Pandemic Gallery Presents:

BOXHOCKEY!!!
The greatest game you probably haven't played yet!
Invented (or at least perfected) by Derek Pippin

Opening Reception:
Sat. June 18th 2011, 7-11pm
Show runs through July 12th


What the #%*@ is BOXHOCKEY you ask? It is a glorious, homemade, indoor/ outdoor game played with two sticks and a hockey puck. The rules are simple, score! Slightly similar in play to Air-hockey or Foosball but completely in a league of it's own.

BOXHOCKEY has proven to be the gnarliest party game we have come to know. We have teamed up with the Inventor, Derek Pippin, a rather sophisticated gentleman who came up with the original BOXHOCKEY, set. Bringing you a show of epic proportions all based around wild game play and having an awesome time.

Besides the sets we will have installed and set up for live gaming, we will be displaying 10 custom painted sets from 10 different NYC street and fine artists. Guaranteed to be a raucous engagement!!
Join us!!

Participating Artists include:

AV 
Dirty Deeks
 Don Pablo Pedro
Keely 
Matt Siren
 Scott Chasse
Stikman 
Tony Bones
Vor138
Wrona

Opening May 21st!

Pandemic Gallery Presents:
"A Time and Place"
May 21st - June 5th
Opening Reception: Sat. May 21st. 7-11pm

a group show of artists who make up  Mensch Kraft Gallery,

an online collective of artists living in NYC.

Sarah Morgan


"Art is often a representation of a time and place, this representation can be literal, or a much more abstract expression. This show embodies the celebration of a time and place. Where, in the artists life and mind, for whatever reason, they decide to create, and to share these moments. Simple in theory, the work of these seven artists is anything but. A multimedia production with painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and conceptual works. Uniting the styles of these artists as they show time. In it’s past, present, and future with places real or imagined."



David Pappaceno

Featuring:

Adam Payne

David Pappaceno

Jose Krapp

Sarah Morgan

Dante Geldhof

Owen Rundquist

Jason Alexander Byers

Adam Payne

Jose Krapp


Dante Geldhof



Jason Alexander Byers



Owen Rundquist

Leon Reid IV "A Decade of Public Art" opens 4/16/11

Leon Reid IV:  A Decade Of Public Art



Photography, sculpture and drawings exhibiting the span of Leon Reid IV’s public artwork, 2000- present.

On Display:
Sat. April 16 - Sun. May 8, 2011

Opening Reception
Sat. April 16, 2011 7-11pm


WATCH VIDEO HERE

‘A Decade Of Public Art’ is Leon Reid IV’s first New York City solo exhibition and features a new public sculpture viewable outside Pandemic Gallery. The show reveals a vast range of unpublished material associated with his well known public artworks. Sketches, maquettes and video footage flesh out works such as “True Yank” the controversial Abraham Lincoln intervention, “Free As A Bird” a sculpture installed on a prison guard tower, and “The Kiss” the cherished London installation for which he is most known.  Reid provides a glimpse into his plans for future public works, including his monumental “A Spider Lurks In Brooklyn” project, which recently received Fiscal Sponsorship from New York Foundation For The Arts (NYFA)

Listed as one of the “60 Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future” by Thames & Hudson, Leon Reid IV has been on the edge of public art for over 15 years. He grew up as a traditional graffiti writer (a.k.a VERBS) and quickly developed a knack for unconventional practices such as painting street signs and installing them during daylight disguised as a construction worker. His most famous work of this period is “Verbs St - Oh Yes I Did” a cleverly manipulated subway sign installed in Canal Street station, NYC. His experiments in graffiti lead him to move beyond the genre and pursue site-specific installations under the pen-name Darius Jones. The New York Times featured an article on “It’s All Right”, a subtle contortion of a One-Way sign and a Phone sign creating the illusion that the two are in love. Reid is one of the few artists responsible for introducing sculpture into the language of street-art, his techniques of installation combined with his humorous and romantic themes have made a sizable impact on urban artists of his generation.

Reid’s current work remains sculptural, highly contextualized and is often installed on existing architecture. In Norway, “The Great Recession” features a giant Kilroy-Was-Here styled sculpture hanging over the ledge of a local bank, apparently holding on to his last dollar.  In Brazil, “Bring The House Down” depicts a life-sized human figure made of chain, attempting to uproot the building pillar of a cultural institution. Reid’s latest works add striking visual elements to existing structures, the result of which he considers a true collaboration with the structure’s architect.

At present and through out his career, Leon Reid IV has designed his work to communicate directly with the public at large. He considers every site -be it domestic or international- an opportunity to create work that is meaningful and accessible to the community where it exists. 

Leon Reid IV’s work has been exhibited worldwide and featured in publications/media such as: Time Magazine, The New York Times, PBS, BBC, Radio National Australia, Good Magazine, Creative Review, Recharge and The Wooster Collective among others. He co-authored a novel based on his experience in graffiti and street-art “The Adventures Of Darius and Downey” as told to Ed Zipco” Thames & Hudson 2008. Reid holds a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and an M.A. from Central Saint Martins School Of Art and Design in London. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.




Sponsored By: Pabst Blue Ribbon

El Celso Solo show 3/11/11

El Celso

¡NO HABLA ESPAÑOL!

New works and an installation featuring Peruvian vernacular posters – and a diminutive discotheque

On Display:

Fri. March 11 – Sat. April 2, 2011

Opening Reception

Friday, March 11, 2011, 7-11pm

¡NO HABLA ESPAÑOL! is El Celso’s most personal show to date. This new series of works was inspired by a recent trip to Peru where the artist became obsessed with posters made in the “chicha” style. These hand-made posters line city streets all over Peru and generally feature an eye-popping neon color palette and commercial graphics-inspired lettering. They are generally used to advertise working class concerts and other events. During a recent trip around Peru, in 2010, Celso began collecting discarded and out-of-date fragments of these posters – known as afiches chicha in Spanish – from the streets of towns such as Chachapoyas, Chiclayo, Cajamarca and Lima (to name a few).

Further inspired by their look, he established contact with the esteemed Fortunato Urcuhuaranga at Publicidad Viusa (publicidadviusa.com.pe), the print workshop that originated this iconic DayGlo look back in the 1980s. (Urcuhuaranga is a former radio DJ and he originally created these posters to advertise his station’s musical happenings.) Based on the outskirts of Lima, in the suburb of San Juan, Ate, this renowned family-run studio has produced posters for countless local Peruvian acts, as well as visual artists and arts organizations around the world.

In collaboration with the Urcuhuarangas, Celso created a series of posters inspired by the Peruvian chicha style. However Celso’s posters are a wry play on the idea of the advertisement: event posters created for non-events. Since last year, he has installed dozens of these on the streets of New York and Miami.

His exhibit and installation at the Pandemic Gallery will feature these colorful pieces, as well as fragments of the original Peruvian street posters that inspired them. Also on display will be a series of intricate collages on wood that recreate the feel of the way these posters inhabit the street. Most importantly, the show will feature a diminutive discotheque – a free-standing structure that will feature light, sound and wild graphics. All of it will serve as a tribute to contemporary Peruvian nightlife culture.

About El Celso

Born in Newark, NJ and based in Brooklyn, El Celso has long running interests in comic books, Expressionist painting, public intervention and motorcycling. His work has been featured, on more than one occasion, in ARTnews Magazine. His 2009 conceptual piece “Art Burn” was covered in both The Art Newspaper and the Miami Herald. The New York Timesdescribed his 2008 exhibition, “Post No Bills,” a street art gallery installation in Long Island City as “audacious.” His colorful, figurative works are also featured in numerous publications, books, and web sites. For more information, visit elcelso.com

"Vivid Summit" Opens 2/12/11

VIVID SUMMIT
opening reception
Sat. Feb.12, 7-11pm
on display till March 5th
Featuring works by:
David Cook
Chrissy Angliker
Jessica Hess
Erin McCarty

  
A collection of work by four talented artists, all with a distinct passion for the skillful use of color. “Vivid Summit” is a window into the unique distortions of truth. While this collection connects each artist together in their bold use of hue, the recognizable interpretations of reality through the labor-intensive nature of their works is memorably distinct. Thus, collectively representing a body of work, where each artist’s individual styles are connected through the rendering of exquisite pieces using bold and vivid color. Delivering their distinctive interpretations of reality to Brooklyn and beyond.

David M. Cook
Born in Louisville Kentucky in 1972, relocated to Brooklyn NY in 2003.

