Summer 2016
91-02 Rockaway Beach Blvd.
The Starry Messenger
Bedwyr Williams
August 13th - August 28th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 13, 6-9 PM
Topless is pleased to present Bedwyr Williams' 'The Starry Messenger'.
Williams' fast-paced, visually relentless, narrative films, are based on social observation and re-imagination as well as his own positioning within both worlds. In ‘The Starry Messenger’, made for his solo presentation representing Wales at the Venice Biennale, Williams' ponders the connection between the microcosmos in a terrazzo floor and the infinite space around us. The viewer is asked to imagine themself as a small, trapped piece of stone within a complex system.
Supported by Arts Council Wales. Text courtesy of Limoncello, London.
Minnow
Gavin Kenyon & Aude Pariset
July 23rd - August 7th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 23rd, 6-9 PM
Gavin Kenyon Tire, 2016. Concrete, watercolor, watercolor paper, varnish. 32.25 x 18.75 x 16.5 inches
Gavin Kenyon Bunny, 2016. Concrete, watercolor, watercolor paper, varnish. 40.5 x 16 x 22 inches
Gavin Kenyon Cloven Rock, 2016. Concrete, watercolor, watercolor paper, varnish. 38 x 18.75 x 16.75 inches
Aude Pariset Pasta Hostis, 2016. Dried pasta, oven racks, lighting system. Dimensions vary
Babble On
Nadia Belerique, Lili Huston-Herterich, Laurie Kang
July 2nd - July 17th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 2nd, 6-9 PM
Dear ---,
Hi - it’s been some time, I hope you remember me. We first met at the pavilion where we accidentally rubbed shoulders. I saw you through slivers of light as we walked amidst the living walls of that labyrinthine space. I watched your feet as you wandered, and saw you carve an inscription into the wall, was it your name? Eventually we joined hands to greet, exchanging some of the lingering green dust that remained on our fingers. I carried around a trace of you and it the rest of that day. Mixed matter.
This morning in the privacy of my kitchen I squeezed a lemon into a glass of water and remembered you.
We’re not strangers anymore, though I feel vulnerable writing to you. I’d like to see you again…will you meet me at the fountain? We won’t be alone, if you wish for sensory sensations that might make this less awkward. The trickling water should calm, though I’ll always wonder if we might witness a flood, a trickle turned overflow.
Once there we’ll decide what’s next, it’s really just a place between spaces.
Yours,
Topless presents Babble On, a project commissioned by the gallery, and the second collaborative installation by Nadia Belerique, Lili Huston-Herterich and Laurie Kang. For their first collaboration, The Mouth Holds the Tongue at The Power Plant Gallery in Toronto, the artists re-imagined an iconic sculpture pavilion by Aldo Van Eyck. Their re-creation flipped the space in multiple ways, inverting hierarchies of material and space. There was no replication of the original modernist sculptures housed by the pavilion. The walls were constructed entirely of floral foam, a craft-based synthetic material for floral arrangements; its sensitive surface denies objectivity as it is easily marked by intentioned and unintentioned interactions. The inscriptions grew exponentially over the course of the exhibition by visitors to the space, markedly changing the installation’s appearance. The space was flipped upside down to conjure a recalibration of body; the lights were on the floor as a lit grid, the maze-like walls suspended above from from the ceiling. Metal sculptures resembling fruit dwelled in and around the space suggesting new metabolizations.
Babble On will be a site-responsive installation, once again utilizing floral foam. The artists will re-create a fountain-cum-well with benches for sitting, talking and observing. The installation will again bear the marks of its sitters and visitors with an additional sound element via the fountain’s spout, using the water directly from Rockaway Beach. Babble On is a space for no answers, a facilitation of intimacies, negotiations and friendships in the making. The title playfully extends its first iteration, suggesting the artists’ continued babblings on collaboration as ongoing experiment, embodiment of space and material sensitivity.
The artists wish to thank Smithers Foams for their sponsorship in this exhibition.
Beverly Semmes & Larissa Bates
June 11th - June 26th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 11th, 6-9 PM
Topless is pleased to inaugurate its 3rd season with Larissa Bates & Beverly Semmes, a dual exhibition opening Saturday, June 11th, 2016.
Larissa Bates’ intimate and jewel-like paintings are faceted reflections of crossing complex histories. The intricacies and details adapted from past, present and some sort of fantasy; simultaneously the artist’s and civilization’s own. The scenes segue between still life, landscape, and portraiture, cultivating the curiosities of and between cultural commodity and cultural identity. Her gold-leafed and gouache works ensnare the viewer in their richness, simultaneously dazzling with their unadulterated preciousness and disturbing with a darker intensity.
Beverly Semmes’ Scratch is a large-scale new work configured specifically for this summer’s space. A hovering form on the wall and a long velvet strip of gold squares bisects the room. Sinuous, meandering sleeves of blue and green become like paint lines, vines that sit on top of the golden length. The source of this river / sunset / flag / butterfly / flood of plush, saturated color appears to come out from the wall as it snakes across the floor and pushes onwards. Semmes is best known for large-scale fabric works that over recent years have become increasingly abstract. This current piece integrates aspects of both a dress and a landscape, in which symbolic and formal elements combine, and the recognizable shades off into otherness.
