Stemming from still-life painting, industrial design and Modernism, Elise Ferguson’s work meditates on interior spaces, abstraction and representation. Intricate, precise and improvisational, her sculptural works are room scale collages. Demonstrating a sensuous enjoyment of materials the sculptures reflect the density and diversity of urban space. The cut vinyl pieces are compositions based on various highway interchange patterns that are repeated and flipped. In a search for a space between chaos and order, the patterns and color choices encourage a fluidity and movement within all her work. Ferguson’s work addresses the curious nexus of Modernist concerns and consumer design. With references to architecture ranging from the sacred (cathedral floorplan) to the mundane (office cubicle layout, faux wood grain), the work reinvestigates the transitional period during which early 20th century painters such as Mondrian made their move from nature based imagery to ‘pure plastic’ abstraction.

Elise Ferguson works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago and a BFA from the School of the Art Insitute.of Chicago. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including shows at Luhring Augustine gallery, Andrew Kreps gallery, CRG gallery, Lombard Fried and Team as well as at the Socrates Sculpture Park and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Arnold J. Kemp’s paintings are invested in the possibilities of abstraction’s psychic and political spaces, as well as its cultural and philosophical positions. A limited palette provides his work with an undercurrent of glamour and the dry humor of conceptual art. Black blackness is the obvious subject matter of these paintings but also of concern are black magic, black light and black art’s histories. Implicit in his work is the questioning of painting as a historical object and the insistence that painting come from where we least expect it.

Arnold J. Kemp works in Williamsburg and San Francisco. He has had solo shows at Debs & Co., New York, The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco. In 2000 his work was included in the Studio Museum in Harlem’s groundbreaking “Freestyle” exhibition. His work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2007 he completed a large site-specific project for the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s Time-Based-Arts Festival and he performed INARMS, a commissioned experimental play, for the San Francisco Poets Theater. His work has been seen most recently in group exhibitions at Postmasters, New York, Sister, Los Angeles and envoy, New York.

ALSO ON VIEW: AUDE DU PASQUIER GRALL . THE MALE CYCLE Nº7 25 APRIL — 7 JUNE 2008 . TU