YOU-TILITY

AMANDA FRIEDMAN

CHRISTINA LEUNG

LIA LOWENTHAL

WILLIAM MCMILLIN

Organized by Amanda Friedman

November 22 – December 21

OPENING SUNDAY NOVEMBER 23, 4 – 6 PM

During the show at SOUTHFIRST I will complete two large-scale works in the gallery in relation to both immediate and exterior influences. These works will start from the structure of my old desk and bed, both physically and psychically. By moving my lived-with furniture into an exhibition space, I am leveraging the self-consciousness of this process.

The group show YOU-TILITY brings together both the process of making the two paintings, and the recent work of three artists I am in close conversation with whose work questions the function of a work of art.

In Christina Leung’s wood sculptures, the presence of comical aberration belies their allegiance to the readymade. The gesture of making a unique, handmade object is already a ubiquitous performance. With varying degrees of legibility, she borrows cues locally.

Lia Lowenthal’s drawings are dubious diagrams, mapping out ambiguous apparatuses (machinery, or jewelry) with undefined use-value or meaning. The drawings push these forms further into a type of useless motion or tableau, looking like insufficient technical illustrations or a still life.

Serenely skeptical, William McMillin’s small oil paintings may look like advertisements for an undisclosed product. Their subject echoes the abstraction used by corporate designers, repurposed to lush effect.

The artworks in this exhibition sit with questions of use-value. They reflexively hammer at how to digest and hold up our shared vulnerability alongside the everyday.

In addition, I gave the gallery owner, Maika Pollack, the assignment to paint a painting in the office of the gallery during the show.

-Amanda Friedman, November 2014

Amanda Friedman had a two-person show with Alissa McKendrick at SOUTHFIRST last Spring. Her collaborative artists’ book made with Ariel Dill and Denise Schatz, Drawing Hilma af Klint was just published by Miniature Garden. She is a co-founder of Essex Flowers.

SOUTHFIRST, founded in 2000, is located at 60 N6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between Wythe and Kent Avenues. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from 1 - 6 PM and by appointment. Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please contact the gallery at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.