Pared Back- Jeff Grant and Louky Keijsers, Curators

January 12th, 2008 – January 30th, 2008

Pared Back
curated by Jeff Grant
presenting the work by Mike Amrhein, Karla Carballar, Jerry Gunn, and Ellen Takata

January 12 – January 30, 2008
Opening: Saturday, January 12 from 6-9 pm

The show is organized in collaboration with Gallery MC and is on view at Gallery MC: 549 West 52nd Street, NYC, between 10 and 11 avenue.

LMAKprojects and Gallery MC are pleased to announce their second collaborative show, Pared Back, which is curated by Jeff Grant.

With works selected over the course of two years, Pared Back, featuring the works of Mike Amrhein, Karla Carballar, Jerry Gunn, and Ellen Takata, is not based on one singular concept or theme. Instead, the cohesive strength of Pared Back lies in its rich, complex atmosphere. This atmosphere is the result of a proliferation of specific relationships that exist between the various works as well as overarching consistencies that occur throughout the entire exhibition. Pared Back is quiet, low in tone and humorous; it is contemplative and focused. The exhibition title refers not only to the relatively short list of artists, but also to the artists’ acute observations, which are subtly interpreted through a minimum amount of information, duration, and/or visual noise.

The subdued tones of Pared Back are most apparent in the muted, subtle colors of Jerry Gunn’s paintings of bricks and in the pallid light and color of Ellen Takata’s images. The minimal composition and movement in Karla Carballar’s video tend towards a somber contemplative tone, as does Mike Amrhein’s quietly tearing honey bear. Though subdued, a vein of humor runs through the exhibition, as can be found in Takata’s occasionally comic figures, and Carballar’s manipulation of childhood music, or in the case of Amrheins jostling football player vibrating on a cell phone. At times this humor occurs as a result of ironic combinations, as in the case of Jerry Gunn’s bricks and Carla’s fragile mosquito. In fact, fragility and solidity are characteristics shared among most of the works shown here, visible in the density of Gunn’s bricks, which are rendered in light and shadow only, often melding into the ground behind them, or in the case of Amrhein’s big bear, a solid creature made of plastic and liquid; a burly animal that cries. Takata’s images often contain solidly rendered forms, paired with barely defined spaces and object; at times even the most clearly delineated characters open up, becoming products of whimsical line. Tentatively perched on a white surface, Carballar’s mosquito is filigree of rigid exoskeleton, at times as still as death. The integrity of recorded time is undermined in Carballar’s aggressive manipulation of the media itself. Using these gestures, Pared Back makes specific characteristics of often-familiar objects and forms important, and available for consideration, as well as bemusement.

Pared Back is an exhibition of subtle tones, characterized by sober contemplation, humorous gestures, and acute observations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karla Carballar –  Esperame en el cielo corrozon (still from video)