Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to present Substance Abuse, a group exhibition curated by Colin Huerter, featuring recent work by:

Kadar Brock Michael Brown Carter Julia Dault Andrea Longacre-White Adam Marnie Ryan Sullivan J. Parker Valentine Ned Vena

The title of this exhibition, Substance Abuse, is intended to suggest not only a mistreatment and breakdown of materiality, but also of the self and its relation to the world. Since the act of breaking down is a form of reduction, perhaps it is natural that the artists included here seem to gravitate toward Minimalism as a way to ground the questioning phase of their process. Whereas that earlier movement was concerned with emptying the object of image, of metaphor, of individual touch, of evident psychological and emotional expression in an effort to somehow purify (and maybe even liberate) line, form and color, this particular group of younger artists is more inclined to call attention to the subtle, expressive varieties of imperfection that seem to be embedded within the material, and thus context itself. For instance, in the buckled, warped, torn, cracked, scratched, and generally abused surfaces of the work on view, an argument is made for the un-sustainability of isolation, for the physical, visible way outside pressures manifest their presence and impose the consequence of systematic, institutional neglect. To continue with their argument is to acknowledge that in the thirty plus years since its heyday, Minimalism has come to symbolize the end of an era, of a singular, progressive, dominant way of thinking about history and the world. While being responsive without being prescriptive, the work in Substance Abuse, both individually and together, places vulnerability as perhaps its central concern ? vulnerability of line, of hand, of material, of self, of history.