Opening Tonight @ Winkleman Gallery, "Send Me the JPEG" and in the Curatorial Research Lab, OptikNerve, by Gary Petersen

Send Me the JPEG

Summer Group Exhibition

June 27-August 2, 2013

Opening: Thursday, June 27, 6-8 PM

Click image above for a brief reality check on the "ease" of online shopping.

In a recent survey by art industry analysts ArtTactic (conducted for art insurers Hiscox), 64% of contemporary art collectors reported having made the decision to purchase an artwork from digital images before actually seeing the artwork in person. While the survey’s report concedes, “Whether all areas of the art world will embrace online trading remains to be seen,” the findings have nonetheless been interpreted in a wide variety of ways: from “Contemporary art collectors are increasingly skipping the first-hand physical experience of viewing art in galleries, and buying ‘sight unseen’ through internet images” to “the online art trade will grow exponentially within the next five years.”

Winkleman Gallery is also very excited about the reach that digital opportunities offer to promote our artists outside the gallery space itself, but we’re a bit skeptical that the rise in the number of collectors who have purchased some art from JPEGs indicates any dramatic impact for the future of “the physical experience.” Rather, we’re convinced the secret to success in the digital age lies in finding the right balance between online presentations and those in person. It is with finding that balance in mind that we present  “Send Me the JPEG,” a summer group show opening June 27, 6-8 pm and running through August 2, 2013.

“Send Me the JPEG” will showcase works from gallery artists, including Cathy Begien, Janet Biggs, Jimbo Blachly, Jennifer Dalton, Rory Donaldson, Chris Dorland, Yevgeniy Fiks, Joy Garnett, Ulrich Gebert, Shane Hope, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, The Chadwicks, Leslie Thornton and Andy Yoder. However, no actual works of art will be on view. Rather digital images of the works will be displayed on large flat-screen monitors. The original artworks in the exhibition run the gamut, from room-sized installations to performance-based interventions, from paintings to prints, from sculpture to photographs. Everything except video, which ironically most online channels are still struggling with.

Obviously, this is a fantasy group exhibition. We could never actually present all these works in our space at the same time. The ability to “present” larger works or more works than our physical space permits is one of the advantages of online presentations. Among the limitations, however, is the ability to effectively communicate an artist’s carefully considered, site-determined decisions, or textures, or the impact of scale, or visual subtlties, or...etc. etc.

In short, “Send Me the JPEG” seeks to question what is gained and what is lost in this new era of collecting. The increase in accessibility and the flow of information has eliminated the formerly formidable geographic obstacles that made it difficult to disseminate images and ideas.  An attendant rise in the amount of capital being devoted to the production and display of contemporary art has made it possible for more artists than ever before to exist.  These have to be seen as positive.  By the same token, the basic relationship between viewer and object has been fractured. Indeed, in this new order, the way a work looks in a photograph (even if it is itself a photograph) trumps all other concerns, which has affected what is made, as well as how it is contextualized. "Disruptive technology" is well named, and one must adapt. Ultimately, though, we trust that “Send Me the JPEG” is an argument that there still is value in experiencing new work in person.

For more information please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com

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Gary Petersen

OptikNerve

In collaboration with Doreen McCarthy

June 27-August 2, 2013

Opening: Thursday, June 27, 2013

In the Curatorial Research Lab, we are pleased to present OptikNerve, a wall painting by Gary Petersen, organized by Doreen McCarthy.  Petersen, a  painter who works on wood panels and paper activated by synthetic colored, geometric abstraction, has created two previous wall paintings including a large scale piece in Wall Works at The Painting Center (New York, 2011).  After the Wall Works exhibition, a discussion ensued between McCarthy, a sculptor, and Petersen regarding the  challenge of working in a fixed space where the artwork was both painting and installation. Wall painting as a medium has its origins in the very earliest history of painting from the caves of Lascaux to Medieval frescos as well as within the current purviews of graffiti, modernist muralists. The shift from a traditional support that is portable and intimate to an enlarged scale that is a temporary work in conversation with and transformation of the architecture of a unique space, was the impetus for Petersen and McCarthy to engage the Curatorial Reseach Lab. The radical enlarging of planes, angles, wedges, and areas of color in Petersen’s small paintings transform the visual experience of viewing an object d’art to entering into and experiencing the painting as a 3-dimensional environment.

Gary Petersen was born in Staten Island, New York. He holds a B.S. degree from The Pennsylvania State University and an M.F.A. from The School of Visual Arts. Awards have included The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, Space Program 2010-2011, in Brooklyn, New York, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Painting Fellowship Award for 2011, 2002,1993 and the Visual Arts Fellowship Award, Edward F. Albee Foundation, 1988. His work has been exhibited widely in New York City and throughout the United States. He has had solo exhibitions at Michael Steinberg (New York), 2005; Fusebox (D.C.), 2004; Genovese/Sullivan Gallery (Boston), 2002 & 1999; White Columns (New York), 1992. Recent group exhibitions have included Jason McCoy Gallery, Theodore Art, Storefront Bushwick Gallery, Edward Thorp Gallery, Mckenzie Fine Art, Lori Bookstein Gallery, Allegra La Viola Gallery, The Painting Center, Sue Scott Gallery, The Bronx River Art Center. Past group exhibitions include Janet Kurnatowski, Lohin-Geduld, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Triple Candie, Plus/Ultra (Winkleman) Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun, Diverse Works (TX), Newark Museum and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition in 1993. His work has been reviewed in Art in America (2012 and 2005), The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Partisan Review. He currently has a studio at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City and resides in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Doreen McCarthy is a sculptor based in New York. Her work has been exhibited  in  numerous group and solo projects in the United States and internationally in Europe and Japan.  In 2013 McCarthy had solo projects at Indiana University, Columbus, Indiana, Galerie Junger, Shanghai, China and a public project in the lobby of the 200 Friedrichstrasse, a Philip Johnson building in the Mitte neighborhood of Berlin.

For more information, contact Ed Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com