Opening: Saturday February 18 2012 5pm – 9pm

Dates February 18- March 24 Open Saturdays and Sundays (Call first) and by appointment

“Show #1” Suzanne Goldenberg, Bobby Neel Adams, Amanda Long, Rachel Phillips, Janice Sloane

The Parlour Art Gallery, located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, is opening to the public on February 18th with the debut group exhibition, “Group Show #1”. The Parlour offers an alternative to the traditional gallery environment – creating a unique exhibition space and venue for artists to become a part of the Bushwick community.

Co-curators Janice Sloane and Rachel Phillips (who along with Chuck Tisa, co-own and reside at The Parlour) introduce themselves and three additional multimedia artists whose work all approaches what might be considered an oxymoronic state of repulsive attraction. The work varies wildly in medium and form, and demonstrates how a common thread can be taken to extremes. The four artists’ collectively question how their respective media can be used to alter our perceptions of self and world by using dichotomies of evolution and death, permanence and transition, beauty and decay.

Amanda Long’s video work transforms figures into physically twisted, candy-colored icons that are doubled, tripled and ultimately abstracted. Aggressively built, Phillips’ mostly black and white drawings evoke primal drawings that are charged with contemporary psychology. In his photos, Bobby Neel Adams shows life and death existing in the same space. Skulls, rotting flesh, and beautiful foliage cohabitate a murky underworld that seems to encapsulate them in time together. Janice Sloane’s work also deals with the theme of time, using hair as a powerful symbol of the fleeting and transformative. For some it is the longest lasting element of the human body, for others short-lived; a sign of decay that is the final thing left after a body has decomposed. Mixed-media artist Suzanne Goldenberg’s sculptures are made of abandoned material. They are improvisational creations simultaneously on the verge of evolving and disintegrating.

“Show #1” will open on February 18th, and thereafter viewing will be possible on Saturdays (please call first) and by appointment. Please visit www.theparlourbushwick.com for further information, including exhibition, calendar, and artist biographies.