Crashcourse IV an installation by John Silvis

Dec 1-16, 2012

Opening Reception: Fri, Dec 1, 6-9pm

Norte Maar, 83 Wyckoff Avenue, #1B, Brooklyn

Directions: L Train to Dekalb Stop. Norte Maar is on the corner of Wyckoff Avenue + Suydam Street

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

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Norte Maar is pleased to present an installation by multi-disciplinary artist John Silvis. This is the fourth installment of a continuing series called Crashcourse. On exhibition will be a large installation titled, Crash Assemblage in the main front room gallery. Small sculptures called, Crash Objects, will be on view in the project room. The combination of both the installation and the objects makes up Crashcourse IV. Opening reception is Saturday, December 1, 6-9pm at Norte Maar (83 Wyckoff Avenue, #1B).

For Silvis, Crashcourse IV continues to explore crashed car imagery in art as existential metaphor. Referencing Andy Warhol’s crash photo silk-screens and John Chamberlain’s large twisted car sculptures. In Crash Assemblages, two perpendicular triangles made of MDF are combined with felt, the artist’s designed wallpaper, tape drawings, a Plexiglas car silhouette, and a shelf suspending a car part object. The installation sights societies continuing saga with car culture and the ongoing romance with escapism.

Crash Assemblages show the moment of impact as large flat Plexiglas cars make contact with MDF planes clad with scenic views of the open road. Large felt cut-outs hang from the wood structures as if to suggest the plush interior of the car. The cartoonish scale of the objects and their scrappy materiality seem to make light of the presumed crash. The works are uncanny in so far as they appear to serve other functions; their diagrammatic forms and spatial configurations implies that they could be maquettes used to storyboard moving image or animation sequences. Silvis in fact remarks that the assemblages borrow from the language of car shows, where hyper-real materials and imagery are used to seduce willing consumers. Consequently, Crash Assemblages comment on the eventual commoditization and fetishization of the crash through the moving image.–Yesomi Umolu, In the Absence of an Event, Feb 2012

Completing Sivis’ Crashcourse IV are his small sculptures titled Crash Objects. Here the artist introduces an actual yet altered remnant of the automobile. Discarded car parts are reclaimed by Silvis, air-brushed and re-assembled and placed on pedestals. The individual car parts form contrived relationships completely foreign to their original purpose. Although completely futile in function, their presence and association communicates a bizarre primal energy.

For more information about John Silvis visit the artist’s website: johnsilvis.tumblr.com