G U E S T  S P O T @ THE REINSTITUTE

SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

 April 13, 2013  through May 25 2013 

Curator: Same Same But Different

Opening Reception: April 13, 2013  7-10 pm

Closing And Panel Discussion: May 25 2-4 pm

Hours: Wednesday 5-7 & Saturday 1-5or by appointment

Location: 1715 North Calvert St. Baltimore, MD



Guest Spot & THE REINSTITUTE is proud to present a group exhibition curated by Same Same But Different. Opening Saturday April 13, 2013, the works will be on view through May 25, 2013. A panel discussion New York Centrality and the Practice will be held along with the closing Saturday May 25th from 2-4pm.

Same Same but Different is the third in an ongoing series of eponymous exhibitions organized by the collective of the same name. The infamous Southeast Asian colloquialism is used as both descriptor for their collaboration and inspiration for their exhibitions. Formed in 2012 in Brooklyn, they have previously mounted exhibitions in New York City and Seattle. Each exhibition is site-specific but remains rooted in the core concept of their collaboration, which is their common formal language of purposeful colors and simple shapes in complex arrangements. The phrase “same same but different” is elastic and is used by merchants to describe a wide array of wares. They have embraced its full meaning by using these exhibitions as an opportunity to showcase multifarious sides of their practices, thereby enabling different combinations of their work to produce new meanings and connections. For the show with Guest Spot @ THE REINSTITUTE, they have taken very literal inspiration from the gallery by expanding the scope of their collaboration by inviting two guest artists to join them in the exhibition space.

Jay Gaskill – Halsey Hathaway – Maya Hayuk – Fabian G. Tabibian – Amanda Valdez

The collective approaches an exhibition as artists would approach a new work, by allowing its form and concept to organically assert itself. This happens not by putting paint to canvas, but through discussions during studio visits with individual artists. The root note of this show is mirroring. Quickly, it became apparent that, in one form or another, each artist is engaging in works that deals with a kind of Rorschachian near-symmetry. The dialogue between the works furthers this notion, as certain elements from one piece is reflected in a distorted fun-house mirror style in other pieces around the room. One can almost trace certain elements as they zig-zag like shards of light through the exhibition. Amanda Valdez’s provocative sturdy forms become Halsey Hathaway’s interlocking curvilinear space which gives way to Jay Gaskill’s swirling zones of colors which are picked up and hypercharged by Maya Hayuk, whose weaving expressive lines lead directly to Fabian G. Tabibian’s drawn diagonal structures, which then get melted and molded by Valdez’s pouring paint.

The connective threads that one can find are limitless. Which do you choose? Same same but different.

Same Same but Different is an exhibition collective formed by three Brooklyn-based artists (Jay Gaskill, Fabian G. Tabibian, and Amanda Valdez). They do not share a studio nor do they make works together. Their collaboration supersedes the physical space of the studio; it exists ephemerally in conversation, in actions, and in shared thinking. The collective’s physical manifestation is in the exhibition space as a site-specific opportunity in which the three artists’ work is brought together to create new meaning and propositions. The phrase “Same Same but Different” represents the nexus at which their work converges and diverges from each other.

Amanda Valdez is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Additionally, she studied at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Amanda has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional-Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine. Recent shows include Taste of Us, her Solo Exhibition at Denny Gallery in New York, El Regreso de los Dinosaurios at Abrons Art Center, in New York, Same Same but Different at Parallel Art Space, in Brooklyn and SOIL Gallery, in Seattle, MsBehavior at The ArtBridge Drawing Room, in New York, Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory, in Queens, and Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York.

Fabian G. Tabibian is a Brooklyn based artist, born in New York City. He received his MFA from Hunter College, studied at the Royal College of Art in London and at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. His work has been exhibited at Parallel Art Space in Brooklyn, Rush Arts Gallery in New York, Momenta Art in Brooklyn and at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY. His work has been selected as a best of 2011 by the editorial board of Rhizome.org and is featured in the 2013 Northeast edition of New American Paintings. He currently teaches at Hunter College and LaGuardia Community College.

