Previous Exhibitions 2012  > history
Exhibitions 7 January – 12 February 2012
TANTRA

ANONYMOUS TANTRA PAINTINGS

These small paintings on found paper are made anonymously in India (especially in Rajasthan) by practitioners of Tantrism—some of whom are artists—to represent and embody fundamental aspects of Tantra, a vast and complex spiritual and philosophical practice. Viewing or meditating on these reductive and essential images stimulates specific mental and/or spiritual experiences that are part of Tantra’s teachings. While the images are centuries old with highly codified forms and colors, the paintings are packed with such a high level of the artists’ intentionality that they continually appear fresh and alive. Despite their didactic function, they also have a history of being coveted, both in India and in the West, as decorative objects and abstract art. Feature Inc. began exhibiting these anonymous Tantra paintings in 1998, as a result of the gallery’s research into contemporary Indian artists and art.



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ANONYMOUS: tantric painting; Legend:
Shiva Linga
; Bikaner, Rajasthan, 2002
 
Connected



CONNECTED:
Ben Berlow, Mel Bernstine, Léonie Guyer, Bobbie Oliver, Sherman Sam


Connected is a concurrent exhibtion of works on paper by five artists not represented by Feature inc., all of whose work has been influenced by the type of Tantra paintings that Feature exhibits (there are other kinds of Tantra paintings that are very different). The five artists are: Ben Berlow, Mel Bernstine, Léonie Guyer, Bobbie Oliver, and Sherman Sam.

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SHERMAN SAM: SS-003-JWB; 2005-10  
JOSHUA HART

Upfront: RICK SIGGINS

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Arborvitae , 2011
Exhibitions 15 February – 18 March 2012
BRUCE BROSNAN: See, hear, remember

Bruce Brosnan's upbeat and pushy painted wood (mdf) cutouts sit on the wall. They are mostly object and very little ground, which allows them to be rather free from the usual space place context. While physically flat, they playfully and graphically locate their layers or sequences of highly colored shapes within very simple space. There are moments when the shapes or groups of shapes suggest identifiable things yet they are removed from much specificity by the simplicity of their graphic or cartoon-like qualities. I especially like how the artist maintains the explosiveness of the kidult experience, yet also quiets things down into dreamy road signs from or for the mind.

Bruce Brosnan began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 2000 and See, hear, remember is his fourth one-person exhibition witht he gallery. He lives and works in Brooklyn, has a BFA from Maine College of Art (19915) and an MFA from Hunter College (1998), which is where I first saw his inspired installations.

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  Burns with the Bark Still On, 2011
TYLER VLAHOVICH: recent work


Tyler Vlahovich has a BFA (1989) from California Institute of the Arts and lives and works in Los Angeles. This recent work is his third one-person exhibition with the gallery and coincidentally, we also began working together in 2000.

It was Richard Hawkins who urged me to visit Tyler Vlahovich and see his work, with the comment that he was such a "natural painter." There's lots going onhere, and while the competition between the elements is relatively peaceful, the overall also presents the possibilty of having one's identity or space being absorbed or pushed around by the encroaching mass(es). THere are moments of landscape to escape into, yet as the many many similarly colored marks and shapes are mostly flat, in tone and intention as well, they flip us back ito abstraction and the idea of parts and pieces all jockeying for the line up. The part-whole, separate-together dialog is pretty strong, and ditto for some quiet humor that, despite the somber palette, drives us to see the beauty and game that is inherent in how we build our lives.

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Tyler Vlahovich
  Wooden Command, 2011

Upfront: TODD KNOPKE

Upfront overflows with Todd Knopke's tumbling and fantastic cosmologies freely clumped and sewn together from scraps of fabric. He was born in LA, attended Virginia Commonwealth University for his BFA, has an MFA from Yale University School of Art, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

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TODD KNOPKE
  The Door, 2012
Exhibitions 21 March – 22 April 2012
MAMIE HOLST MAMIE HOLST: Secrets of the Universe

Mamie Holst distances her subject matter with the use of a limited palette of black, white, and gray. This helps the paintings close down on notions of illustration and, as well, expand out into diagrams. In the midst of all that, there are moments in the paintings that open the door to science fiction. Yet this is countered with a big breath of non-fiction as much of her imagery is gleaned from her experiences with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, and is so noted in the titles. The heavier textures, which are the most recent development in the work, bring a funkier and more eccentric expressiveness to the table that for me makes this work feel all the more urgent, personal, and singular.

