A project of Radiator Gallery, NY and Bäckerstrasse4, Vienna

Nov. 23. 2013 – Jan. 12. 2014

Opening reception: November 22, 2013, 6-9 pm

Artists: Rasmus Albertsen, Adam Frelin, Mathias Kessler, Olaf Osten, Judith Saupper, Raphaele Shirley, Borjana Ventzislavova Curator: Boris Kostadinov

Mind the Gap is a long-term project that promotes dialogue among artists working in the United States and Austria. It includes discussions, artists’ talks and two group exhibitions: in New York (2013) and in Vienna (2014).

Mind the Gap speculates on the idea that our time could be described as “technological Middle Ages”––a dystopian metaphor for swift technological advancement concurrent with the rise of disadvantaged communities and compromised societies; a condition of scientific progress occurring during crises of collapsing financial and outdated capitalist systems; an era which bases its mythology on technological products that do not provide any alternatives for reforms of anachronistic public models.

Mind the Gap also reflects upon social linguistics. Its basis is a “translation” of the sophisticated language of innovations into mass language, just as in the Middle Ages complicated religious postulates were translated into the language of the illiterate peasants through visual arts.

Finaly the project examines a great paradox recalling a classic dichotomy from ancient times: nature versus culture. An advanced technological society is impossible without natural resources, and constantly strives to fix its broken relationship with nature by offering artificial “natural products” to the consumer. The purpose of Mind the Gap is to examine the ways we perceive ourselves in the current technological, political and cultural landscape. The exhibition presents artists’ reflections that move between a personal approach and overarching metaphors, between the romantic idea of progress and visions of dystopia.

Such dystopia can be seen in the video Hrami by Rasmus Albetsen, who works with visual clichés harkening back to classic black and white cinema. Tension and a sense of mysterious conspiracy, secret phone calls and complicated relationships between the characters abound in the artist’s Hitchcock-like approach. However the mysterious building, the demand for logic in an illogical space and the perverse lust for unauthorized experiment in an environment where evil is master, are reminiscent of David Lynch.

In another video, Terranauts by Adam Frelin, a teenage couple finds and uses a discarded box as a means of exploring their own earthly habitat of Los Angeles. With text printed on it, the box appears as if it once contained parts for NASA’s Kepler Mission (a satellite searching for inhabitable planets). The piece’s new way of framing reality refers to the history of architecture––many Japanese gardens areonly meant to be viewed through a building that acts as a framing device.

Hidden Agendas is a site-specific piece by Mathias Kessler designed specially for Radiator Gallery. The artistʼs idea is to bring the place of energy production back into the realm of domesticity, to suggest that the urban environment today is the place of consumption. Cities are not a point of production anymore, but are rather sites where energy and products are being consumed. Kesslerʼs second piece in the show, Das Eismeer. Die gescheiterte Hoffnung, is inspired by a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. The 3D replica is placed in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator unit which is also stocked with beer. Das Eismeer provides a humorous comment on the global problem of deglaciating polar ice caps.

The work by Olaf Osten, Pendeln 090 (Pendulums 090) monumentalizes various casual and intimate moments, which he has recorded in a notebook, and reflects on the phenomenon of change of physical space in a digital environment. It further asks questions such as: What is the sense of time and space for two people residing on different continents when communicating through the internet? What would happen if they had to meet physically? Despite their desire they would fully embrace technology, by the very use of an aircraft for their actual meeting.

Similar to maps, plans, and atlases, which try to make elusive topics clear by squeezing them into a measurable scale, the series Socialatlas by Judith Saupper attempts to counter human fears with the help of a “technical plan.” Another work by the same artist, Oh, Sweet Suburbia … is an object that represents an altered layout of a typical village or suburban neighborhood. The piece comments on the modern cityʼs vertical structures that have replaced the traditional horizontal ones, thus changing the meanings of “personal” and “private” and exemplifying current political and economic hierarchies.

E-inTime2 by Raphaele Shirley is a sound and light sculpture which occupies the space between past, present and future, and between the realms of nature and science. The sounds are based on philosophical and religious texts collected from around the globe and in different times: modern time discoveries, science fiction excerpts from films, literature and contemporary news. Shirleyʼs second work in the show is an ironic game with the history of technology. A vintage projector is awkardly invested with today’s technology – an mp3 player and a video projector, in an attempt to reactivate the old machine.

