Gary DiBenedetto: Sweat Equity Graham Dunning: Loss Sheds a Light on What Remains Chris Stockbridge: Relative Space, Son/Husband

September 8 – October 8, 2011 Opening Event: Thursday, September 8, 2011 6-8pm

Special Performances of Sweat Equity: Saturday, October 1, 2011 Doors open at 1pm, Performance begins at 3pm Thursday, October 6, 2011 Doors open at 7pm, Performance begins at 7:30pm Admission: $20

Contact: [email protected]

Gary DiBenedetto: Sweat Equity During his early years as a struggling musician, Gary DiBenedetto also worked as a carpenter. During this time, he began collecting antiques. Both of these pursuits cultivated an affinity for craftsmanship and history that have impacted his artistic endeavors. The past ten years have culminated with two solo electroacoustic composition CDs and numerous multimedia interactive installations.

The original purpose of the antiques incorporated within DiBenedetto’s installations was to increase the efficiency and ease of everyday life. Foot pedals on sewing machines sped the process of garment-making. Hand-operated clothing agitators eliminated the need for washboards. The artist’s neo-constructivist sculptures reconfigure these tools and bring them into an artistic forum.

Each of DiBenedetto’s sculptures has a moving component, powered manually or by electric motors. An audio processing feature brings the sound generated by these machines to life. As a result, the spectators are able to explore the operations of the many tools that comprise these sculptures.

Sweat Equity (Performance) DiBenedetto has developed a performance to accompany his interactive installation. Sweat Equity expresses outrage over the negative impact of capitalist exploitation as a means of production. With an increasing globalized economy accompanied by ravenous consumption of natural resources, will we lose an opportunity to recognize the futility of capitalist pursuit and the need to change our direction and gain respect for the preservation of human dignity?

Sweat Equity is a non verbal staged performance where dancers operate kinetic sculptures. Each sculpture is a machine that generates sound. Each dancer’s relationship to their sculpture becomes increasingly complex. Tension is exemplified during a sequence of three acts. Each act presents changes in the actor’s physical appearance and operating procedures. An electroacoustic composition unfolds, increasing tension and directing the dancer’s actions.

Graham Dunning: Loss Sheds a Light on What Remains “Loss sheds a light on what remains, and in that light all that we have and all that we have had glows more brightly still.” – Michael Bywater, Lost Worlds.

Sound is temporal and temporary; a reproduced sound recording is a physical, analogue approximation of a thing that once was. Hauntology can be defined as something which is simultaneously backwards- and forwards-looking. As Dunning’s first solo show outside the UK, this exhibition collates some early, non-site-specific works establishing these as some of the main themes in his practice.

Untitled with Records and Hammer (2009) Viewers are invited to smash a vinyl record with a hammer, on a workbench. The diminishing pile of unbroken records and the growing amount of detritus form part of the installation. The records used were each carefully considered and bought by the artist in an attempt to become a professional DJ. As such it is a personally cathartic piece and an autodestructive rebirth, acting as a meditation on ambition and failure.

Untitled (2008) Found bottles are hung at heights determined by the numbers on their bases, in an order prescribed by chance-determination; a corresponding composition consists of the pitched-down sound of each bottle being tapped, assigned to a note according to the same numbers. The work is the culmination of a pseudo-archaeological investigation through an imagined narrative, questioning the “objectivity” of an object.

Stutter (2009) Visitors are invited to read into a microphone from a children’s book while wearing headphones: The sound from the microphone is delayed and fed back to the readers, causing them to stutter and slur their speech. The nostalgic use of a children’s story book clashes with the frustration of impeded reading.

Chris Stockbridge: Relative Space, Son/Husband Relative Space looks at a family relationship shown in an expanded moment of time. It is made up of a series of still images extended with film editing software and looped. The still camera becomes a witness to time passing rather than the index of an event.

The time which emanates in the work relates to the ‘crystal image’ described by Deleuze where the image somehow fuses the past of its subject with the present of its viewing. Yve Lomax has it as time escaping chronology which is uniquely rich with unlimited potential.

