Escape from New York by Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

SEPTEMBER 7–NOVEMBER 2, 2003 Matthew Brannon Melissa Brown Eric Hongisto Mala Iqbal Seth Kelly Karsten Krejcarek Colin McLain Adam Putnam George Rush Roger White Clara Williams Ivan Witenstein

CURATED BY Jason Murison

NEW JERSEY CENTER FOR VISUAL ARTS 68 Elm Street Summit, New Jersey

groups. Every year these new artist-immigrant arrivals carve out another industrial territory, until none will be left. In the case of this exhibition, the city is ‘off limits’ so to speak. Not only does the exhibit exclusively highlight outer-borough artists, but this concept is expressed in the artworks themselves. I was interested in the fact that artists represented an escape from their own surroundings, often depicting fictional scenes of the rural or suburban. I was curious about whether, once the works had been delivered from their urban environment, they would still resonate an inherent urban quality.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Sinatra’s

New York, New York no longer exists.There are no more wide-eyed sailors, mouths agape, emphatically pointing in the air; unless they are pointing to corporate headquarters, media conglomerates, cultural institutions and government offices: (on rhythm) GE,ABC, ICP, NYPD. In a sense, Manhattan has been walled off from its own neighborhoods and residents.The island is a steel prison of its own making. Artists, like many other die-hard New Yorkers who could only ‘make it there,’ have escaped through the series of bridges and tunnels that connect the island with its greater area. As American’s say with muscles flexed and determination in their voice,“when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” This phrase, when uttered just before the resignation of full retreat, sums up this exhibition. But just where do the tough go? The virtual streams and highways of the internet? Deep inside the stadium-seat labyrinths set in the muli-plex? Jersey? When organizing this exhibition of outer-borough artists, I was struck with the image of the walled-off prison-city featured in John Carpenter’s 1982 movie Escape From New York. Though I find it regrettable that Manhattan is not a science-fiction prison-city run by Isaac Hayes, the city has indeed walled itself off in an economic sense. The neighbors and their hoods have, in some way, emigrated across the bridges to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. In fact, there are whole areas in Brooklyn known for their high concentration of artists. Places like Williamsburg, DUMBO, and parts of Long Island City now parallel a role that had been historically occupied by various ethnic

The exhibition ‘Escape from New York’ brings together a group of twelve artists who work in the outer boroughs of Manhattan. These artists turn away from depicting their own urban surroundings, neighborhoods, or communities and instead create fictional landscapes or morphed figuration. The works, of suburban or rural scenes, function somewhat like a prisoner’s dream.They look like fantasies of getting out, tasting a bit of leisure, and then settling into the simple life: suburban tree-lined streets, driving endless interstate highways to rural swamps and endearing snow-covered forests.These scenes are utopian, which is to say that reality cannot be expected to support them.The problem is, no one leaves the city for good; for better or worse, it is always with you. For example, the viewer might find him or herself lost in a landscape of some eerily quiet scene. But upon further study, the viewer almost breaks a fragile illusion. Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens are ingrained in the stitch of the canvas and the thread of the paper. Each piece has a taint of a nasty reality, the urban infecting it. Around every half century or so, the musty tradition of landscape painting is taken out, shaken for dust, and given air.The landscape loses its local bounds and becomes theatrical, much like the canvases of Caspar David Friedrich, Fredrick Church, Jean Francois Millet, Milton Avery, or Salvador Dali. The landscapes in the exhibition share these same qualities: scenes are set, locations are heavy with reference, and new and bold places are explored. Contemporary landscape’s theatricality is set apart from its predecessors by its assimilation of film, especially in the case of cinematic special effects.The landscapes have the familiarity a Lucas film combined with the computergenerated friendliness of Pixar Studios. These alternative universes create a perfect awe but take us nowhere special. Each landscape in the exhibition contains mythos but not myth, locale not location.

