. Her recent work fuses morphologies of living things and mass produced objects with abstraction, yielding scientific curiosities of decorative vernacular. This recent body of work explores the ambiguity of forms and structures borrowed from plant life, skeletons, human forms, and microenvironmental data. Through the manipulation of form, line, color and materiality, Hicks investigates the inherent infatuation people have with commodities symbolizing beauty, sexuality, movement, tangibility, and optimism. Under this premise, she cross references hybrid forms installed at various elevations in the gallery space, evoking responses of subconscious wonderment to objects of desire. </p> <p>The hard fragile materiality notwithstanding, Hicks manages to convey a sense of airiness and absence of mass in her work. The delicate souffle-like creations are absurdly poised on the brink of decay, showing an artist in full possession of her technique as a ceramicist, pushing the buttons of visual delight. </p> <p>Sarah Hicks lives and works in Chicago. She received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in photography from the School of the Art Institute in 1999 and has exhibited work locally at Gallery 40000, Lil Street Art Center, and Alfedena Gallery.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1861 Exhibition: Bret Slater <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Pump Fake - project space</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 22 - December 4, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1960"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/35/35748.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="500" /></a> <p>Bret Slater, <em>Look Up At The Stars She Like "Honey Where The Roof?"</em>, 2010</p> <p> acrylic and staples on cardboard, 8.5 x 8 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">BRET SLATER</span><br /> Pump Fake<br /> October 22 through December 4, 2010</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Pump Fake, an exhibition of work by Bret Slater, October 22 through December 4, 2010 in the gallery's project space. Slater's abstract paintings, tape-on-wall installations, and assemblages combining drywall, cardboard, and other low-tech materials are a handyman's nightmare of subverted utility. Combining his own brand of feckless minimalism with a Forrest Gump-like countenance, Slater manages to imbue each piece with poise and charm -- or poison charm? The material banality of his work belies its captivating dignity, and suddenly the heightened intrigue of tape on a wall normally reserved for a drug induced experience commands scrutiny. The work rejects authority, and avoids traps leading to art historical references, all the while possessing extensive knowledge of the likes of Blinky Palermo, Kurt Schwitters, and Richard Tuttle, among many others. Slater's work is lousy with paradoxes leading, diverting, and ultimately revealing lithe sincerity. In addition, heavily considered formal qualities and madcap construction decisions completely emulsify. </p> <p>Bret Slater received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from <span class="caps">SUNY</span> Purchase School of Art + Design in 2009 and is an <span class="caps">MFA </span>candidate (2011) at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, <span class="caps">TX.</span> Upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at the Free Museum of Dallas in November.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1960 Exhibition: Samantha Bittman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">project space</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 10 - October 16, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1958"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/36/36248.jpeg" alt="" height="550" width="440" /></a> <p>Samantha Bittman, <em>Yellow Zebra 2</em>, 2010</p> <p> Acrylic on hand-woven textile, 23 x 18 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Concurrent with Nudelman's work, the gallery is pleased to present as the inaugural exhibition in its project space, five recent paintings by Chicago-based artist Samantha Bittman. </p> <p>Exploring the relationship between structure and image, Bittman's paintings follow a predetermined set of guidelines dictating color, pattern, order, and texture. Four of the five paintings in the exhibition are on stretched handwoven cloth. The warp, weft, and weave structures remain visible, and are underscored or fully revealed by the painted patterns. A balance of play and logic becomes evident as underlying texture and form melds with a rational but imperfect overlay of painted areas. This subtle juxtaposition often gives way to an optical buzz that breaks down upon close inspection, making perception elusive and fully dependent on the viewer's physical proximity to the work. The wide array of visual effects produced by individual works is extraordinary, ranging from a razor sharp flicker, much like a strobe light, to a meditative calm. </p> <p>Samantha Bittman earned a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004 and an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute Chicago earlier this year.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1958 Exhibition: Michael Nudelman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Light & Magic</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 10 - October 16, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1843"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/36/36250.jpeg" alt="" height="359" width="500" /></a> <p>Michael Nudelman, <em>Light & Magic</em>, 2010</p> <p> Ballpoint Pen + Copic Marker on Paper, 16 x 21.5 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">MICHAEL NUDELMAN</span><br /> Light & Magic<br /> September 10 through October 16, 2010</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Light & Magic; the first solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Michael Nudelman, September 10 through October 16, 2010. </p> <p>Nudelman's painstaking process of creating ballpoint pen drawings, rendered in tens of thousands of small diagonal lines, currently is engaged with the hyper-romanticized landscape. The sources of his imagery are reproductions of famous artists' work. For this show, consisting of nine drawings made in the past two years, Nudelman explores the work of American landscape artists, including several Hudson River School painters. Among them are Asher B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Thomas Chambers. In addition, he includes work by commercial artists who tend to be less respected in the contemporary art world: Thomas Kinkade, Bob Ross, and Robert Wyland.</p> <p>With the human figure and any wildlife appearing in the original artwork removed, Nudelman's drawings arrive through several filters and lenses. The original landscape paintings, whether depictions of the real or imaginary, are not used. He copies copies of images found on the Internet. His drawing process, much like a photocopier, further removes the images from the actual landscape revealing technical striations and occasional tiny globs of ink. Their artificiality, built using many layers of ink and a wide variety of colors, show the mundane in an unfamiliar way. Closer inspection reveals a complicated process and conceptual elements that belie the feathery lightness of visual components immediately seen in his work. The artificial constructs inherent in the work provide a gateway toward numerous aesthetic and conceptual interpretations. </p> <p>The materiality of Nudelman's drawings is often in sync with the ways in which our culture dissociates itself from the Earth. The deliberate use of less-than-archival ballpoint pen shows an artist at peace with his mortality as the work will inevitably age. The future of the drawings is difficult to predict. The colors will fade or break down at different rates. Wizened colors may point toward lost or dying species, and all may eventually be lost or gained, as a meditative creative gesture in the present extends itself toward a future of possibilities.</p> <p>Born in 1985 in Smithtown, New York, Michael Nudelman received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in printmaking from Cornell University in 2007, and an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in Painting/Drawing from the School of the Art Institute in 2009. He has exhibited work in group exhibitions in Chicago at numerous venues including the Union League, Sullivan Galleries, Devening Projects, Julius Caesar, and Zrobili.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1843 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell and Marni Kotak <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Double Face Fantasy</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 31 - September 5, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1942"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/35/35676.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Double Face Fantasy (2010), a new collaborative video by Brooklyn-based artists Jason Robert Bell and Marni Kotak; July 31 - September 6, 2010. The video will be installed in the window of the gallery, running continuously, and is best viewed after dark from the sidewalk. </p> <p>Initially conceived as a playful experiment in chroma key techniques, Double Face Fantasy fuses the artists' painting and performance practices with explorations of romance, portraiture, and narcissism. Presented as a moving diptych, each artist finger paints the other's face, revealing a self-portrait of the painter. Using the application of paint to uncover flesh, the lovers find themselves quite literally emerging through the eyes of their soulmate. The messy sensuality of this play showcases their obvious pleasure, but also probes deeper issues of connection, self, and spiritual union. Double Face Fantasy is five and a half minutes in length and the title pays homage to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's final record, Double Fantasy.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1942 Exhibition: ABOUT FACE <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 11 - July 31, 2010</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1717"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/34/34683.jpeg" alt="Julie Weitz Guardian 12, 2010 Gouache on paper 22 x 22" height="480" width="480" /></a> <p><p>Julie Weitz<br /> Guardian 12, 2010<br /> Gouache on paper 22 × 22</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Jason Robert Bell <br /> Cody Critcheloe (SSION)<br /> John Delk<br /> Scott Fife<br /> Emily Noelle Lambert <br /> Nikki S Lee <br /> Noelle Mason<br /> Mike Nudelman<br /> Ed Paschke <br /> Grant Schexnider <br /> Travis LeRoy Southworth <br /> Julie Weitz</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1717 Exhibition: Noelle Mason <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Bad Boys</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 9 - June 5, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 9, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1716"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/34/34429.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">NOELLE MASON </span>- Bad Boys<br /> April 9 - June 5, 2010<br /> Opening reception Friday April 9, 5:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Bad Boys; a solo exhibition of work by Noelle Mason investigating and critiquing the idea of hysterical masculinity. Exploring extreme masculine drag and brutality, Mason depicts the distinctly irrational behaviors of men and boys, who in fear of acknowledging their own frailties, seek to expunge weakness through accessorizing and violence. </p> <p>Included in the exhibition is Nothing much happened today (for Eric and Dyan), 2005 - 2009. This cross-stitched work combines a pixelated image from Columbine High School's cafeteria surveillance camera taken during the April 20, 1999 massacre, with a process related to domesticity. The artist's massive five-year endeavor captures the iconic image representing 1/30 of a second of the event. Viewed as a mourning cloth or evidence, the work acts as a gadfly reopening old wounds. Its process-driven, slow, calculated, conservative physicality is at extreme odds with the messy, disposable, video still made indelible by the media. Further exploring the Columbine shootings, Mason includes Love Letter (white flag), 2010; a series of 39 handkerchiefs embroidered with excerpts from Eric Harris' journal. </p> <p>Sonata, 2010 is derived from remediated video footage of beheadings performed by Al-Qaeda over the last decade. Intended to terrorize through the power of imagery, the videos themselves have been in a sense 'beheaded' and are stripped of visual content. Instead, they are reinterpreted as sheet music laser cut on leather vellum; a translation or transposition of video image into notation, craft object, and ultimately sound. </p> <p>Fond (fingerbang) 2010, is a video shot at Dia Beacon, NY depicting the artist violating a Joseph Beuys sculpture in the Dia Foundation's permanent collection. Mason's performance of institutional transgression effeminizes Beuys' felt stacks, and by association, Beuys himself. The video is viewed through a navel high 'glory hole' in the wall, forcing the viewer to assume a vulnerable position, doubly breaking the erectness of the body as well as the social erectness of high art.</p> <p>Born in 1977, Noelle Mason lives in Chicago and Tampa where she is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of South Florida. Mason graduated from the School of the Art Institute in 2005 with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in Sculpture, and UC Irvine's BA studio art program in 2002. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1716 Exhibition: Troy Richards <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Perfect View</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 12 - April 3, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, February 12, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1715"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/30/30864.jpeg" alt="" height="178" width="500" /></a> <p>Troy Richards, <em>The Perfect View (interior 1)</em>, 2009</p> <p> Laser cut vinyl on plexi, 24 x 72 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">TROY RICHARDS </span>- The Perfect View<br /> February 12 - April 3, 2010<br /> Opening reception Friday February 12, 5:00 - 8:00 PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The Perfect View; an exhibition of new work by Troy Richards examining the disparity of controlled domesticity vs natural and manmade disasters. </p> <p>Central to the exhibition are laser cut vinyl works (a la Colorforms) on plexiglass depicting a plane crash viewed from multiple perspectives inside and outside a modernist house. Coolly appointed with posh accoutrements, furniture, floral arrangements, and artwork by Bridget Riley and Christopher Wool, the uninhabited domestic scenes are cheerily at odds with the recent intrusion of a large airplane that has fallen from the sky. The odd pairing of extreme control and extreme loss of control rendered throughout in stark black and white freeze-frames various embodiments of polarity. </p> <p>In a second body of work, Richards has created an extension of op art to include trompe l'oeil works riffing on Bridget Riley paintings and Robert Lazzarini sculpture. The two-dimensional laser cut vinyl 'paintings' highlight the artist's mastery of his laborious process confounding the viewer's sense of spatial perception and logic. </p> <p>Troy Richards is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Delaware. He received his <span class="caps">MFA </span>in 1997 from Cranbrook Art Academy in Bloomfield Hills, <span class="caps">MI.</span> Richards has participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program and the Artists in the Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Grand Arts in Kansas City, Duncan and Miller Gallery in Washington <span class="caps">D.C., </span>and has been included in group exhibits in New York City at <span class="caps">P.S.1,</span> White Columns, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, <span class="caps">LFL</span> Gallery, and Sara Meltzer Gallery. This is his second exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1715 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">In the between</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 11, 2009 - February 6, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 11, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1618"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/29/29758.jpeg" alt="" height="622" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>Saturday night</em>, 2009</p> <p> Inkjet print, 24 x 20 ed. 5, 40 x 30 ed. 3 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">ADAM EKBERG </span>- In the between<br /> December 11, 2009 - February 6, 2010<br /> Opening reception Friday December 11, 2009 5:00 - 8:00PM</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present In the between - an exhibition of new photographs and video by Chicago-based artist Adam Ekberg. In the between is Ekberg's second solo exhibition with the gallery. </p> <p>Continuing with the use of lens-based phenomena, humble celebratory gestures, and primitive constructs, Ekberg further develops two distinct bodies of work; images created in the woods or nature, and images using his apartment as stage set. In the latter, images born of isolation and ennui become hermetic mini-exaltations. Ordinary objects displaced from their normal context signal the simultaneity of Ekberg's absence and presence, and a slippage of perceptual lucidity -- the erosion of which gives way to a witnessed consciousness. This higher non-dualistic consciousness replaces subject and object with a singular moment of meditative stillness and attainment. The lineage of this exercise can be traced to the ancient yoga practice of tratak, or fixing one's gaze on an object in order to gain focus and concentration. The capturing of these images arms the camera with an omniscience that finds an odd pairing with beer bottles, disco balls, lighters, and cocktail umbrellas. </p> <p>While similar to the performative aspects of Ekberg's interiors, the outdoor imagery, boundless in many ways, allows the artist to abandon certain restrictive elements and celebrate a personal communion with nature. The positioning of a flashlight on the ground creating an illogically placed beacon of light on the horizon, a duet of balloons in Precise Equilibrium; one helium and one filed with the artist's breath, and a thrown handful of glitter all point toward self-portraiture minus the actual subject. In his video of a fuse slowly burning on the pavement, the gnarled line gradually disintegrates staining the pavement with a residue of gunpowder, evoking a whole life with beginning, end, unexpected twists, a past, present, and future.</p> <p>Born in 1975, Adam Ekberg resides in Chicago and graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA</span> Photography program in 2006. Concurrently with this exhibition, he is participating in Elements of Photography at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, organized by Michael Green and (Re)Collect at the Hyde Park Art Center, curated by Francesca Wilmott.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1618 Exhibition: John Delk <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Stream</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 23 - December 5, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 23, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1617"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/29/29480.jpeg" alt="" height="672" width="450" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">JOHN DELK,</span> Stream<br /> October 23 - December 5, 2009<br /> Opening reception: Friday October 23, 5:00 to 8:00 pm<br /> Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Stream, the gallery's second solo exhibition of work by New York-based artist John Delk. Stream is an installation of obsessive accumulations; indexical lists of data, news stories, material and conceptual minutiae darkly posing questions related to identity and flux.</p> <p>Delk turns digitally recorded data, banal experience, headlines, activity, measurements of time, and detailed observation into materially low-brow mirrors of consciousness. Active self-defining becomes a gateway to understanding the humble ways in which one comes to terms with limitations in a technological and political context. "John Delk", 2009  utilizes the binary code from an audio file of the artist saying his own name to create a self-portrait as a list of thousands of zeros and ones. The specificity of the code connotes genetic composition and individuality as a complexly organized but finite set of components.</p> <p>Stream, 2009 is a thirty-two foot scroll of laboriously hand-typed headlines on fax paper. An avalanche of information from the past five years concentrated into one sentence, Stream dissolves original meaning and intent into a palimpsest through Delk's virulent process. Among other works in this exhibition of video and sculpture,  Pressed incorporates 1358 small portraits from the Wall Street Journal; a fragmented who's who which like most of Delk's work, meditates on the unsettling illusion of primacy and permanence of self and civilization.