Abstract Severe, Jason Anthony LeRoy
Magicians coined the phrase the “hand is quicker than the eye”, with alacrity Jason Anthony LeRoy proves the hand may out quick the mind. Leaving his works’ presence then returning to stare again, starring once gives no guarantee of capturing all illusions trapped in LeRoy’s art. A theme of Gallery Night Fall Edition 2011 at the Studio Lounge, LeRoy joined a bivouac of artists employing variations on human and animal subjects.
Stretching over birch panel, intricate scenes rendered by LeRoy’s graphite and white chalk implements contrast and weave symbols, livings beings and foreign objects together. The edges blur, flashes of emotion appear in unlikely places. All together 5 large pieces fuse surreal and modern art principles with shades of pop and street art, a birthing of miraculous contemporary conceptions of lived experience.
Jason Anthony LeRoy’s work hangs until November 6th at Studio Lounge. If you miss it live, check out LeRoy kickstarting his next project.
Contents
Gallery Night Fall 2011, Studio Lounge
Pt 1 Piqued Canvas, Jenie Gao
Pt 2 Abstract Severe, Jason Anthony LeRoy
Piqued Canvas, Jenie Gao
Walking into Studio Lounge, large canvases covered in artistic expression offer salutations, bizarre and gripping. On the canvas lay familiar forms, a profile of a face, the appendage of an animal, a human body clothed. The forms meld together, a technique exquisitely conveyed by Jenie Gao. Featured on Gallery Night at Studio Lounge, Jenie Gao masterfully persuades her audiences to leave their realities’ and enter hers.
Abstract imagery clouds concrete themes, endangering a surface dweller’s faux pas: claiming a weirdness violation. Quite exceptional, and coherent if not only in craft, Jenie Gao‘s work displays detail in the details. Executing highly proportioned and realistic ink-based compositions, simultaneously in some pieces, Gao reaches for hard to attain anthropomorphic and polymorphic styles seemingly effortlessly.
Gao, also proficient in wood etching, scores exacting resolution in her images. Graphically depicting movement that captures the gravity of that exact moment, precisely, gives Jenie Gao’s work near photographic qualities. Gao’s current works on display at Studio Lounge highlight several pieces from her recent project Thresholds. Jenie Gao’s exhibition anchors Studio Lounges’s wall space until November 6th.
Contents
Gallery Night Fall 2011, Studio Lounge
Pt 1 Piqued Canvas, Jenie Gao
Pt 2 Abstract Severe, Jason Anthony LeRoy
Gallery Night Fall 2011, Studio Lounge
Exposed brick, some wood and some nails, the art tied it all together. Three years ago BYO Studio had the essentials: space, location and passionate people. Today the Studio Lounge fills any expectation an interesting person may have for an interesting place to go.
With vintage furnishings, custom made fixtures and highly flexible interior design in place, dusky lighting cloaks the Studio Lounge in enough mystery to wield a cutting-edge. Cool yet approachable, finding an item that you can trace back to this or that retail big box or catalog probably won’t happen while visiting the venue. No need for overstocked housewares, Studio Lounge’s rawness balances its refinement giving a rare vibe of both down-to-earth yet jet-set, rendering you comfortable but not enough to slouch.
Visual arts get their share of attention, and not privileging any particular creative form, Studio Lounge allows ingenious minds to nudge themselves in whatever direction they dare go. Made available, whenever possible, to ideas pitched with the intention of bringing fashionably artsy people together, the gallery space opens up for house sponsored events like Salsa Sundays and Taste! Thursdays with WMSE‘s Madkid DJ Bizzon. Well organized and thoughtful projects such as private gatherings and workshops can also apply.
For the Fall edition of Gallery Night, Studio Lounge featured the work of a two very talented artists, Jenie Gao and Jason Anthony LeRoy with support of noteworthy works of Steven Bowlin Davies, Melena Magnolia, and Douglas Matchnik, and renown artist David Schaefer. The current installation can be enjoyed until November 6th.
Contents
Pt 1 Piqued Canvas, Jenie Gao
Pt 2 Abstract Severe, Jason Anthony LeRoy
Gallery Night, Summer 2011, Bryan Cera
Expanding like a sponge with access to water, Milwaukee can’t help but ingest all the art it can get its dilated eyes upon. Gallery Night in Milwaukee is truly reaching major event status, even without complete buy-in from all of Milwaukee’s artistic strong holds.
Some of the Light, Blue Ant Gallery, Third Ward
Through the window of the beautiful Shade Shop Building on Milwaukee and St. Paul, black and white projections of President’s faces shine through a black drape. As a passer by you must go in.
Bryan Cera pulled all kind of crap, from all over the place for Some of the Lights, jury rigging an utter bastardization of multi-media consumer electronics, in the devastating can be used to describe a gorgeous person kind of way.
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Some of the Light, Bryan Cera
Voice Pong
Some computer device sits on a table with a two posable antenna protruding. It has a lime green screen with two half-inch vertical lines at the bottom left and right corners. A section at the top looks like it is ready to keep score. Could this be PONG! No, even better voice controlled PONG!
