OnTheCusp.org

Weekend Preview

Sadly, well not so sadly for me, I will not be making it out to this months IDADA First Friday event, as I am still in NYC. Spent all day today gallery hopping Chelsea. Loved it, but thats for another day or another post. With the Tara Donovan exhibition up and running at the IMA this weekend I would recommend that those of you who were not able to make it to the preview last night should head out there this weekend during the day, maybe walk the grounds a bit while you are there and the weather is good. Bit, save your Friday night for your local gallery hop.

As per usual, if you would like further details on the IDADA First Friday events, and a map, click the link to the right.


Sorry folks for the lack of images in todays post. I am simply exhausted tonight and need some sleep. Enjoy the shows.

IMOCA

"Seeing is Becoming"
Opening Reception, Friday April 2nd, 6-11pm.

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) opens a show created from the curatorial vision of Jay Jordan featuring six artists from across the nation titled “Seeing is Becoming.”

The show opens Friday April 2 from 6-11 pm and will run through May 15.

Lexington, KY artists Louis Bickett and Dmitry Strakovsky, Louisville, KY artists Letitia Quesenberry and Chris Radtke, and Los Angeles artists Julie Orser and Shizu Saldamando, resist easy, fixed notions of identity and point to potential new ways of seeing and being.

“The work does not aim at a single, correct interpretation,” says Jordan. “But examines the artist’s attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality.”

For example in Saldamando’s pieces Looking at Art, The Reception, she slyly reverses the position of the viewer and the subject. The subjects, the artist’s friends attending a gallery opening, are drawn in ballpoint pen on canvas. They gaze out expectantly, placing the viewer in the unusual position of the artwork.

In Bickett’s work, carefully archived objects appear to be the collected personal effects of a presumably fictitious ‘Daddy.’ The objects and their labels suggest a complex and often contradictory narrative around their absent owner.

“These artists introduce ideas, and to a certain degree they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response,” explains Jordan. “These gaps are openings, allowing us as viewers to become co-conspirators with the artists.”

Museum hours of Thursday-Saturday 11-6, closed on holidays.


Four Star Gallery

HERRON SCHOOL of ART DESIGN
SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHY STUDENTS
Cue the Violins

653 Massachusetts Ave.
OPENING RECEPTION: April 2nd from 5pm to 9pm
Video Screening at the Wheeler Building

Exhibition: April 2 to April 30
Gallery Hours: 11-5 M-Th 11-7 F 12-7 S

The senior photography students are presenting their final show of the year. Be there to see distinctive work created from every day nature, intimacy, life, and reality. Meet the artists and view their art while eating good food.

Exhibiting Artists:
Ceara Baskerville. Nicole Bock. Megan Bryant. Carol Cashen. Ashley Gilbert. Justin Jett. Ronne Stone. Laurel Lee. Kristine Bedwell. Jennifer Meeker. Paul Miller. Kurt Nettleton. Kyle Smith. Joan Taylor. Erin Van Leer. Justin Walsh. Brittany Williams. Esther Wolf.


Mt. Comfort

DECAY/SUSTAIN

Athenaeum ArtSpace

"Charming Displeasures"
April 2-29, 2010
Opening Reception, Friday April 2, 6-9pm


“Charming Displeasures” is a collaborative senior thesis show put on by Herron School of Art & Design Printmaking majors Courtney Coriell and Socorro Rico. This show explores personal identity, which is expressed through appearance, relationship, and experience. We wish to demonstrate how these 3 issues are unique to ourselves, but also how they can be translated and interpreted to apply to everyone. As young artists it is integral that we begin to build a connection with the community.

401 E. Michigan Street


Dean Johnson Gallery
Objects by Ray Duffey + New Drawings by Tess Michalik
Opening Reception, Friday April 2nd, 6-9pm

The Dean Johnson Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition of Objects by Ray Duffey + New Drawings by Tess Michalik. This exhibition brings together two artists working in different mediums but with a similar minimalist aesthetic. Duffey is interested in the potential ambiguity of objects. His highly refined sculpture and furniture emphasize form and craft, yet often allow the viewer to associate their own interpretations. Michalik's drawings utilize paint and pencil to convey their own formal messages. Here a simple brush stroke or pencil mark create a beautiful composition that, as in Duffey's work, is open to interpretation.

An opening reception for the artists will take place Friday, April 2nd from 6 until 9 pm.

Dean Johnson Gallery
646 Massachusetts Avenue
Indianapolis, IN 46204


Big Car Gallery

A selection of paintings, drawings, ephemera, objects found and transformed, flyers, posters, and documentary video clips culled from the archives of John Clark, the inventor of pLopLop will open at Big Car Gallery April 2 at 6 p.m.
Inspired by dada, surrealism and fluxus activity, pLopLop started life as an experimental arts and literary zine nearly 20 years ago. pLopLop grew beyond publishing to encompass live performance, video experiments, multimedia installations and visual art innovations based on collaboration and transformation.

The pLopLop show at Big Car gallery reflects the ongoing experimental and collaborative energies of the inventor of the zine---and pLopLop's influences, contributors and fellow DIY pioneers as we work together to explore and transform the rugged terrain of an increasingly homogenized world. pLopLop #12 will be released to coincide with the opening and available to purchase for $5.

http://www.ploplopzine.org/

The show runs through April 17.

Music by Normanoak and Pharm Accident will start at 9:30 p.m.


Wug's

cat·ty·wam·pus [kat-ee-wom-puhs]

–adjective
1. askew; awry.
2. positioned diagonally; cater-cornered.
–adverb
3. diagonally; obliquely.
-gallery opening
4. off kilter; abnormal: the body of work and life outlooks of four
fine arts students from Ivy Tech.

Cattywampus will be an exhibition of work by graduating students enrolled in the Fine Arts and Visual Communications program at Ivy Tech Community College, Central Indiana. This show will be curated by the students enrolled in ARTS 250: Senior Seminar.

Showcased will be the work of:
Ashley Brewer
Phil Cardenas
Rachel Foreman
Mckenzie Hogan

as well as selected student work from the Visual Communications Department. All works will be up from April 2nd to May 1st, 2010.
wLS&g is open Fridays and Saturdays from 12-4 p.m.



Five Seasons Studio Gallery

Approaches to Abstraction
works by Dave Voelpel

Voelpel's abstract work features predominately landscapes in both acrylic and oil. Known for his use of vibrant color, impasto and knife work, Voelpel has exhibited professionally for over 15 years. As a member of the International Society of Experimental Artists, his paintings have been displayed in shows in Indiana, Illinois, and Florida. Voelpel is also a member of and has exhibited with The Hoosier Salon and the Watercolor Society of Indiana. The artist's reception will be from 6 - 10 , Friday April 2 at Five Seasons Studio, 1125 Brookside Ave. in the Circle City Industrial Building (off 10th Street just east of College and the interstate) and is a part of IDADA's First Friday Art Walk. Voelpel's work will be on view for three weeks and may be seen by appointment by calling 345-3426.

Editors Note: I had the opportunity to head over to check out this showing before I left for NYC. I think my initial expectation was that these pieces would have been hung in more of a gallery like setting rather than presented in another artists crowded studio space. I feel that the work does suffer some from not have a good and proper gallery wall hanging so that the audience can better appreciate the works themselves. That said, I think you should go and see these works for yourself. If you are interested in more information though, you can check out Rachel Steele's recent blog post about it. Also check out some of the images from the show on her blog post as well. Follow this link.