</p> <p>John Delk lives and works in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Washington, <span class="caps">DC, </span>and Chicago. His work was included in Partisan earlier this year, curated by Mary Jane Jacob for Art Chicago.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1617 Exhibition: Molly Springfield <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Translation</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 11 - October 17, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1616"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/29/29112.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Molly Springfield, Translation<br /> September 11 through October 17, 2009<br /> Opening reception: Friday, September 11, 5:00 to 8:00 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present the gallery's second solo exhibition of work by Washington, DC-based conceptual artist Molly Springfield. Springfield will install the results of a painstaking process that took her two full years to complete: her own "translation," entirely in the form of drawings, of the first chapter of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. </p> <p>Springfield's project--which San Francisco Chronicle critic Kenneth Baker called an "irresistible" work "of rare conceptual elegance"--consists of 28 individual drawings of photocopies of sequential pages from the first chapter of the novel, pieced together from every existing English translation. This patchwork results in the repetition and omission of text from page to page, resolving into an incomplete and not-fully-readable rendition of the original. </p> <p>In addition to confronting the inevitable loss that occurs during the process of translation, Springfield's work is a meditation on the slipperiness of memory, the transformative power of labor, the materiality of language, and the definition of originality.</p> <p>The installation will include a mixed-media supplemental work, A Brief Note on the Translation, in which Springfield explores the conceit of playing translator--offering viewers selections from the research and writing that informed her work. In serving the dual purposes of explanatory wall text and artist's sketchbook, Brief Note underscores the subtle cheekiness inherent in much of Springfield's work. The text is also intended as the preface for a forthcoming book of the drawings.</p> <p>Springfield received her <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006. Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco, and Mireille Mosler, Ltd., New York, as well as group shows in New York, London, Miami, and Washington, <span class="caps">DC.</span> Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art Papers, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. She was a finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize in 2008 and 2009, and received a DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities/ National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2009.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1616 Exhibition: Peter Barrett & Sarah Hicks <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Taxonomies</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 19 - July 31, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1610"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/26/26018.jpeg" alt="Top: Sarah Hicks Object Pair #1, Spore/Specimen Series, 2009 Ceramic 6 x 5 x 3.5 Bottom: Peter Barrett Untitled #8, 2009 Acrylic and pencil on paper 20 x 17" height="734" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Top: Sarah Hicks<br /> Object Pair #1, Spore/Specimen Series, 2009<br /> Ceramic 6 × 5 x 3.5</p> <p>Bottom: Peter Barrett<br /> Untitled #8, 2009<br /> Acrylic and pencil on paper 20 × 17</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">PETER BARRETT </span>and <span class="caps">SARAH HICKS </span>- Taxonomies<br /> June 19 through August 1, 2009<br /> Opening reception Friday June 19, 5:00 - 8:00 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Taxonomies: a two-person exhibition of new work by Peter Barrett and Sarah Hicks. By balancing known forms with complex permutations, and exploring fascinations with object obsession and indexical classifications, Barrett and Hicks offer two independent bodies of work in painting and ceramic sculpture. </p> <p>The large wall painting and smaller works on paper by Peter Barrett reference Op art, Minimalism, and complex geometric forms that somehow manage to avoid the cloying dazzle, austere meditations, and cold finite resolutions of all three influences. Ambitiously rendered, the infinite forms pulse with obsessive detail and confounding spatial orientations. While seducing the sense of vision with boggling complexity, Barrett leads the viewer toward environments built using the properties of physics, cosmology, and retinal occult. </p> <p>Peter Barrett lives and works in Woodstock and Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> Recent exhibitions include <span class="caps">KMOCA</span> Kingston, <span class="caps">NY,</span> Dorsch gallery Miami, and group shows in New York at Claire Oliver Fine Art curated by Shamim Momin, and Bellwether Gallery. He graduated the School of the Art Institute Chicago's <span class="caps">MFA </span>painting program in 1996, and received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Rhode Island School of Design in 1990.</p> <p>The ceramic sculptures of Sarah Hicks begin with molds of mass produced domestic and found objects that are cut and reassembled into objects of familiar but indeterminate origin. Manipulating common notions of design, the artist borrows organic and graphic elements to treat surfaces with fluidity, color, line, and texture. The resulting chic tchotchkes are abstract sculptures imbued with an optimistic dynamism and placed in orbit somewhere outside traditional and contemporary decorative arts. </p> <p>Sarah Hicks lives and works in Chicago and received a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in photography from the School of the Art Institute in 1999. She has exhibited her work locally at Gallery 40000, Lill Street Art Center, and in Shape-Shifters at Alfedena Gallery, curated by Jason Foumberg.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1610 Exhibition: Laura Fayer <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Pull of the Moon</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 17 - June 13, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1422"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/20/20700.jpeg" alt="" height="374" width="500" /></a> <p>Laura Fayer, <em>What Time Has Told Me</em>, 2008</p> <p> acrylic and rice paper on canvas, 48 x 64 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LAURA FAYER </span>- Pull of the Moon<br /> April 17 through June 13, 2009<br /> Opening reception Friday April 17, 5:00 - 8:00 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Pull of the Moon; an exhibition of new abstract paintings by New York-based artist Laura Fayer, April 17 through June 13, 2009. This is Fayer's second solo exhibition with the gallery. There will be a reception Friday April 17, 5:00 - 8:00 pm.</p> <p>Continuing with her process of handcrafting tools, stamps, and stencils to create these abstractions, Fayer paradoxically leans slightly further toward minimalism with the current body of work, while the stamped mark-making has become significantly more complex and labor intensive.</p> <p>The gestural marks accumulate to form a system, with each mark unique but related to those within a cluster. These layers of marks, varying in opacity, undulate as systems within systems. The detailed way in which Fayer crafts each mark subverts the emotive qualities of typical gestural abstraction.</p> <p>With deliberate poise, each mark serves as a calligraphic bridge toward others floating within pools, layers, webs and interrupted patterns. Color fields, patterns, and fragments take turns receding while new movements surface and lead toward edges, directing the eye toward the history of the painting itself. From urban sprawl to a mapping of personal energy currents, each topographical element and family of like-minded imagery changes its role within each painting. Structure gives way to the amorphous, and in the balance, a unity evolves through the combining of disparate elements.</p> <p>Laura Fayer's work has been exhibited recently in New York, Denver, Boston, and Washington, <span class="caps">DC.</span> She attended artist residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell Colony, and received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Fayer received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Hunter College in 2006 and a BA from Harvard University in Visual and Environmental Studies.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1422 Exhibition: Gravity Buffs <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Jason Robert Bell, Amy Cutler, John Delk, Adam Ekberg, Lilly McElroy, Angel Otero, Travis LeRoy Southworth</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 27 - April 11, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1421"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/6/6566.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Lilly McElroy, <em>Into a Bed</em>, 2006</p> <p> Lambda Print, 5 x 7.5 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">GRAVITY BUFFS</span><br /> February 27 through April 11, 2009<br /> Opening reception Friday February 27, 5:00 - 8:00 pm</p> <p>Participating artists:<br /> Jason Robert Bell<br /> Amy Cutler<br /> John Delk<br /> Adam Ekberg<br /> Lilly McElroy<br /> Angel Otero<br /> Travis LeRoy Southworth</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Gravity Buffs; a group exhibition featuring work that resists the normal axioms associated with gravity through imagery, process, and metaphor. The exhibition includes painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and prints. Each work requires a suspension of disbelief to allow illogical readings of gravity to fully reveal conceptual content and narratives. </p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art, with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, experimental films, sculptures, graphic works, internet pieces, outdoor installations, and theatrical performances have been exhibited and performed in New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">D.C,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, and Tokyo.