First Responders, April 5th – 20th, 2014 – content

First Responders

FirstResponders_installshot(Westview)
FirstResponders_installshot(Westview)

FirstResponders_installshot(Westview)

FirstResponders_Installshot(eastview)
FirstResponders_Installshot(eastview)

FirstResponders_Installshot(eastview)

FirstResponders_InstallShot(northview)
FirstResponders_InstallShot(northview)

FirstResponders_InstallShot(northview)

sam Mckinniss, The Quick and the Dead
sam Mckinniss, The Quick and the Dead

sam Mckinniss, The Quick and the Dead

Sam Mckinniss, Ghost Face
Sam Mckinniss, Ghost Face

Sam Mckinniss, Ghost Face

Orion Martin, Career and Magic, 2014
Orion Martin, Career and Magic, 2014

Orion Martin, Career and Magic, 2014

Ariel Dill, Glyph. 2013
Ariel Dill, Glyph. 2013

Ariel Dill, Glyph. 2013

MarleyFreeman_Bunny_2012
MarleyFreeman_Bunny_2012

MarleyFreeman_Bunny_2012

FirstResponders_InstallShot
FirstResponders_InstallShot

FirstResponders_InstallShot

marleyFreeman_And_2010
marleyFreeman_And_2010

marleyFreeman_And_2010

Kyle Petreycik, High Power,2014
Kyle Petreycik, High Power,2014

Kyle Petreycik, High Power,2014

Kyle Petreycik, Decade
Kyle Petreycik, Decade

Kyle Petreycik, Decade

Kyle Petreycik, Decade, 2014
Kyle Petreycik, Decade, 2014

Kyle Petreycik, Decade, 2014

Kyle Petreycik, Decade (detail), 2014
Kyle Petreycik, Decade (detail), 2014

Kyle Petreycik, Decade (detail), 2014

Katie Loselle, Untitled, 2013
Katie Loselle, Untitled, 2013

Katie Loselle, Untitled, 2013

Katie Loselle, This is a Story About a Witch, 2014
Katie Loselle, This is a Story About a Witch, 2014

Katie Loselle, This is a Story About a Witch, 2014

Eric Shaw, Untitled (Yellow Z)
Eric Shaw, Untitled (Yellow Z)

Eric Shaw, Untitled (Yellow Z)

Ben Horns, Daniels Shirt (2008), 2014
Ben Horns, Daniels Shirt (2008), 2014

Ben Horns, Daniels Shirt (2008), 2014

Eric Shaw, Untitled (Blue Squares) 2014
Eric Shaw, Untitled (Blue Squares) 2014

Eric Shaw, Untitled (Blue Squares) 2014

Deanna Havas, Found Abstract Renders, 2012
Deanna Havas, Found Abstract Renders, 2012

Deanna Havas, Found Abstract Renders, 2012

 

PRESS RELEASE
First responders
curated by Zach Smith
April 5 – 20, 2014
Opening reception:
Saturday April 5, 2014 7 – 10 PM

featuring:  Ariel DillMarley FreemanDeanna HavasBen HornsKatie LoselleOrion MartinSam McKinnissKyle Petreycik, and Eric Shaw.

Good Work Gallery presents First Responders, an exhibition organized by curator Zach Smith that features a dynamic group of works from a selection of contemporary artists working in a range of media. The paintings, sculptures and photographic prints included in the show are united in their individually separate progressions from a universally fundamental state, characterized, as most works are, by the sketch, specifically the gesture. First Responders seeks to expand traditional roles of drawing and works on paper as expressions, within studio practice, of that primary urge to draw, articulating contemporary evolutions of a first inchoate response to some obscure desire.

“Originally, First Responders was a show of works on paper. I wanted to loosen the general sense of that milieu and see where new artists fit in with it. I looked for near-platonic instances of visceral reaction – artists as trained practitioners, rushing to the scene of abstract crises. The end result would be a collection of outlier-works everyone’s broader practice wouldn’t automatically suggest.

My inquiry became all the more intriguing when I couldn’t figure out how any one person might approach this challenge. Do artists truly quit drawing as studio practices branch elsewhere? Is there still a pseudo-scientific impulse for order that never goes away? I figured out ‘gesture’ was the answer. Dumb, easily learned, and looking good in lobbies all over the world, gesture is for me the absolute. It is completely irreducible. 

It’s best to parse this idea as smart and dumb role-playing each other. Given the quickened pace of contemporary appropriation, lobby art could inspire serious painting. Painting can breathe a sigh of relief. In this endlessly post-minimal landscape, gesture grows evermore optimistic. And really, optimism is the core of what I’m getting at. The elemental is kinetic, not potential. The animate is there before it has something to animate. The same qualities skeptics of a work call vacuous are often what make it most trenchant. Every time artists find another way of transposing mass culture, knee-jerk readings of the work as being flippant remerge. I’m not sure there’s a viable alternative though. The prevalence of boredom, insouciance and spleen as key catalysts for emerging art is well documented. Reflection doesn’t guarantee thorough results. Impulse can be refined, but flashes of the uncanny are rarely if ever reverse engineered.

Besides, I can only “engage” with a work once I’ve decided it looks amazing. Maybe that’s just me, being of a pictures generation. Gesture now holds the same semantic function as ‘drawing’ or ‘works on paper’. Whether rigorous or not, It is goofy and good-natured. Ecstatic rapturous newness needn’t pay lip service to history. But it had best show up on time, before everyone else, lest the spirit of a moment flatline and tap out forever.” 

Zach Smith

Opening reception: Sat, April 5th, 7-10pm
Open for Viewing: Sat and Sun, April 5 – 20, 1 – 7pm and by appointment.

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