G U E S T S P O T is an independent art space that exhibits contemporary artists within a progressive curatorial framework. Guest Spot’s focus is to create a new curatorial program that addresses current ideas of exhibiting art through rehabilitation of spatial contexts. The core programmatic theme is a re-appropriation of rigid social norms of space utilization to more thoroughly examine the concept of the "American Home". Its program will include artists whose works deals with concepts relating to impermanence, ephemerality, and liminality.
G U E S T S P O T
1826 Fleet Street, Baltimore, Md
Saturday 1pm-5pm, Wednesdays 5pm-7pm, or by appointment unless otherwise noted.
Zig-Zag is a group exhibition that derives from a formal drawing-base aesthetic, while encapsulating a political regard. The exhibition will consider the departure from the formulaic critique of the line to recognizing that the mere action of drawing a line represents a primal political act; the divide. Making no distinction between drawing and intervention, forming a relationship in which artist and intent is merged, thus nullifying the neutralizing effects of formalism on the discussion.
Works By: Shaun Flynn Katie Kehoe Rob de Oude Meridith Pingree
Lifted from Curator notes: Thinking Your self into Oblivion ; Politics- Formality- Context
“The mutual disdain between Art and Politics has been repeatedly defined and examined, within each separate category. Determining that Art has a singular context in relation to the Artist’s intent limits a contextual critique, thus persuading a singular perspective. The attitude of defining art as ‘if I call it so’ usually is tied up in an ideology of self ego. The object is usually critiqued and examined within the construct of the time and place it was made, and by whom. If a piece has an anonymous author, a romanticized artist persona is created, thus displacing the formality as something intrinsic to the nature of the object itself. The role of curation is to allude to the creator’s original intent, ownership and demise. However, rarely does the Artist’s intent for an object get completely seen through; if it is, how long can it be preserved? The ability to critique a work from an ‘Art object’s perspective’ may fulfill the role in which its contextually regarded and serves the idea that, since all art is created from opposition, it is inherently political.”
Katie Kehoe (b. Canada, 1979) earned an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA. Katie uses the word “AND” as a mode of expression as well as a structural tool and by drawing it through processes of repetition, overlap, magnification and distortion she investigates the nature of form and language as constructions. Her work has been presented in various festivals and galleries in Canada and across the United States. Recent exhibitions include LOL: A Decade of Antic Art, The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore and Construct, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore.
Dutch native Rob de Oude lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY. He has been educated at the Hoge School voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam, in painting, sculpture and art history and has followed the Graduate program for painting at SUNY Purchase, NY, as part of an educational exchange program. de Oude has shown in the Netherlands, the US and France. He has participated in Red Dot and Fountain Art Fairs in New York and Miami, Slick Art Fair in Paris and has, amongst others, been featured in the NY Post, L Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Artnet Magazine and NYArts Magazine. As initiator and founding member, de Oude is the current gallery director of Camel Art Space in Brooklyn, NY.
Based in Baltimore, Shaun Flynn has been an active member of the city’s art and music community for the past 14 years. He also is a founding member of the multi-purpose performance, music, and arts venue Floristree, that has been hosting memorable shows and events and feasts since 2004. His body of work is a varied but complementary synthesis of these elements, often utilizing photography-as-evidence-as-the-art of his ephemeral sculptures and interventions in public spaces. Formally, the sculptures seem to be concerned with extracting difficult and fragile realizations of common material elements, like plywood, sheetrock, sign-making vinyl, and traffic cones, in and out of the spaces where these materials are indigenous. Flynn recent exhibited at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Space 1026, Philadelphia, and Contemporary Museum, Baltimore.
Meridith Pingree is a New York based artist known for her quirky reactive sculptures, and squishy geometric forms. Her work has been shown in New York, LA, and around the country including two recent solo exhibitions at Fringe Exhibitions in Los Angeles, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Other recent exhibitions including her work have taken place at the Bronx Museum, Smack Mellon, The Soap Factory, BravinLee Programs, Triple Candie, James Nicholson Gallery, among others. Pingree received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture and an alumni of Skowhegan. Pingree’s work has been written about in the New York Times, Art Week, The Brooklyn Rail, Vellum Magazine, and numerous art blogs. She recently finished a kinetic sculpture commissioned by Richard and Lisa Baker.
