Heist Gallery is proud to present the summer program 1(212): The City’s Summer Heist, curated by Julie Fishkin and Matt Lucas. 1(212), a series of two-week exhibitions, alternates between solo and two-person shows and presents a program of artistic nods to our city, to celebrate unremitting life and the creativity it breeds. NYC is huge, confusing, inspiring, and inescapably real, just like the work Heist Gallery presents this summer.

“New York is resetting. A lot of wealth has been pulled out of the system and much of the pretension and arrogance has gone with it,” says Heist owner, Talia Eisenberg. “This selection of New York based artists reflects a return to the grittier and more sundry elements of the city which were once its hallmarks.”

The program starts with a production by Liz Magic Laser titled chase. Laser’s project consists of three performance-based video and photographic works that utilize bank vestibules as the setting. The daily exchange with ATMs serves as the departure point for this series of works including automatic (2007), deposit (2008), and chase (2009). The most recent work is a production of Bertolt Brecht’s play Man Equals Man. Laser worked individually with professional actors to perform their assigned roles in branch locations of their respective banks. Their videotaped activities attempt to rearticulate a physical and verbal relationship with these bank spaces. A live event will take place on the night of the opening reception.

The subsequent two-person segment, opening July 16th, will be A Summer Wasted with Tim Hailey and Milton Carter. Their two-person segment deals with fame, stardom and how subcultures, notably motorcycle gangs and trick-masters infiltrate the city.

Opening August 2nd is Jennifer Sullivan’s solo segment, Manhattan Miniseries (With Sweaty Palms). Working within an improvised set that she will construct on site, Jennifer Sullivan will create all new daily episodes of her TV variety talk show about art, It’s a Process, of which she is both host and producer. Each episode of It’s a Process will be a unique entity, ranging in content from the intimate to the extravagant, with the intention of setting a stage for dialogue, discovery and possible disaster. The set will feature her paintings, collages and video work, which will be on display with It’s a Process is not live “on air.”

Closing the 1(212): A City’s Summer Heist is a two-person segment with Peter Feigenbaum and Marissa Bluestone titled Trains and Trips from Cement to Cemetery, opening August 20th. The two-person exhibition incorporates Feigenbaum’s “Trainset Ghetto” which attempts to create a cinematic, hyper-real miniature environment based on 1980s-era decaying outer-borough New York City, using model railroading supplies. The antidote to this impending inner city reality is the eerie painted work that Bluestone creates. Reminiscent of the Hudson Valley school of painting gone awry, Bluestone’s large-scale paintings and exquisite drawings depict a dream-like vacation from the city that becomes a nightmarish trip through the recesses of a wandering mind.

Summary schedule of exhibitions: Liz Magic Laser – chase: June 29th – July 12th Tim Hailey & Milton Carter – A Summer Wasted: July 16th – 26th Jennifer Sullivan – Manhattan Miniseries (with Sweaty Palms): August 2nd – 16th Peter Feigenbaum & Marissa Bluestone – Trains and Trips from Cement to Cemetery: August 20th – 30th