UGLY ART ROOM: A Cinderella Story: From a Bomb to a Bombshell

A Cinderella Story: From a Bomb to a Bombshell

As part of Greenpoint Open Studios (Oct. 1-3, 2010)

Paulie Gee's - 60 Greenpoint Ave

Greenpoint Open Studios & The Ugly Art Room

October 1-3, 2010

ERIK DALZEN, MARTIN ESTEVES, CHRISTINE FACELLA, BEN HALL, JAC LEHAV, YULIYA LANINA, RAFAEL PEREZ, DAVID SENA, ALLISON READ SMITH, MATTHEW TRYGVE TUNG, CLAIRE TYPALDOS

Opening Reception: October 1st, 2010, 11pm

Paulie Gee’s

60 Greenpoint Ave, Brooklyn

In association with Greenpoint Open Studios, The Ugly Art Room is pleased to announce A Cinderella Story: From a Bomb to Bombshell at Paulee Gee’s, a space rebuilt over the remains of a restaurant that burnt down.

There are no glass slippers in this group art exhibition. Rather, the works selected from a handful of Brooklyn-based artists, display less of a narrative reference to the titled fable, than a shared sense of a rough-hewn re-emergence. The motives discussed for the show are that of “the violence of beautification, glorification of the grotesque, and the destruction of ugliness”, but the actual art demonstrates more of a naturally filtered dignity from the leftovers of random material. Like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, something new in stature and meaning can be created with a few smart moves from what might already be at hand. A lemon can make lemonade from itself and the ugly duckling chooses to become a swan.

Really, the “theme” of this grouping is that of a giant wood-burning pizza oven standing where fire so recently destroyed a building. White cube groups shows are both helped and hindered by the “purity” of the space allowing dialogue between the pieces without distraction. This Greenpoint spot, the area itself already ripe with renewal, has been redesigned with so much character, reclaimed wood, raw materials, exposed brick, tin ceiling, that the art has to exist “amongst” the space without becoming ornamental. The result of this thinking garnered images of nature interpreted, studied, and altered.

The existence of art in the “real world” blurs in recent contemporary practice and reinforces the argued need for the distilled museum and gallery situation. The challenge here is letting a group of pieces “work with” an area that is suggesting placement as soon as the works are brought in. This in itself becomes more of a formal, natural progress.

Is this the Cinderella being dressed up by magical birds and mice? No magical curatorial construction, these works were made by hand.