The Darkest Hour Is Just Before the Dawn Owen Mundy + Joelle Dietrick
In The Country of Last Refuge

The Impossibility of Remaining,

Desire Street, Evonne M. Davis
Desiderium
September 8 - October 6, 2007
Opening Reception September 8, 2007 6-9 PM
Curated by Evonne M. Davis

See images from reception

Desiderium (n.)
Deep, unfulfilled longing. Yearning. Desire without hope
Anything desired; that of which the lack is felt; a want generally felt and acknowledged.

The end of Desire Street is the river, according to curator Evonne M. Davis. Unfulfilled desires- whether terminal or provisional- temporarily unite 29 artists, by transporting them together to a place of unassuaged need.

Les Ayre entombs a provocative collection of favorite objects in lead, preserving them, or perhaps denying herself further access. Norene Leddy will be offering the public the opportunity to try on “hacked” platform heels that feature an embedded LCD screen, GPS transmitters and an audible alarm. Their functionality is based on extensive interviews with sex workers, and can be viewed as an extended mediation on pleasure and danger. Dahlia Elsayed stares directly into the camera and states a series of desires for specific foods. This simple expression of wants is one of the most jarring inclusions in Desiderium. It is hard to meet her eyes.

Alicia Ackerman, Laura Amussen, Les Ayre, Leticia R Bajuyo, Gianluca Bianchino, Mona Brody, Suzanne Broughel, Gema Alava Crisostomo, Robert Dandarov, Steven Dressler, Kathy Goodell, Marion Held, Kathryn Allen Hurni, LJ Lindhurst
Lara Loutrel, Tami Lynn, William Mwazi, Kelly Pinho, Brian Stuparyk, Leah K Tomaino, James Vining, Susan H Wilson,
M Laine Wyatt

In the New Media Room:
videos by Dahlia Elsayed, Carolyn L Kane, installations by Jieun Kwon, Norene Leddy and Marina Shterenberg

In the Project Room:
Ana de Portela’s installation Slumber Party is the culmination of her three month residency at Gallery Aferro, featuring cement beds and linens.

1938
August 11 + 18th, 2007, 8 PM

Instigated by Sebastian Patane Masuelli
Performance by American Watercolor Movement at 8 PM 

See images from 1938

1938 is a site-specific installation instigated by Sebastian Patane Masuelli with musical collective American Watercolor Movement. 1938 is also an original film created by Masuelli and filmmaker Michelle Mumoli. Jersey City-based American Watercolor Movement, consisting of Tom Barrett, Joe Centeno, Jason Cieradkowski, John Fesken, Mark Townsend and Brian Wilson, will be giving two live performances of "The Mustacio Suite," a musical score to the film with lyrics based loosely on the Spanish Civil war. During each performance, Masuelli will play VJ, creating a new narrative for one night only. Artists contributing to the set include John Fesken, Jesse Wright, Pete Tuomey Jr, and Seth Godwin. The recruitment and involvement of an extended community of artists and musicians for the project constitutes a semi-ironic reference to underground resistance, not unlike Thelonious Monk's 1968 Underground album. 

Michelle Mumoli is a Newark born video artist most recently credited as associate producer on '8 Bit' (a documentary about
video game artists) which premiered at MoMA last October. Her work has been shown at several galleries in the tri-state area, including the Jersey City Museum and Newark Museum.

A recent reviewer wrote of American Watercolor Movement: "It's hard to imagine this amalgam of junkyard technology, unabashed artiness, multiculturalism, and high theory coming from anywhere else" (but New Jersey.) Their songs have been described as "confusing, sleazy, foggy, threatening, decayed; usually sexy, sometimes dangerous, always alluring."

Motivated by a self-described affinity for lost causes, Masuelli has assembled a ragged army of volunteers to create a strangely seamless alternate world within Gallery Aferro's Newark space. A ghostly aura of idealism and artistic production past hangs over the entire undertaking. One such ghost might be the cinematographer for 1973's The Spirit of the Beehive, an acclaimed but obscure film about post-war Spain. During production, the cinematographer went blind.
This press release is respectfully dedicated to him.

