By Daniel Rothbart and Maia Anthea Marinelli

July 9-30th, 2010

June 15th, 2010 The LAB (for installation + performance art) is pleased to announce ‘Soundstorm’, a kinetic installation by Daniel Rothbart and Maia Anthea Marinelli. This work intends to create a dialogue between art and nature, using sculptural elements that move according to the barometric pressure in New York City, at any given time. Isobars are represented by a shifting motorized web of pulleys and ropes that envelope the gallery and produce metallic noise. These sounds will be piped outside the gallery to complete the tableau vivant.

Daniel Rothbart’s work looks at the relationship between nature, urban postmodern identity and metaphysics. Rothbart holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University and won a Fulbright grant to Naples, Italy in 1990. His work can be found in public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Recent projects include exhibitions at the Andrea Meislin Gallery, Exit Art and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill. His latest European exhibition took place at Galerie Depardieu in Nice in June 2010.

Maia Anthea Marinelli’s work explores themes of women in relation to their cultural environment through conceptual strategies with sculpture, land art, photography, performance and interactive installations.Marinelli holds a B.F.A. from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence Italy, and an M.F.A. from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Her work has been exhibited at the Biennale of Mediterranean Artists, the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa, Italy.

For more information please contact Danika Druttman on 212.339.2092 or email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront turned fishbowl producing 30+ fast paced performance art and installation exhibitions annually. Aimed at furious midtown foot traffic, The LAB’s programming is designed to confront modern relationships between art and audience and seeks to force interaction between high energy, “outrospective” exhibitions and nearly 25,000 daily passersby. THE LAB is located on the North East corner of 47th and Lex and is a Roger Smith Collaboration in Art. www.thelabgallery.com

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The LAB (for installation + performance art) is pleased to announce ‘The Trader’s Ball’, an installation by French artist Fred Forest. With his trademark over the top irony, Forest rubs salt in the wounds of the free market banking industry , mocking their response to the financial crisis that has shaken the world. The installation will include corporate mannequins dancing the night away in The LAB and parallel scenes of jovial ignorance taking place via Second Life on large screens in the gallery. The action will take place to music by New York rapper Jamalski, who will orchestrate the movements of the dancers to a syncopated beat based on the real time fluctuation of the financial markets. To see the project’s website go to: www.thetradersball.com/

This piece will be in conjunction with a piece based around Forest’s Second Life avatar, Ego Cyberstar, that will be showing at The Science Fair at Flux Factory, June 5^th- 13^th.

Photos: Adam Wallace

Fred Forest is a French new media artist. He is the holder of a state doctorate in the humanities from the Sorbonne and has also taught on the faculty of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Cergy-Pontoise and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. Forest has taken part in the Biennale of Venice (1976) and the Documenta of Kassel (1977, 1987) and his work has won awards at the Bienal do São Paulo (1973) and the Festival of Electronic Arts of Locarno (1995). In 2004, Forest’s archives, including his video works, were added to the collection of the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel of France and a retrospective of his work was held at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in 2007. Beginning in 2008, Forest launched a new series of performances in the environment of Second Life.

For more information please contact Danika Druttman on 212.339.2092 or email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront turned fishbowl producing 30+ fast paced performance art and installation exhibitions annually. Aimed at furious midtown foot traffic, The LAB’s programming is designed to confront modern relationships between art and audience and seeks to force interaction between high energy, “outrospective” exhibitions and nearly 25,000 daily passersby. THE LAB is located on the North East corner of 47th and Lex and is a Roger Smith Collaboration in Art. www.thelabgallery.com

The Traders’ Ball Second Life Video

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Park’s work fuses the raw material of music into visual, emotional and intellectual forms by drawing with cut paper, shaping, and layering positive and negative space, into rhythms. The paper is meticulously cut and composed, opened and closed, with a focus on creating lines that specify coherent patterns of light and shadows on a grid, forming a visual musical structure. In essence, the paper itself becomes the instrument that draws light into musical patterns.

Park has tried to create living forms and images of flowers with cut paper combined with color, sound and light, expressing  inner  rhythms with a feeling. This musical structure-living forms of the flowers, is an abstract and metaphysical realm. Music, by evoking that abstract space, inspires Park to create new spaces through her art. For Space Rhythm Drawings- Flowers, Ga Hae Park will combine Sonatas, BWV 1030 -1035 by Johann Sebastian Bach.

For more information, or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact Danika Druttman at rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com or 212.339.2092

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront turned fishbowl producing 30+ fast paced performance art and installation exhibitions annually. Aimed at furious midtown foot traffic, The LAB’s programming is designed to confront modern relationships between art and audience and seeks to force interaction between high energy, “outrospective” exhibitions and nearly 25,000 daily passersby. THE LAB is located on the North East corner of 47th and Lex and is a Roger Smith Collaboration in Art. www.thelabgallery.com

Photos: Adam Wallace

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BENNYROYCE DANCE PRODUCTIONS’
CHRONOS PROJECT

An evening of dance on a theme of time…

Featuring World Premieres by
Brian Gibbs
Nilas Martins
Monique Meunier
Bennyroyce Royone

DATE: April 22-24, 2010
TIME: 7:30PM
LOCATION: 184 Eldridge Street, NY
ADMISSION: $15 General ($10 Student & Seniors)

WWW.BENNYROYCE.COM
WWW.UNIVERSITYSETTLEMENT.ORG

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The source for this site-specific wall drawing was a pencil drawing done in Japan in 2001. The situation took place in Kid Ailack Hall in Tokyo where 40 performance artists were walking through their performances in a large stage area, identifying places where props were to be placed, where lighting technicians needed to place a spotlight, where and when technicians were to produce sound for each performance. O’Hara sat alone in the audience area and drew the movement of all these proceedings, tracking each person as he or she crossed and re-crossed the stage area. She made one large drawing of all observable movement for four hours in that space.

For this site, the 2001 stage-blocking drawing was photographed, downloaded into a computer, printed in sections, copied onto acetate and projected in sections onto the walls of the LAB using an overhead projector. The work progressed from left to right. Thirty volunteers from Fordham University, the School of Visual Arts, artsengine, LAB supporters, and occasional passersby assisted Morgan O’Hara with the painting. The modus operandi was to paint black the spaces between the lines, allowing the lines to emerge on their own from the white walls.

A site-specific wall drawing is a drawing which is done specifically for a particular space. Concept, scale, proportion and architectural elements must all be taken under careful consideration. This particular drawing was selected by O’Hara from among many possibilities as the best one for this particular space. In the nearby theatre district of New York as well as in the many concert halls not far from the Roger Smith Hotel, preparations for performance are taking place every day. It is hoped that this drawing will call attention to the many unnoticed backstage activities which support the performing arts.

Live Transmission is on view 24/7 at The LAB (for installation + performance art) thru May 7th, 2010.

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The LAB (for installation + performance art) will be hosting “Live Transmissions” a series of live collaborative time based performances by our current LAB artist, Morgan O’Hara, and a selection of unique musicians and artists. They will take place in the Gallery, which is also the location of O’Hara’s latest site specific wall drawing. Each performer will play in the space while O’Hara simultaneously draws a “Live Transmission”, which will result in an abstracted map of the their gestures.

Each performance will be fully audible and visible from the street outside the gallery on 47th and Lexington.

For more information please contact Danika Druttman 212.339.2092  or email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

Schedule

MORGAN O’HARA and Friends at the LAB  April 2^nd-May 7th 2010

Morgan O’Hara’s Live Transmission drawings track, in real time, the vital movement of living beings, transcending both figuration and abstraction, executing a direct neural translation from one human action into another. Drawing methodically with multiple razor-sharp pencils and both hands, as time-based performance, O’Hara condenses movement into accumulations of graphite line which combine the controlled refinement of classical drawing with the unbound sensuality of spontaneous gesture. In the context of her recently completed site-specific wall drawing, O’Hara will do a LIVE TRANSMISSION DRAWING PERFORMANCE duet, drawing with each of the following. The site-specific wall drawing, Backstage Transmission, will be in place until 7 May 2010.

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PETER GREGSON  20 April  6 – 7 PM
Broadcast LIVE on rogersmithlife.com @ 6pm – DON’T MISS IT!

Born in Edinburgh, Peter Gregson is a cellist and innovator in the field of contemporary music. He has performed widely in the UK and the US, at venues ranging from The Royal Albert Hall in London to the Twitter Offices in San Francisco.  Recently commissioned by Bowers & Wilkins and Peter Gabriel to record an album of original music for acoustic and electric cellos for their Society of Sound label. His work has been recognized with the 2008 Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for music and with membership in the Courvoisier Future 500. Peter is the 2010/2011 Creator in Residence at the Hospital Club in London. Selected performances in 2010 include MIT Media Lab, Roundhouse, Future Gallery, 92nd Street Y, The LAB, Queen’s Hall and King’s Place.