Halsey Hathaway was born in Buffalo, NY in 1980.  He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, his MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY and was awarded the Tony Smith Award from Hunter College. Halsey Hathaway is a 2010 fellow in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts.  His first solo show was at the historic Reid Chapel of First and Franklin Street Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, MD, in December of 2011.  He showed with Gary Petersen in a two-person exhibition at Storefront Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY in January 2012 and participated in a three-person show at Nathan Bernstein Gallery in New York, NY in May of the same year.  His work has been mentioned in many publications including Time out New York, The New Yorker and Art in America.   Halsey is currently planning for an upcoming solo exhibition with Rawson Projects in Brooklyn, NY.

Jay Gaskill was born in Silver Spring, MD in 1980. He received his education in New York City, earning a BFA in Painting from the School of Visual Arts in 2002, and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College in 2011. During his time at Hunter, he was awarded the Judy and Arthur Zankel award for travel to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. He has exhibited in several group shows in New York City, Seattle, and Vienna, Austria. His work has been profiled online in Dossier Journal, and the influential Pencil in the Studio Blog. He is currently preparing for his first solo show at Oner River Gallery in Englewood, NJ in the fall of 2013. Jay lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

GUEST SPOT AT THE REINSTITUTE

1715 N. CALVERT STREET BALTIMORE MD 21202

WWW.GUESTSPOT.ORG

PUBLISHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 
Discussion with Waal-boght Press and photographer Carl Gunhouse
Saturday March 23, 2013 2-4pm
Guest Spot and THE REINSTITUTE are proud to present a discussion with Jason John Würm from Waal-boght Press and photographer Carl Gunhouse. The talk will explore how the current economic state of the US has changed how the independent publisher is regarded and the influence of a culture characterized by a profusion of content. Waal-boght Press is a new independent publisher of small edition photography books and zines located in Brooklyn, NY. Carl Gunhouse is a NYC-based photographer who is also known for his photography writing and his online website called Searching for the Light.
The discussion will mark the closing of Carl Gunhouse’s solo exhibition Falling Apart on Saturday March 23, 2013. Book and Exhibition details below.
Falling Apart (published by Waal-boght Press 2013) draws on Carl Gunhouse’s academic background as graduate student in American history to investigate the way in which history tends to affect our perception of current events. The work is culled from images made over six years of wandering across America, a path based on intuition and the chase of the occasional historic event. This journey began in the crumbling of the Bush presidency and continued through Obama’s first term, witnessing the unraveling of American prosperity and the long slog of dealing with the repercussions. The resulting work lacks the grandiosity of journalism and its constant hysteria for the now and instead exposes the little visual bits of America that are left to history and give voice to our shared experience.
The exhibition Falling Apart is a survey of Americana, documenting economic and social regression in a time needed for great progressive change in American history. Living in a culture that is obsessed with access to excess, blind trust in technology and its lure for the infallible has poisoned our ability to decipher between choices. Carl Gunhouse’s work draws on his academic background as a graduate student in American History to investigate relationships between current events and their historic significance. For the past six years Gunhouse has been traveling across America by car, bearing witness (with his large format camera in trunk) to the unraveling of America prosperity.
Carl Gunhouse was born in 1976 in Boston, Massachusetts, but he spent his formative years in suburban New Jersey. Growing up, he developed a love/hate relationship with suburbia that led to the angst familiar to most suburban youth. With this unrest came the discovery of the anger and DIY ethics of hardcore punk rock. Yearning to be part of the hardcore scene, he started photographing bands, which began his love of photography.
To escape suburban New Jersey, Carl enrolled at Fordham University in New York City. While completing a BA in European History at Fordham, he discovered that photography could be something to pursue a career so he decided to simultaneously complete a BFA in Photography. After going on to earn his MA in American History from Fordham, Carl concentrated on street photography. In hopes of developing and refining his photography work, Carl completed his MFA in Photography at Yale University.
Since graduating, he has found a great deal of personal satisfaction teaching as an Adjunct at Montclair State University, Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, and Nassau Community College. He has also gained some renown for his straightforward writing on photography for such web sites as Searching For the Light, Lay Flat, and American Suburb X. His photography has been shown nationally and internationally. As an artist, he has produced a body of landscape and portrait photographs by driving around the United States to expose the little visual bits of America that give voice to our shared history and experience. Carl currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

PUBLISHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 

Discussion with Waal-boght Press and photographer Carl Gunhouse

Saturday March 23, 2013 2-4pm

Guest Spot and THE REINSTITUTE are proud to present a discussion with Jason John Würm from Waal-boght Press and photographer Carl Gunhouse. The talk will explore how the current economic state of the US has changed how the independent publisher is regarded and the influence of a culture characterized by a profusion of content. Waal-boght Press is a new independent publisher of small edition photography books and zines located in Brooklyn, NY. Carl Gunhouse is a NYC-based photographer who is also known for his photography writing and his online website called Searching for the Light.

The discussion will mark the closing of Carl Gunhouse’s solo exhibition Falling Apart on Saturday March 23, 2013. Book and Exhibition details below.

Falling Apart (published by Waal-boght Press 2013) draws on Carl Gunhouse’s academic background as graduate student in American history to investigate the way in which history tends to affect our perception of current events. The work is culled from images made over six years of wandering across America, a path based on intuition and the chase of the occasional historic event. This journey began in the crumbling of the Bush presidency and continued through Obama’s first term, witnessing the unraveling of American prosperity and the long slog of dealing with the repercussions. The resulting work lacks the grandiosity of journalism and its constant hysteria for the now and instead exposes the little visual bits of America that are left to history and give voice to our shared experience.

The exhibition Falling Apart is a survey of Americana, documenting economic and social regression in a time needed for great progressive change in American history. Living in a culture that is obsessed with access to excess, blind trust in technology and its lure for the infallible has poisoned our ability to decipher between choices. Carl Gunhouse’s work draws on his academic background as a graduate student in American History to investigate relationships between current events and their historic significance. For the past six years Gunhouse has been traveling across America by car, bearing witness (with his large format camera in trunk) to the unraveling of America prosperity.

Carl Gunhouse was born in 1976 in Boston, Massachusetts, but he spent his formative years in suburban New Jersey. Growing up, he developed a love/hate relationship with suburbia that led to the angst familiar to most suburban youth. With this unrest came the discovery of the anger and DIY ethics of hardcore punk rock. Yearning to be part of the hardcore scene, he started photographing bands, which began his love of photography.

To escape suburban New Jersey, Carl enrolled at Fordham University in New York City. While completing a BA in European History at Fordham, he discovered that photography could be something to pursue a career so he decided to simultaneously complete a BFA in Photography. After going on to earn his MA in American History from Fordham, Carl concentrated on street photography. In hopes of developing and refining his photography work, Carl completed his MFA in Photography at Yale University.

Since graduating, he has found a great deal of personal satisfaction teaching as an Adjunct at Montclair State University, Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, and Nassau Community College. He has also gained some renown for his straightforward writing on photography for such web sites as Searching For the Light, Lay Flat, and American Suburb X. His photography has been shown nationally and internationally. As an artist, he has produced a body of landscape and portrait photographs by driving around the United States to expose the little visual bits of America that give voice to our shared history and experience. Carl currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