</p> <p>New York-based Amy Cutler's extensive exhibition history includes a major survey at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (2006) and solo shows at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2004), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2002). She has also participated in a two-person exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2002) and in such important group exhibitions as Global Feminisms, the Brooklyn Museum (2007); <span class="caps">ARS</span> 06, <span class="caps">KIASMA,</span> Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; and the Whitney Biennial (2004). Works by Amy Cutler are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and other major institutions. </p> <p>John Delk received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, Washington <span class="caps">DC,</span> San Francisco, and Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span></p> <p>Chicago artist Adam Ekberg graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA</span> Photography program in 2006. Since then, his work has been exhibited throughout Chicago as well as in St Louis, Indianapolis, and Seattle. Photos and video works were recently acquired by the <span class="caps">MCA</span> Chicago and MoCP Chicago.</p> <p>Lilly McElroy is currently living in Provicetown, MA as part of a six-month artist residency program. She graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in photography and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2006. Her performance-based work has been written about extensively and her work will be included in upcoming exhibitions in Poland, and at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She has participated in recent exhibitions in Finland, Chicago, St Louis, and New York.</p> <p>Currently completing an <span class="caps">MFA </span>at the School of the Art Institute, Angel Otero has exhibited his work in his native Puerto Rico and throughout numerous venues in Chicago. </p> <p>New York-based Travis LeRoy Southworth will participate in upcoming exhibitions at the Bronx Museum, Evanston Art Center, and San Francisco. He graduated <span class="caps">SAIC</span>'s <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2007 and his work is in the collection of the MoCP Chicago.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11-6</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1421 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Unreasoning Mask: New Revelations in Figurative Metaphysics</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 9 - February 21, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1345"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/22/22018.jpeg" alt="" height="403" width="500" /></a> <p>Jason Robert Bell, <em>Hannyannah</em>, 2009</p> <p> acrylic, epoxy, metallic pigments, collage, and sand on canvas, 8 x 10 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The Unreasoning Mask: New Revelations in Figurative Metaphysics by Brooklyn-based artist Jason Robert Bell, January 9 through February 21, 2009. There will be an opening reception Friday January 9, 5:00 - 8:00 pm. This is Bell's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Bell's small-scale paintings and sculpture feature enigmatic entities built with layers of paint, paper collage, raw metallic pigments and colored sand trapped within epoxy. The works encase powerful figurative images under smooth glossy surfaces. These metaphysical portraits, whose imagery is the result of years of the artist's independent research in the fields of mythology, spirituality, symbolism, and speculative thought, are fusions of primitive, modernist, and otherworldly forms producing profoundly playful and arresting imagery.</p> <p>The title for the exhibit comes from Melville's Moby Dick, describing the nature of reality: "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!...How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?" - Ahab to Starbuck</p> <p>Bell uses the visual arts as a mode of hermetic philosophy, exploring assumptions of reality and selfhood, creating new forms of expression from the vast sea of his visionary imagination. Each work is an attempt to access an exalted mental space, a primal mystic "Eternal Now", where the entity that is coming into existence in the painting is slightly beyond comprehension. Similar to the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the "tulpa" or "thoughtform", in which actual living beings are created from thought, these transformative works are a synthesis of Utopian landscape, living forms, and the artist's own lucid and blissful dreamlike state. </p> <p>Bell's work reveals his own pasteboard masks, and grotesquely ravishing life forms and worlds that hint at deeper, more powerful realities beyond our reality.</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art, with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, experimental films, sculptures, graphic works, internet pieces, outdoor installations, and theatrical performances have been exhibited and performed in New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, Washington <span class="caps">D.C,</span> Baltimore, San Francisco, and Tokyo.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1345 Exhibition: State of the Union <div class="exhibition-subtitle">John Delk, Noelle Mason, Conor McGrady</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 10 - December 20, 2008</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1256"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/19/19785.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">STATE</span> OF <span class="caps">THE UNION</span><br /> John Delk <br /> Noelle Mason<br /> Conor McGrady<br /> October 10 - December 20, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday October 10, 6:00 - 9:00 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present <span class="caps">STATE</span> OF <span class="caps">THE UNION, </span>an exhibition with artists John Delk, Noelle Mason, and Conor McGrady, October 10 through December 20, 2008. The artists' work critically mirrors the current status of the United States as an ideological gun-toting machine whose devotion to global domination and hegemony manifests as thinly disguised totalitarianism. The exhibition acknowledges the ironic mixture of idealism and violence that are characteristic of the contemporary US social and political landscape.</p> <p>Addressing terrorism, police brutality, immigration, political greed, the Bush administration, and the blinkered ways in which many Americans choose not to view their country's political standing from a global perspective, Delk, Mason, and McGrady go way beyond simple derision in their practice. </p> <p>John Delk serves up a candy-coated American flag and a hole in gallery floor spewing George Bush's past five State of the Union speeches, edited to contain only fear-inducing buzzwords and phrases. Reiterated to the point of nauseating numbness, the works reveal Americans' ability to sugar-coat horror and convert sound bytes into palatable truisms. Delk is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington. He received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in 2001 from the School of the Art Institute.</p> <p>Noelle Mason's window installation of Mag-lites spelling the word <span class="caps">SILENCE </span>in Braille explores the artificial means by which we extend our ability to see. Simple and powerful, flashlights both illuminate the subject and obscure the identity of the user, giving the user - in this case the gallery - powers of x-ray vision violating the space of passersby, and invisibility. Another work made of illuminated stained glass projects a surveillance image of 9/11/2001 hijackers passing through security at the Portland airport. Mason graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2005. Her work has been exhibited internationally and locally at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Betty Rymer Gallery, and the University of <span class="caps">IL.</span> She recently joined the faculty of the University of Houston's sculpture department.</p> <p>Conor McGrady's four new vignettes are de-contextualized portraits depicting roles played by those at various levels within the political power machine. Each serving their purpose methodically and succinctly, McGrady's cast of characters carry out their chilling missions implicating the viewer as a powerless witness to an unstoppable criminal act. Conor McGrady studied at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle, <span class="caps">UK, </span>before receiving his <span class="caps">MFA </span>at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. Most recently his work has been exhibited in the one-person exhibitions, `New Arcadia' at <span class="caps">M.Y.</span> Art Prospects, New York and `Green and Pleasant Land', Saltworks, Gallery, Atlanta. In 2009 he has upcoming one-person exhibitions at Claremorris Gallery, Claremorris, Ireland and Gallery Karas, Zagreb, Croatia. In 2002 he was selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.He currently lives and works in New York.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 - 6</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1256 Exhibition: Patrick Berran <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Places to sit and conquer</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 5 - October 4, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 5, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1127"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/19/19126.jpeg" alt="" height="501" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Patrick Berran<br /> Places to sit and conquer<br /> September 5 - October 4, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday September 5, 6:00-9:00 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Places to sit and conquer; a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Brooklyn based artist Patrick Berran, September 5 through October 4, 2008. There will be an opening reception Friday September 5, 6:00 - 9:00 pm.