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KEVIN NORTON  22 April  8 – 9 PM

Kevin Norton is a unique percussionist (at times playing vibraphone and drum set simultaneously) as well as a prolific composer with over a dozen CDs released as a leader. Kevin has played with many highly esteemed European improvisers such as Paul Rogers, Joëlle Léandre, Paul Dunmall and Frode Gjerstad. For ten years, Norton was Anthony Braxton’s main percussionist in both the “ghost trance” phase and the “standards” phase, plotting out the course for all percussionists who followed him. His most recent projects include compositions for various sized chamber groups and a duo with pianist Connie Crothers. Norton was a resident composer at the prestigious MacDowell Colony and has served on the faculty of several schools including the University of Maryland. He is currently on the faculty of William Paterson University.

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DAVID WATSON       26 April 2 – 3 PM

Originally form New Zealand, where he was instrumental in developing a scene in for experimental and improvised music where he co-founded braille records to record the local improv music scene , David Watson has become an internationally respected highland bagpipe player whose work subverts any conventional expectation. His performances draw on traditional sources, electronics, and experimental improvisation to “blow the bagpipes into the 21st century”. In 1987 he moved to New York and has performed in clubs, new music and concert venues throughout New York (cbgb’s, The Knitting Factory, The Cooler), Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He has curated  music series  for Roulette, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, St. Mark’s Church, Greenwich House, Bang-on-a-Can, PS 1, and PS 122, toured Japan with John Zorn and members of The Boredoms, Merzbow, Ground Zero, Makigami Koichi among others.

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JUNSUNG KIM  26 April 6 – 7 PM

Born in Seoul, Korea, attended Hunter College, the Art Institute of Chicago, and currently a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Junsung Kim will perform his piece “108 Deep Bows”. For Kim, O’Hara’s site-specific wall drawing evokes a strong sense of Buddhism, seeing it as a metaphor for “Tangled human relationships among living beings and the universe which are both absolute and simultaneously fall into nothingness.” Using white paint, rice paper and black thread he will prepare himself physically and then execute the practice of 108 deep bows in the space.

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TOMOMI ADACHI 28 April 8 – 9 PM

Born in Kanazawa, Japan, Tomomi Adachi is a performer, composer, sound poet, and installation artist. He studied philosophy and aesthetics at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has played improvised music with voice, live electronics and self-made instruments and composed work for his group “Adachi Tomomi Royal Chorus” which is a punk-style choir. He has performed contemporary music by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Dieter Schnebel, as well as Kurt Schwitters’s “Ursonate”. for the first time in Japan. Recent work involves voice, sensors, computer, self-made instruments, and sound poetry. He is currently in residence in New York City.

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JOAN GRUBIN  29 April 3 -4 PM

Joan Grubin is a Brooklyn-based visual artist who makes dimensional installations in paper. Her work is rooted in the vocabulary of minimalist geometric painting and deals with issues of perception and color. Her intention is to engage the viewer through an optically disorienting ambiguity of space that gives rise to a tension between what is materially present and what is not. In the Lab, she will be creating elements with fluorescent paint and tape for a new wall installation of whimsical sculptural gestures made out of the detritus from her primary body of work. She has shown widely in solo and group exhibitions in and around the New York area and beyond, including the Islip Museum and the Weatherspoon Museum. In 2008 she was awarded a Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has twice been a finalist for a Percent for Art public art commission.

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Live Transmissions” are made by a process in which O’Hara, with a pencil in each hand, records the left and right hand movements of an observed subject performing a task. Drawing methodically with multiple razor-sharp pencils and both hands, as time-based performance, O’Hara condenses movement into accumulations of graphite line.Such tasks have included knitting a sweater, a farmer’s wife digging up asparagus, a musician performing on piano and street pavers setting paving stones. The result is an abstracted map of the subject’s gestures.

The installation at The LAB will first involve the projection of a selected “Live Transmission” drawing done in New York, onto the walls and floor of the space.  Then, the spaces between the lines will be painted, allowing the lines themselves to emerge from the white walls. Changes and distortions caused by parallax will be incorporated into the new drawing. The result will be a large-scale painted version of the original graphite drawing whose lines will be seen at different angles as passers-by move past the piece.

The installation will be

on view 24/7 at the corner of 47th St. and Lexington Avenue.