NEWS: 
Eric Doeringer   




Ed Ruscha: Books & Co.
Tuesday, March 5–Saturday, April 27, 2013

Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY
www.gagosian.com
 


Gagosian Gallery is presenting an exhibition featuring artist books by Ed Ruscha and more than one hundred artists he has inspired.
The Gagosian show will include Eric Doeringer’s Stains, Stained (as part of the ABCED box set), Some Los Angeles Apartments, Real Estate Opportunities, and Records. MIT Press’ Various Small Books will include Doeringer’s Stains, Some Los Angeles Apartments, and Real Estate Opportunities There are multiple photos and a short text for each book, and Real Estate Opportunities will also shown in the Various Small Books’ introduction.
On March 6, Ed Ruscha takes the stage at The New York Public Library to reflect on his career and enduring influence in conversation with Paul Holdengräber, director of LIVE from the NYPL . For more information and to purchase tickets to this event, click here.
Ed Ruscha’s publication of artist books beginning in the early 1960s had a profound effect on other contemporary artists. Bruce Nauman’s Burning Small Fires (1969) was the first of many books directly influenced by and in conversation with Ruscha’s publications; in this case Ruscha’s Various Small Fires and Milk (1964), a book featuring documentary-like photographs of matches, a smoking pipe, and other forms of fire. The opening of Ed Ruscha Books & Co. will coincide with the release of MIT Press’s Various Small Books: Referencing Small Books by Ed Ruscha (2013) and will feature over one hundred artist books by Ruscha and numerous others, showcasing Ruscha’s lasting impact along with those he has inspired.
View more information here.
 
Guest Spot will be featuring Eric Doeringer’s work at Open Space Editions and Multiples Fair (Baltimore) 
View more information here  

NEWS: 

Eric Doeringer   

Ed Ruscha: Books & Co.

Tuesday, March 5–Saturday, April 27, 2013

Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY
www.gagosian.com
 

Gagosian Gallery is presenting an exhibition featuring artist books by Ed Ruscha and more than one hundred artists he has inspired.

The Gagosian show will include Eric Doeringer’s Stains, Stained (as part of the ABCED box set), Some Los Angeles Apartments, Real Estate Opportunities, and Records. MIT Press’ Various Small Books will include Doeringer’s Stains, Some Los Angeles Apartments, and Real Estate Opportunities There are multiple photos and a short text for each book, and Real Estate Opportunities will also shown in the Various Small Books’ introduction.

On March 6, Ed Ruscha takes the stage at The New York Public Library to reflect on his career and enduring influence in conversation with Paul Holdengräber, director of LIVE from the NYPL . For more information and to purchase tickets to this event, click here.

Ed Ruscha’s publication of artist books beginning in the early 1960s had a profound effect on other contemporary artists. Bruce Nauman’s Burning Small Fires (1969) was the first of many books directly influenced by and in conversation with Ruscha’s publications; in this case Ruscha’s Various Small Fires and Milk (1964), a book featuring documentary-like photographs of matches, a smoking pipe, and other forms of fire. The opening of Ed Ruscha Books & Co. will coincide with the release of MIT Press’s Various Small Books: Referencing Small Books by Ed Ruscha (2013) and will feature over one hundred artist books by Ruscha and numerous others, showcasing Ruscha’s lasting impact along with those he has inspired.

View more information here.

 

Guest Spot will be featuring Eric Doeringer’s work at Open Space Editions and Multiples Fair (Baltimore)

View more information here  


   Matthew Northridge Labor Day, 2012

 

TOWARD A NEW FORM ORDER 

Artist Talk:  Saturday January 26, 2013  2-4pm


Guest Spot is proud to announce a dual exhibition entitled Toward a New Form Order featuring artists Lisa Dillin (Baltimore) and Matthew Northridge (New York City). Opening Saturday December 15, 2012, the works will be on view through January 26, 2013.

Recursive systems generally create the impression that the sum of parts dictate the form of the whole. Fractals, as self-similar patterns, are understood to be the same from near as from far. In the realm of social and political satire, when presented as a form of critique, a certain alchemy can occur and elevate familiar patterns beyond trivial self-similarity.

The tendency to dissect a punch line and disaggregate a joke into its parts truncates one’s ability to see the particular humor within. The somber order, sense of solitude, and dry wit contextually linked to minimal art is merely a backdrop against which these artists embellish their political will.  Both Dillin and Northridge’s approaches are in some ways substantially similar; although both borrow from a minimal aesthetic, they also possess the ability to obsessively examine minutely, while maintaining a transcendent outlook.  The result is a humorous-like paradox, as if they are saying “I am serious, so I am laughing.”

