ISAAC LAYMAN PHOTOGRAPHS FROM INSIDE A WHALE July 17 - August 30 Public Reception: Thursday, July 17, 6:00-10:00pm Brunch with the Artist: Saturday, July 26, noon at the Gallery Please join us for a walkthrough discussion of the exhibition with the artist. Image at right: MIDDLEMAN (2008). 25 x 28 inches. Edition of 3. $1,500 framed Image above: STOVE (2008). 59 x 79 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 framed

ICE CUBE TRAY, 2008. 55 x 118 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 unframed [Ed 1 of 3 sold]

SINK (2008). 58 x 78.5 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 framed [Ed 1/3 on hold]

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EXHIBITIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE LAST 500 YEARS EVEN THOUGH PHOTOGRAPHY HAS ONLY BEEN AROUND FOR 180 You see, the stretching of the truth has already begun. LAWRIMORE project is pleased to announce its second one-person exhibition with Seattle artist, Isaac Layman. “Photographs from Inside a Whale,” is an exacting, meditative body of new large-scale photographs and photographic installations that serves as a portrait of the artist as a young, reluctant photographer. “Exacting” because Layman’s constructed images ask a lot of the viewer. “Meditative” in that the work rewards patient and diligent looking with art historical, conceptual and existential payoffs. “Reluctant” in that, although trained in (and clearly in love with) the medium, Layman continually questions what a photograph is, how it is made, and what it ultimately means. Taking the double-meaning phrase, “I wouldn’t wish my life on others” as his starting point and shot entirely in the artist’s own home, the individual subjects—Layman’s kitchen sink, his stereo cabinet, his workbench, his stove, a doorway, a wall—are massively ordinary. Re-viewed and seen as a whole in its installation context, the work is a comprehensive study of the being of an individual as represented by the objects that surround them, further begs the question of the being of all beings, all the while interrogating the history of photography and the politics of looking and seeing.

STEREO (2008). 58 x 102 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 framed [Ed 1/3 on hold]

LAYMAN OWES YOU THE TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND HE WON’T GIVE IT TO YOU. Take for example MEDICINE CABINET (2008), a larger than life (73.5 x 59 inches) representation of that ubiquitous architectural element in nearly everyone’s home. Using a digital back on a traditional 4 x 5 camera that records one line 1 pixel wide by 8,000 pixels high and then moves to the right to record the next line, the whole process taking twenty minutes for each exposure (think: a long-exposure panoramic), Layman took three photographs of the cabinet using three different depths of focus. Combining the exposures digitally and removing the minutely out-of-focus portions leaves as true a depiction of this subject as possible. But it is very far from the truth. It is somehow better than reality. It is like a Renaissance painting where the perspective and focus of the image is correct, but it is not how the eye would ever be able to see the real scene. Within the very shallow three inches of depth of the cabinet there is no breakdown of the image. Your eye cannot go wrong. You see things the way you would not normally be able to. The experience Layman provides changes your habits of looking and it heightens your awareness of seeing. And this is just the beginning of what the photograph provides to the thoughtful viewer. In this single image Layman conjures: the process of the very first photographs; plumage and mating rituals; narcissism; quotidian existence; consumerism; the Minimalist grid; Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticist compositions; Pop Art’s serialism and celebration of the banal; the ‘invention’ of Renaissance perspectivism; Humanism; the still-life tradition in art, especially the American trompe l'oeil painters, Harnett and Peto; medicine as “pharmakon” (both “poison” and “cure”) as metaphor for photography; the artist as shaman; not to mention the fact that “health” as implied by the contents of the cabinet is etymologically tied to the word “art” in that they both mean “to make whole.” MEDICINE CABINET, 2008. 73.5 x 59 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 unframed [Edition 1/3 sold]

WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET Other works in the exhibition are similarly loaded with associations and vacillate with truths and falsehoods. STEREO (2008) [above] pays tribute to the invention of stereoscopic imagery and Cezanne’s brand of proto-Cubism (the one image is made of 45 views seamlessly stitched together), while also bringing metaphors of artistic and technological obsolescence. ASLEEP 4.5 MINUTES (2008), at first glance, appears as though it is just a simple self-portrait of a sleeping subject in the tradition of Warhol, Goya, Caravaggio, Vermeer, et al. Using the same technology as in MEDICINE CABINET, when the photograph first began its exposure Layman was not in the composition at all. While the camera was scanning he placed himself in the frame and promptly fell asleep. The only clue to this pristinely focused, time-lapsed image (one would normally assume the resulting photograph would be quite blurry) are the precisely rendered, scalloped pocket edges on his shirt recording each rise and fall of the artist’s chest as he was breathing. The power of MIDDLEMAN (2008), a dead-pan meditation on the role of the artist as image producer, lies in the strong foreshortened line created between the artist’s pointing fingers that gradually move from blurry to sharply focused as they approach the empty frame hanging on the wall. POOL TABLE (2007), which takes the photograph off the wall to present the object in its usual orientation and original scale, combines references to the action paintings of Pollock and the stain paintings of Frankenthaler and Louis with notions of masculine recreation and rumpus room escapism. Similarly, TOOLS (2008) presents symbols of typical masculine escapist activities, though here Layman conflates these ideas with issues of the female gaze and women’s roles with its obvious compositional relationship to Manet’s BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE (1882). Image: ASLEEP 4.5 MINUTES, 2008. 40 x 53.5 inches. $3,500 framed [Edition 2/3 sold]

TOOLS (2008). 58 x 76 inches. $4,000 framed

POOL TABLE (2007) Sculptural photograph Archival inkjet print mounted to Plex, painted wood plinth 30 x 108 x 43 inches Edition of 1 with 1 A/P $8,000. (installation view, AquaArtMiami, 2007)

POOL TABLE (2008). 30 x 108 x 43 inches

FLOOR, 2008 Photograph hung at an angle to "reflect" the floor below. Installation view White Cube. 30 x 144 x 20 inches. Inquire for details about commissioning a similar installation for your collection.

SINK WITH LETTUCE (2008). 59 x 93 inches. Edition of 3. $4,000 framed

YOU'VE BEEN FRAMED “Framing,” with all of its philosophical baggage and implications, is a theme that runs throughout the exhibition. We see it at work in the photographs discussed above (the “frame” around the POOL TABLE, for example), but especially in works like SINK (2008), STOVE (2008), THREE DRAWERS (2008), ICE CUBE TRAY (2008), and SINK WITH LETTUCE (2008). Again, these are easy subjects at first, but require prolonged looking for full appreciation. The sinks are particularly rewarding as one discovers the complicated compositions Layman has constructed. They aren’t simply dirty dishes thrown into the water. Each element was chosen and precisely placed by the artist until the desired composition was achieved. Its as if the eye is on a leash being led from one element to the next with the utmost discipline and cadence. Beyond all that, Layman applies the metaphor of the frame to the title of the exhibition, constantly revealing the inside of “whales”—framing his own life, framing the politics of constructed images, and framing the tropes of photography. Layman sums all this up nicely in PICTURE FRAMING GLASS (2008), perhaps the simplest work in the show but, as one would expect from what we’ve established above, also one of the more complicated. If we’ve spoken about Layman’s nod to major modern art movements, we can safely say that this piece is most definitely his Minimalist tribute. The image, a piece of glass leaning against a grey wall, recalls the “lean” pieces of Serra and broaches the theories of Michael Fried in ART AND OBJECTHOOD. Layman further complicates the issue by using the glass that is the subject of the image to actually frame the photograph. Similar to Kosuth’s conceptual acrobatics, here we have both the object (the actual glass) and its objecthood (the representation of the glass), conflated, vacillating between truth and falsehood en abyme. It is either, neither and both all at once. You see, with Layman, it’s all in how you choose to frame it.

DRAWERS, 2008. Sculptural photograph (triptych). 5 x 36 x 28 inches each. Edition of 3. $4,000

PICTURE FRAMING GLASS (2008). 29 x 23 inches. Photograph of the glass used to frame the photograph of the glass Unique $3,000 framed

BIOGRAPHY Isaac Layman received his BFA in Photography from the University of Washington in 2002. Since 1997 his work has been shown in Seattle, Miami, Portland, New Zealand, Rome, and New York. He was a member of S.O.I.L. before having his first one-person exhibition at Lawrimore Project in January of 2007. He currently lives and works in Seattle.

SELF PORTRAIT (2008). 45 x 39 inches. Edition of 3. $3,000 framed.

CATALOG AVAILABLE A 20-page, full-color catalog of the exhibition with an essay by art historian Kenneth Allan is available. To request a copy call 206.501.1231 or email scott@lawrimoreproject.com

SAMPLE CATALOG PAGE

Installation view - "Photographs from Inside a Whale" - L.P. Main Space

CATALOG SAMPLE PAGE

DETAILS: -All images EDITIONS OF 3 unless otherwise noted. -Prices escalate as editions sell, i.e.: Edition 1 of 3 - $4,000 framed Edition 2 of 3 - $4,000 unframed Edition 3 of 3 - $7,000 unframed A/P 1 of 1 - to be determined -Only edition 1 of 3 sold as framed by the artist.

LAST SHOW

A LAWRIMORE PROJECT BIENNIAL Installation View

SUTTONBERESCULLER THREE DRAGON RESTAURANT Installation using remenents of the origional sculpture of the same name.

ALEX SCHWEDER SPIT SKIN Biodegradeable Packing Peanuts, Saliva 18" x 48" x 72" at present. 2006 $8,500 "This installation of licked together biodegradable packing peanuts contorts, deforms, and melts when it contacts water. Located in a subterranean bathroom at the American Academy in Rome, this saliva stuck skin served as a map of moisture exchange between leaky walls and the leaky bodies that occupied them." ~Alex Schweder

CRIS BRUCH SARTRE COMES TO BOUNTIFUL, 2008 Vinyl, fluorescent lights 78 x 42 x 8 inches Edition of 3 $8,500 With all the discussion about borders and fence building, this common builder's question takes on great gravitas with this new editioned sculpture by Cris Bruch.

