Upcoming: Whitney Claflin Infinity Pool

January 20th - February 11, 2018
Opening Jan 20 7-10 PM
BYOB

Megan Marrin @ 576 Morgan Ave Apt 3L Gallery

Megan Marrin

What's Mine Is Yours

March 14 - April 5, 2015

Opening Saturday March 14, 7-10 PM

Flame

576 Morgan Ave Apt 3L Gallery 

By appointment only

Flame

November 8 - December 21, 2014

Opening Saturday November 8, 7-10 PM

Press Release

If you are hungry, you can eat a burrito; you can put a picture of a burrito on the wall; you can monetize a canvas with the word burrito. Alternatively, you can speak the word "Burrito"; in that case, something comes out of your mouth instead of going in.

However, you can't have your burrito and eat it too. The word "Burrito" in an abstract painting can neither be eaten, nor spoken, nor depicted, nor even read. It has been separated from any underlying. It has no survival value as food, and no aesthetic or emotional value as a sign of food. It can only be flipped from hand to hand.

The history of finance, like the history of Western painting, moves in the direction of ever-greater abstraction. The philosopher and derivatives trader Elie Ayache points out that advanced financial instruments are so fully abstract that they no longer refer back to any "underlying" whatsoever. They are blank forms, Ayache says, pure contingencies; traders may use them to literally "write the future." 

Instead intrinsic value can only be defined in terms of a work's functioning as a financial instrument. FLIP ART, as The New York Times has put it, "is just about the nearest thing in today’s fragmented global art scene that approximates to a coherent movement." It's only when the art is "flipped," that it accretes intrinsic value.

Today abstract art needs to be purged of expression, and of Greenbergian self-reflection, as much as it has been purged of extrinsic representation. It no longer even makes sense to simulate currency, as in the post-representational practice of Picasso, Warhol, and J.S.G. Boggs. Now we are expecting turbo-appropriation of trends, sub-prime speculation on collectively approved materials and art stacks to be bought in bulk. This turbo-appropriationism will in turn provide as much political effect as accelerationist strategies in art, speculations on anonymous materials and real estate exchanges in art fairs.

This doesn't mean that I am actually liberated by this art from worldly concerns. The constraints of political economy can, and do, get in the way of aesthetics. A starving person is blocked from full aesthetic enjoyment. It is only when I am able to taste the BURRITO that I enjoy the delicacies of cuisine, otherwise “I feel nothing at all”.

Steven Shaviro

Flame was invented in 2010, based on the virus of the same name, to filter through relevant information and feed it back into the gallery system.

Robin Bruch Opening October 4 7-9PM

PRESS RELEASE 

Robin Bruch's stalwart style, which she has been honing to variously obsessive, meditative and energized degrees since the 70s, has a kind of punk sensibility. It has its own ever changing set of rules and it doesn't box itself in. It loves colors and shapes and employes them to deftly spirited effect. It loves paint. Bruch's characters come back and forth in time, making icons of themselves, while also mingling with new members of the team.

In this exhibition, Bruch presents a more nuanced range of recent work. The show comprises a series of tondos, a suite of very small square paintings and two medium scaled works. These three types of work coexist in a surprisingly interconnected universe. Some things that happen: several iterations of wavy or accordion like bands; cubes and triangles; a triangle in almost every painting; old compositions appearing in a new pose or a different outfit; beguiling color combinations.

In one work, two irregular multi-colored cubes meet each other in the middle of the painting, and then expand or contract into the outer edges of its square frame. A deep blood like purple pervades the remaining space. Within these cubes, which are attached at the hip, is an undulating wavy multicolored band, which bisects them. All of this unfolds in a brushy, chalky/matte surface, materializing an awkwardly exuberant, yet brooding field.

In one tondo, two trapezoids grind over a field of green, the same wavy band dancing across their midriff. And this happens again in another, but the band has now morphed into a concertina. Her shapes are saturated with pigment like a coloring book, and their outlines are often left visible, lending them an electrified aura. Sometimes, it is almost as if they rest on a backlit screen. 

There is something to be said about the casual, non-fussy appearance of the works. The brushstrokes showing, or not. This part more solid... etc, but we know that this virtuosity is not easily won. Perhaps the pleasure of Bruch's work is in its economy, and the dignity that she gives to that economy. When a painting is good, it is good. Maybe she is even more confident now. Maybe she has let loose. Or, perhaps the world of her painting has just gotten that much more into the groove of things after all these years.

576 Morgan Avenue, Apt. 3L

Brooklyn, NY 11222

Between Driggs and Nassau

Buzz 3L

L Train to Graham

G train to Nassau

BYOB

576morganave@gmail.com