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255Canal @ EXIT ART Alternative Histories is a history of New York City alternative art spaces and projects since the 1960s. Opening Reception: Exit Art On Display: Gallery Hours: Portrait of 255triplets by wowe
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Past
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Figuring It Out Opening Reception: On Display: “Figuring It Out is the result of two years of intense drawing sessions from the live model exploring different ways of seeing and rendering the figure. Focusing primarily on the relationship between emotions and creative expression, I chose to “feel” the form rather than consciously controlling its representation and started drawing with long sticks at the end of which I secured a pencil, a brush or charcoal using color and ink wash as a way to enhance spontaneity and bypass the rational brain. In my approach to the form, the figure also represents a platform for the creation of abstract compositions.” Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Valentina grew up between Italy and the United States and has been living and working in New York since 1997. |
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VIOLENCE IN HONDURAS - A youth phenomenon in a troubled country Opening Reception: On Display: "In Honduras crime is endemic. With a population of 7.3 millions and 4.473 homicides, its per capita murder rate in 2008 was 59,7 x 100.000 inhabitants, the second worst in the world...The most violent day of the year was Christmas with 38 killed. 65% of the murders were committed in public places of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the political and the economic capital of the country, by hired killers, usually members of a gang recruited by the Mexican and Colombian narco cartels. More than 30% of the victims had less than 24 years of age. The country has a youthful population; 50% of Hondurans are under the age of 19. But endemic poverty, chronic unemployment and the prospects offered by drug trafficking have contributed to a virulent crime wave conducted mainly by youth gangs known as "maras". The maras are said to have tens of thousands of members and use threats and violence to control poorer districts in towns and cities. ...The increasing number of people living in extreme poverty is leading to an always higher number of kids living in the streets and most likely going to enter the maras." (Nanni Fontana) Nanni Fontana was born in Milan, Italy, in 1975. Since 2003, he has been working as a professional photographer and has collaborated with New York based agency WpN World Picture Network and Milan based agency Prospekt Photographers. He is now an independent photographer working with charitable foundations and nongovernmental organizations. His current freelance photojournalism projects focus on international news and in-depth reportages on social issues. These projects have led him to travel throughout Europe, the US, Cuba, Mexico, Egypt, Mongolia, Nepal, India, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Japan, Honduras and Australia. His pictures have been featured in the Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Die Tageszeitung, Yedioth Ahronoth, L’Espresso, D la Repubblica delle Donne, Vanity Fair, The Economist, Newsweek, Internazionale, Fortune Magazine and National Geographic. |
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Inherent Bodies Opening Reception: On Display: C. Alexander Häusler’s work is all invested in space. How is space perceived, how is space constructed and how is space creating social interaction. Trained as an architect he later studied sculpture as way to work with space more immediatly. The large scale paintings shown at 255Canal gallery inscribe body and perception into surface. Like an installation the large paintings interact with the moving observer while conquering the third dimension. With his 2-dimensional pieces C. Alexander Häusler researched the nature of paint and painting and the nature of visions using the human scale, far from pictorial references. Further a photograph series is exhibited at 255canal in which C. Alexander Häusler examines the body movement over time by capturing people in front of his paintings. And when the silhouettes blur and become surreal beings, the inherent imaginary quality of his abstract work reveals. Born in Bavaria, Alexander studied sculpture and architecture in Munich and at Harvard. In 2004 he moved to New York where he works as an independent artist and architect. |
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Surroundings Opening Reception: On Display: Luca Bariola was born in Piacenza, Italy in 1976 and currently resides in New York. He has been exploring and experimenting with photography in its different forms for the past thirteen years. The exhibition at 255Canal, his first, represents works from the last two years. “Surroundings” reflects Luca’s study of the color reached through the use of traditional photographic techniques. All photographs are chromogenic prints from negatives film and have not been digitally altered or manipulated.
