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 |  |  | | |  | Artists: Zachary Buchner, Kevin Cyr, Matthew de Leon, Jonathan Durham, Jonathan Ehrenberg, Kate Gilmore, Angelina Gualdoni, Eric Heist, Nicholas Johnston, Dimitri Kozyrev, Fawn Krieger, Caitlin Masley, Jaclyn Mednicov, Ryan Sarah Murphy, Lisa Ross, Nicolas Rule, Suzanne Song
Mixed Greens is excited to present the group exhibition Gimme Shelter. While shelter is traditionally defined as a structure that provides protection, these seventeen artists present a more complex, multifaceted understanding of the concept. More specifically, the works in this show investigate the delicate balance of perception: whether a space is inviting or uninhabitable, comforting or crumbling, being constructed or consumed.
Most traditional are the artists who represent a place of sanctuary or refuge. Kevin Cyr’s Camper Kart, for instance, is the fully habitable fusion of a shopping cart and a small camper tent. What is unclear, however, is whether or not the sculpture is meant to be a safe haven for a future worst-case scenario, or if it represents an immediate survival strategy. Less obvious, but equally direct, are Lisa Ross’ photographs of spiritual structures in Northwest China and Jonathan Durham’s video, a step-by-step lesson in filming a worship service at a mega-church in Texas.
In juxtaposition, Fawn Krieger and Zachary Buchner create abstract sculptures—Krieger’s on the floor and Buchner’s on a pedestal—that appear to take building remnants and either preserve them or recontextualize them as more idealized architectural structures in the process of expanding. The abstracted spaces defined by Angelina Gualdoni’s paintings, Ryan Sarah Murphy’s collages, Caitlin Masley’s housing project drawings and Dimitri Kozyrev’s paintings of military bunkers are equally blurry: The landscapes are seemingly growing while simultaneously disintegrating. Each piece is full and empty, vast and microcosmic.
Many other artists represent structures as having fallen out of use or ceasing to exist. Jaclyn Mednicov’s deserted landscapes, Nicholas Johnston’s ice caves, and Eric Heist’s renderings of post-Katrina New Orleans capture sites that “once were.” And Suzanne Song’s illusory wall painting implies the shadow of remnants, or the outline of a structure no longer there. Quite literally, Kate Gilmore’s video, Down the House, records the artist smashing a pile of construction debris into even greater obliteration.
Alternatively, the characters in Matthew de Leon’s video Can’t and Jonathan Ehrenberg’s video Moth are unable to escape their dreamlike otherworlds, leaving the inhabitants unable to connect to reality. In this scenario, their surroundings act ultimately as prisons, reminding us, as Nicolas Rule’s drawing suggests, that a shelter may be uninviting or even unwanted.
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|  |  | Mixed Greens is thrilled to present Steed Taylor’s Road Tattoo Study In Three Windows. Taylor’s “tattoos” are usually painted directly onto a roadway for purposes similar to that of a tattoo on skin—as a means of commemoration, communication, and ritual. For this window installation, Taylor moves beyond the road and explores situating a road tattoo on glass, still fulfilling the site-specific, community-based, public nature of his previous works while also announcing his upcoming collaboration with a charity assisting people living with AIDS.
Placed at locations of individual or community significance, road tattoos are composed of cultural designs previously appropriated to mark skin. Once the outline is drawn on the road with the help of local volunteers (road tattoos can exceed 200 feet in length), text of personal and community significance is painted within the design. For example, Messenger River in NYC’s Riverside Park integrated the names of NYC bicycle messengers killed while working, and Broken Chain in Mesa, AZ, included quotations from local women and children who were victims of domestic violence. When the text is complete, a nondenominational prayer commissioned for the piece is recited and the outline is painted in, concealing all words. Eventually environmental conditions dissolve the tattoos into the road.
Taylor’s tattoos are performative installations utilizing surprising spaces—well-trafficked streets, and now windows—to break the monotony of commuting and to inspire the cooperation of a community. For Road Tattoo Study In Three Windows, Taylor uses only a portion of a 200-foot road tattoo, yet he retains the unique symbolism and striking power of its enormous counterpart. As the piece continues from window to window, it undulates, disappearing behind the building façade and reappearing in the next window, ironically mimicking actual road tattoos as they dissolve unevenly due to traffic, time, and weather. This site-specific project re-imagines its original source and connects Mixed Greens’ 26th Street windows to the larger community.
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