Dane Rex/Nonesuch Documentation

Here are a selection of photos chronicling Dane's exhibit "Nonesuch" at Good Faith Space.

[28-9July] Dane Rex / Nonesuch Flyer + Installation (2)

I designed a flyer for local distribution & added some more installation shots... - PJM

Nonesuch: Dane Rex Solo Exhibition at GFS [Opening 2Aug2013]

Good Faith Space [GFS], Art for Humans [AFH] and Kellogg LTD are proud to present NONESUCH, the first solo exhibition for Bushwick-based artist Dane Rex. GFS will host an opening reception for NONESUCH on Friday, August 2nd from 6-8PM. Copies of Dane's second zine, "Jaundice," will be on view and available for purchase at the reception. Good Faith Space is located at 722 Metropolitan in Williamsburg/Brooklyn, on the 3rd Floor, at Standard ToyKraft.

BY SUBWAY: L Train to Graham Avenue, G to Lorimer Street

CONTACT: Paul McLean [artforhumans@gmail.com or (c)615.491.7285]

PREVIEW ZINES: http://danerex.bigcartel.com/

PREVIEW ART [in black & white]: http://instagram.com/nonesuch_

ARTIST STATEMENT

DANE REX

Nonesuch

Making art has always been a release for me. I've always made art. It's just what I did, what I do. I never set out to produce pieces with a specific subject or moral/social/political message. When making art in the beginning I don't think there's much of a thought process. I enjoy the feel of the pen or paintbrush in my hand, cutting up images, playing with the materials and textures, spending hours working on one piece. Upon reflection, I know subconsciously when I'm making my artwork there's more going on than me simply cutting up images and sticking them onto paper. I see patterns in my work. I see that they are visceral and raw and can be perceived as political, socially aggressive, whatever, but I never like to think about it too much, and I don't want to put a label on something when I'm not sure myself what it means - if it means anything at all. If I had to derive meaning from my work I would suggest that I am a product of the world around me. What I create is a symptom of my own experiences growing up and now. My world is my childhood, my parents, Florida, Granada, Long Island... My tiny basement studio. I'm inspired by New York: its crudeness, its aggression, its seemingly unbreakable veneer. I like the abandoned parts, the old factories,the train tracks, the forgotten areas, the uncared for places - hell, the uncared for people. I've always had a fascination with photographs. I like to collect strangers' old photo albums. Sometimes I would find them in the trash, and just thought I should keep them. Other times in junk stores I would find a family portrait and felt I, someone, should have this, do something with this. I suppose its a voyeuristic interest. It's like peeking into someones personal world. My other love is the advertisements from old magazines. The picture-perfect wife, the gleaming children, the delicious food, the sophisticated liquors, the artsy cigarettes... Basically we are being sold the American dream. When looking through modern images the message is the same. We are still being sold this idea of perfection. This is how you should look, dress, eat. This is happiness, and this is the ideal America. This is what we are all striving for. This is making us unhappy, and I reject theses ideals, these pressures. I take this imagery and I re-imagine it. I take the image out of context, I create a new meaning. The images are no longer perfect. You can take whatever you want from it in the end, but at least it is real.

ABOUT GOOD FAITH SPACE

GOOD FAITH SPACE [GFS] currently inhabits the Project Room of Standard ToyKraft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC. The mission of GFS is to platform Dimensionist Art projects and multidisciplinary collaborations by accomplished and emerging creative practitioners, and to serve as a nexus for 4D discourse in NYC. Paul McLean is Lead artist of GFS. GFS is sponsored by Kellogg LTD.

AFH Update 5/2013 [Part2]

We are developing our 2013 expo series on the fly for Good Faith Space. One upcoming exhibit we're excited about [tentative mid-July opening slated] will feature the multimedia work of Brooklyn-based artist Dane Rex. Dane has recently completed a zine, "Castrate Yourself," which GFS will be launching. He'll also be presenting selections from his diverse and compelling 2012-13 2D and 3D serial output, comprising a range of content in a spectrum of portable and hangable art on paper and other substrates, including found stuff, like industrial wood throwaways and print material.

Eric Leiser is planning to create a site specific installation at GFS in September. We're talking about what that might look like. Probably the expo will include Eric's remarkable holography, paintings, moving images [sample above], soundscapes by Eric's brother/collaborator Jeffrey and other sculptural or dimensional elements.

Deer + Bird [in progress at #411 Brooklyn Fireproof, during BOS2013; Society for the Prevention of Creative Obsolescence]; acrylic on wall; by Shane Kennedy; dimensions variable.

Shane Kennedy, as mentioned previously, is leaving for Europe in July to reconvene the Voyage of the Hippo with his pal Clemens Poole and the rest of the Hippo crew. When Shane returns, we are envisioning his next wall painting happening at GFS.

[Look for news on a little cake social happening to close the SftPoCO showcase sometime in the next week or so.]

My conversation with Shane about painting is now going on its 13th or 14th year. I cannot overstate how significant his accomplishment is (as seen in the SftPoCO wall painting). Earlier in the week we traveled together to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, and one aspect of the trip involved seeing the marvelous wall paintings on view there. The discursive exercise we had on this auspicious occasion juxtaposed traditional Tibetan Buddhist representation with the 4dimensional form Shane is developing as a branch of the discipline. The two mediums, at least in their open-edged, flattened, conceptual lattice framework, are approaching each other as structural similarities, now.

Shane also visited the Metropolitan Museum to view "The Boxer," this week. We discussed the types of detail in that great sculpture, one of my all-time favorites, that do not photographically reproduce from the bronze to the 2D representation (photo/jpg). Shane's wall paintings are appropriating this feature of lossy translation, but re-opening the visual animation of the original content as a projection on top of a projection. The base or substrate projection, the ground, if you will, appears to be static (but isn't). It's a profound innovation, in the manner Shane is dealing with it, even if the model has been experimented with by others previously.

The process by which the SftPoCO wall paintings were realized, as a feature of our BOS2013 program, but as a progression over a time phase too, has integrated wovenform effects in a very complex array of invisible networks, which, in the aggregate, nonetheless evidences itself in a very simple, even minimal, painting, at least in its early stages. Now that a color field/plane has appeared, employing color in representational facets symbolic, sensational and decorative, the figurative design is floating, and the white walls (two of them, incorporating a 90 degree corner, a perpendicular planar device) activate to imply projected background as a full or total, complete abstraction, one that it is possible to suffuse with any static or moving image. It's like a Slider (not the sandwich, the digital widget).

I am looking forward to talking with JN about this. There is an interesting wrinkle to consider, which has to do with Noise and hyper-realism countermanding optic recognition, in patterns or in the contingent or referential. For instance, one can apply the photo below as a "backdrop" or setting for the scene depicted at 411 BFP. It is helpful to recall Mark Tribe's recent landscape exhibit at Momenta here. The key is to be able to permit each element in the "painting" to exist in all its dimensional possibility. Shane has mastered this ability at a young age. - PJM

I would hint that GFS is going to devote substantial programming to mine this seam. The inaugural meeting of SftPoCO seems to indicate that the technology of our individual artistic expression is amenable to sharing, to collective transmission, even recording.

Our organizational conferences, including the artists, admins, techs, staff and supporters, seem to be directing us to consider a standalone environment where food, art, talk, media and music commingle. The models we are considering are diverse.