Chris Cosnowski
“American Metal”
March 1 – 31, 2012
Artists’ Reception:
Thursday, March 1, 2012 (6-8pm)
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm
Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave
Trophies have played a critical role throughout history. Beneficiaries of these awards take pleasure in receiving them, not because the trophy has monetary value, but because it symbolizes success. Those that win them cherish the satisfaction and legacy that is associated with it, and revel within the symbolism of the prize itself, victory. Trophies are, and will continue to remain, a visible goal to which any competitor is geared, and harbor the unspoken sacrifices that victory so often demands.
In American Metal, artist Chris Cosnowski utilizes and exploits the intrinsic value and symbolism of these treasured keepsakes. His paintings envision a nostalgic no-holds-barred America. The works allude to the idealism of American values, yet somehow the narratives speak volumes about shifting ideals via the represented objects. What appears to be solid and significant is trumped by the discovery that the metal is an illusion. These beloved objects aren’t gold but merely spray plated plastic with no real weight - an apt metaphor for a country in economic turmoil due to its gratuitous and gluttonous pursuit of all that glitters.
Cosnowski's figurines exemplify different aspects of American society: the rodeo trophies illustrate our romanticized past and the wild west in all its rugged testosterone-soaked glory; the cheerleaders embody an obsession with sports, beauty and social standing; the motocross continues the sports metaphor and also typifies America’s love for speed, daredevils and gasoline; the bodybuilder pokes fun at the prevailing image of the country as mighty and heroic and evaluates its preoccupation with and perception of physical beauty; and the policeman, whereby the artist states, “I used this imagery to represent the need for excessive security just to live ‘freely’ today.” The artist goes on to say, “America is ostensibly a meritocracy, and I think we can all agree that hard work, talent, creativity and integrity should be rewarded. American exceptionalism, however, seems to have been largely replaced with greed and a craving for celebrity. American metal (mettle) used to mean something solid.”
Chris Cosnowski received his MFA in Painting from Northwestern University and his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH. His work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London and has appeared in publications such as New American Paintings (Midwest Edition), American Art Collector and Chicago Magazine. Cosnowski currently lives and works in Chicago and has been represented by Lyons Wier Gallery since 2001.
For more information and images, please contact:
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel: (212) 242 6220, Email: gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
"Resourced: The Influence of Photography in Contemporary Art" Group Exhbition
Exhibition Dates: February 2 – 25, 2012
Artists’ Reception: Thursday February 2nd (6-8pm)
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm
Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Resourced, an exhibition of eight contemporary artists who use photography to create and sometimes inspire their art making. Each artist appropriates certain aspects and assets afforded by the camera, creating work that is referential but independent in spirit. The featured artists are: Ryan Bradley, Mary Henderson, David Lyle, Tim Okamura, Fahamu Pecou, James Rieck, Aristides Ruiz, and Cayce Zavaglia.
Although the advent of the Daguerreotype utilized and revolutionized the principles of the camera obscura by capturing images in the early nineteenth century, the use of the camera obscura as a preparatory tool for artists dates as far back as the Renaissance when in 1490, Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first detailed description of the camera obscura in his “Atlantic Codex.”
Resourced presents a contemporary look at the influences and inspiration borne from the platforms of photography, ranging from found vernacular photography to self-portraiture. Collectively, the exhibition reveals the inexhaustible possibilities of how an artist can appropriate and re-contextualize a photographic image into a distinct conceptual perspective through various other media.
The artists’ methodology of capturing a moment or finding inspiration is as subjective as their aesthetic point of view. Some artists choose to take a traditional approach by staging studio shoots that generate self-produced photographs open for creative transformation. This can be seen in Ryan Bradley’s digitally manipulated shots of muse Adi Neumann that result in ornate hand drawn deconstructions of the female figure, Fahamu Pecou’s painted self-portrait that evolves into a parody of contemporary media, Cayce Zavaglia’s intimate and striking portrait of her daughter, Abbi, that becomes a painstaking hand stitched embroidery on canvas, and Tim Okamura’s expressive and provocative oil portrait of friends that he intuitively situates within urban environments of New York and its surrounding boroughs.
Others artists seize captured moments from the past and present for re-contextualization, thereby transforming the original source material via personal and societal prisms into another place and time. David Lyle’s use of found vernacular prints and vintage photographs are cleverly reimaged and redefined within our contemporary zeitgeist, executed in his limited use of only black paint. Mary Henderson’s oil paintings source images from photo-sharing websites that she alters compositionally into an intentional public image executed in paramount technical detail. Aristides Ruiz’s hyperrealist ballpoint drawings metamorphose extracted shots of animated New York streets into baffling renderings of urban life. And finally, James Rieck’s appropriation of commercial advertising into deliberately cropped photo-realist paintings truncates contemporary culture to its essence.
