Shape Up – Tamara Gayer, installation (Project Gallery)

March 14th, 2008- March 31st, 2008

SHAPE-UP

Tamara Gayer

March 6 – March 31, 2008

Opening, March 14 from 6-9 pm
Closing party, March 29 from 6-9 pm

Gallery MC and LMAKprojects are pleased to announce their second collaboration: “Shape Up”, a project by Tamara Gayer. For the exhibition, the artist will transform the project space into in urban
landscape of bold colors and geometrical shapes, expressing the
artist personal experiences amongst these buildings and intersections. By bridging notions of mental and public space, Gayer
enables viewers to position themselves within the reconstructed site.

Shape Up – the show – reflects multiple meanings of the phrase. The
title is not only a ‘wink’ to getting in shape, but a reference to
the current situation in the city; large scale construction abounds,
buildings are being renovated, deconstructed or destroyed, while new ones rise from the ground like mushrooms. This seemingly never-ending reconfiguration is changing the physical shape of the city all the while mutating its character. Gayer has always been fixated on how completely she lives in the city. Her fascination encompasses its physical presence (skyscrapers, vinyl siding, cracked sidewalks, gigantic plasma screens and so forth) and its psychological fluctuations. Gayer works in the vein of a romantic ecologist: she is interested in the ebb and flow of the urban landscape, which etches its form on our behavior, wearing into our comprehension. Her images combine spatial representations of urban landscape with abstract pattering. The three dimensional images represent all the varied and diverse functions that a city encompasses, randomly: government offices, hotels, parks and apartments; while the patterns (somewhat more abstract) stand in for our reactions. She creates her work by projecting a glamorized image of the city on traditionally unused or underused parts of exhibition spaces. In Shape Up she will use the windows and floor to reconfigure the office area. Her images, suspended between two and three dimensions, are created from adaptations of large-scale drawings (simultaneously handmade and computer generated) morphed into appliqués of self-adhesive vinyl, wall paintings and other advertising ‘mediums’.

With ‘Shape Up’ Tamara Gayer is redefining her role as an artist in
light of her recent experience as a political activist. She has shown
extensively in New York and abroad including at Priska Juschka Fine Art, Kunst Buero, ExitArt and Foxy Production. Her work is
represented in many prominent collections including that of the
Museum of Modern Art. Together with the Vigalante, she is half of
Combina-Cuchina, a creative partnership that spans visual art, music,
video and performance. She currently resides in Brooklyn and is in
the process of piecing together her ideal city.