EUTOPIA

Michael Bevilacqua

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MBevilacqua_BetweenTwoWorlds-1k

Between Two Worlds [2015] _ Acrylic over archival printed canvas _ 55 x 60 inches

Michael Bevilacqua
Between Two Worlds
Jacob Lewis Gallery, Chelsea, New York [link]

Modding the surface, graphing code, and appropriating iconographic references Markus Persson disciples’ would worship, Bevilacqua acts as guide straddling the present reflection with current nostalgia of yesteryear. From Atari 2600 to now, he tracks the embryonic pixel’s exponential growth culminating as a reflection back upon it’s dumb, Euclidian self, revealing the origin as a Byzantine master story teller. An elusive iconoclasm of chrono-collapsed familiarity contrasts with specificity, requiring a cypher to enter a flat world. The user is now the witness and the recorder, and an experiential teacher being taught multi-layered understanding of our digitality.

~ Ian F. Thomas
images courtesy of Jacob Lewis Gallery

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Francine LeClercq

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Francine LeClercq
I Am Your Labyrinth
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, New York [link]
May 26-June 20, 2015

Richly layered, LeClercq’s exhibition continues to recalibrate her convictions about the crucial roles of specificity, context and perception.
Comprised of differently sized tablets, pieces depicting the iconic Sleeping Ariadne from various angles are dispersed in both the real and a replica scale-model of the gallery space in a seemingly explosive outburst, as if erupting from the diverging perspectival gaze of the viewers. She presents us with an instantaneous bird’s eye and linear views wherein the shifting centrality and relations between the observer, the work, and the varying spatial outlines of their exchange is brought to the fore.

Ali Soltani
images courtesy of the artist

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Charles Ray

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Charles Ray -Matthew Marks Gallery_BaledTruck-install

Charles Ray
Baled Truck
machined stainless steel (2014)
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York [link]

Seeing it fifty feet out upon entering the gallery, it may appear like a giant, metallic candy bar.  On approach though, Baled Truck elongates (decompresses) revealing its quasi-cubistic structure, yet it still remains below you.  How to enter?  Or as Ray posited, “Does looking at it carry you, or do you carry it?”  Understanding the loss of the Figure – the body – through the simulated compression as signaling, in effect, a pedestal or the virgin block, Baled Truck, with its machined curves like shimmering drapery, manages ultimately to recover the body via negativa.  As incorruptible as a saint.

~ Cameron Cuming
images courtesy of Matthew Marks

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Eric Heist

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Eric_Heist_Install

Eric Heist
Biosphere 2 [link]
curated by Jacob Rhodes
Field Projects, Chelsea, NY [link]

Unpacking the 90’s biosphere project’s psychological failings, Heist presents the engineered, structural forms of the utopic dream as a stable force against which ego batters. A hysterically phallic glass column topped with a shoddy, slumped geodesic dome clumsily isolates and aggrandizes biosphere texts. Triangular wall panels issue a fragmented, foggy battle cry, a half-hearted stencil mirroring a half-hearted believer’s brash voice and casual actions, echoed on the left by a push-pin archive of magnanimity and selfishness. Tragically, the constant conflict needed to realize the noble pursuit was cancerously carried within, poignantly captured in Heist’s delicate gouaches of the site’s derelict bones.

~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of Field Projects
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