</p> <p>Patrick Berran's abstract paintings center on multiple paradoxes that reference art history, autobiographical elements, aesthetics, process, and imagery. As the business of art and art education have become more intrinsically linked to the content of work, snarky young artists typically reveal their educational experiences through proof that they too are in control of the medium. Nods to Bonnard, Kandinsky, Klein, and even Monet make their way into Berran's paintings, demonstrating an artist in full possession of history and setting forth a course to extend the conversations of respected masters. </p> <p>Berran's point of departure is a synthesis of musical elements that both lead forward and close doors as the viewer deciphers the process-related codes. As a serial killer would deliberately offer clues that set detectives off on the wrong course to discovery, a viewer is likely to enter the image - often a snapshot of, or cropped emotional vortex - attempt to decode the illogical behavior of the material, and arrive conclusively back where they started. As the lead vocalist in the violently energetic, internationally touring punk rock group Apeshit, Berran's musical and performing arena is one of primal screams and complete annihilation through raw release. Conversely, the paintings he creates are through a patient process of meditation, seduction of material, and transcendental thought patterns. They reveal an aesthetic that is sublime and at the same time repellent. There is extreme sensitivity to surface texture, sensuality, and tension, with resulting images depicting places that are beyond the visual and tactile. The common ground Berran finds between his music and paintings is that neither has obvious line, harmony, rhythm, or a pleasing tonal quality. Yet in the end they compel, supplanting the expected logical experience with a divine and demonic path filled with false leads, fugue state departures from previous layers, and pathological lies told so fast that one must stay in the moment to keep up. Repeat viewing proves further puzzlement and obsession. </p> <p>Patrick Berran was born in 1980 and lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 2002 and Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006. He has exhibited his work at numerous venues in <span class="caps">NY.</span> He is the lead vocalist in the punk band Apeshit, touring internationally. A recent performance at the Whitney Museum can be viewed on Youtube:<br /> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUS1c3c_JIg<br /> For more information about Patrick Berran's music visit http://apeshitnyc.com/</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1127 Exhibition: Cayetano Ferrer <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Registration/Alignment</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 1 - August 30, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, August 1, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1344"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/17/17844.jpeg" alt="" height="485" width="500" /></a> <p>Cayetano Ferrer, <em>Corner Crystal #2</em>, 2008</p> <p> ceramic tile, wood, inkjet prints, florescent light, 25 x 36 x 36 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Cayetano Ferrer<br /> Registration / Alignment<br /> A window installation<br /> August 1 - 30, 2008</p> <p>Opening reception Friday August 1, 8-10pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Registration/Alignment, a window installation by Cayetano Ferrer August 1 - 30. There will be an opening reception Friday August 1, 8-10pm. </p> <p>The title of the show Registration / Alignment alludes to the process of temporal and spatial identification, as the viewer enters the work. Rather than acting as containers of meaning, these works are spatial and temporal registers for the surrounding space, like tuning forks or registration marks in printmaking. With edges that bleed from the window space itself to the scale of the city, the perceived scale of the work is constantly shifting, and its edges are determined by the alignment of the viewer.</p> <p>The center of this installation is Corner Crystal #2 (2008) a depiction of the space of the exhibition, a storefront window space in the meatpacking district of near-west Chicago. Positioned in a rather mundane corner of the space, the sculpture uses the technique of anamorphosis within the photographic surface to create the illusion of its own disappearance. In entering the piece, the viewer's perceptual logic is distorted until the focal point is discovered, and at this moment the sculpture seemingly disappears into the background. This condition of emptiness reveals the illusion of the photographic surface, and objectifies that particular moment and place. It is hyper-nostalgic; conscious of it's own temporary placement in that specific location.</p> <p>At the base of the sculpture is a tile floor that becomes the grounding element for the piece, and brings to it a material history carried over from a previous work. The tiles were discovered in the basement of an abandoned house, which was devastated by a fire in the Redhook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Used to create Tile Fade (2007), which was installed on a platform on the third floor of the gutted building for the Visions of Carlos exhibition, the tiles themselves are a modernized interpretation of a spiral motif, and carry the synchronistic reference to the passage of time and the life-death-rebirth cycle.</p> <p>In the series of photos Area Mosaic #1 (2008), four of these tiles are placed in a large perimetrical square around the gallery, photographed, and brought back together in a store-bought picture frame that re-iterates the spiral motif. Within the image, the tiles register the otherwise disparate sites that are determined by their relative proximity to the exhibition space. In the titular logic of the piece, the four tiles make up a single mosaic, of which the blocks of city in between become its grout.</p> <p>Cayetano Ferrer graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">BFA </span>program in 2006 and will move to LA to pursue graduate work this fall. He has exhibited his work in Chicago at Three Walls Gallery, Betty Rymer Gallery, Plaines Project, ArtLedge, <span class="caps">G2, </span>and other venues. His work has also been exhibited in New York, Korea, and Oakland, <span class="caps">CA.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/1344 Exhibition: Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee, Stephanie Serpick, Don Voisine</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 13 - August 2, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 13, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/915"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/16/16107.jpeg" alt="" height="525" width="500" /></a> <p>Callum Innes, <em>Untitled</em>, 2002</p> <p> oil and shellac on linen, 37.5 x 36 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">UNPAINTED </span>- <span class="caps">RECENT ABSTRACT PAINTING</span><br /> June 13 - August 2, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday June 13, 6-9pm</p> <p>Patrick Berran<br /> Laura Fayer<br /> Callum Innes<br /> Bob Jones<br /> Jim Lee<br /> Stephanie Serpick<br /> Don Voisine</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Unpainted - Recent Abstract Painting - June 13 through August 2, 2008. There will be an opening reception Friday June 13, 6-9pm. Participating artists include Patrick Berran, Laura Fayer, Callum Innes, Bob Jones, Jim Lee, Stephanie Serpick, and Don Voisine.</p> <p>Each artist in this group exhibition proves that abstract painting can continue to provide a vital and necessary voice, visually, conceptually, and aesthetically. Expanding boundaries and defining what a painting can be, the artists reveal that beauty, purity of concept, design, intelligence, and visually compelling treatment of the medium have much to offer in the present. </p> <p>Patrick Berran is based in New York. A recent graduate of Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program, Berran's paintings are a chivalrous blend of Turner-esque light, romance, and an alchemical hand that deftly guides the viewer away from his illogical material process. Under Berran's control, properties of paint disobey their natural laws and are seduced into slowly revealing new possibilities of surface, color, and form. Berran will have a solo exhibition in the gallery in September.</p> <p>New York based Laura Fayer incorporates a process of hand-made stamps, stencils, and rice paper to create canvases that meditate on forms found in the natural and built environment, aerial view landscape, and an imperfect Asian aesthetic. Fayer's layering process reveals the history of individual works and completeness through an additive accumulation, rather than one of excavation, decay, and erosion. </p> <p>Scottish painter Callum Innes has achieved significant recognition worldwide for his conceptually driven unpainted canvases. Seemingly monochromatic colors are applied and subsequently unpainted with washes of turpentine. The unpainting process, when arrested, reveals a frozen moment where past, present and future coexist on the picture plane, leaving the hidden properties of paint exposed. </p> <p>Milwaukee artist Bob Jones creates wholly nonfunctional objects from the detritus of a studio in disarray. The accumulation of discarded materials and energy, and what can be called the kidnapping or removal of the objects from that environment, yields magnetically charged and confounding works once contextualized within an art viewing setting. </p> <p>The painting/sculptural hybrids of New York based Jim Lee are a quirky and intelligent blend of folk-minimalism. Carefully constructed, witty, charming, with references to Tuttle, Kelly, Ryman, and the Arte Povera movement, Lee's work achieves an unusual blend of awkward poise. </p> <p>Chicago based Stephanie Serpick subtly combines the faintest hints of Victorian patterns, quasi-Gothic lettering, and tattoo design to create atmospheric paintings. They explore memory and its gravity, as it separates from and fragments the present.</p> <p>The hard-edged reductive paintings of New York based Don Voisine are elegantly unpretentious and rigorous in their paint handling. Voisine's colors and surfaces vary from glossy to matte, and transparent to opaque. With a humble disposition, they whisper assured wisdom.