Artist’s Statement
Film, obsession and beauty
The focus of my work is in the chance union of forms, symbols, images and colors. It is through cosmetics, in the sense of making up the world in an almost shaman-like manner, that my work plays with a pre-established language of beauty pervasive in popular culture and attempts to establish a complicated link to a mythological world. My work is about obsession and beauty.

Bio/Resume
Born in Florida, and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Francisco López has been based in New York since 2001. He graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1999. His work has been exhibited at the Boston ICA, Trieste Film Festival in Italy, Sala Mendoza in Caracas, and Transhudson Gallery and Momenta Gallery in New York. In 2004 he showed a video installation as part of the Young Architects Program at PS1 MOMA in New York and his video “Telepathic Numbness” was exhibited at the British Council Electric Earth Show in Caracas, Venezuela. He has lectured at the California Institute of the Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009.

Website
http://www.mogollon-ny.com/

Artist Statement
This work re-presents a mental landscape, an office-scape, used as a symbol or stand-in for contemporary culture at large. Stemming from an interest in the exploration of the psychology of the individual in contemporary culture as contrasted with the primitive psychology of man, this work offers a synthesis that highlights the latent tension between our former modus operandi and our current structured status. While this lifestyle transformation may be recognizable in the lives of the majority, I focus on a specific grouping of individuals, those living in a maximal built environment, the urban environment, cut off from the natural world. This new normal position removes the sights, sounds, scents and behaviors integral to life in the natural world and replaces it with a myriad of man-made objects and experiences centering around the idea of function or purpose in relation specifically to the human being. No longer residing in a subsistence-based communal setting where a reactionary attitude to our environment is part of our survival technique, we now plan for our survival in a construct based in politics and the economy.

The Arts provide a unique escape from this practicality, this need for function or popularization in a market-driven economy for both the fabricator (or art practitioner) and the viewer/collector. To recognize this fact is to provide evidence of the enduring appetite to witness an idea, a feeling, or an aesthetically driven combination of color or pattern that stretches beyond the rigidity common in other areas of our experience. To some extent, the strong economy of the art market itself is evidence of the desire for the unique or rare object, rare because it was not mass produced and is not readily available. On the other hand, it must also be recognized that art objects themselves are now bought and sold purely on the basis of commodity value.

Humor, absurdity, or dysphoria may be an element present in my work in it’s often-times futile attempt to provide a response to the predicament of life in contemporary culture in the form of simulated nature. It is through this lens that my work investigates the tension between our past and out present modes of conduct.

Website
http://www.lisadillin.com

Screwball Spaces, Gowanus Canal’s newest addition of artists’ studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, opens its doors to the public for a rare glimpse into the work spaces of New York’s contemporary artists.

http://openstudios.screwballspaces.com/

Henry Chung, Studio 50, Anonymous #23, 36″ H x 24″ W (framed), Computer Punch Tape
http://www.HenryChung.com

Enrico Miguel Thomas
Studio 90

Miranda Maher
Studio No. 56
http://www.miranda-maher.com
miranda_maher@hotmail.com
miranda@miranda-maher.com
347-431-5275

Leoworks, Studio 27

Joetta Maue
waking with you,  2010, hand embroidered, appliquéd, and painted re-appropriated linen, and queen size bed, 60in x 80in. x 15in.
www.joettamaue.com
Studio #2

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Yasha Butler, studio 80, Title: Off Circle, Media: Porcelain and Glaze / wheel-thrown and altered, Size: 6.5″h x 10″ x 10″, www.yashabutler.com

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Nathan Gwirtz; ceramics arena #12; oval dish, 2010, porcelain, underglaze sgrafitto, glaze;  nathangwirtz.com

Dana Atherton, Studio 62, Abstract Collection, Oil dana.a.atherton@gmail.com

Eastern Parkway in Autumn, 2009

Garden Signage, 2009

Kingston Ave on a Saturday, 2009

Artist’s Website
http://www.jennylow.com/

we, the people, are the languid conjoined lovers, 2009 photograph, archival pigment print on Luster

mother's eye, future and past grief, repeat. 2009 photograph, archival pigment print on Luster 24"x40"

plunging fingers in the film of night, 2009 photograph, archival pigment print on Luster 27"x40"

perennial gatekeeper of marble and concrete, 2008 pigment print on Somerset 23"x35"

Intoxicating sovereignty (jerusalem Fall afternoon) 2008 photograph, archival pigment print on Luster 40"x60"

Artist Statement
One of the oldest cities in the world, Jerusalem has always been infused with fracture and duplicity, which carry on to this day in the city’s fabric and leaders. As reverent home to three of the world’s major religions, Jerusalem embodies Foucault’s idea of a heterotopia — an impossible space where parallel contradictory layers exist.

Using reflective surfaces in my constructs, it is often unclear whether an image is the thing itself or its reflection. I avoid the traditional horizon, and the compositions can become purposefully disorienting. A photographic image can be thought of as a belief system in itself, and as such, I hope to create a structure infused with doubt.

Website
orit-ben-shitrit.com

Erasure

Metal on Metal

Vanishing

Artist Statement

This is about the intersection of man-made environment and nature: nature reclaiming the space appropriated by man.

This is not abstract art. This is nature photography / Close-ups from the urban environment.

The art of small things – things you have to get close to – bend or kneel down to observe, because small things require extra effort from the viewer.

Time: Take the time to look around. Beauty is hiding everywhere.

Time: All things must pass / slow decay from the elements.

(Re)discovering the psychedelic nature of reality. Notice the tiny, insignificant details that are part of the daily environment.

Discover the tiny universes hiding in plain sight everywhere – tune into the noise your mind has learned to cancel out in order to become more efficient.

“What is it?” is not the question – what matters is what the viewer projects.

Website
http://danielabrahamphoto.com/