 |
Email PageMinets À Polis
June 23, 2005- August 19, 2005
Rob Fischer, Chris Larson, Dave Rathman, Todd Norsten, Alec Soth, Aaron Spangler
Cohan and Leslie
138 10th AveWe are pleased to announce "Minets À Polis” an exhibition including work by Rob Fischer, Chris Larson, Todd Norsten, David Rathman, Alec Soth and Aaron Spangler. The artists, all Minneapolis-based or born, offer a provocative critique of a specific American mythology that is firmly rooted in the middle and upper-midwestern part of the country. Minneapolis, which has emerged as one of the most compelling and diverse art-making centers, sits at a particularly observant vantage point onto the heartland’s changing psychic terrain.
Rob Fischer, whose work is tied to Minnesota in both its production and content, addresses the vehicles of American travel and mobility in various forms while also referencing the physical landscape: boats, trailers, trucks and domestic corridors play essential roles in his project. In this exhibition, Fischer continues to construct an ongoing meditation on the human relationship to space and origin and our desire to escape and explore yet root our selves to an exact place.
Chris Larson will debut photographs and a new video installation entitled "Barn Razor," which explores university fraternity culture and its macho underpinnings as it observes assertions of male strength during a pull-up contest. This new work follows the film "County Line" that Larson made for his show at Franklin Artworks in Minneapolis in 2004.
Todd Norsten will show three new paintings that address the vernacular imagery and language of the American small town. Like a DJ, Norsten samples and borrows pictorial references from contemporary art and commercial sources. Log cabins, snowmen and Jesus, all archetypal emblems embedded in mid-western culture, appear in the work, questioning their place in the typical middle-American narrative.
David Rathman, known for his depictions of TV cowboys from the ‘wild west’ era, will show new paintings of cultural stock figures: boxers and wrestlers. The images, sometimes combined with Rathman’s signature appropriated texts, suggest a darkly humorous subversion of the mythology built around athletics and heroics, and the public experience of spectacle.
Alec Soth will show several large-format color photographs from his “Portraits” series, images that are deeply telling studies of his subjects as well as examinations of the space and invisible connection in between himself and his sitter. Soth critiques the relationship between identity and geography that continues to characterize the American experience.
Aaron Spangler’s work, large painted woodcarvings, explores the imagined after-effects of war on America’s rural landscape. Spangler blows apart the myth of the peaceful heartland, as he alludes to the unrest and anarchy that lurk below the surface. Spangler exposes the point where apocalyptic destruction goes head to head with a hard-working utopian pioneer spirit, an approach paralleled in the artist’s painstaking carving process.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
|
 | |||||||||||||||
|
© 2005-2008 chelseaartgalleries.com | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
| Site Map |