Recursion is sometimes used humorously in computer science, programming, philosophy, or mathematics textbooks. It is not unusual for such books to include a joke entry in their glossary along the lines of:

Recursion, see Recursion. [2] ” 

.

Born is Silver Spring Maryland in 1976, Lisa Dillin is based in Baltimore MD, relocating to the area in 2010 via Brooklyn, NY. Dillin received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the area of Sculpture in 2006 and a BFA from Atlanta College of Art in the areas of Photography and Sculpture in 1998. Dillin is currently employed as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and American University in Washington D.C. Her work has been selected for exhibition at various venues including the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington D.C., Flashpoint in Washington, D.C., Artspace in New Haven, CT, Nurture Art in Brooklyn, NY, Flux Factory in LIC, NY, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI. Dillin was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Sondheim Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2011 Trawick Prize.

Matthew Northridge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.  His work has been included in such exhibitions as “Out of Site: Fictional Architectural Spaces” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, “Open House: Working in Brooklyn” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, “Material Matters” at the Johnson Museum (Cornell University), and “The 183rd Annual” at the National Academy Museum.  His solo efforts include shows at Gorney Bravin + Lee (NYC), Western Exhibitions (Chicago), and KANSAS (NYC). He has received fellowships from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.  His work is currently included in “United States” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT.

G U E S T  S P O T @ THE REINSTITUTE

   Matthew Northridge Labor Day, 2012

 

TOWARD A NEW FORM ORDER 

December 15, 2012 – February 26, 2013

Curated by: Rod Malin

Opening Reception: Saturday December 15, 2012  7-10pm

Artist Talk:  Saturday February 26, 2013  2-4pm

Hours: Saturdays 1-5pm & Wednesdays 5-7pm or by appointment

.

.

Guest Spot is proud to announce a dual exhibition entitled Toward a New Form Order featuring artists Lisa Dillin (Baltimore) and Matthew Northridge (New York City). Opening Saturday December 15, 2012, the works will be on view through February 26, 2013.

Recursive systems generally create the impression that the sum of parts dictate the form of the whole. Fractals, as self-similar patterns, are understood to be the same from near as from far. In the realm of social and political satire, when presented as a form of critique, a certain alchemy can occur and elevate familiar patterns beyond trivial self-similarity.

The tendency to dissect a punch line and disaggregate a joke into its parts truncates one’s ability to see the particular humor within. The somber order, sense of solitude, and dry wit contextually linked to minimal art is merely a backdrop against which these artists embellish their political will.  Both Dillin and Northridge’s approaches are in some ways substantially similar; although both borrow from a minimal aesthetic, they also possess the ability to obsessively examine minutely, while maintaining a transcendent outlook.  The result is a humorous-like paradox, as if they are saying “I am serious, so I am laughing.”

.

Recursion is sometimes used humorously in computer science, programming, philosophy, or mathematics textbooks. It is not unusual for such books to include a joke entry in their glossary along the lines of:

Recursion, see Recursion. [2] ” 

.

Born is Silver Spring Maryland in 1976, Lisa Dillin is based in Baltimore MD, relocating to the area in 2010 via Brooklyn, NY. Dillin received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the area of Sculpture in 2006 and a BFA from Atlanta College of Art in the areas of Photography and Sculpture in 1998. Dillin is currently employed as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and American University in Washington D.C. Her work has been selected for exhibition at various venues including the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington D.C., Flashpoint in Washington, D.C., Artspace in New Haven, CT, Nurture Art in Brooklyn, NY, Flux Factory in LIC, NY, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI. Dillin was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Sondheim Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2011 Trawick Prize.

Matthew Northridge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.  His work has been included in such exhibitions as “Out of Site: Fictional Architectural Spaces” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, “Open House: Working in Brooklyn” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, “Material Matters” at the Johnson Museum (Cornell University), and “The 183rd Annual” at the National Academy Museum.  His solo efforts include shows at Gorney Bravin + Lee (NYC), Western Exhibitions (Chicago), and KANSAS (NYC). He has received fellowships from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.  His work is currently included in “United States” at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT.

