"Optical Perception;" Corridor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Nov 5-Dec 16, 2006

Patricia Chaplin, Raymond Gibbon, Gilbert Hsiao, and Don Bryant Rodrigues. Curated by Meridith McNeal and Danny Simmons.

Untitled, 2006, acrylic on rowlux, 26 x 90 inches

Photos below show Ike and Abbrielle showing off the t-shirts they made at Rush Kids T-shirt design day at Corridor Gallery. Corridor Gallery is part of the Rush Arts organization,which runs numerous art related programs for underserved groups at several locations in Brooklyn. For more details, please see

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2006-11/local/art-for-life and www.rushphilanthropic.org

Ike

Abbrielle

Photos: Meridith McNeal

"Two Vinyls;" Minus Space Projects, Brooklyn, NY, Sept 2006

This was an installation featuring paintings on Rowlux, a type of dimensional vinyl found in drum kits, and album jacket art of various kinds of music selected from my record collection. For more photographs of this and other installations featured at Minus Space Project Space, see http://minusspace.com/projectspacearchive.htm

"Presentational Painting," Hunter College/Time Square Gallery, New York, NY, Feb 16-Apr 15, 2006

Hartmut Bohm, Paul Corio, Daniel Crews, Matthew Deleget, Lynne Harlow, Gilbert Hsiao, Changha Hwang, Susanne Jung, Steve Karlik, Rossana Martinez, Charlotte Nicholson, Francisca Reyes, Steven Salzman, Martjin Schuppers, Mike Stack, Don Voisine. Curated by Gabriele Evertz, w. John Cox and Abbey Ryan. For artnet Magazine review by Stephen Maine go to http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/maine/maine4-7-06.asp.

Top Spin, 2003, sprayed acrylic on wood panel, 42" x 42".

Presentational Painting is a term coined by Sanford Wurmfeld. In the catalog to an earlier exhibiton of Presentional Painting in 1993, he wrote:

"Presentational art...refers to art structured by a human being and presented as a statement, a visual fact, to be expereienced or received by an active viewer. By its sensory nature, such art is untranslatable and the ideas or feelings transmitted by it are tied to the particular object that expresses them."

Still earlier, in 1985 in an exhibition for a show entitled "Color Documents: A Presentational Theory" he wrote:

Presentational Painting is a strain of modern art that originated around 1920 when painting departed entirely from reproduction and thus representation of the object. It stands at opposite ends to abstraction and must be distinguished from it since abstraction denotes art that does not relinquish its relationship to the exterior. But it is important to note that abstraction paved the way for a greater consideration of the role of viewer participation. By definition Presentational Painting is concerned with the account of meaning that is inherent in the painting itself. It is an art that has persisted in the face of resistance and has held its own against many other styles. The specialized approach to concentrating on perceptual phenomena, clarity of its organizing principles and affinity to logic gives rise to pictorial effects that are surprising despite its grounding in calculability and foresight. The pictorial possibilities are still expanding. The striking spatial and kinetic aspects of color interactions are especially astounding to observe. It is this consistency of the search for innovation and diversity that gives the practice its vitality. But to ensure continuation it requires the rethinking and reworking of the critical criteria that informs our expectation for this mode of expression today. "

"...it is the manipulation by the artist of the physical variables--the paint quality, the flat surface, and the size and shape of the support--together with an understanding of the relation of these variables to predictable visual structures, that is fundamental to esthetic meaning in paintings, and the basis of presentational art."

For Hartmut Bohm see http://www.hartmut-boehm.de/

For Matthew Deleget see http://www.matthewdeleget.com/

For Rossana Martinez see http://www.rossanamartinez.com/

For Don Voisine see http://www.metaphorcontemporaryart.com/curExhDV_Arc.html and
http://www.mckenziefineart.com/exhib/DagleyVoisineexhb.html

"Minimalisms," Gallery W 52, New York, NY, Jan 26-March 20, 2006

John Beech, Julian Dashper, Matthew Deleget, Zipora Fried, Gilbert Hsiao, Kyle Jenkins, Rossana Martinez, Tilman

From essay accomopanying the show by Joao Ribas:

"The simplicity of minimalist art belies a radical agenda. Its stripped-down, reductive language-seemingly benign-in fact unsettled most of the conventions of modern art. "What you see is what you see," painter Frank Stella once famously said of the minimalist aesthetic, yet the laconic description underplays its vital role in contemporary art.

Initially focusing on sculptural form, minimalism proposed a literal, almost industrial definition of art. A minimalist artwork was first and foremost an object in three-dimensional space; a box, a shelf, an aluminum square. Such calculated neutrality antagonized the art preceding it and led to a rethinking of what could be conceived as a painting or a sculpture.

The ongoing impact of this questioning is clear in today's best reductive art. The minimalist ethos has become a way for painters to purge abstraction of metaphor or allusion and refocus it on formal elements; flatness, monochromatic color, serial form, and bare geometry - in short, qualities that stress immediate visual impact. Minimalism shows this tendency converging with a renewed interest in abstract painting, demonstrating how complex ideas can be enveloped in reductive forms. With an emphasis on structural clarity and the literal qualities of the medium, such work is often closer to a painted object rather than a traditional painting."

For Matthew Deleget, see http://www.matthewdeleget.com/

For Rossana Martinez, seehttp://www.rossanamartinez.com/

"Brooklyn," Wesport Arts Center, Westport, CT, Jan -Feb 17, 2006

Meredith Allen, Reed Anderson, Louis Brawley, Eyal Danieli, Brian Dewan, Nancy Drew, Gail Flanery, Jeffrey Givson, Gilbert Hsiao, Brian Hubble, Jodie Vicenta Jacobson, Nathan Slate Joseph, Wei Jia, Yun-Fei Ji, David Kramer, Lauren Luloff, Meridith McNeal, Chris Oh, Lynn Saville, Danny Simmons, Greg Stone, Lin Yan. Curated by Amy Simon. Stylistically a very diverse show, well documented at http://www.westportartscenter.org/press/brooklyn2.htm.