transnational monster league
January 4 - February 8, 2002
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 4, 6 - 8 pm
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present transnational monster league, curated by Banks Violette.
Like crying at a horror movie, the artists in transnational monster league relate to a grade-b vocabulary of the lurid and the absurd in a paradoxical manner; rather than trade off the sensational, each artist approaches excess as a vehicle for a near-classical refinement. While the overflow of popular culture is seen as a suitable site for the location of their own individual activities, each artist ultimately arrives by disparate means to a shared awareness of an interior that can only open on to an exterior: a cinematic world view wherein the audience is now the main event and the main event is ourselves watching ourselves performing as that audience.
Olaf Breuning's photographs both document his own extensive video and installation work, and exist as independent and carefully choreographed agglomerations of cultural ephemera. Breuning has exhibited extensively in the US and Europe, with recent exhibitions at Metro Pictures (NY), Swiss Institute (NY),and the Kunstverein Freiburg in Germany.
Sue de Beer's recent photographs foreground the artifice behind special effects driven moments found in horror movies, distilling in the process moments of carefully scripted (and uncomfortable)beauty. De Beer will have a solo exhibition of new work at Postmasters (NYC),with additional exhibitions at Kunstewerke (Berlin, Germany) , and the Neuegalerie am Landes Museem Joanneum (Graz, Austria).
Jason Fox's paintings trace out a landscape of comic-book hyperbole and suburban boredom with a hybrid syntax that is disturbing more for its accuracy than its excess. Fox's recent exhibitions include shows at Feature Inc. (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), and Aktionsforum Praterinsel,Germany.
Barnaby Furnas' paintings explore a history that is inextricable from its own cinematic ghost; an american civil war we share as a common heritage, handed down through the camera lens. Furnas has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery(NYC).
Matthew Greene's video "Agathis" allows an absurd situation (the artist in full make-up as a witch) to become a vehicle to investigate the nature of video itself - more Burt Barr than Wes Craven. Greene is located in Los
Angeles, Ca. and has had recent exhibitions at LACE (LA), and SandroniRey (LA).
Steven Parrino's paintings exist as a document of their own destruction: a record of a practice that both encompasses collapse and refinement in uneasy proximity. Parrino has exhibited extensively, with recent exhibitions (with Jutta Koether) at the Swiss Institute (NYC) and Team Gallery (NY),
Derek Eller Gallery is located at 526 West 25th Street, 2nd floor. Hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 11am - 6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery at 212.206.6411 or visit www.derekeller.com.