Art-in-Buildings

Now on view at the West 10th Window | Esther Ruiz: Discovery!

Esther Ruiz draws on the languages of Minimalism and Pop, creating brightly colored neon-lit geometric forms. Her architectural objects operate as miniaturized fictional landscapes, referencing pop culture, space operas, and science fiction. Bringing together Euclidean shapes to build colorful, freestanding sculptures, Ruiz's work brings to mind the fluorescent glow of a Dan Flavin installation, the psychedelic palette of Pink Floyd, and the otherworldly colors of the desert. In Discovery at the West 10th Window, Ruiz imagines a futuristic environment on a desert planet, embedding totemic, glowing beacons into a sand-covered ground. These half buried sculptures suggest a contained, unknowable form of information within a fictional, alien landscape. The soft orange-painted walls recall the warm glow of a sunset, creating a moment of stasis in the window space when the neon lights of the city first turn on.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Flash Back Friday to Art-in-Buildings' 2015 exhibition at the West 10th Window, Amanda Millet-Sorsa, A Game of Tarot!

A Game of Tarot is composed of a full deck of delicate, hand-painted tarot cards. During the course of this exhibition, Millet-Sorsa will show a few cards at a time, switching them out every other day for a new reading, to display all 78 cards over six weeks. Drawing on tarot's use during the Italian Renaissance, Millet-Sorsa has invented her own pictorial language to portray the original suits of the tarot deck to reflect the society we live in today: blood as a weapon of war, network as power, water as wealth, while the heart remains the same. Examining these pillars of society on a macro, global level, A Game of Tarot then abstracts the imagery relating to each suit and figures of the deck. For instance, in her attempt to find the equivalent of the knight today, Millet-Sorsa concluded, in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo's tragic events, that the pencil, or the expression of the individual, is the knight. The pen emerges as a weapon instead of the historically depicted sword or spade. Here, A Game of Tarot is continuously in flux, inviting viewers to contemplate the structure and cardinal virtues of our modern day, global society.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Throw Back Thursday to Greg Lindquist's mural painting Smoke and Water: Catawba in NC in 2017!

Smoke and Water: Catawba is a 16 by 70 foot mural at Monroe Crossing Mall in Monroe, North Carolina created by New York-based and North Carolina-born artist Greg Lindquist in partnership with Art-in-Buildings.

The foundation of Greg Lindquist's practice is at the intersection of art and ecology and rooted in years long investigations of coal ash and its environmental impact. His work draws on documentary photography of water sources contaminated by coal ash and focuses specifically on its otherworldly and eerily beautiful swirl, which itself is evidence of a corrupted ecosystem. Named after the nearby Catawba River, Smoke and Water: Catawba synthesizes visual elements that are iconic of his work into a monumental participatory wall painting executed by Lindquist in collaboration with local volunteers. This project, his largest undertaking to date, will bring the local art, education and environmental communities together in creating the mural. Monroe Crossing will serve as a gathering place for meaningful exchanges, inspiration for action, and formations of new friendships and relationships by the shared experience of creating art and becoming stewards of the local environment.

Learn more on the AiB website!

This week is your last chance to see Justine Hill's exhibition Backdrops at 125 Maiden Lane! Don't miss it!

Flash Back Friday to Art-in-Buildings' 2017 exhibition at the West 10th Window, Melissa Jordan, Laddering.

Melissa Jordan's work explores the physicality of photographs via layered images. These works question the flatness of the image and the way we experience them in our digitally-driven daily lives.

In Laddering, Jordan transforms the West 10th Window into a lightbox, layering saturated photos of partially blurred or obscured women. Bright light shining through the glass of the window brings to mind the glow of a bus stop advertisement board, while the warm, otherworldly colors shining through Jordan's prints give the window a religious quality, referencing Madonelle street corner shrines in Rome that light dark intersections at night. The female faces in Laddering are intimately close, pushed up against the window, but the hooded figures resist eye contact with the viewer. The glossy women, truncated at the chest, evoke the flat and airbrushed women found in print ads, existing between model and artificial mannequin.

