Anatomical /Microbial /Microcosms

May 13 – July 11, 2010

Thursday, May 13, 6-8pm: Opening Reception

Tuesday, June 22, 7pm: Panel Discussion: All in My Mind
Dr. Joseph LeDoux, Dr.Andre Fenton, Nene Humphrey, Eva Lee, Claire Watkins

Curator: Maddy Rosenberg
Participating Artists: Brian Alves, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Travis Childers, Barbara Confino, Elena Costelian, Thorsten Dennerline, Mary Hambleton, Nene Humphrey, Eva Lee, Linda Plotkin, Barbara Rosenthal, Paul Tecklenberg, Claire Watkins

From the microscopic origins of humans to the pieces of our anatomy, artists examine the biological “us.” Elena Costelian, in her first New York exhibition, lures us into the complex hidden mysteries of the heart and the elemental heart of lead as Thorsten Dennerline enchants us with his etched bodily journey through a layered sequence. Stephanie Brody-Lederman’s whimsical book object hints at both Cornell and Magritte, not to mention Mr. Potato Head. With Travis Childers the eyes have it as they pattern the surface while populating it. Scans of Barbara Rosenthal’s brain, in one their manifestations, paper the walls, while for Mary Hambleton it is the full body repetition that moves across the surface. Eva Lee brings us along for the journey in her explorations of the inner drama of the inner body as Claire Watkins presents us with her sculptural yet linear interpretation of the functioning neurosystem.

Barbara Confino marches us off to a possibly inevitable not so distant future of genetic warfare. Brian Alves presents us with the word as virus in various mutations as Paul Tecklenberg‘s photograms play on our perceptions of life under the microscope by manipulating the mundane imagery of a cork. Linda Plotkin’s biomorphic abstract dance of a microscopic world dazzles us with the electrifying colors of the deep as Nene Humphrey quietly delights us with the subtlety of shape and color. These artists take us on an intricate adventure into our physical makings.

In the further exploration of the confluence of art and science, All in My Mind is an informal talk about the brain and the connections between neuroscience and art. Three artists in the exhibition and two neuroscientists present their work and discuss what is in their minds when they do it. LeDoux promises to perform a few songs he has written about mind and brain.

A catalog of the exhibition is available as part of the second issue of the CENTRAL BOOKING MAGAZINE due out in June.

Astronomy: The Celestial

March 4 –May 2, 2010

Central Booking opens with the Big Bang in its new space as Astronomy: The Celestial inaugurates Gallery II. In this exhibition, artists explore the universe from a very earthly base as well as a more cosmic one. Ted Victoria’s human industrial detritus amuses us as it hovers continuously above the earth, and Doug Beube brings us back down to earth as he has us “read” all about it. Barbara Houghton in her re–visiting of Galileo evokes an eerie channeling as Karen Hanmer turns the heavens into paper riddles. Mary Hambleton’s delicate lyrical painted world softens the blow as Ilse Schreiber-Noll brings us to a dark one, built up in layers of paint and scratched through. Eric Puybaret takes us over the rainbow with child-like wonder and Donna Levinstone calms us with her quiet passing of the day sky into the night one. With John Noestheden we find a brilliant universe dazzling us with the light from the darkness as Eva Lee weaves patterns of light that contrasts with the vastness of the space between. Susan Schwalb presents us with altar-like reverences for the beginning of it all while Carol Prusa delicately silverpoints a black hole and C Bangs combines the reality of it with the possible. Pamela Moore reduces all to pure form as Despo Magoni takes the personal and abstracts it into the universal universe.

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Anthropology: Revisited, Reinvented, Reinterpreted

Nov. 19, 2009 – Jan.17, 2010

Central Booking gallery presents, Anthropology: Revisited, Reinvented, Reinterpreted, an exhibition where artists explore the great cultural landscape of past and present, and take a look at cultures from the inside, the outside, and through the passage of time. Myth and religion are examined and turned inside out. Human events are placed within an historical context that may have happened, could have happened and the most fantastical ones that actually did.

