Archive for June, 2008
Comfort,
Saturday, June 21st, 2008Opening Reception:
Friday, July 11, 2008
7 - 11 pm
Big Orbit Gallery, 30 Essex Street
AND
Artspace Buffalo Gallery, 1219 Main Street
Artists:
Hackworth Ashley – Brooklyn, NY
Kyong Won Bae – Buffalo, NY
Avantika Bawa – Atlanta, GA
Richie Budd – San Antonio, TX
Zoё Charlton – Baltimore, MD
Aoife Collins – London, UK
Rick Delaney – Baltimore, MD
Craig Drennen – Savannah, GA
Jacob Kassay – Brooklyn, NY
Arzu Ozkal-Telhan – Cambridge, MA
Leah Rico – Brooklyn, NY
Paul Lloyd Sargent – Brooklyn, NY
Kurt Von Voetsch – Buffalo, NY
Sarah Walko – New York, NY
Alexander Young – Buffalo, NY
Curated by Alexander Young
The Artspace Buffalo Gallery in conjunction with the Big Orbit Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, Comfort, Burn. Culling its title from the text of William Shakespeare’s unfinished tale of fortune and misanthropy Timon of Athens; Comfort, Burn refers to a crucial moment wherein the eponymous Timon–a fallen plutocrat ailing and in exile–curses wealth, along with civilization, as a tool of hypocrisy and further condemns those who would seek or offer it. Combining regional, national, and international artists; this exhibition foregrounds both subjective comfort and the mastering of space and time offered up to the beneficiaries of the communication age and its phantasmagoria of speed and consumption. Much like the character Timon, the artworks exhibited are situated both within and against dominant cultural narratives through methods of reenactment, recombination, and reappropriation. From Paul Lloyd Sargent’s revisitation of the counter-cultural icon Abbie Hoffman as his alias Barry Freed, to Aoife Collin’s thread by thread disassembly and reassembly of common artificial flowers, and Craig Drennen’s ongoing recoding of the dramatis personae of Timon of Athens within his practice of conceptual paintings and multiples; each artist endeavors to investigate and introduce new layers of meaning and critique into both that which is familiar and that which remains concealed, inimical to casual perusal.
