September 4 – 28, 2008

Opening: Thursday, September 4, 6 – 8pm

chashama ABC Gallery
169 Avenue C at 10th Street
Train: F to 2nd Ave, L to 1st Ave

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 11a – 7p

New York, NY – The curatorial team of Kelly Kivland, Alisoun Meehan, and Christopher Stackhouse are pleased to present the exhibition, CONTRANYM, in conjunction with the New Voices, New York series at chashama ABC Gallery. Exploring the complexities and dubious nature of visual expression and vocal utterance, CONTRANYM will present how language is dependent on the dualities of silence and absence, presence and matter. The exhibition will include the following works by Robert Delford Brown (performance), John Cage (painting), Victoria Fu (video), Stephanie Loveless (sound/performance), and Brian Kim Stefans (digital poetics):

Robert Delford Brown, Explosion of a Tile Factory
John Cage, 10 Stones
Victoria Fu, The Lake House
Stephanie Loveless, (nothing of nothing)
Brian Kim Stefans, Scriptor

During the opening reception, visitors will be part of an original Robert Delford Brown interaction. A Fluxus artist who began his artistic life in 1950s NYC, Brown will transform the gallery front into a vibrant explosion of recycled materials, as part of a collaborative installation that is testament to joint, spontaneous action. Armed with the duct tape, string, scissors, spray paint, and newspaper, Brown and visitors will collectively create a temporary sculpture splayed out from floor to ceiling.

“The ecstatic power that has marked Brown’s art since the 1960s threw a monkey wrench into the avant garde in those days. He touches a nerve at the core of the social codes that organize not only our behavior but also the limits of our art…Robert Delford Brown’s transcendent vision takes on a great significance.” – Allan Kaprow

In John Cage’s “10 Stones,” painting functions as spiritual notation creating a lexicon beyond letters. The chance stone tracing is based on Cage’s ‘Where R = Ryoanji’ drawings inspired by the Ryoanji rock garden in Kyoto, Japan – a seminal meditative work on material and transformation.

Victoria Fu’s short video, “The Lake House,” is a palindromic riddle illustrating the convergence of affection and opposition, intimacy and estrangement in human interaction.

Brian Kim Stefans, editor of the new media poetry website www.arras.net, will premiere the digital poetics work “Scriptor,” featuring dynamically generated, largely scriptural typeface that anthropomorphize words and text with Flash animation.

The premiere of Stephanie Loveless’ sound installation in continuum, “(nothing of nothing),” developed through live performance throughout the exhibition run, weaves and re-envisions the voices of iconic divas, splitting the ghostly from the presently living, the preternatural from the basic material.

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chashama is a non-profit arts organization that provides opportunities for performing and visual artists. We support the development of art by awarding grants, producing shows and providing subsidized studio, rehearsal and performance space. Since 1995, we have provided artists with a home and the support resources necessary to present and create art that engages the community of New York. For more information, please visit www.chashama.org