In the landscapes by Borjana Ventzislavova nature is transformed into a symbol––powerful and impressive without further details. Depicting nostalgic deserts with a lack of human presence, We Are Nowhere and Itʼs Now and Itʼs Just Me in There and I Am Naked bring associations of cataclysm and catastrophe. Neon signs that have, absurdly, remained lit are the only remaining artifacts, replete with obscure and desperate content. Finally, in her installation Help, the artist materializes the desert and sounds a clear and unequivocal call for help.

Special Event, November 24 (Sunday), 11:30 AM / Artists’ Talk // Moderator: Boris Kostadinov. Special guests: Tamas Veszi (Radiator Gallery), Silvie Aigner (bäckerstrasse4).

The exhibition is supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst and Kultur, Austria

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October 25 – November 15, 2013

Opening Reception Friday Oct 25, 6 – 9 pm / Closing Reception Friday Nov 15, 6 – 9 pm

Maximus Clarke, Peggy Cyphers, Stefan Eins, Alyssa E. Fanning, Nancy Goldring, Alexander Heir, Nick Kline, Mike McLean, Gary Petersen, James Siena, Michael Taussig, Lisa Walker

Curated by Alyssa E. Fanning

Radiator Gallery is pleased to present Heat Chaos Resistance – It’s Time To Live In The Scattered Sun, a sociopolitically-conscious print and drawing exhibition displaying the work of twelve contemporary artists. The exhibition features examples of both process: artist maquettes that serve as a ‘stage’ for photography; watercolor drawings that work in conjunction with text as part of ethnographic studies taking ultimate shape in books; graphite and gouache drawings inspired by the graphic clarity of the print; and product: anti-war digital prints and posters; monoprints that envision a brief meeting with cosmological time; screen prints that explore a reconciliation between the spirit and physical worlds; etchings that offer abstract accounts of the human condition; pigment prints that find inspiration from news photographs of people in disastrous situations; and zines documenting a generation’s battle with the War on Terror.

Heat Chaos Resistance – It’s Time To Live In The Scattered Sun (the latter half of the title is from the Doors’ “Waiting For The Sun”) was conceived in the spring and summer of 2013, a period that witnessed a burst of political activity, from the announcement that levels of heattrapping carbon dioxide were at an all time high, to explosions of protest in Gaza, Turkey, to the global “March Against Monsanto”, to widespread protest in Brazil, to the leaking of U.S. and U.K. government surveillance and classified files, to bloody revolts in Egypt and Syria, and to the looming threat of U.S. military action in Syria. The heat of the warm months represented an incubator for activism as one event after another boiled over between May and October.

Heat Chaos Resistance examines the print, a medium with a history of sociopolitical content and context – from Kathe Kollwitz’s poignant prints depicting the tragedy of war in the early 20th century, to the direct action posters of ACT UP in the later 20th century – its potential to reflect the injustice and perils of the world around us today; to translate our state of despair into visible forms of protest and empowerment, to spread awareness, and to reflect, teach and heal.

Alyssa E. Fanning is an artist, writer and curator. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2008 and her MFA from Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey in 2012. Fanning has exhibited across the United States at spaces including White Box and ABC No Rio, New York, NY; Mortville, Chicago, IL; the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; and the Arts at Marks Garage, Honolulu, HI, among others. Fanning has curated with the Manhattan based curatorial collective, BROADTHINKING, and independently. In 2012 Fanning self-published her own monograph Disaster Off the Hackensack. Fanning has been involved in social activism since 2001 when she joined Bergen Action Network, Bergen County, NJ, a grassroots activist organization dedicated to fighting government and environmental injustices.

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Sept 6th – Oct 13th, 2013

Opening Friday, Sept 6th 2013 6 – 9PM

Curated by Marion Daniel

Artists: Chloé Dugit-Gros, Morgane Fourey, Benjamin Hochart, Florentine & Alexandre Lamarche-Ovize, Marion Robin, Aurélie Sement, Olivier Soulerin.

La Couleuvre (Saint-Ouen, 93, France) and Radiator Gallery (New York, United States) are two independent contemporary art spaces that organize an exchange. Two exhibition projects are being presented in New York (September 6th, 2013) and in Saint-Ouen, (September 20th, 2013): The Left Over Method, i.e. the «remains method» or what to bring with you? What do you move when change your location? How the practice transforms, adapts, changes radically – or not?

The concept:

An exhibition of young artists living in France will take place in New York. In conjunction, an exhibition of Radiator Gallery artists living in New York will be held in Saint-Ouen, near Paris. The goal of the endeavor is not to repeat the Paris show in New York or vice-versa, but to examine what it means today in an environment of globalization and virtuality to move from one place to another. What does it mean to move the location of the workshop, to move the place of one’s practice?

