Jason Bryant:Fleshpot
Dates:
Fri Nov 16, 2007 00:00 - Tue Nov 13, 2007
[IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c331/marisais/BryantConfessweb.jpg[/IMG]
Jason Bryant: Fleshpot
November 16th - December 14th 2007
Opening Friday November 16th 6:30-10:00pm
“I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.”
-Madonna
Stop, drop and roll, baby, ‘cause you are on fire! Just for you, Like the Spice presents an exhibition of new works by Jason Bryant. Now you’ll have a chance to stare. Jason’s unique approach to popular culture and his lavishly detailed, pristinely finished canvasses and drawings make this show a must-see.
Mirrors are so shiny that you can’t see them; you can only see yourself reflected back. Jason Bryant’s paintings are a half-silvered mirror, reflecting and clandestinely observing consumer culture and it’s effects simultaneously. Vigorously cropped, these works narrow our focus to cultural and emotional markers. (Who are you wearing tonight? Don’t you just love it?) We’re never quite sure if the subject is a celebrity or just the kid down the block, but the smiles seem like they might be faked and the clothes look like costumes. Each persona is a mask made for public presentation. Sometimes fake smiles are a natural reaction to an uncomfortable situation. Sometimes they are simply the default mode.
Bryant’s paintings and drawings restage cultural performances like headshots and advertisements but reinvest their stars with a bit of privacy, a bit of agency. Ironically, by cropping out the eyes and other foci, the faces seem more truthfully expressive; they express the importance of the mask. Fake is the new real. What if you called a press conference but all you could do was smile? What if that made you indestructible?
Jason Bryant (b. 1976) grew up in rural North Carolina. Encouraged by his mentor, Paul Hartley of East Carolina University, Jason's fascination with drawing was replaced by a love for painting. After receiving his BFA, Jason moved to Baltimore, where his internship for the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Art and Culture introduced him to many of the contemporaries with which he works today.
His relationship with this community of artists was furthered when he was accepted to the Maryland Institute College of Art, and he received his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art graduate program in 2004. He moved to Brooklyn in 2005 and began work as an assistant to artist Kehinde Wiley.
Jason’s work has broad appeal, and has appeared in multiple shows, from Nebraska, North Carolina and Maryland to New York, L.A. and London. In the past four years, Jason's paintings have been chosen for such publications as The Baltimore City Paper, Link Magazine, Direct art Magazine volumes 5 and 7, and New Art International. Jason believes his art attempts to reflect our world back at us, and tries to better illuminate people's understanding.
Jason Bryant: Fleshpot
November 16th - December 14th 2007
Opening Friday November 16th 6:30-10:00pm
“I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.”
-Madonna
Stop, drop and roll, baby, ‘cause you are on fire! Just for you, Like the Spice presents an exhibition of new works by Jason Bryant. Now you’ll have a chance to stare. Jason’s unique approach to popular culture and his lavishly detailed, pristinely finished canvasses and drawings make this show a must-see.
Mirrors are so shiny that you can’t see them; you can only see yourself reflected back. Jason Bryant’s paintings are a half-silvered mirror, reflecting and clandestinely observing consumer culture and it’s effects simultaneously. Vigorously cropped, these works narrow our focus to cultural and emotional markers. (Who are you wearing tonight? Don’t you just love it?) We’re never quite sure if the subject is a celebrity or just the kid down the block, but the smiles seem like they might be faked and the clothes look like costumes. Each persona is a mask made for public presentation. Sometimes fake smiles are a natural reaction to an uncomfortable situation. Sometimes they are simply the default mode.
Bryant’s paintings and drawings restage cultural performances like headshots and advertisements but reinvest their stars with a bit of privacy, a bit of agency. Ironically, by cropping out the eyes and other foci, the faces seem more truthfully expressive; they express the importance of the mask. Fake is the new real. What if you called a press conference but all you could do was smile? What if that made you indestructible?
Jason Bryant (b. 1976) grew up in rural North Carolina. Encouraged by his mentor, Paul Hartley of East Carolina University, Jason's fascination with drawing was replaced by a love for painting. After receiving his BFA, Jason moved to Baltimore, where his internship for the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Art and Culture introduced him to many of the contemporaries with which he works today.
His relationship with this community of artists was furthered when he was accepted to the Maryland Institute College of Art, and he received his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art graduate program in 2004. He moved to Brooklyn in 2005 and began work as an assistant to artist Kehinde Wiley.
Jason’s work has broad appeal, and has appeared in multiple shows, from Nebraska, North Carolina and Maryland to New York, L.A. and London. In the past four years, Jason's paintings have been chosen for such publications as The Baltimore City Paper, Link Magazine, Direct art Magazine volumes 5 and 7, and New Art International. Jason believes his art attempts to reflect our world back at us, and tries to better illuminate people's understanding.
Anna Druzcz: Endemic Constructions@ Like The Spice
Dates:
Fri Sep 14, 2007 00:00 - Wed Sep 05, 2007
Anna Druzcz: Endemic Constructions
September 14 - October 7th 2007
Opening Friday September 14th 6:30-10:00pm
Like the Spice Gallery is proud to present “Endemic Constructions” the first New York solo show by Anna Druzcz, featuring digitally composed photographic landscapes cobbled together from organic and synthetic sources. Constructed, not born, these frankenplaces explore the threat aimed at nature by technology and vice versa. Ranging from small works to large-scale images, these finely made prints twist familiar urban landscapes into dystopian playgrounds. The factory seal on these nightmares is not intact however. They show evidence of tampering; warped perspectives, stitched together backdrops and an unsettlingly calm demeanor.
Born in 1979 in Poland, Anna Druzcz’s initial training in studio arts began at the Beal Arts Secondary School’s Vocational Art Program in London, Ontario. Anna continued her studies in photography at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto and earned her Master’s degree in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. There, using a combination of photographic and digital techniques she built her current visual methodology.
Image construction, either within a directorial mode - in front of the camera lens, or through digital dissection and compositing of disparate visual elements, constitutes a significant component of her artwork.
Anna was awarded the title of “International Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2004 - Non-Professional Category” for a selection from her Maskarada Series at the International Photography Awards, placing second the following year. Her work has been included in shows at Gallery 621 in Florida, A.I.R. Gallery in Chelsea and at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.
Like the Spice Gallery
224 Roebling Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211
718.388.5388
www.likethespice.com
Mon., Wed.-Sat. 12-8:30 Sun. 12-7:30
September 14 - October 7th 2007
Opening Friday September 14th 6:30-10:00pm
Like the Spice Gallery is proud to present “Endemic Constructions” the first New York solo show by Anna Druzcz, featuring digitally composed photographic landscapes cobbled together from organic and synthetic sources. Constructed, not born, these frankenplaces explore the threat aimed at nature by technology and vice versa. Ranging from small works to large-scale images, these finely made prints twist familiar urban landscapes into dystopian playgrounds. The factory seal on these nightmares is not intact however. They show evidence of tampering; warped perspectives, stitched together backdrops and an unsettlingly calm demeanor.
Born in 1979 in Poland, Anna Druzcz’s initial training in studio arts began at the Beal Arts Secondary School’s Vocational Art Program in London, Ontario. Anna continued her studies in photography at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto and earned her Master’s degree in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. There, using a combination of photographic and digital techniques she built her current visual methodology.
Image construction, either within a directorial mode - in front of the camera lens, or through digital dissection and compositing of disparate visual elements, constitutes a significant component of her artwork.
Anna was awarded the title of “International Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2004 - Non-Professional Category” for a selection from her Maskarada Series at the International Photography Awards, placing second the following year. Her work has been included in shows at Gallery 621 in Florida, A.I.R. Gallery in Chelsea and at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.
Like the Spice Gallery
224 Roebling Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211
718.388.5388
www.likethespice.com
Mon., Wed.-Sat. 12-8:30 Sun. 12-7:30
Like the Spice Gallery Celebrates One Year With Most Triumphant: Paintings by Liz Brown
Dates:
Fri Jun 22, 2007 00:00 - Tue Jun 05, 2007
Most Triumphant: Paintings by Liz Brown
June 22nd- August 5th 2007
Friday June 22nd 6:30-10:00pm
Like the Spice is proud to present Most Triumphant: Paintings by Liz Brown, opening Friday June 22nd in conjunction with the celebration of its one-year anniversary. Time freezes and history sits silent in this collection of majestically deadpan paintings. Building on her successful first New York solo show at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts in Chelsea this exhibition features work from several new series.
Ms. Brown’s recent paintings troll the shallow pool of memory to see if we really catch much in our day-to-day experience. Dinosaurs, battleships, miraculous vans, an indoor undersea paradise, and a machine with all the answers populate this exhibition. Ships stage epic battles against a vast and empty ocean. Vans make Duke’s of Hazard style jumps and drift off towards heaven. Natural and artificial histories battle each other in chilly silence. Even the forest seems air-conditioned as painted by Brown. The once and future king of the thunder lizards, deposed, stands watch over his diorama.
These epics flattened onto canvas refuse to have their grandiosity distilled out of them, retaining all the resonance of echoes. To make immemorial the victors of nature and society, and transmute them into living fossils Brown edits out the cobwebs. As George Bernard Shaw said, ”If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it how to dance.”
Liz Brown has shown in California, Maryland, Connecticut and New York. She has been included in three previous group shows at Like the Spice. In 2005 she was a Space Program recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library Print Collection, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport Connecticut. She earned her MFA from the Mount Royal Graduate Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. Since then she has taught at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland and at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC. Currently Liz lives and maintains her studio in Brooklyn.
June 22nd- August 5th 2007
Friday June 22nd 6:30-10:00pm
Like the Spice is proud to present Most Triumphant: Paintings by Liz Brown, opening Friday June 22nd in conjunction with the celebration of its one-year anniversary. Time freezes and history sits silent in this collection of majestically deadpan paintings. Building on her successful first New York solo show at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts in Chelsea this exhibition features work from several new series.
Ms. Brown’s recent paintings troll the shallow pool of memory to see if we really catch much in our day-to-day experience. Dinosaurs, battleships, miraculous vans, an indoor undersea paradise, and a machine with all the answers populate this exhibition. Ships stage epic battles against a vast and empty ocean. Vans make Duke’s of Hazard style jumps and drift off towards heaven. Natural and artificial histories battle each other in chilly silence. Even the forest seems air-conditioned as painted by Brown. The once and future king of the thunder lizards, deposed, stands watch over his diorama.
These epics flattened onto canvas refuse to have their grandiosity distilled out of them, retaining all the resonance of echoes. To make immemorial the victors of nature and society, and transmute them into living fossils Brown edits out the cobwebs. As George Bernard Shaw said, ”If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it how to dance.”
Liz Brown has shown in California, Maryland, Connecticut and New York. She has been included in three previous group shows at Like the Spice. In 2005 she was a Space Program recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library Print Collection, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport Connecticut. She earned her MFA from the Mount Royal Graduate Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. Since then she has taught at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Laurel, Maryland and at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC. Currently Liz lives and maintains her studio in Brooklyn.
Video Installation by Gaby Steiner @ Like the Spice - May 25th - 7pm
Dates:
Fri May 25, 2007 00:00 - Thu May 17, 2007
Like the Spice is pleased to present a Video Installation by Gaby Steiner
Without memory: holding reflections
In this installation Gaby Steiner focuses on the ongoing discrepancy between remembering and forgetting and the interplay between the imaginary and the real. It seems as though each is reflected in the other around an indiscernible fleeting moment.
Gaby Steiner has recently exhibited at the New School, the BAPLab Festival, and the Share Event.
This exhibition will include other video works by Heather Boaz and Jason Head.
Opening reception: Friday, May 25th 2007. 7:00pm-10pm
May 25th - June 10th
For more information: http://www.likethespice.com/videoinstallation.html
Without memory: holding reflections
In this installation Gaby Steiner focuses on the ongoing discrepancy between remembering and forgetting and the interplay between the imaginary and the real. It seems as though each is reflected in the other around an indiscernible fleeting moment.
Gaby Steiner has recently exhibited at the New School, the BAPLab Festival, and the Share Event.
This exhibition will include other video works by Heather Boaz and Jason Head.
Opening reception: Friday, May 25th 2007. 7:00pm-10pm
May 25th - June 10th
For more information: http://www.likethespice.com/videoinstallation.html
Art Opening at Like the Spice:
Dates:
Fri Apr 06, 2007 00:00 - Wed Mar 28, 2007
Like the Spice
224 Roebling Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211 718.388.5388
www.likethespice.com
Press Release
Organized Religion April 6th- May 5th 2007 Opening Friday April 6th 6:30-10:00pm This group show of mixed media works will address a variety of subjects from personal religious sentiments to the institutions that either inspire or suppress them. The show addresses concepts such as belief systems, divinity, God, Gods, karma, Hell, apocalypse, eternal afterlife and morality.
Organized Religion focuses on the artists’ personal reactions to issues of belief and religion. The works explore systems of thought and ways of living through the filter of religion...personal and political. The artists in Organized Religion re-personalize traditional religious faith, examine the effects faith has on believers and those around them and forge new spiritual awareness from personal visions of the beyond. The current clashes within and between traditional belief systems, secular humanism, and holistic spirituality make faith more rife for artistic exploration now than ever before. These struggles saturate our culture now and their outcomes will determine the cultures of the future.
Artists in the Exhibition:
Treasure Frey, attended Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an artist and Illustrator who has had her work published by such organizations as the Peace Corps, the Utne Reader, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Stranger. Inks, gouache, watercolor and collage depict a man falling from the sky in “It is impossible to understand without surrender.”
Michael Krynski, was born in Poland and now makes his work in New York. He received his MFA from SVA in 1997. Krynski’s acrylic and pigment on Epson print works “Step Out” and “St. Francis” bring mystery and mythology to ideas of religion and transcendence. Yoshio Itagaki, was born in Japan and lives in New York City. His work has showed in the US, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. In Japan he was the recipient of the Philip Morris Art Award and the Pola Art Foundation Grant. The two pieces for this show, “Cloning Jesus” and “Santa Cross” enact religiously charged urban legends.
Seth Cohen, earned his BA from the University of Wisconsin and his MFA from the Hoffberg School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. He had a solo show at the Repetti Gallery in Long Island City and shown work in group shows at the Broadway Gallery in New York City. “Signs of Wonders” an oil on canvas and “Temple of the New” a pencil on paper drawing imagine ancient religions inhabiting the contemporary world.
Chadwick Whitehead, "Chadwick Whitehead makes images with graphic cuts and distinct strokes. The focus is the narrative and the character of the marks." NY Arts Magazine The beasts of Revelation as described in the Bible are the subjects of Whithead’s works in this show.
Jason Bryant, earned his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland institute College of Art. He lives in New York City. Bryant’s “Georgetown (1973)” oil on canvas depicts the bodily effects of possession on Regan’s body in the movie “The Exorcist”.
224 Roebling Street
Brooklyn, New York 11211 718.388.5388
www.likethespice.com
Press Release
Organized Religion April 6th- May 5th 2007 Opening Friday April 6th 6:30-10:00pm This group show of mixed media works will address a variety of subjects from personal religious sentiments to the institutions that either inspire or suppress them. The show addresses concepts such as belief systems, divinity, God, Gods, karma, Hell, apocalypse, eternal afterlife and morality.
Organized Religion focuses on the artists’ personal reactions to issues of belief and religion. The works explore systems of thought and ways of living through the filter of religion...personal and political. The artists in Organized Religion re-personalize traditional religious faith, examine the effects faith has on believers and those around them and forge new spiritual awareness from personal visions of the beyond. The current clashes within and between traditional belief systems, secular humanism, and holistic spirituality make faith more rife for artistic exploration now than ever before. These struggles saturate our culture now and their outcomes will determine the cultures of the future.
Artists in the Exhibition:
Treasure Frey, attended Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an artist and Illustrator who has had her work published by such organizations as the Peace Corps, the Utne Reader, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Stranger. Inks, gouache, watercolor and collage depict a man falling from the sky in “It is impossible to understand without surrender.”
Michael Krynski, was born in Poland and now makes his work in New York. He received his MFA from SVA in 1997. Krynski’s acrylic and pigment on Epson print works “Step Out” and “St. Francis” bring mystery and mythology to ideas of religion and transcendence. Yoshio Itagaki, was born in Japan and lives in New York City. His work has showed in the US, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. In Japan he was the recipient of the Philip Morris Art Award and the Pola Art Foundation Grant. The two pieces for this show, “Cloning Jesus” and “Santa Cross” enact religiously charged urban legends.
Seth Cohen, earned his BA from the University of Wisconsin and his MFA from the Hoffberg School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. He had a solo show at the Repetti Gallery in Long Island City and shown work in group shows at the Broadway Gallery in New York City. “Signs of Wonders” an oil on canvas and “Temple of the New” a pencil on paper drawing imagine ancient religions inhabiting the contemporary world.
Chadwick Whitehead, "Chadwick Whitehead makes images with graphic cuts and distinct strokes. The focus is the narrative and the character of the marks." NY Arts Magazine The beasts of Revelation as described in the Bible are the subjects of Whithead’s works in this show.
Jason Bryant, earned his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland institute College of Art. He lives in New York City. Bryant’s “Georgetown (1973)” oil on canvas depicts the bodily effects of possession on Regan’s body in the movie “The Exorcist”.