Vox Populi members: Leah Bailis, Jamie Dillon, James Johnson, Jonathan Prull, Andrew Suggs, Brent Wahl, and Linda Yun

REPETTI – Long Island City, NY, 9/20/08. Seven artists, all members of Philadelphia’s Vox Populi, show new work with crossover concerns of how the space we inhabit, physical and digital, affects our lives.

James Johnson is primarily interested in creating illusions. He makes objects, imagery, and participatory situations that are both visually alluring and also confounding to the people who encounter them. Often depicting a domestic scene, the sculptures have two parts: a façade and a back-end. The rear houses the equipment that creates the illusion as seen by the viewer while standing in front, peering inside.

Andrew Suggs’ video installation looks at the contemporary obsession with cultural artifacts, and how our fascination with these objects, images, or sounds, generates a heightened sense of nostalgia. In his work he addresses how this sentimentality might stem from our access to an ever-increasing information flow that creates a present with little delineation from past or future

Jamie Dillon combines simple materials in order to offer the possiblility for escape. To communicate with an alternate universe, a pathway is sought – a makeshift portable portal. Dillon explores the possibility of a gateway to a parallel existence while entertaining notions of rebirth and progress.

Leah Bailis makes fragments of houses out of cardboard, and then stacks them in an attempt to build a new house from these pieces. In a very direct way she creates a glimpse of something iconic (the house), then re-arranges it, willfully redefining the the house and the space itself.

Jonathan Prull’s explorations into formal considerations take the shape of large, three-dimensional explosions. By investigating form, color, light and dark, his hulking sculptures can swallow the same space they help define.

Linda Yun has two pieces, one evident only via scent. Her work meditates on those moments where the banal quietly shifts to a subtle moment of wonder, capturing one’s attention even if just for a moment. Faced with a culture where anything can be replicated by industry, Yun chooses to focus on low-fi, humble attempts to build formally pleasing scenarios.

Brent Wahl uses ephemeral materials to make low-tech, yet complicated constructions that often teeter on the verge of collapse. Ultimately these objects are photographed, animated, or in some cases installed in a space prior to their destruction. The resulting work quietly investigates disparate links between time, architecture, faith, nature and the spectacle.