The questions asked each time are: How does your work change when it changes location? What is most important for you in the move? Is it a necessity? What does the move change in your art practice?

What do we keep?

A series of further questions was asked of the two groups of artists: What work do you choose to show when transportation conditions are minimal? How do you intend to show this work? How do you adapt it to the new situation? How does this work communicate the place, and the moving from one point to another?

Presentation of the artists from Paris in New York

Chloé Dugit-Gros (born in 1981) is a sculptor as well as a drawer and a video artist who is developing a video work that moves shapes and objects in front of the camera to create a kind of ephemeral sculptures always moving. She will present two of her latest video creations. http://www.galeriedohyanglee.com/chloe-dugit-gros

Morgane Fourey (born 1984) plays on the ambiguity between the object and its image and working on the issue of scam and truth – false items. In this recent work , she has worked on everything that makes the perks of art : Packing and particles, wedging plaster or marble cardboard, plasterboard , painted plaster. She will propose a specific project to Radiator Gallery. http://morganefourey.com

Benjamin Hochart (born in 1982) is working with different media such as drawing, sculpture and painting. He invented a method of drawing based on a musical approach (Dodecaphonies, Noise drawings, etc.). He is also working with choreographs. He will be showing some editions directly connected with his work processes. http://benjaminhochart.com

Florentine & Alexandre Lamarche-Ovize (born in 1978 and 1980) are a couple of artists adopting a singular language where plastic research mixes painting, sculpture, drawing and photography. They will be showing a graphic “diary” which took form in their studio near Paris and will exist as a different piece in the space of Radiator Gallery. http://lamarche-ovize.com

Marion Robin (born 1981) is developing a pictorial work that takes shape based on poetics of places. She is interested in the details of the architecture that she amplifies, remakes and diverts. She will intervene directly in the space at Radiator Gallery. http://www.marionrobin.fr

Aurélie Sement (born 1982): is a video artist. Her films are about architecture, worksites, gestures of people working, etc. She is working on spaces being created. “Poussière” (Dust) proposes a poetical approach of an intermediate location, where we don’t know exactly what is seen and unseen. http://www.aureliesement.com

Olivier Soulerin (born in 1973) operates his practice by producing paintings, sculptures, drawings and videos. His abstract vocabulary is based on a very accurate observation of reality. He will propose drawings and a wall painting in connection with the space of Radiator Gallery. http://labellerevue.org/pdf-d27artistes/olivier_soulerin.pdf

The places:

La Couleuvre i n Saint-Ouen is a collective of artists ( Frédérique Lucien, Philippe Richard, Pierre Mabille, Olivier Soulerin) and theorist (Marion Daniel), which organizes four exhibitions per year: an exchange with another organization in France or abroad , a carte blanche to a curator or artist-curator and a group exhibition made by one of the members. http://lacouleuvre.blogspot.com

La Couleuvre also has a library, subjective library, which hosts each projects works on paper or multiples and is also a white card to publishers (young Lefthand editions, for example). La Couleuvre organizes cinema screenings between exhibitions , two of the members being actresses (Elina Löwensohn, Romanian-born French-American) and a director (Bertrand Mandico).

Radiator Gallery is a venue in Long Island City that is run by artist Tamas Veszi. The gallery provides local and international curators and artist-curators an opportunity to work within a multi-disciplinary setting. Radiator recently partnered with the Embassy of Israel to exhibit a project by the artist Guy Goldstein and collaborated with Art Market Budapest to present works by Hungarian photographers. For each project, the gallery organizes numerous special events, readings and discussions.

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Adam Frelin and Rena Leinberger

Curated by Eileen Jeng October 25 – December 13, 2014

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 25, 6-9 pm

Radiator Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent photographs, sculptures, and videos by Adam Frelin and Rena Leinberger. By re-creating, displacing, and transforming seemingly familiar images, objects, sites, and actions, the artists construct distinctive narratives as well as explore the role of the mediums. With their formal qualities, these works subvert art historical conventions as well as cultural and societal expectations. The works conflate fact and fiction, past and present, and the natural and man- made environment. The title of the exhibition, From Within the Flesh of the World, is taken from Victor Burgin’s essay, “Monument and Melancholia” (2008).

nstalled on a diagonal in the back of the main gallery is Frelin’s outdoor sculpture Drifter, a tapered 14- foot long unsealed wood cylinder coated with layers of dirt at the bottom. Having first been situated in a cemetery, the sculpture – symbolic of a safety coffin’s cylinder from the 18th century – has absorbed its surrounding environment. It bridges the uncanny divide between the living and deceased as well as reality and fiction.

