About
a group show on tendencies of young minimal, abstract, contemporary art, presenting the genre from a European and an American perspective. It examines the anatomy of abstraction through new innovations in painting, works on paper and installation, showing how young contemporary artists use methods and material to tackle the historical limitations of abstract art and by circumventing traditional precedents, offering a fluid, more organic re-interpretation of the hard-edged historical formal conventions. This show is a 2-part project, followed by *DAF - Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft* in June 2012, presenting the abstract genre from a modern German and contemporary American perspective.
DAVIDE BALULA Throughout Balula's art making practice - which includes sound installation, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting and photography and favours no one discipline over another - the artist examines and upends the straightforward nature of visual and sensory perception through the formation of new interactions between materials, space, time and ideas. At the core of Balula's work is the belief in the subjectivity of what we know. He pokes at, plays with and tests the limits of perception by creating a frequently strange relativity between materials and ideas, which, in turn, determines a fundamentally altered experience of what is viewed.
DAN SHAW-TOWN creates minimal and abstract works on paper using graphite and spray enamel with which he engulfs the sheets in a repetitive process of mark marking, coating and rubbing. These entirely covered sheets become a sculptural material with new potential, and are handled as such. Often becoming bent and folded before then being displayed, sometimes on the floor or on the wall with nails running through their metal grommets. Shaw-Town sets up parameters in which to create the work, and the primary goal is to cover the sheet, an entropic system of transformation allowing the artist to get from A to B within a partially controlled yet fundamentally spontaneous process.
LUKE BARBER-SMITH *STAINS, SCRATCHES and BURNS* The works *horizontal smoked frame* and *wet truck with nails* show the effects of fire and water on impressionable materials, captured in printed colour photographs. The process of creating and photographing stains, scratches and burns is a means to explore the idea of decay, as it relates to architecture and structure. The images position the act of photography next to the process of producing a creative object: the affected material. Through the use of digital media, the produced images are balanced and edited by the artist to capture a perfect perspective, resulting in a printed photograph more powerful than the object itself.
JIM LEE investigates painting as a three-dimensional object and maintains his ongoing engagement with materiality and space, physicality and texture, colour and form. Integrating painting with elements of drawing and sculpture the work challenges the confines of surface, line, scale and frame to expand earnestly upon a post minimalist tradition. Melding humour and sincerity with a confluence of art historical references, Lee's works are expressive and raw and reveal compositions with loose, material play. Jim Lee's work teeters between fallibility and accomplishment, transforming the pathetic into the sublime. His impressions combine the architectural and the innate, in order to reintroduce the day's detritus into dialogue. It's through these familiar objects and methods that make this work, penetrating, personal and long lasting.
SHORT BIOS
DAVIDE BALULA lives and works in Paris and Annecy, France and was born in Portugal in 1978. He studied at the DNSEP, àcole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy, France and DNAP, àcole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, France. Balula exhibits his work internationally and is represented by Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris. Solo exhibitions include *A Compass in the Eye*, Frank Elbaz, Paris, 2010 *American Wall Nut*, Fake Estate, New York, 2009. Also in 2009, Balula staged *The Endless Pace*, a human clock performed by 60 dancers presented in conjunction with Performa '09 and Fake Estate. Balula has presented his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions and institutions, including Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, Museums Quartier, Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art of Kyoto, Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami and Total Museum, Seoul. In 2009, he participated in the LMCC Residency Program.
DAN SHAW_TOWN was born in 1983 and has a BA in Fine Art (Hons) from the London Metropolitan University and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work is presented internationally, solo exhibitions include the upcoming shows at China Art Objects, LA, at Seventeen in London and Unosunove in Rome (all in 2011) and Drawings, Gallery-C at TEAM Gallery, New York in 2009. Group shows include *Surface/Tension* at Lisson gallery, London in 2011 with Kitty Kraus and Gedi Siboni, MOT Int., London and Pianissimo, Milan.
LUKE BARBER-SMITH was born in 1981 in Philadelphia and holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work is exhibited internationally in various solo and group exhibitions. Solo exhibitions include *Psychotropic Horizons* at Preteen Gallery, Hermosillo Mexico and *Dear Mother Earth* at Jericho Ditch, Virginia and *1981* with David Ostrowski, curated by Chris Succo at Parkhaus, Düsseldorf. Barber Smith took part in *The Kings County Biennial*, Brooklyn, curated by James Fuentes and Kidd Yellin.
JIM LEE received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 1996. He has had several international solo exhibitions including shows at Motus Fort, Tokyo; FDC Satellite, Brussels; Galerie Markus Winter, Berlin; Freight + Volume and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York. Additionally he has been included in exhibitions at Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; La Station, Nice, France; IMOCA, Indianapolis; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta; Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston and the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY. Lee lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, NY
