On the Arts of Invading Spaces

 Curated by Karin Bravin

Space Invaders

I am showing two installations in this group exhibition curated by Karin Bravin

		Space Invaders, organized by guest curator Karin Bravin, features the work of eighteen artists who make use of the unique spaces at Lehman College - both inside the galleries and outside the building. Using the walls, the ceiling, the floor, or the balcony above the atrium, works appear to grow out of the structure, hang down, wrap around, or peer out from under. Working with a specific location in mind, the space becomes the artist's canvas. The outcome can be organic and free flowing, expressive and thought provoking. These site-specific installations will include floor-bound works arranged in sprawling configurations that appear to be organically inspired. Some of the artists use large sculptures that skillfully appropriate both indoor and outdoor spaces. Others use bits of material that might have once intersected with someone's life creating an expanding cultural collage, and some create installations that cascade from a ceiling or stretch from inside to outside. Each artist will inhabit the space differently, taking cues from the distinctive architecture - Lehman College Art Gallery is located in a building designed by Marcel Breuer in 1960. Upon approaching the gallery from the center of the campus, the viewer will encounterRachel Hayes' boldly colored fabric installation. Light and wind affect the piece as it is viewed from both indoors and outdoors. On the Goulden Avenue side of the campus viewers will find Dahila Elsayed's series of text-based flags. These festive, poetic, and suggestive visual markers metaphorically call to attention aspects of the campus with which one might not be familiar. DeWitt Godfrey's monumental steel tubes sit under an overpass, nestled between concrete walls. Kim Beck's work will lead us from the outside to inside with vinyl decals of commonly overlooked weeds that grow out of cracks and up walls. Inside, in the gallery lobby, Sheila Pepe will dress the atrium with a degree of craft and decoration that likely was never intended for Marcel Breuer's cast concrete; Rita MacDonald's large-scale wall drawing plays up the roundness of the foyer's walls with an image of a pattern caught in a spinning motion. Carol Salmanson's Hercules Lite, made of transparent green plexiglass, will mimic the shape of the building's massive support columns, emphasizing contrasting feelings of weightlessness and ephemerality. In the galleries, Diana Cooper will combine fragmented photographs with three-dimensional elements, abstracted, but projecting an inherent sense of oppressive systems, networks, circuitry and surveillance. Heeseop Yoon's installation of black masking tape on Mylar will play with positive and negative space, void and solid, transforming the space into a busy network of lines that not only slows down the process of seeing and drawing but also suspends the viewer's gaze. Franklin Evans'work will explode the boundaries of painting with such disparate elements as books, sound recordings, sculpture, painting, artist's materials, digital images, drawing, and process residue. Abigail DeVille will transform the small video room using found and inherited domestic objects that make a connection to her personal universe and the one at large. Cordy Ryman's Rafter Web Scrapwall will be a sprawling 30 foot wall installation of recycled remains from a previous installation of painted wood pieces;Mariah Robertson will create a cascading floor to ceiling installation of unique photographs that are the result of darkroom experimentation. Lisa Kellner uses the language of diseased cellular activity to make large-scale installations. She hand forms, paints and sews together thousands of organic, bulbous shapes out of silk organza.Nicola Lopez will create an installation using woodblock printed Mylar that will transform a portion of the space's sloping ceiling. Robert Melee's marbleized imitation wood and drop ceiling panels will cover a space that channels and explores the distinct, yet inter-related psychologies of the suburban home. His installation will include the paintings of fellow artist Erik Hanson. Gandalf Gavan's neon and mirrored wall installation will alter the viewer's perception of the exhibition space, and Halley Zienwill make use of a hidden gallery kitchen that will be invaded by hundreds of her collaged and psychologically expressive characters.
		Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm For more Information about Lehman College Art Gallery visit: www.lehman.edu/gallery

 Burlap Falls, 2012 Rachel Hayes

 Making Modern, 2012 Rachel Hayes

My work 'Making Modern' withstood 90 mile per hour winds during hurricane Sandy in October 2012. Surprisingly there was hardly any damage!

