ARTIFICE OF FORM
Nathaniel Freeman, Josh Keyes and Andy Vogt
September 1 - October 14, 2007
Reception for the Artists: First Friday, September 7, 2007 6-9PM
Andy Vogt, (detail)"Object Afield", 2007
Swarm Gallery presents a curated group exhibition Artifice of Form, featuring Nathaniel Freeman, Josh Keyes and Andy Vogt.
In 1943, the Navy was experimenting with the application of Einstein's Unified Field Theory in an attempt to render a destroyer invisible. The ship, the USS Eldridge,
had indeed disappeared, the report said, but at a terrible price to the crew. According to the report, the sailors had been made "vague in form" and could walk through walls.
Nathaniel Freeman first heard about the USS Eldridge while preparing for show of his video work in NYC. He decided to cast a small herd of deer into one of the
gallery walls as a response to the story. "I love the folly of human ingenuity," says Nathaniel, "I do some engineering work as well, so I am constantly surrounded by
my own miscalculations." The new work at Swarm is an extension of this idea. Freeman cast a life-size boxer entering the wall. A gaggle of geese decoys look on as witnesses
to the follies of human ingenuity.
Like an archeologist, Josh Keyes isolates narrative scraps from the world and places them in the void of the canvas to see what they might become.
The images are meant to have a diagrammatic quality that arises from his desire to see things more clearly. Though often steeped in satire, Josh's drawings and paintings
are also suffused with a sincere admiration of our planet. His altered landscapes reveal both the intricacy of the earth as a system and the complexity of our response to
the natural world, while retaining a sense of specificity and intimacy. Keyes is interested in creating psychological narratives set in closed systems that express the behavior
of and the interaction between humans and animals. The dystopian model creates a dynamic playing field where he can experiment with these ideas and forms.
Similarly, Andy Vogt discovers in the detritus of discarded plaster lath the clues to a new geometry and space. DeWitt Cheng from Artweek writes: Sorted by
color and length, the scavenged strips are affixed flat against the wall but at angles following the conventions of isometric drawing. The result is a large, free-form
mural suggestive of fences or animal pens in disrepair, or stratigraphic fence diagrams, or even the ungainly solar-panel structures that unfold from the space shuttle,
unconstrained by the pull of gravity, like huge unglued cardboard boxes. Vogt simply and cleverly creates the illusion of three-dimensional space in two-dimensions.
In PROJECT SPACE
745 Seventh Ave., New York (Where Vision Gets Built)
Clark Buckner
745 Seventh Ave., New York (Where Vision Gets Built) is a two-channel video projection, which documents a building in New York City as a public video installation.
The piece explores the roles of video and architecture in the constitution of public space, considers the opposition between nature and civilization, and raises the question:
Where does vision get built?
Clark Buckner, "745 Seventh Ave., New York (Where Vision Gets Built)", two-channel video installation, dimensions variable, 2006
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