Thu May 10, 2012 19:00 - Sun Jun 10, 2012

New York, New York
United States of America

Lambert Fine Arts Presents: Gutbox - Grid
May 10th - June 10th, 2012
Collaborative Installation : Sat, May 5th - Wed, May 9th

Public Reception : Thurs, May 10th, 7-10 pm

57 Stanton Street (at Eldridge) NY, NY 10002
212-353-2787 / info@LambertFineArts.com

Lambert Fine Arts is pleased to present a new collection from international artist collective Gutbox titled GRID. Comprised of nine core members, Gutbox embraces the true nature of collaboration in which each piece of art is developed improvisationally by three or more artists without prior planning. Each artwork evolves from the creative reactions of one artist in dialog with the one preceding them and then the collective determines as a group when the piece has matured to completion. On Saturday, May 5th, visitors can witness this process as Gutbox installs their collaboration to encompass the entire gallery at Lambert Fine Arts in both a constructed and a metaphorical GRID.

Living in NYC, it's impossible to be unaware of the gridded hive of modernity, our action within it, and its psychological impact. Grids that are often laid across the land like a map pop up into three dimensions of the city, mushrooming to the heights of skyscrapers, and burrowing underground in the form of subway tunnels. Cross-town busses, car traffic, pedestrian zig zags, and flight patterns complete the transportation grid and perpetuate its motion.

To some of us the order of the grid could be experienced as safe and comfortable, while others feel confined by its predictability and regiment. Though all members of Gutbox live in major metropolitan systems, some have experienced life in more spacious areas. Gutbox member, Jazz-minh Moore, was born 'Off the Grid', at Breitenbush Hotsprings, a community in the Oregon woods that creates its own electricity out of the natural current of river water. Maps of this place are woven into GRID. Some members were reared within the suburban sprawl and its ever expanding footprint, offering a sense of order, uniformity, and a far-reaching grid.

Some of the works in GRID reference aerial landscape photographs of the agricultural grids that pattern most of this wide country. Others are a nod to the gridded patterns in plaid shirts, the complex mapping of computer chips, and metal grids found in the old security glass of fallen windows in the Navy Yard. Gutbox's goal is to leave no grid unturned.

Present in GRID will also be deviation from, and destruction of, the human-made grid. Points of transition, from the right angles controlled by humankind to the organic geometry of nature, include riverbeds, which snake their way organically across gridded plains, or the linear structure of an abandoned building falling into oblique angles of ruin.

One way or another, we all participate in GRID.

Gutbox is Nick Dyball, Ray Sell, Ulrike Theusner, John J. Hagan, Heather Hart, Thomas Witte, Jazz-Mihn Moore, Jeff Sims and Seth Mulvey

Fri Nov 11, 2011 19:00 - Fri Nov 11, 2011

New York, New York
United States of America

Lambert Fine Arts Presents:
Brandon Friend & Jason Griffin – Identity Crisis

November 11 - December 6th, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday November 11, 7-10pm

57 Stanton Street (at Eldridge) NY, NY 10002

212-353-2787 / info@lambertfinearts.com

F to 2nd Ave | JMZ to Essex St | D to Grand

Gallery Hours: Tues - Sun 1-8pm
Lambert Fine Arts is pleased to announce the opening reception of Identity Crisis, a collaborative exhibition of mixed media craftsmen Brandon Friend and Jason Douglas Griffin on Friday, November 11th from 7-10pm.
Identity Crisis is an internal conflict of and search for identity. In their coming exhibition, Brandon Friend and Jason Douglas Griffin explore this conflict through individual and collaborative portraits of social uprising and self-determination.
Friend and Griffin use mediated pop culture imagery as the foundation for their iconic characters - depersonalized representations of authority in situations of conflict. Friend’s Defenders and Griffin’s Ninjas question traditional social power structures using familiar characters that challenge viewers to position themselves on multiple sides of an implied conflict. The loosely narrative images offer no conclusions as to which parties actually are the defenders or those being defended, which are batting down and which are unleashed to stealthily fight on the side of truth. However, the reality of a larger cause is essential to this work which asks the public to question the sources, content, and fallout of the barrage of mediated information, and in turn to collectively rise above the desire for immediate satisfaction of individual needs for the good of the collective. Ultimately, the work poses the challenge of the Ninja/Defender – the viewer can choose whether they will collaborate.
This call to collaboration is at the center of the Identity Crisis addressed by both the Ninjas and Defenders Series, which use anonymity as a vehicle for collective engagement. The Defenders present images of concrete moments of faceless opponents in ambiguous conflict, asking the viewers to decide which side is which, and which side they would stand on. The Ninjas are composites, oppressors or the oppressed, created with and determined by viewers who have submitted images of themselves via social media outlets to be used discriminately as subject matter – to be ‘Ninjafied’. Both series converge on the moment of action, when decision is necessary, and ask the viewer to rise in response.
A Gentleman’s Game, a large-scale joint piece showing a Ninja and Defender playing a game of chess, seizes the window of Lambert Fine Arts and extends onto the walls, inviting public engagement with Identity Crisis. Inside are Friend’s Defenders, images of riot police created through collage of myriad layers of imprinted material on canvas and board, that reference topography, archaeology, and sculpture as much as traditional painting and drawing. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the Defenders are Griffin’s Ninjas, mixed-media works that bring transfers, stencils, line drawing, gestural and flat areas of abstraction into a spatial face-off. On hand will be an arsenal of collaborative pieces, combining the stratospheric, dream-like intensity of the defenders with the decisive, graphic and linear humor of the ninjas. These collaborations, in dialogue with the individual series, present the Ninjas and Defenders as icons of a cinematic scope in an epic narrative of opposition.
-Text by Rachel Meuler

Thu Oct 20, 2011 20:00 - Sun Nov 06, 2011

New York, New York
United States of America

Lambert Fine Arts Presents:
Grand Opening - Round #1
October 20th - November 6th, 2011
Opening Reception: Thurs, Oct 20th 8-11pm
57 Stanton Street (at Eldridge) NY, NY 10002
212-353-2787 / info@lambertfinearts.com
F to 2nd Ave | JMZ to Essex St | D to Grand
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sun 1-8pm
Lambert Fine Arts is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition
on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 from 8-11pm.  Featuring the work of over 20 artists in a variety of mediums, Grand Opening - Round #1 serves as a showcase of the diversity of our artists and as a glimpse into the programming of our coming year.
“We believe that the arts provide one of the most powerful means for communication about our shared humanity and the critical issues of life, so the artist reigns supreme,” says Executive Director Marc Lambert.
 
LFA’s concentration on developing a culturally and socially connected community in the Lower East Side, offers a welcoming alternative to the traditional art gallery model.  Our focus on collaboration and multi-media approaches to art production will include all forms of the visual arts, as well as film, music, dance, theater, literature, and performance art.
 
For the Grand Opening - Round #1 exhibition, the main gallery will
feature works by each of the artists currently part of LFA’s Urban Arts
community: Bob Clyatt, Harris Diamant, Amanda Dickerson, Jonny Fenix
, Brandon Friend, Joseph Grazi, Jason Griffin, Gutbox Collective, Terrenceo Hammond, Doug Henders, Liu Guangyun, Karim
 Marquez, Rachel Meuler, Hitomi Mochizuki, Shalom Neuman, DH Peligro, Jean
-Guerly Petion, Ray Sell, Rob Swainston, Kara Taylor, and Benito Valadié.
 
Round #1 will provide a preview sampling of what is to come during LFA’s annual schedule - pieces by all our artists, as well as the premiere of “Butoh Experience: Stone and Lotus”, a performance piece by prima ballerina Paunika Jones. There will also be a site-specific video installation by Allison Berkoy entitled “Rec Room” in the lower-level lounge gallery that contains miniature and life-sized video sculptures in which figures inhabit scenes of illusion and delusion in
varied states of recreation and re-creation.
 
LFA occupies the unique and quirky landmark Fusion Arts Museum, beautifully reflecting the funky, innovative, and provocative nature of contemporary Urban Arts. With multi-cultural artists using a multi-media approach, the artists and performers at Lambert Fine Arts
demonstrate a contemporary sophistication in their use of new media, modern technology, and complex symbolic imagery to engage viewers in a progressive and compelling social critique.