Anthropology is Central Booking’s second exhibition from their series where art meets science; curated by Maddy Rosenberg (artist/curator) and Jon Coffelt (artist/curator) this group show features the work of 29 international artists. The participating artists are:

Pinky Bass, Sang-ah Choi, Paul Clay, Béatrice Coron, Mitchell Gaudet, Laura Gilbert, Janet Goldner, Karen Graffeo, Kelly Grider, Mona Hatoum, Christina Hope, Lee Isaacs, Kahn & Selesnick, Janice Kluge, Eunkang Koh, Chris Lawson & Leng Seckon, Max Carlos Martinez, Dana Matthews, Avery McCarthy, Antjuan Oden, Omar Olivera, Lothar Osterburg, Joel Seah, The Chadwicks (J. Blachly and L. Shaw), Elisabeth Wöerndl, Emna Zghal.

As you explore Anthropology, you will come across the installation of artists Kahn & Selesnick whose work provides a context for the impressive hypothetically “found” artist’s book, The Circular River, which is meant to document through text and panoramic photographs a Russian expedition of a century ago. Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw assure us that they take their role as keepers of the flame for The Chadwicks, an historical New York family, quite seriously, albeit with wit.Béatrice Coron, creates a life-size cut paper human maze for us to wander through while Janet Goldner, influenced by her yearly ventures in Mali, gives us a sequence of metal gates with text and image that are meant to be read as we pass through them.

From the years of studying the Roma of Italy, Karen Graffeo allows us to understand the unique culture of an otherwise private people, and the addition of books made by the Roma children gives us further insight into what their culture means to them as a clan. Chris Lawson’s collages made with Buddhist MonkLeng Seckon in Cambodia become a cultural record while transcending mere documentation. Lee Isaacs brings us “The Day Of The Dead” series that asks us to understand how culture expresses itself through the loss of loved ones. Paul Clay,who studied anthropology and therefore sees his work within that context, in his photographic and video work examines with the same rigor whether it be foreign cultures or ones closer to home. Mitchell Gaudet uses cast and slumped glass as a vehicle to explore our perceptions of specific religious practice and idolatry whileLaura Gilbert explores the family unit and asks us to understand how we react to each other as a culture and as individuals.

Mona Hatoum breaks down barriers to understand the domestic and how it is a microcosm of what we understand on a global level. Janice Kluge in her ceramics works within the confines of what many understand as domestic but turns these ideas on their head. Max Carlos Martinez remains haunted by the myths of the American west that his childhood was steeped in. German born Lothar Osterburg explores the myth of his adopted country with his photographs of staged sets of his own making that evoke the romance of the American Great Plains. Sang-ah Choi uses the pop-up book form in her own unique way, as a commentary on her life in America seen from the point of view of the outsider andEunkang Koh externalizes her internal memories, conflating her past culture with her present in her oversized book worlds.

Emna Zghal responds in her suite of prints to a little known poetic record of a 9thcentury repressed African slave uprising in her native Iraq that through failure still found success in changing the course of that nation’s history. Antjuan Oden’s approach is an organic one, adding pieces of his own culture to his work with found objects. The Austrian artist Elisabeth Wöerndl gives us a video of her response to her time spent in Chicago that becomes a musical integration of humans on the move. Avery McCarthy looks back upon certain photographs that carry with them resonances of high points in western cultural history.

Pinky Bass explores cultural mores as they refer to the feminine mystique in contemporary American culture and its relationship to other cultures around the world while Dana Matthews creates a large accordion book seeing the female as an iconic one. Kelly Grider’s archetypal and sometimes mythic work utilizes photography and delicate darkroom techniques. Christina Hope uses underwater photography towards an interest in a variety of archetypes as she personally conveys ideals of inclusiveness. Joel Seah through “The Hanky Code,” utilizes a sexual position charting system which harks back to the1960s and early 1970s, humorously playing upon the old archetypes of gay culture.