Dumbo Freestyle Canopy

September 28, 29, 30 2012
Directions
commissioned by:
DUMBO Art Festival

Rachel Hayes @ Headlands Center for the Arts

Unyielding Faith
Headlands Center for the Arts 30th Birthday Party
September 15th, 2012
San Francisco, CA

Rachel Hayes - Break/Step @ Radiator Arts

FREE ENERGY
fabric, vinyl, welded steel

http://www.radiatorarts.com/Gallery.html

Break/Step

10-61 Jackson Ave
Long Island City, New York 11106

Esther Choi, Rachel Hayes, Todd Knopke, Rena Leinberger, Stephanie Loveless, Al Lupiani, Angel Otero, Ian Pedigo, Armita Raafat, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Peter Soriano, Miryana Todorova and Sebastian Vallejo

Curated by Eileen Jeng

June 8 - July 8, 2012
Hours: Saturday and Sunday 3-6 pm Opening reception: June 8, 6-9 pm

Radiator Gallery presents Break/Step, a group exhibition featuring artists, currently based in the New York metropolitan area, whose works embody deconstruction in creation and vary in techniques. The imagery, act, and aestheticization of deconstruction play an important part in contemporary art, especially in process-oriented works that focus on materiality. The title refers to the movement when soldiers are instructed to “break step” when crossing structures, such as bridges, sensitive to resonance. The unified rhythm is intentionally broken to create a new sound and image.

In the matrix that composes our urban environments, buildings, land, and materials are constantly being developed or constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Materials are recycled and reused, sometimes in creative ways. Land erodes, only to be built upon or preserved again. On a practical level, the infrastructure of cities, like New York, is constantly being reconstituted and the act of deconstruction occurs everyday -- which begs the question: what is the nature of creation when construction and deconstruction are integral parts of the process?

Over the past four decades, contemporary artists have continuously challenged the medium utilized and process involved in works of art; narratives are broken, reinterpreted, and recreated. The artists in Break / Step use various traditional and innovative media, such as oil paint, fabric, plastic bags, glass, and industrial tubing. Surfaces are highly mediated. Images are re-construed, deconstituted, and altered. Sounds are fragmented. And public and private spaces are transformed. Chance, risk, and failure are evident and inevitable.

Abstracted in composition, these paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, performances, films, and videos gain transformative dimensions. Out of disclarity and fragmentation, clarity and fresh perspectives re-form and develop. Some works produce a confounding affect, evoking a sense of tension. The artists examine aesthetic and formal qualities in their work, and some confront personal memories and histories as well as address cultural, social, and identity issues. Many dichotomies are suggested, such as permanence and impermanence, stability and instability, utopia and dystopia, reality and illusion.

Eileen Jeng is an independent writer and curator and the archivist at Sperone Westwater in New York. Her latest project includes Facture at AIRPLANE in Brooklyn among others. She was a research assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago, and she was involved in various exhibitions, including FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City in 2007. She earned an MA in arts administration and policy from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in art history and advertising from Syracuse University.
A catalogue will be published in conjunction with Break/Step. Please also find related events and documentation at www.radiatorarts.com. For more information and images, email info@radiatorarts.com or call 1 347 677 3418.

Wheelhouse Review - Rachel Hayes & Eric Sall

Studio Visit with Wheelhouse Review

Please click the link above to see more pictures from our studio in Kansas City. Wheelhouse Review visited the week we packed up to move back to Brooklyn.

Rachel Hayes & Eric Sall in Abstract Kansas City @ The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Kansas City Star - Review

 Eric Sall on the left

Eric Sall on the left & far right, Rachel Hayes in the middle

Return to the Easy System, 2010, ink, acetate, gels, fabric sewn on paper.

Rachel Hayes & Eric Sall in Brucennial

NY Times Review

www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com

And in Other News

Kansas City Star writes about our show... at the Dolphin Gallery
Eric Sall and Rachel Hayes return to Kansas City with large-scale installations at Dolphin. After training at the Kansas City Art Institute, the two got married and now live in New York............

The Old Gold posted pictures of the group show, I Wanna Be Somewhere, I (Rachel) was in last week. My piece was a model of Ice Cold Daydream at the Dolphin Gallery.

Isolated Incidents & Ice Cold Daydream

Eric and I are excited to be showing together in Kansas City, MO. We met in this city, and had our first studios in an amazing loft in the West Bottoms neighborhood. Recently, the awesome Dolphin Gallery relocated to this neighborhood.

September 4 - November 7, 2009
DOLPHIN
1600 Liberty St. Kansas City, MO

Eric Sall
Isolated Incidents
Eric Sall new paintings at Dolphin Gallery were created within the past year during a studio residency at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program in Brooklyn.
In addition to the seven large scale canvases on display the exhibition includes an entire wall installation of small drawings, paintings, photographs and collages mocked up as they were in Sall’s studio in
New York.

Rachel Hayes
Ice Cold Day Dreams
Rachel Hayes installation Ice Cold Day Dream envelopes the front Gallery at Dolphin. A single 30' X 30’ drape of sewn fabric and vinyl hangs weightlessly acting as catch-all for the dense and weighted form that seems to rest in its embrace. Created is an experimental landscape with color, line and light, layered to create a depth of new and ambiguous images.

Rainbow Conversation

Two Public Art Projects Announced-- Rachel Hayes and Nina Bovasso Kickoff Re:Construction 2009

BravinLee Programsis pleased to have been selected as consultants to the Downtown Alliance for their Re: Construction program. This initiative channels the energy of Downtown's rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as canvasses for innovative public art and architecture. Each project uses standard construction barriers for artistic installations, embracing the ongoing nature of Downtown's redevelopment. The program will run for three years, and is funded through a grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is funded through Community Development Block Grants from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This summer BravinLee programs will present Rachel Hayes and Nina Bovasso on two different construction sites in Lower Manhattan.

In mid August, Rachel Hayes will install Rainbow Conversation at the Louise Nevelson Plaza construction site, part the of New York City Department of Design and Construction's Liberty Street reconstruction project, located at the corner of William Street and Maiden Lane. In Rainbow Conversation, Sculptor Rachel Hayes creates spectacular experiences of color and motion in an area that might otherwise be overlooked or avoided. Strips of opaque and sheer fabrics and vinyl have been sewed into striped panels. These materials are not only objects with boundless properties for manipulation, but also historical signifiers of gender, fashion, decoration and gesture. Hayes' installation will transform the 41 aluminum fences that surround the construction zone into a sensual and vibrant experience, building experimental multihued landscapes with line and light. Some of the pieces will flutter in the wind so that one will see both movement and color from either end of the Plaza, beckoning the viewer to move around it. Hayes is interested in the deep conversation going on behind the fence, consisting of mostly grueling and heavy activity, engineered with giant machines. Rainbow Conversation has been just as carefully engineered as the construction going on behind it: Each piece was meticulously hand-sewn, and incorporates not only Hayes' own physical labor, but also that of family and friends, including both her mother and mother-in-law. According to Hayes, "It is almost as if my work doesn't care what is going on behind it, yet I am responding to the construction site, offering sheer windows to peep through and witness the hard work of others. It is quite interesting that all this construction surrounds Louise Nevelson's 'Shadows and Flags', 1978, a powerful sculpture by an important woman artist. It is almost cyclical."

Rachel Hayes hails from Kansas City and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has had solo exhibitions at Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge, Solvent Space, Richmond, VA, LAB Gallery, NY and Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM. Group exhibitions include the Sculpture Center, NY, Kansas City Jewish Museum, Grand Arts, Kansas City, and Fakespace LA. Awards and Residencies include Sculpture Space Residency, Art Omi International Residency, Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship in Sculpture. Most recently she was awarded the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship in Sculpture and will have a solo show 2010 in Cornish, NH.

Project management for Rainbow Conversation: Eric Sall