Cut-outs in the layered prints destroy this sleek façade, interrupting the display to reveal hidden depth within the window. Referencing a 'ladder', or the small catch in a pair of stockings that leads to an inevitable run, Laddering is built upon a distorted surface, as though the image is printed on an imperfect cloth, rippled in motion. Jordan implies that the holes running through the prints have the potential to unravel, distorting their own pictorial surface and imposing a sense of discomfort on the viewer.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Throw Back Thursday to Art-in-Buildings' 2015 exhibition R. Blair Sullivan, Lehr at the West 10th Window!

To create his installation, Lehr, Sullivan employs polarizing film to create a vitrine within the already vitrine- like space of the West 10th Window.  The polarizing film dramatically distorts the objects behind it: from 5 feet away, the viewer can see a warped image of the objects, but as one gets closer, the objects completely disappear. The mirrored Plexiglas floor further obscures the objects that it reflects, including Sullivan's signature candle-smoke drawing on the ceiling. The mirrored floor gives the false impression that the vitrine extends deep into the cellar and up into higher floors, giving immense scale to the diminutive window exhibition space. The result is a complex visual space that does not respond in the way a viewer might expect; approaching the window causes the reflections to shrink and eventually disappear, rather than appear larger. Sullivan's manipulation of materials and objects creates an unexpected and enigmatic feedback loop of visual information.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Only two more weeks left to see Justine Hill's 'Backdrops' at Art-in-Buildings' 125 Maiden Lane exhibition space! Don't miss it!

Backdrops brings the artist's most recent installation Standing (2019) and a selection of her series Heads (2018) to the lobby of 125 Maiden Lane. A painter that works primarily in shaped canvases she calls 'cutouts,' Hill's work explores the visual and physical boundaries of the painted surface. The artist layers her shaped canvases with bold brushstrokes that at once emphasize and conceal their structure. In Standing, Hill pushes the surface of her painting even further into the realm of sculpture by pulling painted two-dimensional elements away from a canvas backdrop. Viewed from the front, the images flatten to create a landscape. From the side, they resemble a shallow theater set of an imaginary world. Informed by a ballet collaboration with choreographer Michelle Thompson Ulerich where Hill's paintings were used as a moveable mis-en-scene for dancers, Hill began to consider the fluid nature of separating painted objects in space and creating physical depth in her work.

On the opposite side of the 125 Maiden Lane lobby is Hill's earlier series, Heads. The artist describes these paintings as an attempt "to reclaim the white space behind her cutouts" by placing them on top of an unstretched canvas substrate. The resulting abstracted portraits are composed of two split layers, the headshot and the backdrop, which Hill seamlessly unifies through her intrepid application of color, effectively blending the inserted "heads" with their canvas frame. Pushing dimensionality even further, Hill's installation at 125 Maiden Lane includes a custom printed wallpaper backdrop. Mirroring Standing's conflation of the wall, the painting, and the foreground – this new installation of Heads equally considers all three elements. In Backdrops, Hill tests the realm of three dimensionality through a strictly two dimensional lens.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Throw Back Thursday to Art-in-Buildings' 2004 exhibition Hirofumi Maeshiba: Consciousness of Space at 125 Maiden Lane! 

How is space experienced? Consciousness of Space includes twelve carved wood sculptures made out of cherry or walnut wood, some with a smooth surface, others roughly chiseled or painted in bright colors. All of the sculptures are assembled of several single parts. They look strong and stationary but are delicate in their final construction. Executed over a period of ten years, Hirofumi Maeshiba continues to explore his relationship between body and spirit and to investigate his primary question:"How to create the surrounding?"

Learn more on the AiB website!

There are only a few more days left to see Jasmine Murrell's Have you found what you're looking for? at the West 10th Window! Don't miss it!

Jasmine Murrell's work examines the boundary between history and mythology, appropriating and recontextualizing objects in new environments. Maintaining an interdisciplinary practice, Murrell uses materials that are rich in social and cultural meaning. She examines the insertion of the black body into cultural mediums, critiquing histories of commodification and exploitations of blackness.

In Have you found what you're looking for? at the West 10th Window, Murrell presents two upturned feet constructed from dirt, emerging heels up from a mound of soil. Gnarled branches protrude from the soles of each foot. The partially buried feet evoke an upturned grave, while the extending branches hint at the possibility of renewed growth. Murrell's dirt installations consider the relationship between dirt as a signifier of uncleanliness and dirt as the foundation and sustainer of living, growing things. Her installation at the West 10th Window recreates the human form out of the earth and reconnects the human body with the natural world.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Happy Valentine's Day! Thinking back on Kristin McIver's Love Piece, installed at the West 10th Window in 2015!

Kristin McIver's Love Piece reads 'I LOVE, I WANT, I NEED' in pink neon, enclosed in a clear acrylic box. The artwork, installed on the floor of the vitrine-like space of the West 10th Window, becomes both a sign and a signifier. As such, Love Piece is a semiotic play on the contradictory nature of today's art market and its slippery relationship with retail commodification.

McIver sampled the text featured in Love Piece from third party comments and reviews of her earlier artworks found on social media. Though the work's first person voice may reflect the desires of the viewer, it is also a self-referential expression of the internet as an endless feedback loop of aspiration and alienation. Furthermore, Love Piece must always be titled in conjunction with its materials (neon, acrylic, desire), per the artist's instructions. This refers to the viewer's engagement as they recognize themselves as the 'I' addressed by the message. Through this process of interpellation, the viewer becomes both the subject and the object of the work.

The work also underscores the importance of context and the instrumental will of the artist: though presented here as a sculpture, this work would have radically different implications if found in another space that favors neon, such as a strip club, retail window, or bar. The work is thus imbued with the immaterial, linking it to a rich art historical lineage and a quality that cannot be acquired as a neon fabricator.

Throw Back Thursday to Art-in-Buildings' 2009 exhibition, Ron Klein: Naked Green at our 125 Maiden Lane exhibition space!

The exhibition Ron Klein: Naked Green comprises two site-specific wall installations Moved to Square, 2009, RE:ID, 2009, and three over-scale sculptures Naked Green, 2001-2, Sticks and Stones, 2001-02 and Blackeye, 2003, representatives of the interwoven focal points contained in the artist's work.

The earlier work, large scale floor bound and suspended sculptures are the iconic result of his explorations of nature's architecture and its essence. The wall composition RE:ID, 2009, consisting of honey locust pods collected from the grounds of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, is derived from the artist's own thumbprint and stands for his interest in the human condition. In Moved To Square, an intense assemblage of found objects from concrete and tropical jungles alike, Klein reinvents through appropriation, changing the semantics of association and the use and structure of the organic and man made materials.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Have you seen Julie Tremblay's installation Against Nature at Art-in-Buildings 125 Maiden Lane space? Come by to see it in person!

In Julie Tremblay's exhibition Against Nature at 125 Maiden Lane, the artist presents and expands upon her installation Niche. Tremblay is known for her ethereal transformations of industrial materials into organic forms that are reminiscent of the patterns found at multiple scales throughout the universe – in plants, flowers, and nebulas. In Niche, the artist draws on the mathematical expression n+1, which articulates a process of adding incremental changes to a variable. Tremblay uses this expression to examine mutation as reflections on the patterns within chaotic structures. Tremblay aims to breathe life into the mesh material, creating a sense of a growing organism that interacts with and is organized by the molecular structures of the natural world. Niche is an imagined environment that invites the audience in, blurring boundaries and hard edges, and engaging with the atrium's architecture. The title, Against Nature, considers the contemporary environmental crisis, and asks the viewer to reassess their relationship to the natural world. Tremblay's work emphasizes the interconnectivity of all things, and articulates a common ground between seemingly disparate objects. At base, all things are formed from simple structures and patterns. Against Nature is a reminder that we should not fight this connection, but embrace it.

