An Ideal For Living, or Thinking Inside the Box


You have all heard the stern admonition from supervisors or lifestyle gurus that we must: “Think outside the box” to get on in work and in life. But of course we know boxes are infinitely useful. Sit on them individually as chairs, stack up a few boxes we have a table, open the tops and turn them on their side we have book shelves. As well as storing ordinary things, you can also use boxes as shelter, drawing surfaces, costumes and re-cut the cardboard into sculptures or vast stage sets: A child may even prefer the large box the toy came in to the plastic toy because the container allows the imagination to transport into other worlds. Instead of delivering a preprogrammed experience the carton becomes- in the hands of the child- an airplane, an army base or a ship.


In the case of Isolation Room the box is the 7’ x 7’x 9’ Gallery Kit (2010) which occupies a dining room plus a carefully selected drawing, painting or sculpture. The kit can be built in any existing interior space at minimal cost ‘DIY’. It is just big enough to fit in a few visitors to contemplate the beauty within and includes its own track lighting system. The gallery kit re-imagines the ideal integration between art and life: as such it is also a perfect unregistered non-profit art space. As an owner the space is as public or private as desired and the hours are by appointment. As a visitor, if you tire of the interior of the gallery and the art, you can sit down outside in the living room and rest your feet. You can have a chat with the kit owner and have a glass of wine or watch TV shows- the discussions are always a highlight. Then you can wander off into the back garden and have a smoke if you like, which to be candid, is the reason you probably agreed to show up in the first place. It’s an ideal for living.


Isolation Room is an evolving project that will focus on one artwork per exhibition cycle. each piece will be placed in a physical state of quarantine, situated in a modular viewing space inviting an extended period of contemplation. Building on an ongoing interest in containment, the constructed room allows for the smallest possible collaboration between the gallery space, curator, artist and audience. At its core one work stands in isolation. This is also an opportunity to protect work from a forced theme, loose contextualization or commercial exploitation. By placing the individual piece as a subject in isolation the work is then encouraged to exist and be perceived from an aesthetic standpoint.


Daniel McGrath & Dana Turkovic

PLEASE VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE:

www.isolationroom-gallerykit.com

CURRENT EXHIBITION



















Jay Lizo: Jimma! (solar powered)*
March 11 - April 7, 2011

*Especially for Jimma! Isolation Room is now a zero carbon emissions exhibition

venue. Our one track light is actually hooked up to a solar panel. Special thanks to Home Eco, St. Louis. www.home-eco.com


Jimmy Carter’s poetry book “Always a Reckoning” met with mixed reviews upon its publication. New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani called Carter a "mediocre poet" who writes "well-meaning, dutifully wrought poems that plod from Point A to Point B without ever making a leap into emotional hyperspace, poems that lack not only a distinctive authorial voice, but also anything resembling a psychological or historical subtext." Ouch. The literary critique was a bit like the judgment of the electorate in 1980 then. But we feel Jay Lizo’s portrait of President James Carter is very cool. Indeed it is a celestial looking “Jimma”. This work is pulled from a painting series titled “A Song from My Hero Collection”, which grouped together portraits of people real and fictitious that Lizo has admired. This is the Jimmy who is perhaps best loved for his political afterlife. You know, the Jimmy we got to see after he built “habitat for humanity” houses and spoke up for Middle East peace. That’s what a true hero is A BUILDER (not destroyer). It’s almost like he’s at the strobe lit galactic disco for true heroes. Peace out Jimma!

Jay Lizo received his B.F.A. from Ringling School of Art and Design in 1998 and in 2005 he received his M.F.A. from University of California - Santa Barbara. His solo exhibitions include: And The Choir Song On, Box 13 Gallery, Houston, Texas, 2010; Lovely Ladies, Sea and Space Explorations, Los Angeles, 2008.Some of his group exhibitions include an upcoming show at Kristi Engel Gallery, Los Angeles, A Year of Hiroshige, Cypress Community College, CA; 12 Gauge, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, 2010; Resound, Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, 2010; Portrayal/Betrayal, Gallery of Long Beach City College, 2008; A/V, Blueseats, New York, NY, 2008; High Desert Test Sites 5, Joshua Tree, CA, 2006; Supersonic, Los Angeles, CA, 2005; LA Tap, Melbourne, Australia, 2004. Lizo lives and works in Los Angeles.


Work is courtesy the artist.

RECENT PRESS AND OTHER INFO...

Isolation Room/Gallery Kit will be changing to www.isolationroom-gallerykit.com shortly and you may be redirected in the near future!


Here is a link to a projects profile on Isolation Room/Gallery Kit from a newly launched website titled Temporary:
http://temporaryartreview.com/profiles/isolation-roomgallery-kit/



Below are two images of the solar powered set-up...
















































MINIATURE GALLERY KIT
Edition of 25
email: daniel.john.mcgrath@gmail.com for availability.

RECENT PRESS and other news...

Here is a jpeg of the Johannes Wohnseifer review in the March 2011 issue of Artforum magazine. Written by Ivy Cooper and Photo by Shaun Alvey.































Here is a recent article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch written by Diane Keaggy...
http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/visual/article_10009d2b-1c4c-5eb9-9522-8ac24d3d0b2e.html





















Installation view from ACE exhibition...







































Isolation Room/Gallery Kit will be taking part in an exhibition hosted by the ACE Curatorial collective at Hunter College in New York titled I know you know I know you know I know. The event will take place from January 28-29, 2011 at the Hunter College Times Square Gallery/MFA Building at 450 West 41st Street.


www.hunterace.wordpress.com

We would like to thank Joan and Mitchell Markow for their generous gift with additional support from the Santo Foundation.




10/6/10 - St. Louis Post Dispatch Culture Club blog...

September issue of Sauce Magazine
written by Byron Kerman for the current exhibition of Isolation Room...






PAST EXHIBITION

















Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson

Fireworks

On view through February 10, 2011


Isolation Room/Gallery Kit is pleased to present the video Fireworks by artists Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson. In 1994, the artists began their partnership while sharing a studio in Manchester, England. Crowe and Rawlinson work across a range of media addressing subjects such as faith, politics, national identity and the environment. Using pairings and oppositions, their video and sculptural works create an encounter with the viewer that focuses on the complexity of objects through actions and reactions with direct reference to their specific social contexts. A captivating video, Fireworks functions as a metaphor for the disentanglement of the social and ideological consequences of an action in relation to its evident spectacle. Installed in a large cavernous space, a series of fireworks are laid out in an ambitious construction, timed explosions are set off in a continuous and fascinating display, from spastic sparks to flickering flames, smoke eventually permeates the room and shifts our experience accordingly. An interest in consequence is reflected in the aesthetics of spectacle and overkill that is the core of this work and is a good example of a powerful visual and an aural intensity that can be seen as an opportunity for direct conversation with the viewer. In a recent interview Crowe and Rawlinson sum up their conceptual preoccupations: “…the pieces all work through this method of presenting a thing… with another one. It’s different from making pairs or sets or doubles – it’s about how your understanding of an object changes when you force it to be seen in relation to itself.”



Crowe and Rawlinson's recent group exhibitions include: Mobile Research Station, Sculpture Park, Berlin, 2009; Involved Socially, Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco, 2008; Stranger Things are Happening, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, 2009; Arttranspennine 08, Apartment, Manchester, 2008 and A Season of Film, Axel Lapp, Berlin, 2008. Their recent solo exhibitions include: How We Do Art Now, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin; Northern Art Prize, Leeeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, 2009; The Carrier's Prayer at Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, 2008; At 25 Metres, FACT Liverpool, 2007; Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, Manchester Art Gallery and Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, 2003. Crowe and Rawlinson are represented by Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpoool and live and work in Manchester, England and Berlin, Germany.

Work is courtesy the artists and Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool.



Here is a recent article in the RFT written by Jessica Baran...


Here is a recent article in the St. Louis Beacon written by Ivy Cooper...
http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts-life/visual-arts/107844-review-of-fireworks-at-isolation

PAST EXHIBITION



















Pello Irazu
On view through March 10, 2011
Isolation Room/Gallery Kit is pleased to present a work on paper by Spanish artist Pello Irazu. Belgrado XIII is part of a series of sculptures, turned photographs then drawings using paint and adhesive tape on paper to further explore the complex relationship between the individual and both architecture, domestic space and everyday objects. Irazu uses the photographic medium as a support for his paintings relating his ideas to photography's capability to reproduce reality. Referring directly to objects from his studio such as chairs, tables, boxes, various tools, and other miscellaneous materials as each layer is covered with colors drawing from the artist's glossary of vivid reds and muddied golden yellows. These photographs are then painted over with rectangular shapes mimicking paper, wood, iron or adhesive tape collaged to the surface of the prints. Beautifully constructed, this effect emphasizes the surface of the photograph while dialoguing with the elements in the image, a summation of shapes whose movement is fixed in time. Irazu describes these works as "wall sculptures" or "spatial screens", and are essentially used to investigate the same preoccupation as his sculpture. By combining elements of conceptualism, minimalism, and constructivism, Irazu merges and modifies objects to explore the tensions between photographic representation, painting and sculpture, regarding space as something as he describes to be more than "a mere container to hang things."

Born in 1963 in Andoain, Spain, Irazu currently lives and works in Bilbao. He has
exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, the Reina Sofia and the
Guggenheim Museum. Irazu's work is held in the collections of major institutions
including The Guggenheim, Bilbao, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, The
Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Yves Klein Foundation, Arizona and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, San Diego. A recipient of many European awards, Irazu received the
Icaro Prize for the best young Spanish artist and a Fulbright Grant to live and work in
New York.

Work is courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.


Here is a recent article in the St. Louis Beacon written by Ivy Cooper on the Pello Irazu exhibition...
http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts-life/visual-arts/108150-review-of-pello-irazu-at-isolation

Photo by Shaun Alvey.

PAST EXHIBITION











Easton Miller
Through January 11, 2011

While attending the art fairs in Chicago this past May, I stumbled upon a small booth rented by LVL3 Gallery based in Chicago. In the corner of the smaller and more experimental Next Fair, Easton Miller’s small suite of paintings were some of the few works that really stood out to me after a marathon day of art finding. Miller uses a range of materials to make work that cross-pollinates between sculpture and painting with humor and intelligence. His most recent pieces are humorous one-liners about products and celebrities with mainstream American appeal. His choice of layered materials and paint, this combination can be heavily symbolic but also perfectly paired with his more acute sensibility to paint and its role in the work. Relying on his blocks of visual information the works celebrate the battle between candor and an observed restrain. His continued exploration into the hybrid of mediums allows for an active and at times odd blend of object and illusion. The paintings exist in a space that allows for mystery and subtlety, ultimately questioning its physical and conceptual structure. DT

Artist Biography: Miller earned his BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. His recent and upcoming exhibitions include MAda Shell Gallery, Ashland, Oregon; Jolie Laide Gallery, San Francisco; LVL3 Gallery, Chicago; The Great Poor Farm Experiment, Wisconsin; Heaven Gallery, Chicago. Miller lives and works in Chicago.


Photo by Shaun Alvey.


Below is an essay by Douglis Beck on the occasion of Easton Miller's Strata exhibition at Isolation Room.

PAST EXHIBITION
























Johannes Wohnseifer

Through December 8, 2010

The Thin Commandments is a series of ten silk screen-printed aphorisms stemming from the work of a psychologist, who summarizes her experiences in the treatment of people exhibiting eating disorders as a list of a Ten Commandments that is both horrifying and poetic. Catch yourself agreeing and disagreeing with the statements at your peril as the cults of diets and exercise collide in a quasi-religious creed. DM

Artist Biography: Johannes Wohnseifer (*1967, Cologne) lives and works in Cologne and Erfstadt. In 2008, the galleries Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Casey Kaplan, New York and Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid held solo exhibitions of the artist. In 2007 Wohnseifer’s series “Kleenex Mathematics” was shown at the Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver. The exhibition “Vertrautes Terrain – Aktuelle Kunst in und über Deutschland” at the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the shows “The Porn Identity. Expeditionen in die Dunkelzone” at the Kunsthalle Vienna recently presented works of the artist. Currently, Wohnseifer’s works can be seen at „Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection” in the New York MoMA.

Works are courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York.


Photos by Shaun Alvey.

Exhibition Press:


Below is an essay by London based curator and freelance writer Rebecca Harris...
GALLERY KIT - (to scale)
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS



















































































































































video
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)