For more information, or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact Danika Druttman 212.339.2092

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront turned fishbowl producing 30+ fast paced performance art and installation exhibitions annually. Aimed at furious midtown foot traffic, The LAB’s programming is designed to confront modern relationships between art and audience and seeks to force interaction between high energy, “outrospective” exhibitions and nearly 25,000 daily passersby. THE LAB is located on the North East corner of 47th and Lex and is a Roger Smith Collaboration in Art. www.thelabgallery.com

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LISTINGS INFORMATION:
SPRING LAB, By Morgan O’Hara
The LAB (for installation + performance art)
501 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, 47th and Lexington
Subway: E, 6, V to 53rd and Lexington or 4, 5, 6, 7 to Grand Central
April 2-23rd, on view 24/7
Free
212-339-2092
www.thelabgallery.com

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“A Spectrum Of Jewels” will feature what Maslanka calls a ‘Dodecaorthogonal Space Poem’.  This type of ‘mathematical poem’ is constructed with twelve ‘orthogonal space poems’ arranged contiguously within a Cartesian coordinate system.  Orthogonal space poems are always in the form of ‘A’ equals ‘B’ multiplied by ‘C’. What is different in this new work is that one of the variables in each poem is a fabricated word whose meaning comes from the mathematical operation applied to the other two variables (words). The words were carefully chosen to point to a spectrum inspired by Zen teachings. Thus, the aesthetic value of the piece is derived from visualizing the meaning of all the concepts spread throughout the entire three dimensional space.

The following statements are to help navigate the installation:

The yellow ball is the point of origin for the entire system. The green balls are points in space which represent the meaning of a concept which lies on one of the ‘word axes’.  A word axis is a one dimensional line drawn between two concepts in space.  In a three dimensional space you may have three ‘word axes’.  The three word axes in this installation are “Emptiness/Thinking”, “Existence/Non-existence” and “Monasticism/Urbanity”. The red balls are points in space to delineate the coordinate pairs for which the orthogonal space poem starts.  The poem lies on the planer space that lies between the red ball, the two adjacent green balls and the yellow ball. For a better understanding of visualizing these poems you may want to Google “verbogeometry” and “Orthogonal Space Poem”.

The twelve orthogonal space poems are:
Emptiness times Urbanity = Socrastival
Emptiness times Monasticism = Apecksuval
Emptiness times Existence = Doalldoxuval
Emptiness times Non-existence = Nonalldoxuval
Thinking times Urbanity = Selcrasaval
Thinking times Monasticism = Taoodoxuval
Thinking times Existence = Wastconditival
Thinking times Non-existence = Dreemholeval
Existence times Urbanity = Natucrasaval
Existence times Monasticism = Onkeval
Non-existence times Urbanity = Boidasval
Non-existence times Monasticism = Onkeval

For more information, or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact Danika Druttman 212.339.2092

Photos: Adam Wallace

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009 The LAB (for installation + performance art) in association with SLAG Gallery, has been converted by Grimanesa Amorós into ”LA INCUBADORA”, which will be featuring “You Cannot Feel It…I Wish You Could” a sculpture installation arising out of her personal experiences during and immediately following her pregnancy with her daughter Shammiel. The installation explores the interplay between biology and society and particularly the concept of male pregnancy.

“During my pregnancy with my daughter, and afterwards when I was nursing her, I noticed how curious her father was about my experiences,” recalls Amorós. “I wanted to create a piece around motherhood, and the unbridgeable gulf between the male and female bodies, specifically in the area of reproduction. Then I began to imagine ways in which that gulf might be bridged. I am re-envisioning The Lab Gallery as a warm human incubator, in contrast to the cold exterior of Manhattan, yet concurrently reflecting its sterility. This is a new way to present “You Cannot Feel It…I Wish You Could” that works with my current sensibilities while still staying true to the original sculptures.”

The installation is comprised of eleven “clones” of a new kind of human body: a pregnant female torso with the same male head attached to each of them. The casts were taken from a mold made from the artist’s body one week before she gave birth to her daughter. The floor beneath and around the body-casts is covered with soft, pale sand referencing the earth as a foundation for biological manipulation.

The lighting in the space and the music, a collaboration with composer Meshell Ndegeocello, who created a piece of music made specifically for the installation, reinforces the magical quality that many of us feel when confronting the wonders (or monsters?) of modern science.

Photos: Amorós Studio

Grimanesa Amorós is an interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research and critical theory, which have greatly influenced her work. She often makes use of sculpture, video, and lighting to create works that illuminate our notions of personal identity and community. Amorós utilizes her art as an agent for empowerment to involve viewers from all different backgrounds and communities. She was born in Lima. Lives and works in New York City and Peru.

For more information or to schedule an interview with the artist or for an invitation to the opening night dinner please contact Danika Druttman at ddruttman@rogersmith.com or call (212) 339-2092.

THE LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront turned fishbowl producing 20+ fast paced performance art and installation exhibitions annually. Aimed at the furious midtown foot traffic, THE LAB’s programming is designed to confront modern relationships between art and audience and seeks to force interaction between high energy, “outrospective” exhibitions and nearly 25,000 daily passersby. For more information, call 212-339-2092, or email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com. www.thelabgallery.com

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