Opening reception Saturday, Feb 15th. 4 to 6 p.m.
Open daily thereafter, Monday through Saturday 12:00 noon to 5:30pm. Closed Sundays.
On view until March 15th, 2003.

Alteration & Habitation: Christian Nguyen and Carole Loeffler

An extension of "Sculpture: A Matter of Soft and Hard," the sculpture show at the Artist Alliance
Part of "Crossings: Artistic and Curatorial Practice" a multi-site exhibition curated by Anne Ellegood and Rachel Gugelberger in conjunction with the 2003 College Art Association Conference.

At CUCHIFRITOS art gallery/project space.

Alteration & Habitation statement:

An extension of the sculpture show at the Artist Alliance, Alteration & Habitation presents the work of two sculptors, Christian Nguyen and Carole Loeffler, underscoring the pronounced differences in their approaches to the medium. Despite their differences, the gallery becomes a cohesive environment in which a profoundly dynamic interplay exists between the works on view. Nguyen utilizes the existing architecture of Cuchifritos to alter the space. Engaged in an on-going project entitled Strike that began while participating in the World Views studio program on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center, his site-specific artworks use simple building materials such as drywall and window treatments to reveal hidden elements of a space and create new relationships between its architectural elements. For Alteration & Habitation, Nguyen has re-articulated the entrance wall by adding opaque, cut up panels to the glass structure, completely shifting the sight lines into the gallery and the relationship to the back wall, which he has also reconfigured with drywall and mirror. His hard-edged abstract modification calls to mind landscapeÑmountain vistas or lightening boltsÑas well as materials disintegration or destructionÑbroken glass or the rough edges of debrisÑ, engendering a consideration of how structures can be vulnerable to destabilizing factors.

Inhabiting the Nguyen-altered gallery are several of Carole Loeffler's "binks." Loeffler has amassed more than fifty sculptures in her series of binks, which she describes as, "a species of beings in different stages of evolution." Made from various textiles, these colorful, quirky soft sculptures are teeming with personality. Guided by the materials properties of the fabrics, each bink is unique. Yet, Loeffler is sure to articulate orifices for eating, speaking, procreating, and shitting in each of their awkward figures. Inspired by Claes Oldenburg's ability to alter our conceptions of the objects that inhabit our everyday lives by rendering them as soft, droopy sculptures, Loeffler has set out to inspire viewers to imagine the humanity of the objects she makes. Her binks enter a space and burrow in, setting up a home there, and interacting and existing with all the excitement, trepidation, and will to survive that humans feel as we negotiate our daily lives.

Alteration & Habitation allows visitors to experience each artist's work individually while their juxtaposition brings new insights and understandings to their work. Perhaps Loeffler's binks offer an emotional tenor within Nguyen's perfectly articulated interior, while Nguyen provides a much needed home for Loeffler's family of beings.

And:

Artist Projects in the Essex Street Food Market

The Essex Street Market has served the Lower East Side Community for over 50 years. The indoor market is a result of the policies of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who forced the pushcart peddlers on the streets indoors during the 1939 World's Fair in his attempts to ÒcleanÓ the streets for tourism. The market thrives today as a neighborhood market, both a vital business and cultural institution. Installed in the market are three projects.

The sculpture of Michele Brody consists of a lace skirt within which grass seeds native to Northern California are planted and sprout with the aid of a hydroponics watering system. Exploring the passage of time in the recognizable form of a skirt, Brody illustrates the tenuous relationship between nature and the human made environment. The wall installation of Carolyn Kay, consisting of green fabric and painted dark gray numbers, disrupts the strict arrangement and movement of numbers to create instability of value. Kyle Riedel's vinyl banners depict digitally created architectural spaces that exist somewhere between a sense of the real and virtual, the familiar and unfamiliar. The imagery presents a 2 dimensional stage of possibilities for the imagination.

