JEN HITCHINGS
CRY ME A RIVER
In her first solo exhibition in New York City, artist Jen Hitchings deepens her painted explorations of the darker aspects of contemporary society via images of flooded suburban landscapes, depicting disasters both natural and emotional.
Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 16 , 6-8 PM
MEN Gallery presents CRY ME A RIVER, the first solo exhibition in New York City by Brooklyn-based artist Jen Hitchings. The new paintings at MEN Gallery will present a further and deeper exploration of the themes of anxiety, abandonment, and disasters both emotional and natural, as seen in FORK IN THE ROAD, her solo exhibition at PROTO earlier this year.
The paintings in CRY ME A RIVER are a return to roots for Hitchings, both personally and as a painter, as she reexamines more deeply the personal iconography and subject matter from her past work, such as using loosely-rendered cars as stand-ins for friends and family. An example of this is found in Abandonment Issues, in which she depicts two opposing Ford pickups reminiscent of the vehicle her father used to transport his belongings out of her childhood home when her parents chose to end their marriage.
Her recent depictions of flooded landscapes combine memories of her home-town, which floods regularly, and an interest in the flood itself as a metaphor for a psychological state. Flooding is also a psychotherapeutic technique used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders by exposing the patient to their painful memories with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness. This is, essentially, what Hitchings has forced upon herself when recreating these scenes. Technically, the paintings record this meditative activity with their repetitive dots and patterns painted entirely by hand with a brush, the artist’s struggle with the subject matter reinforced by the inevitable flaws in the final image, illuminated in her attempt to create perfect lines and spacing.
The content in this work also suggests the artist’s interest in environmental disasters and, more broadly, the slow destruction of the cookie-cutter suburban towns fabricated with the intent of creating the illusion of a community of do-no-wrong, nuclear families. Hitchings’ has always strived to illuminate the dark underlying aspects of society: indulgence, promiscuity, debauchery, but in a contradictory, celebratory color palette and lively expressiveness. The works in CRY ME A RIVER continue this trajectory, yet with much more controlled and subdued color and carefully considered, metaphorical imagery.
ARTURS VIRTMANIS
AGAINST THE TRAGIC WALL
Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 5 , 6-8 PM
May 5th – May 27th 2018
M E N is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Arturs Virtmanis, Against the Tragic Wall.
In his artistic practice, Virtmanis creates visually and metaphorically dense drawing environments that combine relics of sentimental imagery from past eras, cryptic texts in the form of obsessive, undecipherable calligraphy, collections of found objects, architectural scale models, and the residue that is accumulated in the process of creation. For his first solo exhibition at M E N, Virtmanis turns to Nietzsche’s interpretation of the origins and functions of the Greek Tragic Chorus. He specifically focuses on the chorus´s role as a barrier, a “tragic wall”, between the true and unbearable emotions described, and the spectators who are pulled into the abyss of human suffering by the performers, while also being protected from it by the ideal poetic form of the performance. Arturs Virtmanis turns his drawings and sculptures into that “living wall”, the Tragic Chorus.
“I am attempting to create an entropic “spectacle” that consists of very unstable and short lived conglomerates of images that assume their temporary stability only in the context of walls of an exhibition space inadvertently pointing towards the fragile and fleeting nature of existence”
ARTURS VIRTMANIS was born in Riga, Latvia and is currently based in New York. He studied design in Riga Applied Arts Collage and at The Academy of Fine Arts where he received BA in sculpture. His installations have been exhibited at The Drawing Center in New York, Blue Star Contemporary Art museum in San Antonio Texas, ExitArt NY, PS 122 NY, Morris Museum, New Jersey, Jersey City Museum, Poor Farm Experiment in Wisconsin, Riga Art Space in Latvia, Baltic Arts Center in Helsinki, Planthouse Gallery NY, Cynthia Broan Gallery NY, Fishtank Gallery NY, Denis Bibro Gallery NY, Gallery X in NY, Marsha Child Contemporary NJ, Chamot Gallery NJ, Mimi Ferzt Gallery NY, Alma Gallery Riga, M6 Gallery Riga Latvia, Biennale Art Gend in Kopenhagen Denmark. His solo exhibition 10 000 Melancholy Folds at the Kunsthalle Riga Art Space was nominated for the Purvitis Award (highest award in arts in Latvia) as the best show of the year (2013). In 2014-2015 Arturs participated in Open Sessions, a research/exhibition program at The Drawing Center, New York. In 2015 he created a large scale environmental installation Resurrection Blues for the Cesis Arts Festival in Latvia. In 2016 created a life size shipwreck object ” To Perish in Fantasy” for the arts festival Survival Kit 8 in Riga, Latvia. In 2017 created a large scale site specific drawing installation Meta-Scrawl in Beijing’s legendary arts District 798 at the Xin Dong Space for Contemporary Art. In 2018 the installation Fucking Times! was nominated for the Diena (largest daily newspaper in Latvia) Event of The Year in Culture Award. Arturs work has also been exhibited at the exhibition American Century at The Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Venice Bienalle of Architecture (in collaboration with visionary set designer George Tsypin). He has designed objects for the Spiderman – Turn Off The Dark, a musical production in New York City; Sea Glass, a futuristic carousel in Lower Manhattan NY; created site specific installations for an immersive theater project “Queen Of The Night” at Paramount Hotel in New York City; designed giant inflatable scenic objects for the Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremony. Together with George Tsypin he has designed a set for the opera The Gospel According to the Other Mary at English National Opera.
M E N proudly presents Primitive Man, a solo exhibition of new work by Aaron Williams. Presented at 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY and on view from March 31st through April 29th, 2018, this exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation with M E N.
Primitive Man offers a concise selection of William’s most current investigations, wherein long-held interests including modernist architectural ideology, construction and fabrication science, pop culture, semiotics, and the impact of artistic endeavors on the larger populous, to name only a few, are explored in a pared down format of two paintings on opposite walls, facing each other.
Williams’ current body of work, though still containing the DNA of previous interests has become increasingly personal, concerned with the parameters of the artists’ own gesture as well as time spent within the architecture of his workspace, which houses both his studio and wood shop. From the laborer’s trowel to the artist’s brush, the degree to which aspiration is mediated and informed by both choice of tool and breadth of human extension, are considerations that are foregrounded in William’s most recent undertakings. Marking a return to the discipline of painting, these new works employ architectural schematics, repetitivebrushstrokeand silkscreen, among other devices to get at the core nature of the expressive action and end result. Here labor, intuitive mark, animus, and the influence of arbitrary demarcations within and upon material environments weigh on, augment and contribute to the generative drive and it’s attendant aesthetic yield.
Aaron Williams was born and raised in Rhode Island. He received his B.F.A. degree from the Maine College of Art and received his M.F.A. degree from The Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Solo exhibitions include Guest Spot Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY, LaMontagne Gallery, Boston, MA and Mulherin + Pollard, New York, NY, among others. Williams has exhibited at various venues throughout the U.S. including, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, Denny Gallery, New York, NY, PROTO Gallery, Hoboken, NJ, Garis & Hahn, New York, NY, Lesley Heller Gallery, New York, NY, Howard House, Seattle, WA, The Visual Arts Center, Summit, NJ among many others. The artist and his work have been covered by numerous publications including Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Art F City, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Art Info, The Portland Press Herald, and many others. Aaron Williams lives and works in Queens, NY.
Aaron Williams: Primitive Man is on view at M E N (13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002) from March 31st – April 29th 2018 weekends noon-6pm and by appointment. For further information please contact the gallery at press@13monroe.men or at +1.917.719.1447. All images are subject to copyright. (image: As Yet Untitled, 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12 inches.)
M E N gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new work by Nicholas Cueva presented at 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY, February 14th through March 11, 2018.
