make tank

Robert Gero

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 12:44:33 -0500

Robert Gero

robertgero@sbcglobal.net

bio

Robert Gero is an artist working at the intersection of art, philosophy and architecture. His most recent work explores the theoretical and physical possibilities of temporal structures. These are structures in which the interiors are continuously expanding, folding and unfolding while the exteriors remain stable. Robert Gero holds an MFA in fine art and a PhD in Philosophy. His work has been featured in numerous shows including The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York, Artist Space, New York, The 45th Venice Biennale, Venice, 92nd St Y-Makor Gallery, New York, The McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, UICA, Grand Rapids, He is a member of the New York artist collaborative Archicule.

MakeTank is both an evanescent local effect, and a rigorous practical/theoretical approach to creating an art laboratory. It is a space in which idea-works are formulated and cross-informed in their production. MakeTank strives to produce the multiple eruptions of those aleatory events, which occur in the space of proximate makings. MakeTank sets itself the task of examining the conditions of art making and exhibition, resisting the reduction to conventional binaries of product/process, individual/collaborative or private/public. By emphasizing the temporal moments of parallel making MakeTank is one resistance to the drive of culture towards an extreme objectification.

Prem Makeig

Wed, 5 Nov 2008 14:36:10 -0500

Prem Makeig
Prem@PremMakeig.com
www.PremMakeig.com

Bio:

Prem Makeig is originally from San Diego, CA, and was born in 1978. He received a BFA from Washington University, Saint Louis (2000). His drawings, paintings, and sculptures often center on narrative themes, depicting outdoor scenes including animals and figures in motion, as if captured using a still camera. In 2007 Prem was a resident at Cooper Union and was a visiting artist at Rutgers University. Commissioned works of public sculpture include permanent installations in downtown St. Louis, and in Maharashtra, India. Prem lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Statement:

Working in the 21st century, when technology and social evolution provide hope for the future while trends in population growth and environmental destruction foretell a bleak existence on a devastated planet, my work and working process investigates the tension between these forces. I am in the first generation to be born into the computer age, and the age of the biggest population boom in the history of the planet. Between the opposites of fear and hope, certainty and uncertainty, consciousness and unconsciousness, I find bewilderment that fuels my work.

I have embraced new technology including computer 3D-modeling and digital fabrication, though in doing so I often return to subjects of the most basic types of human existence: a figure pushing a simple hand cart, carrying sticks, running from danger, or rowing in a simple boat. I am interested in these images because no matter how much technology we master, in the end, the plight of the human is still one of navigating the world, seeking out natural resources and individual survival.

My installations, drawings, and movies often feature an individual dealing with nature, but not a friendly nature, instead responding in ways that they are forced to respond by calamity or critical necessity. My installations are like snapshots of a moving scene, as if taken with a futuristic three-dimensional camera. I revere the natural world as a force that at the same times sustains our existence and threatens it. I am interested in the experience of the individual within this struggle.

Make Tank:

Working in materials that can be easily transported to the gallery including but not limited to aluminum foil, wax, plaster, wire, and tape, the participants of MakeTank will be creating in the spirit of collaboration, in the space of three weeks. Results are not necessarily the goal, but instead the evolving creations will take form and fade away, taken over by other forms. The tank will be a place to see what is happening more than what has happened and is static.

michael rees

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 22:06:09 -0500

Michael Rees

x@michaelrees.com
www.michaelrees.com

biography

Michael Rees’ work takes language and nature as the starting point of his work. Valence is a primary idea in the description of language and nature as it is described in chemistry and biology. Valence is an abstract principle that describes bonding in atoms and the number of arguments that a verb can take in linguistics. These themes are the discursive elements of each of the periods of his work. Rees refers to his works as having multiple valences, layers of experience, meaning, and connectivity. These layers surround an object linguistically and then extend it into the world. These valences incorporate the biological concept of meme, the smallest unit of cultural evolution. Each work is the physical manifestation of a memeplex that refers to a body mind spirit dynamic.

His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum in the 1995 Biennial and again in 2001 in the exhibition BitStreams. He has had international exhibitions at the MARTa Museum in Germany, and shown in New York galleries. The work is included in public collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art and also at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas city with a large permanent public installation of sculpture and animation Putto 2x2x4. Rees utilizes performance, animation, video, installation, sculptural objects, computer software programs, and interactivity.

In 2008 Rees won a Rockefeller Renew Media Grant for the project Social Object: sculpture and software. His sculpture Converge: Ghraib Bag is on exhibit at The Fields Sculpture Park at Art Omi, Ghent, New York. His work is also included in e-form at the Beijing Today Art Museum and the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, both in China.

Rees is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Digital Media at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ.

make tank grows out of the desire for artists to get together and work together. It takes as its model a musical jam session where artists get together to play and share ideas and influences. It involves the idea of a think tank, a place where experts evolve ideas on human problems. Its a make tank because thinking is evolved through making or translated into a process. The ideal make tank are people in a room together, working, absorbed, listening to music or electronic lectures. They are working, talking, laughing. Pushing and pulling language material models and forms. Engaged with simple materials and high minded ideals.

make tank will take place at the LAB Gallery on the south east corner of Lexington Avenue and 47th street, will take place from November 5- November 25. Four artists, Robert Gero, Prem Makeig, Michael Rees, and Matthew West will get together and work together in the space for 3 weeks. There is no set schedule for their arrival and departure but viewers can often see the work that is made and sometimes the work being made. These sculptors will use a variety of materials and objects to work in a changing exhibit where their presence and activity is as much the work as the product of the work. There is no final piece or finished project, rather the idea is for people to have a glimpse into artists making their work and for the artists themselves to jam together on their own projects or to join up and work together-- as they see fit.

They will use clay, plaster, foam and other materials to work out ideas in form. The LAB gallery cannot be entered by the viewer. A white cube-- its a glass tank with 2 sides exposed through picture windows to the street. This makes it an ideal place for make tank.

matt west

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 10:48:22 -0500

Matthew West
mwestie@mac.com
www.westieinc.com

Matthew West grew up in South Dakota and lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Matthew West creates installations, sculptures, and animations that include realistic figures such as Automobiles, Buffalos, and abstract minimalist forms. These works derive from personal experiences and the repurposing of frontier myths and involve the human body with a shift from the abstraction to realism.

An interdisciplinary collective where sculptors, thinkers, and geeks gather within a confined "tank" to experiment with public space through do-it-yourself creations. The collective will meet during make-tank sessions to work out new creative possibilities implemented through documentations drawings, sculptures, and performance. This will happen using low-tech materials that allow for high-tech improvised sessions.