Ryan Humphrey, DCKT Contemporary, New York - Divine Objects of Hatred

Ryan Humphrey

Divine Objects of Hatred

DCKT Contemporary, New York

February 18 – March 25, 2006

For RYAN HUMPHREY’s first exhibition with DCKT Contemporary, the artist shows round paintings made to resemble practice targets in a variety of diameters. At first glance the paintings are seemingly decorative but upon closer examination one sees that they have in fact been riddled with bullet holes.

Ryan Humphrey’s negotiations of the pitfalls of capitalism and his existence within the contradictions of the class system are facets of his life experience. The paintings have been titled to reference adverse events with individuals, the pettiness of the “art world” and engagement with larger entities. Ryan Humphrey questions the assimilation of art within the home decorating industry and the use of artworks as accessories. The paintings are consciously benign and decorative yet wounded, raw, unforgiving and purposely devalued.

Ryan Humphrey will have a solo exhibition, Empty Thoughts, Lame Excuses and Decorative Lies, at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, from April 7 through July 2, 2006. Ryan Humphrey is included in the ICI organized traveling group exhibition Will Boys Be Boys? Questioning Adolescent Masculinity in Contemporary Art, curated by Shamim M. Momin. Upcoming venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Exene Cervenka @ DCKT Contemporary, NYC - America the Beautiful

Exene Cervenka: America the Beautiful

DCKT Contemporary, New York

January 7 – February 11, 2006

DCKT Contemporary presents EXENE CERVENKA's first New York exhibition. On view in America the Beautiful are journals and mixed media collages dating from 1974 through 2005 by one of the founding members of the seminal Los Angeles punk group, X. The exhibition was originally organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art and guest curators Kristine McKenna and Michael Duncan.

The exhibition features a selection of journals from the collection of approximately 100 that Exene Cervenka has completed over the past thirty-one years, as well as over twenty collages. Exene Cervenka’s journals combine rough drafts of songs and personal reflections rendered in a baroque calligraphic script with photographs, drawings and scraps of ephemera found while traveling as a musician. Similarly, the collages are created from found materials to form an interpretative composite portrait of the country she’s come to know through her life experiences on the road.

An icon of Los Angeles’s seventies punk scene, Exene Cervenka is known internationally for her work with the critically acclaimed band, X. Today she continues her musical career with X as well as in solo performances and participation in bands such as The Knitters, Auntie Christ and The Original Sinners. A visual and spoken word artist for more than thirty years, Exene Cervenka has also published four volumes of poetry.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Maria E. Pineres, DCKT Contemporary, NYC - A Rogues' Gallery

Maria E. Pineres: A Rogues' Gallery 

DCKT Contemporary, New York 

November 19 – December 17, 2005 

DCKT Contemporary presents A Rogue’s Gallery, a new series of work by MARIA E. PINERES. With her signature medium of stitched needlepoint images, Maria E. Pineres confronts media-saturated contemporary culture’s favorite guilty-or-not-guilty pleasure: the celebrity mug shot.

Celebrity culture exists today almost completely without boundaries. In adversity to the tightly controlled studio system generated publicity of Hollywood’s golden era, nothing today is off-limits. There is hardly any distinction between public and private - and the more private, stark, and embarrassingly real, the better. In the 1940’s and 50’s, readers of Confidential and other such scandal sheets collectively gasped a joyfully naughty, voyeuristic breath and eagerly wrung their hands at the novel site of police-file mug shots of Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra. The publication of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon (1958) furthered the airing of Hollywood’s dirty laundry into a cultish pastime and created an outlet for a scandal-loving subculture. Today, especially given the access-all-areas manner of internet-disseminated information, such images are commonplace.

In A Rogue’s Gallery, Maria E. Pineres captures an eerily doll-like Michael Jackson and a seemingly helpless Lizzie Grubman among many others. All are depicted in the police station after the initial brush with the law, yet before the indignant publicist denials and the ensuing round of post-release talk show appearances. In her new work, Pineres goes one step further from her previous series. Homespun grandmotherly needlework, already turned on its ear, is taken into the world of stars which have crashed and burned, darkly glowing through the atmosphere, onto the decidedly non-lunar surface of central booking. Both the dazed Nick Nolte and snarling Sid Vicious are given true VIP treatment: vertical diptychs featuring kaleidoscopic serial imagery of their respective mug shots with hallucinogenic multicolored backgrounds—a conscious mirror image of the windmills of her iconic subjects’ addled minds. We see a variety of emotions in these faces, rather then blank slates: guilt or embarrassment sometimes, but, more often, defiance, smugness, sweetness and, most often, rebelliousness.

