Brandon Perdomo

To Perseverate

8 November 2019 - 15 November 2019

Opening Reception : Fri 8 November 7P - 10P
Performances at 7.30P

Areté Gallery presents "To Perseverate," an exhibition of interdisciplinary work by Brandon Perdomo, opening on 8 November 2019 and on view until 15 November 2019. This is his first one-person show with the gallery.

For Brandon Perdomo, the content of the picture is not just the person or the object that it depicts, but rather the thoughts or concepts the image evokes. His images capturing movement go beyond the apparent, without however being symbolic or representational: for him, a photograph is just a moment in a longer and multilayered creative process, since he sees himself more of a creator of scenes or sculptural compositions than just a photographer; his work as a butoh dancer and a performer in public spaces permeates everything in his images, from the vulnerability of the often-blurry characters, to the urgency of the tense bodies’ movements. Through his treatment of the body as more of a sculptural or choreographic device (paired with the extensive use of dance movements and performative self-oblivion), Brandon Perdomo creates poignant visual gestures which do not stand for something, but rather bring actual relationships into existence – relationships between the individuals who pose for her, the body and its environment, the viewer and Brandon Perdomo himself.

In one of his more recent projects, MVMT, Brandon Perdomo draws from the long tradition of the mythological themes in Western art; this translates into a comment upon the behavior of a person in society, as well as the way society in turn stands in the world at large. For this reason, he guided his models into vigorous dance movements, presenting the body as objectified and anonymous, and yet vigorous and elegant. In the various tableaux vivants, the bodies in the MVMT series are treated as abstract forms, with their features in elongated effort so that they are not discernible, thus adding tension to the already passionate imagery. To further enhance the atmosphere that he depicts, Brandon Perdomo has carefully chosen his models, most of which are fellow artists; and took them to anonymous places where kinetic magic can happen.

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Brandon Perdomo is an interdisciplinary artist from New York, fascinated with self-reflection and alterity, which are the engines of his performances and images. Interested in contemporary politics and minorities, as well as in the intricate manners in which the body is perceived in the public sphere, he channels his aspirations towards social activism, which seem to have reemerged into his more recent creative work – since behind his impressively coherent and visually stunning work lies a healthy dose of thought and research, as well as the ambition to tackle some serious philosophical questions about human existence and, as he says, ''I share my world with others, and I need worlds to be shared with me."

- Alina Noir

Perdomo is a three-time awardee of the DCA Art Fund Grant by the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island. He has shown work in various venues in New York including the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art - Snug Harbor Cultural Center, the Alice Austen House, Socrates Sculpture Park, Chinatown Soup, Coney Island USA, Happy Lucky no. 1, The Halls At Bowling Green, and SI MakerSpace. His collaborative work has brought him to the Watermill Center in New York, CAVE home of LEIMAY in Brooklyn, Teatro Munganga for Butoh Festival Amsterdam, Burlesque Imitates Art in New Orleans, and DfbrL8r Gallery in Chicago.

www.brandonperdomo.com

MOVEMENT ON FILM

October 25th – November 6th

MOVEMENT ON FILM highlights the dialogue between the camera and body as well as celebrating embodiment, women in interdisciplinary arts, dance on film, and lineage. Featuring the work of dancer/choreographer/vocalist Janis Brenner and interdisciplinary artist Muyassar Kurdi, MOVEMENT ON FILM will present video installations by both Brenner and Kurdi, as well as original and limited edition 35mm photographic prints by Kurdi, featuring Ms. Brenner and others. On October 25th and November 6th, the artists will present performances to compliment the exhibit, as well as special screenings of “Where She Is” (2018) the experimental short by Janis Brenner and artist Bahar Behbahani as well as selections from Kurdi’s 16mm film trilogy.

Opening Reception and Performance: October 25th 7–10 PM

Gallery Hours:

Oct 25th 7–10 PM

Oct 26th 6-9 PM

Oct 28th 6-9 PM

Oct 29th 6-9 PM

*Gallery hours also available by appointment

PERFORMANCES

October 25th, 8:00 PM

Screenings of Muyassar’s 16mm film trilogy:

A Song for Many Women (9m21s, 2018) is a short 16mm movement film exploring gravity, perception, and subtlety. A woman’s dance in the aftermath of war and destruction.

Field Dances (9m17s, 2019) is a short 16mm dance film ruminating on space, scale, micromovements, and anatomy.

“Where She Is” (19m39s, 2018) the experimental short by Janis Brenner and artist Bahar Behbahani

Playing continuously:

Travelling (10m9s, 2017) is a short 16mm movement film, a pilgrimage, a ritual: exploring gravity, vulnerability, spaces between spaces, visual rhythm, and presence.

Where She Is (2018) the experimental short by Janis Brenner and artist Bahar Behbahani

November 6th, 8:00 PM

Muyassar Kurdi’s voice/electronics duo performance with Lucie Vítková

Janis Brenner’s solo excerpts of the movement-voice-theatre work Inheritance: A Litany AND screening of “Where She Is” (19m39s, 2018) the experimental short by Janis Brenner and artist Bahar Behbahani

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Muyassar Kurdi ​(b. 1989 in Chicago) is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work encompasses sound art, extended vocal technique, performance art, movement, analog photography and film. She has toured extensively in the U.S. and throughout Europe. She currently focuses her attention to interweaving homemade electronic instruments into her vocal and dance performances, stirring a plethora of emotions from her audience members through vicious noise, ritualistic chants, and meditative movements. Recent projects include: SEVEN VOICES, a multi-channel piece for seven voices, which was recorded during her artist residency at EMS in Stockholm February 2018. She also released Travelling on NORENT Records and Intersections and Variations on Astral Spirits in early 2018. Publications include KunstMuzik Journal (2018) and Array Journal: Gender and Sound Technology (2018).

Performance highlights include: The Rubin Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, Cafe OTO, Chicago Cultural Center, Center for Contemporary Art Laznia, Bond Chapel, Fridman Gallery, University Galleries, Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea, and Judson Memorial Church as well as exhibitions and film screenings (solo and group works) at VIERTE WELT, Trieze Gallery, Knockdown Center, Queens Museum, Spectacle Theatre, and Anthology Film Archives. Kurdi’s 16mm dance film Travelling was an OFFICIAL SELECTION for the BLOW-UP International Arthouse Film Fest - Chicago in October 2018. Kurdi has collaborated with composers Yasuno Miyauchi, Ka Baird, Arrington de Dionyso, Daniel Carter, Tomomi Adachi, Diana Policarpo, Lucie Vitkova, Bradley Eros, Laraaji, Patrick Holmes, and Ben LaMar among others.

Janis Brenner is an acclaimed, award-winning dancer/choreographer/vocalist/teacher and is Artistic Director of Janis Brenner & Dancers in NYC. Known for her “meticulous artistry," (The Village Voice) she has toured in 36 countries and is recognized worldwide as a “singular performer.” Awards/Honors include: 2018 “Best Production” award at the United Solo Theatre Festival for her one-woman, dance-opera-play and comic drama, Inheritance: A Litany, NY Dance & Performance Award ("Bessie") for performance in Meredith Monk’s The Politics of Quiet, Lester Horton Award for Choreography in L.A., Copperfoot Award for Lost, Found, Lost at Wayne State U, The Fund for US Artists at International Festivals, Asian Cultural Council, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, O'Donnell Green Music & Dance Foundation (collaborating with composers Jerome Begin and Svjetlana Bukvich), Harkness Foundation for Dance, UNESCO, US Embassies in Moscow, Bosnia, Jakarta and Dakar, and a commission for The Memory Project from the Whitney Museum of American Art. She received the “Best Choreography” Award at the 2017 United Solo Theatre Festival for Eva Petric’s eden, transplanted.

Ms. Brenner’s work has been commissioned/restaged on more than 50 companies and colleges worldwide and she performed with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble from 1990 - 2005, 2014, recording on ECM Records. She was a soloist with the Murray Louis Dance Company (1977-84), working with Rudolf Nureyev, Placido Domingo, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Joseph Papp/The Public Theater, Bat Sheva Dance Company, and Alwin Nikolais. Ms. Brenner has been on faculty at The Juilliard School since 2009, mentoring Choreographers and Composers Collaborations and teaching Movement & Music Improvisation. Janis Brenner & Dancers has performed throughout the US, Asia, Russia and Europe since 1989 and appeared at major venues throughout NYC. Their work, A ‘Peace’ For Women was commissioned for and premiered at the United Nations Millennial Conference at Madison Square Garden Theater. JB&D have served as Cultural Ambassadors on numerous international tours.