Similar to visiting the neighborhood theatre or turning on the television, the effect upon the viewer is instant envelopment, familiarization and pacification. Dark forests, dust-bowl planets, burnt-out cities one month after armageddon: no problem. We have seen it all before. The public seems to have an ageless taste for over-built giants, often appearing in frozen valor, stunned by the glory of it all. One can just look at the public sculptures of the 17th and 18th centuries: heroic bronzes and marbles often ripped with muscles and caught up in the fight.These are not a far cry from Arnold’s Terminator character. Our contemporary giants have turned from physically toned to the buff of technology. Instead of using an array of muscle and might, these titanic heroes of the silver screen tend to fall back on the lazy super-strengths of the computer. No longer is Schwarzenegger’s hard body an issue; rather what morphs out of it is a force to be reckoned with. The enhanced aesthetic of The Terminator (just to pick one out of many blockbusters) is shared by the exhibition’s contemporary figurative artwork. Each sculpture or painting looks as if it has walked off the screen. They are uninvited strangers, machine-like and urban. The figures mimic the spectacle of the cinema, pushing, hyperextending and exaggerating realism with a multiplicity of cartoon-like computer anime. The advancements in movie making have influenced art production. Special effects, computer animation, science fiction and fantasy movies have given painters and sculptors the opportunity to create fictions that escape from modernist two-dimensional concerns. A green light has been signaled to explore the irrational depths and verisimilitude of a digital universe.The bitter pill of Hollywood has indeed been swallowed by the art world. But who hasn’t swallowed it? Hollywood’s assimilation into popular culture is wide and overbearing, not only reflecting the culture we live in, but often dictating it. Hollywood’s influences on art reaches farther than simply mirroring technological feats. Since the early 1990s, the art world has slowly embraced the narrative through the emergence of video work. What developed was a type of art that uses concept like a basic plot line: abstraction, pop culture, and postmodern revisions became building blocks for the object, the painting, photography, video and performance. The artworks become self-sufficient postmodern phenomenas, masterpieces of controlled illusion. One could argue that this is the

AN INTRODUCTION BY JASON MURISON logical evolution of Pop Art: contemporary art that panders to a public. After all, this is a public who understands how to read other modes of picture making, from the subversion of advertisement to the non-linear film to the stylization and constant remodeling of our celebrities. The visual sophistication of the general public calls upon a final point in the exhibit. Thanks widely to an array of multi-media outlets that include, among others, television and film production companies, glam magazines, and internet web sites, escape from the urban locale happened a long time ago. The high ideals of the modern urbanite and the cultured city-dweller are no longer contained within city-limits. The metropolitan is now cosmopolitan. In a general sense, we meet on a flattened ground of mass media.The cinema, television, art and music are just part of a cultural conglomerate where ideas and experiences have been mixed. The urban influences the suburban, the suburban flatters the urban, and so on, until country kids develop the manners of gold-draped ghetto gangsters and city dwellers decorate apartments rustic and talk about fly fishing. Collectively, we are really never where we are. We seem to escape while staying in the same place.

MATTHEW BRANNON

Terror in the Hollow Castle, 2002 Satan’s Bedroom, 2002 The House that Bled to Death, 2002 Dark Halls, 2002 Horror Estates, 2002 The Uninvited IV, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” EDUCATION 1999 MFA, Columbia University, New York, NY 1995 BA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Tatum O’Neals Birthday, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL John Connelly Presents, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Talking Pieces,Text and Image in Contemporary Art, curated by Ute Riese, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (catalogue) Snowblind, John Connelly Presents, New York, NY (3 Person Show) Late to Work Everyday, curated by Noah Sheldon and Roger White, DuPreau Gallery, Chicago, IL, Poster Project in 3 Locations, curated by Ralf Brog, SITE Ausstellungsraum, Düsseldorf, Art Frankfurt, Frankfurt & Reg Vardy Gallery, London, England Melvins Spring Tour, curated by Bob Nickas, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY Manhatten Transfer, curated by Jay Batlle, Esso Gallery, New York, NY K48 Religion & Cult Issue, curated by Scott Hug, K48 Magazine, New York, NY, July Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center For Visual Arts, Summit, NJ (catalogue) My people were fair and had cum in their hair (but now they’re content to spray stars from your boughs), curated by Bob Nickas, Team Gallery, New York, NY 2002 Triple Theatre, curated by Peter Nesbett,Triple Candie, New York, NY Dark Spring, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen and Liam Gillick, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal (catalogue) Haus am Meer, curated by Ralf Brog, SITE 6 magazine, Düsseldorf, Germany Open City 16, curated by Mungo Thomson, Open City Magazine, New York, NY 2001 Dedalic Convention, curated by Liam Gillick and Annette Kosak, MAK, Austrian Museum for Applied Arts,Vienna, Austria Out of Place, curated by Andrea Kroskness, UKS Biennial, Norway, collaboration with Heidie Giannotti Wall Labels +, curated by Stefano Basilico, New School University, New York, NY 2000 Luggage, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany, instigated by Matthew Brannon Soft Rock, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany @ , curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY 23rd New Museum Benefit Gala, curated by Stefano Basilico, New Museum, New York, NY