LAST EXHIBITION

*Please note that this is only a 10-day exhibition* Image above: ERIC THOMPSON Cleaning Out the Dead, 2008 5-channel audio, custom fluorescents, reel-to-reel machine. [Installation view: White Cube of Lawrimore Project] An audio and light installation exploring acoustic and temporal displacement. An audio diary left by an aging relative becomes the focus of a mediating space that functions as a diffusion layer on personal experience and the obfuscating nature of language. MORE HERE

T. JARED FRIEND We Spent Our Time Lusting After Uneven Terrain, 2008 Steel, acryllic, polyethylene, LCDs, speakers, contact mics, gravel 8 x 6 x 24 feet A video installation with real-time sound synthesis that attempts to preemptively mediate a physical experience with a cinematic one. MORE HERE

AMIR STONE Blight Horizon, 2008 Digital video projection, fused acrylic, water, milk, and real time infra red capture 36'' x 52'' x 8' Imagine a space filled with light timelessly suspended. Beams pass by scattering suddenly. As you move slowly the light avoids you. You do not know why. You can see forms hanging, moving slowly and reacting to your movements. Blight Horizon utilizes cutting edge video composition combined with real time image manipulation and the physical properties of light in space and time. It is an art installation that relies upon controlling scientific principle with the poetry and rigor of art to create an entirely immersive environment. MORE HERE

GARY PENNOCK The Cold Empty Wave, 2008 Digital Video Infinite Loop An inquiry into the nature of time experienced through waves of light emanating from an empty corked bottle shattering upon the concrete. This magic moment is in a process of fission and fusion, while gravitating to an explication of its existence. MORE HERE

STEFAN MOORE Untitled, 2008 video loop

NAASIR RAMJI Nur, 2008 | Solo Dance Performance | LED embedded flex circuits | Composed Audio A dance as a body of light. Nur, the Arabic word for light, is not only a reference to external sources of illumination, but internal ones as well. It is often used as a metaphor to encompass the notions of the Spirit, the Soul, and finally, that of Intellect.

JON MASAYA EVANS Meditations on Temporeality, 2008 Video, Electro-Mechanics, Paraffin Wax 3'x2'x2' It is said that the founder of Zen, Bodhidharma, meditated in a cave for nine years until his limbs atrophied and eventually fell off. It is after this time that he found enlightenment... Meditations is a living and changing sculptural experience. MORE HERE

COLLIN MONDA Recycled, 2008 HD & Stop-Motion 30 min A surreal experimental narrative in which real and fiber-based worlds are unexpectedly interleaved. The film follows a character who works at a paper recycling center and gradually descends into a bizarre illustration fueled obsession with an unseen female through her intriguing paper waste. MORE HERE

LEI ZHANG The Stone Mason and His Wife, 2008 Digital video

MATTHEW SALTON The Sleeper, 2008 Super8 transferred to HD video

ERICA BETHURUM Indistinction, 2008 Infrared / motion tracking camera, custom software Indistinction is an interactive installation that displays the intimacy of a individuals facial fingerprint as a means of networking with other viewers. The piece displays a pulse of liquid ripples which expand to unmask similar facial point features of past participant to show a connection between them and the individual interacting. MORE HERE

JD PIRTLE The Far Dark Shore, 2008 Stereoscopic digital video and computer graphics A woman encounters her youth and mortality in an interdimensional space between the screen and the world all around us.

ALEX GEORGESCU Absorbed, 2008 3D Projection on Plaster 6ft x 4.5ft Absorbed is a short animation that explores the potential of stereo environments, and experiments with projection on non-flat surfaces. MORE HERE

LAST SHOW SUSAN ROBB THE CHALLENGE NATURE PROVIDES April 24 - May 31, 2008 BRUNCH WITH THE ARTIST SEATTLE WEEKLY PREVIEW HERE ROBERT WADE's OPENING PHOTOS HERE STRANGER review by Jen Graves

MAIN SPACE INSTALLATION VIEW THE CHALLENGE NATURE PROVIDES Lawrimore Project is pleased to present its first one-person exhibition by Seattle artist, Susan Robb. “The Challenge Nature Provides” will include recent video, photographs and sculpture that continue Robb’s interrogation of the complicated relationship between culture, nature and the environment. Utilizing such diverse materials as polyethylene, stainless steel, Plexiglas, crystals the artist has grown, fire and human waste (including the dealer’s), Robb’s new works are ideological hybrids of flesh, nature and technology impelled by the American landscape. The multi-sided question, “where are we in nature?” has been at the core of Robb’s inquiries throughout her 15-year career. The current wave of green-washing and ecoism aside, and as this new body of work proves, Robb’s work is eternal, open-ended and poetic. Like others who came before her and felt a deep connection to the land: Neruda, Fuller, De Maria, and Mowat, Robb’s new works are all poetry and power. If green is the new black, and eco-art de rigueur, Robb’s work recoils in horror at this recent selling of the environment and pushes back on these notions to dramatic, sometimes tragic, and always singular ends.

USING DE MARIA’S LIGHTING RODS, THE ANIMALS STAGE A VALIANT SURRENDER, 2008 Stainless steel, feathers, fur, acrylic 12 x 12 x 8 feet $20,000 As the title suggests, this piece imagines a scenario wherein, fed up with humankind, animals have claimed an element from Walter De Maria’s LIGHTENING FIELD, 1977 and repurposed it to support a surrender flag fashioned from their own feathers, hides and fur. The flag, violently thrust into a pile of crystalline rocks Robb fabricated from colored and mirrored acrylic, not only addresses the obvious ecological crisis we currently face, but also narrates a profound understanding of courage and the act of giving into one’s fears.