For all press inquiries, please contact melinda@aretevenue.com.

“The Universe, How Vast, How Small”

A group exhibition featuring six artists from Areté Venue and Gallery Flat File Program: Caroline Blum, Paula Cahill, Goldie Gross, Jeong Hur, Joe Piscopia and Katrina Slavik. Curated by Fay Ku.

April 19-May 12, 2019

Opening reception Friday, April 19, 6-9pm

How do we recreate the universe within ourselves? What are its building blocks? “The Universe, How Vast, How Small” group exhibition brings together six artists from Areté Venue and Gallery’s Flat File Program whose intimate works on paper, paintings and photographs construct worlds in microcosm, their small scale concentrating largeness of vision, like light intensifying as its focus narrows to a laser beam.

Caroline Blum’s two paintings resemble the hypnotic abstract designs found in Paleolithic cave paintings. Both Seed Book and Winter’s End were inspired by works of art themselves (Musa Mayer’s Night Studio and George Braques, respectively); Blum’s seed-like marks are alphabetic, her own composed sentences, testament to the germinative powers of art.

Paula Cahill’s Current I and Current II are kinesthetic charts, the translation of ephemeral phenomenon onto a two-dimensional surface. Cahill’s works on paper are lyrical attempts to penetrate the inscrutable logic underlying the movements of the nature.

Goldie Gross’s Dingle, Ireland is romantic, harkens to an earlier era, of traditions long disappeared. The uninhabited rural landscape, the watercolor media and even the scale seems to belong to another era. It seems to belong altogether to another era, where the travel, history, and experience can be literally held in the palm of one’s hand.

Jeong Hur’s photographs of celestial bodies are representatives of the non anthropomorphic view of the universe. There is nothing familiar or comforting with this view of the universe. Mysterious, pitiless, Hur’s Boston to NYC 8-2 fills the viewer with cosmological, primal awe.

So meticulously, compulsively crafted, Joe Piscopia’s works seems to erase the human hand. And yet, his work is the recording of an intensely personal inner process, intuitively built, to express the fleeting emotional states of the artist.

Katrina Slavik’s whimsical, mytho-historic worlds are constructed landscapes that slip between different times and dichotomy, her “landscape pieces explore themes of displacement, migration, and co- habitation between people, animals, and plants.”

These six artists attempt to transcend history or time, and limits of personal knowledge, and created intimate-scaled works that capture the grandiose.

“The Universe, How Vast, How Small” will be on view April 19-May 12, 2019. Opening reception will be Friday, April 19, 2019, 6-9pm. Areté is participating in Greenpoint Gallery Night; please RSVP (https://www.facebook.com/events/1221942091304430/) via FaceBook Event page.

 The Flat Files Program Series: Cheryl Molnar Solo Exhibition

The Architecture of Memory
Cheryl Molnar Solo Exhibition
Jan 27-Feb 22, 2019

Opening Reception: Sunday, January 27 3-5 pm
Areté Venue and Gallery is pleased to announce our second exhibition from our Flat File Program featuring local Greenpoint artist Cheryl Molnar.  This is Molnar’s first solo exhibition with Areté.

What at first appears to be an intricate painting but upon close examination slowly reveals itself to be finely cut slivers of paper and wood veneer, hand painted and then laboriously collaged together to create fields of grass, multifaceted rocky cliffs or lush botanical growth.  The architectural structures often incised directly onto wood panels and inserted into these wild landscapes.  In Molnar’s most recent body of work, she continues to construct her paintings with an engineer’s sensibility and rigor, but the architectural structures come from the world of leisure and recreation—and of memory.  The structures and patterns seem borrowed from an earlier generation, and yet also inspired by autobiography.  Her paintings collapse both geography and time.

The artist’s process begins with documentation: Molnar photographs locations newly traveled and well-known and loved.  These photographs that then selected, digitally stitched together, combining landscapes with structures from various “memories.” This is the way we experience memories: we confuse the place and time, the structures bleed together, places patched together in our minds the way Molnar collages photographs, like concretized memories.  These are the improbable landscapes of our memory, given physical shape.

On view for “The Architecture of Memory” will be recent collaged paintings on panel as well as small-scale editioned work that reveal much of the early stages of her process, much like “sketches” but done through photographs and digital manipulation.  Opens Sunday, January 27 with a reception from 3-5pm and on view through February 22, 2019, by appointment only.

