Thu, 1 Oct 2009 14:26:07 -0700

Iv Toshain is a young Bulgarian artist currently living and working in Vienna. Here series of recent drawings, paintings and photographs take a pointed and ironic look at an environment that mirrors the social codes with stereotypes, consumerism, brain drain, power exertion, frivolity, material life and reflects them back to her audience, beautifully slick and glamorous through a very dark mirror. These Images are layered with the underlying disturbances that occur in a culture that celebrates youth, achievements and worships physical attractiveness.
Iv has shown her work throughout Europe and the United States with exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Chicago and New York to name a few.

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:56:06 -0700

I was born and raised in Seattle and Edmonds. I began making music in my teens and soon changed to the plastic arts, working in printmaking, clay, found objects and painting simultaneously. Since then I’ve explored many media and have discovered that drawing is at the center of a kind of expansive practice that I currently enjoy. I have a strong connection to the Northwest and feel that my work is heavily inspired by the culture and landscapes surrounding Seattle.

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 13:44:18 -0700

Seattle artists, Eric Thompson, Aubrey Birdwell and Stefan Moore aim to explore the illusion of happiness and the reality of misery through their personal, American experience. The artists will be presenting new site specific, multi-media installations for this exhibition.

More from the artists below.

We are discontinuous beings in search of a simulation of continuity to subdue our fear of separation. The American home provides protection through encapsulation. In travel and as a form of rogue property we often carry with us a semblance of the familiar den. The box with a locked door full of comforts for us alone. We carry this capsule to contain our individual and separate existences even amidst so many others. Safety and freedom in equally moderate amounts. We reject and embrace that we are free-floating and disconnected from everything around us. We are exclusively what everything else is not. We are all discretely concrete and temporary, and it bothers the hell out of us, doesn't it?

In space and temporal media, these pieces attempt to re-stage our memories of what American life has been through our eyes. Through cultural quotation we attempt to pry open the locked box and articulate the immense void of American culture.

- Eric Thompson and Aubrey Birdwell

"I recorded this dude at a party. I really like that he was giving some guy a hard time for being a dick. I think it is an important social detail to think about. An echo of a moment. Repeating. Stolen audio from a man reprimanding rudeness and snobbery at a party. Newer audio overlain from around the current space. A temporal reframing of the past out of context. An audio-temporal prototype juxtaposed and mismatched."
In the spirit of social eavesdropping there are a few bugs around this gallery complex. What is said will be replayed on the street soon. The audio is always a past moment. A replaying of something gone."

-Eric Thompson

A huge part of my thought process as an artist revolves around other people’s definition of themselves and the world around them. The ongoing theme to my current body of work is re-appropriating popular definitions of happiness. I asked Yahoo! Answers for the key to becoming successful. Here is my favorite reply by user "dagmar".

I think you need talent but you also need drive and determination. Set your mind to what you are trying to accomplish and keep at it. Of course a lot of it depends on what you are trying to be successful in. If it is an artistic pursuit that can be a lot more difficult to succeed in than say, being a Dr. or an accountant. No matter what your goal, do the best you can and do it with joy and love. Make the best of whatever success you find and don't be discouraged. If you try to enjoy life and not get too caught up in 'success' you can be very happy and satisfied.

- Stefan Moore

Thu, 7 May 2009 13:32:04 -0700

Zadlo's debut solo show will present videos, works on paper and digital photographs from the past two years which explore the impact of constantly evolving (and obsolete) technology as it relates to film and video.

Across Zadlo’s varied modes of output there is simultaneously a sense of reverence (infatuation) for technology, as if it is a thing just out of reach but of great interest, but also a sense of contempt for it (because it doesn’t stay still), as if it is something unnatural in a natural world. Images and content from popular films, nature and daily life are re-interpreted through Zadlo’s literal filter. The when, where and who are thrown into the air, and he doesn’t offer solutions about how to bring the pieces back together. The work is a cause for disorientation and can be anxiety-inducing; however, it is Zadlo’s playfulness and attempts to be meditative in execution about who and where he (we) really is that lasts longest.

Taking a contrary stance to expectations and seeing through literal eyes to produce humor and layers of meaning is at the core of Zadlo’s practice. In the exhibition’s centerpiece, the computer animation, DVD Film Burn, we are presented with the image of a DVD and watch as it literally burns. Embedded within this work is the media confusion of analog (film) and digital (DVD), and also commentary on the nature of all media to fade away and become obsolete. As the DVD burns against a white background it eventually dissolves into nothing and we are left with an entirely white screen.

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:25:33 -0700

"Nowhere, Anywhere, Everywhere" includes works in a range of media (painting, works on paper, paper mache, and ceramics) that are a world apart. Characterized by open brushwork and a vibrant palette, the paintings and sculptures use basic means to explore the nature of abstraction and the creation of form and meaning through a variety of references including Modernism, American decorative art, and Asian traditional culture and art.

The paintings and works on paper create form through color. In "Sampler" (2008), a virtual catalog of painting techniques are used to create a kaliedoscopic effect of loose geometric forms over an atmospheric background. The "Reticulum" series of watercolors use multi-hued brushstrokes to construct isometric forms. The paper sculptures, such as "Studio Mountain" (2007) appear as if one of the paintings has been crumpled up, offering a multitude of new views.

The painted paper mache sculptures are abstract paintings in three dimensions. They are contradictory objects; an abstraction that exists in actual space. It takes the modernist maxim of treating the painting as an object to an extreme. These also reflect my interest in the tradition of ancient Chinese scholars to collect unusual stones that would be brought back to their studio as objects of meditation and metaphors for the land of immortals. Many actually would be altered or carved to seem more "natural". A famous story involves Mi Fu (1051-1107AD) who reportedly greeted one of his favorite stones, which he addressed every day as "Stone Brother" with a bow. I respond to that idea and am intrigued by the animism implied and it inspired the titles to my own sculptures, such as "Mother" (2008), and "Gege (older brother)" (2008). Along those lines, "Mother" is wrapped in a brown rope and blue anodized chain not unlike the shimenewa used to denote sacred natural forms such as rocks or trees in Japan.

The ceramic sculptures explore similar terrain using very direct handbuilding techniques and bold glazes. Some works retain the pattern of the canvas that created the slab, imitating the surface of a painting, while others are nearly formless accretions of daubs of clay.