TEXT MESSAGE
Opening Reception
Saturday April 1st, 2017
7PM – 10PM

featuring artists

Fred Feldmesser
Michael Flechtner
Stuart Kusher
Theodore Svenningsen
Senon Williams

#TextMessageArtShow

WORDS & ART are a potent mix.

Fred Feldmesser is a self-taught artist living in Los Angeles. His art is about texture, materials and the idea of painting as an object. His work takes on greater power and influence than the icon or objects themselves. Feldmesser distances the icon from its context by combining and isolating it from relevant expectations, wanting the viewer to “see” and not be afraid.  His materials include wood, steel, barbed wire, cement, glass and wax. He sees his role as an artist being that of an activist, to foster questioning and awareness of anyone or anything through the presentation of confrontational, uncomfortable or whimsical images.

“I am intrigued, surprised, curious at how bountiful is the sense of indignation to injustice much of the work keys into. The direction appears unrepentant in its lack of forgiveness for man’s imperfections.”- Mel Sobel

Master sculptor Stuart Kusher is an irreverent classicist, a polydextrous visual communicator, a post-media mythologist and consummate rule-breaker for whom content, concept, technique, process, and meaning are bound together in a singular intuitive imperative — telling the many varied stories of humanity, beginning with his own.
– critic Shana Nys Dambrot

Kusher, renowned for his epic sculptural works, presents viewers a rarified window into the artist’s creative process. His featured work, titled “SKETCHBOOK”, is a five-foot ash-panel visual diary of sorts. A chronicle of time and place, Kusher’s 2016 epoch memorializes the untimely passing of the many and great creative souls lost to this tragic year (David Bowie and Prince among others). A potent mix of mediums demonstrates the grand versatility of Kusher’s faceted skill set, while giving us an open point of reference to the artist’s creative process.

Michael Flechtner
“Neon,  more properly luminous tube, has been my medium of expression for nearly a decade.  It has replaced the paint and sculptural materials I used as a student.  I’m ever mindful of the compelling nature of this pure, colored, glowing light and the tendency of many to see “all things neon” as signage or kitsch.  It is my experience that the more traditional viewer and critic resist seeing neon as a fine art medium.

My work reflects a fascination with the symbols of language, technology and how they influence popular culture. I describe animals, machinery, etc. and utilize various forms of language. The various ‘components’ inhabit my internal landscape.  I bring forth and arrange this highly idiosyncratic material to create pictograms, ideograms and rebuses, surely the effects of my unconscious.  Through the creation of these pieces I work through and process personal issues and attitudes.  Each piece is a complete record of that process.  In spite of this focus on my “inner self”, this work is for everyone.  To that end the figures are recognizable and the compositions are “pleasing to the eye.”  And if the viewer wants more, they can apply there own meanings and interpretations which I feel are as relevant as my own.

Because many of the pieces are so enigmatic, I post an interpretation. Often the viewer has overlain their own meanings.  Because of certain psychological theories, I believe their ideas and interpretations are as pertinent and valid in this exchange as mine.

Senon Williams‘ search for truth leaves him amazed and baffled. Creating art is his meditation on meaning in the face of a fraught existence. His works on paper begin with fragments of humanity’s ongoing questions. The pairing of words and imagery suggest deeper meaning by creating a dialogue that invites us to support or defy multiple conclusions, how do we help and how do we hurt? His mind is filled with Jagged thoughts, art is the outlet.

Theodore Svenningsen

“My text / conceptual work is comprised of various areas of interest. One involvement is with theory driven art, and concerns the exploration of the self-referential substratum forming the underpinnings of such art.

A second, unrelated to the first, area of interest concerns interrelationships between individual persons and the larger group, and investigates the difficulties and inabilities of these certain individuals to fit in.

The text, words ( or signs, as words are referred to in semiotics ) are, in these pieces, used in a their usual, everyday, denotative narrative manner. The text also becomes, in the work, an aesthetic entity in itself, independent of its denotative meaning. A conflation of these two aspects is integral to the work. Logic symbolism forms the aesthetic element in a number of the pieces.

Additional areas of concern involve the investigation of money in society and its position as almost the only criterion of importance in the judging a life, dominating and almost obliterating all truly human propensities. Another concern involves the actual, but mostly ignored, temporariness of life.

Although all of the above is the very substance of the art, it all remains within a consideration of the visual experience, for, after all is said and done, it is the visual arts.

ARTIST TALK
hosted by critic Peter Frank
FRIDAY APRIL 14th
7PM – 9PM

ART SANDWICH CONFIDENTIAL vol. III
An evening of standup comedy hosted by Ramon Rivas II
SATURDAY APRIL 29th
7PM – 10PM

click on red text for event details