Mamie Holst began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 2000, and Secrets Of The Universe is her fourth one-person exhibition with the gallery. Born in Gainesville, FL, she has an MFA from School of Visual Arts (1987) and currently lives and works in Fort Myers, FL.

Landscape Before Dying (Exiting), 2009-11 > exhibition images
JOHN TORREANO JOHN TORREANO: Impossible Collisions

John Torreano's most recent paintings are based on imagined collisions between deep space objects, such as nebula, with images/theories of or about dark matter. While the source images of nebula are actual and scientific, the images of the dark matter, which are from the Hubble gallery, are hyped, or even invented, in order to enhance a visual understanding of what they depict. "By combining these images/concepts of dark matter with images of various nebula, such as Orion or Carina, I find a place of working wherein I have to invent ways to bring these imagined collisions to some kind of painterly resolution. The chaotic nature of these imagined layers of impossible realities, forces me to invent things in the painting of the paintings, I wouldn't have a need for otherwise."

John Torreano has an MFA from Ohio State University (1967) and lives and works in NYC. He began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 1998, and Impossible Collisions is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Dark Matters Collide with Doradus , 2011 > exhibition images
JENNIFER SIREY

Upfront: JENNIFER SIREY

Upfront houses Three Holes, 2011, by Jennifer Sirey, a mysterious, fragile, alluring, and sexy sculpture with just the right slice of frightening.

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Three Holes, 2011
Exhibitions 26 April – 26 May 2012
SAM GORDON: trompe l'oeil

Sam Gordon has long mined his life experience for his work. The earliest works on paper, which feel half in the world and half in the head, remind me of tattoos. His photographs–which he calls thoughtographs–and his dedcades of sketchbooks push in and pull out of everything he does. Even in The Lost Kinetic World, his consuming, five-year-and-ongoin, hand-held cam documentation of magical moments in performance and events from wherever in the world he b, it is Sam Gordon who is there waving to you after all is said and done.

As the artist puts it: "This group of new paintings follows my interest in exploring new processes and ways to make paintings. Instead of taking the canvas for granted, I wanted to construct the canvas-old clothes of mine,canvas remnants, and paint rags are sewn together to form the actual ground on which to work. Using bleach as paint, the mark making is one of erasure and suggests a photographic quality. What is painted and what is removed becomeas as confused as what is printed or sewn. The paintings often include thumbnail versions of themselves as well as pages from my sketchbooks as inkjet transfers- these serve as footnotes. How the paintings are made is left to the viewer to decipher."

Sam Gordon was born in Brooklyn, grew up in San Franciso and received a BFA  from the Rhode Island School of Design. His first solo exhibition at Feature Inc. was in 1997 and this is his seventh solo show at the gallery.

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SAM GORDON

Blue Space, 2010



Upfront:
LISA BECK: To Here Knows When

Upfront houses a 1992 Lisa Beck Installation,To Here Knows When, which muses on the part/whole discussion that has permeated her work for over 25 years. It was initially installed in the Feature office in 1992, when the gallery was on Broome St.

A soft-bound, 48 page full color catalog of Lisa Beck's work has been published by the gallery; $30 USA, $40 international.

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LISA BECK


To Here Knows When, 1992
Exhibitions 30 May – 30 June 2012
TODD CHILTON TODD CHILTON: Steady

For the past seven or so years, Todd Chilton has been making intensely colored, personally sized, straightforward, geometric abstract paintings. "I build the paintings by layering hand drawn patterns that are always bounded by the edge of the canvas. The paintings exhibit imperfections that are a result of handmade patterns and geometry. This often heightens optical effects in the patterns, and serves to create a situation in which the viewer becomes aware of the experience of looking. I want to create images that convey at once a sense of ambiguity, purposefulness, and humor. At times they have a sense of openness on one hand and resistance on the other. I am interested in what happens in the middle. Meaning comes through determined imprecision, broken or sagging structures and the obvious hand that created the painting. This underscores the physical experience that takes place between a viewer and my work through surface, scale and optical qualities, which subvert, or sustain, a sense of balance."

Todd Chilton was born in Chula Vista, CA, 1977, attended School of the Art Institute, Chicago for his MFA (2005), and currently lives and works in Chicago. This is his first one-person exhibition with Feature Inc.

