Curated by Martha Kirszenbaum

artists: Quistrebert Bros, Morgane Tschiember, Peter Coffin, Aude Pariset, Leigh Ledare, Eileen Quinlan

Opening reception: October 9th, 2009, 6 to 9 pm

Gallery hours: Fri–Sun, 2-6 pm, through October 18th, 2009

or by appointment at [email protected]

Borrowing its title from the famous 19th-century Romantic Polish poem by Juliusz Slowacki, I’m So Sad, My God presents six artists, three French and three American, whose works convey the dichotomy of joy versus sadness, alongside a pinch of melancholy. This exhibition can be seen as a reflection on what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze claims in his Abécédaire. Defining the tension between joy and sadness in terms of power, he opposes the power of creation, where joy is defined by means of “entering the color” for a painter, to sadness that relates power to control.

In their series of black canvases, evoking urban steel mythical dreams, Florian and Michaël Quistrebert produce a saturated dark flow of paint and incisive geometrical figures and lines. Black as a color and as a state of mind exists here in all its complexity of tones — from matte gray to glossy tar— and moods. Their video Virgins is an appeal to psychedelic culture, conveying magic in space, forms and colors.

Morgane Tschiember’s series Folded, consisting of aluminum models painted in off-white, night blue or pale pink, explores the tension between form and flesh. Her welded sculptures resemble a scarified, stitched up body. Tschiember juxtaposes minimalism and formalism in these softly assembled, yet rectilinear, pieces installed on a reflective surface, as to confuse the perception of space and size.

Brooklyn-based multifaceted artist Peter Coffin’s work includes playful investigations made of suspended orchestras, trees wearing jeans and colorful UFO’s, similar to what the art critic Gregory Battcock named « idea art ». Not far from his usual childlike imagination, Term Paper Blues is a humorous and slightly ironic poster referring to teenage culture and college fears, as much as to American anti-depressive drug addiction.

Berlin-based Aude Pariset’s photographic objects capture the progressive interstice linking up two and three-dimensions, photography and sculpture. Her work refers to experimental photography through optical illusion as in Figure Quelconque. Pariset seems also to operate a nostalgic appropriation of time and space in XIV, where a photograph taken in Berlin’s Neukölln is mentally transferred by the artist to her native Versailles.

Leigh Ledare’s latest project is a complex portrait of her mother and an exploration of their relationship, through photographs, gathered objects, collages. Ribbons and Flowers seems to challenge and reverse the role of an everyday object by presenting an upside-down ribonned hat attached to a fringed lamp. This romantic yet despaired vision echoes Francis Picabia’s statement : « Solitude can be compared to a lamp that fucks » (Un effet facile, 1922).

Eileen Quinlan’s geometrical abstract photographs, created by double exposure or darkroom manipulation, are kaleidoscopic and shadowy images, challenging our visual and conceptual senses. In Demystification #8, the artist employs an experimental use of layers of smoke and mirrors recalling neo-Cubist construction, whereas Shalimar #6 is an elegant explosion of a fur-like black spot and cuts. Both images contain an illusive vanishing point, a punctum in which one’s eye gets slowly drawn.