DIGESTER, 2008 55-gallon drums, the waste of Scott Lawrimore, biogas, campfire Dimensions variable DIGESTER uses the logic of reverse engineering to bring the viewer back to the origins of culture—back to the hearth—back to a place where we can re-create, re-invent and re-imagine a future in balance. Six 55-gallon drums engineered to produce methane from human waste will be used to fuel a simple campfire. Akin to Superflex’s Biogas project as realized in THE LAND, Robb ups the ante and changes the conceptual stakes by using her art dealer’s effluent as fuel. Utilizing the waste of someone who, it can be argued, trades in one of our highest forms of culture, Robb makes manifest the gallery’s role as a meeting place for ideas, shared experience and as a proposed site for encouraging enlightenment. Like the archetypical notion of the hearth, this communal, self-sustaining campfire appeals for the creation of a more imaginative, more personal and intimate relationship with nature and asks the viewer to take part in a dialogue that could possibly bring about a shift in our cultural, political and ecological future.

SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT, 2006 4-channel audio, clay, steel, speakers, wire Dimensions variable $6,000 Signal transduction is the means plants use to communicate to themselves information about their environment so they can make any necessary changes or adaptations. This piece is an imagined amplification of that communication and highlights another one of Robb’s strengths, making visible that which is imperceptible. With it’s heavily layered and processed whispering audio track repeating, "It's in the air. It's in the water," the 60 hybrid flowers take us to a place that is somehow both lyrical and unsettling.

FLOWER POWER, 2008 Archival inkjet print 33 x 60 inches Edition of 8 $3,200

INSTALLATION VIEW

IN THE WHITE CUBE Like lost pages from Pablo Neruda’s STONES OF THE SKY, Robb’s new gem-like sculptures RACING TOWARDS HARDNESS IS A KIND OF SOFTNESS, 2008, THE GENTLEST GESTURE, 2008, and WHAT HEAVEN DO STONES HAVE, 2008 are flowering Sakura branches made from cultured crystals, circuit boards, and muscle wire. Taking Neruda’s line, “Everything is racing towards hardness,” as a cue, her crystal encrusted branches and flower blossoms, at once robotic and precious, are presented as both life and death, as technological advance and evolutionary inevitability, as movement away from the softness and decay of flesh and towards the solidity and purity of rock.

THE GENTLEST GESTURE, 2008 Crystal, muscle wire, circuit board, Mylar, steel shelf 8 x 24 x 17 inches $3,000 [SOLD]

RACING TOWARDS HARDNESS IS A KIND OF SOFTNESS, 2008 Crystal, muscle wire, circuit board, Mylar 4 x 25 x 18 inches Unique $2,500 [SOLD]

WE ARE COMING, WE ARE COMING, WAIT UP, STONES! (TERRA-FORMATIONS), 2008 Archival inkjet prints, paper, glass, powdercoated steel shelf 84 x 31 x 6 inches; Edition of 8 $3,800 [Ed. 1/8 SOLD] Recognizing how American cultural identity is in part created by our feelings about the natural landscape and that these feelings are imbued with inherent contradiction; that American nature is a spiritual and physical void which needs to conquered and civilized through technology and scientific order , and that nature is sublime and God is inherent in this very land, Robb created WE ARE COMING, WE ARE COMING, WAIT UP, STONES! (TERRA-FORMATIONS 1 – 3), 2008. Produced with aerial photographs of geological formations taken by the artist that are then split, mirrored and bookmatched into new compositions, this work acts as an abstract visual bridge between the three sculptures in the Main Space. It uses our visual understanding of the American landscape as translated though such diverse methods as zone-system photography, military aerial photography, and strip mining, as well as our biological endowed understanding of visual information as bilaterally symmetric beings. WE ARE COMING… wryly posits a new terra formed earth, though unlike what we have been engaging in the past 100 or so years, to create a landmass/animal hybrid, endowed with one of the simplest of all shared commonalities, bilateral symmetry; that which elicits a response in us that says, ”living being”. Bilateral symmetry is a formal sub-theme throughout the works in the show and is a common thread in Robb’s work in general. It is one of the most common ways of understanding the world and what is sentient in it. After all, the only animal that isn’t symmetrical is the sponge. As Robb explains it, “and who wants to be a sponge?”

I AM A LAND ANIMAL, 2008 Archival inkjet print, paper, glass, powder coated steel shelf 22 x 28 x 6 inches; Edition of 8 $1,500 [Edition 1/8 SOLD; Ed 2/8 ON HOLD]

THE CHALLENGE NATURE PROVIDES 1, 2007 Epson archival inkjet mounted on Diebond 42 x 57 inches Edition of 8 $4,500 [Editions 1/8, 2/8 SOLD] The title for Robb’s exhibition comes from these two recent photographs. For Robb, the challenge is to understand ourselves as dualistic creatures that are endowed with conscience yet mysteriously still animal. We resist animalistic impulse at one turn, while embracing it at another. We challenge our own human nature and also submit to it. The seemingly illicit poses and ambiguously violent actions depicted in the photographs beg the questions: What is our relationship with nature? Is the violence welcomed, reciprocal and warranted? Is it resignation or domination? The violent and submissive elements of these works also relate to the notion of “valiant surrender” found in the sculpture, USING DE MARIA… in the Main Space.

THE CHALLENGE NATURE PROVIDES 2, 2008 Epson archival inkjet mounted on Diebond 30 x 41 inches Edition of 8 $2,500 [Edition 1/8 ON HOLD]

SEA-ICE LIFEBOAT, 3-D SCHEMATIC, 2007 Epson archival inkjet on Sintra 20 x 32 inches Edition of 8 $1,500 [Edition 1/8 ON HOLD] Environmental, site-specific, and relational, PROJECT SEA-ICE LIFEBOAT will equip Alaskan polar bears with large-scale rafts resembling floating sea ice, but made from recycled oil drums and impervious to the effects of global warming. Because of global warming, sea ice is melting more rapidly, leaving polar bears in peril. Polar bear survival is closely tied to the presence of floating sea ice platforms; from these natural ice rafts polar bears find food, mates, and appropriate locations for cub dens. PROJECT SEA-ICE LIFE BOAT is a monument underscoring the disastrous effects of global warming, a poetic and far-fetched but calculated and potentially far-reaching attempt to rescue polar bears; simultaneously, it forms a complex expression about personal and corporate involvement in climate crisis. This work will take the form of three large-scale sea ice “rafts” made from recycled oil drums in the shape of SUVs while still bearing the recognizable terrain contours of floating ice. The sea ice rafts will float off the coast of Seattle in the Puget Sound, in the English Bay in Vancouver, BC, and in the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, before being transported to Barrow, Alaska, where they will float for some time in the Chukchi Sea where sea ice is melting most quickly. If environmental conditions improve, this artificial sea ice will accumulate real ice and snow, covering up the SUV form and acting as a seed for what could be a permanent polar bear habitat unaffected by climate change. If conditions don’t improve, the faux sea ice will truly be a life raft, an arctic sponsor ship for climate catastrophe. While the work itself is site specific, Robb has created peripheral works around the project, including a Second Life/virtual world version of the work where her avatar is a polar bear and a poster campaign placed in parking garages.

WARMTH, GIANT BLACK TOOBS #4, 2007 High Definition DVD, 20 minutes, score by Shuttle 358 remixed by the artist Edition of 20 $1,500 [Editions 1/20, 2/20 SOLD] More than a billion tons of trash is dumped into the ocean every year. According to an article in Best Life Magazine, oceanographers have found a swirling miasma of consumer plastics—plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic toys—the size of Texas in the pacific ocean. Plankton, fish, birds, and marine mammals all ingest these plastics (and the chemicals they contain and leach), which in turn we ingest. Scientists are just beginning to research the long-term ways in which the chemicals used to make plastic interact with biochemistry, uncovering how plastics not only effect planetary health but are also linked to cancer, diabetes, and endocrine malfunctions. Like Andy Warhol said, we are indeed (and literally) all becoming plastic. In WARMTH, GIANT BLACK TOOBS, Robb uses solar power and ambient breezes to give life to the ever-present black plastic garbage bag. Polypropylene garbage bags, 50 feet tall by 30 inches in diameter, are inflated with air by allowing the wind to fill them or by running with them. One end is staked to the ground; the other end is free. The sun does the rest. Employing a similar principle to that of hot air balloons, the sun heats the air inside the Toobs, and since hot air is less dense then cold air, the Toobs become buoyant. Solar-produced buoyancy, breezes, and internal convection work to transform this symbol of the (American) cycle of consumption and waste into seemingly sentient creatures, live plastic hybrids whose choreography brings to mind the very sea creatures our epoch’s mass of waste affects.

VIDEO EXCERPT

PREVIOUS EXHIBITION CHARLES LABELLE Polis/Persona A Selection of Video and Projected Work 1993-2006 Seattle P.I. Review By Nate Lippens

IN THE WHITE CUBE BLIND TRAJECTORY, 1993-95 Video documentation of an action $3,500 Clad in a Chroma Key Blue suit, the artist wanders blindfolded around two sites: Tompkins Square Park in New York City and Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. Former homeless encampments, the sites are now renovated urban parks. Though the suit is designed to become invisible it only makes the subject more noticeable, while the world in his eyes has disappeared. A contemporary Oedipus or fool? He walks in circles. "These works began as simple investigations into the interaction of the subject and the city. I was interested in re-exploring and re-experiencing the city. By altering my ability to perceive the environment - by literally blinding myself- I hoped to “see” the city in a whole new light. The first tentative steps in this process began in early 1993 with a series of short blind-folded walks around my own Hollywood neighborhood. Soon I embarked on a series of longer walks, up to almost a mile, along major thoroughfares in LA such as La Brea Ave, Grand Street in downtown LA and Sunset Blvd. While these works take place on the street I was not interested in the idea of creating a public spectacle nor are they about interacting with other people on the street, a la the early works of Adrian Piper or Vito Acconci. My interest is specifically in the relationship of the subject to the built environment and its greater history. The social realm is important to the work, specifically in the way this realm is delineated by currents of power and control. Building upon the Situationist derive, which sought to undermine the manipulation of the individual subject within the city via a strategy of drifting aimlessly, Blind Trajectory / Unknown Pleasures is about achieving a tentative, admittedly questionable, liberation. It is in this context that the Chroma Key Blue suit that I had specifically fabricated for the later works in the series is significant. Chroma Key Blue is a special effects color used to “key out” things within the image- to make those things disappear. This idea of disappearance recurs in my work time and again. In Blind Trajectory / Unknown Pleasures part of my aim is to somehow disappear within the city, to make myself a ghost, the perfect flanneaur. Paradoxically, the bright, artificial hue of the suit makes me stand out in the environment more. In the end, the idea of achieving invisibility, of escaping, is just a fantasy, a wished-for transformation.

STARS AT NOON 35mm slides, prejector, 6 color prints Unique $5000 The ad in the LA Weekly "Chance Encounters" section reads: "Stars at Noon: I will be on the NE corner of Curson Av and Hollywood Blvd at noon on Saturday March 2nd." The same ad but different locations each week for five weeks. A star is formed on the map of Los Angeles. And each week the blond man waits, patient, to be noticed, to be discovered, to be picked up.

DISSAPPEARER-MAGIC TOUCH (The Haptic Imperative), 2006 White gloves that have been passed through the artist's body, found video footage. Unique 2006 $12,000

The magician's hands make things disappear and reappear transformed. His touch subverts our vision and proves the eye to be fallible. Immersed in the world as a fish in its bowl, his magic is real. His mask is his face. His performance is for no one~ until now.

DiSSAPPEARER-MAGIC TOUCH (Video of Installation)

RED VENICE SUITE Single Channel Video Projection with Music 2003 We follow a the person wearing a red hooded jacket through the streets, alleys and over the bridges of Venice early one morning. We try to get a glimpse of the person's face. We wonder where they are going. Who they are. We get closer. The person stops, hesitates. They turn around... or do they?

TRAFFIC Single channel video 2001 $3,800 A super 8 movie shows a red balloon bobbing around in traffic on Sunset Boulevard. The film is projected onto a man's naked chest. As he breaths the balloon rises and falls. His breath is in the balloon. His heart beats faster as the balloon is struck by one car then another, its fragility and lightness paradoxically liberating.

Adriana Grant discusses TRAFFIC in the I Saw This section of the Seattle Weekly

LAST MONTH

THE PROM A Semi-Formal Survey of Semi-Formal Painting Curated by Alex Ohge With work by: Tomory Dodge (LA) Ingrid Calame (LA) Eric Sall (NY) Gordon Terry (NY) Nicholas Nyland (Seattle) Yoon Lee (SF) Tiffany Calvert (NY) Robert Hardgrave (Seattle) Joseph Park (Seattle) Seattle P.I. Review By Regina Hackett Seattle Times Review By Gayle Clemans Seattle Weekly Review By Adriana Grant

TOMORY DODGE b. 1974 Denver, CO; lives and works in Los Angeles SURVIVALIST, 2007 Oil on canvas 13.75 x 16 inches [SOLD] Dodge’s work epitomizes the semi-formal tenets of the exhibition by allowing the paint and its application to work equally against representational elements. Dodge’s loaded brush is pulled across the canvas leaving heavy trails of streaked color and grey matter. The landscapes and architectures created by these gestures seem to float in space barely held together by thick lines of paint ready to collapse or change at any moment. Dodge calls on Richter’s squeegees and even Lichtenstein's ‘brushstrokes’ but moves beyond these references allowing his trust and devotion to the medium to take over the work. Tomory Dodge is shown courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles

TOMORY DODGE EPSILON, 2007 Oil on canvas 14 x 16 inches [ON HOLD] Dodge received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He was awarded the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant in 2004. He has had solo exhibitions at ACME., Los Angeles, CRG Gallery, New York, and Taxter and Spengermann, New York. His work was included in group exhibitions at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek, Koln Germany; CUE Art Foundation, New York; LA Louver, Venice, CA; San Francisco Art Institute; Columbia University, New York; and Plalazetto di Cenci, Rome. Permanent collections include, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Knoxville Museum of Art; Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas; Dallas Museum of Art; and The Smithsonian American Art Museum. Reviews of Dodge’s work include The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Modern Painters, ArtForum, Flash Art and Art Week among others.

INSTALLATION VIEW EXHIBITION RUNS January 11th - February 23rd Lawrimore Project is pleased to present the second of a three-part series devoted to contemporary painting strategies. Curated by Gallery Manager, Alex Ohge, THE PROM... is a pure celebration of the medium. This semi-formal survey brings together a group of artists from around the country all completely devoted to the process of painting and all exploring the semi-formal terrain where representation meets painting for painting's sake.

ERIC SALL STOCKPILE, 2007 (left) Oil on canvas 96 x 78 inches BLOODY RIDGE, 2007 (right) Oil on canvas 62 x 90 inches Sall pulls, scrapes and rakes the paint across the canvas to create swirled ribbons of color and salt water taffy blobs that are loosely held together by backdrops of washes of paint. He tackles the medium with a deep understanding of what paint can do yet constantly finds new and challenging ways of pushing the medium. The work is held together with some structure, offering references to architecture and landscape while deploying his own lexicon of abstract gestures. As ATM Gallery, New York notes, “Sall uses free-association and instinct when approaching his canvases. Utilizing the tradition within painting of presenting a figure, a protagonist, over a marginal background, he merges marks to create a non-representational figure sitting atop a more general background as a nod to representational painting without depicting any discernable forms. His manipulation of paint is informed by art history equally with instances from his personal experience. Magazine advertisements, movies, logos, his youth, and background are all sources from which he draws his inspiration. He states that his influence can be ‘a memory of the Northern Lights at 3:00 a.m. on a secluded dirt road in the middle of South Dakota to an image of a brand name jacket in a magazine that I desired. It is just as likely that I would associate graphic marks to designer logos as I would associate a washy field of color to a Midwest sky.’" Eric Sall is shown courtesy of ATM Gallery, New York

ERIC SALL STOCKPILE, 2007 Oil on canvas 96 x 78 inches $12,000 [ON HOLD]

ERIC SALL BLOODY RIDGE oil on canvas 62X90 As ATM Gallery, New York notes, “Sall uses free-association and instinct when approaching his canvases. Utilizing the tradition within painting of presenting a figure, a protagonist, over a marginal background, he merges marks to create a non-representational figure sitting atop a more general background as a nod to representational painting without depicting any discernable forms. His manipulation of paint is informed by art history equally with instances from his personal experience. Magazine advertisements, movies, logos, his youth, and background are all sources from which he draws his inspiration. He states that his influence can be ‘a memory of the Northern Lights at 3:00 a.m. on a secluded dirt road in the middle of South Dakota to an image of a brand name jacket in a magazine that I desired. It is just as likely that I would associate graphic marks to designer logos as I would associate a washy field of color to a Midwest sky.’"

INGRID CALAME DRAWING #222, 2005 Color pencil on trace Mylar 54 x 36 inches Calame's bold contrasting colors, meticulous tracing and transfer technique is evident here in her preliminary drawings for future paintings. Appropriating the contours of stains she finds on the streets of various cities, Calame’s technique mimics the appearance of gestural abstraction with a subversive take on everything from the spilled canvases of Pollock, the piss paintings of Warhol, and the stained canvases of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, to the conceptually-driven stain paintings, sculptures and photographs of Ed Ruscha. Calame states, “I trace the lacey stains left by the evaporation of nameless liquids, their contours determined by the viscosity of the vanished fluid and the texture of the surface which it pools.” Part chance, part choice, in Calame’s hands these anonymous, abstract forms come into focus. A small blob becomes a shoe print. A stretched arching line is now a tread mark from a race track. A series of loops is now made clear as graffiti from the side of a building. Calame documents the history we want to dismiss. Her layers are numerous and calculated in both form and content. Ingrid Calame’s work shown courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York

TIFFANY CALVERT b. 1976, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY UNTITLED (Chandelier #1) Oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches $6,000 The works create visual dilemmas between foreground and background, depth and flatness, idealized and inherently confused spaces. More recent paintings are concerned with Westward expansion, "Manifest Destiny" and "American-ness": Images of domination from Roosevelt's mansion and hunting trophies, a curtain from Charles Wilson Peale's Cabinet of Curiosities (possessing the world), images referencing the Great Plains and the Interstate Highway system, turn-of-the-century reapers on the Plains emblematic of the Grapes of Wrath,the Great Depression and the somewhat parallel disappointment in some of those who went West to find gold. —Tiffany Calvert. Tiffany Calvert is shown courtesy of Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago

TIFFANY CALVERT UNTITLED (Nola #4) Oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches $6,000 Tackling themes of spatial illusion and juxtaposed environments, Calvert’s paintings challenge what we understand as landscape and architecture. Tightly rendered interiors are meshed with loose washes of muted colors creating a strangely beautiful dream-like environment. The artist’s painterly execution constantly reminds us that her work is as much about the medium as it is about the content. In her latest body of work Calvert continues to explore similar themes while adding new layers for the viewer to negotiate. Detailed patterns suggesting wallpaper or fabric are mixed with piles of furniture giving these dark interiors a sense history. Although there are passages of tight rendering, the work still remains somewhat loose and painterly reminding the viewer that the work is still about the celebration of the medium. Tiffany Calvert is shown courtesy of Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago

TIFFANY CALVERT UNTITLED (Nola #5) Oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches $6,000 Calvert received her BFA from Oberlin College in 1998 and her MFA from Rutgers in 2005. Grants and Awards Include the 2007 Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside CA. 2006; ArtOmi International Artists Residency, Omi NY, 2006; Artists Residency Program, Artists' Enclave at IPark, East Haddam CT; Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship , 2005 ; John Bettenbender Commencement Award recipient 2003-2005 ; Rutgers Scholars Award, all semesters Teaching Assistantships and Part-Time Teaching awards, all semesters ; 1999 SFAC Grant: finalist for $10,000 grant by the San Francisco Art Council 1998; BA with Honors, Oberlin College Art; Students Committee Grant: Oberlin College 1997 Honorarium, awarded by president for outstanding services to Oberlin College.

NICHOLAS NYLAND b. 1976 Lakewood, WA; lives and works in Tacoma, WA PASSAGEWAY, 2006 Floor cloth in acrylic and spray enamel on canvas 30 x 168 inches $3,000 HAMMOCK, 2006 Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches $1,800 [SOLD] BEST FRIEND, 2006-07 Paper mache, acrylic, gouache, copper, foil, tacks, wire 20 x 18 x 16 inches $1,800 [SOLD] If the painting on canvas and watercolors presented here are what we typically associate with traditional manners of working and presentation, his floor cloth and sculpture force us to reconsider just where and how a painting can exist in this world. I intend to conjure a world or a space for imagination and reverie in my work that may manifest itself in miniature form or room sized wall drawing/painting installations. My work is driven by a fascination with the life of form, the nature of creation and the will to decorate. I feel reassured to borrow freely from our gloriously diverse visual culture because, as George Steiner reminds us, “there are no more beginnings”; we are playing with all the cards. The true creation, the art, lies in the transcendence of those parts into an animate whole. —Nicholas Nyland

NICHOLAS NYLAND BEST FRIEND, 2007 Acrylic, paper mache, copper,wire,gouche,tacks 20 x18 x16 inches $1,800 [SOLD] Nicholas Nyland is shown courtesy of S.O.I.L Gallery, Seattle

