Chashama is pleased to present possibilities, a show about painting curated by Rick Herron.

Danny Coeyman Eric Doeringer Kate Fauvell Daniel Turner

A collection of site specific, new and recent work from five emerging New York painters, possibilities is the result of the conditions affecting developing artists addressing the problem of paint and painting. Conceived, proposed, organized and hung in just two weeks by five artists without New York gallery representation and a first time curator, the exhibition itself serves as the documentation of a short, frenetic period of brainstorming, experimentation and new collaboration.

Much of the work in the show will be made just days and hours before the show opens, the exhibition serving as the catalyst for the creation of new forms and unexplored practices. During exhibition planning and installation, myriad decisions to be made about the show presented themselves by way of late night IM conversations, contractual agreements, financial hardship, geographic distance, the thrill of new lovers, the anguish of parting with old ones, and the boundless enthusiasm for an exciting opportunity. The artists in possibilities embrace limitations as opportunities and rely upon change and uncertainty to fuel their development.

Danny Coeyman has previously worked in portraiture and traditional means of drawing and painting. However, he will be working in a completely new direction for possibilities, making several works interested in the tactile and tensile qualities of paint itself. Using homespun cotton saturated in oil paints, Coeyman will weave abstract “canvases”, the color embedded right into the material itself, obliterating the idea of surface, the “painting” becoming every bit of the cotton, front and back, inside and out, the visible and the obscured. The creation of the work contains elements of the personal and spiritual as Coeyman struggles to invent the techniques and processes he needs to realize his vision. Weaving paint soaked cotton balls by hand and building a crude homemade loom, Coeyman is interested in weaving not only paint, but also his own nature into the work he creates, imbuing work that may seem cerebral and esoteric with a warmth and soul that can be absent in minimal or process oriented painting. In addition, Coeyman will be using paint pours and paint stripping, directly on the surface of the gallery wall, to create site specific works about the viewer’s awareness of the space and its material properties.

At 34, Eric Doeringer is both the oldest and most widely exhibited artist in possibilities. Perhaps best known for making cheap bootlegs of trendy contemporary artist’s work and selling them on the streets, at art fairs and even the Whitney Biennial. Doeringer uses the conceptually based practice of bootlegging to continue art history’s dialogue about authorship, authenticity, originality and art dealing/collecting. Recently, Doeringer has become interested in addressing the work of conceptual artists from the 60’s and 70’s like Daniel Buren, Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner. Since these artists deal in ideas and not unique, precious objects, Doeringer’s appropriation of these projects, which he calls “recreations”, is a delicate matter fraught with more questions than answers. In addition to showing extant works addressing several issues and periods in painting, Doeringer will create a wall text piece based on a Lawrence Weiner project for the first time.

Kate Fauvell uses dripping, oozing paint, a luminescent palette and a wide range of materials to connect with her audience in a personal and viscerally focused practice. Fauvell turns the inside out, bringing bones, spines and organs to the surface. Faces drip, melt and peel away to expose her raw, emotional relationship to the people in her life, but also acknowledge a scientific curiosity and fascination with anatomy. Painting on thin sheets of Mylar and hung on light boxes used to read X-rays, Fauvell creates work that glows with the intensity of life that resides inside her figures. For possibilities, Fauvell has created several new works on a human scale that stand on the floor, giving viewers an immersive experience simultaneously inside the body of her subject and the artist’s own imagination. Using a minimal visual language, Daniel Turner’s pieces are often made with repellent intoxicating materials such as antiseptics, kerosene, vinyl, soot, and liquid aluminum. Known to destroy huge bodies of work as performance or often making objects on site and then casting them aside afterward, Turner’s work can serve as art history’s memento mori. For possibilities, Turner will present new paintings made of toxic liquid materials wrapped between layers of folded vinyl. Achingly beautiful and expertly crafted, Turner takes the most vitriolic and caustic parts of life and traps them in a crystalline state, lending the object a sense of grace and granting the audience a comfortable distance. In addition to his vinyl paintings, Turner will create a new project on site during the installation.

Rick Herron is an artist and curator from Plattsburg, Missouri. As curator, he seeks to collaborate with contemporary artists to help them find new inspiration, energy and focus in their work. This is his first exhibition in that role.