SOUTHFIRST 60 N6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.southfirst.org
SOUTHFIRST
gallery is proud to present BADLANDS, a two-person show of sculpture, a video
and new paintings. The exhibition features work by Jacob Stein and Ellen
Takata and is on view from June 30 Š July 23.
Sometimes
getting away means watching movies. Ellen TakataÕs oil on linen paintings
sketch out scenes derived from watching Asian b-movies and arthouse staples. A
Fassbinder femme becomes the muse for a gestural composition. Two Samurai
detectives peer out from behind a hill. The woman in the dunes serves her
captive tea. The paintings make use of simple and direct lines to sketch out
architectural spaces with a practiced looseness, but it is when they focus in
on details that the pieces really gel. The flicker of a painted eye and the
shine on a painted photograph are among such moments. Takata here judiciously
inserts the poignant excess of meaning that film and photography carry, without
the tedium that working from photographs can imply. They are deft odes to
escapism.
Jacob Stein spent four months working in the California desert to ready this project, which was shown as part of the event High Desert Test Sites 5 in June. Finding inspiration in a local landowner, Justus Motter, Stein learned from him the stories that seemed to haunt his forty acres of desert. These large-scale plaster and wire sculptures are prototypes for those he built on-site in California. There is a cactus in bloom, a bleached-out Joshua tree, and a tall, white teepee. A video documents the tour Jacob and the man gave of the land. SteinÕs sculptures stand in like ghosts for MotterÕs memories, and mark off sites for storytelling about geodesic domes, the blooming desert, and nude modeling against the American flag. The gallery sculptures are ephemeral transmissions from MotterÕs home and experience in Pioneertown.
Ellen
Takata completed a certificate in painting at GoldsmithÕs College, London, and
received a MasterÕs from Harvard University in East Asian Studies. She lives
and works in Cambridge, MA. Jacob Stein received an MFA from Columbia
University in 2005. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
SOUTHFIRST is located on 60 N6th Street in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Gallery hours: Fri, Sat & Sun 1-6 PM and by
appointment. Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please
contact us at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.
S O U T H F I R S T
60 N6th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211
phone/fax 718 599 4884
www.southfirst.org