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/915 Exhibition: Emily Noelle Lambert <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Pink Trees</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 25 - June 7, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/914"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/14/14729.jpeg" alt="" height="644" width="500" /></a> <p>Emily Noelle Lambert, <em>In the violet sky</em>, 2008</p> <p> acrylic on canvas, 52 x 40 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">EMILY NOELLE LAMBERT </span>- Pink Trees<br /> April 25 - June 7, 2008<br /> Opening Reception Friday April 25, 6:00 - 9:00</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Pink Trees; a solo exhibition of paintings by New York based artist Emily Noelle Lambert April 25 - June 7. A reception will be held Friday April 25, 6:00 - 9:00. </p> <p>The landscape paintings and landscape/figurative hybrids created by Lambert run the risk of complete boundary dissolution through gesture and hallucinatory colors that depict an alternate world in which dissociation equals solace. Lambert's non-linear narratives allow many points of entry but few escape hatches. While her web of cryptic imagery is drawn from a pool of everyday iconography, the complexities of the resulting landscapes verge on complete abstraction - a process rich with metaphor mirroring the contemporary American landscape as a genetic blend of the typical and exotic. </p> <p>Visual melting pots cross referencing the real and imagined give way to artificially constructed terrain, both interior in the psychological sense, and exterior. Choosing to view the work through the lens of racial evolution in America, specifically in her home base - New York, Lambert's work may be seen as visionary in its achievement to blend discordant color elements harmoniously, while defining completely that color is color, in every degree or intensity of hue. The work seeks a complete acknowledgement of the urban populous through the infinity of an imagined utopia. Thus the artificiality of construct and incorporation of acrid colors, independently directed linear webs, and an absolute whole connectedness between disparate elements reveal a keenly delineated but complete perspective. The irony of color and its assumed roles are charged with social commentary and aesthetically reveals a disturbingly beautiful vision that longs for a happy ending, with or without the presence of man. </p> <p>Emily Noelle Lambert was born in 1975 in Pittsburgh, <span class="caps">PA.</span> She earned an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Hunter College, New York in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Washington, <span class="caps">DC,</span> Pittsburgh, Germany, and The Netherlands. Upcoming exhibitions include Seoul, Korea. She currently resides in New York.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/914 Exhibition: Lilly McElroy <div class="exhibition-subtitle">I throw myself at men.</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 14 - April 19, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 14, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/913"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/14/14908.jpeg" alt="" height="343" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LILLY MCELROY </span>- I throw myself at men.<br /> March 14 - April 19, 2008<br /> Opening reception March 14, 6 - 9 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Lilly McElroy - I throw myself at men, a project incorporating performative photographs of Lilly going to a lot of bars where she literally throws herself at men. She uses her body as a projectile hurling herself toward strong, vulnerable hominis-cum-receptaculi waiting to catch her. Perfectly poised in a perpetual state of social awkwardness and in full possession of the ability to subvert stereotypical gender roles, McElroy poses questions concerning relationships, social connecting, sex, gender, and the desire to form relationships quickly that are both intense and long lasting. The project initially started after Lilly placed ads on Craigslist.org looking for men who would meet her blind date style in bars and allow her to throw herself at them. Simply put, Lilly's work comes from a place where the desire to make a positive connection with another person is coupled with the full acknowledgement of one's own separateness.</p> <p>Lilly McElroy graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in photography and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2006. Lilly is an internet phenomenon, easily one of the funniest performance artists alive, and recently moved to New York.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/913 Exhibition: Knut Hybinette & Troy Richards <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Nowheresville</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 25 - March 8, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/912"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/13/13457.jpeg" alt="The Promises of the Administration Have Been Kept, 2008" height="667" width="500" /></a> <p><p>The Promises of the Administration Have Been Kept, 2008</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">KNUT HYBINETTE </span>& <span class="caps">TROY RICHARDS </span>- Nowheresville<br /> January 25 - March 8, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday January 25, 6 - 9 pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Nowheresville, a multimedia installation by collaborative Cleveland based artists Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards, January 25 through March 8, 2008.</p> <p>Taken from the literal definition of the word Utopia, Nowheresville focuses on the ideas and literary work of the French writer and Utopian socialist Charles Fourier: specifically on the experimental community, Ripon, Wisconsin, which was formed to put his ideas into practice. Ripon was a short-lived experiment but would later become the birthplace of the Republican Party. Presenting a historic trajectory that leads toward the near future, Ripon is portrayed as a Midwestern dystopia, infested by chaotic suburban drug addicts, killers, and societal decay.</p> <p>The centerpiece of the exhibition is an innovative video game created by Hybinette and Richards incorporating video, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and cutting-edge technology. The gallery installation consists of a shanty housing the game, a decaying billboard depicting a video of Fourier espousing utopian dogma, as well as drawings and prints used in the making of the video game. </p> <p>Both Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards are on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art. Born in Sweden, Hybinette graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA</span> Photography/Animation program in 2004 and has exhibited his photography nationally and in Sweden. Richards received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Cranbrook Art Academy in 1997 and has exhibited his work in New York at <span class="caps">P.S.1,</span> Queens Museum, Sara Meltzer Gallery, and <span class="caps">LFL</span> Gallery. Hybinette & Richards have received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the Ripon game.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/912 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Lesser Deities</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 30, 2007 - January 19, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, November 30, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/911"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7817.jpeg" alt="" height="400" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>Match</em>, 2007</p> <p> Inkjet Print, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">ADAM EKBERG </span>- Lesser Deities<br /> November 30, 2007 through January 19, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday Nov. 30, 6 - 9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Lesser Deities, a solo exhibition of photography by Chicago based artist Adam Ekberg, November 30, 2007 through January 19, 2008. </p> <p>In his current body of work, Ekberg mines spectral evidence of a larger mystical presence through minute gestural interventions that are self-reflexive to the medium of photography. Ekberg's signature blend of anthropomorphized ephemera and objects creates a neo-pagan iconography that hints at rapture through the minimal or unseen. By capturing the reflection and refraction of light through the lens, permitting optical aberrations, flares, and subtly staged events, Ekberg translates what may be only peripherally visible into a quixotic logic that brings the viewer closer to their understanding of, and belief in a larger cosmic force. Simple and profound in their compositional proclamations, the unabashedly humble images are imbued with an essence that is proof positive of divine evidence. Tackling issues relating to man's understanding of God, existence, and mortality through a vocabulary of serene reflection and solitude, Ekberg throws down the gauntlet challenging belief systems pertaining to spirituality in contemporary art.</p> <p>Adam Ekberg graduated the School of the Art Institute's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006. Since then, his work has been exhibited throughout Chicago at Hyde Park Art Center, Loyola University Museum of Art, Around the Coyote, Gallery 2 School of the Art Institute, Fifty-50 Gallery, Lloyd Dobler Gallery, as well as in St Louis and Seattle.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/911 Exhibition: Justin Marshall <div class="exhibition-subtitle">As Seen On TV</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 19 - November 24, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 19, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/893"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/9/9415.jpeg" alt="" height="666" width="500" /></a> <p>Justin Marshall, <em>I know you're right</em>, 2007</p> <p> C-print, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/893 Exhibition: Grant Schexnider <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Paintings</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 7 - October 13, 2007</div> <br/> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/582 Exhibition: Adam Ekberg <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Disco ball in the woods - Window Video Installation</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 4 - September 4, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, August 4, 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/902"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/6/6646.jpeg" alt="" height="398" width="500" /></a> <p>Adam Ekberg, <em>A disco ball on the mountaintop</em>, 2005</p> <p> Inkjet Print, 30 x 40 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Disco Ball in the Woods, a video by Chicago based artist Adam Ekberg August 4 - September 4, 2007.</p> <p>Adam Ekberg's photographs and video work record the existential spiritual presence of the self through the thoughtful staging of ephemeral events. The work navigates secret wormholes of the universe, gathering mystical evidence that is reflected back to the viewer through the refraction of light, extraordinarily tenuous and illogical circumstances, and singularly concentrated imagery. This distillation produces a body of work comprised of formal compositions that are at once visionary and accessible. Ekberg's simplicity of means allows each image to communicate the profound in the everyday. His imparted artistic ideals imbue each image with a gentle understanding that allows the viewer to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, elevating perception and wisdom with the selflessness of an evolved yogi or spiritual being.