Causey Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of Watching Shadows Fade into Light, their June exhibition featuring the sculptures and drawings of Howard Gross. The exhibition which opens on June 17 and runs through July 10, 2011 will be the third solo exhibition for Mr. Gross at Causey Contemporary. A public reception will be held with the artist on June 17 from 6 – 9 p.m at the gallery’s Williamsburg Brooklyn location – 92 Wythe Avenue. Additionally, the JT Locus Dance Company will perform an original dance based on Mr. Gross’ work in the gallery on July 8th at 7:30 p.m.. The public is invited to attend both events or to visit the exhibition during normal gallery hours: Wed. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 7 p.m., Sun. 12 – 6 p.m., or Mon. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Watching Shadows Fade into Light will feature new mixed media sculptures and drawings by Howard Gross. The exhibition is in many ways a reincarnation of an earlier exhibition of sculptural reliefs which Mr. Gross exhibited in his first solo exhibition at the Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago nearly forty years ago. At that time, Howard says he was attempting to transform his drawings into three dimensional relief sculptures. He used chicken wire armatures molded into forms, attached them to panels and coverd them with cotton, latex, horsehair, spanish moss and/or poly-urethane foam. Two years later, Mr. Gross followed this exhibition with one entitled Boxes in which he enclosed the forms inside twelve inch square boxes. In the current body of work, Howard has chosen a far more neutral material to convey the forms which are also enclosed in boxes or mounted upon masonite panels. The effect is a more direct translation of the drawings into three dimensions than the objects from the earlier exhibition. Both the drawings on scratch board or paper and the sculptures are a form of puzzle solving for Mr. Gross, creating a form or shape that relates to the one next to it – each decision leading to the next decision. For the sculptures, he has chosen is a white clay molding material that offers complete flexibility in creating the intricate and varying shapes which translate the labyrinth, curving shapes within the drawings themselves. In the pieces, both sculptural and drawn, each devoid of color, shadows provide the nuances of grey.

Howard Gross began his artistic career in Chicago receiving his MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago during his first solo exhibition at the Alan Frumkin Gallery. The exhibition was in fact presented as Mr. Gross’ graduate thesis. He believes the moments that open that exhibition – first his professors coming to evaluate the work for his degree and then his dealer, Alice Adams entering, followed by him receiving his degree – were prophetic in that it marked for him the first time art dealers and curators came to his defense and offered him support and/or opportunities. One of Howard’s sculptural pieces from this exhibition, Heidi’s Bicycle now resides in the permanent collection of the Weatherspoon Museum.

Following another exhibition at Alan Frumkin Gallery, Howard relocated to New York City where Ivan Karp gave him an opportunity to exhibit at O.K. Harris that was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Jock Truman allowed him to exhibit his photographs of art world people with their eyes closed. Known as A Closed Eye Concept, Alana Heiss also included this series in an exhibition at P.S. 1 and The Whitney Museum of Art owns a unique artist book comprised of one hundred of these images.

Next Howard began a series entitled Notes on a String. In this series he began with a spool of white thread and when someone went away on a trip, he gave them a piece of the string, asked them to install in somewhere interesting and then send him documentation. The dealer, Florence Lynch allowed Mr. Gross to install one string in her gallery in 2000 surrounded by photographs of it twirling around.

In the meantime, Howard continued the intricate drawings, paintings and sculptures which he had created since Chicago. In 2007, He exhibited his sculptures in an exhibition at Causey Contemporary ( then Chi’ Contemporary Fine Art) and in 2009 the gallery exhibited his drawings and paintings. In 2010, His sculptural works again appeared in an exhibition at Lumen Gallery in New York.

In addition, Howard’s works have appeared in group exhibitions at Causey Contemporary, the Tilton Gallery, the Dorsky Gallery, the Truman Gallery and the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, all in New York. The Galleries St. Petri, Archive of Experimental and Marginal Art in Lund Switzerland included him in their Tenth Anniversary exhibition and the Artist Book Gallery included them in one of their exhibitions in Paris, France.

As well as having pieces in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum and the Weatherspoon Museum, Howard Gross also has works in the permanent collection of the International Center of Photography in New York and Southern Illinois University Museum in Carbondale, Il.

Watching Shadows Fade into Light marks his third solo exhibition with Causey Contemporary. The exhibition runs from June 17 – July 10, 2011. Gallery hours are Wed. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. , Sun. 12 – 6 p.m. And Mon. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. The public is invited to the artists reception on June 17 from 6 – 9 p.m and to a dance performance by J.T. Locus Dance Company based upon Howard Gross’s work on July 8 at 7:30 p.m. For more information on the exhibition, the receptions, the dance performance or Howard’s work contact Causey Contemporary at 718 218 8939 or via email at [email protected]