2009 PROGRAMS AND INSTALLATIONS

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2008 PROGRAMS AND INSTALLATIONS

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Sameness, Difference and Desire
Curated by Bill Arning

In making sense of the visual world the human eye scans constantly, and then when objects of interest are identified the mind is engaged and starts making distinctions with other previously identified objects,; Are they the same or different? If different, how are they different? If the same, are they the same, similar or two iterations of the same phenomenon? This is true if the objects under consideration are fellow humans or products on the supermarket shelf. Somehow in this visual perusal the close examination leads to inchoate feelings of desire, some for sameness, some for difference. In this selection of international video artists this process of comparison provoking desire is replayed in each video in ways that are also both exactly the same and completely different.

Reading Room
Designed by MFA Students in Fine Arts
Parsons the New School for Design
Curated by Jeffrey Walkowiak, Independent Curator and Writer

PULSE's reading room has been designed by a select group of students from the MFA Program in Fine Arts at Parsons The New School for Design.
The students were chosen by Independent Curator Jeffrey Walkowiak, and together, they have created a space for reading, relaxation, discussion and contemplation. In addition to being able to view artworks from the MFA Studios at Parsons, visitors are encouraged to sample what students are reading and thinking about in today's art schools.

Mark Anstee
Type B
Courtesy of Madder139

Mark Anstee's new works are individual drawings rendered in hand blown Venetian Murano glass. The subject, the ‘Hoodie’ draws attention to himself, glowing in a vibrant green, the colour of nature, of camouflage, of Kryptonite. The figures take different positions or poses that could be separate moments, frozen states in a continual movement. Is he falling? Is he struggling to stand or is he dancing? Are we witnesses to agony or ecstasy? With these child-sized hooded apparitions, Anstee continues to explore the line between perceptions and prejudices and what may be another kind of reality.

Jennifer Burkley Vasher
Tylenol Room (Entitlement / The Past is Never Dead)
Courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery

A meditation on loss and survival, The Tylenol Room (Entitlement - The Past Is Never Dead and Buried) consists of a canopied room hung with multiple garlands of strung white pills. Over 550,000 aspirin went into the creation; each individually strung like a pearl necklace--the process akin to saying the Catholic rosary, obsessively over and over again.

Graham Caldwell
Compound Eye, 2008
Courtesy of G FINE ART

Graham Caldwell’s piece is composed of a seemingly infinite number of circular mirrors clustered into a spherical shape. Convex, concave and flat, they invert, magnify and distort. Ultimately the piece is about seeing.

castaneda/reiman
Untitled (Sketch for a Landscape), 2008
Courtesy DCKT Contemporary, Inc.

castaneda/reiman's current body of work focuses on natural scenic environments existing on the fringes of the urban landscape, their various interpretations and how these areas are reflected within domestic spaces. Untitled (Sketch for a Landscape), 2008 incorporates common building materials with dozens of carefully cast, porcelain and concrete replicas of landscaping rocks. The rocks supply an odd, unstable foundation for a structure that mimics both construction and conventional landscape painting.

Chez Bushwick
The Invention of Minus One, 2007 - 2008
Chez Bushwick Presents, 2008

The Invention of Minus One: Jonah Bokaer’s full-length production of technology-infused work propels dance and motion capture into new realms of innovation. Using state of the art digital choreographic software, Bokaer examines the erasure of the moving body, and the trace of its presence. The Invention Of Minus One is performed by award-winning dancers from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Music by Christian Marclay, décor by Michael Cole, lighting by Aaron Copp, and costumes by Isaac Mizrahi complement the work.

Chez Bushwick Presents: Chez Bushwick will present a program of live performance by artists whose work crosses over into the realm of visual art performance.

Mary Coble
Blood Script, 2008
Courtesy of CONNER CONTEMPORARY ART

In Marker New York (2006), DC (2007) and Madrid (2008) Mary Coble stood silently while passersby wrote in marker on her body derogatory words they had been called or had used against others. In Blood Script, these documented hateful insults will be tattooed onto Coble’s skin without ink. Ornate script will create a dichotomy between beautiful visual forms of the words and the horrible meanings they convey.

Words will appear in blood as needles penetrate Coble’s skin. Contact prints will be made of each word by pressing paper against the incisions. As they are created, blood impressions will be displayed on the wall.

In a related performance, Note to Self (2005), Coble had names of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans-gendered hate-crime murder victims tattooed on herself in inkless block letters. The blood prints and documentation are in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Leonardo Drew
Number 90
Courtesy of Finesilver Gallery

Drew is known for his dynamic large-scale sculptural installations, which incorporate created, manipulated and found materials such as paper, cotton, children's toys, cast paper, rust and mud. On the one hand, Drew's sculptures can be seen as exercises in formalism rooted in the very experience of looking. On the other hand, these works explore memory through materiality, employing the detritus of human experience within our diverse histories.

Ryan Humphrey
ARK, 2008
Courtesy DCKT Contemporary, Inc.

Ryan Humphrey’s ARK, 2008 is loosely based on the Ark of the Covenant which held the Ten Commandments and other sacred religious objects. Before the Ark was lost, most people weren’t considered worthy enough to witness its contents; only people specially appointed by the church could open the Ark without suffering the wrath of God. In Humphrey’s ARK all of the contents are visible and Lego building blocks substitute for religious objects.

