Art in America

ARARIO is pleased to announce an exhibition 'Art in America' featuring 7 young American Artists: Christopher Deeton, Roe Ethridge, Rob Fischer, Euan Macdonald, Todd Norsten, Allison Smith and Leo Villareal from October 17th through November 19th, 2006. This exhibition includes 30 works ranging from paintings, installations, video, and photography.

The 7 Artists in 'Art in America' present the current American Art in its raw form. The reason their works are under such spot-light is neither due to unconventional experimentalism like the “sensations” of Young British Artists nor due to common regional characteristics like naturalism and painting centerness of the Young German Artists. It is because the works of these emerging American Artists have great diversity that cannot be characterized by any one particular genre or ideology. Yet strange familiarity and comfort ties them together as one. Though appropriating the formative elements of past American Arts and at the same time applying current context and possibility of reinterpretation, they have recreated a complete new form.

Christopher Deeton’s symmetrical abstract paintings are frequently associated with 1960s’ Color-Field painting. The huge black mark covering the large canvas has a meditative effect as Rothko’s paintings did. For this, Deeton does not use a brush but tilts the canvas so that colors run down and spread by the force of gravity. This technique evokes tension by combining gravity, the artist’s will to control, and the accidentally of the spread of color as one.

Roe Ethridge is a New York-based photographer. In his pictures, there is nothing like Henri Cartier-Bresson(1908~2004)’s “the decisive moment(Images la sanvette)” of sorts, but only the artist’s eyes full of curiosity and the true aspects of the world reinterpreted by them. (2004-2006) is a picture of fish whose guts are anatomized. The image of the bowels with the small fishes half digested in the stomach reflects the curious eyes of the artist, leading the viewers to participating in his experiment and observation.

Rob Fischer is well known for his unique installations. His works begin with consideration of space. The serial relationship among the space where things are placed, man who uses things, and the space where he lives forms the key concept of his work. Usually he combines the parts of vehicles such as the fragments of a plane or a ship with other materials and investigates what kind of new context these vehicles are creating when the viewers see them in an entirely different place. (2004-2005) is a ship’s structure covered with glass, displayed longitudinally not laterally unlike the familiar side view of a ship. Pieces of broken glass are pasted on the surface of the ship, whose bottom is open to make the whole structure look like a gigantic door. In this way, the part of ship meets the viewers in a transformed shape and in a different place. The ship here comes to function as a passage to the art world not as a mere vehicle.

Euan Macdonald lives and works in Los Angeles. His drawings and video works have a flavor of humor. While reminiscent of Ed Ruscha (1937~)’s (1970), his (2006) is full of fun and joke and very light-hearted, unlike the seriousness of Conceptualism and deep thinking about language and art.

Todd Norsten also often uses light and funny images. (2006), these eighteen small pieces, includes ambiguous but not heavy images like a T-shirt with a skeleton pattern or letters, a girl with pigtails and so on. The phrases written in the pieces such as “STOPLOOK//INGATME” or “I TOOK YOUR PICTURE” beneath an empty box add enjoyment to the viewers’ appreciation.
Alison Smith’s project “Muster” in 2005 was covered extensively by the press. Her installation work (2004-2005) belongs to this Muster project. This was exhibited both the 2004’s Muster project conducted by Mark Dion and Morgan Puett in Pennsylvania and 2005’s Governor’s Island project. Mustering Officer's Campsite was the actual campsite Allison created and fashioned for herself for The Muster. It was exhibited both in the 2004’s Muster project conducted by Mark Dion and Morgan Puett in Pennsylvania and in the 2005’s Governor’s Island project. The objects and items displayed in and around the tent include artworks, decorative paintings, stencils, sgraffito ceramics, a field desk, and leather craft works that Smith learned and made to express her identity, ideas and revolutionary cause.
Leo

Leo Villareal works with lightings. Villareal’s light works can be traced back to Dan Flavin (1933~1996)’s fluorescent constructions. While Flavin opened a new horizon of ‘light art’ by using artificial light, Villareal presented for the first time light art whose colors and patterns change by adding the element of movement to light. His (2005), four sets of three fluorescent lightings, shows blue and red lightings changing every moment. Their changing pattern is irregular and unpredictable, for it is programmed to have infinite numbers of cases.