/  by gyan shrosbree



ORTEGA y GASSET PROJECTS

GYAN SHROSBREE: 

THE DRESS / WHAT TOUCHES THE FLOOR

January 14 - February 25, 2023
Opening Reception with the artist: Saturday, January 14, 2023, 5 – 7pm

Gyan Shrosbree, The Dress/What Touches the Floor, #1 and #2, acrylic on canvas tarp and stretched canvas, 100” x 60” each, 2022

 

Brooklyn, NY (January 2, 2023) — Ortega y Gasset Projects proudly presents a solo show opening on Saturday, January 14, GYAN SHROSBREE: The Dress / What Touches the Floor, co-curated by OyG Co-directors Clare Britt, Leeza Meksin, Nickola Pottinger, Adam Liam Rose, Zahar Vaks, and Lauren Whearty. The exhibition, activating both the main gallery and The Skirt, will be on view through February 25, 2023. 


For this presentation, the artist will be showing a series of large scale paintings on tarp and stretched canvas, comprising figures paired with pairs of shoes, encircling the main gallery. In the Skirt space, Shrosbree will create a site-responsive installation of her playful and colorful paintings that range in size from bossy large-scale to tiny and intimate.
 

Shrosbree’s subject matter deals with female-bodied, dressed-up figures, evoking fashion’s ability to signify self-determination, agency and empowerment. This is a feminist point of view - full of spirited resistance to the austere modernist and minimalist ideals still circulating today. 
 

Shrosbree addresses the emotional, personal and political content in her work by asserting: “There is a psychological note that I want to hit upon, somewhere between extreme discomfort and pure joy. The feeling that our hands are too big and our outfit too fluffy. Once again, you arrive at the party in the wrong attire feeling exposed and without your armor. Or the opposite, the armor is just right and you feel powerful and protected by the colors that surround you.”
 

In Shrosbree’s chosen list of materials, further content can be gleaned. The supports for her large scale figures are tarps –flexible, unfixed and utilitarian. They can be rolled up easily and hung in a variety of ways suggesting make-shift, temporary home structures, or the processes associated with fixing, rebuilding, repainting, redoing. Pairing paintings on tarps with the more conventional stretched canvases, the implied hierarchies within fine and applied arts are playfully debunked. What is the difference and similarities between dressing up our bodies, dressing up our paintings and dressing up our homes? 
 

When looking at the world through the eyes of Gyan Shrosbree we start to see that the questions and answers play charades, while finding pleasure in dress-up, juicy colors, flattened shapes, awkwardness, and masquerade.
 

For the opening on Saturday, January 14th, the artist has also made a fashion line of wearable art, in collaboration with her mother, Kathleen Shrosbree. Gyan paints her vibrant imagery onto unstretched cotton duck, and Kathleen patterns and sews the individual pieces, ranging from tunics to tote bags. The OyG co-director artists will all be modeling the various items at the opening, made specifically for this occasion.

 

Text by Leeza Meksin

Gyan Shrosbree, wearable art in-progress, acrylic on cotton duck, 2022

ARTIST BIO

Gyan Shrosbree received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at JEFF, Marfa, TX; Wrong Gallery, Marfa, TX; Ola Studio, Pound Ridge, NY: nx.ix Gallery, Detroit, MI; Haus Collective, San Antonio, TX; Grapefruits, Portland, OR; Grand View University, Des Moines, IA; Yellow Door Gallery, Des Moines, IA; Ripon College, Ripon, WI; Lovey Town Space, Madison, WI; and The Iowa Arts Council and State Historical Museum, Des Moines, IA. Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Glen Ellyn, IL; Ground Floor Gallery, Nashville, TN; The Woskob Family Gallery, State College, PA; NYSRP, Brooklyn, NY; and Artstart, Rhinelander, WI. Gyan has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, The Vermont Studio Center, Two Coats of Paint, and The Maple Terrace. Recent publications featuring her work include Hyperallergic, New American Painting, Egomania Magazine,The Coastal Post, Inertia Studio Visits, Precog Magazine, and Maake Magazine. Gyan is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Maharishi International University. She lives and works in Fairfield, Iowa.

 

CURATORIAL NOTE

This solo show is co-curated by OyG Co-directors and artists Clare Britt, Leeza Meksin, Nickola Pottinger, Adam Liam Rose, Zahar Vaks, and Lauren Whearty. Typically, the artists who run OyG Projects take turns curating shows. Sometimes, however, OyG co-directors collaborate by working as a curatorial team on a solo show which creates an exciting experience both for the exhibiting artist, who receives a lot of feedback from our team, and for the co-directors themselves, who get to think about curation in a collaborative and expansive manner. Previous such collaborative approaches to curation included the solo shows of Rick Briggs, Carl Hazelwood and Rose Nestler.

A note on access: Ortega y Gasset Projects is accessible through two sets of stairs via 3rd Ave: The first set contains 7 steps to a landing, and the second 5 steps leading visitors into the gallery. If you have questions or specific access requests, please contact us at oygprojects@gmail.com.

