PULSE Miami Beach
robert henry contemporary is pleased to announce our participation in Pulse Miami Beach 2017 taking place at Indian Beach Park, 4601 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33140 from December 7-10, 2017. www.pulseartfair.com
In booth S102, located in the south tent of the fair, robert henry contemporary will present an exhibition of two artists in the special CONVERSATIONS area of the fair, which offers a unique focus for exhibitors and visitors to explore new visual and conceptual dialogues between two artists. Our conversation titled, The Everyday Consumer, presents the work of Richard Garrison and Noah Loesberg. Both artists transform common ideas, objects and experiences of daily life into exceptional objects of rarified beauty. These transformations offer the viewer alternate perspectives and opportunities to discover the beauty in the banal, often boring and overlooked aspects of American life.
The Everyday Consumer: Richard Garrison and Noah Loesberg
Richard Garrison’s meticulous deconstruction and analysis of ubiquitous materials, objects and places from the suburban, most often consumer related, American landscape (Sunday newspaper sale circulars, parking lot colors, colors of product packaging, etc.) recontextualizes aspects of consumer culture and provides us a new perspective on commonplace objects, places and experiences of contemporary American culture.
In his series titled Circular Color Schemes, (puns intended), Mr. Garrison measures the amount of each color from Sunday newspaper sale circulars and then in concentric rings of color graphs the amount of each color in gouache and watercolor on paper. Each wedge of color in the circle is marked as to which picture of the product it originates from, like "frozen chicken" or "flat-screen T.V." The resulting compositions look like a cross between a reimagined color wheel and a Joseph Albers painting.
In his Parking Space Color Schemes series Garrison takes photos of every parking lot space his vehicle occupied over a several month period. He noted the location, time and date each parking space was occupied. Back in his studio Garrison, using gouache and watercolor, matched the color of each parking lot paving photograph and painted that in a grid with notations of location, time and date below the color. The rectangles of the grid are proportional to each space of the parking lots he visited.
Through a process of careful scientific-like scrutiny Richard Garrison dissects and restructures the color schemes of common everyday objects, places and experiences. His Minimalist compositions expose the beauty in the banal. Coupled with Hanne Darboven-like analytical quantification and qualification his studio practice offers us a thoughtful re-examination of objects and experiences ubiquitous to the American experience. This deconstruction of quotidian objects and experience is a personal, non-judgmental, examination of the visual, emotional and conceptual aspects of consumerism.
Richard Garrison was born and raised in Albany, NY and received his BS in Studio Art from the College of Saint Rose, Albany in 1993 and an MFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 1995. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA, the Queens Museum of Art, NYC, The Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY and the Elmhurst Museum of Art, Elmhurst, IL. He lives and maintains his studio in Delmar, NY.
Through shifts in scale and substitutions of materials sculptor Noah Loesberg recontextualizes items from historical sources like early 20th century builder’s guides, Middle Eastern illuminated manuscripts or bottle mold drawings downloaded from the Internet and our contemporary built environment. Common things, like windows, window casings, tire treads, patent drawings, often overlooked or simply ignored by most of us are for Loesberg full of beauty and rich with metaphoric potential. By transposing the ubiquitous into the unusual, Loesberg brings to our attention the pleasure of ornament and the beauty in the everyday.
Loesberg’s Bottle Mold series begins with patent drawings from the US Patent Office downloaded from the Internet. He then reconstructs the drawing three dimensionally in wood and sets that in a cast of polyurethane resin. The resulting sculptural abstraction reshapes an otherwise cryptic black and white plan drawing meant for informational purposes only into a richly colored object of uncommon beauty. This transformational process constitutes the essence of Loesberg’s studio practice and by extracting beauty from the mundane he asks us to contemplate our cultural assumptions and reevaluate what we think. Noah Loesberg’s exploration of materials and context offers us a perspective to see common objects differently and manipulates our preconceived notions of beauty and value.
Noah Loesberg received his MFA in 1994 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA in 1990 from Bennington College, Bennington, VT. He has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, a residency from Dieu Donne Papermill and was awarded CAAP grant from the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs. His work has been exhibited at venues nationally, including, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY, Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI, PS122, New York, NY and Abrons Art Center, NY, NY, among others. He lives in Brooklyn and maintains his studio in Ridgewood, Queens, NY.
