Tag: Coleman Burke Gallery
Trong Gia Nguyen – Domestic God
DUDLEY ZOPP ///
Hiroyuki Hamada
LUC DEMERS
Adam Krueger @ Coleman Burke Gallery
Coleman Burke Gallery is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition by highly acclaimed painter. The show will open on Thursday, January 14th and continue through Saturday, February
27th.
For the exhibition, Untitled (saran wrap painting), 2009, the artist has created twenty-six new works which
will be installed in varying manners throughout the gallery. Each painting is initially rendered on a
stretched canvas and subsequently cut out and adhered to a thin sheet of PVC plastic. In many cases,
such as in Fly in Ointment, 2008, Krueger then installs the work directly on the gallery wall, creating a
dynamic trompe l’oeil effect in which the image appears more autonomous than it would were it
confined to a traditional stretched canvas. Three additional works are comprised of figurative paintings
mounted to free-standing plywood silhouettes, installed in accessible locations around the gallery which
invite visitors to pose with each work while assuming the identity of the painted subject.
Krueger’s innovative installation methods and virtuosic technical ability can often obscure the highly
personal and emotional subject matter that pervade his work. In each painting and installation the artist
depicts a complex autobiographical moment or feeling, though does so self-consciously via the female
form. In Small Wonder, 2009, a woman with a shaved head breast feeds a packaged loaf of Wonder
Bread, symbolizing a fear of being able to provide adequate sustenance to oneself and one’s family, a
problem that has become familiar to people in every industry during the current economic recession but
one that has always characterized the life of the artist.
Krueger intentionally distances himself from each work so as not to distract the viewer from the universal
nature of the subjects, but also partly to maintain a degree of emotional anonymity in an increasingly-
ostentatious world. This reticence of the spotlight is idiosyncratic in a generation responsible for coining
the term “Art Star” and inventing Facebook, Twitter and the “blogosphere”. But although Krueger
withholds any direct visual reference to himself, the genuine nature of the subjects he so laboriously
portrays could not exist without intense moments of introspection.
Born in 1982, Krueger received his B.A from the Rhode Island School of Design and his M.F.A from the
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. He has shown in group exhibitions at the David Zwirner Gallery,
Marlborough Chelsea and most recently in The Open at Deitch Studios, Long Island City, NY. The artist
lives and works on the Lower East Side.
!ND!V!DUALS
NEW YORK, NY – Coleman Burke Gallery is pleased to present “The Outside of Inside”, the New York debut exhibition of !ND!V!DUALS, the highly acclaimed artist collective comprised of cryptozoologists and dumpster-divers extraordinaire Luke O’Sullivan, Colin Driesch, Meers and Dom Casserly. These artists play dual roles as both skilled artisans and mad doctors as they transmute found and recycled materials into surprisingly inventive anthropomorphic creatures.
“The Outside of Inside” is an installation featuring several large-scale and small-scale sculptures of animal hybrids, who much like their creators, vary in moments of antic disposition, excitement and complicity. To create a context for the sculptures’ anthropomorphic hijinks, landscape paintings in ornate frames occupy the walls with graphic paint-pen drawings of animals added to them, serving as a home and peripheral extension to the transgenic species beside them.
“The narrative is fairly open, it’s about living with these things, being transported into their world, even if just for a second.” – Luke O’Sullivan
Inspired by biological mutations as well as the mutations that are often exhibited by their favorite superheroes, !ND!V!DUALS’ installation pieces present a humorous but poetically lucid, ethical critique of genetically modified organisms and where this practice might lead. The playfully anti-social nature of the characters in their tableaus, while loveable in one sense, is also meant as a warning about the possible outcomes of fooling with mother nature. Like the products of genetic engineering, these characters, birthed by human imagination and ingenuity, could just as easily turn on us.
Its very difficult to reach a creative consensus in collaborative groups, something must be accepted rather than wanted…not with !ND!V!DUALS! A more Darwinian method is utilized, where one must coerce the other in uncompromised submission.
“The only creative arguments that come up are solved by Greco-Roman wrestling. We fight each other, in the studio, on the spot. The winner makes the decision. The loser lives with it and we go on. Simple. Boom.” – Dom Casserly
Individuals got its start when Dom Casserly and Meers, who grew up together in Holliston, Massachusetts, met Colin Driesch as first-year students at The Massachusetts College of Art, in 2002. Joined a year later by Luke O’Sullivan, who was studying at the Art Institute of Boston, their first joint project was a triple bunk-bed nicknamed Death Trap 2000.
Coleman Burke Gallery (formerly RedFlagg) features both emerging and established artists working in a variety of mediums and practices. Coleman Burke Gallery is affiliated with Coleman Burke Gallery Brunswick, a site-specific project space in Brunswick, Maine, as well as Coleman Burke Gallery Portland, a storefront installation space at Port City Music Hall in Portland, Maine.