Steps, 2012 > exhibition images
ALAN WIENER ALAN WIENER: Sculpture

Alan Wiener's small-scaled, multi-leveled sculptures begin as a liquid and end up solid. Their puddled modular forms remind us of that magic. While standing in front of an amazing building or amazing person, I am often fascinated by the very complex and barely knowable process by which they came to be. These sculptures, which often reference both hi-rise buildings and something near to human, play with the recognition of that fascination. As one stoops or bends to zoom in to scrutinize the deceptive building process and its subsequent liquid-to-solid drama, the interior becomes visible and reveals the skeletal network that structures the floors of empty/full chambers. Along the way, notions of inside and outside unsettlingly flip flop. The move from the outer moist flesh to inner dry skeleton parallels the dynamism of micro/macro shifts these sculptures induce, and while pulsing through these experiences, they bless us with a bit of vertigo. Though structurally strong, the scale and materiality renders these creatures vulnerable if somewhat naked. As they stand exposed on their pedestals, their presence amplifies into performance and as such, we are invited to view, examine, dissect, appreciate, comprehend...it is a digestion of sorts.
Alan Wiener was born in Philadelphia in 1968, has a MFA from Tyler School of Art, Elkin Park, PA (1993), and lives and works in Brooklyn. He began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 1998, and this is his third one-person exhibition with the gallery.


Untitled , 2009 > exhibition images
BILL KOMOSKI


Upfront: BILL KOMOSKI

Two paintings by Bill Komoski hang Upfront and while both display his abstracted and complexly webbed space that is both geographic and aerial, biological and microscopic, the foreground of each is unexpectedly haunted by a loosely constructed masked personality reveling in its mixed messages.

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1/3/12, 2011
Exhibitions 10 July – 11 August 2012
DOUGLAS MELINI: A Sharing of Color and Being Part of It
Working with the contrast between a minimal palette and intensive patterning (a dialog that allows the paintings to be simultaneously quiet yet depply activated), Douglas Melini makes hard-edge abstract paintings that investigate color and space. "I like to think of the [aintings as being built, put together part by part, creating a geometric net for the viewer, a vibratory field." The paintings' fields are both solid and porous, and while they are primarliy constructed as a mental or physiological expanse, even a cursory review of their titles suggesta that one may connect to this work in a variety of ways.

The portal aspect of the paintings is magnified by the artist's recent addition of a hand-painted, patterned frame. "The frames (which function in more than one way) were created to reinforce the idea of an interior space, a space that continues to move back, deeper (not extending left or right or up and down) as they continously open and close. The frame also allows the paintings to be active from all viewing angles, giving them a sculptural prescence... In the short film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, we are taken on a journey through space, both macro and micro. The film depicts the relative scale of the universe in factors of ten. It is this type of space, a space that systematically continues to move inward, that is structured in the paintings."

For some time now, I've thought of my paintings as transporters, signposts, and images that allow one to consider how one sees things, helping one to get from one space to the next. The paintings reflect my interest in visual vibrations and how our body and mind respond to vibratory experiences. I believe that art can function as a decoder, providing insights into how the orld looks; a way of connecting the dots, and really seeing things."

Douglas Melini was born in VIneland NJ in 1972, has a BA from the Univerity of Maryland (1994), an MFA from Calfornia Institute of the Arts(1997), and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His solo exhibitions include RIchard Heller Gallery , Santa Monica, CA, Rocket Gallery, London, White Columns, NYC, Ursula Werz, Tuingen, Germany, Minus Space, Brooklyn, and The Suburban, Oak Park, IL.
A Sharing of Color and Being Part of It
is his first one-person exhibition with Feature Inc.


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DOUGLAS MELINI
That Purple Odor, 2012


Upfront: JARED BUCKHIESTER

Jared Buckhiester hits Features upfront with watercolors of a rambunctious squadron of footless (floating / flying?) cheerleaders that question the function, purpose, identity and gender of these creatures. Jared Buckhiester was born in Dahloneg, Georgia, lives in Brooklyn, has a BFA from Pratt (1999), and is in the MFA program at Bard. He has had one-person exhibitions with Rare Gallery, NYC, envoy, NYC, Galerie du Jour- Agnes B, Paris, and Thomas Rehbein Gallery, Cologne.