MELISSA BROWN

2 Die 4, 2003 oil on aluminum 120 x 60”

EDUCATION 2000 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME 1999 MFA Painting Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT 1996 BFA Printmaking, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2002 Kravits/Wehby Gallery, New York, N Y SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2002 Contemporary Drawing, Mixture Fine Arts, Houston,TX Glow In the Dark, Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA 2001 Looking for Mr. Fluxus..., Art In General, New York, NY Technology and The Landscape, Gallery Hana, Austin,TX 2000 Three Person Exhibition, Kravitz/ Wehby Gallery, New York, NY Meat Packing District Art Fair, Bellwether Gallery, New York, NY Malfunction, Group Exhibition, Welsh-Beck Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Pogo Stick, Group Exhibition, Contemporary Arts Collective Gallery, Las Vegas, NV Works on Paper, Group Exhibition, curated by Stefano Basilico, PPOW, New York, NY

ERIC HONGISTO

Langrangian Points, 2001 acrylic, gouache, latex paint on walls and floor 144 x 164”

EDUCATION 1999 1998 1998 1997

Yale University School of Art, MFA in Painting/Printmaking Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME Keene State College Maine College of Art, BFA in Painting

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2002 Hudson Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA 2001 White Room, White Columns, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2002 Scratch, Arena Gallery, New York, NY CWOS, Artist space, New Haven, CT Painting Lately, Henry St. Settlement Abrons Art Center, NY Looking In, LMCC Window Front Show, 50 Murray St., New York, NY Emerging Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY Queens International, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY Pfawc!!, Mills Gallery, Boston Center For the Arts, Boston, MA DNA@DNA: Genetic Imprints, DNA Gallery, Provincetown, MA Paper Remix, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY Meat Market Art Fair, Arena@Feed, New York, NY Flat File, Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Location, www.brooklynart.com 2001 FAWC Fellows, Provincetown Art Association, MA What I did this summer…, Allston Skirt, Boston MA Out of line and over the top, PS 122, New York, NY Skowhegan Alumni Show/ Auction, Knoedler Gallery, New York, NY Painting/Not Painting, White Columns, New York, NY Subjective Color, Untitled (Space), New Haven. CT

MALA IQBAL

Shadows, 2001 acrylic on paper 51 x 65”

EDUCATION 1998 MFA, Painting, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI 1995 BA,Visual Art and English, Columbia University, New York, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2002 Where, Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2000 Super-natural, Artist Access Gallery, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ Out of Place, Staub (g*fzk!), Galerie für zeitgenössische, Kunst, Zurich, Switzerland 2002 Summer Drawings, Mixture Contemporary, Houston,TX New Narrative Work, Bucheon Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2001 Yellow Brick Road, White Columns, New York, NY Augusto Arbizo, Mala Iqbal, Kanishka Raja, Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Learnedamerica, curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY The Cat’s Away, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY Altered Landscape, LFL Gallery, New York, NY New Artists 3, Delta Axis at Marshall Arts, Memphis,TN

SETH KELLY

Drained Swamp Structure, 2000 plaster, wire, wood, polymer, resin, paint 12 units each 18 x 22 x 32”

EDUCATION 1995 BFA, School of Visual Arts, New York SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY 2001 Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY Cheekwood Museum, Nashville,TN SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ 2002 The Empire Strikes Back, curated by Jason Fox and Cannon Hudson, ATM Gallery, New York, NY I Just Can’t Pretend, curated by Dan Torop, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY Landscape, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY 2001 Pictures at an Exhibition, curated by Jenelle Porter, Artist Space, New York, NY Learnedamerica, curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY 2000 Back to Nature, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, Long Island City, NY Group Show, Bellwether, Brooklyn, NY