  Youth, Conor McGrady

 Someday This Will All Be (something else)
June 16-July 14, 2007
Opening Reception June 16, 6-9 PM
Curated by Emma Wilcox

On being a local. Locally or otherwise.
With essay by Tim Maul
In the New Media Room: Gianluca Bianchino, Jonathan Franco
See images from reception

“Cause when I look in his eyes/I can see it, paradise “ –The Jellybeans*
“It ain’t a mystery/Baby not to me.” –The Misfits**

Gallery Aferro presents 5 artists working from within the landscape genre. Someday This Will All Be (something else) is about being a local, locally or otherwise, about what agenda nostalgia might serve, and about remembering the view. The ruin, the home town, the block, the unofficial monument and the front yard all get the benefit of the long view, the last look, or the look backwards.

Tim Maul returned to his hometown of Darien CT to photograph an ice machine that is a stand in for a local monument. He writes: “It remains unchanged, except for paint jobs, since the early 60's when my bicycle offered me freedom beyond my paper route. It has a superficial resemblance to some of Rachel Whitread’s work. It always had an illicit aura-boozy commuters picking up ice on the way home. As an adolescent I found this to be a ghostly transaction; I cannot recall seeing the machine serviced. Darien now is a bloated, self-satisfied real estate marvel and this machine, seemingly alone, has borne witness to change.” Maul also presents an original essay on the history of alternative spaces past and present, as seen through his experience as a NY artist.

Conor McGrady grew up in Belfast in the 70’s. His 4 x 8 foot renderings of the empty housing structures and neighborhoods are an unrelenting vision of past and potential violence, surveillance, and architectural control, and are done from memory alone. In some cases, the neighborhoods were designed with the help of military technicians. The work, according to McGrady, is not directly about Ireland, but about the ubiquity of conflict and oppression worldwide, and his aim is to raise questions relating to the control of space and boundaries

The proliferation of lush, large-scale photographs of ruins continues unabated. Dylan Chatain’s are notable for their vision of America as a landscape of hidden places, despite which (or because) there is no relief from the oppressive presence of other humans. Images of riotously overgrown greenery overtaking Staten Island- inaccessible by car until 1964–are dreamlike in their lack of obvious timestamp. Is this the past or the future?

Laurinda Stockwell’s diptychs have a similarly complex relationship with time. Rural subject matter that often functions as touristic fodder is reworked in her intimate and penetratingly honest images.

*The Jellybeans met in high school in Jersey City, NJ. By 1965, they had broken up.
**Lodi, NJ

April 21 - May 26, 2007
Curated by Emma Wilcox

Opening Reception Saturday April 21, 6-9:30

Performance by Asha Ganpat Just Like Mom and Dad's! throughout

Illustrated full color catalog available, sponsored by Newark Art Supply, also an artist owned business

Merav Ezer, Eliza Gagnon, Asha Ganpat, Ganzblum, Richard Herzog, Jessica Lagunas, Valeri Larko, Maria Adelaida Lopez, Karen Margolis, James Morgan + John Bruneau, Toni Pepe, MaryJo Rosania, Karen Zalamea, Bobby Zokaites

One of the various definitions of the word vacuum is “a partially exhausted space.”
But as in forensics, where a milligram of dust can contain a complex narrative, 14 artists have made visible the hidden significances of a minor player in mostly domestic dramas: the vacuum cleaner. For the artists, this significance may be political, scientific, nostalgic or simply perverse.

Dedicated to James Murray Spangler*, an amateur inventor/department store janitor whose chronic lung problems may have inspired him to design the modern portable vacuum cleaner, the exhibit was in turn inspired by the work of Columbian-born Maria Adelaida Lopez. Lopez’s “dust houses” are replicas of those of her former employers from her grad-student/housecleaner days, made from the dust of vacuum cleaners. The artist has stated that her work is for “all the other Marias.”

The recurring nature of dust and dirt as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation is an underlying theme for many of the artists below. Eliza Gagnon will be presenting a video edited from interviews she did with an astonishing range of Americans on various aspects of dust and cleaning, including 9/11 dust, cleaning and sex, cleaning and race, and favorite cleaning product smells. Like many of the artists, Merav Ezer’s work is informed by her experiences as an emigrant from her country of origin. Using a vacuum, she creates molds of personal objects such as cigarettes and high heels, preserving them.

Bobby Zokaites rebuilds Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners for the function of painting. The algorithm that the machines use to vacuum rooms then becomes visible. The Roombas will be painting at the opening, petting is allowed.

* Without money to develop his invention, James Murray Spangler sold his patent to his cousin’s husband William Hoover in 1908.

A Thought Experiment

Countries, Territories and Commonwealths Represented in the Show: