Saturday, May 16, 2009

Anti-Oxidant BK tonight! Wed 5/20


Anti-Oxidant BK

Wednesday / May 20 / 10pm / Free

the Den @ Northeast Kingdom
18 Wycoff Ave
Bushwick, Brooklyn

Jefferson stop on the L train

Tonight's theme is "You the Narrator." Come out tonight to view works from Angela S. Beallor, Rebecca (Marks) Leopold, Christina Medina, Jake Selvidio, and Hyla Skopitz.

REBECCA (MARKS) LEOPOLD
rebeccaleopold.com
In Addition / 2008
Layering image, text and sound, In Addition is an exploration of the simple truth that the word “you” houses multiple definitions throughout a day or over a lifetime. Just as we do away with obsolete machines, we too lose those individuals, ideas, places and identities we once defined in relation to our lives. This work is an example of the artist’s ongoing practice of documenting isolated domestic performances in order to elucidate the ways in which technology influences and has the capacity to reveal our own psychic spaces. Throughout her work, the act of writing is consistently juxtaposed with various self-reflexive camera techniques and constructed technical errors, making reference to the current speed of communication while focusing on the entropic and corporeal aspects of every day life.

Rebecca (Marks) Leopold was born in a suburb, found time in the country and now lives and works in New York City & Philadelphia. A double graduate of Bard College she received her MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies in 2008. She has exhibited work in New York, New Mexico, New Jersey as well as others. Most of her time is spent crafting pixels into seconds and sentences.

ANGELA S. BEALLOR
angelabeallor.com
Conversation / 2007
The documentary filmmaker is invested in this family’s life but always at an insurmountable distance. She speaks to her friend of her concern and ambivalence. The friend who listens in return expresses interest and concern. In the end, she is not sure what to do with this information. Michael Bernard-Donals writes, “Testimonial narratives do not disclose history; instead they disclose— where the narrative most clearly shows the seams— the effect of events on witnesses.” The subtitles of the video capture not only the words as they are said but too the pauses, hesitations, and silences.

Angela Beallor has a BS in photo-illustration from Kent State University and an MFA in advanced photography from Bard-ICP. Her work often involves appropriated images and objects, photography, video, and writing. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Brooklyn

CHRISTINA MEDINA
youwereinmydreamslastnightbaby.com
Daydreams / 2007
It began as a childhood daydream. Then one sticky summer’s night I woke up and I realized it came true. These are the explorations of my own private surrealistic Cult of Domesticity. No makeup, no shoes, in the kitchen, a stove, a spoon, and Pace Picante Sauce.

Armed with a ten-year-old's imagination, I am dreamer by nature and prefer to wonder what the world would be like upside down. My motivation is derived from an examination of my own childhood memories, longings, aspirations, and beliefs. I would like to wake the dormant dreams we left behind with our dolls and toy cars. Teetering between a need for financial security and living a life of adventurous exploration of my heart’s desires, I remain a believer in truth, beauty, but most importantly LOVE.

JAKE SELVIDIO
selvidio.com
Poppy & Grandma / 2008
After nearly forty years of marriage, my grandfather, Poppy, left my grandmother to be with his long-time girlfriend. Sixteen years later, and just a week after Poppy's girlfriend's passing, I interviewed each of my grandparents separately and asked them to recount their stories of meeting each other, falling in love, and eventually going their separate ways.

I have been making short, documentary-style videos for five years. They have become a collective autobiography that encompasses my friends, family and past relationships. I studied photography and video at Pratt Institute, where I received my MFA.

HYLA SKOPITZ
skopitz.com
Bima / 2008
I spent a week with my grandmother. I sat with her on the porch every morning drinking burnt coffee and watching the birds who live in the Asian maple tree. Half blind, she listens to them sing and tells me the same stories all over again. I feel very close to her, in synch. “The tree is dying because there are too many of them,” she says. She goes inside with a sigh; the lawn is littered with saltines. I eavesdrop through the screen, she is talking to ghosts again.

Untitled (Pancakes) / 2007
The process of making pancakes, a futile attempt to relive a childhood memory that is imbued with nostalgia and sentimentality, translates into a sincere gesture as it oscillates between hilarity and sadness. Part document and part performance, the camera itself shifts between objective distance and subjective presence and explores the solitude of the artistic process and the way one negotiates the past and often tries to hold onto or pay tribute to that which has been lost.

While You Were Out / 2007
I like to think of him coming across these words, jotting them down. Leaving it for me absent-mindely. Yet, this is an artifact, the star of my archive in fact. Is it possible to create something which conveys a complete emotional state, daily life filtered through loss, without suffering from sentimentality?

Hyla Skopitz grew up with a giant papier maché hot dog on the mantle and a rubber bat hanging from the chandelier. She naturally developed an eye for detail and ironic juxtapositions. As a teenager, she began documenting the endless shelves and cubbyholes filled with miscellaneous screws
and bolts, coils of wires covered in cobwebs, and arcane gadgets in various states of disrepair that her grandfather, a child of the depression, had collected in secret basement rooms. Her photographs and videos continue to investigate familial relics, nostalgia, and sentimentality. They oscillate between diaristic and documentary, emotional and objective, the present and memory. She received her masters of fine arts at ICP-Bard. She currently works in the MET Museum Photo Studio and lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her most recent photographs are featured in the next "Abe’s Penny" (Volume 1.4, June).