Curatorial Statment
Exhibition Checklist
Gallery Location/Directions
Acknowledgements
Curatorial Statement
Locations considers recent creative practices that engage with the urban experience. The works in this show explore such issues as the internalization of the conditions of public life, the reconfiguration of the boundaries of public and private life, and the development of a role for the artist in the exploration of these relationships.
All of the artists engage with the subtlety of the urban environment by identifying familiar formal elements and common surfaces. The representation of these urban spaces present opportunities for the chance encounters of everyday life rather than the more usual, larger and somewhat cliched spectacles of city life. For example, Heidi Schlatter’s light boxes use the familiar language of commercial real estate photography that includes imposition of vertical perspectives and sublime minimalism to advertise common public housing in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The images arrest viewers as both potential inhabitants and potential consumers. Finally, however, their falsity and seductive emptiness inevitably deflate the very expectations they raise. Incorporating the local neighborhood from alternative perspectives, Jeff Konigsberg’s site-specific drywall relief references structures including the Board of Education, the gallery, and the artist’s home. These disparate places, presented in tight order, take on a refined sense of geographic location and architectural detail. In contrast, Franziska Lamprecht’s work zeroes in on the individual perspective, subverting the code of uraban anonymity. Lamprecht uses digital technology to render the domestic interiors of strangers she follows through stores. Employing strategies of surveillance, documenting the time and place, translating the observed behaviors of her subjects into imagined private settings, her work breaks down the idea of a unified identity in an urban context in which subjective experience is imagined and exchanged.
The work of the artists included in Locations should be considered not only in light of their idiosyncratic methods of locating the self within the context of the city, but also as secular inquiries into the construction of the individual in the context of the present urban environment.
Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly September 5, 2002
Susanna Cole is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University. Erin Donnelly is Associate Director of Visual and Media Arts at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The two have collaborated on exhibitions including "Play’s the Thing", the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program Exhibition; "Ground Zero: 01" an online exhibition for the Visual AIDS Gallery; and "Breach" a project by Michael Raeowitz for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
Exhibition Checklist
Unless otherwise noted all works are from the collection of the artists; dimensions are given in inches (height x width x depth).
Eric Brown
Shelter Study I, 2002
Aluminum, enamel
5 1/2x5x5 3/8
$450
Shelter Study II, 2001
Aluminum, acrylic paint
3x2x4
NFS
Shelter Study III, 2001
Aluminum, acrylic paint
9x4x4
$450
Sara Eichner
Brick Façades, 2002
Oil paint on birch panel
13 5/8x14 5/8
Lent by PPOW Gallery, New York
$1,500
Adjacent Brick Buildings, 2002
Oil paint on birch panel
13 5/8x25
Lent by PPOW Gallery, New York
$2,400
Space Above Brick Building, 2002
Oil paint on birch panel
13 5/8x14 5/8
Lent by PPOW Gallery, New York
$1,500
Stills from "Tell" Orange
Tell, 2001
VHS
$6,000 (3 originals)
Stills from "Tell" Purple
Jeff Konigsberg
Into the White, 2002
Acrylic, carved and peeled sheetrock
144x144
Price available on request
Franziska Lamprecht
If I would be you, your room would look like that, 2000-2002
Fourteen computerprints mounted on Plexiglas
Each: 10x10
$3,000 complete set
Camille Norment
Closure, The Stasis Project, 2002
DVD Projection
Site specific installation
$3,000
Heidi Schlatter
Untitled (Garage), 2000
Permanent ink on vinyl, wood
72x132x4
$5,500
Borinquen Houses, 2002
Duratrans, lightbox
16x20x5
$850
Marcy Houses, 2002
Duratrans, lightbox
16x20x5
$850
Marcy Houses, 2002
Duratrans, lightbox
24x24x5
$950
Daniel Zeller
Land of Opportunity, 2000
Graphite on paper
30x37
Collection of A.G. Rosen
NFS
The purchase of artwork is an important way individuals can support contemporary artists and share their work with others. The Rotunda Gallery is a not-for-profit exhibition space and retains 20% of the proceeds of sales to help underwrite its exhibitions and educational programs. Please ask the gallery sitter if you would like additional information.
Gallery Location/Directions
The Rotunda Gallery (33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights), housed in an award-winning space designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, showcases the work of Brooklyn artists. The Rotunda Gallery's educational programs reach 6,000 students each year with gallery visits and in-school art making projects. Janet Riker is the Gallery Director; Meridith McNeal is Associate Director. The Rotunda Gallery is a project of the not-for-profit BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, Inc.
Located in Brooklyn Heights, just over the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Gallery is also easily accessible by public transportation. It is a short walk from the 2,3; 4,5; M; N or R trains at the Court Street/Borough Hall station; or the A, C trains at High Street.
Acknowledgements
The Rotunda Gallery gratefully acknowledges the 1999 Leadership Gift of Richard B. Fisher.
The Rotunda Gallery is grateful for the generous support of our exhibition and education programs from the Sally and Milton Avery Foundation, Chase Manhattan Bank Foundation, Con Edison, the Cowles Charitable Trust, Forest City Ratner Companies, the Greenwall Foundation, the Independence Community Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and the New York Community Trust, as well as numerous individuals.
Programs are made possible in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President and the Brooklyn Delegation to the New York City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Rotunda Gallery is a project of BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture.
September 5 through October 18, 2002
Curated by Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly