Foxy Production
623 West 27th Street, ground floor, 212-239-2758
Chelsea
January 6 - January 29, 2011
Reception: Thursday, January 20, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Foxy Production presents work by three artists who foreground process in their inventive and unexpected transformations of images and materials. DEVILLE COHEN, ANDREI KOSCHMIEDER and JOE WINTER interweave production, performance and presentation in their reprogramming of everyday systems and procedures.
Deville Cohen’s performance-based photographs and video installations use black-and white Xerox images as integral elements in their mise-en-scène. Sets, characters, and props become entangled in psychic dramas saturated with humor, desire, and anxiety. Cohen’s video, The Wall, combines both “real” and Xeroxed objects, some of which – bricks, a Xerox machine – cover the performers’ faces. The central scene – a Xeroxed brick wall – is eventually punctured by a character in red heels, who simultaneously punctures any space between scenes and the objects and people in them. Cohen’s two-dimensional works inspire the making of his videos: here he presents a series of drawings on collaged, Xeroxed paper, reminiscent of expanded, intriguingly dramatic and detailed film storyboards, that attempts but never quite succeeds in producing a cohesive narrative. Andrei Koschmieder makes painterly works that bring the studio into the street in witty, nuanced combinations of chance and choice. Koschmieder presents a series of images made using a low-tech contact print method that deliberately prolongs their production time. A local calligrapher was employed to add a sequence of texts to each image, giving them handcrafted yet repetitive marks. The set of works’ fusing of contrasting elements produces a dynamic quality where everything seems to collapse and come together at once.
Joe Winter’s images evolve and dissolve, often through the combustion of ink and light, and the force of error and malfunction. Winter has created an active, office-like area that includes a lamp focused on colored construction paper and a printer with print-outs of ethereal, deteriorating sunsets, emerging as the machine’s ink runs out. Faded paper from under the lamp and abstract prints resulting from the violent shaking of the printer are hung on the walls. Nearby a dry erase board is smeared with marker ink; with the marker pen left there, poised for use, the destablizing of everyday processes seems to be an end in itself.
Deville Cohen (Tel Aviv, 1977) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He studied at the Weiseensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and holds an MFA from Bard Collage, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Exhibitions include: Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv (solo); Recess, New York (solo); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Queens; The Company, Los Angeles; Lesley Heller Workspace, New York (all 2010); Nowhere Gallery, Milan (solo); LAXART, Los Angeles (screening)(both 2009); tor111, Berlin (solo)(2008); and Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland (2006).
Andrei Koschmieder (Frankfurt, Germany, 1980) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt. Exhibitions include: White Columns, New York; Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö, Sweden (solo); Credenza, New York (solo); Cleopatra’s, New York; 179 Canal, New York (all 2010); RGB LED, Seoul, South Korea; Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö, Sweden; Pro Choice, Vienna, Austria; Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2009); Kunstverein St. Pauli, Hamburg, Germany; Literaturhaus, Frankfurt; and Hold & Freight, London (both 2008).
Joe Winter (Wilmington, DE, 1981) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in New Media Studies from Brown University, Providence, RI; and an MFA from UC San Diego. Exhibitions include: The Kitchen, New York (solo)(upcoming 2011); CCS Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (project)(2010); Plug.In., Basel, Switzerland; Marian Spore, Brooklyn, NY; X Initiative, New York; Space 414, Brooklyn; Urbis Center, Manchester, UK (all 2009); Eyebeam, New York (2008); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; University Art Gallery, UC San Diego; Compact Space, Los Angeles (all 2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Compact Space, Los Angeles (both 2005); and Estacion Tijuana, Mexico (2004).
Special thanks to Johan Berggren Gallery and Michael Connor/Marian Spore.