KARSTEN KREJCAREK

Untitled, 2003 silicon, glass eyes, hair, micro controller, water 12 x 12”

EDUCATION 2000 1998 1997 1994

MFA, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY BFA, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD AICAD New York Studio Program, New York, NY Richmond College of Art, London, England

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ 2000 Video Screening, curated by Bonnie Collura,Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN Two Friends and So On, organized by Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowitz, Andrew Krepps Gallery, New York, NY MFA Thesis Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY 1999 Artist’s Space – Project Room, New York, NY

COLIN MCLAIN

RIP, 2002 oil on canvas 36 x 24”

EDUCATION 1998 Post Baccalaureate Certificate, Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy 1994 BFA,Tyler School of Art,Temple University, Philadelphia, PA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Colin McLain: Recent Paintings, Apartment 5BE, New York, NY 2002 Colin McLain: New Work, David Lusk Gallery, Memphis,TN 2000 Art Fair Torino,Torino, Italy Colin McLain: Recent Paintings, Sergio Tossi Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy (catalogue) SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 2002 2001 2000

Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ (catalogue) 45th Annual Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR Arts in the Park, Memphis,TN Art Fair Bologna, Bologna, Italy

ADAM PUTNAM

Perfect Lover, 2002 c-prints 80 x 114”

EDUCATION 2000 MFA,Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT 1995 BFA, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ 2002 Staged/Unstaged, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, Riva, New York, NY Into the Abyss, Ketilhusid, Akureyri, Iceland I Just Can’t Pretend, curated by Dan Torop, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY Hi8 #3, video screening curated by Alexandre Estrela, Parkhaus Treptow, Berlin, Germany Benefit Auction, Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY 2001 Space 2, Bellwether Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Stories, curated by Casey McKinney, Sandroni Rey,Venice, CA Benefit Auction L.A.C.E, Los Angeles, CA Adam Putnam and Mara Lonner, Sandroni Rey,Venice, CA 2000 Walker After Hours,Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (video screening in conjunction with ‘Dialogues’) Two Friends and so on, curated by Johnathan Horowitz and Rob Pruitt, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY

GEORGE RUSH

Anymore, 2003 oil on canvas 60 x 96”

EDUCATION 1998 MFA, Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY 1992 BFA, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2002 Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2001 Galeria Javier Lopez, Madrid, Spain Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ 2002 2002 Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL 2001 Shadow Play, The Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond,WA Faculty Exhibition 1, Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY Summer Group Show, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2000 Luggage, organized by Matthew Brannon, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany @ , curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall, curated by Bob Nickas,Team Gallery, New York, NY

ROGER WHITE

Blinds, 2002 oil on canvas 44 x 70”

EDUCATION 2000 MFA, Columbia University, New York, NY 1999 BA,Yale University, New Haven, CT SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ Dreamy, ZieherSmith Gallery, New York, NY Late to Work Everyday, curated by Noah Sheldon, DuPreau Gallery, Chicago, IL 2001 Learnedamerica, curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY Tirana Bienalle 1, curated by Vanessa Beecroft, National Gallery,Tirana, Albania 2000 Columbia University MFA Thesis Show, Brooklyn, NY

CLARA WILLIAMS

Exile and Innocence, 2001 acrylic on canvas 48 x 71”

EDUCATION 2000 MFA, Sculpture,Yale University, New Haven, CT 1995 BFA, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Art in the Public Realm, Public Art Fund, New York 2002 Something like this, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery 2000 Temporary Contemporary, an installation by Clara Williams, Cheekwood Museum of Art,Temporary Contemporary Gallery, Nashville,TN SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ Unnaturally, two-year travelling show, curated by the Independent Curators International Fellowship Artists Exhibition, Connecticut Commission on the Arts Gallery Land Acquistions 2, a project for Cabinet magazine 2002 Into the Woods, Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY Past Tense: A Contemporary Dialogue, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 2001 Beyond City Limits, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY Group show, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY Armory Show 2001, The International Fair of New Art, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY Fresh, The Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, New Museum, New York, NY 2000 Darrin Kraft and Clara Williams, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY @ , curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, Long Island City, NY Jennifer Cohen, Donghee Koo,Wangechi Mutu, Matthew Ronay and Clara Williams, Thesis show for Yale University MFA– Sculpture, New Haven, CT Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA

IVAN WITENSTEIN

Watch her younger year by year Stare her back in time, Teach her the four food groups Hotdogs, pussy, beer and crime, 2003 epoxy resin, fiberglass and bronze 84 x 36 x 72”

EDUCATION 1999 MFA, Sculpture,Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT 1997 BFA, Corcoran School of Art,Washington, D.C. SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2002 Here Comes the Son, Here Comes the Knight, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2003 Escape from New York, curated by Jason Murison, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ Life Like, Apartment 5BE, New York, NY 2001 Learnedamerica, curated by Jason Murison, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, curated by Jason Forest, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA Dear Dead Person, curated by Banks Violette, Momenta, Brooklyn, NY 2000 Meat Market, Momenta, Brooklyn, NY Dedicated to Art, Hemicycle Gallery, Corcoran Museum,Washington, D.C. Two Friends and So On, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY

the artist’s involvement; casting an energetic spiral, cut up and rearranged, momentous and collapsing.

WORK IN THE SHOW A bad pun lurks in the paintings by Mala Iqbal and Colin McLain. The pun, appearing like a phantom, is the one about the continual death and resurrection of the painting. Iqbal’s paintings are of often quiet and brooding rural and suburban landscapes. Hidden danger prowls behind the fence, in the tall grass or in the crystal clear lake. The painting process resembles a National Geographic nature special, where each aspect of the landscape is individually attended to and spied upon: small bright explosions of fungi dot dead trees limbs, leaves are rendered one at a time, and lakes shimmer in multiple tones. The colors and shades in the painting are reminiscent of early Disney animation.They allude to a cartoon where the still life is animated and often given a persona. Everything in the painting is in flux: grass blades have their own spirit and sway, trees swoon, and perspective dances between a crisp sharpness and a dulled blur. Iqbal’s paintings remind us that everything is living and moving at every moment in time. In Colin McLain’s paintings, movements are created by physical paint spills and runs. McLain, blots and pools paint on to canvas that lays face up on tabletop, much like a surgeon operating on a patient.The paint, acting under the artist’s control carves out hardened arteries, clogged veins and not-so-vital organs. Colin McLain acts like a Dr. Frankenstein, shocking his drawings of cadavers alive with cadiums and cobolts. In McLain’s R.I.P. the oozy portrait of a just-awakened medical study looks startled by the pure pulsating colors that surround him. Adam Putnam moves the spirit of performance into still processes. His work often depicts spaces that appear to have a psychology. By conjuring an unseen energy in the landscape, drawn buildings are personified and interiors are led to romantic deaths. In the Perfect Lover Putnam constructs architectural space and then destroys it. Without the involvement of the human subject, the photography is left to look like a documentary of the paranormal. The photograph depicts a scene reminiscent of the horror film Poltergeist: an interior angrily swallows itself into oblivion. The photo collage expresses

Stylization has come back to haunt us in Matthew Brannon’s horror film poster work. Brannon’s posters are based upon elements of graphic design.These posters, like The Uninvited IV refer to a genre of 1960’s British horror film noir. Mirroring movie advertisements of the time period, Brannon overlays his prints with an icy abstract modern design. Patterns combine with pixilated computer pictures of mansions that adorn the background in a dilapidated manner.The text breaks the work away from being considered as a fabricated ‘found object’. Rambling, humorous words and phrases open the poster to themes of decadence and pessimism, décor and power.The print itself is a homage to a time that has faded, and it works like a ghost in memory. Melissa Brown’s landscapes are ominous. Her stenciled paintings are reminiscent of a New Deal woodblock print. Brown’s paintings are contemporary scenes that call upon a past of dust bowl depression and stalled recoveries. Clouds and rocks seem to chase the good times away. Factories keep guard over graveyards. In the painting 2 Die 4, the driver or the viewer seems to be on an endless road, doomed to drive for eternity.The driver/viewer simultaneously sees his or her own future and past, imitating the method of painting. Brown paints like a printer. Like the process of a silkscreener or a lithographer, her method starts from the back and proceeds to the front. Stencil overlaying stencil leads the viewer into a marathon of repetitive shape, color, and size in her painting. George Rush paints hermetic glass houses that are shelters from modernism. Hidden in the middle of the woods to camouflage location, Rush’s glass houses preserve museum-like modernist objects. Rush’s paintings portray these objects different than those found in glossy architectural style magazines and recreated museum display rooms.The glass house (aren’t they easy to shatter?) reflects upon the precarious nature of high modernism.Whether the houses are storerooms or summer homes, they ultimately function similar: they keep the utilitarian objects out of reach. What were once objects created for the masses are now regarded as haute culture. By creating relationships with modern furniture and architectural elements, Rush, in effect, tells an allegory of the fragility of modernism through décor.