FRIENDS OF GUEST SPOT OPENING @ CURRENT SPACE BALTIMORE!
EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE
Curated by Carl Gunhouse & Ginevra Shay
March 2nd -18th, 2012
Opening Reception Friday, March 2, 7 - 10pm
Everything That Rises Must Converge is a group exhibition that explores the connection between six emerging photographers and their neighborhoods. A dialogue is formed between these photographers and their immediate surroundings that helps shape their art and is expressed through a personal narrative in their work. The photographers have become ambassadors for their neighborhoods, communicating the stories, feelings and idiosyncrasies that surround them.
Exhibiting Artists:
Heyward Hart Andrew Laumann Joseph M. Lopez Trevor Powers RaMell Ross Irina Rozovsky
Heyward Hart, from Spartanburg, SC, studied photography and received his MFA from Yale University. His work has been exhibited nationally including shows at Nicole Klagsburn Project space in New York, NY, Aviary Gallery in Boston MA, and the Hanes Art Center in Chapel Hill, NC. He has also been awarded the Richard Benson Prize and Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Heyward currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Irina Rozovsky (b. 1981, Moscow) studied French and Spanish literature as an undergraduate at Tufts University, and received an MFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art in 2007. Her work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions and publications, including 25 under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers (powerHouse Books and Duke University); 31 Women in Art Photography, curated by Charlotte Cotton and Jon Feinstein; Exposure at the PRC, curated by Mia Hamm; the Magnum Expression Award juried by Martin Parr; Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography(Humble Arts, NYC) ; Rencontres, Arles; PhotoEspaña, Madrid. Most recently, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the New England School of Photography, Boston. This spring she published her first monograph, One to Nothing (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg), which was named a Selected Title at the German Photo Book Award and featured on the Top 20 Photo Books of 2011 list by Alec Soth. Irina lives in Brooklyn, NY, and teaches at the International Center of Photography.
Born to a Cuban mother and Puerto Rican father in New York City, and raised in Florida, photographer Joseph Michael Lopez began working as a documentary cinematographer, notably on the critically acclaimed Bruce Weber film, Chop Suey. Lopez’s recent solo work gravitates toward filmic still images, book forms, haptic installations that have been exhibited in New York and Berlin. He studied with photographer Danny Lyon and at Columbia University, where he holds an M.F.A. Lopez’s work has appeared on the cover of the Sunday Review of The New York Times and he is a contributor to Agence VU’. He has just completed working on the first chapter of his ongoing long-term book project, Birth Write: Patriarchy and Lust, which was nominated by the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund. The project’s second chapter has been proposed for production in 2012.
RaMell Ross is a photographer based in Greensboro, AL. A 2005 Georgetown graduate, RaMell double majored in Sociology and English and received a minor in art. Merging his passions for art and service, RaMell is currently the Youthbuild Job Placement Manager at the Hale Empowerment & Revitalization Organization, Inc. This led him to document the Black Belt region of Hale County, Alabama, an endeavor, which he is still actively photographing. An unstoppable emerging artist, RaMell has already been published with The New York Times, ESPN, Penguin Group, The Washington Post, Simon and Schuster, Business Week, Food and Wine Magazine, Garden and Guns Magazine, CNN, Ready Made Magazine, and several online publications.
Trevor Powers was born in 1985 in Burlington, Vermont. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA where he studied Photography and bookmaking. He received his Diploma in 2008 and Fifth Year Certificate in 2009. His work has been published and exhibited throughout the United States. He now lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
Andrew Laumann was born in the spring of 1987 in Baltimore, MD, where he currently resides. He did not attend College, after high school he spent 4 years traveling and living around the country. His work is concerned with the act of destruction and reconstruction and its affect on the natural and supernatural world. He has multiple publications by the likes of Gottlund Verlag, JSBJ, & Hamburger Eye, and has been shown nationally and internationally.
See Jenny Drumgoole’s latest piece at Guest Spots upcoming exhibition Staging Over Manipulation as she enters a contest “The Real Women of Philadelphia”, hosted by celebrity Paula Deen.
