HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

TONE POEM  June 1 - 18 | Opening reception for the artists Saturday, June 1, 6-8 pm

N. DASH, ELIAS HANSEN, MATT KENNY, ROSY KEYSER, ADAM MARNIE

HALSEY MCKAY is pleased to present Tone Poem, a group show featuring five artists that will occupy both floors of the gallery. The exhibiton introduces itself with seemingly humble materials–weathered wood, lacerated sheetrock, plastic bags, sawdust and adobe ground are all utilized as starting points. Between the hands of this group, these familiar components undergo varying acts of sublte restraint and active intervention. A variety of possibilities emerge from the materials themselves and to the potentials of painting, printmaking and sculpture. Seemingly unrelated objects begin to reveal similar appreciation and understanding of these artists’ worlds and rituals. An undercurrent of inventiveness, economy of means and commitment to hands-on approaches shines through. The tinkering of human presence abounds creating a splintered and ethereal narrative–at once plausible, eerie and at peace.

As an ensemble, these five artists evoke moments of angst and meditation that float through the spaces of the gallery in a grittily elegant dance. Matt Kenny skews the ubiquitous black plastic bags of New York’s bodegas by tenderly and laboriously inking their thin film and running it through an etching press. The resulting fascimiles appear simultaneously photo-realistic and arcanely abstract–elevating and keenly reflecting the spirit of their origins into ghostly indexes.

With similar sleight of hand, Elias Hansen’s seemingly repurposed, cast-off glass pieces are actually meticulously hand-blown works that the artist marries with rawly wired LED lights and salvaged wood from the forrests surrounding his upstate studio. A birch chair glows from the floor while illuminated beakers commune on the walls.

Rosy Keyser also sources the woods and fields of upstate New York for her paintings’ material. Thrust into the picture plane, imprints and remnants of beer cans, corrugated steel, sawdust, tarps, oil paint, enamel, and canvas form rythmic gestures. Made without a press Keyser’s mono-printing process is blind to her as she works and each iteration moves away from its original visage. On their own terms, Keyser’s paintings are imbued with a materialist spirituality that leaves a myriad of sensory impressions.

The fusion of place, touch and material is further evidenced in N. Dash’s linen, jute, indigo and adobe works. While she intentionally explores the means by which information and bodily expression can be embedded into her hand-painted materials, the works themselves speak a language of specific sites and experiences. Her restrained palette, and earthy grounds emote arid atmospheres which move at the desert’s pace.

Similarly monochromatic, though unaltered or digitally output in highly saturated red, Adam Marnie’s works return us to the city’s speed and aggresion. Using industrial printing and construction materials and intervening in the gallery walls themselves, Marnie frames acts of violence. In opposition to motivations of their Minimalist predecesors, Marnie’s works act as a constructed theatre in which to explore the tension between the artifice of presentation and the truth of action. A wall-sized piece of sheet rock is punctured by a single fist and trapped with its rubble in a frame marred by the flooding of Hurricane Sandy. Upstairs, flickering light creeps in through pockmarked holes and incisions in a piece that brandishes the immediacy of its marks rather than the slow-time of decay.

N. Dash holds a BA from New York University and her MFA from Columbia University. She has had solo shows with Untitled, NY as well as a two-person exhibition alongside William Anstasi at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, NY. Group exhibitions include, Abstract Everyday / Everyday Abstract, Curated by Matthew Higgs, James Cohan Gallery, NY; Ghosts Before Breakfast, White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Painting Expanded at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, NY. She has been featured and reviewed in Modern Painters and TimeOut New York. She lives and works in New York and New Mexico. N. Dash is represented by Untitled, NY.

Elias Hansen has had solo exhibitons with Maccarone, NY; Jonathan Viner, London; The Fireplace Project, East Hampton; The Company, LA as well as two-person collaborations with Oscar Tuazon at Maccarone; Parc Saint Leger and Balice Hertling, Paris. He has participated in recent group exhibitions at Peres Projects, LA; The Station, Miami;  A Pallazo, Brescia, Italy; Galleria Suzy Shamma, Milano, Italy, Western Bridge, Seattle and Palais De Tokyo, Paris. Hansen has been an artist in residence at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA and the University of Ohio in Columbus. His work has been reviewed and written about in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Art Review and The LA Times among others. Hansen is represented by Maccarone in New York and Anat Egbi in Los Angeles.

Matt Kenny holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has had solo exhibitons with Karma and Derek Eller, NY and was recently included in Water Feature, curated by Lizzie Wright and Shaun Krupa at Wildlife, Brooklyn, NY. A Real Bronx Cheer, Kenny’s collaboration with Dan Colen and Ron Delsner was recently published by Fulton Ryder. Feelings of Control, a monograph of Kenny’s works was published in 2011 by Karma. Kenny and photographs of his library were a feature of Ari Marcoupolous’ Area 51 Series. He lives and works in New York CIty.

Rosy Keyser was born in Baltimore, MD and now lives and works between Brooklyn and Medusa, NY. Keyser received her BFA from Cornell University and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had several solo exhibitons with Peter Blum, NY and her work has been included in the following group shows: Painter Painter at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, curated by Eric Crosby and Bartholomew Ryan; Pink Caviar at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Immaterial at Ballroom Marfa, TX, curated by Fairfax Dorn; Stubborn Materials at Peter Blum Chelsea, New York, NY; Her work is included in permanent collections such as the Louisiana Museum, Denmark, the Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK, and the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Keyser is represented by Peter Blum in New York.

