WORK is pleased to announce the opening of its inaugural exhibition – SHIFT – a show of new art by 2007 Goldsmiths, University of London M.F.A. graduates Eric Ayotte, Ryan O’Connor, and T.L. Smith. Paintings by both Ayotte and Smith and sculpture by O’Connor will activate WORK, a new viewing station and project art space on the Brooklyn waterfront.

The red tin shack of WORK is sanguinely set where the northern stretch of Red Hook’s Van Brunt Street meets the westernmost end of Union Street. As both compliment and alternative to the heavy industry of its immediate neighbors, WORK endeavors to conscientiously provide itself as a conveyance for artistic labors.

SHIFT is based on the concept that galleries are both vehicles for ideas and temporary repositories reliant on fixed intervals in time. By showcasing the work of three American artists immediately following their completion of the Goldsmiths M.F.A. program, the show reflects the moment when artists change gears and perspectives are refocused. Guest curator Kathleen Smith has selected complementary work for SHIFT that probes interstitials of time, place and pattern in conjunction with the mobilization of WORK. Ayotte’s Afterward (divided) (2007) unfolds in time across a glossy surface through parcels of paint, which reference the pixilation of a television or computer screen. An abstracted image of a deadly car crash, culled from the media, moves from cold geometrical pattern to transcendent mortal order to reveal a drama of speed, disaster and death. Similarly, T.L. Smith’s work starts with an image that references the material world and ends with paint and its materiality as subject. Smith’s Communication at its Best 2 (2006) is composed of lines and the space between them, which reference lines of communication transporting information over time from one space and form to another. O’Connor’s site specific sculpture, approaching the interactivity of performance, references the physical oddity of the red tin shack by making use of geometrical yet absurdist forms built from everyday materials.