Staging over Manipulation
January 27, 2012- March 3, 2012
Curated by: Heather Loughran and Rod Malin
Opening Reception: Friday January 27, 7pm-10pm
Closing Artist Brunch: Saturday March 3, 1pm-5pm
Hours: Saturdays 1-5pm & Wednesdays 5-7pm or by appointment
Staging over Manipulation is a group exhibition which brings together four artists whose works transcend traditional processes of manipulation. The exhibition explores roles in which artists set and shape the organizational context. These artists’ works reflect on attributes of a culture that demonstrates a malignant conscience in exposing an excessively branded society. While employing methods typically used for staging, the artists challenge not only the contextual framework of branding, they also expose the arena from which works are seen, i.e., the art branding syndicate.
Works By: Julie Benoit Eric Doeringer Jenny Drumgoole Kim Llerena
These engineered practices high light the tension between Fact and the ideas surrounding the America’s cultural need to orchestrate.
Julie Benoit was born in Gambrills, Maryland in 1975 and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.. Through wandering about the city she has developed an interest in all of the small, unnoticed moments that surround her. Benoit has shown her work in galleries in Baltimore, DC, New York, Oregon, Los Angeles, and other cities. She also writes an occasional art review for local blogs and has in the past written for other local magazines.
Eric Doeringer is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Much of his artwork involves re-making the work of other artists. Doeringer has exhibited at institutions including MoMA PS1, The Whitney Museum, La Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, MUSAC, The Bruce Museum, and The Currier Museum. In 2011, he curated the exhibition “I Like the Art World and the Art World Likes Me” at EFA Project Space in New York and had solo shows at Another Year In LA (Los Angeles) and Plush Gallery (Dallas)
Kim Llerena is currently earning her MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She was and raised in Gaithersburg, Maryland before attending New York University, where she received dual BA degrees in Journalism and Spanish. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, she interned at Jeff Harris Photography Studio, shot freelance photography work, and worked full-time as Assistant to the Director at CITYarts, a public art non-profit organization in Manhattan. Llerena has exhibited in Maryland and New York.
Philadelphia artist Jenny Drumgoole inserts herself into marginal spaces for pseudo-celebrity within popular culture—most recently, by entering absurdly humorous videos of herself in a “Real Women of Philadelphia” online video recipe contest sponsored by Kraft. Her most recent video-based performance work involves the artist physically and virtually infiltrating competitive events with subversive art actions which question our obsessions with celebrity, desire, and the limits and illusions of individuality in popular culture. Drumgoole received her MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art in 2006.
Curator
Heather Loughran was born in Baltimore, MD and currently lives and works in New York City. She is earning her BFA in Photography from Parsons the New School for Design. Loughran began working at Guest Spot as a Curatorial Assistant, starting when the Gallery opened in June. This is her first official collaboration working with professional artists.
For further info contact: Rod Malin rodmalin@guestspot.org
STRANGE MAGIC CLOSING BRUNCH THIS SATURDAY 1/21/12
Strange Magic Curated by: Skye Gilkerson
As protesters congregate in cities around the world, it’s clear that economic and political frustrations are cresting, and many people long for change. Common access to tools and media allows new perceptions to grow, and kindles the desire for collective and individual empowerment. Four artists with divergent practices wave their magic wands to create transformations of all kinds. Embracing wonder and surprise, they challenge reality through interventions to everyday life, shift perspectives through adaptations to architecture and space, and question what is malleable by attempting transformations of the self.
Works By: Jean Alexander Frater, James Johnson, Jassie Rios, Oscar Scantillan.
