Yeni Mao-Dead Reckoning @ Collette Blanchard Gallery 1/7/11

Yeni Mao

Untitled

2010

digital c-print

34 x 29 inches


Thursday is for Chelsea but , this Friday January 7, 2011 is for Lower East Side to the opening of Yeni Mao 's Dead Reckoning @ Collette Blanchard Gallery. Be there! 
See you Friday!


Please read press release below:

YENI MAO

Collette Blanchard Gallery is pleased to present Dead Reckoning, a selection of new collages, sculptures, and photographs by Yeni Mao. The exhibition will be on view from January 7th – March 2011, with an opening reception on January 7th, 2011.

Yeni Mao’s recent body of work uses a diverse artistic lexicon of nautical, animal, botanic, and martial arts film references to explore the cyclical regeneration of history. The artist is particularly interested in the distortion of inherited cultural narratives, in his words: “the magical and superstitious way we navigate our own reinvention as we move around loosely through space, via immigration and extradition; and time, via history and tradition”. Mao’s first solo exhibition at Collette Blanchard Gallery addresses these moments of transformation and deliverance.

The central installation, Dead Reckoning, for which the exhibition is titled, is a sculptural homage to explorer Zheng He. This installation, a large construction of multiple toy boats hung from the ceiling to create an artificial horizon line, captures the dichotomies in Zheng He’s legacy as hyper-masculine eunuch, and the flip of historical global power bases. Slippage between historical fact and the generation of myth becomes fertile territory for Mao. The use of the term Dead Reckoning to describe the formulation of cultural evolution outlines the conceptual core of the exhibition.

Mao’s engagement with the distortion of cultural references is also reflected in the exhibition through photography and collage, harnessing the reproductive properties of the photo medium to appropriate the fight scenes of martial arts films, as well as addressing the way kung-fu mythos is processed through time and cultures. Mao’s potent series of C-prints The Battle Wizard represent the heroes in ethereal transformative situations. An allusion to Italian Futurist Anton Giulio Bragaglia, these prints attempt to capture the metaphysical with photography. The collage Enter the Invincible Hero, one of a series of rich, meticulous collage works, further deconstructs the image sequence, utilizing kung-fu fight scenes to Muybridge-like effects. The multiple figures are used in a painterly, mark-making way in collective forms referencing natural forces. Mao alters the original meaning system behind the martial arts mythos to suit his own purposes.

Originally from Ontario, Canada, and having spent time in Sweden, Taiwan, and studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Mao currently lives and works in New York City. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, at venues including Ise Cultural Foundation and chashama, both in New York; ROMGallery for Art & Architecture in Oslo, Norway; and Shang Element Contemporary Art Museum in Beijing, China.

For more information, please contact the gallery at 917.639.2912 or gallery@colletteblanchard.com

Yeni Mao

Enter the Invincible Hero

2010

archival ink jet print collage on mylar

60 x 36

Mickalene and Carmen Thomas- McLeod Wedding Reception @ Collette Blanchard Gallery 9/6/09

Mickalene and Carmen Thomas- McLeod such a great adorable couple!

Carmen and Mickalene...radiating happiness! yeah!

Mickalene and Carmen

I think... I know who this one is...

This girl was just rocking this dress...fabulous!

Art collector and photo editor Cesar Llacuna

Artist/Photographer Jeremy Kost and Ruben Natal-San Miguel

Mickalene Thomas and Ruben Natal San Miguel

Party patrol crowd




Mickalene Thomas with a guest friend

Us trully... where else... in front of artwork!

Mickalene Thomas Mom...Love her!

Gallerist and host Collette Blanchard, Friend and Mickalene's Mom

Gallerist Collette Blanchard and Ruben Natal-San Miguel

The DJ spinning great tunes that kept us twirling all night long (well also the drinks too!)

The bartenders that kept me happy all night with tasty drinks (champagne)

Sunday September Six, was the wedding reception of super talented artist Mickalene Thomas and Carmen McLeod @ Collette Blanchard Gallery. The actual wedding was last weekend in Connecticut.It was a beautiful reception , with beautiful people, great drinks (way too many for me!), great food and the most important thing was to celebrate the union and commitment of two beautiful souls in love...AMAZING!

Collette was as usual the perfect host and Mickalene's mom was such a presence and radiates great energy ...I want her to adopt me!

It was very intimate but, just perfect!

Congratulations Mickalene and Carmen!

www.mickalenethomas.com

www.colletteblanchard.com

The Brand New Heavies-Curated by Mickalene Thomas@ Collette Blanchard Gallery

ARTmostfierce will not miss this one!

Check this out!

The Brand New Heavies

Curated by Mickalene Thomas

Lauren Kelley, Deana Lawson and Jessica Anne Peavy

January 23 - March 9, 2009
Opening Reception Friday January 23 6-8


Image above:
Lauren Kelley
Area still from "88 Jones' Bones", 2008
Single channel digital video
Time: 6 min 24 sec

Opening Reception Friday, January 23, 2009


Collette Blanchard Gallery is pleased to present The Brand New Heavies, Curated by Mickalene Thomas. The exhibition will be on view from January 23 - March 8, 2009 and will include three dynamic contemporary artists innovatively working in fundamental mediums. Lauren Kelley, Deana Lawson, and Jessica Ann Peavy present recent work conveying salient sentiments through means that are at once, sensual, opulent, and psychological.

The works of all three artists offer staged scenes, referencing theater and performance, while incorporating embellished caricatures through collaboration with and/or commentary on their varied subjects. Lauren Kelley's videos present meticulous, comprehensive, fictitious narratives in overwhelming detail. In Get Bones from 88 Jones, Barbie dolls, an array of plastic sweets, sculpted elements and malleable, inconstant clay form an accelerated narrative satiated with the metaphorical implementation of materials and imagery. Kelley's whimsy informs the happenings in the love life of a librarian with detail similar in degree to the sculpture crafted by Liza Lou. The environments in Kelley's work also resonate with the staged frames in the work of photographer, Deana Lawson. In Anna the everyday patterned couch blending with the drapes in the background is disrupted by the sequins adorning and condition of the thin, staid figure. The minimalist palette and compositions of Lawson's work bring to mind paintings by Barkley Hendricks and the videos of Jessica Ann Peavy. Peavy's A Conversation Piece also references intimate relationships as Get Bones from 88 Jones, though in this case the sensual narratives are articulated through tales of food-making and consumption as two videos play simultaneously and transverse from each other. Similar to some work of Chantal Akerman, Peavy's piece incorporates pauses and static frames, giving the viewer an opportunity to contemplate the different ways in which women communicate which each other. One character speaks candidly about food likes and dislikes, while the other vivaciously recalls an anecdote of food preparation, nourishment, intimacy and rejection.

Lauren Kelley received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently participating in the Core Residency Program in Houston. Deana Lawson, who has been included in several exhibitions over the past year, was recently interviewed by Tova Carlin for Time Out New York, and received a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Jessica Ann Peavy graduated with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Recent recipient of NYSCA, Peavy's work is currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and will be included in an upcoming show at the Bronx River Arts Center.

This exhibition is Mickalene Thomas's curatorial debut. She graduated with an MFA from Yale University and currently shows with Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Susanne Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in various catalogues and reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Post, NY Arts, Modern Painters, Essence, Whitewall, Frieze, and Artforum. For more information please contact the gallery at 917.639.3912.