SPATTERED COLUMNS
Spattered Columns, a project of Art Connects New York, is a temporary exhibition space dedicated to showing the work of New York-based artists who do not have commercial representation. We hope you will visit this dynamic art space showing a wide variety of work by emerging artists.
Spattered Columns opened its fourth temporary exhibition, Structured, on April 14. Curated by Jeff Bergman, the show, featuring work by nine artists will be open to the public through May 13. Mr. Bergman described the collection as follows:
Structured ties familiar places and materials together with unfamiliar settings, focusing our attention on everyday landmarks and fixed points in our world. Through the work of these nine artists, the known becomes unmoored or fantastic in its representation, leaving us with an entirely new space. The conversation between and among artists, places, and the viewer dislocates our sense of comfort with our surroundings and allows us to see them with a fresh perspective.
These individual images show the city of New York in what I hope will be a new light. Nathan Kensinger documents a flood of light into disused space in his images, especially Auditorium, creating a hopeful glow to echo the light of its former students. Kensinger revives the space in a still image, reminding us of the places that have been left to decay and become an unattended monument. Michael Neff achieves the same effect using shadow rather than light, emending the lines of a permanent edifice with chalk and documenting his vision before nature or time causes it to disappear. Rather than waiting for a moment to capture, the site-specific installation relies on the artificial light and will be out of context by the time daylight arrives. The theme of grasping at the fleeting shadow is further reiterated in Heidi Nielson's images of the shadow cast by the Citibank Building in Long Island City Sundial – 1 year. A year's worth of shadows created by a single colossal structure in Long Island City creates a beautiful pattern - yet it implies darkness for those that lay in its path. All of these images reveal excitement and inspiration in unintended spaces, offering a model for discovery through an artist’s gaze.The structure of a building, its facade and materials, are bound together to create place. Sara Eichner removes the building and leaves the familiar patterns of a facade. In highlighting the materials as their own pure selves in Sliding brick planes, 2008 and Hexagon intersection, 2008, the origin of the façade allows endless possibilities to the viewer. Lauren Pascarella created a new space from a site-specific group of photographs, dismantled and sculpted out of the physical structure of 491 Broadway and the materials of the Spattered Columns gallery. Her image is in no way the truth, but a reimagining of structure, unbound by physical architecture. In her image, a modern facade becomes a sculpture - and in this, the rebirth of any space becomes possible.
A classical facade by Matthew Trygve Tung seems a refined single historical or architectural document, but in fact is a created by the artist from a host of sources. These three images are an amalgam of buildings, styles and places without a landscape. If even so forthright a thing as a building can be recreated into fine art, these artists seem to agree through their work, then so too can the rich pastiche of a life. In Austin Kennedy's series 7 Landscapes, the altered image displays the setting of great monuments in appropriated picture postcard images. What remains is a void, lovingly displayed for the viewer. Rather than the object without landscape as it is seen in Tung’s drawing, Kennedy gives us landscape and viewer.
2009-2010 Spattered Columns Exhibitions
| Awakenings, curated by Heidi Lee, arts consultant, showed the work of | 10.14.09- |
| Emily Barletta, Judith Braun, Yadir Quintana and Houben RT. | 12.16.09 |
| MICA New York Alumni Exhibition which showed the work of 29 | 1.14.10- |
| Maryland Institute College of Art undergraduate and/or graduate alums | 2.16.10 |
| graduating between 1968 and 2009. | |
| Feed the Kitty, a show juried by Salon ACNY, featured work by selected | 3.10.10- |
| artists who have donated work to ACNY permanent placements including | 4.7.10 |
| Structured | |
| You can have it all, a two-person show organized by artists Jeremy Willis | 5.20.10- |
| and Kerry Downey | 6.19.10 |
Spattered Columns
491 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, New York 10012
646.546.5334
Open to the Public
Tuesday through Thursday, 12pm to 6pm or by appointment
