25 Feb - Culturecounter - Gavin Brownas Enterprise at Passerby

Opening Friday February 25, 6-8 pm

February 25 - March 26, 2005
Wed-Sat 12-6 pm

Chris Caccamise
Dorota Kolodziejczyk
Jason Meadows
Carlo Zanni + Yucef Merhi

Organized by Fernanda Arruda and Michael Clifton

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise at Passerby
436 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011
212 206 7321
[email protected]

Culturecounter

Chris Caccamise, Dorota Kolodziejczyk, Jason Meadows, Carlo Zanni + Yucef Merhi


"Popularity breeds contempt." - Quentin Crisp


"Culturecounter" brings together five artists whose work reflects a collusion and embrace of popular culture. Celebrity, consumerism and prevalent taste emerge as subject and material in the sculpture, painting, collage and new media artwork on display.


Carlo Zanni and Yucef Merhi hacked into the online database of a New York entertainment magazine and created an ideal dynamic city to visualize information in constant flux. Live queries shift the scale of skyscrapers every 5 minutes while CNN news links and meteorology websites provide an apocalyptic atmosphere. Their contemporary networked landscape operates as a visual diagram and social metaphor of a public sculpture, as any urban center is.


Wrapped in candy colors, the paper and enamel text sculptures of Chris Caccamise comment on the commodification of longing and desire in popular culture. Although the structuring ground for several sculptures features idyllic mountain vistas and jubilant rainbows, the text messages, which often come from Top 40 pop songs, render the view artificial and bittersweet. His newest piece "I like things pretty much the way they are" beckons to the complacency of the current moment.


Dorota Kolodziejczyk engages the drip and stain of abstract painting's legacy through controlled negotiation of color and space. Hand brushwork augments multiple layers of poured paint and give rise to horizontal swathes of color that bracket and amplify the action on the canvas. Though titles ("Izod", "Living Large") often originate in popular culture, they transcend their origin and instead refer to compositional qualities.


In a typical work by Jason Meadows, the construction of an object is as exposed as the source material used to build it. Nuts, bolts, magazines and MDF, along with the occasional celebrity riff, reverberate the accessibility of our off-the-shelf consumer culture. The artist favors "subjects of common origin… to privilege to common". Brad Pitt, Jimmy Carter, Spiderman and an Internet porn star have materialized as subject matter in recent collage and sculptural works.


February 25 - March 26, 2005
Wed-Sat 12-6 pm

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise at Passerby
436 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011
212 206 7321
[email protected]