Current
BIG FUTURE Curated by Risa Shoup and Maximilian Bode
May 3-24 | 47 Bergen Street, Boreum Hill
Opening Reception May 3, 6-10 pm
Featuring Markus Bradley, Delano Dunn, Nancy Hubbard, Kiya Kim, Anne Mourier, Bethany Robertson, Ian Trask, and window installation by Jessie Henson.
About BIG FUTURE:
BIG FUTURE is an exhibition of artists’ proposals for fantastic, nearly impossible exhibitions. The concept was influenced by the history of a series of short films made by Godard in lieu of written proposals to potential funders. Godard was having trouble getting films financed in the late 70s and 80s, and instead of filling out applications for funding, he made these shorts that were meant to encapsulate the theory and content of the longer films he wanted to make. These shorts now stand as works in-and–of themselves. Inspired by this idea, BIG FUTURE showcases finished works that have never been shown before and represent the idea of an as-yet unrealized piece or collection of pieces.
About the Artists:
Markus Bradley
Brooklyn-based Markus Bradley is an alumni of F.I.T. and Parsons School of Design. He is an accomplished installation artist who uses color and light to create geometric images, which reference abstract symbols. He has exhibited at Jackson Hall Gallery, Create NYC collective art residency, Bertrand Delacroix Gallery, Webster Hall and “Light up Brooklyn” presented by Google. His artwork is featured in the upcoming documentary “Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie,” a Magnolia Pictures release. In BIG FUTURE, he exhibits sculptural, painted work that act as models for later installations.
Delano Dunn
Los Angeles born Delano Dunn received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2001. While attending school in New York, Dunn worked to refine his craft of illustrating, resulting in his induction into the Society of Illustrators. Dunn went on to work as an illustrator and graphic designer for six years before he decided to focus entirely on his fine art work. Dunn is currently based in New York and has shown in a number of solo exhibitions at places such as the University of California at Los Angeles, the Olean Public Library, and Brooklyn Brewery. In BIG FUTURE, Dunn exhibits collages involve deconstructing and reassembling advertising from the 1970s and 1980s. All of these ads were originally intended to appeal to an African-American audience, and Dunn’s simple rearrangement of visual information attempts to unearth the unspoken message of how, “the black community… could truly be more black, how they could obtain real, true blackness.”
Nancy Hubbard
Nancy Hubbard is a graduate of Rutgers University and SUNY, and is a current resident artist at the Invisible Dog and galleryELL, a transient gallery based in Brooklyn. The content of Nancy Hubbard’s artwork “examines the mysterious pull of time and memory,” which can also be said about the very combinations of media that she chooses to work with. She sees the traditional techniques of photogravure and process-based illustration as an “escape” from 21st century life. While her works are tranquil and bare, they are empowered with an uneasy awareness of the past, and an almost uncomfortable sense of nostalgia. BIG FUTURE showcases photogravure prints made by Hubbard, using imagery from her personal past.
Kiya Kim
Kiya Kim was born in South Korea where she attended Dong-eui University, receiving a BFA in Fine Arts. In 2010 Kim began her studies at SVA in New York, studying art business. She has since shown extensively in New York City and resides as a curator and artist at the Invisible Dog Arts Center. Kim states that she is focused on “life patterns” in her artwork. By collaging reshaped images from mass media, Kim highlights patterns and the mimetic nature of the human thought process. Her work depicts a cerebral allegory, which draws influence from the book “Spark of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People.” BIG FUTURE includes collages by Kim, which combine flat elements with found objects.
Anne Mourier
Accomplished interior designer Anne Mourier discovered her affinity for photography and mixed media about a decade ago. Ever since, her work has drawn influence from her experience contemplating household items and arrangements, which alter living spaces. Mourier currently resides in Brooklyn NY, where she moved to from France twenty years ago. She is represented by the Muriel Guepin Gallery in NYC and is scheduled for a solo exhibition at the Invisible Dog in September of 2013. BIG FUTURE features a maquette created by Mourier, which plays with the idea of household cleaning as being both an act of “leaving things bare” as well as a means by which to “hide things.” The images that Mourier has carefully selected for the pillows on her bedspread represent members of her own family who share sentiments with the artist regarding obsessive cleanliness and tidiness. This model is a yet unrealized version of a larger installation that Mourier hopes to create, which would “conceivably be able to support 35 bodies.”
