SOUTHFIRST 60 North 6th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.southfirst.org

PHILIP VANDERHYDEN

With STUART ARGABRIGHT, WILLIAM BARG and SEAN DACK

“PAY YOUR FUTURE SELF FIRST”

April 25 – May 25, 2015
Opening reception, Sunday, April 26, 4 - 6 pm

Performance Sunday, May 17, 6 pm

SOUTHFIRST presents “PAY YOUR FUTURE SELF FIRST,” an exhibition showing the fifteen-minute two-channel video Volatility Smile 2 (2015) by Philip Vanderhyden. The work is displayed on a 35-foot long wall of flat-screen monitors. The exhibition also features three new looped videos by Sean Dack presented on Sony “cube” monitors, and a performance by Stuart Argabright featuring the video Hip Tech High Lit (1987), an eighteen-minute cyberpunk sleeper Argabright made in collaboration with William Barg.

In Volatility Smile 2, Vanderhyden creates an immersive environment in which the visual language of corporate identity, consumer product design and advertising is looped and arrayed in a glowing, sprawling digital display which seems to float in the dark gallery space. Volatility Smile 2 follows projects Vanderhyden completed in relation to multimedia artist Gretchen Bender, and investigates interrelationships between the history of computer graphics and human subjectivity. Vanderhyden restaged Bender’s Total Recall at The Poor Farm, WI, in 2012 and at The Kitchen, NY, in 2013; he remade Bender’s work People in Pain (1988) in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

“Pay Your Future Self First” is a collaboration with Dack, whose looped video sculptures present imagery and text associated with information surveillance and algorhythmic artificial intelligence.

On Sunday, May 17 at 6 pm the gallery will host a performance by Argabright, who worked with Bender on the soundtracks for her video works, as well as on Robert Longo’s Arena Brains and the original soundtrack to Longo’s Johnny Mnemonic. As collaborators, Barg & Argabright’s projects included Hip Tech High Lit (1988), and coproducing William Gibson’s Neuromancer audio book soundtrack (1995).

Philip Vanderhyden (b. 1978, Menasha, WI) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University. He has previously exhibited at The Kitchen (NY), Hudson Franklin (NY), The Suburban (Oak Park), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago), and The Poor Farm (WI) and was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Sean Dack (b. 1976 Albany, NY) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. He has previously had two solo exhibitions at Southfirst, as well as solo shows at Daniel Reich Gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Fitzroy Gallery, Hiromi Yoshii gallery, The Suburban, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. He has work in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Zabludowicz Collection (London) and the de la Cruz collection (Miami).

SOUTHFIRST, founded in 2000, is located at 60 North 6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between Wythe and Kent Avenues. Due to the interruption in weekend L train service, the gallery is specially open Fri., 1-5 May 1, 8^th and 15^th, as well as normal weekend hours Sat. and Sun. 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.