One Week Only!

“The work in Faith Holland’s series of reflections on the photographic medium, both literal and figurative, demand to be seen in the light of twentieth century art historical trends….everything one normally tries to suppress when in the realm of art – the glare, our reflection, the people surrounding us – is here brought to the fore and deliberately exaggerated…The photographs reveal the attraction of the museum, the gallery and the art fair…” – Seth Watter

In new video works by the Brooklyn based artist Clara Jo, the artist employs a do-it-yourself process, creating functionless mechanical devices for her performance based work. Using these intermediary devices, she questions how humans interact with their environment and with each other. The work elicits a reduced form of communication that allows for an alternative reinterpretation of language. In mediating imagery, sound, and light, Jo create moments of playful analysis a visual experience that address her notions of intimacy

New York based artist Lanya Snyder presents a series of large format color photographs, Snyder explores the nature of image construction, working with a view camera and printing without digital manipulation. Her attention to detail and emphasis on scale depicts both the abstract and the literal idiosyncrasies in the present day American landscape. Juxtaposing images of recognizable sites, such as the Hoover Dam, with images deliberately void of context, she creates a dialogue surrounding the nature of association.

New York-based artist Emma Spertus’ installation dissects the architecture culled from a broad range of horror films in order to isolate the structural typologies that evoke fear. Utilizing simple means such as mirrors and a shelf placed at eye-level to which images of seemingly ‘familiar’ yet eerily situated domestic interior and exterior spaces have been adhered, Spertus reorganizes these ‘scenes’ to reveal the mechanisms of fear as well as allowing for a closer inspection of the simple function of seeing.

Born in Berlin, Beny Wagner spent his childhood in transit, living in New Haven, Tel Aviv and Berlin. He describes the difference between each location and how history can become an immediate visual experience. “I have always been interested in how history is an ever-evolving process. Paintings present the viewer a frozen moment in time, an image that has been worked to the point of completion. I want my paintings to work as a transparent façade. The image that masks the last layer of paint represents the window into understanding the memory of paintings that no longer exist but were necessary in order to reach the final step.” Wagner uses an abstract vocabulary, borrowing well-known tropes, such as graphic lines and squares referencing the grid to create paintings where tension evolves between graphic and gestural marks.

Faith Holland was born in New City, NY in 1985. She graduated from Vassar College with a BA in Media Studies in the Spring of 2007. She was a collaborator on Squirm, Vassar’s annual magazine of photographic and literary erotica, as well as the founder of Vassar’s first photography magazine, Fix. Currently she is living and working in New York City on a number of ongoing projects among which include Art Bargains (2008– ), hand-made and affordable miniature versions of the work of artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst

Clara Jo studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Karlsruhe, Germany before graduating from Bard College with a BA in Photography. In March of 2008 she collaborated on a project with Harrell Fletcher for the Dark Fair at the Swiss Institute of New York, organized by the Milwaukee International. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Lanya Snyder was born in 1986 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She recently graduated from Bard College with a BA in photography where she was the recipient of the Eugene Atget Prize in Photography. She lives and works in New York City.

Emma Spertus was born in 1979 in Berkeley, California and is current a MFA candidate at Hunter College in New York City. In 2002 she received the Art Inside/Outside Space XV Commission from the Jerome Foundation.

Beny Wagner was born in 1985 in Berlin, Germany. In collaboration with Smolny College in St. Petersburg, Russia he organized Almost There, an exhibition of student work at the UBS Exhibition Space in Red Hook, NY. He graduated from Bard College in May of 2008 and was awarded the Elizabeth Murray & Sol Lewitt Studio Arts Award. He currently lives and works in Berlin.