Bethany Robertson
Bethany Robertson is an MFA candidate at the Mason Gross School of Art and a printmaker, bookmaker, and art educator. Robertson claims that she “enjoys Fig Newtons, unicorns, being on boats, and 90s pop and hip hop. Her favorite food is pizza and her favorite color is chartreuse.” As part of her MFA thesis exhibition, Robertson has been creating sculptural arrangements of paper in an ongoing project called Slash. Robertson seeks to reconcile her focuses on sculpture and printmaking by combining materials that are commonly used in both fields. Her experience as a catalogue librarian at her undergraduate university, influences her sculptural arrangements. A piece of Robertson’s Slash project will be on display in BIG FUTURE. These sculptures highlight subtle shifts in color shades, and form “printerly” optical effects through a simple and elegant exploration of reinterpreting the common 8.5? x 11? page.
Ian Trask
Ian Trask is a scientist-turned-artist who has shown in group and solo exhibitions at Recession Art. His sculptures transform materials of waste and commercial byproducts into refined aesthetic objects through an alchemistic procedure of reinterpreting a material’s value and usefulness. In many of Trask’s sculptures, the viewer will find a mischievous invitation. Texture and tangibility are essential to the experience of these objects, and by provoking the impulse to explore, each piece rouses in the beholder the same spirit of curiosity, experimentation and play that occasioned their creation. BIG FUTURE will include new works by Ian Trask, which contains overlain, anonymous photographic slides from the mid-20th century. Displayed as stand-alone slide viewers, these image combinations are created entirely by physically manipulating these slides.
About our Window Installation: Jessie Henson, Small Cup of Light
“And I should mention the light
which falls through the windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches…”
- Billy Collins
Jessie Henson creates a series of personal skies for her viewers, allowing them to interact with the “stars” in a very intimate way. The works present maps of the galaxy as a commentary on the place of one person’s life in a community and the connections between the individual and society. Small Cup of Light further explores the tension between the concrete reality of ordinary life and the search for escape through fantasy and whimsy – opening an interior world of play and personal narrative.
Henson’s works attempt to negotiate the fragility and mystery of the world, while searching out the sublime and the possibility of wonder. These works invite the viewer to reflect on their place in a larger universe and speak to our search to find purpose in the quietest moments of our lives.
Jessie Henson has exhibited internationally, including in New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City. She was an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, a Create Change Fellow at the Laundromat Project in New York, and has participated in the AIM program at the Bronx Museum of Art. She is a Smack Mellon “Hot Pick” artist and received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She will be the Windgate Visiting Artist Fellow at Urban Glass in 2013.
About the Curators:
Maximilian Bode is a born and bred new yorker; he was raised in the tough streets of Soho, where he lived until he moved to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute.
in January of 2006 max was asked to join the art department of the new yorker magazine as an art director, and the youngest employee in their organization. he remained there for five years, all the while focusing on his art. during that time his work was shown in galleries in Brooklyn, the east village, dumbo, and Chelsea. Max has lectured at the society of illustrators, SUNY purchase, SVA, Parsons, and Pratt Institute. he has also sat as a judge for the American illustrations annual and the society of illustrators annual.
in 2010 max left the new yorker to devote more time to his own practice and to teach at Pratt Institute.
Risa Shoup is the Associate Director of The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn.
She works to provide artists with the financial and workspace resources they need to create work that the public can experience in non-traditional spaces. Since Fall 2011, she has coordinated Seniors Partnering in the Arts Citywide for Queens Council on the Arts. She is also currently a Fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development and a MS in City & Regional Planning candidate at the Pratt Institute. Shoup studies the production of space for housing, manufacturing and other forms of production.
As a curator, she is works primarily with artists who work environmentally and create installations. In July 2011, she opened Ode Hotel, an exhibition of sculptural and installation-based works in the Old Hotel section of The Wassaic Project’s Maxon Mills exhibition space in July 2011. In March 2012, she curated a site-specific installation by R. Justin Stewart at The Invisible Dog. And on November 16, 2012, Shoup’s most recent exhibition, On Purpose: Art & Design in Brooklyn 2012 opened at the BRIC Rotunda Gallery. On Purposefocuses on the intersection between architectural and design projects with fine art to examine sustainability. This past summer, Shoup was named to ArtInfo’s 30 Most Influential Art Figures Under 30. Her current project is Brooklyn Commune, a research effort and series of public conversations, organized in partnership with Andy Horwitz and Culturebot, to investigate the value of labor in the arts and discuss new, more equitable, models of production. All Brooklyn Commune events will take place at The Invisible Dog. She is currently curating 1,2,3,4 which opens at Gallery 200 in DUMBO on April 4.
Image courtesy of Kiya Kim