As Lyons Wier Gallery specializes in “conceptual realism”, the common ground shared in Resourced is the realist platform that photography allows and the conceptual leap the artist affords.
For more information and images, please contact:
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel: + 1 212 242 6220 / gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
www.lyonswiergallery.com
Artists’ Reception: Thursday February 2nd (6-8pm)
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm
Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Resourced, an exhibition of eight contemporary artists who use photography to create and sometimes inspire their art making. Each artist appropriates certain aspects and assets afforded by the camera, creating work that is referential but independent in spirit. The featured artists are: Ryan Bradley, Mary Henderson, David Lyle, Tim Okamura, Fahamu Pecou, James Rieck, Aristides Ruiz, and Cayce Zavaglia.
Although the advent of the Daguerreotype utilized and revolutionized the principles of the camera obscura by capturing images in the early nineteenth century, the use of the camera obscura as a preparatory tool for artists dates as far back as the Renaissance when in 1490, Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first detailed description of the camera obscura in his “Atlantic Codex.”
Resourced presents a contemporary look at the influences and inspiration borne from the platforms of photography, ranging from found vernacular photography to self-portraiture. Collectively, the exhibition reveals the inexhaustible possibilities of how an artist can appropriate and re-contextualize a photographic image into a distinct conceptual perspective through various other media.
The artists’ methodology of capturing a moment or finding inspiration is as subjective as their aesthetic point of view. Some artists choose to take a traditional approach by staging studio shoots that generate self-produced photographs open for creative transformation. This can be seen in Ryan Bradley’s digitally manipulated shots of muse Adi Neumann that result in ornate hand drawn deconstructions of the female figure, Fahamu Pecou’s painted self-portrait that evolves into a parody of contemporary media, Cayce Zavaglia’s intimate and striking portrait of her daughter, Abbi, that becomes a painstaking hand stitched embroidery on canvas, and Tim Okamura’s expressive and provocative oil portrait of friends that he intuitively situates within urban environments of New York and its surrounding boroughs.
Others artists seize captured moments from the past and present for re-contextualization, thereby transforming the original source material via personal and societal prisms into another place and time. David Lyle’s use of found vernacular prints and vintage photographs are cleverly reimaged and redefined within our contemporary zeitgeist, executed in his limited use of only black paint. Mary Henderson’s oil paintings source images from photo-sharing websites that she alters compositionally into an intentional public image executed in paramount technical detail. Aristides Ruiz’s hyperrealist ballpoint drawings metamorphose extracted shots of animated New York streets into baffling renderings of urban life. And finally, James Rieck’s appropriation of commercial advertising into deliberately cropped photo-realist paintings truncates contemporary culture to its essence.
As Lyons Wier Gallery specializes in “conceptual realism”, the common ground shared in Resourced is the realist platform that photography allows and the conceptual leap the artist affords.
For more information and images, please contact:
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel: + 1 212 242 6220 / gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
www.lyonswiergallery.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
January Exhibition: Jazz-minh Moore "Is That All There Is"
Jazz-minh Moore
“Is That All There Is”
January 5 - 28, 2012
Artist’s Reception:
Thursday, January 5, 2012, 6-8pm
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm
Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave.
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present, Is That All There Is, its second solo exhibition with Jazz-minh Moore.
Moore’s new series of paintings features her sister, Asia Kindred, amidst the ruins of a deteriorating cabin. The primarily naturalistic pallet is infused with distortion and bright color, causing the compositions to hover between physical and psychological space.
The cabin depicted was the first structure built on the land where the artist was born, deep in the Oregon woods. Over the years and seasons, Moore has watched the dilapidated structure fall into a nest-like geometry that she finds beautiful. The external post and lintel structure has given way to the kind of forgotten, mythical space that a teen might build her fort in; a space wherein secrets can be told and tasted, where the patchy, uneven ground is both soft and solid. It is within this context that Asia is found squatting, or absentmindedly doodling on the fallen boards with a sharp stick. The cabin and the girl are inextricably linked through overlapping compositions. In some works, such as 'The Tower', Asia is almost entirely camouflaged amidst a patterning of light and tattoos.
