#life-vest

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Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

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Victory Riot Sculpture  Life-Vest, Nylons, Rocks, Wood & Thread in Victory Without Fanfare at Lexington Art League, Lexington, KY 2014

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Sculpture plans.

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S.O.S. a solo exhibition • Melissa Vandenberg January 7 – February 14, 2014 opening reception TUESDAY, January 7, 6-9pm

beta pictoris gallery is excited to present S.O.S., Vandenberg’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Drawing on fifteen years of innovation across a diverse range of media including sculpture, works on paper and performance, in S.O.S. Vandenberg challenges viewers, ever so softly, to consider their personal constructions of self, identity, place and nation. As she states on her website, “identity is in the home we create, the goods we possess and in the land we live.”

Anchoring S.O.S. is a series of works through which Vandenberg continues to explore her fascination with the iconography of identity. In Sink or Swim: Family Style (shown on right), three life vests fashioned from salvaged American flags hang from a handmade wall-mount.

Repetition is a motif central to Vandenberg’s production. Recalling Gilles Deleuze’s pronouncement that only that which is alike differs, and only differences are alike, Vandenberg inserts selected symbols, such as stars or stripes, and certain texts, such as the word EXIT, within many of her works. Both the three-dimensional Clouds of Vertical Development – a hand-fabricated, multi-media three-dimensional Exit sign with an electrical cord tail, and EXIT, a collaged multi-media photograph from the Seen, Not Heard series, each use a typographically similar text. It is almost as if Vandenberg has taken the negative space created by removing the term from the former and layered it over the latter creating an oscillating relationship between these two series.

It is this type of subtle understandings of the ways in which an artist can move within and between media that makes Vandenberg’s long history as a practitioner evident. Rather than be trapped within the confines of a medium for fear of stepping outside it, she is as comfortable within one as she is within another. She also revisits methods, but reinterprets their meanings. Drawing on the matchstick drawing methods of her 1998 Untitled (Match Drawing Series) works, Vandenberg is now producing new pieces which scorch paper, but she has turned towards the figurative, using many of the same icons that appear in her collages and three-dimensional works.

Vandenberg will also present a new performance, Zoetrope, that will expand on her recent project Sew to Speak. Performance is central to her practice, as is engagement through media including blogs and tumblr. At beta pictoris Vandenberg will recontextualize our relationships with the mechanical and the machine, altering our understandings of both its uses and its values. As she explains, one of her hopes is to blur the boundaries between “private and public.” Perhaps then it will be time to send an S.O.S.

beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary is a contemporary art gallery and space dedicated to supporting creativity with a focus on experimental and issue driven works. Through representing emerging, established, and internationally recognized artists, the gallery is committed to bringing a global perspective to contemporary issues and practices across the visual arts. The program consists of exhibitions, print publications, and media outreach.

beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary 2411 Second Ave N. Birmingham, AL 35203 www.MausContemporary.com [phone]

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Details of Life Vest Mandala and Waterworks at Solo(s) Project House, Newark, NJ. The exhibition, Charm Offensive is up until October 14 and open and free to the public. http://solosprojecthouse.com/2013-summer-residency/

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May I have your attention Newark & NYC?! I need 8 volunteers to help perform my Life-Vest Mandala for 20 minutes during the opening reception for Charm Offensive @ Three New Exhibitions on Saturday, September 7. Weather permitting, we will take the life-vests outside on Broad Street for a loosely scripted Happening at approximately 8:15pm. No special skills necessary, just your awesomeness and generosity. Please email me though my website if you can help www.melissavandenberg.com

Opening Reception:  Saturday, September 7, 2013 7 – 11 pm  Charm Offensive explores power, fear and impermanence through the use of common patriotic goods like flags, stickers, quilts and other domicile media. The visual prompts are familiar; maps, mandalas, sharks, life-vests, snakes and gravestones. These cues are emblematic of my ongoing fascination with nationalism, ancestry and partisanship. The mundane is of central focus in an effort to keep object and subject related to life. The physical outcomes are two, three and four dimensional––a multidisciplinary approach that is both antagonistic and sentimental. Charm Offensive aims to be contradictory, filled with both satire and idealism, in a effort to reflect our own experiences with mortality, authority and fear. I am exhibiting with two amazing artists: Robert Lach (NJ): PROJECT TITLE: Scavenged, Transported, Assembled September 7 – October 13 Robert creates traveling environmental habitats inspired by the architecture of birds using discarded suitcases. These once precious objects are stripped, shredded, and reused to create nests, nest colonies, and an installation tailoring the layout and design of the space provided. "With nature as my guide, I will experiment and explore with other found materials in search of balance and simplicity of form." Jennifer Wroblewski (NJ) PROJECT TITLE: (Ill) mandalas September 7 – Jan 1, 2014 Re-imagining mark-making (drawing) as worship, the SPH lobby becomes avenue for a site- and time- specific installation consisting of several mandalas drawn directly on the walls and floor, using charcoal and tape and potentially including found objects and/or fauna. The energy of the (ill) mandalas elevates the intentions of the artist and audience and allows for ease of meditation and the possibility of entering a trance state. ----- SPH is located at 972 Broad St. in the arts district of downtown Newark, NJ. It is free and open to the public, Wed – Fri from 12 – 6pm. Three New Exhibitions at SPH: Melissa Vandenberg, Robert Lach + Jennifer Wroblewski