ANNE PERCOCO: TERRARIUM

Anne Percoco, Terrarium @ ArtBloc, Jersey City, NJ

SILVERMAN and Hamilton Square Condominium Association in association with ArtBloc present ANNE PERCOCO: TERRARIUM

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 2014, 7–9 p.m.

Hamilton Square
232 Pavonia Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000

Exhibition on view September 5, 2014–ongoing

Anne Percoco’s Terrarium transforms an industrial shipping container into an enclosed ecosystem. With the help of the Hamilton Park Greens Group volunteers, she has filled the containers with weeds harvested from nearby Hamilton Park. Throughout the two-month project run, the installation has been in a constant state of flux as the artist plants, waters, and maintains this living ecosystem while collecting seeds from plants for limited edition seed packets.

Percoco sees Terrarium as a foil to the domesticated space of the park, a wild place within the neighborhood, encouraging viewers to look at the overlooked, and to be aware of the complex wilderness growing in the peripheries of Jersey City. This project is about collective contribution as it is about habitation and biodiversity.

The installation is unassuming during the daytime but takes on otherworldly qualities at night with the activation of pink LED grow lights and a sound installation by Michael Durek. This ethereal quality invites viewers to consider the plants as having an interior life and an agency of their own.

Work In Progress: Terrarium

The score features minimal, droning sounds reminiscent of the hums and tones that form the background of our sonic experience of cities, while occasionally becoming more cinematic and tonal. The skillful layering of these elements makes them seem almost natural.

Ultimately, this project is about what is undervalued from our daily urban environment, how our value systems interact with both humans and non-humans, and, as Gary Snyder wondered, “where do we start to resolve the dichotomy of the civilized and the wild?”

Percoco makes art not by creating something new, but by reorganizing what’s already there. Her process is resourceful, responsive, and playful. She spends as much time exploring, collecting materials, and researching as she does making. She makes full use of each material’s unique formal properties as well as historical, cultural and environmental resonances.

Percoco studied at Drew University, Madison, NJ (BA 2005) and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (MFA 2008). Percoco was born in Boston, MA, in 1982. She lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

For more information on Anne Percoco, or to contact the artist, please visit her website: annepercoco.com.

A rendering of Anne Percoco’s installation Terrarium. Courtesy of the artist.

Contributors:

Musician Michael Durek created original sound design for this installation. For more information on the artist, go here: michaeldurek.com.

Filmmaker John Dunstan will project an original video to the side of ArtBloc during the opening reception. For more information on Dunstan, go here: vimeo.

Partners:

SILVERMAN is a New Jersey real estate developer, creatively rebuilding urban areas, supporting the arts, while building neighborhoods.

ArtBloc is a mobile art gallery and performance space built from two repurposed shipping containers – it is a dynamic community venue for art, music, dance and theater.

Brendan Carroll is an artist, writer and curator. He organizes a rotating exhibition program of prominent and up-and-coming artists for SILVERMAN.

Transportation Map:

Transportation Directions from Lower Manhattan to Hamilton Square Condominiums

 

 

Sara Wolfe: Boom Boom Boom

Sara Wolfe, Oh Mickey, 2009, oil on canvas, 23 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches

SILVERMAN AND HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present
Sara Wolfe: Boom Boom Boom 


Opening Reception: Friday, September 5, 2014, 7—9pm  

Hamilton Square Condominium
232 Pavonia Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.434.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from September 5, 2014 to December 31, 2014

“I’m really interested in associations viewers have to colors and form. I’m fascinated with how little visual material we need to trigger a memory or physical reaction” — Sara Wolfe

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present “Sara Wolfe: Boom Boom Boom,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition is a mini-survey of the artist’s painting from the past ten years. For more than a decade, Wolfe has produced vibrant abstract paintings on canvas and paper, which range in size from modest to large-scale. Her work may vary in style and execution, but it is united by her no-nonsense approach to painting. It’s as playful and offbeat as it is serious and substantial.

Bringing old and new work together can often prompt new insights for artist and audience alike. Surveying her work, Wolfe is not so much surprised, as she is aware of a continual interest in color and motif.

“I’m drawn to more geometric works from the past, as my current work is more minimal… Layers and expressionistic marks have made way for what is hopefully a nuanced play between shape and the illusion of space,” says Wolfe.

“Color continues to seduce me, and it’s interesting to see it explode out of earlier work. I am still distracted by the variety of the art store paint shelves and want to try each one. The newer work attempts to be conscious about color choices without losing the intuition of choosing color spontaneously.”

Sara Wolfe, Untitled, 2008, oil on canvas, 32 x 32 7/8 inches

Wolfe creates a seemingly infinite variety of work that can be viewed simultaneously as pictorial and abstract. More often than not, her work is derived from her daily visual experience. From cerebral to intuitive, she explores line, value, color, and texture. Each piece, however minimal, reveals the touch of her hand. Paint, in all its plasticity, ranges from opaque fields to translucent patches. Application is casual, but informed. Color tends not to be stable; rather, it is contradictory and unpredictable.

Sara Wolfe, Untitled, 2008, oil on canvas, 32 x 32 1/8 inches

Of late, she paints organic and geometric forms in cosmic space. These forms twirl, tumble, and play peekaboo. The feel is as unfussy as it is buoyant. There is an infectious joie de vivre about Wolfe’s geometric abstractions. For the artist, paint is a means to an end, not the end. She is compelled by paint’s inherent physicality, especially in contrast to the virtual imagery that bombards the public on a moment-by-moment basis. She is fascinated by how the mind stores and remembers information.

At first glance, it might be easy to dismiss her work as slapdash or unassuming. But to view her paintings in this manner would rob you of a rewarding visual experience. To appreciate this work requires time—minutes, not seconds. In light of today’s hyperdigitized era, which inundates us with a relentless cycle of images, Wolfe’s paintings can offer the viewer a meditative refuge.

Sara Wolfe, Untitled, 2013, Oil on Canvas, 24 1/8 x 23 1/8 inches

Sara Wolfe is a New York City based painter who has exhibited in venues including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, the 92nd Street Y and Exit Art in New York City, and, most recently, The Center for Contemporary Art and Arts Guild in New Jersey. Solo shows include the Jersey City Museum’s Majestic Theater in 2006 and Gallery Aferro in Newark in 2009.

Wolfe has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including those from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Residencies include Yaddo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Centers and the Association of Independent Schools of Art and Design. Wolfe holds an M.F.A. from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts and has studied painting in Florence, Italy and at the School for Visual Arts in New York City. She has taught painting and drawing at Rutgers University, Middlesex County College, New Jersey City University and at SUNY in New Paltz, NY.

This exhibition will be on view at Hamilton Square Condominiums through December 2014. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000.

Sara Wolfe: Boom Boom Boom is the twenty-first exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN.

For additional information on the artist, please go here: sarawolfe.com.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Shauna Finn, Anne Percoco, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Tom McGlynn, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.

Transportation Directions from Lower Manhattan to Hamilton Square Condominiums