The idea of aligning one's own experience symbolically with gods in mythical fables is prevalent in Moore’s new body of work. The work speaks obliquely to the artist's disillusionment with monotheistic and patriarchal codes within Western culture. Throughout these paintings, physicality is dominant in the materials, subject matter and process: wood on wood, sex, cutting, and nature. The birch surfaces that inhabit the work also have a voice within the compositions.
Utilizing the wood grain as a landscape to influence her compositions, Moore leaves some sections unfinished, while others are highly rendered. The level of completion is an evolving collaboration between the artist's hand and the organic drawing ‘style’ present in the wood panel itself. Some surfaces are finished with a high gloss resin. Others are left bare. The surface treatment is reflective of the subject matter within each work.
Through a combination of tattoos on her sister's body and archetypes carved into the wood panels of the fallen cabin, Moore creates a personal pantheon of gods to reflect her experiences. These divinities, including a pair of snails in slow fornication, a blue-faced Kali, lines from a Jenny Holzer projection, a sculpture of a laughing pig with a coin-slot asshole by Matthew Weinstein, Medusa, Ouroboros, performance artists Eva and Adele, Lady Rizo, and an inextricable tangle of vines, connect as beings to Moore’s quest for a new iconography.
Jazz-minh Moore received her MFA at California State University, Long Beach, CA and BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA. She has received numerous grants and scholarships including a NYFA fellowship and a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Moore has produced solo shows in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Paris and has been featured in publications such as Interview, Whitehot and American Art Collector among others. She is the co-founder of the New York City based art collective, Gutbox, and recently participated as a contestant on Season 2 of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” on Bravo TV. Moore currently works and lives in New York City. “Is That All There Is” was made possible in part by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
“Is That All There Is”
January 5 - 28, 2012
Artist’s Reception:
Thursday, January 5, 2012, 6-8pm
Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm
Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave.
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present, Is That All There Is, its second solo exhibition with Jazz-minh Moore.
Moore’s new series of paintings features her sister, Asia Kindred, amidst the ruins of a deteriorating cabin. The primarily naturalistic pallet is infused with distortion and bright color, causing the compositions to hover between physical and psychological space.
The cabin depicted was the first structure built on the land where the artist was born, deep in the Oregon woods. Over the years and seasons, Moore has watched the dilapidated structure fall into a nest-like geometry that she finds beautiful. The external post and lintel structure has given way to the kind of forgotten, mythical space that a teen might build her fort in; a space wherein secrets can be told and tasted, where the patchy, uneven ground is both soft and solid. It is within this context that Asia is found squatting, or absentmindedly doodling on the fallen boards with a sharp stick. The cabin and the girl are inextricably linked through overlapping compositions. In some works, such as 'The Tower', Asia is almost entirely camouflaged amidst a patterning of light and tattoos.
The idea of aligning one's own experience symbolically with gods in mythical fables is prevalent in Moore’s new body of work. The work speaks obliquely to the artist's disillusionment with monotheistic and patriarchal codes within Western culture. Throughout these paintings, physicality is dominant in the materials, subject matter and process: wood on wood, sex, cutting, and nature. The birch surfaces that inhabit the work also have a voice within the compositions.
Utilizing the wood grain as a landscape to influence her compositions, Moore leaves some sections unfinished, while others are highly rendered. The level of completion is an evolving collaboration between the artist's hand and the organic drawing ‘style’ present in the wood panel itself. Some surfaces are finished with a high gloss resin. Others are left bare. The surface treatment is reflective of the subject matter within each work.
Through a combination of tattoos on her sister's body and archetypes carved into the wood panels of the fallen cabin, Moore creates a personal pantheon of gods to reflect her experiences. These divinities, including a pair of snails in slow fornication, a blue-faced Kali, lines from a Jenny Holzer projection, a sculpture of a laughing pig with a coin-slot asshole by Matthew Weinstein, Medusa, Ouroboros, performance artists Eva and Adele, Lady Rizo, and an inextricable tangle of vines, connect as beings to Moore’s quest for a new iconography.
Jazz-minh Moore received her MFA at California State University, Long Beach, CA and BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA. She has received numerous grants and scholarships including a NYFA fellowship and a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Moore has produced solo shows in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Paris and has been featured in publications such as Interview, Whitehot and American Art Collector among others. She is the co-founder of the New York City based art collective, Gutbox, and recently participated as a contestant on Season 2 of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” on Bravo TV. Moore currently works and lives in New York City. “Is That All There Is” was made possible in part by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Anthony Lister OPENING
ANTHONY LISTER
How to Catch a Time Traveler
Exhibition Dates: March 19 – April 19, 2010
Artist Reception: Friday, March 19th, 7-10pm
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Anthony Lister’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, How to Catch a Time Traveler. The exhibition follows directly on the heals of Lister’s 50-foot, site-specific mural, “Red Dot”, created specifically for the Pulse Art Fair, NYC (2010), showcasing Lister’s undeniable signature style that has garnered him international acclaim.
