Photo by Jason Fulford
Productive Steps brings together works that highlight their own production and, in so doing, bring the viewer into terms with the performance of the making itself. These works explicitly foreground the "bad performance" of materials which in turn creates a simultaneous seeing of the object itself as well as it's evidenced history / or "mechanical" production. This central concern here plays out in a diverse set of strategies that take a variety of methods and materials as their ground. Daniel Turner's piece starts with the pristine white of the gallery wall where James Hyde has repurposed the nylon webbing of a lawn chair and Jill Sylvia a sheet of ledger paper. Works by Zak Kitnick and Adam Marnie both take construction materials, a radiator cover and a piece of drywall respectively, as starting points in pieces that explore the intersection of sculptural and pictorial concerns. The show also includes a subset of artists investigating the material issues currently surrounding photography (John Houck, David Benjamin Sherry, Ketuta Alexi, Andrea Longacre-White, Asha Schechter, and Jason Fulford). Dani Levinthal's drawings round out the group and provide a more personal and visceral investigation of material use.
The show will continue outdoors with a sculptural component including works by artists whose practice has developed in the studio yet lends itself to outdoor installation by exploring more rigid everyday materials, including new work by: Jory Rabinovitz, Grayson Revoir, David Scanavino, Mel Shimkovitz, Nick Van Woert, and Joe Zorrilla.
About the curators
Lucas Blalock's work has been exhibited widely at venues including Eighth Veil (Los Angeles), Kate Werble Gallery (New York), and Art in General (New York). He has published two books, I Believe You, Liar (2009) and Towards a Warm Math (Hassla, 2011), and his pictures have been featured or written about in The New Yorker, Lay Flat, Art Review, Guernica, ARTnews, Fantom, and Time Out NY among others. Blalock is also a featured artist in Art 21's web series "New York Close-Up" which focuses on young artists in NYC.
Sam Falls (b. 1984, San Diego, CA) is a New York-based artist, with a BA from Reed College and MFA from ICP-Bard College. His work is shown nationally and abroad, including previous solo exhibitions at Higher Pictures, New York, NY; International Center for Photography, New York, NY; Ohwow, Los Angeles, CA; and Fotografika, Stockholm, Sweden. He has a few monographs of work including Color Dying Light (Hassla, 2009), Dans la Chambre Verte (JSBJ, 2010), Light Work (Gottlund Verlag, 2010) and Visible Library (Lay Flat, 2011).
Featuring: Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Jason Fulford, John Houck, James Hyde, Zak Kitnick, Dani Levinthal, Andrea Longacre-White, Adam Marnie, Grayson Revoir, Jory Rabinovitz, David Scanavino, Asha Schechter, David Benjamin Sherry, Melissa Shimkovitz, Jill Sylvia, Daniel Turner, Nick Van Woert, and Joe Zorrilla.