Clara Williams finds a practical and homemade solution to European art works. She often strips down rarified works of monarchies and kingdoms and gives them an American populous punch.Williams often raises the stakes when considering the Russian drama, Switzerland’s Bourbaki Panorama, or the German glockenspiel. In Exile and Innocence, Williams delivers the populous diorama as high art painting. The painting’s subject is a diorama on display in New York’s Natural History Museum. In her solo gallery show, It originally accompanied a larger installation of snowy ‘nature’ sculptures and French military mural remakes.The painting, like the diorama, depicts dear and foe preserved in a calm, peaceful and quite endearing scene. By painting it, Williams acts as both still-life painter and field-study artist. Roger White makes paintings that subtly wash away clichés of representation. The themes of his paintings take on a generic value: sunsets, mountains, seascapes, portraits of families and their beloved dogs. Each theme might as well have quotation marks around them, since they have been painted a thousand times over, used as illustration, cheap advertisement, and logos. In effect, each representation has been exhausted.White reclaims these used-up genres and paints them anew: suddenly sunsets flare hot armageddon, and family portraits wash out and blur, hinting to what these generic people are really like. In Blinds, White tackles the overuse of the ‘window’, which is seen time and again in the history of painting, both in the abstract and representational. In the painting, a window floats on a solid green and quite minimal background.The landscape is displayed much like a stage set through rising curtains on either side. Outside, a typical landscape view is cut, abstracted and obstructed by its Venetian blinds. Ivan Witenstein’s sculptures hit at the base of a political golden rule. They strike at liberal biases and baby-boomer causes that are draped with nostalgia – the third rail of political art. Witenstein’s sculpture values the comic book as much as the classic novel, deconstructing the two: finding overlaps and then creating an object that regards them as one and the same. The anthropomorphic hot dog is taken from an inner-city advertisement. Witenstein touches up this free-market neighborhood phallic symbol with a hint of Michael Jordon’s face and a still birth adorning either end.The birthed baby becomes a listening post in a dialogue with the hot dog that is ‘like Mike’. The giant frankfurter acting as public advisor recites its own title like a lullaby:

“Watch her younger year by year, Stare her back in time,Teach her the four food groups, Hotdogs, pussy, beer and crime”. Both Seth Kelly’s and Karsten Krejcarek sculptures evolve from the imagery of science fiction. Kelly’s Drained Swamp Structure is a multigrid formation based on roots rising out of swamps. The materials inform the work. The swamp structure’s roots are rendered and stylized like pen and ink illustration of IF magazine (science fiction novelettes circa 1960’s).These roots meander and grow from a larger structure made of PVC plastic plumbing pipes. As the grid swamp structure grows, it mirrors itself and blurs the line of horizon and perspective. Hard and plastic, the sculpture dominates with a monolithic presence, much like that of the post-minimal object. The structure radiates the possibility that one can build to infinity, rising both above and below the water line. Karsten Krejcarek’s sculpture is the dystopia’s dystopia. Krejcarek creates computer-animated sculptures, often with the capacity for streaming dialogue and wandering narratives. Krejcarek imagines the machine’s ultimate breakdown – not just burnt out chips and broken gears, but breaking psychologically.The crying humanoid machine is in a rut of tears and self-loathing. Has it been programmed that way? Or has the science fiction trope of super machines taking over the earth (as in The Terminator and The Matrix) backfired? Has the machine evolved an existential conscience? Quite possibly the machine is frozen. It is doomed to an eternity of tears with no past tense or future perfect. Eric Hongisto makes abstract wall painting. His murals are site specific, often playing within the existing architecture. The paintings shed the formal weight of Modernist history and often allude to science: stars burst, dark holes swallow, and molecular structures move up, down and around the wall. These representations are abstracted in color, shape, and size. Like looking through a telescope or a microscope, the scene of the infinitely small and unimaginably large are contained in one human-size view.These forms that dance and twinkle are marked on the wall, overwhelming the perspective of the viewer. The murals are reminders of what an indifferent and abstract universe with which we are surrounded.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST MATTHEW BRANNON Satan’s Bedroom, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 The House That Bled, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 The Uninvited IV, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 Terror in the Hollow Castle, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 Dark Halls, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 Horror Estates, 2002 silkscreen on paper 25 x 32” edition of 12 MELISSA BROWN 2 Die 4, 2003 oil on aluminum 120 x 60” Calvary Cemetary, 2002 oil on aluminum, 36 x 48” Forest Lawn, 2002 oil on aluminum 36 x 48” ERIC HONGISTO Untitled, 2003