Kodamazothgolemnkiski consists of a series of close up photographs of anthropomorphic, totemic sculptures of blackened gum that Frelin scraped off the sidewalks of New York. At a distance, these objects resemble primitive prehistoric figures. The video Firefall is a re-creation of an epic event that took place in Yosemite National Park until the 1960s, where hot embers were shoveled over a cliff, resembling a vivid red waterfall.

Leinberger focuses on the intrigue of the spectacle in relation to constructed and demolished environments in her work. Her Zero Panorama series was inspired by an image she found while searching for historical explosions on the Internet – one of naval officers and one of the wives cutting into a cake to celebrate a nuclear testing site – which was deemed obscene by The Washington Post. Leinberger’s black and white photographs are of re-creations of iconic images, such as the historical explosions of Nagasaki and the Challenger, but in cake frosting. The artist explores the “seduction of the spectacle” of both of the explosion and frosting as well as the dichotomy between the rational and absurd.

In Utopias, Unmoored, Leinberger creates a series of photographs and videos of small-scale islands of urban settings constructed out of unstable and inexpensive materials – foam, colored paper, wood pieces – in the water. Leinberger obscures referential details of location. She examines the relationship between architecture, landscape, and societal interventions as well as failure theory in building materials.

About the Artists

Adam Frelin’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Las Cruces Museum of Fine Art; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Recent group shows have been held at Sculpture Center, Cleveland; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; Columbus Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and part of a screening at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Frelin has published two photography books and has had several public artworks commissioned throughout the world. He received a BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Art at the SUNY University at Albany, and he lives in Troy, NY.

Rena Leinberger’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gallery 400 at University of Illinois at Chicago, and Evanston Art Center, and in a commissioned public project by NYC DOT’s Urban Art Program in Queens. Her work has been included in group shows internationally in Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. Recent group shows have been at the Queens Museum; Bronx Museum of the Arts; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids; and Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz. Leinberger received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she lives and works in New York.

About the Curator

Eileen Jeng is an independent curator and writer and the archivist at Sperone Westwater in New York. Her recent projects include Suddenly, There: Discovery of the Find at Garis & Hahn in New York, Break/Step at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, and Facture at AIRPLANE in Brooklyn, among others. She was involved in various other exhibitions, including Out to See at the South Street Seaport and FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. She was a research assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. 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.

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Video+Sound Art Exhibition

March 21st-April 25th, 2014

Open Fridays and Sundays 12-6 pm or by appointment

OPENING PARTY: Friday, March 21, 6-9PM

Artists: Danielle de Picciotto and Alex Hacke Sam Marlow and Alon Cohen Nicole Antebi and Laura Ortman Kitzinger Gabor and Alex Hamadey Shir Lieberman, Jonathan Phelps and Fabio Fonda United VJs, Jim Ellis

Curated by Leo Kuelbs and Karl Erickson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“Submerged!” is a new seven-channel video+sound art exhibition based on three short stories by co-curator Leo Kuelbs, making its North American debut at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, NYC. Considered seven pieces of a whole, “Submerged!” brings artists from a variety of backgrounds together to react to the stories, minimizing narrative aspects while amplifying personal response. The result is a presentation of multi-faceted, dynamic perspectives creating a setting and an almost tangible realization of the subconscious. Eyewitness accounts of fictitious happenings, observed through the psyche of the protagonists are blown apart, the reconstituted fragments then put to sound in this series of collaborative works. Digital and hand-drawn animations mix with overlaid imagery and camera-based work to further envelope the viewer in the “Submerged!” experience.

Curators Karl Erickson and Leo Kuelbs have presented works all over the world including: “The Decelerator” and “A Wake: Still Lives and Moving Images,” as well as numerous public and marketing art events including “Blueprints and Perspectives” (Dallas, 2013), “Codex Dynamic” (NYC, 2012) and “Divine Coalescence” for Dom Perignon (Berlin 2012). Concentrating on conceptual and new media art, Karl Erickson has been involved in the NYC art scene as an artist recently exhibiting at The Center for Strategic Art and Agriculture and Winter Shack, as a resident at LMCC’s Swing Space, and as the Executive Director of Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn.

Radiator Gallery, located in Long Island City, NYC, has continuously presented a cutting-edge program of conceptual and international works. With its ingenious integration of gallery and studio spaces, Radiator not only presents, butalso develops new artists and ideas for the international arts community. Innovative programming also moves beyond Radiator’s walls. International exchanges and off-site collaborations round out Radiator’s ambitious program.

Interesting Artist Notes:

*Contributing a soundtrack to “Submerged!” is Alex Hacke of Einsturzende Neubauten and other groups who is married to artist and author Danielle de Picciotto who also contributes to the show.

