Santiago Mostyn, Peter Sutherland and Jai Lennard have directed a documentary approach in art making toward a more personal effort. The work in this exhibition evidences their consideration of the unmonumental and betrays a sympathy for an aesthetic experience that is possible in the ordinary.

The focus of Santiago Mostyn’s practice is the image. He sees images as the major language and currency of contemporary culture. Mostyn endeavors to enact a separation between an image and its objecthood, or an object and its image perception, which he describes as pure looking. The long paper work contained in this exhibition is a fragment of a larger image taken from a photograph of a real object but with its own ambivalent dimensionality. The partial image becomes a tactile reference due to its material presence of paper folded, unfolded, and hanging. The traditional black and white prints are location and casting stills for a future film montage. In shifting pure imagery away from the forms from which they derive, Mostyn provides the possibility of a new life for the object.

Peter Sutherland’s ouvre in film, installation, writing and photography derives from his peripatetic way of life. For over a decade, his place of work has been the unbounded and open road. His recent decision to work in a studio initiated a significant shift in his practice; the making of sculptural objects, which continues his interest in the intuitive capture of the anecdotal and unassuming. Sutherland’s work runs counter to a flawless and slick aesthetic. He uses small point and shoot cameras and natural light in his photography; in his sculptures he appropriates objects with an originally quotidian purpose. The subject matter is paramount to Sutherland. Curating unrelated objects leads to poetic possibilities. He says, “Maybe it’s about curating things that you enjoy rather than creating it all the time.” Through an aesthetic of the prosaic, Sutherland’s works explore the pleasures and discomforts of popular culture.

Similar to Sutherland, Jai Lennard’s recent engagement with assisted readymades began with his artistic practice in photography. Versed in portraiture, the instillation of chairs in the gallery exists as an extension of his other works, which explore the perverse aspects of everyday people’s lives. These people, created by Lennard, explore their desires through their environments while often reliving childhood experiences. Lennard uses the chairs as vehicles to explore potential narratives inherent in a child’s complex experience within the classroom; these narratives explore feelings such as isolation, desire, confusion, anger, and fear. As the scenes vary in nature, we are left to wonder if we are witnessing children at play, or an adult wanting to be one.

For more information and images, please contact Annelie McGavin at (718) 213-2469.

Gallery hours: Thursday through Sunday 1 – 6 pm or by appointment Contact: [email protected] (718) 852-4396 www.studio10bogart.com The gallery is across the street from the Bogart Street exit at the L Train Morgan stop.