May 9 - May 24, 2015
Opening Reception: May 9, 3-5PM
Key Projects is pleased to present Type of Abstraction, a group exhibition featuring Anke Becker, Enrico Gomez, Heidi Neilson and Karen Schiff.
Type of Abstraction brings together four artists who reverse or obliterate text so that the attempted act of reading is subverted into an act of seeing abstract letterforms and patterns. The exhibition is comprised of drawings and prints. Each artist uses a serial process to transform and dissect elements of text/letterforms into an abstract language of patterns and shapes.
Using varying shapes of American coins, Anke Becker transforms the pages of Karl Marx’ book Das Kapital into an all-over geometric pattern, rendering the text illegible. Enrico Gomez deconstructs the architecture of a letter block by block—combining hard edge geometry with gestural mark making. Heidi Neilson re-contextualizes text into an abstract array of punctuations and also, investigates the properties of wooden letterset by the reversal of text into abstract imagery. Karen Schiff arranges letters, numbers, punctuation and symbols, using their forms and inked irregularities to generate new forms.
About the artists:
Anke Becker is a visual artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her art practice includes drawing, visual poetry and collaborative installations. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been featured in several publications. Residency fellowship awards include Kimmel-Nelson-Harding Center for the Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. In addition to her studio practice Anke founded the international art-project “Anonymous Drawings” - through regular intervals, she organizes open calls and exhibitions of drawings.
Enrico Gomez is a painter, curator and art critic. He received his B.F.A. in Art with a concentration in Drawing from Arizona State University and has exhibited at various venues including Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ, Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn NY, Pop Up Art Shop Baranquilla, CO, Van der Plas Gallery, New York, NY, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, The Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Mesa, AZ, P.S.122 Gallery, New York, NY, Momenta Art, Brooklyn NY, and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, NY. He has been featured in various publications including The New Criterion, Hyperallergic, Art F City, The L Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, and The New York Times. Co-founder of the critically acclaimed Parallel Art Space, he is also the Founder and Director of The Dorado Project; an artist-run, contemporary art compendium based in downtown Jersey City, NJ. The monthly art critic for WAGMAG Brooklyn Art Guide he is also a contributing writer for esse: art + opinions. In 2014 Brooklyn Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture.
Heidi Neilson is an artist addressing topics such as weather, fake snow, and the cultural landscape of outer space. Her work, often collaborative and publishing-based, has been supported by the Art Matters Foundation, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Center for Book Arts, the College Book Art Association, The Drawing Center, Flux Factory, I-Park, the International Print Center New York, the Islip Art Museum, Kala Art Institute, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Lower East Side Printshop, Provisions Library, the Queens Museum of Art, Visual Studies Workshop, and Women’s Studio Workshop. She is a member of the ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative, co-founded SP Weather Station, and her work is included in over 60 museum and university collections. Born in Oregon, Heidi received a BA in biology from Reed College and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute.
Karen Schiff (KLS) works at intersections between art and language, in images and in words. She holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art (School of the Museum of Fine Arts / Boston, 2006), and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory (University of Pennsylvania, 1998). Her work has been shown in galleries and museums in New York, around the United States, in Iceland and in Spain; in 2014 she showed in the “Art=Text=Art” exhibition at SUNY / Buffalo and created an artist’s project, Counter to Type, for the College Art Association’s Art Journal. She has published in Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail and Art Journal, and in 2015 she hosted a roundtable about Agnes Martin, at Parsons / The New School for Design. She is writing the catalogue essay for the Painting Center's juried exhibition, "The Writing on the Wall," in Summer 2015.