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 14 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
M E N
13 Monroe Street, New York NY 10002
In 2017, Nicholas Cueva began a series of paintings depicting early-morning surfers in the waters of Southern California. Each painting is a meditation on patience represented in the time spent waiting for waves. Rendered on a variety of coarse fabrics, recognizable images of human bodies and surfboards in the water pass in and out of view, subsumed by the water and mists which are created by the textures of the painted surfaces themselves.
Nicholas Cueva was born in Dana Point California in 1983. He received his MFA from SAIC in 2011, and has lived in New York since. This is his first solo show in Manhattan. His recent solo in 2017 at Five Myles was on Jerry Saltz list of “10 Achievements of 2017”. His curation and involvement in the New York area art scene, most notably with the Brooklyn gallery, Underdonk, fuels a scene of incredibly talented artists from whom he draws inspiration.
The gallery is open to the public Saturday and Sunday 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM
CURVEBALL
CATALINA SCHLIEBENER
Opening Reception: Wednesday, November 15 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
November 15 – December 15, 2017
M E N
13 Monroe Street, New York NY 10002
M E N is pleased to present Curveball, an installation by Chilean born contemporary artist Catalina Schliebener.
Curveball is the third exhibition in a trilogy of installations that reflect Schliebener’s preoccupation with the early construction of gender phenomenology. The artist examines various means of insidious societal indoctrination that includes gender based color choices (pink / blue), shape, weight, and size of toys and more widespread conditioning regarding convention and social mores that children are continuously and explicitly subjected to.
The first two exhibitions, Pin The Tail (Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse, NY, 2016), and Growing Sideways (Bureau of General Services Queer Division, The Center, New York, NY, 2016 and Hache Gallery, Buenos Aires Argentina, 2017) addressed the implicit bias of psychological testing, celebratory ritual, and early childhood activities, including games and coloring books.
For her exhibition at M E N, Schliebener, through found objects, color schemes and collage, again examines the elements that regulate and dictate gender behavior, particularly within the context of sports, including softball and baseball.
Contemporary artist Catalina Schliebener (born in Santiago, Chile, in 1980) received her bachelor of philosophy degree at the Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales ARCIS in Santiago, Chile. Post-degree studies at the Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales ARCIS included visual arts and art theory. From 2002-2008, she worked as an assistant professor within the areas of philosophy and art theory at several universities in Chile.
Catalina Schliebener’s work has been exhibited individually and collectively in galleries, museums and art fairs in Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Lima, Belfast, London, Miami, and New York. She has received scholarships granted by the Development of Culture and the Arts Fund of the Government of Chile (Fondart), the Board of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Chile (Dirac) as well as the Henry Moore Foundation of the United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions include Pin the Tail at Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, NY, Queering the BibliObect at the Center for Book Arts, New York, NY and Growing Sideways at Bureau Of General Services Queer Division, The Center, New York, NY and Hache Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Catalina Schliebener Curveball is on view at M E N, 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002, from November 15th – December 15th 2017 weekends 12-6pm and by appointment. For further information please contact the gallery at press@13monroe.men or at +1.917.719.1447. All images are subject to copyright.
PARTNERS
JARROD BECK
M E N is pleased to present Partners, a solo exhibition of new works in cast aluminum, charcoal, and glass by Jarrod Beck.
Contemporary artist Jarrod Beck will create a large-scale drawing installation in the front gallery at M E N, incorporating charcoal and packing tape, underscoring the artist’s interest in material impressions, memory and the human relationship to environments both natural and built. Spanning the greater length of the gallery’s interior, the drawing serves to foreground the symbiotic exchange between person and place, demarking and quantifying the site, one arms length at a time. In some ways a literal record of the performative and durational qualities of this enterprise, Beck’s wall drawing will hold evidence of the artists hand as well as abstract segments of his entire body, imprinted full-scale and photo-negative like against the ephemeral yet sturdy packing tape ground.
Echoing the linear qualities of both drawing and human limbs, a large cast-aluminum sculpture will also be installed within the gallery. Singular and totemic, this work alludes to the relationship between the observer and the observed, with a weighty and de-compositional read that highlights the tensions between material durability and perceived fragility. A horizon line writ large and vertical, this sculptural work suggests preoccupations with borders, archaeology, endurance and earth art.
With a background that includes training in architecture and design, Jarrod Beck brings a multivalent temperament to his art making practice, traversing arbitrary distinctions between disciplines and materials with ease. Utilizing tools as diverse as the written word, handmade paper, rubber, and performance, Beck is as much a land artist as he is a sculptor and a poet.
For Partners, the artist will additionally offer glass works from his recent Piers series, to be installed in the back room of the gallery. Evoking the pylon remnants of New York City’s West Side Piers (once a locus of community exchange and sexual expression within New York’s pre-AIDS era gay male population), these sculptures are comprised of glass, hand-blown into wooden molds that ultimately incinerate under the intense heat of this molten material. The wood holds and forms the glass while simultaneously disintegrating in process, rendering the final product a record of both the molds original shape and the various states of its fiery demise.
Jarrod Beck has created outdoor sculptures for Socrates Sculpture Park (Astoria, NY), Sara D. Roosevelt Park (NY, NY), Calder Plaza (Grand Rapids, MI) and the Anti-Defamation League (Omaha, NE); installations at the Lever House, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, Abrons Art Center, South Street Seaport Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Instituto Cervantes, Rhode Island School of Design, Stony Brook University, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Cape Cod National Seashore and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. His drawings are in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. He has been a Visiting Artist at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn and Sculpture Trails (Solsberry, IN) and has been an artist-in-residence at Dieu Donné Papermill, The Yard, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, Sculpture Space, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Lower East Side Printshop, Vermont Studio Center, Siena Art Institute and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Beck was a 2017 finalist in the Craft/Sculpture category of the NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship and will be in residence at Rice University’s Moody Center and the Watermill Center in 2018. He earned a M.Arch degree from Tulane University and a MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Jarrod Beck: Partners is on view at M E N, 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002, from September 16th – October 15th 2017 during business hours and by appointment.
THE RIB
JOIANNE BITTLE
Opening reception: Saturday, May 20th, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM
M E N is pleased to present The Rib, a solo exhibition of works by Joianne Bittle. Including paintings made during the last four years and a new video, the installation extends Bittle’s practice of using exhibitions as a medium for storytelling. Taken separately, her subjects are distinct and specific – migratory birds, a speculative robot suit, skeletal anatomy, and a mountain-fed desert spring. In Bittle’s deeply researched and synthetic studio practice, however, these elements combine to form a richly imagined narrative about cosmic time, the risk of wonder, and the delicate dance of mythology and technology.
The Rib is Bittle’s fourth solo exhibition in New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Churner and Churner, New York; Wave Hill, Bronx; and Eugene Binder Gallery, Marfa, Texas. Bittle has participated in several group shows in the U.S. and abroad including The Queens Museum; The Arsenal, Central Park; Radiator Arts, LIC; Root Division, San Francisco; The Observatory Room, Brooklyn; Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount College; The Emerald Triangle Museum, SC; Akus Gallery, Connecticut; Proto Gallery, Hoboken; Wrong Gallery, Marfa; Emily Harvey Foundation, ESBA-TALM, Angers, France, and CNEAI, Paris. She was awarded the 2016 AIRIE Residency in the Florida Everglades. Her collaborative works have been featured at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2015), K20 Dusseldorf (2016), Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017) and the Dia Foundation (2009). Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, New York magazine, Arte Fuse and National Academy of Sciences magazine, among other publications. She received a BFA from Indiana University where she was awarded a fellowship at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy with continuing studies in Art History and the Earth Sciences. She lives and works in Long Island City, Queens.
