TOXIC BEACH BLANKET POP-UP PARTY

beachparty2Put the superfun back in superfund!
Date: Friday, April 6
Time: 8:00–11:00 PM
Admission: $7
Presented by the Hollow Earth Society

The Gowanus is a neighborhood in flux—a place where past, present, and future are colliding—not to mention nature and industry, construction and decay… So join us at Observatory for a night of good, clean toxic fun in celebration of the Hollow Earth Society’s ongoing Pop-Up Museum! Featuring specialty “Gowanus Punch” drinks and henna tattoos for sale, free comestibles, video and sound art, and performances including burlesque, comedy, puppetry, and music.

Performers include:

  • Lindy Lollipop, Burlesque Performer
  • Gretta Vendetta, Burlesque Performer
  • Eric Grundhauser, Comedian (Creator of DUNGEON MASTER and co-host of The Brain Fart Trivia Show)
  • The Great Gouldini, Puppeteer
  • Grace Baxter and Emi Brady, Henna Artists

Pop-Up Museum artists and facilitators include Stephen Aubrey, Grace Baxter, Emi Brady, Ted Enik, Ben Garthus, Ethan Gould, Wythe Marschall, Megan Murtha, Nandini Nessa, Rob Parker, Rob Peterson, Kathryn Pierce, Oberon Redman, Lindsey Reynolds, Nikki Romanello, Mike Rugnetta, Tim Schwartz, and Jon Waldo.

The Pop-Up Museum

wireTHE POP-UP MUSEUM
of the Gowanus Canal

Curated by the Hollow Earth Society and Radio Transmission Ark

March 3 – April 22, 2012

Toxic Beach Blanket Pop-Up Party showcasing the evolved work of the Museum: 8:00 PM, Friday April, 6th.

See our inspirations on Tumblr >>
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A museum’s mission involves the categorization, preservation, and contextualization of objects within a finite space. The Pop-Up Museum is designed to function as the inverse of these practices, bringing together a set of local, “unremarkable” objects that then become art or serve as a springboard for art that references them.

Through the playful contextualization and re-contextualization of these objects, we will redefine the museum—both what a museum looks like, physically, and what it does, culturally.

Specifically, we will work with found materials from all around the Gowanus neighborhood to create a new “history” of the region and its traditions (a not entirely serious one).

As a collective, we will plow through a century of objects in order to remix in miniature the Gowanus, Observatory, and the whole enterprise of the museum—the whole enterprise of producing, categorizing, and showing off knowledge. Quick, fast, and dirty, the Pop-Up Museum presents the unpresentable: change itself.

The “art on the walls” for this show will thus consist of:

  1. input – gathering of information, data, narratives, knowledges, magics, magnetisms, and (overlooked) curiosities from the physical space around Observatory
  2. process – generation of media, drawings, recordings, photos, video, writing, and data analyses
  3. output – a series of mixed-media art-objects, a book, a series of records, miniDV tapes, presentations, workshops, sound walks, magical fieldtrips, historical jaunts

All of these, not one of these, will become the art of the Pop-Up Museum…

Facilitators

  • Ethan Gould
  • Wythe Marschall
  • Rob Peterson
  • Lindsey Reynolds

Artists

  • Stephen Aubrey
  • Grace Baxter
  • Emi Brady
  • Ted Enik
  • Ben Garthus
  • Nandini Nessa
  • Megan Murtha
  • Rob Parker
  • Kathryn Pierce
  • Oberon Redman
  • Nikki Romanello
  • Mike Rugnetta
  • Tim Schwartz
  • Jon Waldo

LUNATION: Art on the Moon

lunation-image11LUNATION
Art on the Moon

Observatory’s first group-curated show  •  January 7 – February 26, 2012

View show images here

Opening Party: Saturday, January 7th, 7–10 PM, FREE
Closing Party/Observatory’s 3rd Anniversary Fundraiser: Saturday, February 18th, 8 PM/$20
Show Viewing Hours: Thursday & Friday 3–6 PM, Saturday & Sunday 12–6 PM

Artists and scientists have always been attracted to the moon…
Our closest celestial neighbor, the earth’s little sister, the moon creates the tides and illuminates the woods at night. For centuries, humanity believed the moon provided a key into the invisible realm: it called out the beast within us, freeing us to act as wolves, to run, to dance, to chant—and sometimes (as in Duncan Jones’ Moon) to split in two, to find our double, our changeling moon-self.