Learn more on the AiB website! 

Flash Back Friday to Art-in-Buildings' 2017 exhibition "Christopher Chiappa, The Search for Church' at our 125 Maiden Lane exhibition space!

Christopher Chiappa's installation The Search for Church is a site-responsive iteration of a longstanding project that began in 2003, the result of Chiappa's exhaustive experimentation with color, texture, and surface on a singular form - a stool modeled after the design of the iconic Weber grill. The project began with a utilitarian aim: the artist, having recently moved to a new, empty studio, was in need of a table and chair, and decided to make an object that could serve as both. The project has since grown to include over 100 elements, all of them unique. Some are made with simple and solid colors, others reveal years of coating, sanding and re-coating in enamel paint and resin. Although each object is a standalone work, their presentation in a display unit built by the artist creates an opportunity to view them together as one large wall relief and demonstrates the seemingly endless variations possible to this simple structure. The scale of the presentation - and their highly visible position in the atrium facing Maiden Lane - adds to their spectacle.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Throw Back Thursday to Art-in-Buildings' 2013 exhibition at the West 10th Window, "Dominique Paul, Insects of Surinam 19"!

Dominique Paul's Insects of Surinam 19 is a site-specific installation composed of an original print, lit from behind, effectively morphing the West 10th Window into an exposed lightbox. Insects of Surinam 19 is part of an ongoing photo-collage series in which male body parts from bodybuilding magazines are juxtaposed with Maria Sibylla Merian's botanical illustrations from The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam. Published in 1705, this text is still considered one of the most significant contributions to the field of entomology and is notable for its careful documentation of butterfly metamorphosis. Here, Paul juxtaposes the form of the male body builder with the illustration of a sweet potato plant, positioned as if growing out of the sidewalk. Paul's prints work to destabilize common associations of the feminine and nature; as the flesh of the male body becomes part of the plants and insects depicted in Merian's drawings, masculinity and nature become one.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Throw Back Thursday to Art-in-Buildings' 2017 exhibition Tamar Ettun: Yellow to Pink in the 125 Maiden Lane exhibition space!

Tamar Ettun's presentation, Yellow to Pink, includes a selection of the artist's sculptures, video, and a new immersive inflatable. The objects and video in this exhibition form a mini-retrospective of the last two years of Ettun's practice; she is now half-way through a four-year body of work, Mauve Bird with Yellow Teeth Red Feathers Green Feet and a Rose Belly, which is grounded in an exploration of trauma and empathy. Ettun developed this project with the dance company she founded, The Moving Company. Ettun and the dancers, Tina Wang, Mor Mendel, and Annabel Zoe Paran, known as Movers, create performances that explore stillness as a form of radical resistance and movement as an exercise of physical empathy. The sculptures on view are from the first year of Mauve Bird, the video, Part Yellow: Desire, is from the second year, and the inflatable is a new work that viewers can enter for a moment of respite from the hectic public spaces of Lower Manhattan. Ettun will activate the space with several performances over the run of the exhibition, beginning with Yellow to Pink during the exhibition opening. This work signifies a transition from last year's Yellow to 2017's Part Pink: Aggression. Parts Yellow and Pink share a similar polarity, expressed as a push and pull between the body and the abstract, the intellectual and the physical, static objects and movement-based performance. The repetition of this duality in the work results in a kind of mirroring - each object and action in Ettun's practice is reflected in another object or action. It is an elegant closed-circuit, bringing Mauve Bird back to its core principle, empathy.

Learn more on the AiB website! 

Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings is pleased to announce the newest exhibition at the West 10th Window: Jasmine Murrell, Have you found what you're looking for?

Jasmine Murrell's work examines the boundary between history and mythology, appropriating and recontextualizing objects in new environments. Maintaining an interdisciplinary practice, Murrell uses materials that are rich in social and cultural meaning. She examines the insertion of the black body into cultural mediums, critiquing histories of commodification and exploitations of blackness.

In Have you found what you're looking for? at the West 10th Window, Murrell presents two upturned feet constructed from dirt, emerging heels up from a mound of soil. Gnarled branches protrude from the soles of each foot. The partially buried feet evoke an upturned grave, while the extending branches hint at the possibility of renewed growth. Murrell's dirt installations consider the relationship between dirt as a signifier of uncleanliness and dirt as the foundation and sustainer of living, growing things. Her installation at the West 10th Window recreates the human form out of the earth and reconnects the human body with the natural world.

Learn more on the AiB website!

Time Equities, Inc. Art-in-Buildings is pleased to announce the next exhibition in the AiB Gallery at Travelers Towers, Our Valence by Kennedy Yanko in collaboration with Lutfi Janania and a performance by Zachary Tye Richardson. 

Please join us for our opening celebration at the AiB Gallery January 24, 2020, 6:00-8:00pm. Performance by Zachary Tye Richardson at 8:30pm.

AiB Gallery, Travelers Tower, 26555 Evergreen Rd, Southfield, MI 48076.

Brooklyn-based artist Kennedy Yanko is known for her large sculptural works that place rigid foundations of crushed metal in conversation with fluid, sumptuous paint skins.  Her work creates what may be perceived as contradictions between hard and soft materials, but for Yanko emphasizes the synergies in the objects’ organic, elemental compositions. As she explains, “my understanding of the world – all matter – is created from frequencies – the buzzing of atoms. What happens within an atom is the building block of existence.” 

In the AiB Gallery at Travelers Towers, Yanko furthers her exploration of the organic interconnectedness of all materials, collaborating with Lutfi Janania, a botanical artist working with exotic flora, and performance artist Zachary Tye Richardson. Through this performance-based sculptural installation Yanko illustrates the intangible regenerative moment between life’s beginning and end, offering a “glimpse of what must occur.” 

At the center of Our Valence is a lush crown-like shrine of dried flowers and ferns. A sharp chartreuse painted backdrop extends behind the sculpture and wraps across the wall and floor, unifying the installation by pulling the viewer’s eye to a second wall-mounted shrine across the room – a dry, prickly frame that lies in stark contrast to its lush counterpart. Richardson animates the space through performance, a recording of which is projected onto the walls of the gallery. Their movements vibrate with the energy of the surroundings, activating the metal base, the paint skin, and botanicals, embodying what cannot be seen by the naked eye: “the breath of life.” Towards the front of the installation sits a shallow, clear pool of water, which acts as a collision between the dry and the lush shrines, and offers a visual moment of pause.  

With Our Valence, Yanko and Janania create the backdrop through which Richardson articulates the continuous co-existence of materials and their unseen lives. As sculptural objects, the shrines sit within the gallery’s walls – as performative objects, with Richardson’s choreography they tell a deeper story.

Artist Statement: 

“Our Valence is a performance-driven installation comprised of exotic florals, organic material, found metal and paint skins, and narrative bodily movement. It is a somaesthetic enactment of creating the indivisible: building the building blocks of matter. This room represents the personifying moment when seemingly opposite forces harmonize. Our Valence exists as the repetitive moment that begins and ends again and again. It must occur before life can be seen, felt, heard, or perceived as a whole. ⁠

Here, corporal sensation and its accompanying ricochet of human phenomena remind viewers of their potential for an ever-expanding spectrum of experience. This space, designated for self-experimentation, is where intellectualization rests, gazes at, and learns from its proprioceptive counterpart: intuition.”