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My American Uncle / Mi tio de America Opening Reception: On Display: Dreams run high in New York. They are the primary fuel that brings new people here every day.Their power and energy are comparable only to the sharp edge of a New York disappointment. Its taste is sour and bites deep into the soul. The Spanish artist Antonio Ortuño knows quite well that the marriage between dreams and disappointments is unbreakable in a city that asks its citizens to endure that battle in order to survive. That's why Ortuño´s new exhibition 'My American Uncle' is a quest into the emotions and feelings Antonio Ortuño (Alicante, 1970) has lived in New York for four years. His career started out in 2002 at the Festival de Arte Contemporáneo “Conmutaciones-02” of Zaragoza, where he showed the video installation “Por Amor/Deshechos”, that was also shown at the gallery Local Project in New |
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Matt Daws Opening Reception: On Display: Matt Daws, a novel-in-progress and group of paintings and other texts representing the work and commentary of its protagonist, examines the projection of his anxiety about social relations and family life, religion, sex, and the dynamics of his internal experience onto the myth that painting is dead and the Modernist division of art into representational and abstract categories. After graduate school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a few years www.jeremyprice.com
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Laundry Day Opening Reception: On Display: “Since my first visit to the U.S., the act of doing laundry became one of my obsessions. It slowly interpreted itself into archetypal symbol of American pop culture. (Cristiana Depedrini) Cristiana Depedrini was born in Milan in 1976. She lives and works between NY and Milan. Exhibitions include the solo exhibition: "CROmatica" at the B>Gallery in Rome. She exhibited at the MI-Art Art Fair in Milan (2008), "Art Verona" Fair in Verona (2008). “Laundry Day” is Cristiana’s first exhibition in New York.
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Paper Castles Opening Reception:
Paper castles are ephemeral and fragile structures. When we think about them, we instantly recall the world of dreams, those wishes we raise in our mind as if they were marvelous castles. Since they are figments of our imagination, those “castles in the sky” have a short life: they vanish in one night, just as Tillo Buttinoni’s sculptures (they are on view only Wednesday, April 15, until midnight). Tillo creates his sculptures with cheap and everyday materials, such as paper and colored tapes, which are often recycled, even collected from the street. On one hand, his works allude to children plays, to those clever and utopian architectures made out of “nothing” that we invent with the most surprising and spontaneous ease when we are young. On the other, they refer to gamble. Paper is not only the material that Tillo uses to give birth to his sculptures; it is also both a concrete and metaphorical allusion to playing cards. The artist first duplicates and enlarges a set of cards by hand, applying the colored tape stripes on the surface as if they were brushstrokes, and then adopts those hand-crafted cards as architectural elements to built his “paper castles”. Playing cards act as words: they generate a system of signs, a language. Colors, suits and pictures can have a very different meaning according to the context in which they are employed. Tillo is telling his American story with a deck of black cards. Among them he chooses only one suit, diamonds, and two pictures, the Queen and King. If we look back at tradition, black cards, which differ from the regular ones because they are “in negative”, allude to occult practices; diamonds, more common in the French use, correspond to “money”, the suit that Italy and Spain have adopted instead of diamonds when playing; the Queen and King are the two pictures that usually have more value in the deck. Tillo’s Paper Castles installation is a tangle of signs that need to be solved and interpreted by keeping attentively the “here and now” in mind. Diamonds stand for money, that’s why the artist associates them to the symbol of the American dollar. It is not a matter of chance that they appear as the only suit in the work. Diamonds are a strong allusion to the dictatorial power that money has on our society. The “black” Queen and King stand for President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle; the only two promising symbols of political change in such an extremely critical time, when the global economical recession seems to have erased all illusions and optimism at once. Tillo Buttinoni (born 1974, Milan, Italy) is a sculptor who works with various materials and techniques. His sculptures are mostly site-specific, and are often assembled to create large and immersive environments. In the past ten years, he showed his work in many collective and solo exhibitions, in Milan and around Italy. Paper Castels, an installation especially created for the artists space at 255 Canal Street, will be his first American show. It is an individual and poetic reflection that Tillo dedicates to New York. |