Exhibition at Art of Our Century Gallery March 11 - April 4 2021

PRESS RELEASE:

A Fine Disregard for Decorum

James Esber, Jane Fine, Tony Geiger, Justin Neely, Kris Rac, Andrew Smenos

Art of Our Century
March 11 - April 4, 2021
137 W 14th Street, New York City

OPENING: Thursday, March 11, 4-7pm

Gagné Contemporary is pleased to present “A Fine Disregard for Decorum”, opening March 11, 2021 at Art of Our Century gallery. Featuring current work by artists James Esber, Jane Fine, Tony Geiger, Justin Neely, Kris Rac, and Andrew Smenos, the exhibition is curated by John Gagné and runs March 11 - April 4. A socially responsible Opening will be held Thursday, March 11 from 4-7pm at the gallery, 137 W 14th Street, New York, NY 10011.

In the face of political and cultural distortion strategies from seemingly every direction, a good strong Antidote goes a long way.

Several such purifying, edifying antidotes will be on view – from savage political commentary to the rich world of the paranoid to the folly of if-it-wasn’t-so-horrendous-it-would-be-hilarious. The six artists in a state of elevated vigilance harness the craft, wit and frankly nerve to deliver us closer to hope than to despair.

Kris Rac’s small but mighty “Damnatio Memoriae” series collides Goya’s “Disasters of War” on iPhone glass with the former president’s baleful tweets obliterated on screen, while giant alien insects in military garb storm the family farm in Tony Geiger’s conspiracist wet dream, “Coronet Sunset”. So it really is the right time for Andrew Smenos’ glistening paintings of tinfoil hats and ceramic stacks of cold hard cash.

Jane Fine and James Esber, working independently or collaborating as J.Fiber, bring such an obsessive, furiously detailed technical finesse to one horrorshow after another that it can be hard to look and harder to look away. Justin Neely continues his project crossing digital and painterly lines, here quietly reframing shards of headline Noise as funhouse mirror commercial content.

The Gallery Shop will feature smaller artworks by the artists, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, artifacts and printed material. A percentage of proceeds from the Gallery Shop will be donated to two organizations fighting the fight – Her Justice, providing free legal assistance to women in need across all five boroughs of New York City; and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a legal organization for racial justice.

Gagné Contemporary works with emerging and mid-career artists across New York City, USA and Toronto, Canada – part of an art advisory that encompasses gallery exhibitions, artist representation, collections and a curatorial practice.

Art of Our Century gallery is inspired by Peggy Guggenheim's 1942-47 gallery of a similar name and will likewise feature emerging artists alongside more established names. The gallery is open Thursday- Sunday, 2-6pm, and by appointment at 137 W 14th Street, Upstairs.

Press from Ground Histories at P.S. 122

Ground Histories, the exhibition at Painting Space 122, ran from JULY 19 – AUGUST 25, 2019 and was curated by Will Corwin. The exhibition featured Roberto Visani, David Goodman, Ala Dehghan, Heidi Lau, Will Corwin, and myself (Kris Rac). Here is an excerpt from Will’s excellent PR on the show:

Each of the six artists in Ground Histories utilizes geological strategies to generate meaning in their practices, either by mimicking or portraying these formations, as with the ceramics of Heidi Lau, the repetitive cast enclosures and columns of Will Corwin, and the projections of Ala Dehghan; recreating landscape-based monuments in a gallery setting, like Kris Rac's grave markers and David Goodman's tents or huts; or, by invoking these forces of nature or deities themselves, as in the abstract figurations of Roberto Visani. The spacious renovation of PS122 gallery offers a comfortable setting to wander through a miniature garden of Folies, a virtual park of scenic intrusions and extrusions meant to be read as an encyclopedia of stories, personal narratives, historical references and ritual sites rising from the surrounding environment.

Ground Histories also generated some press attention, with a few of those articles & quotes listed below:

“GROUND HISTORIES,” THE SCULPTURE EXHIBITION THAT TOOK ROOT AT PS122 GALLERY” by Britt Stigler, August 16, 2019 in All Arts.

“Ground Histories concludes with Kris Rac’s Teen Bedroom (an ongoing series of material field poems) (2019) where four installations are arranged as graveside memorials, replete with astroturf to suggest the setting of a cemetery lawn . Littered with found objects such as candles, bottles, stuffed animals, and various ephemera, Rac portrays the vestige of cushioned grief. Moreover each head stone bears one word: insignificant, original, ambivalent and satisfaction.”

— Jill Conner

“All That’s Left: A review of ‘Ground Histories’ at P.S. 122” by Jill Conner, August 16, 2019 in Medium.

“Ground Histories at PS122” by Etty Yaniv, August 2, 2019 in Art Spiel.

“Kris Rac’s “Teen Bedroom” is an elaborate and poetic installation of four imaginary graves with photographs of teenagers sleeping with guns in bed. While the offerings draw upon documentation of graves in cemeteries all over the world, the tomb forms are based on graves from Arlington cemetery in Washington DC. The artist says she was moved there by the masses of replicated tombstones as an “amorphous field of individuals.” In “Insignificant” for instance, the grave is made of a wooden tablet painted in deep brown, an elongated stripe of synthetic green grass, surrounded by old yellowish pieces of bedsheets. The offerings here combine a used teddy bear and large glass votive candles the artist found by a roadside shrine. An entire life summed up by a single formula. Rac’s graveyard offerings readily associate with ancient funerary sites excavated in Ancient Egypt and elsewhere in the ancient world, which in the context of this show ties beautifully with Corwin’s altar and Lau’s gate in the east room.”

— Etty Yaniv