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JARED BUCKHIESTER


Squad D position A, 2012
Exhibitions 5 September – 7 October 2012
GINA MAGID

GINA MAGID : paintings

Gina Magid uses elements of drawing and a fairly dark palette to make paintings where both the paint application and subject matter feel lived in. Her brushwork is basic and straightforward and doesn’t go out of the way to hide earlier developments, and her foregrounded subject matter makes no effort to deny the obviousness of her entertainment of a pipe not being just a pipe. While all the paintings exhibited are relatively slow in tone and pace and compositionally cultivate moving the viewer’s attention and thoughtfulness into or onto the resonance of the object represented, it is worth noting that in the two figurative works, one a portrait of Nina Simone and the other a portrait of the artist, both are wearing rings that visually counterpoint their open and forward-gazing eyes that transmit back to the viewer all that they put on them.

Gina Magid lives in Brooklyn and attended UC Santa Cruz for her BA (1992) and Pratt Institute for her MFA (1996). She began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 2000, and this is her third one-person exhibition with the gallery.

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Big Cat/Poppy, 2012
JOSH PODOLL

JOSH PODOLL: paintings

Josh Podoll's most recent paintings are swirling and expanding atmospheres populated with a jumble of simple shapes and masses of various colors, densities and textures. Loosely formed, each floats as a mutable thing with irregular edges within the confines of the white canvas in much the way I imagine a mass of soup without a bowl would float in outer space—part animation, part science. Space generall opens towards the top of the canvas and a sense of weight or heaviness occurs at the bottom, yet there is no ground. Podoll's palette is limited and nears monochrome yet there are enough distinctions to move the push and pull over to micro macro. The more solidified shapes and masses moving through the splashes, bursts and gushes of the soup seem to be navigating under the playful intelligence of air traffic control. And every now and then I catch a glimpse of one of these paintings and it feels like a head full of thoughts.

Josh Podoll lives in San Francisco, attended Maharishi International University for his BFA (1996) and University of Iowa for his MFA (2002) He first exhibited with Feature Inc., in 2004, and this is his third solo exhibition with the gallery.

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Provisional Blanket, 2012  
JUDY LINN


Upfront: JUDY LINN

Judy Linn, noted for watching the world with a patient eye, will grace the upfront with some of her recent photographs. Playing off neighborhood shops with signs in their windows, two photos of building facades will be taped to the front windows of the gallery. Judy Linn was born in Detroit, has a BFA from Pratt (1969) and lives in upstate New York.

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Bud, 2012
Exhibitions 10 October – 21 November 2012

ALEX BROWN: Common Scents

Alex Brown’s work is playfully difficult to pin down. From a distance it appears representational yet as one approaches the image, it falls apart into abstraction. As one steps away, like an animation, the abstraction reconfigures back into representation. The edges of the repeated modular shapes that compose the abstraction are hard edge with centers like some candies, gushy or gelatinous. The representational aspect of the work references the photography of the found printed source material, and the abstraction references mathematics or the computer, though neither technology is utilized. Sometimes science pops into that discussion as the repeated modular form begs to be understood as molecular structure. There are of course other ways to enter this work, color and history probably being the most obvious, or in this body of work in particular, light. My main concern however, is that we go for the multiple reads and enjoy the 200% that the artist builds into them.

Alex Brown was born in Des Moines in 1966, lives there now, and took a BFA from Parsons School of Design in 1991. He began exhibiting with Feature Inc. in 1988 and this is his 6th solo exhibition with the gallery.

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ALEX BROWN
Concert for Hate and War, 2012


Upfront: JASON REPPERT

Jason Reppert was born in Boston in 1974, lives in Brooklyn, and has an MFA (2004) from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. His work is heavy on materiality, traffic cones form the base of each of the three sculptures on display, and while deep formal concerns are there, figurative, if not erotic, reference are also present.


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JASON REPPERT

Oracle, 2012
Exhibitions 1 – 22 December 2012
PUNT

PUNT
with the Feature family

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PUNT, 2012
JASON REPPERT

Upfront: JASON REPPERT

Jason Reppert was born in Boston in 1974, lives in Brooklyn, and has an MFA (2004) from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. His work is heavy on materiality, traffic cones form the base of each of the three sculptures on display, and while deep formal concerns are there, figurative, if not erotic, reference are also present.


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Oracle, 2012  
    
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