Known in the Low Brow movement for his intriguing, playful hybrid of street art, expressionism, and cubism all manifested in non-traditional media such as spray paint; Lister’s new body of work shows the tongue-in-cheek frivolity of his earlier pieces developing (or decaying) into a more mature and disturbing direction. The deformities and un-done aesthetic resolve of Lister’s work provides viewers with a concretization of contemporary societies’ psyche – or, as the artist himself states, “making the obvious more, well, obvious”.
In his latest series, Lister continues his examination of pop culture and how a generation raised on American television processes and interprets the symbols and imagery of their youth. The result is gender bending cartoon characters, superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, and other villains of unusual shape and size, that uncover the unconscious sexual desires and repressed taboos embedded in these seemingly innocuous popular icons. The artist insists that his paintings have no overarching message or sociological comment, he simply sees his superheroes and villains as the classical gods and goddesses of our modern society, and likes to toy with the symbols and characters so many of us have grown up with.
The work contains a circular perspective, one that shifts between, even confuses the non-rational inner workings of the child and adult mind. Yet this inescapable paradox of the human condition, wherein we are at all times evolving from and dependant upon the experiences of youth, is unlocked by Lister’s painterly antics, and revealed to be the utterly serious and impossibly ridiculous condition it is. Lister’s practice is indeed about reality. A reality his work does not claim to resolve, but rather to question, loudly.
Anthony Lister has shown widely internationally in solo exhibitions at Metro 5, Melbourne; K Gallery, Milan; Spectrum Gallery, London; Criterion Gallery, Hobart; and the Wooster Collective, New York; among others. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Australian Art Collector, Vogue Magazine, Modern Painters, Paper Magazine, Art in America and VICE Magazine. Lister’s work is present in many reputable collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the David Roberts Collection, the TVS Partnership and the BHP Collection. Lister is the receipient of the Prometheus Award (2009, 2005), the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2008) and the ABN Amro Art Award (2007).
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 11-7, Sun. 12-6
Subway: C, E exit 23rd @ 8th Ave. 1, 9 exit 23rd @ 7th Ave.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Second Annual Fahamanon 80's Party!
In honor of NYC Art Week and in the name of a good time, the Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to invite you to the second annual Fahamanon 80's Party, where we are Bringing it Back Like Marty McFly.
This is the most OFFICIAL Party during the NY Art Fairs/Armory show... so everyone will be in the house... Don't play around... Get your 80's gear together, call your friends and bring your ass to the hottest party since 1985...
TONIGHT!
Lyons Wier Gallery
175 Seventh Avenue (@20th St.)
NYC, NY
8:00 - 12:00 PM
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
PULSE Art Fair NYC 2010
IMPULSE will feature "Red Spots", a large-scale mural by Australian born, New York-based artist ANTHONY LISTER. The 40-foot mural will showcase Lister's undeniable signature style that has garnered him international acclaim.
Lyons Wier Gallery is also presenting a solo project by New York based artist MIKE LASH in the IMPULSE section (Booth #4) of the Pulse Art Fair. MIKE LASH was included in "To Have it About You: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection," Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum University of Minnesota and "Lies for Leo, A Book Signing and Exhibition" at Agnes b. Tokyo, Japan, & Agnes b. Madison Ave, New York.
Additionally, IMPULSE will feature "Best In Show", a site-specific installation by VADIS TURNER. Fresh on the heels of her recent inclusion in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and C21 Museum, Turner continues her investigations into the transformative legacy in handmade objects.
PULSE FAIR HOURS:
Thursday, March 4 Press and VIP Private Preview 9am - 12pm
Open to public 12pm - 8pm
Friday, March 5 12pm - 8pm
Saturday, March 6 12pm - 8pm
Sunday, March 7 12pm - 5pm
About PULSE:
PULSE Contemporary Art Fair is the leading US art fair dedicated solely to contemporary art. Held annually in New York and Miami, PULSE bridges the gap between main and alternative fairs and provides participating galleries with a platform to present new works to a strong and growing audience of collectors, art professionals and art lovers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
