© 2023 Sara Jones
My solo exhibition at chashama 266 gallery in Manhattan was very rewarding. I made some site-referencing and site-specific pieces for the show, which have inspired some new directions in my work. Here are some installation photos from that exhibition, in case you missed it:
Transmitter presents: The Model Reader
PAUL GAGNER, ALEX GINGROW, MEGAN HAYS, ELLE PÉREZ, DEVIN POWERS
JUNE 5 – JUNE 28, 2015
Opening reception: Friday, June 5, 6–9 PM
Open Weekends 12-6PM, 1329 Willoughby Ave.
Paul Gagner, Abstraction as a Second Language, 2015
In conjunction with Space Available, organized by Rob de Oude and Paul Corio, Transmitter (minus Rob de Oude) presents The Model Reader. Like so many good ideas, this show stemmed from a conversation at the bar after an opening. From a casual discussion of an artist who seemed to be making work just for us, we arrived at Umberto Eco’s notion of the Model Reader. The Model Reader is a fictitious reader of any actual text (or work of art) who is imagined by the actual reader or viewer as they read, as the person who would perfectly receive and understand the work. With this as our inspiration, we selected five artists, each of whom we feel are making work with us as the ideal audience.
Preparatory sketch for site-specific piece.
I'm excited to announce my first solo exhibition in New York, Ropes Fragments Drafts. It will be June 3-14, 2015 at the chashama gallery at 266 West 37th Street, and will include several new site-specific pieces.
I'm honored to be in amazing company in the Art F City Benefit and Auction. The theme is Power Women, and there is amazing work available by such artists as Michelle Grabner, Marilyn Minter, Judith Braun, Inka Essenhigh, Betty Tompkins and more! See the Auction here.
There will also be a huge party on April 13th, and I would love to see you there! You can get tickets here.
TRANSMITTER PRESENTS: 6 x 6
JEFF FELD, ERIK SHANE SWANSON, LYNN SULLIVAN, JOHN BOHL, SKYE GILKERSON, SANDRA ONO
FEBRUARY 20 – MARCH 28, 2015
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 6 – 9 PM
Transmitter is delighted to announce 6 x 6, with works by Jeff Feld, Erik Shane Swanson, Lynn Sullivan, John Bohl, Skye Gilkerson and Sandra Ono. The opening will take place Friday, February 20, 2015 from 6 – 9 pm and the works will be on view through March 28, 2015. 6 x 6 is a show created through a process of “curatorial telephone.” Each Transmitter partner chose an artist in the order in which the partner joined the gallery. Additionally, each partner chose an artist for 6 x 6 based on perceived harmonizing themes of the works that preceded their choice. With this eccentric curatorial process Transmitter created a potential for multilayered interpretations of visual connections.
Rob de Oude, initiator and originator of Transmitter, chose Jeff Feld. Rob says “I met Jeff a few years back during openings at one of the many galleries in Bushwick and as it turns out we have a lot of mutual friends. He had kept the door to his new studio and home shut for a long time because of renovations, but then during open studios a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to see his work and was immediately attracted to these sculptures for their humorous and lightweight (literally) take on formalism and modernism. The pieces are very well made and I did not recognize the material right away; they appear to be wood, metal or stone rather than cardboard.”
Carl Gunhouse next selected Erik Shane Swanson, whose interest in vernacular objects and design has led to a practice that elevates and redeems the everyday. Swanson’s most recent work embeds commercial iconography from ice packs and saltshakers into faux-marble, using an ancient Roman practice called scagliola. This creates a sleight of hand within a sleight of hand, revealing overlooked everyday objects by embedding them in marble patterns, while hiding the materiality of the work in plain sight.
Tom Marquet chose Lynn Sullivan. In her work, plaster forms appear to have been fixed midway through processes of division and duplication. Initially bone or fossil-like in appearance, these forms are built by layering plaster and paper pulp on models of sailing ships, one form of sculpture growing on top of another. This process of division and accumulation is hinted at and echoed in the structure of the works' pedestals. Through this process, Sullivan recodes the nostalgic metaphors of travel inherent in the model sailing ship into an uncanny echo of the artifacts of pre-historic, pre-human time.
Rod Malin selected John Bohl’s work for its referential language that activates a dialogue within the group exhibition. Bohl creates a symposium of visible language expressed fluidly across several major bodies of works. Bohl’s keen sense of collaboration has given his practice a foundation of social and aesthetic value. His ability to navigate painting in a playful, yet thoughtfully determined manner, is untarnished by the challenges of the craft. Bohl’s abstractions could be classified as Visceral-Pop; they are suggestive and unique while being culturally familiar.
Sara Jones chose Skye Gilkerson, who uses subtle interventions, constructed from ordinary, often ubiquitous materials, to unfold our awareness of our surroundings and destabilize familiar structures. Space, time, light, and language, as well as architecture, landscape, and changes in the weather; all become the materials for this exploration. She says, “From the vacant building next to my studio, to the distance between mountain ranges, to the spaces that separate words on a page, my work begins with openings and gaps.” In this exhibition, Skye will be showing works on paper from the series “Wounded in West Texas.”
Finally, Mel Prest invited Sandra Ono to complete the exhibition. Ono’s work is precise, but not tight, and is filled with dark humor and beauty. Inspired by biology and physiology, she uses synthetic, utilitarian products, such as fake fingernails, plastic bags and rubber bands, transformed into larger shapes. With repetitive gestures, she constructs organic forms that appear to build up and break down at the same moment to serve as proxies for different internal states. Her objects and installations experiment with formal elements and the way they shape our cognitive and visceral experiences.
I am happy to announce a new project that I am working on. Transmitter is a collaborative curatorial initiative, focusing on programming that is multidisciplinary, international and experimental, founded in 2014 by Rob de Oude, Carl Gunhouse, Rod Malin, Tom Marquet, Mel Prest, and me. We have a gallery space at 1329 Willoughby Avenue, 2A, Brooklyn, NY 11237. Our first exhibition is OPEN ENDED, with artist Clinton King. The opening will take place Friday, January 9, 2015 from 6–9 pm, and the works will be on view through February 15, 2015.
studio wall, works in progress
I just got back from a productive two week residency at the Vermont Studio Center. I made several new paintings and met lots of great artists and writers. It was the perfect way to start off the winter.
Thanks to Annie Coggan of Chairs and Buildings for interviewing me for her blog--this month's theme is all about drawing.
Abstraction and Its Discontents, curated by Deborah Brown, is on view at Storefront Ten Eyck through November 23rd. I have the above painting (Honest Misrepresentations) included in the exhibition. The show has been getting some press, including this article in Two Coats of Paint and this article on Hyperallergic. There will also be a panel discussion with the same title at SVA on November 11. It's free and open to the public!
My studio will be open this Saturday and Sunday, October 18-19 from 12-6pm. Please stop by and say hi!
98 9th Street, 2nd Floor, studio #14
For more information about Gowanus Open Studios and all the events going on this weekend, visit artsgowanus.org.
Thanks to Hyperallergic for including my studio in their guide to the weekend!
This week I had the pleasure of traveling to Wassaic, NY to participate in the Wassaic Project Print Edition. They invite artists to come up and create a print edition with their master printer, which for me was an amazing experience to work in a medium that I am not that familiar with. It's fun to get out of your comfort zone, especially when it makes you think about your work differently! Here is a slide show of the process of creating the 4-color print I made with printer Scott Porcelli.
A few weeks ago, artist and curator Enrico Gomez contacted me to use one of my pieces in an online exhibition he was curating. The exhibition is part of an online project called The Tale Tellers, which is a project conceived by UK based curator Charlie Levine. Artists, writers and thinkers have been invited to interpret their favourite stories, songs or poems via a series of images that represent key plot points within that story. Each selection of images tells a complete tale.
The tale Enrico chose to retell is Ernest Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." I am honored to have my drawing "Night Swimming" be included as the final image in the story.
Very much looking forward to this exhibition at Storefront Ten Eyck in October!
I am excited to share this interview about my work and practice that was featured on the blog Temporary Land Bridge. Thanks to Andrea and Kirk for coming by for a studio visit and asking such good questions!
A book I began working on several years ago has been published! In January 2010, I had the great honor of working on an exhibition at The Cooper Union called "The Great White Whale is Black," featuring the work of painter and architect Tony Candido. At the time, we really wanted to put out a catalogue to celebrate the exhibition, but the project grew to include newer work and became an even richer and deeper investigation of Tony's thoughts and teachings. Steven Hillyer (the Director of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive at The Cooper Union) and I worked with Tony to edit and select the artwork that went into the book, Steven spent many hours condensing pages and pages of interviews, and I figured out a way to arrange and design a cohesive volume that ended up including over 100 works of art. I was endlessly inspired while working on this project, and am honored to have been able to have contributed to the creation of The Great White Whale is Black.
One of my paintings has been selected for CURRENT: GOWANUS, an exhibition curated by Benjamin Sutton, that opens with a big benefit celebration next Wednesday, May 14th. You are invited to come out and celebrate and support the great non-profit that is Arts Gowanus! There will also be a closing party on Saturday, May 17th, as well as many other fun events in between. Please come out, see some great art, and support the artists who work in Gowanus! More information about all the events is here.
Installation shot of my painting at Galerie Impakto
My work is included in a group exhibition in Lima, Peru in March. Objektivity opens at Galeria Impakto on March 4th. The artists included are: Aaron López, Abel Barroso, Francisca Prieto, Livia Marin, Paul Wackers, Rob Wynne, and Sara Jones.
I am excited to be included in this show at Avis Frank Gallery in Houston.
“In art history, regionalism has been understood as a relatively deliberate effort, by regional producers, to develop the characteristics of distinctively local artistic interests……. However, many artistic regions were probably denoted as such only with hindsight by a society or its historians.”
–Whitney Davis (Oxford University Press)
Any issues of geographical identity are more concerning to those that sell, criticize and categorize art than to the artist themselves. Artists do not declare themselves as “New York artists” or “Texas artists” as those phrases are limiting, but the media and critics will happily use them…. galleries too.
So Avis Frank is proud to present ten artists
from LAHOUNY.
Please support good local art
wherever it comes from.
Josh Alan, Sara Jones, Hiyme Brummett, Bryan Schnelle
Siobhan McBride, Annelie McKenzie, Heath West,
Loren Erdrich, Eduardo Portillo, Sara Cain Bowen.
Happy New Year! I am excited to share my new website with you. I have been busy in the studio, and hope to photograph my new work soon! In the meantime, enjoy the spruced-up new presentation, and be sure to check out my jewelry line, Two-point, and my tumblr, Piles + Voids.