This is Maria E. Pineres’ second one-person exhibition in New York. Her work has been shown in one-person and group exhibitions at DCKT Contemporary and, recently, in group shows at both Sara Meltzer Gallery and John Connelly Presents.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Timothy Tompkins, DCKT Contemporary, New York - Manifest Destiny

Timothy Tompkins: Manifest Destiny

DCKT Contemporary, New York

October 15 – November 12, 2005

DCKT Contemporary presents an exhibition of new paintings by TIMOTHY TOMPKINS. Manifest Destiny takes its title from a rhetorical document written in 1839 by John L. O’Sullivan which advocated the belief that it is America’s God-given right to expand outwards and dominate the continent in the name of economic and political security. On a global level, Timothy Tompkins’ paintings exist within the framework of the current political climate manifesting itself today where certain disturbing parallels and connections could be made between the Jackson Administration and the Bush Administration. From continental expansion to the current presence in the Middle East, the desire of this nation to extend itself outwards in the name of self-interest and protectionism is a defining and controversial character trait unchanged since the 19th century.

Timothy Tompkins begins by digitally altering his own photographs, breaking the images down to between 12 and 15 core colors and blurring the contours. He then uses high-gloss commercial enamel sign paint on aluminum panels to execute the paintings. The quick-drying nature of the paint, manufactured by 1 Shot, enhances its expressive liquidity and materiality. Often, the contours of the underdrawing and small areas of the aluminum support are still visible, as if the image is still forming.

The Interstate Sublime series of paintings take as their foundation a re-investigation of the Hudson River School artists and the idea of national identity expressed through landscape. The paintings began with a series of photographs taken during several road trips. The scenic environments range from mountain to ocean. With the point of view as that of the driver the viewer becomes a participant and conspirator within the landscape, in contrast to the 19th century ideal of simple observer of the landscape. In the past the emphasis was on the awe-inspiring and untamed beauty of nature. Now that same nature has been tamed and the landscape can be perceived as an inconvenience and something to be passed through as quickly as possible.

The Empire painting series plays with the idea “American Imperialism” as represented through the iconic building. The structure that seems to define the nation’s character juts syringe-like into the sky, at once beautifully imposing and increasingly pretentious in name, it is also represents a modern vulnerability. Referencing Monet’s “series” paintings, the Empire State Building is painted in varying light conditions ranging from sunrise to evening.

Timothy Tompkins’ work was recently on view at The 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan and in Oil Paintings at White Columns, New York, NY. In 2003, his work was seen in New American Talent: The Eighteenth Exhibition, curated by Dominic Molon (Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), which traveled extensively through Texas. Timothy Tompkins is in the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Mario M. Muller, DCKT Contemporary, New York - Heaven or Las Vegas

Mario M. Muller: 

Heaven or Las Vegas 

DCKT Contemporary, New York

May 7 - June 18, 2005

DCKT Contemporary presents MARIO M. MULLER’s second New York solo exhibition. The show consists of India ink drawings from "The Las Vegas Suite (2004-5)", ranging in scale from 48x68 inches to 26x40 inches. This exhibition marks the debut of Mario M. Muller’s Las Vegas Suite which was begun in 2004 and which the artist sees as an on-going series.

Drawn to the high and incredibly bright desert light of Las Vegas, Mario M. Muller offers a view of this tourist and gambling destination that transcends the fleeting glances a typical stroll down the strip might afford a casual viewer. Mario M. Muller’s visual paradigm has been to transform the instantly recognizable aspects of an urban existence and offer them anew, stripped of detail and feature. For this new body of work, the artist has departed from the human form and focused on the architectural details of a city where veneer replaces substance. Each work is a still life in high-contrast silhouette and shadow depicting building facades, marquees, artificial parking lot lights, and surveillance technology.

The largest scale drawing in the exhibition, LV #10, is of an ornamental cupola of iron filigree and rows of light bulbs as seen from a severe vertical angle, silhouetted against the stark desert sky. The immense amount of vertiginous detail acts abstractly when viewed from near and, as one recedes, snaps into focus.

The entire oeuvre creates a visual pendulum swing between the immediately identifiable landscape and an abstracted and narrow view of light and shadow patterns on three-dimensional objects. Throughout, Muller harnesses the high contrast and liquid nature of India ink to mimic the pooling and fluid aspects of sunlight. The strong horizontal proportions of these compositions are reminiscent of the panoramic vistas of the West.

Mario M. Muller’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; University of Louisville, KY; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Mario M. Muller was recently commissioned by the MTA Network Poster Program to interpret the New York City subway system and was named an Art in Transit commission finalist for the Kingsbridge Road Station in the Bronx.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com