About the Artist
Cheryl Molnar’s work has been exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon in New York, The University of Arizona, The Islip Art Museum on Long Island and the General Electric Headquarters in CT. She recently completed a permanent ceramic tile instillation for PS19Q in Queens, a commission from Percent for Art and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Currently a member artist at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, her other art residencies include the Winter Workspace program at Wave Hill, Smack Mellon, Weir Farm Art Center and Cooper Union. Cheryl received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Pratt Institute.She is a longtime resident of Greenpoint, Brooklyn where she resides with her husband, baby daughter and infamous cat.

#thearchitectureofmemory
@arete_brooklyn

Group Exhibition and Celebration of Official Launch of Flat Files Program

September 14-October 6, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday, September 14, 6-9 pm
Curated by Fay Ku

Areté Venue and Gallery celebrates the official launch of its Flat Files program and the new season with a group exhibition of selected artists Patricia Fabricant, Friedman-Havens, Sabrina Marques, Cheryl Molnar, Julianne Nash and Jung Eun Park.  This eclectic group of emerging and mid-career artists, abstract and representational, nevertheless share strong graphic sensibility and distinctive palette.  This exhibition includes consigned works from Areté’s flat files as well as additional works beyond the program’s parameters in terms of scale and media.

Patricia Fabricant describes her work as meditations on color, line and space.  A versatile artist, her work ranges from representational to the abstract, but always consistent is her strong color and design sense in her vigorous negotiations between the gestural and patterning.

 The collaborative duo of Friedman-Havens (David Friedman and Matti Havens) produces works as battlefields in which dueling aesthetics and core practices (Havens is a predominantly a video artist while Friedman’s paintings and drawings emphasize materiality and physicality) result in experimentation with process and materials, building and destroying, ultimately create surfaces of anarchic pleasure.

 Whimsy and humor are weaponized to triumph over painful experiences and of “not something once known and then lost, but something–someplace–that may never be known and can therefore only be found in the imagination.” Sabrina Marques creates narratives populated by fantastic creatures, their innocent appearance and clean lines belie darker aspects of human experience.

Julianne Nash and Cheryl Molnar both begin with photography, and then manipulating images to create fantastical objects (as in Nash’s photographs) or collaged with other materials to create impossible landscapes (Molnar).  Using algorithms to digitally distort images, Nash’s photographs are metaphor for vision as well as homage to loss and memory.  Molnar’s fictional landscapes are inspired by places where she has been but by exaggerating and juxtaposing the architectural and environmental elements, she shines a spotlight on human activities’ effect on the environment as well tracing memory of place.

 Jung Eun Park’s works on paper are economic yet poetic; she has developed an idiosyncratic personal iconography expressing the yearning for connection and the home. Using sewing as well as graphite and water-based medium on thin off-white Korean, her works on paper take on its depicted objects depicted anthropomorphic, and appeal to touch as much as sight.

For more information on the Flat Files Program, please visit here or contact gallery@aretevenue.com. Gallery hours by appointment only.

Nick Yulman

“Selected Works for Musical Robots"

Oct 20th - Nov 2nd

Closing concert on Oct 27th @ 4pm and 7pm with guest musicians/instrument makers.

Presented in conjunction with Atlas Obscura

Nick Yulman works with sound and interactive media in a variety of contexts including installation art, audio storytelling, and music. He has been building and composing music for robotic instruments for more than a decade. He’s brought his immersive “song installations” to venues around the world including Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, Warsaw’s Ujazdowski Castle, and an abandoned paint factory in Queens. He studied interactive media at NYU’s ITP program and has taught classes there on Automata. Additional information at http://www.nysoundworks.org 

Dyspepsia: A Techno-Existential Intrusion Into The Human Body

a duo show by Mattia Casalegno and Yefeng Wang

curated by Tansy Xiao

February 15 - February 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 17, 6-10 p.m.

PERFORMANCES   FEB 17 + 25, 6-10 pm

February 17, 6-10 p.m.

Performance Lab: Kalan Sherrard + Jacob Cohen and friends

Throughout the evening...
GameOfLovex3: Audience participatory performance art by Illya Szilak performed with Tansy Xiao. 
https://www.instagram.com/gameoflovex3/

"If I could have anyone in the world, it would still be you."
A crowd-sourced performance art project which explores expanded forms of intimacy. Conflating and confounding notions of public and private, “mine” and “yours," material and virtual realities, it would still be you undermines the ease and superficiality of social media interaction, even as it relies on these platforms for its production and distribution. The project offers participants the opportunity to discover what is lost in human interaction and what new possibilities emerge as we extend ourselves through computer technology.

