Month: August 2007

Shannon Lucy, James Clauer and Brent Stewart@ Cynthia Broan Gallery


September 6 – October 13, 2007
Opening reception: Thursday, September 6, 6-9 pm

Cynthia Broan Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of our fall season with our second solo exhibition by Shannon Lucy as well as James Clauer’s intriguing short documentary Aluminum Fowl, and photographer Brent Stewart’s portraits of the impersonator characters in the upcoming film Mister Lonely, directed by Harmony Korine. The three artists in this dynamic lineup are all friends from Nashville.

Shannon Lucy’s show last year introduced us to her world of made-up memories, the paintings depicting mementos of a faded corporate empire- maps, journals, flags and medals evoking a nostalgia for lost innocence. In this new series, Paintings, drawings and other modern artifacts, the story becomes more personal, presenting a series of childhood memories which seem to present evidence that there was indeed an age of true innocence. A little girl’s dance leotard, her cross-stitch declaring a pure heart, and a cryptic but earnest Rainbow Chart show youthful intent and abandoned endeavors. The
darkness or disappointment of the future lurks humorously within the sentimentality, and the artifacts reveal the inevitable loss of the girl’s innocence. The page of a primer using the example of Bo Peep for a grammar exercise, the story of a fire in the attic, and a specimen plate of vicious, almost laughing, tiger teeth are her early teachings of a world of violence and disappointment. In another primer, we learn than Little Lucy learns the word “black”, as in sheep and flag, confronting her own nonconformity at an early age. Shannon Lucy’s world of nostalgia becomes our own, the artifacts reminding us all of the treasures, the projects and the ideals we have abandoned long ago.

Brent Stewart photographed his series of character portraits while working as still photographer for the film Mister Lonely, which recently premiered at Cannes Film Festival. The film tells the story of a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris who ends up at a castle where a group of impersonators of famous people live communally and prepare for a big show. The black and white portraits evocatively depict people who have chosen to abandon their own identity to assume the character of the famous person they idolize. Stewart captures the longing and the loneliness of the compromised and conflicted characters, who seem to lack the confidence to pull off the celebrity they wish to become. Charlie Chaplin, Abe Lincoln, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the Queen of England are just some of the characters, but the portraits heighten the sense of struggle within the primary character, the nobody trying so hard to be a somebody.

James Clauer’s short documentary Aluminum Fowl (2006), which Brent Stewart worked on as well, is a portrait of four brothers living on a chicken farm in the rural south who hang around and fight their chickens, along with some cats and dogs. The boys don’t seem to have hopes or dreams, or any chance of change in their situation, so their struggle is primarily against boredom. They kill time by playing with the chickens, even bathing and sleeping with them, and instigating the fights just to make something happen. Despite violence and apathy, the film reveals an honesty and a sense of belonging and acceptance that ultimately makes them true protagonists.

Shannon Lucy, b. 1977 Nashville TN, received her MA at New York University. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Brent Stewart, b.1974 Nashville, TN, received his MA at Goldsmiths College, London. His directorial debut, Blackberry Winter (2006), produced by O’Salvation, is currently on the festival circuit. He lives and works in Nashville. James Clauer, b. 1973 Nashville TN, is a self-taught artist who began his film career as cinematographer for Gummo. Aluminum Fowl has screened at several prestigious film festivals, including Sundance and Rotterdam. Clauer currently lives in Los Angeles.Aluminum Fowl and Mister Lonely were both produced by O’Salvation, founded by Harmony Korine and agnés b.
The gallery wishes to extend very special thanks to O’Salvation.

  • Cynthiabroan

    • DAVID LAMELAS


    David Lamelas “London Friends (Lynda Morris)”, 1974
    Black and white photograph
    Detail from the contact print
    © David Lamelas

    DAVID LAMELAS
    September 6 – 29, 2007
    Opening: Thursday, September 6, 6 – 8 P.M.

    Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce an exhibition of Argentinian-born artist David Lamelas. With both Lamelas´ seminal film installation “Film Script (Manipulation of Meaning)” (1972) and the photo series “London Friends” from the following year, the show focuses on two works the artist realized during his residency in London from 1968 to 1977.

    David Lamelas is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art and the related practice of institutional critique which developed during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Buenos Aires in 1946, he emerged in the early sixties with an arsenal of artistic strategies and a clarity of concept that at the time had not previously been formulated within any cultural context in Europe and the United States.

    Characteristically, his use of different media is wide ranging, and has included sculpture, site specific installation and performance, as well as drawings, photographs and film, the latter of which he is perhaps most known for. What unifies this wide range of medium is the artist‘s focus on the transmission of “information”: the conditions for the production of art and its perception, the notion of “time” and “space”, the role of the viewer, and perhaps more crucially the generation and manipulation of meaning in contemporary mass media.

    In 1968, the year he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennial, Lamelas also moved to London where he studied sculpture at St. Martin´s School of Art and stayed until 1977. It was during this time that Lamelas created his seminal installation work “Film Script (Manipulation of Meaning)”, consisting of the simultaneous projection of one film and three slide sequences. The first presentation of the work was held at Nigel Greenwood‘s gallery in 1972. Filmed within the gallery itself with Greenwood’s assistant Lynda Morris playing the leading role, the plot and location of this film was intriguingly self-referential. The film projects a running accumulation of scenes that may just as well be documentary as fictional. The first slide projector shows the action in a sequence of stills; the second shows two of the pivotal sequences of the film in a different order; while the third cuts out key moments of the action. Thus Lamelas varies the ways in which action is being manipulated, which in turn affects narrative development and influences its reception.

    In the second work on display, “London Friends”, 1973, Lamelas explores the narrow space between fiction and reality. Having invited a number of friends to a photo-session in a studio to have their pictures taken by a professional fashion photographer, Lamelas found that his subjects naturally took on glamorous poses embodying an image of fictionalized portraits of famous personalities. The resulting images, being simultaneously personal portraits and “fashion” photography, become a striking portrayal of the London scene at the time.

    David Lamelas lives and works in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.
    Recent solo exhibition of Lamelas’ work have been held at the Secession, Vienna; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen. Lamelas´ work ´The Violent Tapes of 1975´ is currently on view in “Panic Attack”, the Barbican´s survey on art in the punk years.

  • Pruethmagers

    • Graham Hudson@Rokeby

    For Hudson’s second solo exhibition at Rokeby the artist will present one work, which will extend from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall, installed during August, over a five week period prior to the opening.

    Crossing between sculpture and installation, Hudson’s practice and materials evolve in response to places and events. His forthcoming installation will include the discarded and overlooked objects of London’s streets and cheap mass-produced goods, constructed with both energy and wit.

    Hudson’s practice is concerned with the politics of materiality. The use of every day and redundant objects as viable artistic material has recurred throughout the 20th Century and has its roots in the work of pivotal artists such as Kurt Schwitters and in Duchamp’s ready-made. In his recent large installations parallels can be drawn to the sprawling spaces of Hirschorn, and Takahashi.

    Hudson comments on the issues of the day as well as the history of modern life and art in installations that employ the formal analysis of minimalism with the joie de vivre of the baroque. His work, often in an apparent state of ruin and of monumental fragility, remind us of the chaos of daily perception. He glorifies the mundane and celebrates in formal simplicity, all the while communicating on the ageless themes of love, life and death.

    Since completing his six month Parade Ground residency, supported by the Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Hudson spent two months in Nairobi and has since been based in Los Angeles. Solo presentations have included Monitor, Rome, Zinger Presents Amsterdam, and Liste, Basel. Commissions have included the Scholl Collection, Miami and Comme Des Garcons in London and Tokyo. Forthcoming commissions and exhibitions include the Zabludowicz Collection, London, Locust Projects, Miami and an installation as part of BodyCity, the Docklands, Dublin.

  • Rokeby

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