Adam Marnie was born in Minneapolis and now lives and works in New York. He received his BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2001, and his MFA in Sculpture from Bard College in 2012. Solo exhibitions have been with Derek Eller Gallery, NY and his work has been included in recent group shows such as Photography Is, Higher Pictures, New York; Haley Mellin / Olivier Mosset [and Back Room], Untitled, New York; and The Perpetual Dialogue, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. The follow-up to SH T, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (a collaborative project with Dawn Cerny and Tuomas Korpijaakko), SH T II was held at Know More Games, Brooklyn, NY in April 2013. He is represented by Derek Eller Gallery, New York.

DENISE KUPFERSCHMIDT | NADA NYC

COLBY BIRD | ROSE SHOULDER | May 4 - 26, 2013

SARAH DORNNER | TRANSOMS | May 4 - 26, 2013

COLBY BIRD - ROSE SHOULDER
May 4 - 26

HALSEY MCKAY is pleased to present Rose Shoulder, Colby Bird’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Through laborious but simple efforts such as sanding, sawing, and staining, Bird has transformed various mundane materials into simple, elegant, associative sculptures—all functioning electric lamps. 
 

The primary medium of this installation is light itself. Bird’s photographic practice accounts for his overdeveloped sensitivity to—and reverence for—light and its infinitely variable character, temperature, and intensity. Bird eagerly reaps the ubiquitous utility of electricity and artificial light—the lamps are a fetishistic, perhaps even idolatrous, gesture that celebrates modern-day convenience. The bulbs run continuously, and some will inevitably burn out and require replacement. Bird is interested in the maintenance that the pieces require—his work often demands a continuous measure of labor from a gallery attendant, collector, or museum preparator.  The lamps are also dependent upon the labors of city workers distantly removed from the piece: the men and women who toil away at the power plants responsible for the generation and distribution of electricity.

As ardently engaged with the past as the present, the exhibition calls to mind moments in art history ranging from primitive fertility idols to Jeff Wall’s re-staging of the opening chapter of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man—the protagonist pictured in a cramped, cluttered room with a sea of lightbulbs engulfing the ceiling. Bird’s lamps also find parallels in rudimentary Paleolithic Venus figurines, not only in appearance but also in the awe, wonder, and thanks the votives inspired in their idolaters.

Rough and sometimes crude but socially and historically engaged, Bird’s project demonstrates a disposition for both youthful insouciance and unabashed earnestness. Although Bird’s work may seem to have a casual relationship to fabrication and assemblage, it is the result of countless hours of painstaking labor, rich with allusions to art history, and represents Bird’s intense engagement with contemporary culture.

Colby Bird was born in Texas and now lives and works in New York City. He earned his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Fitzroy and CRG Gallery in New York, Real Fine Arts, Brooklyn, Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin and Texas State University. His work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and was included in the recent exhibiton The Anxiety of Photography at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen and Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin.

SARAH DORNNER - TRANSOMS
May 4 - 26
HALSEY MCKAY is pleased to present Transoms, Sarah Dornner’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Culling from disparate epochs in design, history, architecture and mathematics Dornner’s work explores the nature of perception and its destabilizing effect on spatial engagement.

Comprised of two-dimensional works and sculpture, repetitive patterns and isometric forms are deconstructed and presented as pure line. Employing aluminum, steel, lacquer and wood, line is used to translate a two-dimensional screen into a three dimensional sculptural cage and back again to wall based powder-coated, hand-etched panels. This translated and re-translated dialogue is assembled and presented in a way that frustrates a clear comprehension of the environment in which the works are placed.

Fountain, the centerpiece of the exhibiton references a wrought iron screen, The Oasis, by Edgar Brandt. The screen is exemplary of Art Deco, a period that’s influence resonates through the exhibiton both stylistially and conceptually. In Dornner’s piece, perfect semi-circular bends radiate from a center column– metal rods flow as if propelled from a jet stream. It is an object full of potential, appearing as if it could be played like a harp–capable of producing patterns in sound as well as the visual patternation reflected from its forms.

Transoms presents the possibility of a frustrated, impossible, absurd or magical interaction between objects and space. Dornner considers this relationship in terms of the psychological dynamics of domestic spaces and the power roles embedded within. Through her works she looks to confound these dominant frameworks and suggest alternatives. Much like Deco emerged during a period of rapid industrialization and technological advancement–a clear parallel can be drawn to our gadget obsessed contemporary existence as our social lives are trapped increasingly in technological ether.

Sarah Dornner was born in 1979 in Valencia, CA. She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and later received an MFA in Sculpture at the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT. Solo exhibitions include Primavesi House, Bureau (2013) and Sarah Dornner, Casey Kaplan Gallery (2007). Dornner’s works have also been included in the goup shows Summer Whites, Rachel Uffner Gallery (2011) Sixth Sax, Halsey McKay Gallery (2012) as well as at the Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens (2013). She was recently named as one of Modern Painters ‘Artists To Watch’.

LAUREN LULOFF solo exhibition at Cooper Cole, Toronto
May 1 - 25

MATT RICH solo exhibition, Razors and Vapors at Devening Projects, Chicago
April 28 - June 8

Dallas Art Fair  April 11- 14

Booth C8

TED GAHL | Gin Blossoms