Is the moon home to life? Today we know it isn’t, but even as of 1830, speculation was rampant that the moon was inhabited by Christianized bat-people who worshiped in great ziggurats. (See The Sun and the Moon by Observatory alumnus Matthew Goodman for details.) Still, life comes to the moon. We know the moon contains frozen water, and we dream of using it as our jumping-off point for visiting even more alien vistas.

Down here, despite all the prowess and nuance of our latest telescopes, earthlings still look up naked-eyed with excitement at the full moon. Lovers and children gaze up at its slowly blinking façade in mute wonder. Artists portray the moon as a source of danger and power, and latter-day sorceresses and men of magic call up to that heavenly lamp, seeking to transcend the ordinary night. For them, the old myths have not changed so much: the moon is still a secret mirror, showing in pale light how the familiar contains always an element of the unexpected…

Artists Included

  • Grace Baxter
  • Jesse Bransford
  • Susan Crawford
  • Noah Doely
  • Joanna Ebenstein
  • Theo Ellsworth
  • Ted Enik
  • Jesse Gelaznik
  • Ethan Gould
  • Dr. Gary Greenberg
  • Pam Grossman
  • Maria Liebana
  • Gerald Marks
  • Chad Merritt
  • Heidi Neilson
  • G.F. Newland
  • Rebeca Olguín
  • Herbert Pfostl
  • Kathryn Pierce
  • Lado Pochkhua
  • James Walsh
  • Julianne Zaleta

LUNATION Dates to Save:

EXHIBITION: La Loteria

front-loteria-baja-150An international exhibition featuring art inspired by the Loteria Mexicana deck of cards
Exhibition Opening Party: Saturday, September 10, 7-10 pm
On View: Saturday September 10 - October 22, 2011
Hours: Thursdays & Fridays 3-6pm; Saturdays & Sundays 12-6pm

Borderline Projects is pleased to announce the opening of La Loteria, an international art exhibit that will feature the work of 29 artists from 11 countries, who drew inspiration from the symbolism, style, characters, themes and other aspects of the Loteria Mexicana deck of cards, in order to create their pieces. La Loteria is a game that uses a deck of cards illustrated with figures that represent everyday objects, plants, animals, mythical creatures and other characters. The origins of this game go back to 16th century Italy, where most of the lottery games (such as Bingo, the Lotto, etc.) were born, and where the first decks of playing card, including the Tarot, were introduced into Europe.

The idea behind this exhibition was to use the images of La Loteria as a matrix that helped generate dialogues, intersections, and points of encounter. To take a slice of Mexico’s popular culture, characterized by its hybridism, and ask artists to make it their own. We have invited artists from all origins and disciplines to adapt, pay homage, adopt or desecrate La Loteria: a true artistic experiment. This exhibition seeks to open a liminal space, a border-zone where it can be possible to explore our differences together.

The Artists: Josephine Coy (UK) / Yvianna Hernández (US) / Jeanne Sturdevant (US) / Tara Kathleen (UK) / David Trullo (Spain) / Richard Meyer (US) / Maria Liebana (US) / Elena Rodz (US)/ Enrique González (Mexico) / Patricia Espinosa (Mexico) / Shannon Daugherty (US) / Beatriz Albuquerque (Portugal) / Fay Torresyap (US) / Saredt Franco (Mexico) / Ted Enik (US) / Laura Conde (Mexico) / Art Garcia (US) / Sanaa Khan (Pakistan) / Raúl Mirlo (Mexico) / Giselle Elías (Mexico) / Stephane Eck (France) / Tomás  Hache (Mexico) / Chocolate Habanero Arts Collective (Mexico) / Cynthia H. Hsieh (China) / Ral Veroni (Argentina) / Fabian Debora (US) / Clari Netzer (Israel) / John Craig Freeman (US) / Chiara Cola (Italy)

More information here.

SCREENING: “Theatrum Mundi” Production of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”

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Codex Buranus (Carmina Burana) Wheel of Fortune (Schicksalsrad) Source: Wikipedia

Date: Monday, July 18th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $8
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana-full title Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanæ cantoribus et choris cantandæ comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis (”Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images”)-was written not in the depths of the dark ages as one might assume, but in Nazi-era Germany, premiering to great acclaim in 1937 Frankfurt. The piece sets to music a selection of poems drawn from a subversive medieval manuscript of the same name which had been discovered at a Bavarian Benedictine monastery in 1803; primary themes include the popular medieval trope of the Wheel of Fortune (a literal example of which controls much of the action), the ephemerality of life, and the allure and peril of drinking, gambling, gluttony and lust.