Those to antenna were actually microphones, calibrated to move the PONG paddles up the side of the screen in proportion the decibel level and length the note held in your voice. The object of the game is to return the ball to your opponent by positioning the paddle with sound. The microphones amplified grunts, hums, and ahhhs used to steady the paddle, absurdly audible.
Time Bandit
A face sticks to the wall via illusion. A video projection of Cera is throw on a mold of a face from behind, a video recorded Cera talks in monotone non-sequiturs to whoever stands and stares.
Sound Ripples
You notice some one on the way to the exit, heading past two square plastic dishes holding water. Inverted cones rise above the dishes, a cord hangs back into each dish. A digitized wail blares out, a you look for a robotic recreation of WALL-E. The person heading for the exit back tracks in front of the dish apparatus, cueing the sound effects.
A motion sensor translates physical activity from objects in its range into audio frequencies. The sound bothers the water in the square dishes enough for a light to reflect shadows of concentric circles on the wall, commonly attributed to droplets returning to their source.
Knuckleheads
Turning 1 of 4 knobs, sections of face from various Presidents rotate in view. Video projected on black cloth, crown, nose and chin are mixed and matched from assorted portraits of our nation’s past and present Executives.
Dazed and Computed
Bryan Cera, artist and wizkid, may be cast in the real life documentary of TRON, completely accidentally, any day now. Some of the Light was one of Milwaukee’s best done freelance exhibits to date. Wanna see more from Bryan Cera look! O_O
Gallery Night Spring 2011, Studio 420b
With significant inspiration present, growing an idea requires little space. Mark David Gray curator and resident artist of splashing new Studio 420b whips up his creative gumbo with this recipe. Born of a workspace less than 300 square feet, the gallery’s loosely carved and ample surface area now allows for nooks amenable to his artistic companions.
The raw and utilitarian stance of Studio 420b suits the theme of its current installation New Work. Adding intrigue to the theme, concrete floors hoist a sign proclaiming “All Hail Marx and Lennon” scribed in sharp-edged block letters emphasized with a profile portrait of the late John Lennon designed in pastels. It happens that one of the gallery’s artists is a Marx, Lindsay Marx.
Marxism
A 50 times removed cousin of those other great Marx, using oil on canvas, Lindsay Marx explains her impressions of moments suspended by photography in the 1960′s. Her paintings adjust our perspective close enough to see the profoundness of mundanely human dramas beckoning attention, drowned out by the turmoil typically associated with the era of social change. Layering color tones, motifs, concepts and patterns, pictures of moments transform into paranormal events revealing unseen forces acting at that moment. Employing the same technique, other works divine the thoughts of the central subject matter. Exquisite, modest and sometimes eerie, Marx evokes all three with appreciated intent; nothing here perceived as weird for weird’s sake.
The World is a Marble
Perforating the main wall space, a series of small geometrically identical frames house intricately drafted illustrations by Sean Bodley. Having even the negative spaces amazingly formulated solely from strokes of a pen, Bodley demonstrates the art of constructing worlds on a fantastic scale. Glancing at craggy cliffs appearing inches tall you may notice minute human forms that, from their point-of-view, immediately and epically magnify everything around them to Grand Teton scale. Admittedly, Bodley relishes the fantasy genre brought mainstream by the Lord of the Rings motion picture trilogy. Executing with marksman precision, Bodley charts detailed maps of places existing somewhere between Milwaukee that place Atreyu tried to save, and River Styx. Expressing interest in the fantasy genre’s friendliest format, one of Bodley’s artistic channels transmits his current work in an illustrated novel entitled Guardians of Gaia.
Fighting Faux
Too busy settling the West or snatching what they could by guile or force, turn of the century rugged individuals had little time for art, unless they were making “Wanted” posters. Mark David Gray pays tribute to the period of settlement and gunslingers with several of his pieces currently covering Studio 420b walls. Ruddy sepia tones infuse age and subdued neon highlights kick pop appeal into visual renderings that pluck Teddy Roosevelt out of historical archives and place him into new contemporary interpretations. Bigger than the dimensions of the canvas that carries them, several of Gray’s precise works idolize the former President in an endearing but kindly mocking fashion. Others works more straight forward, do plain old justice to the man and the legend. Lacking remissness, Gray offers additional odes to other men or legends fitting the phonetic description “Marx” or “Lennon” for further ponder.
Treading a rare path, Gray’s serious demeanor betrays his engaging and open mind and manner; a mastermind behind a space that is truly hospitable to creativity. Milwaukee is fast going the way of “scenes”, yet here people come as they are, and work as they are. Through its atmosphere, Studio 420b takes the bit out of the mouth of being an artist. In the process, truly phenomenal art ferments.
Retrospective: Gallery Night, Winter 2011
Always enjoyable Gallery Night yielded a few notables during the winter 2011 edition. Originally posted to the Sane Artworks Blog January 26, 2011.