“I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. In the last few years, my work
has been based primarily in pattern and color, using imagery taken from nature, the
occult, punk rock, and heavy metal. These influnces have been used individually in
my work, but in the last few years they have started to blend themselves together.
Because these influences have been running through my head as far back as I can
remember, the motifs I’ve used individually before has allowed me to follow a new
direction of starting to develop, and follow more of a narrative revisited as subject
matters in my newer work. In one of my last projects, the narrative was based on
the love-hate relationship between a queen and a two-headed king, in a mythical world inhabited by snake horses, 6 legged priestesses, and countless warriors.
It has been incredible for me to watch the quality of my work develop, and I hope
I’ve been able to achieve more quality in this latest body of work. In this newest
version, I find the birds living in a new world of pattern and color, and they have
taken on more religious iconography (another reappearing theme in my work) with
the idea of killing dreams - The priests and bishops of this world trying to hold back
the thoughts and ideas of the non-believers of their world, using mind-control, and
often times death, to make their point.”

http://dmcook.carbonmade.com/

 





















Chrissy Angliker

Chrissy Angliker was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and raised in Greifensee and Winterthur. Her artistic inclinations emerged at an early age, as she experimented with stone, clay, and found objects among other materials. Beginning in 1996 she was fortunate to study with the Russian artist Juri Borodachev, who became her artistic mentor for several years.  In 1999 at age 16, Chrissy moved to the US to study Fine Art at the Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts.  In 2002 at age 19, Chrissy had her first solo show at Gallery Juri in Winterthur, Switzerland.  Seeking to broaden her means of expression, she then pursued a degree in Industrial Design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  The skills she developed there, including three-dimensional design, relationships between objects, and creating character through form, continue to influence her artwork, and vice versa.  Chrissy's design work includes furniture, lighting, product design, way-finding, display design, graphic design and branding.  After spending her post-graduate years working in the design field, Chrissy's creative expression shifted back to painting in 2008. Since then she has cultivated her artwork in addition to her pursuits in the design realm.  Chrissy's work in both art and design reflect her spiritual, political, and humanitarian perspective.  Her work has been featured in several international publications.

http://www.chrissy.ch/

Jessica Hess
Rather than elegance or grandeur, my focus lies in structure, simplicity, and decay. In practice I work with photographs, which serve as both a reference and a starting point. My work develops from an accumulation of images and impressions of urban, industrial, and abandoned architecture. Some paintings are made with fidelity to the original source, while others are reinvented, compiled, and manipulated. Over time the works become subconscious collages of material and combinations of locations from years of collecting images and observations.


I am attracted primarily to utilitarian buildings where engineering takes precedence over aesthetics. Many of my subjects are vacant or disused, and beautiful in these states of neglect. Although the paintings are devoid of human life, the structures and sites I work with bear witness to a human presence and the dynamic nature  of the urban environment. Their surfaces reflect the visual call and response of graffiti, as well as the slower processes of weathering and deterioration.


My inclusion of street art documents and makes permanent these otherwise transitory public works. By painting graffiti laden sites I am participating in an anonymous collaboration with other artists and  giving a quiet nod of appreciation to street art. All street art evidences creative traffic and the time invested by others on my otherwise lonely subjects, adding color and excitement to otherwise dull locations. In reworking and transforming these locations my paintings further this collaboration of time, structure, and surface.

http://www.jessicahess.com/

Erin McCarty
Emotive, celebratory, dark, and intimate, my work highlights the unusual beauty of environments and creatures both real and imagined.  Influenced largely from the patterns and colors occurring naturally in the outside world as well as within our body system, my paintings communicate the excitement, grandeur, and terror of human life and the unknown. Originally born and raised in Valdez, Alaska, I now live and work in Portland, Oregon.

http://erinmccarty.blogspot.com/

"Trespass" Opens 1/15/11

Opening Sat. Jan. 15th, 7-11pm

Pandemic presents:

TRESPASS

Curated by Evan Robarts

 copyright Grear Patterson 2010

 A group show featuring 10 young artists working in different mediums and vernaculars. Along with the traditional meaning of the word, TRESPASS violates social conventions and openly engages in the taboo. TRESPASS places private moments in a public exhibition, where the act of viewing invades personal boundaries. TRESPASS questions established and preconceived notions of art.

TRESPASS is an action, a state of mind, an invitation.

___________________________________________________________

The show will feature a wide array of styles and mediums. Painting, sculpture, photography, video, and more. The artists themselves represent a new age of aesthetic visionaries and emerging inspirations. The visual mix, in perfect tandem, will provide a glimpse into a world of stimulating beauty often hidden from view.

__________________________________________________________

Featured Artists:

Korakrit Arunanondchai
Joshua Citarella

Julian Duron
Jack Greer

Sandy Kim

Leah Meltzer

Edouard Nardon
Grear Patterson

Victor Payares
Evan Robarts

______________________

Show runs through Feb. 6th

  Copyright Korakrit Aunanondchai 2010

 Copyright Evan Robarts 2010

Copyright Leah Meltzer 2010

___________________________________________________________________________

Korakrit Arunanondchai
Korakrit Arunanondchai was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009 and is now a first year MFA student at Columbia University. Currently living and working in Harlem, his current body of work explores painting processes, the mirror, his addiction to video games and fantasies of growing up. His studio practice incorporates late 90's and early 2000's video game logic and decision making.

Joshua Citarella
Joshua Citarella, age 24, is a native of New York State and a New York City based artist. He holds a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts. His recent work examines representation, often using the familiarity of the human form as a comparative framework to explore the methods through which meaning is encoded within the image.

Julian Duron
Hailing from Texas, Julian Duron is 29 years old and currently resides in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He moved to New York in 2005 to study fine art at the New School, graduating with a BFA in 2010. Julians creates multimedia instillations inspired by technology and the internet culture.

Jack Greer
Jack Greer is 23 years old and originally from Los Angeles. He came to New York 5 years ago to attend Pratt Institute where he received a BFA in Drawing in 2009. Currently residing in the East Village, his work draws on feeling of nostalgia. Whether it is comforting or depressing, the vast changes that occur within a persons life function as the foundation for his art.

Sandy Kim
25 years old and originally from San Francisco. Sandy Kim attended the Academy
of Art University graduating with a BFA in graphic design. In 2010 she moved to Brooklyn to work as an independent photographer. She enjoys
taking snapshots of her friends with an Olympus Stylus Epic.

Leah Meltzer
Leah Meltzer is an artist who works in photography, video art, sculpture installation and performance. While attending Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College in New York City, her work was featured as part of Bushwick Arts Project's 2010 Open Studios. She is currently residing in New Orleans where she has been working on larger scale installations.  Her work is a result of a preoccupation with art history, philosophy, and pop culture.

Edouard Nardon
Born in France, 30 year old Edouard Nardon moved to New York in 2008, he currently lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn. His work is a dialogue between the tensions generated by pride and weakness, emotions and attitudes, moral conscience and instinctive desire.

Grear Patterson
22 years of age and originally from Redding, Connecticut. Grear Patterson grew up in Hillsborough North Carolina where he first began shooting super 8 video and mini DV at age 13. He has studied at both Duke University and the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he currently lives and works.

Victor Payares
Originally from Miami, 25 year old Victor Payares is currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. After receiving a BFA in Fine Art from the Miami International University of Art & Design in 2007, he relocated to New York in 2010. His paintings explore the limitless visual amusement that is offered through the versatility and dynamic nature of painting techniques.

Evan Robarts
27 years of age, Evan Robarts was Born and raised in Miami Beach Florida. He moved out to Brooklyn, New York in 2001 where he currently lives and works. Receiving his BFA in sculpture in 2008, his work examines the relationship between the creative process and 

the materials he works with.
 

" Identifiable Reality" Opens 12/17/10

Identifiable Reality
H. Veng Smith
Oil paintings on wood panels
Friday, Dec. 17 - Opening Reception 7-11pm
Runs through Saturday, Jan. 8

In his first solo show, Veng takes us back to simpler times, to an era when things were made to last. Inspired by the artistry and work ethic of his grandfather, who hailed from a family of Swedish carpenters, Veng’s detail-rich paintings focus on the craftsmanship of the handmade. Embracing the handmade aesthetic to the fullest for this exhibition, Veng had custom mahogany panels built and crafted his own paints from simple pigments and linseed oil. Blurring the lines between the substantive and the imaginary, his paintings depict a world populated by a cast of stoic characters and whimsical winged creatures that interact with wooden contraptions more phantasmagorical than real. Drawing equally on the Old Masters and modern-day illustrators, Veng’s work possesses a timelessness not often captured by his contemporaries.

Born on Staten Island in 1981, Veng began studying painting as a young kid at a local art league. Since then, painting has remained an integral part of his life.  With his work, he looks to capture the feel of something made long ago, be it characters with old-fashioned appearances or objects with Old World designs. He depicts ideas in his paintings in a representational and faithful manner, yet conveys them visually with a whimsical touch.

Borrowing from techniques of the Northern Renaissance, Veng paints by building up multiple layers. His thought process for painting, however, is less traditional and very much informed by his background in street art.  He aims to make surreal impressions, with characters whose square heads are on the one hand very unreal, yet whose facial features are eerily familiar.  He enjoys depicting scenes showing the viewer fictitious landscapes of an Old World interspersed with contemporary qualities. Nature also plays an important role in Veng’s work. He shows animals in a more traditional manner, painting them with realistic colors and textures. Often he’ll couple animals with imaginary devices that they control.

Whether on a panel in the studio or on a wall in a city, through his work Veng tries to convey a playful world of mixed inspirations.

Text and photo courtesy of Luna Park, Photographer
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