Carl Orff ’s original conception for Carmina Burana incorporated orchestral music, acting, dance, masks, costumes, and sets in a kind of “Theatrum Mundi” in which music, movement, and speech were equal and essential pieces of the whole. The few contemporary performances that have staged the production according to Orff’s original conception have a fascinatingly uncanny, unsettling, Hieronymus Bosch-ian feel, as if something deep in our collective past were attempting to speak to us in a symbolic language beyond the reach of reason. By turns epic, bawdy, surrealistic, monstrous, bizarre and sublime-and always utterly compelling-these are very special productions not to be missed.

Tonight, join us for a screening of just such a production; The piece is performed in the original Latin but includes English subtitles, and will be broadcast over our astoundingly great new PA system.

Exhibition: The Corrigan Family Oddments

satisfied-nicotine-freaks

Satisfied Nicotine Freaks, Dennis Corrigan, Oil on Canvas

An exhibition curated by G. F. Newland
Exhibition Opening Party: Friday, June 17, 7-10pm
On View: Friday June 17 - July 23, 2011
Hours: Thursdays & Fridays 3-6pm; Saturdays & Sundays 12-6pm

Greetings Art fans! In celebration of Father’s Day, the Observatory Things-That-Move Dept. invites you all to take a peek at procreation! In nature, talents can be predisposed, and passed on from generation to generation. Families like the Gentileschis, the Peales, the Bachs, the Wyethes, and most recently, the Kominsky-Crumbs have all made a strong case for this heredity thing; the Bush presidencies, not so much, but hey, it’s a crap shoot! Anyway, our latest show is about a wee dynasty of painters named Corrigan, and through their family oddments, we will examine art, eccentricity, and the vagaries of genetic code.

The Corrigan Family Oddments features the work of Dennis Corrigan and his two adult daughters, Sara and Becky. Dennis Corrigan–the family patriarch–rose to prominence in the art world of the late 1960s after returning from his tour of duty in the Philippines during the Vietnam war. He continues to pursue an active studio life involving the production of intricate and creepy yet humorous paintings, and film projects based on puppet characters derived from those paintings. His work resides in museums and galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum or Art and the Brooklyn Museum. Sara, his oldest daughter, is a filmmaker and film-editor who has worked with such luminaries as Woody Allen; her fine art work consists of bizarre images of an imaginary and desperate Marilyn Monroe wannabe. These delightful yet deranged little paintings are created in oil on canvas. Becky, the youngest daughter, works as a singer-songwriter and physical therapist while creating very simple line drawings of ludicrous characters and more complex oil portraits of people on the edge.

This promises to be a most enjoyable show revealing the concepts and skills, similarities and differences of a very talented and humorous family of artists.

Exhibition: RETROFUTUROLOGY: How the Past Saw the Present // How the Present Sees the Future

retrofutur-web

Steam Piano image courtesy Adrian Agredo

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 28, 8 PM
ON VIEW: Friday, January 28 – Friday, March 5, 2011
HOURS: Thursdays & Fridays 3–6 PM, Saturdays & Sundays 12–6 PM

Observatory is pleased to announce our new exhibition, RETROFUTUROLOGY, a group show of visual art, curated by the Hollow Earth Society (Ethan Gould & Wythe Marschall, Founding Colonels).

Join us for the opening, Friday, January 28, at 8 PM.

About the show: To have an imagined future, you must simultaneously have an imagined present and an imagined past…

A DeLorean decked out in flashing lights and wires: A modest-budget promise that, yes, the technologies of our age can puncture the time barrier! Where to go? A rowdy 1950s? A steampunk 1890s?

Our visions of the future are nested. Our conception of time is hyperreal.

This is the process on which the present runs.

Come see contemporary art that investigates futures-past, futures-possible, and other nestings.

Featuring paintings, sculptures, and other works by many artists, including: Adrian Agredo, Tracey Atkinson, Brett Beyer, Emi Brady, bunny M, Jon Burgerman, Chiezo, Devon Clapp, Jesse Corinella, Rachel Debuque, Derrick Dent, Matt Duffin, Ethan Gould, Andrea Hendrickson, Richard Herzog, Andy Hunter, Patti Jordan, John Lee, Haydex Li, Benjamin Mayock, Marianne McCarthy, Megan Murtha, George Pfau, Nick Raynolds, Matthew Robinson, Sean Star Wars, Tom Sarmo, Rachel Schragis, Joelle Shallon, Greg Shelnutt, Niko Silvester, Melissa Stern, Lisa Temple-Cox, and Robin Treadwell.