OyG is an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Ortega y Gasset Projects is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday 1-6 pm or by appointment

Ortega y Gasset Projects
363 3rd Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.oygprojects.com     

/  by gyan shrosbree

Let Me Hear Your Body Talk opens February 5 and runs through May 8 at Wrong Gallery and in Marfa, Texas.

Upcoming: A.I.R. Gallery’s 10th Biennial /  by Alexander Pincus

The A.I.R. Gallery 10th Biennial: "36 Cats and one stripe pussy"
Curated by Ingrid Schaffner
December 6 - January 5, 2013

 

An Essay By Curator Ingrid Schaffner

Is there something inherently Feminist about the juried exhibition? As a juror/curator you start with a vast number of different kinds of work submitted through an open call that is further democratized by having no names or other signifying clues as to an artist’s identity, origin, or affiliation. Destabilizing and potentially productive, this process allows the curator to operate free of dominant paradigms and values. Of course, the fact that all of the artists in the A.I.R. Biennial are women is far less compelling than the imaginative power and politics of inclusion and disruption that continue to make Feminism such a formidable cultural force. (Incidentally, the Biennial is open to submissions from all artists who identify themselves as women.)

At some point in the process of looking at the work of the 652 artists, who submitted up to 6 images each, I wondered if there was a way to turn the exhibition itself into a Feminist statement? Could it be all-inclusive freeing me from making any selection at all? Alternatively, I thought, what about showing only tiny things (there was a remarkable number of small-scale submissions), which I imagined looking great on a giant table? Or maybe just cats. Okay, I’ve long been a fan of Carolee Schneemann’s intense videos of her kissing cats. And one of the thirty-six artists I selected painted a fantastic female/feline double portrait that sparked the title for this Biennial. 36 Cats and one stripe pussy refers to a book that Andy Warhol illustrated with his mother, who was not a native English speaker, titled, 25 Cats Name Sam and one Blue Pussy. But of course, the title comes charged with other potent echoes of, for instance, Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk-rock band, whose members were arrested and incarcerated for a guerrilla action directed against the Putin regime and Russian Orthodox Church last February. (And since installing the show, I’ve found at least one other stray pussy depicted.) But what is it with women artists and cats? No answers please.

To serve the interests of all involved—including the many participating artists whose work is not included—the selection must cohere and stand on its own integrity as an exhibition, one that neither reduces nor trivializes ac nearly overwhelming process itself to, say, just cats. Which brings us back to the diversity and complexity of all that the Feminist movement has brought to the fore of contemporary art since the 1970s—video, installation, performance, craft, identity, non-Western traditions, outsider and folk art, great beauty and terrific ugliness—I trust this iteration of the A.I.R. Biennial shows how much there was to work with, and to represent.

-Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Show Opening | Jim and Gyan Shrosbree /  by Alexander Pincus

Jim and Gyan Shrosbree 
Unity Gallery
Maharishi University
Fairfield, IA

Artist's Reception, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30TH, 7:30-9:00 pm
November 30 through February 4

Gallery Hours 
M-F 10am to 9pm
Sat 10am - 4pm
Sun 7:15-9pm

Unity Gallery is located in the University Library on the west side of Hwy 1

Show at FLIGHT Gallery: "The Suspects" /  by Alexander Pincus

What: Art Opening - Unveiling of a book and series of paintings "The Suspects" by recent San Antonio transplant Gyan Shrosbree.

Where: FL!GHT GALLERY, 1906 South Flores, San Antonio, TX 78204 

When: Second Saturday July 10, 2010 7-10 pm

Who: Gyan Shrosbree + book interpretation by DeviBooks 

What the artist has to say: 

I was a little bit hopeful going in. We’d e-mailed and he seemed all right, not great, but probably not an axe murderer. When we met he was sitting at the bar, so I couldn't see the lower half of his body. He wore a low-necked (tee?  No collar?) shirt with a leather (silver, gold) necklace supporting a large wooden cross.  He chose to not stand up when I arrived; I chose to overlook it. During our conversation, he told me all about himself, and his work, and his problems, and his charming idiosyncracies, which some might call quirks, or flaws, possibly even red flags, or a cry for help.  He made time slow down to a glacial pace, and when we finally stood up, his voice had not only invaded my brain, but was triggering the gag reflex deep in my throat.  Notwithstanding, nothing could have prepared me for the real shocker of the night.  Poking out the bottom of the widest stove pipe jeans to be seen this side of the new millennium were the pleatherest black puffy-soled loafers to ever disgrace a dance floor.  I suppose the puffy soles made him feel taller.  The cracked and dirty pleather spoke volumes, beginning with:  I really fucking stink! They were cheap and old and all I could think of was sleazy, puffy, pointy-toed man sleazing down the street in run down sleaze loafers.  Finally, he showed me he was an open-minded, modern man by letting me pick up the tab for my glass of wine and his six scotch and sodas.  I’ve tried and failed to erase every detail of him from my memory. 