John Kalymnios
Rush, 2006
Courtesy of Caren Golden Fine Art

With it’s 8 monitors simultaneously displaying churning water, Rush is a continuation of Kalymnios’s interest in visual perception and nature, and the way the two intersect through memory and experience. His signature mode of mechanical production heightens the mesmerizing effect of experiencing the natural world. As in all of Kalymnios’s works, the viewer is beckoned and lured into the artist’s hallucinatory world.

Mike Latham & Arts Corporation

Arts Corporation is a New York-based multimedia laboratory run by Mike Latham involved in the research of the intersections of the visual arts, architecture and technology. The work takes the form a spatial installations involving sculpture, film and performance, and the creation of objects which question the boundaries between these disciplines. For PULSE New York 2008, Arts Corporation uses one of its “inventions,” the t.oaster, as the installation’s springboard.

Lucas Lenglet
Untitled, 2006
Courtesy of magnus müller

The spatial works by Dutch artist Lucas Lenglet consist of compilations and arrangements of self-constructed objects and architectonic elements. As a whole, these settings are often spaces to be entered, yet single parts of the installations can also be seen and presented as autonomous images and sculptures.
In earlier years, Lucas Lenglet had been working essentially on phenomenas as aggression and violence and has now begun to turn the spotlight onto the notion of protection and security. He overlaps these two opposing forces in the project "Protection from potential danger“. One could argue that we live in a culture of fear, where the presence of a constant and latent threat feeds our instinctive uncertainties. What do we need to feel safe? How can we defend ourselves against threatening situations? With his works, he suggests possible tools to escape from danger.

Jenny Marketou
The Lounge Of Ethereal Fun
a VIP lounge for small collectors
Courtesy of PULSE, Anita Becker ‘s Gallery and the artist
March 25 to 30, 2008

The Lounge of Ethereal Fun the place to be……will premiere at PULSE /New York .The artist, who has been known for her public projects and new media installations using source material from children's play and games , has been inspired by the current phenomenon where children between 6 and 14 years old are becoming important art collectors using the allowance given by their parents . The lounge is meticulously designed with a pleasurable mix of artwork and children’s artifacts to provide "red carpet" hospitality to children who love to collect art. The lounge features daily interviews conducted by the artist, exclusive ethereal guided tours of PULSE, floating drawings , video programs, easy tunes , artist magazines and a range of creative activities.

Nathaniel Rackowe
Black Cube, 2007
Courtesy of BISCHOFF/WEISS

In Black Cube (2007) corrugated bitumen roofing sheets are sliced, stacked and bolted together. This dark totemic volume, which measures one meter in each direction, seems to absorb light, inferring a mass beyond its physical limits. The deconstructive, reconstructive nature of the piece echos my preoccupation with the fluid, shifting nature of built environments.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Subject-Object proof #2
Courtesy of envoy

Sepuya investigates the dynamic between artist (Subject), sitter (Object) and the final viewer in a voyeuristic set up that collapses the space between all participants. Visitors are greeted by a video projection showing an observer’s perspective of sitters having their portraits taken in the artist’s bedroom in Brooklyn. On the reverse of the video screen is a complete setup for making portraits in the gallery space. The video and performance suggest that what began as a private, intimate experience has become an act of exhibitionism, and questions what each participant in the network is searching for.

Mark Shetabi
“Model (large)”, 2007
Courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery

Mark Shetabi explores the grey area that exists between the larger world and models used to represent it. At what point does a model become a thing unto itself, and not simply a representation? With the distance that a model affords, one can survey the complexity of a larger system. At the same time, this distance isolates the viewer from the experience. Two sculptures, one diminutive and one immense, will be shown. Both are models of a parking garage based on video game imagery. One model sits inside a Plexiglas display case. The other “model” is 34 feet long.

Andy Yoder
Licorice Shoes, 2003
Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery

Licorice Shoes are based on two specific memories the artist recalls from his childhood: the black wingtip shoes his father wore to the office every day and the crock of black licorice his grandmother kept in her kitchen. Blending these two sources with humor and spectacle, Yoder comments on the wonderment, fears and unwritten rules that form our domestic environment and our behavior within it. Licorice Shoes transcend the pop references of Oldenburg-esque sculptures to explore more intimate realms of memory and desire.

Almond Zigmund
Remembering the Future (Orange Façade Box I & II), 2007
Courtesy of Rebecca Ibel Gallery

Drawing on a variety of sources Remembering the Future is an ongoing series investigating the notion of public space and "non-place", a term coined by French anthropologist and theorist Marc Augé. Orange Façade Box I & II, part of this series, is a sculptural arrangement that creates a space that is neither useful in an architectural sense nor passive, as a non-place. Its form evokes minimalist notions of production and essentialism while creating a fanciful and lyrical homage to the desire for beauty vis-à-vis appropriation of industrial decoration and high-keyed hue.

Malgorzata Romanska is an industrialist and President & CEO of MR Industries. For the past several years, she has become one of the most prominent art collectors and philanthropists to emerge from Eastern Europe. Malgorzata Romanska is a proud sponsor of Pulse New York.