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Gallery Night Milwaukee: Green Gallery, Patricia Terry, Berkeley and other splashes
The winter edition of Gallery Night in Milwaukee took place Friday and Saturday this past weekend. I took the A.V. Club’s lead on a couple of art exploits seen on Friday night, but ended up off the trod path and left one destination on my to do list.
The Green Gallery is somewhere I’ve wanted to check out for a while. I heard of this space a couple of years ago, recognizing the name of creative mind Michelle Grabner in a promotional piece for the Green Gallery’s second installation Silverpoint Drawings with Guest Mobile. Keeping with Milwaukee’s good fortune, several classes of privileged but angsty local teenagers (myself included, more angsty than privileged), among others I’m sure, felt edified by her instruction and her work.
A Person of Color: a mostly orange exhibition is currently on display at the Green Gallery. It features a host of artists, mostly spry, hip, and trained with their works of mixed mediums staking out floor space and wall art hung low to make you exert some effort to take a gander. Aggressively, which I guess reflects the color swatches of orange employed here, several of the current pieces take deliberate stabs at your intelligence in overtly self-indulgent to fast approaching borderline cliché ways (making it quite possible that cliché is the new cool this spring).
At Cuvee Black Art made a seldom witnessed mainstream appearance in Milwaukee, expressed through several collages, paintings, and illustrations authored by Evelyn Patricia Terry, a founder of Milwaukee’s art presence. Best known for her paintings and printmaking, Terry’s Gallery Night work included a series of illustrations carrying wisdom laden captions. Words offered ranged from the philosophical “Opposites attract, but likes stay together” to the practical “I have much work to do”. The didactic intent of the Black Arts legacy resonated the gathering.
Art showed up in musical form at Bayview’s Sugar Maple, as the cooperative Milwaukee Area Composers and Artists (MAC&A) filled the sound stage with a couple Master’s thesis jazz compositions, featuring brass favorites tenor and baritone saxophone, trumpet, and lesser seen instrument the marimba. Instigated by local musician Steve Gallam, the set featured work by composition peers Blake Manning, and Mike Neumeyer. Ears out for these guys. Their scoring of original works with pen on parchment tinted paper and impromptu is well done; neither often shared with the public in an informal setting, both suitably hosted by Sugar Maple’s indy jazz inspired confines.
Speaking of jazz, a free benefit (donations accepted) for the legendary Berkeley Fudge will take place at 7:30p this Friday January 28, 2011, at The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Berkeley recently suffered a health setback and the arts community is doing their part to recognize his contributions to the Milwaukee scene. Berkeley resident musician at the Jazz Estate, he was on the bill in the summer 2009 and I missed him unfortunately.
I missed out on Studio 420b exhibitions that featured artists Leslie Peckham, Lindsey Marx, Steven Ruiz, Fred Kames and several others. Judging from previous work, this camp of artist should also be added to your watch list.
Gallery Night in Milwaukee comes around again with spring this time, April 15 and 16th 2011.
Retrospective: Gallery Night, Summer 2009
Local Trolley Issue 5, Post 4
Originally posted July 27, 2009 on the Sane Artworks Blog, this is a bad-a#$’s version of a Shih Tzu.
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All around Milwaukee you can see physical changes taking place: clean-cut mixed-use developments, fragrant plantings in the boulevards. The streets are even getting paved after ten years of neglect. Some of that same rejuvenating energy is being released on the social scene too. Gallery Night is not a new invention and it’s nice to see creative outlets taking root in Milwaukee.
One of my favorite displays of the night hung not from a wall of Art Asia, but from the shoulder of a stern-looking fellow who looked like a typical renegade with a Harley parked outside. Stereotypes in place, alligator would be expected to cover his feet. Instead one rested gently cradled on his forearm and bicep. Everyone has to have a cause.
The caretaker of the endangered Chinese Alligator had the kind of leeriness emitting from those that think satellite surveillance is being taken of them. Apparently he has been battling the animal rights activist, the extreme ones that do not believe anyone should own pets (especially if they are alligators). Those pretentious fun-suckers! Personally, I am all for docile 45 lbs, 18 year old alligators chilling on Gallery Night with their masters. Wait a minute… this must be one of only several handfuls of Chinese Alligators left on the planet.
Everything was red. Not Commy red but deep visceral blood red. This relic of a beast fit in perfectly with the ambiance of Art Asia, a trading post of Chinese gifts, furniture, and artifacts. Minus the crowd hovering around reptilian and owner, you may not have noticed the gator’s presence. It was a serene creature, an expression opposite to the one given by the typical bewitching “alligator smile”. The constant glance of this creature lacked menace unlike its relatives, looking almost relieved to feel protected by and outside force other than it’s own wild instinct. I am usually harsh on exotic animal owners, but I think I can let this one slide. My super-cool friend Miranda and I both ended up donating 5 bucks to the cause.
Gallery Night is a quarterly event.