Crossings: Artistic and Curatorial Practice is a multi-site exhibition curated by Anne Ellegood and Rachel Gugelberger in conjunction with the College Art Association's 2003 annual conference in New York City. Single artist projects, group exhibitions, performances and public projects developed out of a call for entries to CAA member artists. From approximately 300 submissions, thirty artists were selected. The projects, exhibitions and a panel on independent curating address the multiple modes of artistic and curatorial practice that comprise much of contemporary art today. Single artist projects and performances were selected based on the relationship of the work to particular sites -- a food market, a furniture store, alternative art spaces and the public realm, or in considering the diverse concerns surrounding these sites -- everyday activities, consumerism, art history, architecture, technology and identity. Two thematic exhibitions developed out of the submissions, one that reflects on what it is to be "American," and another that examines sculptural tendencies and sensibilities.

Also on view:

Sculpture: A Matter of Soft and Hard
Andrea Cohen, Joanne Greenbaum, Nancy Hathaway, Jeff Konigsberg, Thomas Lail, Joan Linder, Anna Pedersen, Julianne Swartz and Micki Watanabe

ARTISTS ALLIANCE, INC. project space, room #410
CLEMENTE SOTO VƒLEZ CENTER
107 Suffolk St., NYC 10002
phone: 212-420-9202
Open Mon - Sat,12:00 to 5:00pm

Wed, Feb 19th - Wed, Mar 5th, 2003

Sculpture: A Matter of Soft and Hard gathers together sculptural works, examining the medium from two distinct perspectives: hard-edged, architectural work and soft, biomorphic or organic forms. A group show of nine artists, the exhibition presents sculptural works in three-dimensional forms as well as drawings that expand the medium from its two-dimensional definition to embrace built space as emphatically as any work more conventionally categorized as sculpture.

Jeff Konigsberg paints directly onto the walls of the gallery to collapse our sense of perspective, scale, interior and exterior. Panels of black and white and muted colors are covered in a maze of intersecting, and often broke up, thin lines, creating a space that draws you past the physical limitations of the wall. Also playing upon our perceptual understanding is Julianne Swartz, whose work inhabits architectural space in subtle and surprising ways. Using devices such as mirrors, optical lenses, magnets, and fans, she calls attention to the less prominent aspects of a space, from corners to closets to ceilings. Working on-site and building a new work for the exhibition, Thomas Lail cuts into constructed walls to create a space within a space that responds to the existing architectural site as well as its neighborhood or urban location. Joan Linder's large-scale drawings of architecture often mimic the format of the buildings she depicts; the high-rises are dramatically vertical, some even coming off the wall and flowing onto the floor beneath. Created with ink on paper, her works TV Tower and Forum came out of her fascination with the architectural history of Berlin. Joanne Greenbaum's delightful and accomplished large drawings combine numerous abstract shapes to articulate grand yet precarious built environments. Using a graphic, colorful language, she describes her compositions as that of a sculptor "carefully placing objects." Visually linked to the convention of the architectural model, Micki Watanabe's sculptures are containers of space. Inspired by structures found within literature, her open-ended, tabletop depictions of rooms suggest a narrative of human habitation, part fantasy and part reality. Andrea Cohen bridges the natural and the man-made in her funky, yet carefully articulated hybrid-forms made of tree branches, styrofoam, plastic string, wire, felt, latex, and numerous other materials. Appearing to grow before our very eyes, Cohen's sculptures rejoice in numerous references, from the body to plant life, from industry to technology, and from formal compositions to summer camp crafts. Anna Pedersen's enamel on mylar drawings and aquaresin sculptures reference the interior of the body. With almost a Pop sensibility, her works are like friendly spore growths or multiplying tumors that are equal parts seductive and repulsive. Also directly related to the body are the sculptures of Nancy Hathaway, which humorously underscore the ever-present gender distinctions within art historical and mass cultural representations of the body.

These exhibits were made possible in part by the Fund for Creative Communities/NYSCA, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and by the generosity of The College Art Association, The New york City Economic Development Corporation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation.