MARCH 10 to APRIL 22 / EXHIBITION / Daniel Horowitz is an award-winning illustrator and art director. Working primarily as a digital artist over the last decade, one day Daniel Horowitz considered what might happen if he were to pull out a blank page and begin to draw. Not on commission and with no particular purpose in mind. The self imposed minimum, one drawing a day, was to serve as an exercise to pull himself away from the computer and to begin to explore analog creativity. Daniel was concerned that the quality of these artworks would be too different from, or inferior to, his better known commercial illustrations, so he had little intention of sharing this experiment. However, as days turned into weeks he began to realize that within the spontaneity of this process, something curious and new began to emerge.

Daniel formed a blog and began to post his daily explorations. The overwhelming response helped to see the project through to its end at 365 drawings.  Although the requirement was to post a sketch or line drawing and nothing more, he began to create more elaborate collages and paintings as the rhythm took hold of his imagination. As the series nears its completion, we are pleased to announce that  all 365 daily artworks will be united at The Invisible Dog for Daniel Horowitz’s most comprehensive show to date.

Opening Saturday March 10 from 6 to 10pm

http://drawingdujour.tumblr.com/

After two years of research into the Jewish concept of the messiah, R. Justin Stewart, a professed agnostic, will install Distorting (a messiah project, 12C), an intricate environment constructed of fleece, rope and plastic that will serve as a 3-D representation of the concept of the messiah in the 12^th Century. Distorting (a messiah project, 12C) is a visual delight that will overcome the viewer with color and shape as it invades the ground floor of the Invisible Dog. Those viewers wanting to understand the connection between the sculptural elements and the information that inspired them will need only to scan QR codes, discreetly embedded throughout the sculpture with their phone or other mobile devices to download the information they seek.

In the coming years, Stewart will unveil additional installations under the umbrella of “a messiah project.” Just as Distorting only focuses on the concept of the messiah as it existed in the 12^th Century, future installations will focus on other time periods, ideas, and stories from Stewart’s research.

According to the curator: “Justin’s work blends intellectual rigor with visual splendor. His work makes cogent those systems of information that are otherwise too vast, too esoteric to understand through casual inquiry. The QR codes embedded in Distorting create a technological barrier that obfuscates the religious implications of the work mirroring the barriers that one comes across in investigating any new, particularly complex, set of ideas.”

Opening reception: Saturday March 10, from 6 to 10pm

MARCH 10 – 11 / EXHIBITION /In The Artists of The Invisible Dog, New York City photographer Malcolm Brown presents an exhibit of 33 portraits of artists from a unique Brooklyn community of sculptors, illustrators, toy makers, painters, jewelry designers, photographers and welders.  Using a variety of photographic techniques and methods, Malcolm captures the personality of each artist’s work, workstyle and workspace.  Each image is born out of a collaborative vision between Malcolm and the artist and the result is a rich and spirited collection of images.

Originally trained as an anthropologist and spatial sociologist, Malcolm isn’t new to the study and analysis of how people live, work, and play in space.  Before photography, he interpreted these findings into meaningful physical solutions.  With photography, he has taken the next logical step to capture people in environments in a way that tells a story.

www.malcolmbrown.net

Opening Saturday March 10 from 6 to 10pm
On viewing Saturday March 10 from 11am to 10pm / Sunday March 11 from 1pm to 7pm

]]> http://www.theinvisibledog.org/archives/9167/feed 2 http://www.theinvisibledog.org/archives/8759 http://www.theinvisibledog.org/archives/8759#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:40:59 +0000 theinvisibledog http://www.theinvisibledog.org/?p=8759

FROM JANUARY 8 Premiering at the DUMBO Arts Festival on September 23, 2011, The Dumpster Project is a work of transportable public art. The Dumpster Project is also a daily blog (www.thedumpsterproject.com). Fundamentally, though, The Dumpster Project is a physical taxonomy of one man’s existence.

