White Room: Steven Claydon
Courtesy of the neighborhood watch
Press Release
White Columns is proud to present “Courtesy of the neighborhood watch” the first solo exhibition in New York by the London-based artist Steven Claydon. The exhibition will include recent painting, sculpture, prints, and video. Writing in Frieze magazine in January 2006, Tom Morton observed that “Claydon views history as retrospective, subjective and intrinsically fictitious, and (cultural) objects as satellites that constellate around subjects, situations and rituals. Their orbits describe the various negotiations, narratives and trajectories that inhabit an alinear dimension, but which are ordered with hindsight into timelines and histories. In his work Claydon aims to spotlight these absurdities by arranging a collision between contemporary cultural signifiers and their historical counterparts, extruding new material from the debris. In creating such eccentric evolutions, he shifts his subjects’ potency from the pre-eminent to the redundant. Utilizing traditional and ad-hoc methods of production, he also constructs a climate where accurate and semi-fictional resonances accrete and self-replicate independent of their material hierarchies. Steven Claydon’s sculptures, paintings, posters and films perform dense explorations of cultural counter-factuals and historical might-have-beens.” In addition to his White Room exhibition, Claydon’s film ‘Cluk Cluk’ will be presented in White Columns’ Project space.
Steven Claydon (b. 1969) lives and works in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: ‘Statements,’ HOTEL at Art Basel, Basel (2006); HOTEL, London; and Galerie Dennis Kimmerich, Dusseldorf (both 2005.) Recent group shows include: ‘Dereconstruction,’ Gladstone Gallery, New York (2006); ‘Odiseado Tra Tempo,’ Peter Kilchmann Galerie, Zurich; ‘Paris-London: Le Voyage Interieur,’ Espace Electra, Paris; and ‘Post No Bills,’ White Columns, New York (all 2005.) Claydon was formerly a member of the influential group ADD N TO (X) and is now a member of Jack Too Jack. Claydon received an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins School of Art & Design, London in 1997, and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea School of Art & Design, London in 1991.
Steven Claydon’s ‘White Room’ exhibition has been generously supported by the British Council United States.
In our second White Room we are proud to present the first solo exhibition by the Philadelphia-based artist Sarah Anne Lobb. Lobb’s typically domestically-scaled paintings absorb, echo, and amplify the century-long entanglements of non-representational painting. Lobb’s idiosyncratic and mercurial works acknowledge a crooked painterly lineage that simultaneously evokes the casual precision of Raoul De Keyser, the joyful melancholia of Mary Heilmann, and the informal formalism of Bernard Frize. Lobb studied both painting and sculpture at undergraduate level, a dialogue that remains highly pertinent to her work’s underlying formal properties. For her White Room exhibition Lobb will present a discrete group of paintings produced during the past twelve months.
Sarah Ann Lobb (b. 1976) currently lives and works in Philadelphia. She received her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, PA, in 2002. White Columns first encountered her work on the stand of Milwaukee’s General Store gallery at the 2005 Nada Art Fair in Miami. Lobb’s association with the General Store includes her participation in the first installment of the – now legendary – exhibition series ‘Drunk vs. Stoned’, organized by Scott and Tyson Reeder, and Elysia Bowery-Reeder for Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, 2004. Other recent exhibitions include: ‘Small Paintings,’ Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas (2006); and ‘Noah Rorem, Aliza Nisenbaum, Sarah Lobb,’ Boom, Oak Park, IL (2005.)
