Dear Colleagues,

Please join me at the opening of "Quick Whiles Still" Thursday, January 21, 2009 from 6-9PM.

FOR
IMMEDIATE
RELEASE

Heist Gallery Presents

QUICK WHILE STILL

Curated by Colin Huerter Group Show

January 21-February 21, 2010

New York, December 17, 2009 - Heist Gallery is pleased to present “Quick While Still,” a ‘pop-up’ exhibition of large-scale paintings by New York based artists Kath- erine Bernhardt, Kadar Brock, Mark Gibson, Matt Jones, John Newsom, and Wen- dy White. Their work will be exhibited in an exciting, unfinished space. One might even say that the rawness of the space itself is a reflection of the rawness of these artist’s ambitions. “Quick While Still” offers a chance to see their work stripped of the glamour of the highly polished white cubes of Chelsea.

The opening will take place from 6-9pm on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 143 Madison (between 31st and 32nd Streets). The exhibition will continue through Sunday, February 21, and will be open for view from Tuesday through Sunday, 10am-6pm.

The central theme running through “Quick While Still” is the idea of maintaining stillness in action. Each artist uses paint rather loosely, gesturally, in a way that is meant to call attention to the properties of the paint and the act (or action) of paint- ing. There is a responsive/adaptive spirit that centers the show. The paintings on view range from representational and illusionistic to abstract and object-orientated.

“The artists involved in ‘Quick While Still’ really seem to be showing us a way out of the mess we made of the past decade. After two wars, a failed banking system, the real estate bubble, they seem to be introducing new values, new paradigms. Their work is focused yet restless, considerate yet volatile. I find their energy infectious and their ambition refreshing” says Talia Eisenberg, the owner of Heist Gallery. “Putting up this show in an unfinished space seems to make all the sense in the world – it is time for us to hear from the artists themselves on what and how we need to rebuild.”

Katherine Bernhardt’s Swatch watch paintings represent a new direction. While her thick, loose and rapid painting handling remains indebted to the destructive forces of Abstract Expressionism, her target has moved from questioning issues of beauty, glamour, and fetish to the fascination with time as object, icon and cen- teredness. For Bernhardt, the Swatch watch paintings reposition the outwardness of looking with the inwardness of meditation and yoga. The center of the watch face is the point of contact between the different ‘hands’ or ‘arms’ of time and of body.

Kadar Brock’s new series of work investigates the roots of Abstract Expression- ism and Minimalism to find a common intersection. Working on a large scale, his mostly black, white and silvery gray paintings explore the formal questions of the painting as an object while never losing sense of the surface’s ability to sustain a visual experience. Crucial to Brock’s work is a sort of reduction in the decision making process in order to focus on the singular act of mark-making. To accom- plish this, he has recently begun employing a system of chance – rolling dice – to eliminate the element of chance during the act of painting.

There’s a renewed sense of directness and openness in Mark Gibson’s recent paintings. After taking early morning walks in Prospect Park, Gibson returns to his studio to depict his experience of the landscape once removed. The immediacy and energy of his painting practice speaks to the full engagement of the original experience but also its ability to sustain further experiences. In them there’s an immediacy that’s temporary and one that’s more abstract and general. By fusing the particular – the succulent rhythm of individual leaves – with the general – that larger lurking feeling of mystery – Gibson examines the frustration of seeing, paint- ing, and remembering.

For the past couple of years, Matt Jones has worked in four inter-related modes: ghosts, outer-space, inner-space, and energy. Together they form a way for Jones to interact with, evaluate, negotiate and play with the world around him. His ghosts are ‘portraits’ of the people who have witnessed his development as a person (son, boyfriend, etc.). In his outer-space painting, the bottom third of the picture is a paint speckled vision of our universe while the top two-thirds of the painting are a highly reflective black gloss, so that the viewer, standing in front of the picture, is literally projected into the great unknown. The aluminum paint of his inner-space paintings presumably refers to the metal wires of circuit boards. In the same way that these circuits can be re-soldered to establish new ‘connections,’ so too does the mind have the ability to alter its synapses during meditation. By linking the idea of self-repair to self-awareness, Jones’s paintings double back on each other by both representing the process as well as guiding the viewer toward it. Jones’s fourth mode, his energy paintings, is a celebration of the properties and possibili- ties of pure painting. After different colors of paint are poured onto plastic laid on the floor, the canvas is placed on top of it. As Jones removes the canvas from the plastic, the movements of his body are recorded in the movement of the paint and frozen by its memory.

John Newsom continues to explore the natural order as allegory for the human experience. He vibrantly and energetically incorporates a layered pictorial space, abstract patterning and highly detailed renderings of birds and insects in an ex- ploration of themes of love, hope, courage, and change. Newsom orchestrates complicated canvases, featuring a wide variety of gesture and attention to detail, which contributes to the conveyance of visible energies within the paintings. New- som integrates various painting methods through his dynamic brushstrokes. The coarse application of paint is both a style and a statement for Newsom, in which the canvas becomes an emotionally charged field of action and the primal material qualities of the paint are fully expressed.

For QWS, Wendy White presents a new direction in her work. The visual language she has been developing is still present – multipanel canvases, sooty spray paint blacks, tart tennis-ball yellows, Pepto-Bismol pinks, elements of graffiti and spec- tacle. Her new paintings are building off the internal dynamics – both intuitively and formally – of the stenciled language within the picture plane by quite literally escaping from it. In “Reform,” we see the reversed R on the left side of the ‘primary’ canvas flowing into an abstracted, supportive and architectural R. In this exciting painting, one is witnessing the transition from the word in the image to the object as word.

Heist Gallery would like to thank The Smithtown Bank Real Estate and Abraham + Martin for the generous opportunity to mount “Quick While Still.”

About Heist Gallery: Heist Gallery, located in the heart of the Lower East Side, is a vibrant addition to the gallery scene. Always seeking to show work that inspires dialogue in the context of its rich and unique neighborhood, Heist Gallery adds a vital element to current rampant creativity.

Heist Gallery is located at 27 Essex Street (between Grand and Hester). Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 12-6pm. Tel: (212) 253-0451.

For additional information visit www.heistgallery.com.