NICHOLAS NYLAND BRIDGE, 2006 Watercolor on paper 22 x 30 inches $1200

NICHOLAS NYLAND WEB, 2006 Watercolor on paper 22 X 30 inches $1200

GORDON TERRY b. 1971; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY SKY OBSERVES TIME, 2007 Acrylic on acrylic panel 96 x 72 inches The paintings are manipulated on a 10’ x 8' glass work table that is mounted on a hydraulic jack system. The glass is suspended on 4 jacks that connect to the table top with universal joints. Thus, I am able to tilt the work surface on both an x and a y axis, using gravity as one means to move paint around. Most of the other procedures I subject the paint to are hands-off as well. I use blasts of pressurized air, wet into wet dripping and pouring, and various specially designed brushes and paint spreaders. Once the "painting" dries on the glass, it is peeled off the glass; the resulting translucent skin of acrylic paint is then adhered to cast acrylic sheet . The splatter areas originally occur on the glass as well, they are then mapped out and transferred bit by bit on to the acrylic sheet. There's always a confusion implied between my materials and the way I manipulate them. The sterile, sleek, refined and clinical qualities of my cast, molded, and spilled acrylic polymers are filtered through the fluid, the organic, the chaotic, and the ornamental. Categorical shifts like these are very meaningful to me--much more so than the actual choice of physical material. I'm fascinated by the ways in which, for instance, my paintings can reference at once psychedelia, science fiction, modernism, the rococo, decadence, and hermetic texts--wholesome, natural beauty, and toxic, synthetic glamour. — Gordon Terry Gordon Terry is shown courtesy of ATM Gallery, New York

GORDON TERRY A NUMBER OF DISSIMILAR FIGURES, CORRELATED AND COMBINED INTO A HIGHER DIMENSIONAL FORM, 2007 Acrylic on Acrylic panel 96 x 72 inches With juicy fluid gestures and heavy use of thick passages of paint, Gordon emphasizes materials and technique in his work. His complex use of the medium and plexiglas as surface further challenges what we know about paint and its characteristics. His swirls of juicy blobs give a nod to Pollock and abstraction yet offer the viewer so much more to contemplate. Beyond the science and microscopic environments created in the work, the titles provide challenging and humorous possibilities to debate. Yet in the end, we can sit back and simply absorb the visually stunning quality of the work. Terry received his BFA from R.I.S.D in 1993 and his MFA from New York University in 1995. He has been exhibiting his work in the U.S. and Europe since 1998. His work will be included in “Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960’s” at the San Antonio Museum of Art in October 2008. Most recently, Terry’s work was included in “Aspects, Forms and Figures”, at Bellwether Gallery in New York. He has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, ArtForum, Art in Review, Le Monde, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice among others.

JOSEPH PARK b. 1964 Ottawa, Canada; lives and works in Seattle, WA TIM EITEL 24 x 18 inches Oil on panel [SOLD] Although he painted as an undergraduate, Joseph Park came out of Cal Arts as an installation, performance and video artist. His last few installations were actually sculptures about painting. His breakthrough came when he decided to make paintings about sculpture. He has been painting ever since. Recently Park has shifted his painterly attention to portraiture. He had avoided using specific characters in past work, substituting animal imagery to convey human emotions and conditions. In this portrait of Leipzig painter, Tim Eitel, Park takes identification as a given. As in the rest of this series of portraits, he is deploying new mark making for each subject, allowing painterly expressions to work for, by, or against their facial expressions. Eitel is known for his large canvases in muted palettes that combine geometric abstraction with photographic realism. Park’s portrait combines photographic realism with his own version of a ‘soft’ Cubism that also approaches certain Futurist mannerisms, treading that fine line between the mimetic and the abstract. Due to the interest in this series, Park has been commissioned for a number of individual portraits. We welcome your inquiry if you are interested in such a commission.

YOON LEE b. 1975 Pusan, South Korea; lives and works in San Francisco SUBATOMIC VERVE #10, 2007 Acrylic on frosted Mylar 30 x 42 inches Lee is regarded for her colorful, palimpsest paintings in acrylic on large sheets of PVC. Digitally manipulated silhouettes of engineering structures provide the backdrop while wild splashes of gestural abstractions that swirl throughout simultaneously activate and obscure these recognizable structures. Even these seemingly instantaneous gestures begin digitally. Lee starts with scanned images, digitally rendering them into flat planes with their accompanying low-resolution pixilation. She then painstakingly transfers the image—dot by tedious dot—to the surface with squeeze-nozzle bottles containing a resinous acrylic. For this recent series of “Subatomic Verve” pieces on frosted Mylar, Lee has distilled her imagery and palette down to the ‘simple’ gestures seen here. Yoon Lee received her BFA from the University of California San Diego in 1998 and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. She was awarded the Stuart Collection Committee Prize in 1997; The Tournesol Award at The Headlands Center for the Arts in 2005; The Outstanding Local Discovery Award from The San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2006; and the Eduardo Carillo Price from the San Jose Museum of Art in 2007. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Riverside Art Museum; DCKT Contemporary, Miami; Peirogi, Liepzig, Germany; Peirogi, New York; and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her first solo exhibition at Pierogi, New York occurs later this year. Image: Installation view - Lee (left); Calame (right)