POST BY PADDY JOHNSON
Sebastian Mlynarski, Would This Be The Time, 2009, 32 x 40 inches, C-Print
Masthead artist Sebastian Mlynarski is one of twelve New York and Miami based artists participating in Haute Romantics, an Art Fag City curated exhibition at Verge Gallery and Studio Project. Opening in Sacramento this Thursday, the exhibition includes work by Katherine Bernhardt, The Delusional Downtown Divas, Naomi Fisher, Paul Gabrielli, K8 Hardy, Cian McConn with Kristen Jensen, Ryan McGinley, Sebastian Mlynarski, Asher Penn, Maximillian Schubert, Peter Sutherland, and Sara VanDerBeek.
Haute Romantics examines a growing subsection of artists creating work that maps the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism. Untamed landscape, aesthetic beauty, escapism, youth — these themes not only permeate the exhibition, but build upon a period three hundred years passed, in which emotion was seen as a crucial authentic source of aesthetic experience. While the geography and living conditions specific to New York may, at least in part, inform this renewed sensitivity, it clearly extends beyond the city’s borders.
Showcased in our masthead this week, Haute Romantics artist Sebastian Mlynarski uses in-camera, multiple exposures to create images that challenge the notion of stable perceptions. Layered and spontaneous, these pictures mirror an unpredictable landscape, often evolving just as much through chance as by a willful change.
A full press release for the show after the jump.
Sebastian Mlynarski, When I Ask For You, 2009, 32×40, C-Print
Sebastian Mlynarski, And You Come And Stay, 2009, 32 x 40 inches, C-Print
HAUTE ROMANTICS
February 11th — March 20th, 2010
Verge Gallery and Art Fag City are pleased to announce their collaboration on Haute Romantics, a group show highlighting the work of twelve artists and collaboratives exhibiting in New York. The exhibition includes work by Katherine Bernhardt, The Delusional Downtown Divas, Naomi Fisher, Paul Gabrielli, K8 Hardy, Cian McConn with Kristen Jensen, Ryan McGinley, Sebastian Mlynarski, Asher Penn, Maximillian Schubert, Peter Sutherland, and Sara VanDerBeek.
Haute Romantics examines a growing subsection of artists creating work that maps the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism. Untamed landscape, aesthetic beauty, escapism, youth — these themes not only permeate the exhibition, but build upon a period three hundred years passed, in which emotion was seen as a crucial authentic source of aesthetic experience. While the geography and living conditions specific to New York may, at least in part, inform this renewed sensitivity, it clearly extends beyond the city’s borders.
Notably, much of the work included in the exhibition capitalizes on fashion as subject matter, an industry similarly influenced by Romanticism. Ryan McGinley, well-known for his commercial photography work, presents a figurative collage put together while working at Vice Magazine. Also working in collage, Sara VanDerBeek and Asher Penn respectively create and source manipulated fashion photography; each taking a somber tone while alluding to a confused, distorted memory. Katherine Bernhardt's giant expressionistic paintings of swatches, by contrast, seem almost celebratory.
Rather than using pre-existing fashion magazines and ads as material or inspiration, K8 Hardy creates a gender-renegade fashion identity of her own. The exhibition of Hardy's magazine spreads coincides with the launch of her new clothing line J'APPROVE. Cian McConn and Kristen Jensen's melancholic performance project “Vacation from Mine” is an improvisational response to their surroundings. Naomi Fisher and Sebastian Mlynarski's photography contrasts our connection with nature against the order of contemporary culture. Fisher also showcases like-minded drawings in the show.
Like Mlynarski, some artists address the subject of fashion tangentially, or even not at all. Taking a very quiet approach to his art making practice, Paul Gabrielli, employs beauty in light and form to express the poignancy of a single thought. Peter Sutherland's documental photography meditates on beauty with a focus on the banal while the wax trompe l’oeil vanitas sculptures of Maximilian Schubert suggest a similarly quiet Romanticism within the everyday.
The exhibition isn't without its own form of meta-textual introspection; The Delusional Downtown Divas offer a satirical look at the intersection of beauty, the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism, and fashion. Haute Romantics highlights four episodes from their self-titled video series, each focused on the attempts of three privileged young artists' to enter the New York art world. If this show (in addition to hosting Rob Pruitt's Art Awards at the Guggenheim) is any indication, they appear to have done just that.
Haute Romantics runs from February 11th through March 20th. An opening reception will take place at the gallery on February 11th and again on the 13th as part of a larger circuit of openings occurring across the city. Art Fag City Editor-in-Chief Paddy Johnson will deliver a lecture about the show on the 18th of February at the Gallery.
This exhibition was originally conceived by Karen Archey for Art Fag City.
