The Proposition gallery is pleased to present New Work, Dane Patterson’s new series of graphite drawings comprising his third solo exhibition at the gallery, opening on Thursday, February 5th from 6-8 pm and showing until Saturday, February 28th. For this body of work, Patterson has expanded both the scale and content of his characteristically meticulous compositions, creating new visual and metaphorical dialogues from the juxtaposition of found materials with portraits of human subjects and exploring the different ways in which their combinations produce meaning.

Quoting the conventional techniques of commercial portraiture (backdrops, even lighting, and central positioning of subject) as a template, Patterson intentionally disrupts the artificial and often uninspired arrangements inherent to such practice by blocking out portions of his subjects with secondary information – in this case, numerous taped-on photographs containing imagery from found drawings, commercial media, stranger’s lives and the artists’ personal genealogy – each symbolizing their own public/private history. Pieces such as All of the photographs from the New York Times 1-19-09 and All of the photographs … 12-20-08 use very specific appropriated materials to cover the subjects of the portraits and in the work titled Genealogy he actually imposes photographs from his own family history on another individual, as a result bringing himself into the content as an unseen subject.

Your browser may not support display of this image.Patterson at once explores these pieces on a strictly aesthetic level, and highlights the way that the ephemera covering the subjects immediately date the pieces and place them within a specific cultural context. His attraction to the aesthetic qualities provided by haphazard arrangements within portraiture is a logical continuation from both of his previous solo exhibitions (Clutter and Noise and thirty-eight eyes), which featured representations of obscured figures/faces and askew interiors occupied by clothing-stuffed dummies and over-turned furniture.

Dane Patterson currently lives and works in New York City and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

BEN BUNCH

In the project room The Proposition presents the intricately detailed small-scale sculptures of artist Ben Bunch. Bunch is interested in the intersection of craft and industrial fabrication. Consumer and fashion trends saturate our life in an endless echo chamber of branding and nostalgia. Bunch enjoys peering into this chasm through a solitary hands-on sculptural practice. Nowadays, many artists employ the same methods of manufacturing that are found in the consumer landscape. Outsourcing, fabrication, and mass production are well-established tools in the contemporary artist toolbox. However, Bunch rejects these processes of artistic industrial fabrication to address the issues of pop imagery and consumerism in a different way. Using materials of humble scale, weight and substance (mostly foam) his objects are hand-made employing basic tools in the most time consuming manner. The end result is an object that mimics the look of industrial fabrication and relishes the geometry and beauty of consumerism.

Ben Bunch currently lives and works in New York City and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. This is his first showing of work at the gallery.