Weekend

When I first thought of using the title Weekend it was before the election and I was excited to put together a bold, colorful and energetic exhibition, a celebration or an extended party in a warm and exotic location. I thought of inviting my favorite artists as if inviting my favorite people for a weekend escape in the countryside.

Then the election happened and I’ve become hesitant about making a show with a theme of celebration or joy. However, it occurs to me that Weekend can be a more expansive concept, with the possibility of pleasure and communion as well as destruction. It is also worth remembering that the five-day workweek with a weekend break was a hard-fought victory for workers rights.

Pretty much overnight we have become witnesses of civilization crashing and burning around us. Many of us will go inward to find expression of personal visions. Others might react directly to the shocking events, which we hear about in the media daily. I have often struggled personally with what my responsibility as an artist is. I believe artists shouldn’t feel compelled to make topical works unless they are fulfilling a deep personal need for such expression. I often think of Matisse’s response to the hopelessness of the First World War by painting his normally light window in black.

Maria Calandra was born in London, UK in 1976. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is the artist and writer behind the blog Pencil in the Studio, which she started in 2011. In this new body of work, originated during a retreat on the coast of Maine, Calandra is tapping into her subconscious to convey affections for the natural world, using automatic drawing as a more direct approach to capture nature’s spirit. Calandra holds a BFA from Ohio University and received an MFA from Cornell University in 2006. She has shown in both New York City and across the United States previously exhibiting with Andrew Edlin Gallery, Shrine Gallery, Romeo, White Columns, Arts and Leisure, Geoffrey Young Gallery and Sardine.

Andy Cross was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1979. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Cross received a MFA from Hunter College in 2005. A self-proclaimed wanderer, Cross culls memories, objects, and impressions from travels around the world, synthesizing them into compositions that blend art historical, spiritual, and cultural references. Cross has had solo exhibitions in NY with Kravits Wehby, and Martos Gallery. In Brooklyn with Sardine and Cathouse FUNeral. In Boston with Mario Diacono at Ars Libri, and internationally with the Max Mara, Marramotti Family Collection. Cross has also been included in numerous groups shows, with the above mentioned galleries as well as with Peter Blum, ATM, Museum 52, Ortega y Gasset, and in Berlin with Galerie Mikael Andersen. Cross’ work has been featured and reviewed in the Art in America, Art News, Contemporary Art Daily, Hyperallergic, Art Newspaper (Russia online edition), Italian Vogue (online edition), as well as Pencil in the Studio blog. Cross is also an Adj. Prof at KBCC in Brooklyn teaching Painting and Drawing.

Jules De Balincourt was born in Paris, France in 1972 but primarily grew up near Malibou Lake in the Santa Monica Mountains. De Balincourt is known for his idiosyncratic atmospheric paintings with saturated colors, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. He got his MFA from Hunter College, NYC in 2005. His work has been exhibited at prominent international galleries and museums including Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Mori Museum in Tokyo (solo) and has been featured in high-profile exhibitions including, “Greater New York” at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and MOMA in New York, and “USA Today” at the Royal Academy in London.[7][8] His work is in prominent collections, including the Oppenheimer – JCCC Collection for the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Saatchi Gallery, Brooklyn museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Erik den Breejen was born in Berkeley, California in 1976. He is a graduate of Cornell University, where he received his MFA in 2006, and California College of the Arts, where he received his BFA in 1999. Den Breejen’s paintings use texts and song lyrics as a jumping-off point for making hallucinatory and complex visual and color experiences. Recent solo exhibitions include Image, Music, Text at the Untitled art fair in Miami Beach (2012) and There’s a Riot Goin’ On at Freight and Volume, NYC (2014). Den Breejen has exhibited internationally, and his work is in collections throughout the world, including the Kistefos Collection in Norway. He recently completed a two story mural of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, commissioned by the label for their new headquarters in New York. Den Breejen is a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Painting and is preparing for a solo exhibition at F+V in October, 2016. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Franklin Evans was born in 1967 in Reno Nevada. He creates paintings and painting installations focusing on the studio process and its relationship to art and art history. He uses past art to make his paintings, with a recent focus on Matisse and Cezanne. He lives and works in New York, NY. He has degrees from Stanford University, University of Iowa, and Columbia University. Since 2005, he has had two dozen solo exhibition internationally and numerous group exhibitions at venues, which include, among others: MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; DiverseWorks, Houston, TX; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Futura, Prague, Czech Republic; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA. He is represented by Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, NY and FL Gallery, Milan, Italy.