Show at Unit B! /  by Alexander Pincus

This is All Real
May 21- July 2, 2010
Joey Fauerso, Leslee Fraser, Gyan Shrosbree

These three artists, inspired by the subjectivities and proclivities of the others, bring together their work in a maximalist installation that obfuscates authorship, and decentralizes the art object. This construction is a collection of collections! Art objects are interspersed with other items that any of the artists may covet, collect, or consume. Art is artifice, but this is all real.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 21, 6:30-10pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 3-5pm and by appointment

For his 1917 work Fountain, Marcel Duchamp purchased a urinal, turned it on its side, signed it with the pseudonym R. Mutt, and then submitted it to the “unjuried” Society of Independent Artists exhibition, which rejected the work as “not art.” With this gesture, Duchamp upset the hitherto relatively stable basis for knowing an art object upon sight. In recent years many artists have updated Duchamp’s proposal that an artwork’s validity and value comes from its context by incorporating curating into their practice or presenting their work within a collection. In 2009 Vik Muniz made a memorable and amusing mark in this category by juxtaposing design objects from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection with works by art-world darlings—a wooden pencil with eraser by Hymen Lipman (1858) was paired with John Baldessari’s I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971), for example. At present Maurizio Cattelan, who has made a career of critiquing traditional notions of art and artmaking, has a project at the Menil Collection that upends the expectation that a solo show should provide a concentrated look at an artist’s oeuvre; instead, his works are sited throughout the institution, interspersed amongst its displays.

Cattelan and Muniz are just two of the many artists who have lately generated Duchampian conversations about what constitutes an art object and an artist’s work. At the artist-run gallery Unit B in San Antonio, Joey Fauerso, Leslee Fraser and Gyan Shrosbree, a trio of longtime friends and artists, are also contributing to the dialogue with their energetic and endearing collaborative project This is All Real. The exhibition is a colorful and crazy mash-up of plants, figurines and other personal knickknacks; recent drawings, watercolors, sculptures and a video by the artists; and a couple of mixed-media works jointly made for the show. Hung salon-style and without labels, the exhibition is so crowded with delights and the occasional knockout that I resisted the urge to sort out who made every last element and embraced the idea that anything can become artful within the right context.

While I was content not to know whether a pair of unusual bookends was made by one of the artists, a readymade or just brought from home, I did appreciate finding out that Fauerso, who is known for contemplative watercolors and animations that isolate figures in discordant environments, contributed one of the most engaging works in the show. In her poignant, disturbing and funny video Me Time, she makes out with hand puppets with such passion that the fabric creatures seem to come alive. By contrast Fraser’s arrangements of Americana generate some of the quieter and more enigmatic moments in the exhibition. In Civilization #2 a TV table is dotted with a walnut, a lacquered clamshell and a heart-painted holder filled with pink cocktail napkins that read, “Close the curtains.” The kitschy display creates a charged domestic puzzle. Shrosbree, for her part, brings exuberance to the show. In one grouping of her works, This Is Not My Life, an entire wall is covered with giant, fantastical figures of friendly bats, fancy ladies and faux curtains. Every element is cut out of canvas but painted so expressively that you might contemplate trying to join the fairytale world.

The exhibition’s show-stopper is the artists’ collaborative installation This is All Real, which takes over the second of Unit B’s two small rooms. Here stand life-sized photographic cutouts of the three friends, each captured smiling and animated: Shrosbree leans back enjoying the show, Fraser is caught mid dance move and Fauerso happily plays a cardboard flute while actual music is piped in and a real instrument case collects donations. Like the show as a whole, the work cleverly suspends the divide between art and life. With Duchamp as a touchstone, This is All Real delves into one of postmodernity’s paradoxes: that while many of us intellectually embrace the idea that life can be art and vice versa, we have difficulty with the notion that all of it has similar value and is indeed real.

Kate Green is a freelance writer and is pursuing her PhD in art history at the University of Texas at Austin.

hey, what's on your mind? /  by Alexander Pincus

hey, what's on your mind?
Elliott Oliver, Gyan Shrosbree, Liz Smith

Fakespace LA
2401 S. Santa Fe Ave 104
Los Angeles, CA 90058

August 30 - September 5th, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 30th, 5-9pm

"Every collaboration brings unfamiliar nuances to an instrumental language that has become highly developed and essentially self-contained." - David Toop

Fakespace LA is pleased to present "hey, what's on your mind?" Elliott Oliver, Gyan Shrosbree, and Liz Smith are all LA painters who put forth an ambitious project of completing 90 paintings in as many days, each painting being worked on by all three artists, one at a time, layer after layer. The title refers to having the freedom to allow the work to be formed by spontaneous ideas and subsequent reactions as the work is passed along to each artist. The results are often humorous, sometimes ridiculous, and remarkably fluid.

In the end, these artists will be covering two large gallery walls, floor to ceiling, with an installation of the work.

Each individual 18x24 drawing will be available to purchase for $20 each at the opening.

Please join us for the opening reception of this exceptional collaboration on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 , 5 – 9pm. Open by appointment through September 5, 2008. fakespace LA gallery is located at 2401 S. Santa Fe Ave 104, in Downtown Los Angeles, within the Santa Fe Artist Colony.