Sunday, February 25, 6-10 p.m.
Solo Strings and Electronics: Music inspired by Dyspepsia
Tickets: https://dyspepsia.brownpapertickets.com/
Website: https://www.aretevenue.com/calendar-2/?view=calendar&month=February-2018

Du.0 = Charlotte Munn-Wood + Aimée Niemann, violins Trevor New = viola + electronics
Caleigh Drane = cello + electronics
Jason Anastasoff = bass +
Patti Kilroy = violin + electronics

ABOUT

In an era that is riddled with the magnificent potentials of cutting-edge technology and the dystopian anxieties that come along with them, we witness the collapse of sciential and sensual systems as well as the blurring of tangible and intangible boundaries. The intruders in our fantasies spill out from our own bodies and minds, inducing gradual corrosion to the very basis of human cognition: the notion of “self”.

Dyspepsia is a duo exhibition by Mattia Casalegno and Frank Yefeng Wang, both of whose art practices embody the juxtaposition of high technology and human bodies. For the 3D-printed sculptures, Casalegno uses Soylent as the material to mold classical statues: the prototype of human physicality; while Wang adopts Oculus Touch as a tool to redefine the relationship between everyday objects and disjointed body parts. The video works of both artists experiment with transmutation of existing forms, questioning the ambiguous line between human and machine, organics and inorganics, body and foreign objects, and ultimately, self and others.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Mattia Casalegno is a New York-based Italian interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the effects new media have on our societies, investigating the relationships between technology, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these relations unfold into each other. Casalegno has received various grants and fellowships, including the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, NYFA, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, among others. He has exhibited internationally in festivals and museums, such as Mutek Festival, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), MACRO (Italy), Nuit Blanche (Belgium), Optronica (UK), Le Cube – Contemporary Art Museum (France), OFFF (Spain), AVIT (Germany), and LACMA (US).

Yefeng (Frank) Wang is a Chinese new media artist who pursues his artistic career in both East and West, working critically across media including Experimental 3D rendering and animation, video installation, virtual reality, and 3D printing. His exhibitions include Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago, USA), Hyde Park Art Center (IL, USA), El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe (NM, USA), HEREarts Center (New York, NY), Governors Island Art Fair (New York, NY), Xuzhou Museum of Art (Xuzhou, China), The Museum of Luxun Academy of Art (Shenyang, China), Between Art Lab (Shanghai/Beijing, China), Chi K11 Art Museum (Shanghai, China), etc. He was also a residency artist and juried panel member in NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY.

Texture and Motion: Abstract Works on Canvas

March 2 - March 4, 2018

Areté Venue and Gallery is proud to present Texture and Motion, a pop-up exhibition of guitarist Tim Motzer's abstract works on canvas on view starting Friday, March 2nd through Sunday, March 4th in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This pop-up event will also incorporate a series of concerts featuring performances by Motzer on guitar and electronics and guest artists violinist Charlotte Munn-Wood, pianist Melinda Faylor, and percussionist Jeremy Carlstedt. Hand-painted and signed CDs of his recent recordings will be available for purchase as well as small works on paper.

PERFORMANCES ($10 at the door)

Friday, March 2nd

Tim Motzer (guitar & electronics),  7pm

Melinda Faylor (prepared piano) & Tim Motzer Duo Improvisations, 9pm

Saturday, March 3rd

Tim Motzer (guitar & electronics), 3pm

Charlotte Munn-Wood (violin) & Tim Motzer duo improvisations, 7pm

Jeremy Carlstedt (percussion & electronics) & Tim Motzer, 9pm

Sunday, March 4th

Tim Motzer (guitar & electronics), 2pm

James Autery's REVERBERATIONS

Gallery Hours: Tu-Sun 11am-5pm

Opening Party: Friday, Jan 19th, 7-11PM

Photographer and video artist James Autery's latest solo exhibition, REVERBERATIONS, is a study in new media within a rapidly evolving technological age. Seamless infinity loops of video portraits are presented on vintage televisions from the 50's and 80's as well as on rear projection film on acrylic glass.