Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to announce Joe Deutch, Jay Heikes, Chris Moukarbel, Kianja Strobert, Jeffrey Wells, curated by Clarissa Dalrymple for the gallery, from October 26 - November 25, 2006. In the words of the artists and their critics…
JOE DEUTCH, LOS ANGELES
"Joe Deutch works in a labyrinth of self-constructed mythology. His work flows from sculpture, photography, performance, and drawing. In the video he presents we are invited to witness the brief moments of a man's desire to save his own life, contemplating whether to do it or not. A video in which biblical qualities are unleashed upon the artist himself, hell or salvation, or both simultaneously." - Courtesy QNA -From "Goodtimes for Never", @ Queen's Nail's Annex, San Francisco CA. Curated by Eamon Ore-Giron
JAY HEIKES, NEW YORK
"Since I made the video So There's This Pirate…, in which I tell a pirate-parrot joke, I've been making a group of drawings based on it…By telling the same joke over and over, I've realized its rigid structure allows me to find totally new directions every time I make this delivery- like the splats and circles that relate to the art movements such as Pop Art and Expressionism. Eventually, I imagine the narrative of the joke to be totally irrelevant and the stills to exist as a kind of green screen-a forum where any abstraction of the narrative exists as a collage within it. The road gear acts as a sculpture[and the drop ceiling as part of the performance], but really they are props to activate stories, puns, and the kind of deadpan I'm looking for." - Jay Heikes, excerpt from an email interview with Doryun Chong, June-July 2006. Quoted from the Walker Art Center brochure for Ordinary Culture: Hiekes/Helms/McMillian.
CHRIS MOUKARBEL, NEW YORK
"Chris Moukarbel makes site-specific video and installations, often using found media or objects as his sources. His projects explore the idea of memorial, fiction, and are concerned with the way in which politically driven events are edified." - Chris Moukarbel, excerpted from an artist statement, 2006.
KIANJA STROBERT, NEW YORK
"Because I believe that my job is not necessarily to recreate the subject matter that I tackle but to update it and expose the themes to a contemporary perspective, I work into fictions that I find in the material world, that I accept despite the awareness that they are fictions, because, as Wallace Stevens said, there simply is "nothing else." The pieces I have included in this show are illusions of larger illusions. Some are separated by class distinction, some by gender politics, others only by time. I am not fully aware what the consequences of such a compounding, based on intangible distances, will be…I believe that painting is as symbolic a form as it was when its subject matter was the Expulsion. It remains reflective of its time." - Kianja Strobert, from an email dated October 10, 2006.
JEFFREY WELLS, LOS ANGELES
"These pieces invite the viewer to engage in the same activity that was used in creating them. The use of motion and time play an important role within the work to affect the viewer on a more physical level of perception. The retinally animated "Video for a White Wall" was created after months of staring at a white wall. It embodies my realization of how the gallery setting itself creates a physical response that can enhance awareness of the viewer's own visual faculties. In "Self Portrait with a Headache," there is an opportunity for the viewer to experience the same state of mind, which is portrayed in the picture. [Both] pieces deal with physical perception [state of mind and our relationship to our immediate environment.]" - Jeffrey Wells, excerpt from an email dated October 5, 2006.