A new printed publication from the artist accompanies the exhibition.
DENISE TREIZMAN
Opening Reception: March 29th 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Comprised of the shards of everyday objects that the artist both finds and creates, the works of Denise Treizman routinely straddle the disciplines of sculpture, drawing, painting, and collage. Treizman reuses and repurposes the materials within her artistic gestures, a process of recycling replete with equal measures of intention and chance.
Inspired by a desire to combine intuition with a systemic methodology, the artist has created a large sculptural tapestry, woven through with thread, fabric & found objects. This textural & patterned work will be installed in configurations uniquely responsive to the purposefully small spatial layout of the M E N storefront gallery. Exhibited publicly here for the first time, the artist invites viewers to engage with this layered, industrious work up close and in intimately personal ways. Additional two and three dimensional works by the artist will be available and on view within the gallery.
The exhibition will be on view from March 29 to April 30, 2017 at 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002
Denise Treizman earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Cuchifritos Gallery, New York, NY, SOHO20 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and Wave Hill Sunroom Project Space, Bronx, NY. Her work has also been exhibited internationally in cities such as Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Shanghai, China; San Francisco, CA; and Chicago, IL. She recently presented a major public art installation for FLOW.16 at Randall’s Island. Treizman has participated in the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program and in artist residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Vermont Studio Center; Johnson, VT; Berlin Collective/APT Institute (Brooklyn, NY); Ox-Bow Residency, Saugatuck, MI; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; ACRE Residency, Steuben, WI; and Triangle Artists’ Workshop, Salem, NY. Trainman lives and works in NY and is a current Member Artist in the EFA Studio Program, New York, NY.
MEN Gallery at Art on Paper
Jarrod Beck
Jon Campbell
Katherine Di Turi
Karl England
Catherine Haggarty
Sanda Iliescu
Francois Ilnseher
Teresa Moro
Sofia Quirno
Raymond Saá
Catalina Schliebener
Elizabeth Velazquez
Rob Ventura
Ian White Williams
Art on Paper New York 2017 Public Fair Hours:
Friday, March 3
11:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Saturday, March 4
11:00 AM to 7:00PM
Sunday, March 5
12:00 PM to 6:00 PM
VIP Preview:
Thursday, March 2, 2017
6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
AFTER NOON
SOFIA QUIRNO
Opening Reception Wednesday, January 25 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
M E N presents its first exhibition at 13 Monroe Street, AFTER NOON, by Sofia Quirno.
AFTER NOON, unlike afternoon and very much like tomorrow, is a promise of something that is inevitable and yet never comes. It belongs to the mystical world, where what exists is that which can only be shown. That is the world which Sofia Quirno’s works inhabit.
Inspired by the idea of the gallery space in continuous flux and the grid as the ultimate starting point to establish coordinates, the artist created a new multi-media installation for the inaugural exhibition at M E N. The space, the work and the viewers are treated by Quirno as integral parts of the image, creating a constant tension between the limits and borders of the piece. The artist invites the visitors to immerse themselves in the experience, in the space where revelations are imminent, even if never attained.
Sofia Quirno was born in 1978 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied at the Instituto Universitario Nacional de Arte in Buenos Aires, in 2006 and received her MFA from Parsons (The New School of Design) in 2015. She is a recipient of the Robert Sterling Clark fellowship, and the art residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Vermont Studio Center and the Triangle Artists Workshop, NYC. She lives and works in NYC.
M E N is a contemporary art gallery located in the Two Bridges neighborhood of New York City, presenting singular artistic gestures by emerging and mid-career artists in a purposefully-small storefront exhibition space. Artists selected by M E N are granted the creative freedom to produce new work without constraints, limited only by the sharp focus of the space itself. M E N seeks to support exceptional work and the artists that produce it while standing in solidarity with feminist, queer, multicultural, indigenous, and other underrepresented voices within the larger cultural conversation.
Gallery Hours
Saturday 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Sunday 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM