PAINTING & SCULPTURE

JESSE CHAPMAN MARK SCHUBERT

23 September – 30 October, 2005

SOUTHFIRST gallery is proud to present PAINTING & SCULPTURE, an exhibition of work by Jesse Chapman and Mark Schubert. The two-person show is on view from September 23 – October 30.

In Jesse Chapman’s oil paintings, modern subjects pose in classical interactions which, having once been the provenance of Georges de la Tour, here mediate the pantomimes of more contemporary relationships. In The Working Class, orthogonals follow the lines of jeans and shaggy hair cuts, underpainting describes a blue fingernail, and a charm-braceleted arm reaches out to enigmatically cinch a waist—and provide the compositional continuation of the canvas. The eye reads Chapman’s images first as sites of action, then as points in a grid, and finally as semi-abstract blocks of color; the figures’ faces suggest a world of disconnect in which the only portals of contact between people are objects. The paintings surprisingly suggest references as diverse as John Wesley, Earnst Ludwig Kirchner, and Raoul de Keyser. Chapman, who was born in Richland, WA in 1974, graduated from Yale with an MFA in painting in 2003. His work has previously been shown at the Suburban and Shane Campell (Oak Park), Acuna-Hansen (Los Angeles) and Hudson Franklin (New York). He and lives and works in Brooklyn.

As sculptures, Mark Schubert’s constructions set off in anamorphic directions that trail off into abstraction. His Nipperstack has the armature of a found plastic dog and the bulging spirit of a Franz West Passtücke; he turns his constructions and elaborations into a tongue-tied balancing act that suggests that the forms are overloaded with feeling. Little Squeeze 1, 2 and 3 emerge from their awkward armature of toddler children’s chairs as smooth abstract shapes of fiberglass coated with epoxy resin. With the influence of John Chamberlain, these sculptures unfold in the kind of graceful bloom sustained by a hidden root of violence and narrative. Schubert, born in St Paul, Minnesota in 1977, completed a BFA at University of Madison, WI in 1999 and graduate coursework in painting at University of Iowa, Iowa City from 1999-2000. He has shown previously with Southfirst in the Sadie Harkins Dance exhibition; he lives and works in Brooklyn.

SOUTHFIRST is located on 60 N6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 1-6 PM and by appointment. Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please contact Southfirst at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.