Mac Premo is a Brooklyn-based collage artist. His longtime Boerum Hill studio was a sanctuary for an assortment of objects accumulated over decades. Included among the hundreds of items are old baseball cards he shared with his dad, the shoes his eldest daughter first walked in, recently extracted wisdom teeth from an eccentric friend, a Persian music mix-tape, and a fortune cookie message that warns him against the pitfalls of relaxation (it reads: ‘You’ve had a good start. Work Harder!’). More than just objects of ephemera, they are participants in Mac’s artistic repertoire that act as both influence and raw material for his body of work. The years of collecting suddenly turned into a process of de-accession when the move to a smaller studio forced Mac to decide on the fate of his objects. The Dumpster Project is the result of this quandary. Faced with the prospect of throwing his stuff away, Mac decided instead that each object was to fulfill its ostensible destiny: it would see life as art. Rather than the dumpster as trash mechanism, Mac has converted a 30-foot long industrial dumpster into an exhibition space where each object is discretely displayed. A visitor to the installation will walk into a modern-day “cabinet of curiosities”, where objects of nostalgia (i.e. a Yankees cap Mac wore through most of the 1990s) have a place beside items culled from international travels (i.e. the curiously named ‘Long Life’ brand of cigarettes from Hong Kong). Each object will be numbered, and a mobile application will enable the viewer to use his or her smart phone to access a eulogy Mac has written for each item, as well as a studio photograph of the object set cleanly against a white background.
In conjunction with the installation, Mac has embarked on the ambitious task of cataloguing each and every item for the project’s dedicated blog, www.thedumpsterproject.com. Each day an entry featuring an item is revealed and includes a photograph of the item taken by Mac, accompanied by a description of its significance along with its dimensions. Through these daily entries, the visitor quickly gains an understanding of Mac’s aesthetic, quirks, sense of humor, love of family, and sense of self.

‘American Realism’ is a one-day extreme endurance piece for eight actors, about contemporary labor, spoken through the voices of depression-era California migrant workers. Disassembling notions of realism and investigating the possibilities of reenactment without authenticity, this piece exposes the ennui of laborers, from dot-com start-up entrepreneurs to immigrant maintenance workers. The text is composed from an audio archive of Depression-era Farm Security Administration (FSA) work camps in California, called “Voices from the Dust Bowl.” The archive, recorded by the WPA, includes songs, trials, meetings and testimonials. In ‘American Realism’ these nostalgic recordings are reconfigured into a play about labor and community in America today.

American Realism was developed in a summer theatre residency [2011] at the Invisible Dog.

Katherine Brook is completing her MFA in directing at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, where she has directed six full productions, including Tennessee Williams’ ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ and ’Lady Han,’ an adaptation of a Japanese Noh play. Most recently she directed ‘H. Apocalyptus’ (playwright Dean Poynor) at Picolo Spoleto, and assisted on Elevator Repair Service’s ‘Shuffle’ at The Prague Quadrennial. Past directing and collaborative work includes Abigail Browde’s ‘The Home by Josephine’ at University Settlement, and Red Terror Squad’s ‘Family Bed’ and ‘Grey-Eyed Dogs’ (playwright Jess Barbagallo). Before going to grad school, Katherine also worked at StoryCorps and completed her BFA at NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing.

www.katherinebrook.com

free admission

CATCH is a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary, rough and ready performance series-event put on every two months or so, usually in Brooklyn, NY. Curated and hosted by Jeff Larson and Andrew Dinwiddie and brilliantly administered by Caleb Hammons.

Animals, Michelle Boulé, Megan Byrne, The Debate Society, Daniel Fish, The Sasparilla Sisters, Brian Osborne !

Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2003 by Jenny Seastone Stern as a home for the emerging avant-garde, Catch has become an integral part of the downtown community, presenting both short and in-progress works by Tere O’Connor, Big Dance Theater, David Neumann, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Hopkins, Taylor Mac, Dean Moss, Young Jean Lee, Miguel Gutierrez, Christopher Williams, Karinne Keithley, Adrienne Truscott, Neal Medlyn, Faye Driscoll, Ivy Baldwin, Ann Liv Young, Kenny Mellman, Jeanine Durning, Beth Gill, John Moran, Robbinschilds, Dynasty Handbag, Sam Kim, Witness Relocation, Chris Yon, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, the National Theater of the United States of America and dozens of terrific artists you may not have heard of … yet.

Catch presents a stunning array of emerging artists, giving them an opportunity to share the stage with an expanding galaxy of downtown luminaries. This makes everyone’s work more exciting, raising the stakes for young creators and encouraging experimental freedom in our more accomplished artists.    Not only does Catch have “the best short-form programming going,” it also has the liveliest and best-looking audience – beautiful, young ladies and gentlemen (and lowlifes) who come to drink, see great work and mingle with the artists after the show. Catch is a social event and a serious show, where loyal fans of the individual artists mingle with Catch allegiates to view work they know will be rough … and ready.

all tickets $15 at the door

www.catchseries.org

G. Douglas Barrett presents the second installment of Worktreue, a series of music and performance events conflating the problems of historical authenticity in music, and labor in artistic and cultural production.

G. Douglas Barrett is an artist, musician, and writer. His work considers music as part of a critical arts practice in which performance and conceptuality exist as integral components. Drawing equally from the contemporary gallery arts and the performing arts traditions, BARRETT has exhibited, performed, and published throughout North America and Europe: Incubator Arts Project (New York), Diapason Gallery (New York), the Wulf (Los Angeles), Theater Perdu (Amsterdam), Universität der Künste Berlin, Université de Paris-Est Marne-La-Vallée, Phoebe Zeitgeist Teatro (Milan), Galerie Mark Müller (Zürich), Sonic Arts Research Centre (Belfast, UK) and Neutral Ground (Canada); his writing is published in the interdisciplinary literary journal Mosaic (U of Manitoba) and Contemporary Music Review (Edinburgh). In 2009 BARRETT received a DAAD research grant to Berlin. He has obtained advanced degrees from California Institute of the Arts (MFA) and the State University of New York at Buffalo (Ph.D.). Recent collaborators include Francesco Gagliardi, Adam Overton, Bill Dietz, Object Collection, The S.E.M. Ensemble, John Lely, Chris Cuellar, Seth Kim-Cohen, James Saunders, Tom Chiu, Hana van der Kolk, Rozalinda Borcila, and Gia Edzgveradze.

by Richard Garet and Asher Thal-Nir.

The imagery  of  Melting Ground consists of an uninterrupted single handheld take, while flying in  a  helicopter over Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska in August  2005. Garet submitted the footage to  rigorous processes of digital manipulation, altering the takes natural condition, light, motion, rhythm, and duration. The audio was specifically composed for the imagery. Asher’s sonic construction  commenced by making recordings with microphones placed inside the body of a piano, very close to the hammers, and emphasizing not only the tactile qualities of the instrument, but also the timber and  sensorial richness of its sound. Additionally, Asher focused on layering and synchronizingloops of the piano’s sounds to create irregular structures in which new melodic phrases would arise through chance.

Contour Editions is pleased to present the new collaborative work of Richard Garet + Asher Thal-Nir, Melting Ground. This audiovisual release is the latest development of the labelʼs effort to present works that explore the various possibilities of sound and moving image, while also engaging with studio experimentation, materiality, processes, and diverse techniques to treat the material. The labelʼs objective is to reach spectators on a personalized level while facilitating the independent distribution of sound and visual artistʼs work that are often hard to experience within the local community or the cultural landscape of the world at large.

press release melting_ground

Happy New Year 2012. Thank you for your support in 2011. A lot of love.
photos: Simon Courchel for The Invisible Dog