Jan 6th – Jan 29th, 2012 Weekends only: 1 – 6 pm or by appointment Opening reception: Friday, 6th, 6 – 9 p.m. Location: 722 Metropolitan Avenue 2nd Fl., Brooklyn NY 11237 Directions: L – train to Graham Avenue
Artists: Linda Gallagher, Joe Lawton, Ted Partin, Amber Hawk Swanson, Ryan Syrell
curated by Carl Gunhouse
“The fact (is) that photographs — they’re mute, they don’t have any narrative ability at all. You know what something looks like, but you don’t know what’s happening… (It’s) a piece of time and space (that) is well described. But not what is happening. I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of ‘em. They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like… It’s a picture problem. It’s part of what makes things interesting.”–Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand’s picture problem of how to create a complex meaning (in his case narrative) in a silent and still medium is at the heart of the art-making process, that is, turning the materials of the world into something that makes a point in a compelling manner. All the artists in Narrative Ability address this visual problem by creating seductive visual cues that establish the tenor, characters and setting of their art, in hopes of enticing the viewer into providing a solution or a story that reflects both the artist’s intention and the viewer’s desires and prejudices.
In each artist’s work, the amount of control the artists take in tilting the narrative to their respective ends varies from the eloquently subtle to the dramatically directed. Joe Lawton’s pictures skillfully establish a setting that allows the viewer to form a narrative based on the slight gestures and passing glances of a cast of unknowing strangers. Where Lawton’s dense tableaux exist only in fractions of seconds of real time, Ted Partin’s pictures appear to be taking place in infinity. The subjects seem to be seduced into laying themselves bare in the face of the camera’s never-ending glance. The pictures result in an instantaneous emotional charge created by an unseen back story built on the small details that result from staring at a person, the subtle twitches in the face, the wear on the clothes, and the nature of their settings.
While Lawton and Partin’s pictures are open narratives, Linda Gallagher takes a more abstract approach, creating her meaning from a series of visual associations among evocative objects like high heels, handbags, and penises. As unexplained as the objects are in their empty visual space, the images are so laden with content it is hard not to have a gut response to the work, a response that suggests a subconscious connection between shopping and sex that most of us wouldn’t necessarily like to acknowledge.
Amber Hawk Swanson’s project encapsulates an open narrative while taking an overt role in crafting the viewer’s experience of her work. She pairs silent and shocking images of a mangled RealDoll (a life-size silicone sex doll) of herself with a long, dense video in which she sternly reads the often over-the-top comments of an online thread about her art practice. The pictures paired with the video result in a piece of art that defies obvious explanation but provides an overly-detailed, almost academic investigation of their existence.
Narrative Ability is rounded out by the playfully agile paintings of Ryan Syrell in which he takes the most familiar of childhood motifs and sets them to the adult task of making art where cartoon turtles compete for conceptual rigor with Jessica Stockholder’s sculptural ideas. While Road Runner-less western landscapes await either the coming calamity of the chase or the peaceful moments after the childish attacks of a cartoon coyote have passed, allowing us to sit and simply enjoy how nice the cliffs look.
Works by: Matthew Mahler and Andrew Zarou
Camel Art Space is an Artist operated exhibition Space with a focus on current trends in art within a not for profit work frame, is a member of Williamsburg Gallery Association and is participating in 2:nd Friday Art Walk. Situated in one of New York’s artistically defining neighborhoods we strive to provide an accessible exhibition platform and meeting venue for artists, curators and audience alike.
Boundary Proof is a group exhibition that features three artists whose works address cultural use of border limitations, and the ability to navigate beyond and challenge specific cultural red lines. Each in their own right justifies expectations associated with their subject and examines contextual and metaphoric limitations, thus pushing past preconceived ideas.
Works by: Gina Dawson Carl Gunhouse Cyle Metzger
Labels such as “rebel”, “freak” and “prophet” mainly serve to marginalize, thus reinforcing preconceived ideas about cultural boundaries. As didactic as one may be about transformation and innovation, programmatic barriers are still usually fully encouraged, driven by apprehension of existing restrictions. The line is drawn in the sand not to casually walk over, and it is the strained relationship between boundaries that one must supersede. In order to maintain a viable state, keeping up the appearance of boundaries and borders cultivates a close relationship with the opposition, creating a unique exchange that is anything but unpoetic.
Gina Dawson was born in Dallas, TX and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from the University of North Texas in 2002 and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2005. While in graduate school, she received a Dean’s discretionary fund and a travel grant. She has been in multiple group exhibitions in Texas, Boston, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. In January of 2010 she had a solo show at Galerie Jeanroch Dard in Paris and in April of the same year was in a two person exhibition at Judy Rotenberg Gallery in Boston.
