Bells & Whistles by Guy Goldstein

ROOSTER GALLERY, 190 ORCHARD STREET, NYC
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, MAY 31, 6 - 8PM
EXHIBITION DATES:  MAY 31 - JULY 8, 2012

Rooster Gallery Contemporary Art and Residency Unlimited (RU) invite you to the opening of JARO 1 featuring 2 solo shows by RU artists in residency Guy Goldstein and Erin Dunn. JARO 1 is the first in a cycle of jointly organised  exhibitions. Each year, Residency Unlimited and Rooster will offer the possibility to RU artists in residency to present new work at Rooster's premises in the Lower East side..   The term Jaro is a double reference to “year” in Esperanto and “caravan" in the Kichagga language. Time and displacement are integral to the concept of artists in residency.

On the ground level, Bells & Whistles by Guy Goldstein features a new sound piece  alongside works on paper. Goldstein's investigates how to create meaning in a saturated  consumer driven society. The process leading to the sound installation derives from a precise set of conditions. The artist enters printed material information in his computer that he collects from a wide range of sources in New York (e.g. restaurant menus, health leaflets, political flyers, fashion catalogs). He then reads this information out loud and records his voice on the computer. These spoken lists constitute the foundation of the multilayered sound piece that Goldstein will update continuously over the course of the exhibition.

The perception of the audience will be put to test by these surrounding sonic elements, which can be distorted and stretched, thus becoming either completely abstract at a given time, or clear and informative at another. The sound speakers are scattered on the gallery floor with the printed lists randomly displayed on top. The friction produced by the contact of the paper with the sound waves emanating from the speakers inevitably produce rustling effects. By incorporating an aleatory element into the rational world of ordering, the artist challenges the notion of narrative.

Working in tandem with the sonic installation, "Bells and Whistles" presents a series of drawings. Realized in graphite, they feature sonic elements and urban constructions that co-exist and collide thus providing the viewer with a similar sense of fast paced living.

In the lower level of the gallery, Rapture’s Adagio by Erin Dunn presents a complex installation of painting, sculpture and a stop motion animation that synthesizes techniques and materials employed with self-produced digital recordings. The starting point for Dunn is her readings about the life of Chiara de Montefalco (or ‘Saint Clare of the Cross’) who experienced ecstasies of ‘Jesus placing a cross in her heart.’ Upon her death, four nuns dissected her heart and were the first to discover the four chambered human heart - the cross is in quadrants.

Dunn is inspired to explore metaphysical and psychedelic divinity in relation to the body. Just like the Dervishes who get caught up in ecstatic raptures, the emotional intensity of the “sisters” in the animation is  triggered by whirling dances and hallucinatory music, immersing the viewer in an alternative landscape for imagination.

The complexity of Dunn’s creative process bears similarities to fluxus solutions. The paintings are realized with precise airbrush draftsmanship combined with loose and wild encaustic marbleization. The result is a set of ambiguous mandalas and unnamable entities with many sets of eyes, simultaneously angelic and demonic that swim through sky, sea and beyond.

Likewise, the sculptures share a sense of extreme strangeness with the unusual combination of materials, such as foam, wire, plastic and human hair.