</p> <p>Disco Ball in the Woods is a video created in 2006. It is a 4 ½ minute loop picturing an impishly magical scenario comprised of an out-of-place disco ball on a snowy mountaintop in Maine reflecting an artificial light source at dusk. Its illogical presence is hardly questionable given the sheer beauty of the sparkling light dancing on the snow. Ekberg's video is mesmerizing and meditative, ultra-hip and timeless. </p> <p>Adam Ekberg received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in photography from the School of the Art Institute in 2006. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Contemporary Art Workshop, Bridge Art Fair, Fifty/50 Gallery, and Gallery 2 among other venues.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/902 Exhibition: Peter Allen Hoffmann <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Given</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 8 - August 3, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 8, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/581"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/8/8052.jpeg" alt="Untitled 2006, oil on canvas 12 x 10" height="606" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Untitled 2006, oil on canvas 12 × 10</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>June 8 - August 4, 2007<br /> Reception: Friday June 8, 6-9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Given; new landscapes by Peter Allen Hoffmann. Steadfastly poised far outside today's aesthetic epicenter of the New York art scene where cutting edge painting is synonymous with grotesque, market and ego-driven smears of expressionist signatures, and muddled abstraction; a visionary painter is bravely emerging as American landscape painting's leader. Hoffmann, who is based in New York, is a painter's painter who eschews shallows trends and achieves new heights in very old terrain. Acknowledging a certain debt to American and French luminaries, his work follows a long line of artists including Courbet, Hartley, Burchfield, Avery, and Dove. </p> <p>Hoffmann's agility and masterful technique allow him to carve each portion of canvas into a multifaceted gemstone, incorporating multiple perspectives that open and close, leading to unexpected visual resolutions. In fearless pursuit of beauty through subtlety, a shimmering sensuality surfaces through organic shapes that simultaneously protrude and recede. Through illogical visual systems of spatial organization, a ravishing and unabashedly beautiful painting style executed with complete freedom and skill, Hoffmann's work gives way to the mystical treasures and spiritual essence of the contemporary physical world. </p> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann completed Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2005. His work has been featured in various group exhibitions in New York, Berlin, Chicago, and Philadelphia. His first New York solo show was presented by Freight + Volume Gallery in 2006.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/581 Exhibition: Molly Springfield <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Real Object</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 27 - June 2, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 27, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/580"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7536.jpeg" alt="" height="290" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">MOLLY SPRINGFIELD </span>- <span class="caps">THE REAL OBJECT</span><br /> April 27 - June 2, 2007<br /> Opening reception for the artist Friday April 27, 6 - 9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present, The Real Object, an exhibition of new drawings by Molly Springfield. For the past two years, Springfield has embarked on a singularly focused project: making painstaking graphite drawings of photocopies of books--copies of copies, in other words, that meditate on questions of originality, reproduction, and meaning. The obvious labor involved in each drawing evokes, as San Francisco critic Glen Helfand has put it, "an existential sense of futility. All that time and effort, and for what?" </p> <p>In this latest series of works, Springfield ups the ante. The drawings are larger in scale and more ambitious, but they also conform to a set of self-imposed restrictions. The pages that appear in the drawings are carefully chosen-- from books on the history of art or books with personal significance to the artist--and the content of the pages, in turn, dictates the form of the drawings. In some of the pieces, this relationship is made explicit; in others, less so. At the same time, the works address themes that have always preoccupied Springfield--reading versus seeing, technology versus labor, memory versus nostalgia, digital versus analog, pencil versus print.</p> <p>Molly Springfield was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006 and received her <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Later this year, her work will be included in Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite, an exhibition organized by the University of Richmond Museums that will travel nationally. Her next solo show is scheduled for this fall at Moti Hasson Gallery in New York.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 - 6 and by appointment.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/580 Exhibition: Knut Hybinette & Troy Richards <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Ripon Prototype: A Video Game Installation</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 25 - April 25, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Wednesday, April 25, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/776"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7486.jpeg" alt="Town's Edge, 2006 Unique Digital Print, 72 x 144" height="300" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Town's Edge, 2006<br /> Unique Digital Print, 72 × 144</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Ripon Prototype: A Video Game Installation preview on Wed. April 25, 6-9pm. Created by Cleveland-based artists Knut Hybinette and Troy Richards, Ripon is an innovative conceptual installation integrating an original video game with large-scale digital prints that use the setting of a violent dystopia to upset the conventions of gaming culture. Named after and located in Ripon, Wisconsin; a small town founded on the writings of the French Utopian writer Charles Fourier that would later become the birthplace for the Republican party, Ripon is meant as something more akin to ephemeral happenings or events with random chaotic situations in the game occurring only once. The game is designed with multiple monitors and projections that allow up to ten people to play simultaneously. The digital prints, which rely on rigorous drawing and print making techniques, depict the world of the game while surrounding the projections with images of home made methamphetamine labs, drug addicts, as well as cocoa and marijuana plants growing wild in abundant proportions. This depiction of a rural Mid-western societal collapse as a virtual reality involving the viewers is both frightening and humorous. </p> <p>The Ripon project subverts our expectations of video games, engaging the viewer/player in strategic and psychologically complex ways. From the design perspective, this is accomplished in three ways: one becomes less adept as the game progresses, players are de-centered, and each player is mortal. Ripon questions the violence so often used as conventional entertainment in video game culture, utilizing a critical perspective that is possible in the context of art installation.</p> <p>Knut Hybinette was born in Sweden and resides in Cleveland, OH where he is on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Art. He graduated with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in photography and animation from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2004 and has exhibited his work internationally. Troy Richards is also on the faculty on the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated in 1997 with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting from Cranbrook Academy in <span class="caps">MI.</span> He has exhibited his work in numerous venues nationally including the Queens Museum of Art, <span class="caps">P.S.</span> 1, and <span class="caps">LFL</span> Gallery.</p> <p>Ripon Prototype will be exhibited one night only - April 25, 6-9pm</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/776 Exhibition: J Ivcevich <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Sidewalk Soliloquy</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 16 - April 21, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/579"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/7/7028.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/579 Exhibition: Laura Fayer <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Breathing Room</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 2 - March 10, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/446"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/6/6359.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">LAURA FAYER </span>- <span class="caps">BREATHING ROOM</span><br /> February 2 - March 10, 2007<br /> Opening reception for the artist Friday Feb 2, 6-9pm</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by New York based artist Laura Fayer. Fayer's paintings draw on various structures and systems to produce a loose geometry with organic rhythms. She relies mainly on her handcrafted tools such as stencils and oversized rubber stamps to construct her multi-layered work. As part of her process, she studies the natural and built environment; among her many references are architecture, aerial views of landscape, language, and musical structure. Her work reflects the wabi-sabi aesthetic; a Japanese concept of beauty that includes simplicity, unpretentiousness, and imperfection. </p> <p>Fayer's work allows for a coexistence of imperfect elements that can be described as fragments of beauty, thought patterns, intelligence, disturbances, and light. The whole that they create through the inclusiveness of natural dissonance and unfinished forms depicts a true state of perfect unity. Compared to Agnes Martin's quest for spiritual and philosophical truth through form, Fayer's work is similarly ambitious. But rather than eliminating forms that would detract from a singular vision, Fayer incorporates them creating works that are whole through `being' and embracing all parts, whereas Martin's exclusion of these elements, discrimination, and singular vision/process created an artificial state of `being' through `doing'. Fayer reinvigorates abstract painting by allowing all unfinished aspects of the self to combine with profoundly serene results. </p> <p>Laura Fayer completed Hunter College's <span class="caps">MFA </span>program in 2006 and holds a BA from Harvard University in visual and environmental studies. She has been the recipient of a recent grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, attended such artist residencies as Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell Colony, and has exhibited her work in New York, Boston, and Washington <span class="caps">DC.