For the end of the season we present five artists who's work embody the passing year: Russian sculptor Peter Belyi reminisces unsentimentally about the fall of empires; Guerra De La Paz's Snake Charmer series recast the Power Tie as an emblem of submission and greed; conceptual artist Stephen J S... Read more
For the end of the season we present five artists who’s work embody the passing year: Russian sculptor Peter Belyi reminisces unsentimentally about the fall of empires; Guerra De La Paz’s Snake Charmer series recast the Power Tie as an emblem of submission and greed; conceptual artist Stephen J Shanabrook, known for his expression of beauty on the threshold of disaster, waterboard’s two choir boys in chocolate; Leemour Pelli’s paintings evoke the collapse of the human psyche; and Justine Cooper’s fictitious drug “Havidol” – created for a disease she coined, Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder – markets desire for those not satisfied with a generic sense of well being.
Peter Belyi’s Useless Alphabet are homemade signs which read Bread, Cheese, Wine and Vodka – plain and basic commodities. The objects are memorial plaques to history – simple-hearted Soviet era signs from a time of a total deficit of goods.
In response to the marketing and advertising tactics of the pharmaceutical industry Justine Cooper has created a fictional marketing campaign to launch her magic-bullet lifestyle pharmaceutical HAVIDOL® which treats Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. Presented in this exhibition are the TV commercials which tap into our collective desire and expectation that there is always room for improvement – while walking the line between poking fun at ourselves and wondering how to obtain a prescription. Cooper’s work comments on our temperamental relationship to western medicine, built upon the idea of a malfunctioning body or mind, and the yearning to believe everyday life can be remedied.
Guerra De La Paz’s work is composed from appropriated clothing. The term, ‘Power Tie’, surfaced in the 1980’s as stakes and earnings rose to uncontrollable heights. The Power Tie projected a certain level of success by defining one’s place in the hierarchy of the corporate world; as well as expressing wealth and influence amongst the wearer’s contemporaries – a sign of membership and professional expectation among the business elite. The figures are faceless entities like the powerful institutions they represent. Their ties transform into vipers, insinuating the treachery behind their alliance as they suspiciously guard themselves from each other.
Leemour Pelli aims at exploring fundamental aspects of human experience, both real and imagined. Though the work consists of single figures or couples, larger issues concerning the break down or malfunctioning of human relations and humanity itself are invoked. A general failure at connection is evident. Indeed, the work is about fundamental collapse: of contemporary social conventions, perceptions, relationships, and individuals’ internal and exterior worlds. The theme of susceptibility and proclivity for bad and uncertain manifestations seems to abound in Pelli’s works.
Stephen J Shanabrook’s Waterboarding is the peaceful song of a pair of choir boys turned into a silent scream. Shanabrook mixes an array of materials – from chocolate to various melted plastic objects. Shanabrook gives a new and often disturbing meaning to substances otherwise associated with comfort and happiness.
