Jonah Freeman & Michael Phelan
"The Giving Tree"
John Connelly Presents, New York
November 7 — December 13, 2003
John Connelly Presents announces the first solo exhibition of the collaborative work of Jonah Freeman and Michael Phelan. In keeping with previous efforts, Freeman and Phelan use disparate means to explore the contemporary cultural landscape. References to nature, autobiography, popular culture and banal architectural forms are meshed into an installation of painting, video, light and sculpture.
At the center of the installation "The Giving Tree", 2003 offers us the holy grail of absurd 21st Century convenience in the form of a ready-made rotisserie chicken and BBQ. As the rotating heart of the exhibition, the rotisserie is both contained and reflected by the mirrored surfaces of the sculpture's core. The geometric intersecting planes of "The Giving Tree's exterior reflect and diffract the rest of the works that infiltrate the gallery space, including "Love is Colder Than Death", 2003 a large wall drawing of throbbing black and white lines. This reference to the synthetic manipulation of perception and space found in "Love is Colder than Death" is also echoed in a suite of sixteen small, colorful paintings on an opposite gallery wall, each titled after a different street name of LSD.
The disorientating, op-art vibrations of "Love is Colder than Death" are taken to the extreme in "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters", 2003 where two video monitors are matched tête-à-tête in a futile dialogue between technology and nature. One pulses endlessly with the black and white blips of 300 indistinguishable and relentless sonic beats per minute while the other captures a lone but talkative prairie dog in a desolate field. The dialogue between these two disparate subjects is both humorous and heart breaking.
Other sculptural works reflect the collision between culture and nature that is a central theme in the exhibition. "Soul Man", a sturdy piece of drift wood turned into an endearing sidekick with two small carefully placed plastic eyes; and "A Season in Hell" liberates nine resilient penguins from a cardboard box of shimmering faux snow.
Jonah Freeman's work has most recently been shown at the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York City; Public Art Fund at the Brooklyn Public Library; Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland; The Prague Biennale I, Prague, Hungary and the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.
Michael Phelan's work has most recently been included in "Social Fabric", Lothringer 13, Munich, Germany, "Painting as Paradox", Artist Space, "How Come", Stephan Stux, New York, NY, "High Desert Test Sites", A-Z West, Joshua Tree, CA., and at Leo Koenig Gallery in New York City.
JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.johnconnellypresents.com
