2nd Friday Art Walk: March 25 & April 8, Performances by Nathan Davis starting at 7:30pm

Restore Defaults is an exhibition of artists who use elements already of interest in the world as a starting point for their art. Rather than seeking to disguise or destroy these beginnings, they embrace and emphasize their role in the process of creation.

Works by: Hilary A. Baldwin & Matthew Ward • Nathan Davis • Jenny Drumgoole • Calvin Lee • Wacdesignstudio

Curated by: Carl Gunhouse & Thomas Marquet

The default settings in software are the norms that programmers set as a starting point for users. These defaults determine not only how the program will work, but perhaps more importantly, how the user will interact with it. The preexisting settings that create a working context for artists are the basis for the artworks in Restore Defaults. These works, like all creative efforts, find their origin within a larger social context, be it highway systems, cooking shows, computers, or consumer goods. However, rather than taking these contexts for granted, these works focus our attention on those things that have been so long in our field of vision that we no longer see them.

Hilary A. Baldwin and Matthew Ward are both from Brookline, MA, and both studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Collaborators since childhood, Matthew and Hilary explore a wide range of art historical contexts, appropriating ideas and imagery from Abstract Expressionism to B-movies. “Together,” they say, “We inhabit these genres, which we know only through histories. We simultaneously celebrate and satirize their austerity via our responsibilities to each other as collaborators.”

Inspired by natural processes and acoustic phenomena, composer and percussionist Nathan Davis makes music that elucidates essential characters of instruments and the fragile athleticism of playing them. He has received commissions from the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Calder String Quartet, the Ojai Festival, and received awards from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, and ASCAP. Nathan’s music has also been programmed at NYC’s Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall, and in concerts and festivals around the world. Recordings include his electroacoustic percussion cd Memory Spaces and a forthcoming longplay from ICE.

On March 25th, Nathan will be giving an intimate performance of his pieces Crawlspace and Diving Bell, right off the recent debut of his composition Bells at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which the New York Times described as an “alluring … pensive musical experience.”

On April 8th Nathan will be joined by fellow International Contemporary Ensemble member Joshua Rubin and they will be providing a taste of what the New York Times described as no less than “the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new music.”

Jenny Drumgoole is a Philadelphia-based multimedia artist who incorporates video and performance into extradisciplinary actions inserted into the public domain. Her most recent video-based performance work involves the artist physically and virtually infiltrating competitive events with subversive art actions which question our obsessions with celebrity, desire, and the limits and illusions of individuality in popular culture. Drumgoole received her MFA in photography from Yale University in 2006. Her work has been shown at the IFC Center in New York, The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, The Center for Contemporary Art in Israel, the Figge von Rosen Gallery in Germany.

Calvin Lee is a conceptual-based photographer from Boston, MA. He received an MFA in photograph & media from California Institute of the Arts in 2009; and a BFA in Visual & Critical Studies from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA in 2007. His work combines conceptual strategies to explore the connectivity of images, the repression within representation, and the visual semiotics of an image through metonymy and metaphor. Through his analytical, personal, and experimental practice, his work deals with multiple theory based discourses in conversation that question technology, culture, representation, and language. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

wacdesignstudio is an independent design studio based in Houston, Texas founded in 2009 by Scott Cartwright and Jenny Lynn Weitz-Amaré Cartwright. Their focus is on the discourse of contemporary art and its relationship to design and architecture.

Camel Art Space is an Artist operated exhibition Space with a focus on current issues in art within a not for profit work frame, is a member of Williamsburg Gallery Association and is participating in 2:nd Friday Art Walk.