.

.

.

GUEST SPOT AT THE REINSTITUTE

1715 N. CALVERT STREET BALTIMORE MD 21202

WWW.GUESTSPOT.OR

UPCOMING

COMFORT ZONE ARTIST TALK

Saturday October 6, 2012  2-4pm

Curated by: Lou Joseph

Comfort Zone features four artists that re-purpose elements of contemporary domestic life in subtle and distinct ways. By manipulating our usual associations with familiar scenes and objects, they allow us to subtly shift our position. The interior and private are not safe from intrusion; boundaries between personal and public are not fixed. Beyond all, a sense of comfort is presented as the number one goal, hung out as a proverbial carrot by which all manner of major and minor atrocities can take place.  The work in this exhibition explores elements of this ceded ground, along with a variety of ways these boundaries have been crossed. Although all four artists push elements of scale and object hood, all share a willingness to veer from playfulness to formality and employ superior craft in their exploration of these tensions, each one communicating his or her own singular and idiosyncratic worldview.

Works by: Grayson Cox, Ryan Hoover, Kim Faler, Chloe Watson

Grayson Cox is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, and a 2010 graduate of Columbia University. In the last two years, he has participated in residencies in Salzburg, Austria; Warsaw, Poland and Tel Aviv, Israel. Cox teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brookyn, NY and had his second solo show, “The Water’s Fine,” in New York in the spring of 2012, at Gasser and Grunert in Chelsea.


Ryan Hoover is an artist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. A 2006 graduate of the Mount Royal MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art, Ryan is a current Hamiltonian fellow in Washington, DC, where he recently exhibited a body of work there titled “Sculpting with Satellites.” In addition to maintaining his studio practice, Hoover serves as the Director of Fabrication Studios at MICA, where he also teaches in the Sculpture and Environmental Design departments.

Kim Faler lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, and is a 2008 graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in sculpture. Kim was a 2008 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and a 2008-09 Fulbright scholar in Brazil. She has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and has shown work at MassMOCA and the DeCordova Biennial in 2012.

Chloe Watson was born in 1984 and grew up in Virginia. She graduated with an MFA in interdisciplinary studio art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010. Chloe currently lives in Farmington, Maine with her husband, artist Jason Irla, and teaches at the University of Maine-Farmington.

Lou Joseph is an artist working in Baltimore, Maryland since 2008. A 2004 MFA graduate of Indiana University in printmaking, Lou has been a resident artist in Venice, Rotterdam and Antwerp. He is a founding member and director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Baltimore, which is dedicated to emerging artist retrospectives of Mid-Atlantic and national artists.


Marina Pinsky, 2011

Marina Pinsky, 2011

NEW HISTORY

Opening Reception: Friday October 26, 2012  7-10pm

Curated by: Ginevra Shay


NEW HISTORY

October 26, 2012 – December 7, 2012

Working in an era of shifting consciousness and hyperreality, four artists, Dina Kelberman, Marina Pinsky, Luis Arnías and Alex Ebstein explore their perceptions of memories and culture.  Drawing from personal and mass media sources, the artists in NEW HISTORY create art works that portray impressions of time and place, along with lived and fabricated experiences.  Each of the artists in this exhibition approach this theme differently, utilizing material, form, and structure to describe and understand the world that surrounds them.

In a time when parts of our culture are changing and others are rapidly in decline, Dina Kelberman addresses the two American staples, which most readily register these shifts – television and the internet.  Through her art, Kelberman transforms some of the most available mass media content into a new form of familiar experience. By organizing and archiving web-sourced images and videos into personally relevant arrangements, Kelberman re-contextualizes this material into something memorable and strange.  In constructing these visual experiences and environments out of images and materials that are instantly recognizable to most viewers, she allows content that could have otherwise been under-appreciated to take on new meaning and interpretation.

