land of make believe and associated braneworlds
Once again thanks to a generous Chashama AREA grant, scrapworm presented an exhibition/installation of recent surface works - having developed the featured techinique (wet electrostatic copy adhering/tearing) in the Chashama 40 Worth Street Studios program, then further refining the method at Ora Lerman's Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat, and the Artists' Enclave at I-Park.
The continental billboard, land of make believe, explores American opinions of both itself and international politics, as a major work exploring 20th Century evolved American Nationalism through the belief system defining lens of post-war (1948-1955) Life magazines to understand opinions of progress, efficiency, survival, and authoritarian fear/faith dynamics from a human psychological perspective within the influences of apocalypse culture.
The title of associated braneworlds (including subsequent works in the Life:fear series) references scrapworm’s current use of surfaces. Previously focused on creating installations of spatially organized found objects, scrap views these pieces as “branes”, a term used in string theory and high energy physics to rationalize concepts of dimensional reality. Like membranes, these collage surfaces ‘capture’ imaging information specific to their message and the result is a uniquely ‘trapped’ abstraction of technologically produced and culturally distributed representations.A Chashama Opportunity, January 27 - February 26, 2006.
for more images (Under Exhibitions at Chashama Venues, 208 West 37th St.)
for more images , resolve40 review by Mark Stone
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on the way (window area installation)
234 West 42nd St, in the south “New” 42nd St. mega-block, a landscape in an abandoned food court. Site specific to this example of crisis within conglomerate capitalism, the food court window is directly in front of escalators exiting the AMC Empire 25 Theaters within an ‘entertainment complex’. The length of the space allows for a varied topography constructing unique regions as merging habitats that can be perceived as an evolution to left or right. The caged area of the space has also been utilized along similar ideas, and 5000 concept/project bookmarks were distributed from the site.
window installation: mixed media- glass, metal, plastic, paper, plaster, plasticine, wood, organic materials, digital videa, and tvs. approximatey 16’x5’x4’ window area and 12’x11’x6’ cage area.
A Chashama Opportunity, February 1 through April 26th, 2005
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for more images (Under Exhibits at the Food Court at 234 W.42nd Street, ‘on the way’)
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40 worth st. computer suite (studio space)
Phase One, 40 Worth St., Artist in Residence. The works and mechanisms in progress occupy an area approximately 12’x15’x10’ and include technological objects remaining in the former “computer suite” space as well as imported scraps and materials (canvas, wood, metal, wire, foamcore, plant matter, umbrellas, light bulbs, photographs, paper, acrylic paint, pastels). The space was an environmental work space that turned my section of the suite inside out and explored issues of technological/organic while allowing me opportunity and space to fully submerge into new surface collaging processes.
A Chashama Opportunity, May 2004 through February 2005
more information about 40 worth street artists and phase one's final show
for more images (Under The Artists of 40 Worth, scrapworm)
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vertical flotation (wall area installation)
The long site-specific exhibition was composed of existing works and objects brought together for the first time to create a unified and 'regional' aesthetic in the larger space. A paper bag narrative poem followed the length of the show - dedicated to the memory of bud, a pet frog that had been rescued from the china town market buckets of writhing amphibious imports eight months prior.
paper and acrylic medium on metal, light bulbs, objects, paper, metal corner stripping (as ceiling hanger) and nylon line approximately 20’x4’10” wall space
April 11 through May 12, 2004
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visions of excess: visions of void (room installation)
The transformed space/created environment had several layers of concept and was a pivotal experimentation for me. Looking back, I let myself explode in the room and the explosion reverberated in a way that allowed me to attempt to include many variations of scale and layers, conceptual time folding, and the overall effect of numerous psycho-geographical area elements. The original music of JoAnna Scari (“visions compositions”) was included in live performance (as a character receiving and transmitting a tonality of the space/for the space) through an analog audio to video screen feed in a technological sculptural area. A tattered ghost character inhabited the space from time to time, searching and shaping it over the two months just before the building’s demolition. Numerous documents of proposal and response exist, but, concisely, it was a topography of a mind spelunking for a "theory of everything." I hope people enjoyed the intricacies and rawness, the delicate balances and the tension of the stilled/fluctuating moment and could find personal meanings in the inter-relationships presented.
Roughly a 21’7”x19’2”x9’1” room containing various wood, glass, paper, plastic, metal, and organic elements; including, but not limited to: rocks, seashells, flowers, grass, leaves, ash, rust, steel, iron, wire, lathe (metal/plastic), nylon line, rope, shrink wrap, cpr dummy, rubber tubing, magnetic and printer tape, electronics, cathode ray tubes, light bulbs, plastic light bulb cases, staples, previously handmade neon, computers, and books.
January 6 - February 28, 2004
TIXE Gallery 113 W. 42nd Street, A Chashama Space run by Janusz Jaworski
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water vernal west 1st quarter (sculptural installation)
An enterable sculpture, w2 existed as a theoretical future archaeological bunker of human knowledge and resource interested in including both sides of contrasts (inside/outside, simple/complex, chaos/order, decayed/stainless, organic/ manufactured, etc.), as well as tetrahedral/triangulated categories and the implications of these groups/constructs and their relationships to historical architecture and ‘sanctuary’.
Janai Garfinkel, Production Assistant. 7’x7’x7’ (longest points). Paper and acrylic medium on sheet metal bolted to metal studs with neon, welded steel, wire (lathe), nylon line and various objects of metal, glass, and seashells.
April-May 2002
Rosenberg Gallery, NYU (also shown at neointegrity: this is your dinner )
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