View exhibition map and list of works as PDF

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Natural Histories

Sept. 10 – Nov. 8, 2009

Central Booking is pleased to announce the first in its series of exhibitions in Gallery II where art explores science. The inaugural exhibition, Natural Histories, traces a range of artistic responses to an ever changing external and internal environment, touching on the mere presence of human intervention. The gallery is transformed into an evocative space that creates its own natural habitat from the elements of each artist’s personal response to their concept of nature.

Judy Hoffman, whose leaf-like formed paper book works can be seen in Gallery I, creates an installation of found materials mostly organic with a contamination of inorganic materials that “grows” out of the ground and walls to invade the space. The Swedish artist Leonard Forslund contributes a unique book whose textural pages beckons to be touched, unlike his more typically formal work. And we know how in Ana Mendieta’s work her own body became inextricably intertwined with the natural world; here in a rarely exhibited artist’s book she focuses on her etchings. Steven Daiber has long been dealing with the rawness of nature and the objects of rural life. “wrapped” in the symbols of human intellectual life. The artist team of Doug Baulos and Janice Kluge utilize the pages of a book folding them into something akin to a weather vane, allowing one to question juxtapositions within it’s subjective framework.

Holly Sears beautifully seen natural forms exist in a tranquil yet subtly ominous world where all is not quite right. Cosme Herrera interprets formal landscape tableau within the confines of his inlaid wooden mythologies. Josh Willis’s seemingly bucolic miniatures are whole environments in themselves but seen together create a dreamlike world. Robin Holder utilizes her stencil process in a layering and building of forms in deep rich colors that vibrate in her small scenarios. We find the quirky insects of the German silkscreen partnership of Helga Eilts & Jule Rump on various surprising surfaces. Julie A. McConnell’s stereoscopes of the great outdoors evoke a simpler time yet the viewer becomes a voyeur as we are inserted into the images. Sara Garden Armstrong multi-layered litorals are a graceful play of ebb and flow undulating and teeming under intense pressures of primordial states. The softly transparent cloth of Desirée Alvarez juxtaposes the bold drawn imagery with the delicacy of the fabric.

Mary Frank has long explored the natural world in her work and the human place within it.Tina Flau who is fascinated by her own garden in the outskirts of Berlin, uses a native historical German text on natural history as the impetus for her artist’s book, with each illustration becoming its own printed plate. Antonia Contro’s digitally printed collages selected from her collaborative encyclopedia were inspired by the floral and fauna of Cape Cod.Donna Maria de Creeft’s images collaged from text become incorporated into a series of flags and Michelle Wilson’s text becomes the soil for her plant as it actually grows between the bindings of a book.

Tammy Wofsey truly wishes the human form into a tree with her stark and almost life sized woodcut. Scandinavian Amina Bech’s perfunctory studies of tree structures as other worldly places through the use of the tondo seem somewhat clinical in their formality. The photographs of the young German artist Sandra Hartleb of trees in the night creates her own haunting interpretation of a similar subject. The strongly graphic collaged prints of Martin Mazorra reflect human social mores echoed in the aviary world. The seemingly innocuous proliferation of butterflies by Sabra Booth contains the disturbing subtext of their exploding male population In central Texas, while April Vollmer’s painted creatures foreshadow her print work as they ominously fly out of the sky at us in their amoral quest to survive.

Gerhard Mantz, of Berlin, with his computer generated digital prints that mimic painting, resonate with images of an uninhabited planet erupted in its hot and cold extremes. Based on scientific analysis, Heidi Neilson in both her own work and her collaborative effort with theWeather Station project interprets cool data in a highly conceptual yet still visually stimulating way. Chris Jordan documents more directly 6 days of a New York sky in his time lapse video taken from a Chinatown fire escape. The Austrian artist Elisabeth Wörndl plays with the forms of the human brain and their similarities to the clouds in the sky, as she playfully melds them together.

Zane Berzina insists we examine the physical world close-up, thereby drawing us into a totally encompassing specimen placed within small boxes as Travis Childers invites the viewer into a world that seems at once familiar in his use of known domestic and household products, yet relies heavily on our feelings of displacement.

View exhibition map and list of works as PDF