While Kelberman modifies an extant reality by miniaturizing the internet, Marina Pinsky takes impressions of another world and packs them into a dense visual experience all it’s own. Pinsky’s work outlines a struggle to understand her relationship with the historical consequences of two countries that have shaped her existence as a Russian-American. Interested in the physical and philosophical depth of nations in transition, Pinsky incorporates collage and sculpture into meticulous arrangements. She produces an environment for objects, sculptures and typical elements from everyday life so that the viewer may contemplate their histories and existence.

Similarly inspired by the histories and materials produced by a nation in transition is Luis Arnías. Immigrating to the United States at the age of nineteen while making work as a photographer and filmmaker, the Venezuelan-born artist found refuge in the plastics and discarded materials he discovered in his new environment. Out of a reverence for these “humble materials,” he shifted from producing images to constructing sculptures.  While retaining a sense of color he feels to be indicative of Venezuelan culture, Arnías plays with forms of memory and language. His sculptures illustrate portraits, hinting at shared experiences, often with humorous connotations. As much as his work may first appear to be esoteric, it is readily conducive to associations brought on by the viewer.  After creating films and sculptures independently for a number of years, Arnías chose to combine the two mediums to better elaborate on specific personal memories.

If Kelberman’s fabricated experiences culled from mass media sources occupy one end of NEW HISTORY’s spectrum, Alex Ebstein’s mixed media works influenced by personal experience and the nature of time reside at the other.  Ebstein explores how space, line and material, in their most abstract forms, can create something that feels referential. She captures a sense of nostalgia in works that are nonfigurative and which contain no narrative, solely on the arrangement and use of materials. Ebstein seeks objects she deems characteristically “comfortable”, selecting materials that take on a talismanic quality in the works. Her meticulous practice straddles domestic and contemporary techniques, often working yarn and fabric into a shallow-relief surface, while implying a sense of expansiveness.  In creating works that could be thought of as nonfigurative dioramas, Ebstein explores a mode that can appear simultaneously otherworldly and memorious.

Alex Ebstein is a Baltimore-based artist, curator and writer.  Since 2009, she has co-directed Nudashank, a contemporary art gallery, founded with partner Seth Adelsberger.  Her work was recently exhibited in Chicago at Manifest Exhibitions and LVL 3 galleries, and at the University of Cincinnati. In October, she has a solo exhibition at SophiaJacob gallery in Baltimore, MD, and is currently working toward her MFA at Towson University.

Luis Arnías, born 1982 in Venezuela, currently lives and works in Boston, MA. Arnías received a full scholarship to attend Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where he completed his diploma in 2009. He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally. Earlier in 2012, he co-curated From Gust to Hail, an east coast tour of experimental 16mm films featuring the works of fifteen filmmakers.

Marina Pinsky, born 1984 in Moscow, Russia, currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2008 and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012. She has received grants from both schools. Pinsky has also been a guest lecturer and critic at both the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf and Umass Amherst. Her work has been featured on Artforum.com and in both Art Review and Photograph magazine. Recently, she has shown at Venus Over Manhattan, Cleopatra’s, Workspace, and Night Gallery. She currently has two solo exhibitions – one at Vancouver’s Exercise Projects and the other at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Dina Kelberman is an artist living and working in Baltimore, MD.  She works in a wide variety of media including comics, painting, web media, animation, play writing, photography, screencaps, and sculpture.  She is a founding member of the Wham City collective and a comics contributor to the Baltimore City Paper and Tiny Mix Tapes. Her work can be seen at dinakelberman.com and importantcomics.com.

Ginevra Shay (Curator), born 1987 in Washington D.C., is an artist, curator and photo archivist living and working in Baltimore, MD. Her photography has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. This past September her photography book, “TOO MANY PLACES AND TIMES TO REMEMBER” was exhibited at The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, FI. She is currently doing research and archival work in partnership with Project Gado, The Afro American Newspaper and Baltimore Heritage to create an African-American centered walking tour in East Baltimore.


G U E S T  S P O T@

THE REINSTITUTE

1715 N. CALVERT STREET BALTIMORE MD 21202