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/446 Exhibition: Michael Tarbi <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Human Condition</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 1, 2006 - January 27, 2007</div> <br/> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/445 Exhibition: Jason Robert Bell <div class="exhibition-subtitle">The Kala Series</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 20 - November 25, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 20, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/444"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/5/5131.jpeg" alt="" height="497" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present The Kala Series - a solo exhibition of work by Jason Robert Bell. This exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture explores Bell's alter ego; a monstrous fur covered female hominid who is impossibly beautiful, transcendent, comical, erotic, and horrific. These sublimely oedipal self-portraits reveal a fully self-actualized being who is at once psychologically complex, in full possession of her rich inner world and femininity, intimidating, and exists in a surreally beautiful fantasyland, longingly struggling to be accepted, understood, and loved. </p> <p>Bell has created a subject that could serve as a divine and transgressive embodiment of the history of Art. Kala is a contemporary Venus, emerging from a sea of culture and our deepest memories, confronting our belief systems and definitions of beauty, societal acceptance, and self-awareness. She exists as a dark mirror to all the nudes, nymphs, and muses of Art history. Kala is also a rebuttal to the clichéd pornography that has saturated contemporary Art; she is the Jungian shadow that our culture has cast in our idealization and distortion of femininity.</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell lives in Brooklyn, <span class="caps">NY.</span> He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in painting in 1995, and the Yale School of Art, with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in painting in 2000. Bell's paintings, drawings, experimental films, sculptures, comics, and performances have been exhibited in New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Washington <span class="caps">D.C,</span> Baltimore, and Tokyo. Concurrently with this exhibition, Bell is having a mini-retrospective at the Hans Weiss New Space Gallery at Manchester Community College in Connecticut.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/444 Exhibition: John Delk <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Suspension of Disbelief</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 8 - October 14, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 8, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/443"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/4/4709.jpeg" alt="From left: Target, Pleading, Kampf, There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know." height="275" width="432" /></a> <p><p>From left: Target, Pleading, Kampf, There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know.</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>John Delk<br /> "Suspension of Disbelief"<br /> September 8 - October 14, 2006<br /> Opening Reception for the Artist: September 8th, 6-9pm. </p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present "Suspension of Disbelief," a solo exhibition of work by John Delk, including an installation of sound and mixed media sculpture, photography, and live fish. </p> <p>"Suspension of Disbelief," as defined by Wikipedia, is the willingness of a reader or viewer to suspend his critical faculties to the extent of ignoring minor inconsistencies in order to enjoy a work of fiction's inherent outrageousness. Delk believes `the United States is experiencing a deep national crisis as Americans have suspended their critical faculties so as to enjoy a cheap work of fiction being created by the government and presented by the media; both institutions controlled by the invisible hand of corporate interests.'<br /> <br /> Individual pieces respond to current events such as political prisoners or covert surveillance operations while others touch on themes of excess and alienation in American culture. One work is comprised of talking teddy bears installed on shelves, each implanted with an original recording of a personal ad placed on a phone dating service. The ads range from naïve to explicit, but all are an attempt at competitive marketing of the self as a commodity. Other bears are piled into a mound and praying for the world's salvation.</p> <p>"Guantanamo" protests the torture of political prisoners and questions the role of the individual in relation to acts of the state. Specifically it calls to mind the US government's tendency to justify even its most heinous acts as serving freedom and democracy. This installation consists of hundreds of goldfish in small cubes, i.e. cells. Viewers may dismantle and remove the piece through adoption or let it remain.</p> <p>Another work transforming the gallery into a virtual panopticon explores the world of simulation and espionage that increasingly defines our society. The word "evildoers" is spelled out on the wall in Braille with 26 security surveillance globes. The piece calls to mind a recently exposed government practice of undisclosed monitoring of individual's phone conversations, email and bank records, cited as necessary to flush out the "evildoers" hiding among the American citizenry. </p> <p>John Delk lives and works in New York. He received an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, Washington <span class="caps">DC, </span>and Chicago. This event marks his first solo exhibition and is made possible in part by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/443 Exhibition: Conor McGrady <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Purity</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 16 - August 19, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 16, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/442"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/3/3429.jpeg" alt="" height="321" width="500" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Conor McGrady <br /> "Purity"<br /> June 16 - August 19, 2006<br /> Opening Reception: June 16th, 6-9pm. Artist will be present.</p> <p>Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Conor McGrady. Mr. McGrady will be exhibiting recent drawings and paintings based on military or right-winged control of public spaces and the enforcers of this control.</p> <p> "The impetus for my practice as a whole is based on situations of violence and military control, largely drawing on, but not confined to, my experience growing up in Northern Ireland. In the drawings of buildings and urban areas I work almost exclusively from memory in an attempt to strip out all extraneous details. The empty buildings and housing schemes in the drawings are often subject to physical control by the military and in some cases were designed and planned with the help of military technicians to ensure containment of an insurgent population."</p> <p>Conor McGrady was born in 1970 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. He received a BA Honors First Class in Fine Art from the University of Northumbria, Newcastle Upon Tyne, in the <span class="caps">UK, </span>in 1995. In 1998 he completed an <span class="caps">MFA </span>at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2000 and 2002 he was awarded a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the City of Chicago. Other awards include the Ragdale Foundation/Union League and Civic Arts Foundation Fellowship, and the Juror's Award in the `15th Evanston + Vicinity Biennial' at the Evanston Arts Center in Illinois. Mr. McGrady has exhibited widely in the <span class="caps">US,</span> Ireland, and the <span class="caps">UK, </span>with numerous solo exhibitions in Chicago, New York and Atlanta. Of particular note, Mr. McGrady participated in the 2002 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, <span class="caps">NY.</span></p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/442 Exhibition: Thomas Robertello Gallery - Introductions <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 14 - June 10, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 14, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/441"><img border="0" src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/1/1844.jpeg" alt="" height="503" width="500" /></a> <p>Peter Allen Hoffmann, <em>The Fall</em>, 2005</p> <p> oil on canvas, 72 x 72 </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Thomas Robertello Gallery's inaugural exhibition includes work by all gallery artists:</p> <p>Jason Robert Bell <br /> Jorin Bossen<br /> Ken Bucklew<br /> John Delk<br /> Laura Fayer<br /> Peter Allen Hoffmann<br /> Peregrine Honig<br /> Knut Hybinette<br /> J Ivcevich<br /> Emily Noelle Lambert<br /> Justin Marshall<br /> Conor McGrady<br /> Molly Springfield<br /> Michael Tarbi</p></div> http://thomasrobertello.com/exhibition/view/441 News: ArtPadSF at the Phoenix Hotel, San Francisco <p>Visit us at ArtPadSF - May 17-20<br /> http://artpadsf.com/</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/news/view/2174 News: Bret Slater <p>Solo Exhibition, Marty Walker Gallery, Dallas, TX through June 16<br /> Solo Exhibition, Elaine Lévy Project, Brussels, Belgium (upcoming 2012) <br /> “Texas Friends: Bret Slater and Jeff Zilm” Et Al Projects, Brooklyn, NY (upcoming, 2012)</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/news/view/2117 News: Molly Springfield <p>Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, NJ: September 4, 2012-January 6, 2013<br /> Art=Text=Art: Works by Contemporary Artists, an exhibition of selections from the Sally & Wynn Kramarsky Collection. Curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director of the University of Richmond Museums, with Rachel Nackman, Registrar of the Kramarsky Collection.</p> <p>Graphite, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, <span class="caps">IN.</span> Curated by Sarah Urist Green, 2012</p> http://thomasrobertello.com/news/view/10 Press: Art ltd. by Robin Dluzen <p><img src="http://thomasrobertello.com/static/dyn-images/49/49367.jpeg" alt="Art ltd. by Robin Dluzen" /></p> http://thomasrobertello.com/press/view/3842