Karen Sargsyan opening at HVCCA, Sunday, Feb 8 4-6 pm.

Abroad Understanding (detail of work in process), 2008 Metal, paper, wood, 98 x 248 x 224
inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Gallerie Juliette Jongma
HVCCA in Peekskill, NY will be hosting a reception for the opening of the site-specific sculptural installation created by Karen Sargsyan during his Fall residency at the museum.
There is an uncanny rhyming of material in Sargsyan's work and the work of HVCCA's previous Artist in Residence Chris Jones. Both Jones and Sargsyan use paper as the primary element of their sculptural work.
The reception is being held on Sunday, Feb 8 from 4-6pm.

@ HVCCA: Jonathan Meese performance & talk, May 10. Chris Jones exhibition opening May 18

German based artist Jonathan Meese will be giving a performance followed by a talk on Saturday from 12-2pm in Peekskill at HVCCA. $5 Adults; $4 Seniors/Educators; $2 Students/Children; FREE HVCCA Members.
Speaking of HVCCA, Chris Jones, the museum's current artist in residence will be opening an exhibit of the work created during these past three months he's been in Peekskill. I stopped in two weeks ago to see him and drop off more magazines to feed the furnace of his studio frenzy. Chris Jones' stockpile of material.

Since my first visit in the beginning of March, Chris' studio has become far more densely packed with materials and it is now dominated by the sizeable works in progress. Chris uses collaged elements from magazines to build a sort of 3D collage. His work has a dualistic nature - visually, and conceptually. Visually, seeing his work feels a little like viewing something through a set of stereoscopic glasses; your field of vision is slightly skewed. Conceptually, that duality plays out in the notion of actuality vs. representation and what is concrete, solid, vs. the ephemeral, non-structural made structural. The glossy pages Chris uses are not simply the surface of the piece they are integral to the structure and form holding his work together, yet the amorphously shifting imagery within the pages that are essentially the building blocks of his structures serve more to dissolve or erradicate the work's representational presence rather than reinforce it.
He manipulates the imagery in the magazines to embody an uncanny presence and form of textures depicted in his source images. Sculpture detail.
It's trippy stuff. How an appropriately crumpled piece of paper bearing a photographed image can take evoke the immediate and visceral experience of seeing a thing even while you are aware that you are viewing a scaled down, 2D, documentation of that thing.
I'm not going to give away what he's been doing, but he's been doing it feverishly. The work that he's creating now has everything to do with his stay in Peekskill, which is his first time in the States.
architecture of paperChris Jones' exhibit opens Sunday May 18 with a reception and Gallery talk from 4-6pm. The exhibit runs through August 17, 2008.

Field Trip to HVCCA: portfolio review, delivering mags

Thanks to everyone that dropped off magazines and catalogs yesterday. I the mags down to HVCCA today, and passed the mags on to an appreciative Chris Jones, the museum's artist in residence for the next several months. I spoke to Chris for a while on his process of creating his work and the transformation of his collage materials. I snapped these photos in his studio space in the museum's upper level gallery where he's been working for the last two weeks. An exhibit of work created during Chris' residency will open on May 18. So stay tuned. An earlier post, included an image of a collaged motorcycle sculpture made by Chris. There's a much more readable image on his home page, just click the link under his name above.

Several pieces of different scale are in the early stage of development. Playing on the textures in the magazine imagery, some pieces are already taking on uncanny, decidedly un-paper characteristics.
The collection of materials will continue, so keep saving your magazines over the next several weeks, and I'll make another run down to Peekskill on March 30 for the museum's next panel discussion -more on that later. If you have magazines you want to pass along, let me know or take them down to the museum yourself.
I was at HVCCA today to attend the portfolio review day. Nearly 100 artists had an opportunity to get 15 minutes of one on one time with one of six reviewers. I saw several familiar names on the posted lists of review time slots and reviewer assignments.
I'm interested to hear how beneficial this event was for other attendees. Please feel free to comment below. I've never participated in one of these types of reviews and it's sort a blur to me. I think as with any good critique group, it helps to have clear questions you'd like answered in mind, and I didn't have any off hand. The main thing I came away with is an intent to refine the way I speak about my work, particularly with a very short opportunity.

Bring out your old magazines & illustrated books for the sake of art

Chris Jones, Bike, 2007, Images and glue,
97cm X 200cm X 67cm

photo from HVCCA.com

London based artist Chris Jones begins a three month residency at HVCCA this week. I met Jones this evening after the panel discussion held at the museum. He creates sculptural representations of animals, and objects using imagery from magazines, catalogues, illustrated books and the like and he needs to amass a great deal of such items to from which to build his pieces.

If you have any old magazines, or illustrated books you are looking to get rid of, instead of tossing them in the trash, let's see if we can some magic with them. Just email me (info(at)maykr.com) and we'll see if we can get a bunch of material down to him.