*Shir Lieberman is not only a talented animator, she also creates films for textile artist OLEK.

*Jim Ellis’ work has appeared in movies like Terrance Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”

*“Submerged!” artists come from Brazil, Germany, Hungary, The US, Israel, Italy and Native America, making it a truly international show.

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Opening Jan 23 6-9pm
Show Jan 23 – Feb 27 2015
Special Event: Reading Feb 8 2-4 pm

Artists: Micah Danges, Jamie Diamond, Jeff Fichera, Maria Lynch, Elisabeth Smolarz, Weston Teruya & Andrea Wolf.

Writers: Hossannah Asuncion, Christian Hawkey, Hari Kunzru, Ann Neumann & Uljana Wolf.

Curated by: Elisabeth Smolarz and Jamie Diamond

Radiator Arts is pleased to present cake, dolls, gift bags and other things; a group exhibition of the works of Micah Danges, Jamie Diamond, Jeff Fichera, Maria Lynch, Elisabeth Smolarz, Weston Teruya & Andrea Wolf. Employing a variety of media including photography, painting, sculpture and video, each of the artists in this show examines object-hood and it’s relationship to representation, the uncanny and memory.

Our everyday lives are populated and beautified by objects: we collect, organize and fetishize. They are symbols of our desires, surfaces for our projections and vehicles for our memories. By collaborating, constructing, displacing and documenting, each of the works in the show tempts to subvert our vernacular relationship to objects, collapse the temporary and permanent, past and present narratives and confuse ideas of fact and fiction.

Weston Teruya’s sculptures are based on interviews with members of the New York firefighting community. Utilizing spray paint and drawing media on paper, Teruya recreates everyday objects based on these interviews. The final work: a reconstructed cake, sink and an air tank, become symbols of the history of activism which enabled women to join the department in 1982 and continued struggles for more equitable representation today.

In Nine Months of Reborning, Jamie Diamond photographs sculptures of fictional children. The series documents her entry into the Reborn community over nine months and the making of nine dolls. Each hyper-real doll is photographed on completion before being put up for adoption on eBay and recirculated within the community.

Maria Lynch’s sculptural works are psychologically charged and investigate child’s play, fear,and memory. Lynch’s colorful stuffed animal like sculptures engage with a fantasy world where figures exist on the border of abstraction and are suspended like fetishized shrines.

Elisabeth Smolarz utilizes objects as portals to memory by collaborating with individuals to create shrine like installations of their own objects in their home environments. Smolarz’s photographs are loaded with personal meaning and codes. The installation of their precious objects tells the story of each individual, and forms a series of intricate non-concrete portraits.

Andrea Wolf’s video in which a photograph is slowly decomposed through a pixel sorting algorithmic manipulation process investigates our relationship to images, memory and time. Symbolic for the tension between remembering and forgetting the video shows a found photograph as an object which was produced in order to index a lived experience, which functions as a dynamic trigger of perception through which remembrance is activated.

Jeff Fichera’s photo realistic paintings inspire questions of expectation and desire. His works depict the beauty and fascination of detritus, banal objects and gift packaging, immortalizing each object’s unique narrative through the dents and dings in what was once a pristine and structured surface.

In, 2 Towels, Micah Danges’s documents two isolated objects, towel and sand, into one single photographic frame, creating a disorientating tromp l’oeil effect. Danges manipulates photographs beyond the two-dimensional print creating a visceral relationship with the final sculptural image and the viewer.

About the Curators: Jamie Diamond and Elisabeth Smolarz are visual artist based in New York.

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January 27th – February 18th, 2012

Curated by: Jean-Michel Ross

The second event will present the work of the following artists:

Itziar Barrio (Bilbao-New York)
Alex Clark (North Jersey)
Petros Chrisostomou (London-New York)
Gabriela Galvan (Mexico-New York)
Sarah Greig (Montreal)
Milutin Gubash (Montreal)
Theresa Mastroiacovo (Montreal)
Ève K. Tremblay (Montreal-New York-Berlin)
Kim Waldron (Montreal)

The second event will be a group show of artists that have contributed in defining the platform that is Galerie Thomas Henry Ross art contemporain. After two and a half months of research in residence at ISCP, it is now time to work, play and display artworks that have had an impact on the creation of this pop-up gallery. Gallery Radiator, a newly constituted space that defines itself as a radical mediator for the arts, has generously opened its doors for the project by providing a physical space for the exhibition. This collaboration will be the first official show of this new actor on the New York scene situated about two minutes from PS1 MOMA.

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