Main Gallery: Dan Voinea // Project Room: Adam Brent

Main Gallery: "BLINDSCAPE: THERE FROM WHERE NOTHING CAN BE SEEN" // Project Room: "HYPER PRISMATIC MESH"

October 12, 2018 to November 11, 2018
Opening reception October 12, 2018, 7-9 PM

Click for more information on Adam Brent or Dan Voinea

MAIN GALLERY:

Dan Voinea

Blindscape: There from Where Nothing Can Be Seen

Oct. 12 - Nov. 11, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 12, 7-9 PM

Slag Gallery is pleased to present in the main gallery Blindscape: There from Where Nothing Can Be Seen, a new series of works by Dan Voinea.  In this body of work, Voinea addresses photophobia as an allegory of a crisis of the sight - as confusion syndrome: inability to focus a reality. The sight no longer has a point of support. The world has become an informal and confusing magma of suggestions, impressions, concepts, and sensations. Photophobia also alludes to the runaway from visibility and to the anxiety resented in contact with a disturbing, discordant, atonal and inconsistent reality, in which man no longer finds a vital center.

Dan Voinea paints invisible spaces and a state of existential baffling. It refers to the condition of the contemporary man, in permanent transition between various realities and media, captive without a goal in a progressively relative, volatile world, which lacks a primordial nature. The Simulacra, according to Baudrillard, replaces all the layers and sublayers of the world; we live in conceptual fields, and the representation successfully blocks almost all the access paths to what was once called "being" and what was called "world." They supported each other through a mutual epic that merged fiction with biography, yet that has vanished nowadays.

Voinea's characters are touched by sleepwalking. They are and are not present; they are disconnected from the space in which they appear. The style evokes the contours, the morphology and the dynamics of palpable reality and the impressionistic dissolutions of the image - which seems to break into emptiness - relate to the ambiguity of purely mental representations whose vision is blurry, diffused, interrupted by shadows.  The protagonists in Voinea's works are captive in an objectless narrative, frozen in the void. Their identity is as imprecise as the connection with the vague space in which they are placed. They have strange, sleepy appearances and seem to be touched by a state of consciousness' blindness. Seemingly depersonalized, they float themselves in virtuality. The rupture between consciousness and the environment - exposed elliptically and in a chromaticity suggesting noise and disorder - shows the confusing and problematic connection the contemporary man has with a world that is becoming more and more prolix and inconsistent. Face expressions allude to Robert Musil's "Man without Qualities," a man whose identity is exposed to a continuous erosion process. "Is not the only spiritual deficiency that the spirit is spiritless?" Musil asks.

PROJECT ROOM:

Adam Brent

Hyper Prismatic Mesh

Oct. 12 - Nov. 11, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 12, 7-9 PM

Slag Gallery is pleased to present in the project room Adam Brent's most recent work, "Hyper Prismatic Mesh," a monolithic wall to floor sculpture which unfurls with winding grace, offering a sleek aesthetic to the artist's motley visions. Inspired by Julio Le Parc's seminal work La Longue Marche, Brent's sculptural assemblage combines new technology and a range of mediums to explore issues of nature, reflection, relationships, and structure.  The work's sinuous form is made out of extruded, and refractive 3D printed translucent plastic pipes which explore three axes via a seeping pallet of pink and magenta translucent acrylic stains. "This work is as much about new aesthetics as it is about intense material exploration," Brent explains.

Whether it is printing at different settings, painting the inside of freshly printed objects with custom-built tools and brushes, or utilizing a blowtorch to melt off areas for texture - Adam Brent's experimentation of this virtually unexplored medium has resulted in a body of work which pushes technology to its limit.  Brent imbues a sense of mystery in the material, to feel less mechanical and more dynamic as sculptural potential.

 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About Slag Gallery

Slag Gallery is committed to present work by emerging artists and to support and sustainably nourish their careers.  With this at its’ core, the gallery’s efforts concentrate on local and international exposure of works by artists in its’ roster, by providing the cultural exchange with art institutions and organizations, publishing catalogs, collaborating with other galleries, and participating in Art Fairs.

The artists of Slag Gallery have been included in a number of internationally recognized exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale (2001), the Istanbul Biennale (2011), Prague Biennial (2011), along with exhibitions at museums and institutions such as PS1 in New York; The Drawing Center, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Marina Abramović Institute, San Francisco; Kunsthalle Budapest (Mucsarnok); MODEM Modern and Contemporary Art Center, Debrecen; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; MKM Museum Kuppersmühle, Duisburg; Kultur Fabrik, Luxembourg; Brukental Museum, Sibiu; The Museum of New Art, Detroit; NJMoCA; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; Queens Museum of Art, NY; Birmingham Museum of Art: Boulder MoCA; the Islip Museum of Art, NY; Marfa Contemporary, TX; Kunsthaus Worms, GE; Kunstverein Viernheim, GE.

Slag Gallery was inaugurated in June 2008 in Chelsea, NY, and in 2012 the gallery moved to Bushwick.

About the artist, Dan Voinea

Dan Voinea was born in Brasov, Romania.  He received a fine arts degree, painting section, from the National University of Art in Bucharest, Romania.  

Dan Voinea's work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group shows, both nationally and internationally. In 2017 Voinea had a highly acclaimed solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Worms, DE and in the same year, his work was featured at ART@SAP, Waldorf, DE.  In 2014 Voinea's work was presented at Boulder MoCA, Colorado.  This exhibition is Voinea's second solo show at Slag Gallery.  The artist lives and works in Craiova, RO. 

About the artist, Adam Brent

Adam Brent received his BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1995 and his MFA in sculpture from Parsons School of Design in 2001.

Brent's individual and collective work has received critical attention from the Village Voice, L Magazine, The NY Press, Art Critical, The New York Daily News, Architect Magazine, Architizer, Artsy, Art Observed, and the New York Times. Brent also sits on the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Advisory Committee, and currently serves as Program Director; The BFA in Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design.

 

Main Gallery:

Title: Dan Voinea: Blindscape: There from Where Nothing Can Be Seen

Project Room:

Title: Adam Brent: Hyper Prismatic Mesh

Address: Slag Gallery, 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

Website: www.slaggallery.com

Dates: October 12 - November 11, 2018

Opening Hours: Thursday - Sunday 1-6PM

Monday - Wednesday by appointment

Admission: Free

Facebook: slaggallery

Instagram: slaggallery

 

 

Additional images and information can be found on the artist's pages:

Adam Brent

Dan Voinea