Tamara Gonzales: Untitled an exhibition of new paintings

and in the project room: new sketchbook by Austin Thomas recent sculpture by Kevin Curran

Mar 10-Apr 29, 2012

Opening reception: Saturday, March 10, 6-10pm *Opening to coincide with Beat Nite: Bushwick Art Spaces Stay Open Late

Tamara Gonzales* was born in Madera, CA and has been living and working in Brooklyn since 1994. Her new paintings spring to the optical extreme through her unique process of spray painting through found lace tablecloths, doilies, and curtains. Vibrant and witty, layered and textured, the artist combines large gesture with tight pattern to create compositions that at once mimic the grand heroic gestures of the postwar painters, while capturing all-over free spirit found in the graffiti that appears daily on the streets near her Bushwick studio. Inspirations are drawn from eclectic sources: Baroque churches, pagan rituals of the Day of the Dead, rose windows, textiles from an open market in India. Her work is not without subtlety, as there are moments where the artist stops time, opens the frame, expands space and makes room for a meditative practice.

“Especially important to me is that inherent in different lace patterns are many of my prime interests; Baroque churches; rose windows; altars; excess; gaudiness; veiling; and craft.” –Tamara Gonzales

A new publication featuring paintings by Tamara Gonzales and poems by “Punk Poet” Jerome Sala will accompany the exhibit.

More about the artists:

Austin Thomas.

Austin Thomas is an artist that works in collage, sculpture, social architecture, but over all simplicity. Her varied performative actions and artworks are broadly described as delineating and creating “social sculpture.” In homage to Joseph Beuys’s famous formulation and the idea that social systems add up to (or can be rearranged to constitute) one great work of art. Her ‘practice’ has included “Perches” (hybrid sculptural/architectural objects around which events are created); an artist-run gallery in Bushwick; a traveling El Camino that provided a moving space for lectures about art in a cross country trip; and many other public actions that have created spontaneous communities around art, discussion, and most recently a camp for kids and adults, called Camp Pocket Utopia (in collaboration with Norte Maar.)

A graduate of NYU, Thomas has been the recipient of several awards, including a recent New York City Percent for Art Commission, a current studio award from the Elizabeth Foundation, a Public Art Fund Commission, and a sculpture commission from Grinnell College.

Thomas’s collages, are deceptively delicate studies, caught sometimes in the act of unfolding against or through the gridded skin of a graph paper background, they explore enduring thoughts about the specialization of drawing and sculpture.

Her work has been exhibited most recently at Heiner Contemporary Gallery, Washington, DC, and then at The Drawing Center, Murray Guy, The Sculpture Center, Art in General and Storefront Gallery (all in NYC), and at the Corcoran Biennial, Washington, DC. Thomas received press accolades from art critics Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith for her now closed Pocket Utopia Gallery. She continues to foster community amongst artists through various curatorial projects.

Thomas lives and works in New York City.

http://www.austinthomas.org/

Kevin Curran.

Kevin Andrew Curran grew up in a large family (one of eigth kids) splitting time between his mom’s place Upstate NY and his dad’s place in Northern California. Early influences were books by J.R.R. Tolkein, Isaac Asimov, and Frank Herbert, and movies like Rambo, Commando, Top Gun, Karate Kid, and Stand By Me. The male archetypal figures in these and other sources like G.I. Joe were emulated in play, in the interaction between the child Curran and the toy/ environment, and the adolescent Curran in a secret inner world. As a teenage skater-hippie, Curran discovered ceramic sculpture, and later chose to study art, as well as philosophy at the State University of New York in Oneonta. He worked as a studio technician and teachers assistant for Pratt at MWP in Utica, NY for four years after college before heading off to graduate school in Philadelphia, where he studied sculpture. Since then Curran has split his time between New York and Tokyo making and showing his own work, as well as curating shows first as the founder and director of Laundromat gallery and later as a co-founder of AIRPLANE. He is married to the painter Amy Lincoln.

http://kevinandrewcurran.com/home.html

About Norte Maar.

Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts is a 501©3 arts organization with a mission to build community, foster artistic expression, and raise the imaginative energy in us all through collaborations. Norte Maar creates, promotes, and presents collaborations within the disciplines of visual, literary, and the performing arts with an emphasis on community outreach. Norte Maar connects visual artists, choreographers, composers, writers, and other originating artists with venues and each other. Norte Maar relies on the generous support of individuals. To help us continue our creative projects please visit: http://nortemaar.org/support/

Hours: weekends 1-6pm and by appointment: 646-361-8512