acrylic, gouache, latex paint on walls and floor

NEW JERSEY CENTER FOR VISUAL ARTS MALA IQBAL Shadows, 2001 acrylic on paper 51 x 65” By the Lake, 2002 acrylic on paper 51 x 85” SETH KELLY Drained Swamp Structure, 2000 plaster, wire, wood, polymer, resin and paint 12 units each 18 x 22 x 32” KARSTEN KUJARIC Untitled, 2003 silicon, glass eyes, hair, micro controller, water 12 x 12” COLIN MCLAIN RIP, 2002 oil on canvas 36 x 24” Tex Skull, 2002 oil on canvas 72 x 52” ADAM PUTNAM Perfect Lover, 2002 c-prints 80 x 114”

GEORGE RUSH Anymore, 2003 oil on canvas 60 x 96” ROGER WHITE Blinds, 2002 oil on canvas 44 x 70” Sunset, 2002 oil on canvas 54 x 48” CLARA WILLIAMS Exile and Innocence, 2001 acrylic on canvas 48 x 71” Reconnaissance, 2001 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 60” IVAN WITENSTEIN Watch her younger year by year Stare her back in time, Teach her the four food groups Hotdogs, pussy, beer and crime, 2003 epoxy resin, fiberglass, bronze 84 x 36 x 72’ On the River, 2002 fiberglass, epoxy resin 47 x 43 x 53”

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EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Chairman of the Board Millie Cooper

TRUSTEES Ann Howey Carson Judy Cohen Robert Dillon Tim gow Dave Grewcock Elizabeth C. Gump John Holman Natalie Jones Betty H. McGeehan Winifred McNeill Mitchell Radin Anne B. Ross Bettina Scemama Bette Schultz Paul Steck A.Dennis Terrell, Esq. Janan Weber Sue Welch Janet Whitman

Vice-Chairman Virginia Fabbri Butera Roland Weiser Treasurer Joseph R. Robinson Secretary Jay Ludwig

Building Superintendent Rupert Adams

Ziggurat, 2002 charcoal and graphite 30 x 40”

Custodian Robert Campbell

Factory, 2002 charcoal and graphite 22 x 30”

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT Registrar/Membership Administrator Barbara G. Smith

Untitled, 2002 Charcoal and pencil 11 x 15”

Docent Chairman Alice Dillon

Funding has been made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council of the Arts/Department of State

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must thank Ellyn Dennison for contacting and giving me the opportunity to put together this show. I would like to thank the board of the Center For Visual Arts for their enthusiastic reception to the show. I would like to point out the exceptional help that Nancy Cohen, Alice Dillon and Carol Jones in helping organize and install the exhibition. The exhibition would not be possible with out the help of Jenny Daughters for the design, organization and layout of the catalogue. Also, Justine Murison for the continual editing of the catalogue essay and Ian Patrick for the design of the cover of the catalogue and card. I also would like to thank Derek Eller of Derek Eller Gallery, Oliver Kamm of 5BE Gallery, and Becky Smith of Bellwether Gallery for all their help. I also need to thank all the artists who do not have galleries and maintain their own slides and print up their own bios.

Ian Patrick, invitation and catalogue cover design Jenny Daughters, design, layout and organization of catalogue Denise Call, banner design Justine Murison, editor