‘When the present is thrown into question an interval opens up in time …it is when the present of a moment splits and gapes open; when the present itself becomes an interval.’ (‘Sounding the event’ P94)

Time is stretched and distorted in the repetition and resequencing of single frames. Elements of recognisable gestures trigger memory and take on disquieting echoes of the claustrophobia and frustration of family life. The viewer is held by the shifting gazes of the subjects replacing the viewpoint of the artist. It is a performance witnessed by her, played out under her gaze as wife and mother.

A space between stillness and movement, between the photographic and cinematic, is created outside of time’s normally perceived linearity, where expectations of the narrative of family relationship are subverted. It is a time where thought slows and the mind might wander allowing the unconscious to surface and the possibility of new understanding of the familiar and familial to emerge.

BIOS:

American installation artist – composer, Gary DiBenedetto’s recent multi-media works include videos, sculptures and compositions. The sculptures are assemblages of varying materials that have physical movement, which generates sound. The compositions, derived from sounds recorded in natural and industrial environments, are sonic collages that imply political or social messages. Gary’s music has been extensively performed throughout the US and international communities and is available on the CDs Twin Towers (2008) Electroshock Records, Moscow A Drop in the Bucket (2000) and Season of Adjustment (1998) Diversity Music, USA as well as numerous compilations.

DiBenedetto’s multimedia interactive installations have been exhibited at: Art City Gallery Calgary, Gallery 1313 Toronto, Fuller Craft Museum Brockton, The Newark Museum Newark, The Phillips Museum Lancaster, Hunterdon Art Museum Clinton, Boise Art Museum Boise, Albany Institute of History & Art Albany, Kimball Art Center Park City, Grounds for Sculpture Hamilton, Peters Valley Craft Center Layton. www.garydibenedetto.com

Graham Dunning’s working practice deals with temporality, memory and narrative through sound, performance and installation. He is interested in people’s discarded memories and the function of archiving. Found objects, photographs and recordings feature in his work investigating notions of the artefact and implied narrative. Experimentation is fundamental, and Dunning’s practice is often informed by scientific or archaeological protocol. Dunning considers himself an autodidact in the artistic field having studied physics, acoustics, English literature, philosophy, politics and history as an undergraduate, and engaging in art via experimental music and recording techniques; live composition and improvisation; and a lifelong interest in collecting and archiving interesting discarded objects. Various themes and processes recur in his work including: sound and its relation to loss, nostalgia as mourning, exploring the world through listening, and the specific sonic topologies of specific places; organising, arranging, and composing versus unpredictable inputs, random factors and chance operations; archiving, collecting and documentation in tension with ambiguity and open interpretation; and analogue and digital technologies and their (exploitable) limitations.

Most of Dunning’s recent works have been site-specific installations including an interactive installation in Luton, a large town in South-East England, featuring ten turntables with dubplates of local environmental sound recordings to be played individually or in combination by the audience; A “listening post” in rural West Wales enabling visitors to hear the sounds of the site through surrogate ears mounted in birdboxes ten feet high; and a work on board a decommissioned light-ship which invited viewers to read from an annotated copy of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim into a microphone, their voices altered through a remote reverberation chamber built in the bowels of the ship from existing structures. www.grahamdunning.com

Chris Stockbridge completed an MA in Photography with Distinction in 2009 at the London College of Communication. Her Final Show work has been selected for exhibition both in the UK and America. She has been married for over forty years and is currently exploring long term family relationship in her work with her husband and son as models. She has worked with the artist Gina Glover in a major project in a London Hospital, researching and assisting in production. She also assisted in projects working in the mental health department of a London Hospital and led a three month project with a women’s group leading to a central London exhibition. She is delighted to be able to practice and develop as an artist at this stage in her life and welcomes all opportunities to exhibit. www.chrisstockbridge.co.uk

All proceeds from DiBenedetto’s interactive Coin Delivery System and donation box will be donated to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in Chelsea.

HOLY APOSTLES SOUP KITCHEN 296 Ninth Avenue New York, New York 10001 (212) 924-0167

Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen is one of the major soup kitchens in the nation and the largest soup kitchen in New York City. More than 7 millions meals have been served, well over 6,000 meals each week.