Larissa Bates The Epigenetics of Nurture, 2015. Gouache and 22 karat gold leaf on linen. 8 x 10 inches
Larissa Bates The Impossibility of Seeing: Animals of the Universal History of the Things of New Spain, or the Florentine Codex, 2015. Gold leaf and gouache on panel. 14 x 11 inches
Larissa Bates Pussycat Pussycat Where Have You Been? I’ve Been to London to Visit the Queen, 2013. Gouache and oil on linen. 14 x 11 inches
Larissa Bates Economic Botany: Saccharin, Cavendish Bananas, and Cocoa, 2015. Gouache and gold leaf on panel. 14 x 11 inches
Beverly Semmes Scratch, 2016. Velvet. Dimensions Vary
Larissa Bates Land of Vanity and Delusion: Bananas, Gold, Baseballs, 2015. Gouache and 22 karat gold leaf on linen. 14 x 11 inches
NOSCHOOL Residency
August 13 - August 28, 2016
Topless is pleased to present NOSCHOOL Residency at Topless Projects. NOSCHOOL is a four-week arts and education program catering to youth in the Rockaway community led by Frank Traynor of The Perfect Nothing Catalog and Arts in Parts. Each week the students engage in a series of courses and workshops taught by professional artists, curators, and creatives. The resulting works will be exhibited in three consecutive exhibitions hosted in Topless’ Topless Projects beginning the weekend of August 13th – 14th and continuing through the gallery’s final weekend of the 2016 season, August 27th - 28th. In its full, three exhibition cycle the NOSCHOOL Residency will be comprised of works stemming from courses led by Andrea Bonin, Justin Caguiat, Alex Patrick Dyck, Aidan Koch, Elise McMahon, Claire Mirocha & Vanessa Thill, Sophy Naess, Andrew Ross, Will Stewart, Pam Tietze, and Chris Wegman.
Heatsink organized by Roberta Pelan
Michael Freeman Badour & Liam Crockard
June 23 - August 7, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 23, 6-9 PM
ROBERTA PELAN is pleased to present, Heatsink. A two person exhibition at Topless Projects
This is what heat looks like. The disheartening electrical heat produced by the condensing of information. Within our smart technologies data integrity and the efficiency of exchange is at risk with such heat. Our dematerialized world is a vast landscape of micro-furnaces that burn our .ZIPs. Central processing units rely on tiny heatsinks just to keep this information from destroying itself. Like an electric blanket, heatsinks emit waves of energy away from the coordinates of information exchange to maintain optimal operating temperatures. Whether passive or active, the heatsink’s sole concern is with the redistribution of heat.
An active heat exchanger, this is the artist today. Negotiating how to redistribute the heat and energy produced through the condensing of information. First as a passive recipient within professionalized institutions, then as an active heat exchanger, slowing down information exchange, thereby cooling it. By reworking and reanimating modern designs with pails of wood glue and discarded wood scraps, initial core concepts remain but with a new finish, a new vernacular. One that causes hesitation within those quick to ascribe meaning. The rapacious consumption of information is slowed and core temperatures remain optimal.
The exchange must be active, reworking established concepts of the recent past, breaking them down and building them back up. Passivity is the role of the repeater. The repeater receives and retransmits. The artist avoids this, allowing distortion to effect their signal. By archiving the processes at play within information exchange the infobahn can take form. The archive incorporates the bi-products of exchange which distorts its image. We may have to squint if we want to make out this picture but this too is cooling and will allow us to step a little closer to the fire.
Liam Crockard All Thumbs #12, 2016. Found material and hardware. Dimensions Vary
Michael Freeman Badour Re-routed, 2016. Oil on burlap. 36 x 24 inches
Liam Crockard All Thumbs #20, 2016. Found material and hardware. Dimensions Vary
Michael Freeman Badour Bidirectional Networks, 2016. Oil on linen. 18 x 12 inches
Michael Freeman Badour Bit to It, 2016. Oil on burlap. 36 x 24 inches
Eric Wiley
July 2 - July 17, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 2, 6-9 PM
Eric Wiley There’s always someone hidden somewhere, 2014. Oil on canvas. 72 x 56 inches
Eric Wiley Fascinating, the altar of the eternal good, 2014. Oil on canvas. 52 x 40 inches
NADA New York
NADA Projects
Booth 2.06
Anna Glantz
May 5th – May 8th, 2016
Pier 26 - Basketball City
299 South Street, New York, NY
Opening Preview: Thursday, May 5th, 12-4 PM
Public Hours:
Thursday, May 5th, 4-8 PM
Friday, May 6th & Saturday, May 7th, 11 AM - 8 PM
Sunday, May 8th, 11 AM - 5 PM