Sue Havens was born 1972 in Rochester, New York. She is based in New York and Tampa. Havens has recently developed a new body of ceramic work which expands upon her paintings. Inspired by subway platforms, Deco buildings, seersucker plaids, a thrift store dotted skirt, Turkish embroidery and the ruins of Ephesus. Havens received her BFA in Art from The Cooper Union for The Advancement of Science and Art from 1990-1995, and her MFA in painting from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 2003. Havens is a 2008 Fellowship recipient in Painting from The New York Foundation for the Arts and most recently a recipient of the 2017 McKnight Junior Faculty Development Fellowship. She is currently an assistant Professor of Art at The University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.

James Hyde was born 1958 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an American painter, sculptor and photographer who has worked in New York City since the early 1980s. He is represented by Horton Gallery in New York and exhibits internationally with Schau Ort, Zurich, Switzerland and Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris, France. He also has works in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum and has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Hyde often employs unconventional materials when painting that range from plaster, nylon, chrome, steel to styrofoam and glass. His practice has been described as an “exploration of physicality” in his experimentations with different textures and planes that often re-evaluate and expand the limits and boundaries of painting.

Samuel Jablon was born in 1980 in Binghamton, NY. He is an artist and poet who lives and works in New York City. Jablon’s work explores the discursive and sensual visuality of art and poetry and the ways in which these forms serve as sources of disinformation and openness. Jablon received his MFA from Brooklyn College/CUNY (2013) and his BA from Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado (2009). He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, The Queens Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, The Kitchen, Artists Space, and Yours Mine & Ours. Solo exhibitions include Freight + Volume (NY), Arts + Leisure (NY), and Diane Rosenstein (LA). His work has been reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, Interview Magazine, Art in America, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail and others.

Ezra Johnson was born in 1975 in Wenatchee Washington and is currently living and working in Tampa Florida. He is a painter who expands into animation and sculpture adding complication and energy to his painting through the synthesis of different mediums. He received an MFA in Painting from Hunter College in New York in 2006 and has exhibited his work at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Site Santa Fe, the ICA in Philadelphia the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas, Tampa Museum of Art, Freight & Volume Gallery in New York, Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York and many others. Dominique Labauvie Was born in 1948 in Strasbourg France. He lives and works in Tampa, Florida. Educated at the Beaux Art in Paris, France. In 1985 he had his first one-man show at the Gallery Jordan in Paris. In 1986, Dominique Labauvie received the Rome Prize for Germany and spent one year working in Freiburg/Breisgau, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Berlin. Since 1977, Labauvie has received numerous commissions for Public Sculptures in Europe and the United States. In 1997 he was commissioned by the City of Paris to create a monumental cast iron sculpture “Suspended Skyline” which is installed on the Quai de Seine at the entrance to the Park of the Villette. In 1999, he installed “Over the Cities” at the Vandenberg Airport in Tampa, commissioned by the Hillsborough Aviation Authority. In 2001 he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition of sculpture and drawings at the Coral Springs Museum in Florida. In 2009 Dominique Labauvie received the Gottlieb Foundation Award Grant in honor of his artistic achievement. In 2009, he had his first New York solo exhibition, “Turning Point” at Haim Chanin Fine Arts. In August of 2010, “Musical Lines in My Hand” opened at the new Tampa Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited all over Europe, Japan and the United States in galleries, museums and cultural venues. Dominique Labauvie’s work is included in major public and private collections, including: The BNY | Mellon Corporate Collection, Pittsburgh, PA., The National Collection of Contemporary Art, France; Regional Collections of Art of Alsace, Paris, Languedoc Roussillon, France; The Runnymeade Collection in San Francisco; The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida; the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida; and The Tampa Museum of Art.