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 in Fordham University in New York City. While completing a BA in European History at Fordham, he discovered that photography could be something to pursue as career so he decided to simultaneously complete a BFA in Photography. After going on to earn his MA in American History from Fordham, Carl threw himself into finding an expression for his suburban angst in street photography. In a hope to develop and refine his photography, 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, 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, Skuawk, and BigREDandShiny. His photography has been shown nationally and internationally. As an artist, he has produced a body of landscape photographs in New Jersey that deals with his complex personal relationship to suburbia. He is now investigating the suburban experience by driving around the United States and exploring what it is to be an American. Carl currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Cyle Metzger is an artist and writer raised in southern California. His work is inspired by inaccessible spaces and experiences of negotiating social barriers. Since receiving his MFA from MICA in 2010, he has been granted residency fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and New York State’s Salem Art Works, a number of exhibition opportunities in California, New York, Maryland and Delaware, and the opportunity to teach at Towson University in Maryland. He currently lives in Baltimore.
(B.)
image: Jean Alexander Frater, Learning to write with my left hand. 2010
OPENING FOR STRANGE MAGIC
Friday December 9, 2011 7pm-10pm
Curated by: Skye Gilkerson
As protesters congregate in cities around the world, it’s clear that economic and political frustrations are cresting, and many people long for change. Common access to tools and media allows new perceptions to grow, and kindles the desire for collective and individual empowerment. Four artists with divergent practices wave their magic wands to create transformations of all kinds. Embracing wonder and surprise, they challenge reality through interventions to everyday life, shift perspectives through adaptations to architecture and space, and question what is malleable by attempting transformations of the self.
Works By: Jean Alexander Frater, James Johnson, Jassie Rios, Oscar Scantillan.
Jean Frater is a multidisciplinary artist who lives with her family in Chicago. She graduated with a BFA in Philosophy from the University of Dayton, and received her MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited Internationally in venues such as the Wexner Center for Arts in Columbus, the Images Festival in Toronto, Possible Project Space in Brooklyn, El Museo Cultural in Sante Fe, the Big Screen Project in New York, the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, and the Kulturhuset in Stockholm.
James Johnson (born Syracuse, New York, 1976) received an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2002 and a BFA from Marywood University in 1999. James has received several significant recognitions for his work, including a 2011 Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts and a nomination for the 2010 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He was an Acquisition Finalist for the West Prize in 2009 and has been awarded two Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Fellowships in Sculpture/Installation (2007 and 2009). James completed a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in 2007. In 2010, James participated in the second iteration of No Soul For Sale: a Festival of Independents with Vox Populi at Tate Modern in London. James currently lives and works in Philadelphia where he is a member of Vox Populi and holds the appointment of Assistant Professor of Photography & Digital Arts at Moore College of Art and Design.
Jassie Rios is a video/sound artist and writer who uses chance operations to understand the dynamics of the non-places produced by circulation, consumption and communication. Jassie Rios uses drawing as a strategy that includes acts of experimental notations, traces, description, marks and recordings of what happens when nothing seems to be happening in the everyday. She is most interested in the threshold between perception and description and the ways in which they question and inform each other. Born, bred and buttered along the dusty borderlands of Laredo, Texas, she likes to keep small bits and fragments from the great terrestrial tides in her pockets (crumbs, flyers, odds and ends, woolly bits, fluff, debris, rocks, receipts) and make something out of that. Rios received her BFA in painting from Texas State University in San Marcos and her MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She lives and works in the District of Columbia. She has exhibited her works throughout Texas, Louisiana, Maryland and Mexico.
Oscar Santillan (born Ecuador, 1980) lives and works between Richmond, VA, and Guayaquil, Ecuador. He received an MFA in 2011 from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a BFA in 2007 from ESPOL in Ecuador. Oscar attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2010 and has exhibited his work internationally including shows at Conner Contemporary, Washington, DC, Pierogi’s Boiler, New York, NY, the Museum of Anthropology and Contemporary Art, Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Tatton Park Biennial, London, UK, and Gallería Marília Razuk, Sao Palo, Brazil.
