Vincent Dermody  Shanti Grumbine  Sheree Hovsepian  Curtis Mann 

Christopher Michlig  Maximilian Schubert  Pedro Vélez  Audra Wolowiec

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Magnan Metz Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Eraser, a group exhibition of contemporary artists Vincent Dermody, Shanti Grumbine, Sheree Hovsepian, Curtis Mann, Christopher Michlig, Maximilian Schubert, Pedro Vélez and Audra Wolowiec, curated by Rachel Furnari.  Eraser will be on view from June 2 – July 8, 2011. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, June 16th from 6-8pm.

Together, these artists explore the limits of what is visible, legible, or audible.  Facing off with absence, the exhibited artists mine the potential of empty space to represent radical negation and remaking.  They do this through literal acts of erasure that involve intensely physical processes such as bleaching, redaction, or defacement; but they also deal with the idea metaphorically and allude to the ways abstraction is a form of erasure itself. The incomplete or attenuated forms on view are invitations to confront the unknown or the invisible, but also to fill in the blanks or make the picture whole again.  Everyday experience is filled with acts of erasure, from the traumatic to the simply puzzling, from the personal to the historical. Names unintentionally vanish from our memories and we purposefully forget an ex-lover.  Censors shape the television we watch and there's a ready-and-waiting delete button on your computer. Meanwhile, clandestine military action, secret prisons, disappearing bodies in Juarez and political disenfranchisement point to a much darker side of this idea. The artists in this exhibition are exploring the process of erasure and the texture of the experience; in doing so they remind us of what's at stake.

Shanti Grumbine’s incisive transformations of newspaper pages and Christopher Michlig’s creation of ecstatic texts (or glossolalia) from the typography of found posters both point to the shape of words undone and the unsettling emptiness of language. Pedro Velez’s cryptic graffiti refers to the erasures and manipulations enacted in political rhetoric and corporate media. Redactions are aural in an Audra Wolowiec sound piece that intimately registers the sibilant breaks between words and the material qualities of silence.  Curtis Mann’s physically manipulated photographs result in a fragmented vision that fails to fully resolve into a coherent narrative.  Sheree Hovsepian, on the other hand, visualizes light and duration through multi-stage interventions into the relationship between photograph and object.  Maximilian Schubert follows these themes to their logical endgame in a series of blank, cast canvases, while Vincent Dermody’s cut outs are a whimsical nod to obliteration.

Rachel Furnari is an independent curator and critic based in New York.  Recent projects include exhibitions and articles on H. C. Westermann, Aaron Siskind, Ben Shahn, Stephanie Brooks and Theaster Gates.

For additional information, please contact info@magnanmetz.com or 212.244.2344