September 20 – October 18, 1980
Artists Space
Donald Baechler, Arch Connelly, Nancy Dwyer, James Goss, James Holl, Tom Koken
Artists Space opens its Fall season with a group of individual artists' shows. These shows represent each of these artists first one-person exhibitions in New York and will continue through October 18.
Donald Baechler's work in Gallery 205 uses images he appropriates from various banal sources and places into an art context. Baechler's work exists in the form of drawings directly on the wall as well as on paper and other more portable surfaces. The images sometimes make reference to the spaces in which they are installed. In the case of his Artists Space show, Baechler will draw the image of a window directly on the wall of a windowless gallery.
Arch Connelly's works occupy the Foyer Gallery. Intimate in scale, this highly decorative, mixed-media sculpture makes reference to furniture, lamps, flower arrangements and other household items and ornament. Connelly uses the words "mannered" and "self-contained" in discussing his work.
Nancy Dwyer's drawings in the Large Gallery portray people caught in mundane postures and situations. The 3'x 4' drawings combine line and flat color areas; their images are larger than life-size. The scale and uninflected quality of the presentation brings a sense of distorted reality to the situations depicted. It is the artist's intention that this emotionally flat style and ambiguous content will provoke the viewer to supply the image with his or her own meaning.
James Goss's paintings occupy the Corridor Gallery. The small, free-form paintings are oil paint and enamel on gessoed cardboard and hang about 3/4" off the wall. About the paintings Goss says, "Involved in their creation is an attempt to subvert the nature of the object's preciosity while simultaneously using painting's palpable charms to contradict that attempt."
James Holl's "Wake up, It's Time to Go To Work" will be installed in Gallery 207. Holl's installation consists of a diagonal ramp covered with tar and a corridor made of hanging baskets filled with cast paper forms. The piece represents Holl's view of our society's misdistributed wealth. It suggests an invitation "...to charge down the gallery and, like Sisyphus, up the mountain only to slip and fall."
Tom Koken shows oil stick drawings on canvas and paper in the Long Gallery. The images are of generalized human forms in various settings: interior and exterior - urban, suburban and rural. The artist derives these images from dreams, day dreams and memory. By silhouetting the figure and placing it in an objectively recognizable environment, however, the artist says he hopes to "...open it up to general understanding and identification."
Arch Connelly has worked extensively in theatre design and, in 1979, formed a band called "the Decorators".
Programming at Artists Space is partially supported by funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.