It’s no surprise the famous groundhog that is Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow again this year. We know it’s cold. We know it’s going to be cold for the foreseeable future. But that disappointing forecast is no way to start a blustering February week. If Bushwick’s very own reliable rodentia (reliable because they’re always there by our front stoops, no matter the season) could stretch their predictive skills on the neighborhood forecast, they would likely scrape past the shadows and tell us not to worry about the cold, just get to this weekend’s shows and warm ourselves by the fire that is our he(art’s) desire!
“How To Abandon A Burning House Without Panicking” @ 99¢ Plus Gallery (FRI 7-10)
238 Wilson Ave.
Burning through the cold with Charlotte Patterson’s upcoming solo exhibition, 99¢ Plus Gallery explores the principles of time and representation in her photographic works. In “HOW TO ABANDON A BURNING HOUSE WITHOUT PANICKING” Patterson’s process based photographs get into the relativity of memory during human experiences. Sourcing from National Geographic issues from the 1960’s, Patterson layers the images with a solvent removing ink and then photographs the images while in action. From here a tangible play of memory and nostalgia become controlled in the process.
“Do You Care About This Feeling?” @ Brooklyn Wayfarers (FRI 7-10)
1109 Dekalb Ave.
“Do You Care About This Feeling?” goes up this Friday at Brooklyn Wayfarers, featuring a nostalgic turn with mail art and collage by Mitsuko Brooks. Brooks addresses the fact that “we live in a world where seemingly everyone clutches to his or her smartphone at all hours of the day, waiting to get that next fix of immediate gratification.” Using cropped fragments of appropriated photographs, printed ephemera and typewriter lettering, he builds on the belief that slowness and stasis have real purchase during the Information Age.
The slowness of the experience: the opening of the package, uncoiling the letter, the examining the handwriting; are all things that are better expressed via paper mail than through a more immediate means of communication. I am attempting to draw from my core artistic influences, namely Fluxus, Gutai, antiart movements, and social practice.”
Fred Valentine “Toward Grandfather Mountain” @ STUDIO10 (FRI 7-9)
56 Bogart Street
STUDIO10 and Fred Valentine combine forces this February in a flirtation with the trompe l’oeil effect. “Toward Grandfather Mountain” will include works of implied landscapes and overlapping geometric forms where the painted frame becomes a subject in the composition. This illusory element also alters how one reads the “paintings” inside the frames.
These paintings are flat out compositions, improvisations and full thunk thoughts. They come from a place of many starts with monsters and angels from the past clearing the brush and leading the way. They are riffs on a rectangle and the idea of image making.”
— Fred Valentine, the director and owner of Valentine gallery, was recently included in Brooklyn Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture.
Special Performances for “Targets : Alexa Hoyer” @ Fresh Window (8 & 8:45 pm)
56 Bogart Street, lower level
Alongside Fresh Window’s photographic desert exploration in “Targets : Alexa Hoyer” two musical performances will be held on Friday night as part of the exhibition’s closing reception. At 8:00 pm Lara Allen will begin the evening’s musical and visual treatments, followed by Ella Joyce Buckley at 8:45 pm and a psychedelic accompaniment by Daniel Bombach, a multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of the newly built 100 Studios in Brooklyn.
“Fissure : Fog” @ SIGNAL (FRI 7-10)
260 Johnson Ave.
SIGNAL’s second show of 2015 takes a contrast to the recent virtual reality simulation that was Rachel Rossin’s “N=7” from January. Now with a large group exhibition curated by Bennet Schlesinger, “Fissure : Fog” works through the murk and obscurity of the physical and grounding nature. Featuring works by Kayla Guthrie, Graham Hamilton, Valerie Keane, Ryan Kitson, Aidan Koch, Daniel Peterson, Nikholis Planck and Augustus Thompson.
“Cynthia Laureen Vogt: Unsettled Alphabets” @ Amos Eno Gallery (FRI 6-9)
1087 Flushing Ave., Suite 120 (Inside The Loom)
Featured artist Cynthia Vogt spins photographic tales between poloroid and digital video stills laid out in accordion-fold artist books. Printed on paper and transparency film, Vogt’s books are described as “intimately-sewn and layered compositions offering anatomies of language marked by pulsing rhythms.” The semblances put forward by the figures and letters draw a closer correlation, as “Unsettled Alphabets” embraces the blurred, vanishing physical traces of Vogt’s images.