Emily Noelle Lambert was born in Pittsburg Pennsylvania in 1975. She lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA in Visual Art from Antioch College. Her work investigates a fluid movement between large scale paintings, small scale assemblages and sculptures. Connecting these works is a sence of color, mark making and an exploration of abstraction and figuration. Lambert has shown nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions in New York City at Denny Gallery, Lu Magnus Gallery and Priska Juschka Fine Art, Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago, and IMART in South Korea. Her work has been include in group exhibitions at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota Florida, The University of Michigan in Kalamazoo, The Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA, Weekend Space in LA, and RH+Gallery in Istanbul. She has been awarded fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, The Yaddo Foundation, The Alfred and Trafford Klots International Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Dieu Donne, and the Lower East Side Printshop. Lambert’s work has been reviewed in The International New York Times, The Observer, The Brooklyn Rail, Modern Painters, The Washington Post, Art in America, and artforum.com. She is part time assistant faculty at Parsons the New School for Design and adjunct faculty at Fordham University.

David McBride was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1974. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and received his MFA degree from Hunter College in 2004. McBride’s paintings focus on an interplay between traditional oil glazing techniques in painting and methods of mass reproduction, and formally may be recalled as paintings of black and white photographic imagery. McBride often deals with imagery associated with innocuous events and objects than somehow manage to retain a hold on our consciousness. His work has been exhibited at Lesley Heller Workspace, Common Room, New York, NY; curated by Bjoern Meyer-Ebrecht. Rise, Brooklyn, NY; curated by Lynn Sullivan. The Onerdonx Archive, Scholes Library, Alfred University, Alfred NY. Common Room, Brooklyn, NY. Andy’s Room, 57 W 57 Arts; curated by Andy Robertson. Institut fur alles Mogliche, Berlin, Germany, curated by Jenny Vogel. Greater Columbus Arts Council, Notes from Dresden, Columbus, OH. Storefront Gallery, Dunkle Wolke, Brooklyn, NY; curated by William Powhida.

Kristen Schiele was born in Houston, Texas in 1970. Her paintings weave poetic tableaus from the fabric of pop and movie culture. Scenes are painted and silkscreened in a twilight dreamscape of landscape and figures drawing from Fassbinder to vintage “Easy Rider” magazines. brutal and playful, neon and subtle, classical and burlesque, high and low culture, old world and new. Schiele holds a BA in Visual arts from Indiana University, a masters degree from the American University in Washington DC, and has studied at the Universitat der Kunste Berlin. Her work has been exhibited at the Torrence Art Museum, Corcoran Museum of Art, Portland Institute for Comtemporary Art, Nathalie Karg Gallery in NY, Freight and Volume Gallert in NY, Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, PS1 Moma and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Book Fair and The Soap Factory in Minneapolis. Her work was recently added to the Whitney Museum of Art and Metropolitan Musuem of Art collections. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Jered Sprecher was born in Lincoln Nebraska in 1976. His paintings compress time into the surface and touch of painting, that old technology. Flora, fauna, and natural phenomenon combine with intricate painterly structures, “bits of day-to-day life, seen through the glow of the digital screen are the genesis of my work.” Sprecher lives and works in Knoxville, TN. He holds a BA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Sprecher is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009-10) and has had residencies at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in Manhattan (2003-4), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2007), and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2013). Sprecher has had solo exhibitions at venues such as Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York, Wendy Cooper Gallery in Chicago, Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, Kinkead Contemporary in Los Angeles, and Gallery 16 in San Francisco. His work has been included in exhibitions at Espai d’art Contemporani de Castelló, The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Bronx River Art Center, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, and Hunter Museum of American Art. His work has been written about in Art Papers, The Boston Globe, Burnaway, Hyperallergic, Beautiful Decay, and New American Paintings. Currently, Sprecher is a Professor of Art at The University of Tennessee. He has taught at The University of Iowa, Princeton, and Cornell University.

Wendy White was born in 1971 in Deep River, Connecticut. Her work explores the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation, by employing nostalgic symbols in a way that lures the viewer into a pictorial haze to examine an unfolding story. Just as the skaters and surfers of the 1980s had their specific vocabulary, White presents a lexicon of new iconography repeated throughout the exhibition. Her graphic stenciled rain clouds, hearts, and rainbows take on new meaning, acting as stickers that unify adolescent skateboard fantasies with a Lisa Frank-like pseudo-reality. White has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm; Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan; M Woods, Beijing, China; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; and Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.