Eyewash@Schroeder Romero Gallery presents
Summer Reading
A group exhibition of current narrative art
curated by Larry Walczak

Joe Amrhein    Leslie Brack    Richard Humann    David Kramer    Ligorano/Reese    Robin Michals     David Opdyke     Sante Scardillo     Bill Schuck     David Shapiro

DATES: June 28th ­ July 28th, 2003
OPENING: Friday, June 27th, 6 - 9 p.m.
HOURS: Friday - Monday, 12 - 6 p.m. and by appointment
LOCATION: eyewash@ Schroeder Romero Gallery
173A North 3rd Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

David Kramer

In the summer of 2003 we are seeing Hollywood blockbusters such as X2 and The Hulk propelling sales of comic books to all age groups and gender. Comic books (and its more sophisticated offspring the Graphic Novel) are considered by many to be the most original American art form and are selling in record numbers. The union of visuals and text can be traced back centuries but became more widely used in contemporary art with certain forms of conceptualism and even more so with the autobiographical, confessional and story-telling nature of much of post-conceptual art. In those 1970's the huge proliferation of artists books and a genre that became known as "story art" the word/picture combination became a mainstay of the contemporary art vocabulary.

Ligorano/Reese

Years later visual artists continue their investigation into the use of language and sequence in visual art. Much of this group exhibition references aspects of popular culture and even contemporary literature. In David Shapiro's installation of picture/word drawings he links collage and drawing to lines of text from Joan Didion's White Album to Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night. David Kramer's installation uses drawings and typed and hand-written personal observations to further his search for validation and understanding in a confounding modern world. Sante Scardillo continues his social and political commentary on society through manipulated full-page ads usually culled from glossy fashion magazines. David Opdyke's "word machines" steer viewers into areas of poetic self-contradiction and absurdity. Richard Humann creates a clear-cast book of floating letters of the alphabet. Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese's installation Bible Belt sits on a speaker's podium with an LCD monitor bound inside it. Ligorano/Reese have created a special television spot of a televangelist selling the belt. Scrambled pornography intercut between the televangelists' spots converts the piece into a contemporary chastity belt. Joe Amrhein edits art criticism and creates signage work with the tangents layering them and combining them to emphasize the absurdity of art criticism.
Site specific installation by Bill Schuck

Bill Schuck grows his text directly out of gallery walls. Schuck has created a poetic fragment into the walls of Schroeder Romero into which he plants domestic grass seed. From within the wall the seed germinates and emerges, the botanical text remaining alive and verdant throughout the four weeks of the exhibition. Two oil paintings feature the abrupt poetry of Leslie Brack layered atop painted reproductions of Cy Twombly's "Letter of Resignation" series. Robin Michals presents a sequence of digital photographs of the decay of an apple and orange over the course of six weeks. The fruit are within a grid of 792 found images of weapons, either blurred or reduced in scale to the barely perceptible.

Artist, Educator and Curator LARRY WALCZAK started eyewash in June 1997 on the 3rd Floor of a turn-of-the-century residential building in Williamsburg. Since January 2002, it has been a "migratory gallery," either collaborating with other galleries, or producing shows in borrowed or otherwise temporarily acquired spaces. It specializes in showcasing emerging and mid-career artists from Brooklyn.

F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Please contact LARRY WALCZAK at 718 387 2714