Matthew Sepielli: Cathedral
February 3 - 26, 2012
Opening reception:  Friday, February 3, 6pm-10pm

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PHILADELPHIA- Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce its February 2012 exhibition, Cathedral, a project by Matthew Sepielli.

Though conceived as a cohesive project, the exhibit will have two distinctive parts; ten carved white paintings made of plaster on linen in the main gallery and a film in the gallery’s closet space.

Cathedral draws its inspiration from many different sources. Thoughts of sitting in a quiet church in the evening, watching the sun set in the winter and memories of walking in the woods late at night are all moments that are a part of its creation.

In addition, two different writers and their works have played an enormous role in the conception of the exhibit: Raymond Carver and his short story, “Cathedral” and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and his essay, “In Praise of Shadows”.

The paintings in the show will be hung high on the walls to reference cathedral windows. Along with this, the works in the show will only be lit by daylight, the indirect light of the building’s hallway and a small lamp on the gallery’s desk. Those who attend the gallery during daylight hours will see the works in more light; those who attend during evening hours or the opening will see the works in dimmer light.

In the gallery’s closet space will be a short film made by the artist.

Matthew Sepielli is an artist living in Philadelphia and a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

“Unlike most artists who find out their exhibition date has been moved up five months, Philadelphia-based artist Matthew Sepielli was delighted: “I like the idea of it being a quiet show,” he says, referring to the exhibit’s tenure in the February drab. Like the winter months themselves, Sepielli’s exhibition of 10 paintings sculpted from white plaster will be dimly lit. Depending on the time of day or night, viewers will peer at these panels with little more than the aid of a single lamp. A looped video of a nighttime walk through a forest echoes the exquisite isolation evoked in the text from which Sepielli’s show takes its cue. Looking to Raymond Carver’s iconic short story, Cathedral (as well as Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows), Sepielli carved a single cathedral window into the plaster surface of each painting and hung the panels at a height and distance that suggests a cathedral’s nave. Contemplating these elliptical panels in the winter half-light, you may just notice a single orb making its slow ascent over the snowy surface of the plaster. Like Carver’s story, Sepielli’s Cathedral suggests that after all is said and done, there may be a glimmer of hope.”

[FEBRUARY FIRST FRIDAY PICKS]

“…one of the temple’s treasures, hanging in a large, deeply recessed alcove. So dark are these alcoves, even in bright daylight, that we can hardly discern the outlines of the work; all we can do is listen to the explanation of the guide.”

     - Excerpt from Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s, “In Praise of Shadows”, 1933

“All right,” he said. “All right, let’s do her.”

He found my hand, the hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. “Go ahead, bub, draw,” he said. “Draw. You’ll see. I’ll follow along with you. It’ll be okay. Just begin now like I’m telling you. You’ll see. Draw,” the blind man said.

So I began. First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy.

“Swell,” he said. “Terrific. You’re doing fine,” he said. “Never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that. Go on now. Keep it up.”

     -Excerpt from Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, 1981

Twee Abstraction
curated by Alex Paik 
January 6 - 29, 2012
Reception: Friday, January 6, 6 – 10pm

[MORE IMAGES] [ESSAY BY ALEX PAIK]

“Twee Abstraction, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and curated by TSA member Alex Paik, is composed of nine artists from the younger generation who make every effort to undermine formality. The appearance of a lack of technique is celebrated in these paintings, which often employ fragile found materials and underworked surfaces. A look of abjectness is cultivated.

Three of this show’s works hone its ideals particularly well: Jeffrey Scott Mathews’ sewn canvas composition of red and white triangles, DLTA SQNC (RED HEX) (2011); Suzanne Goldberg’s delicate sculpture of wire, plastic netting and wood, The Lovable Pauper (2011); and Tamara Zahaykevich’s Pumpkin Queen (2011), a painted paper-and-foamboard construction that puffs out almost two feet from the wall, and charmingly so.”

[SAME/NOT, BY EDITH NEWHALL]

“Down the hall from Grizzly in galleries next to each other reside some eye-popping works in bright, happy colors. Tiger’s themed show “Twee Abstraction” has a couple of pieces that, whether twee or not I am unable to say, but are pretty great works of color and shape. Tamara Zahaykevich’s “Pumpkin Queen,” a pastel easter-egg-cum-cupcake on the wall (made of foamboard, paper, acrylic, paint, glue) evokes birthday parties, pinatas, and bon bons of all sorts.

 Alex Paik’s zig-zag color-pencil-striped paper construction “Prelude and Fugue” likewise brings up ideas of party games — rubiks’ cubes gone bananas, game boards to nowhere and something like what Frank Stella might have made if he ever had a sense of humor or the ability to not take himself soooo seriously.

 Andrew Masullo’s “5326″ makes (in my mind anyway) a reference to the Canadian flag, only the hallowed maple leaf has been turned into a cheery, cherry-red splat.”

[AROUND THE WORLD AT 319 N 11TH, BY ROBERTA FALLON]

“A lot of abstraction shows miss the mark by being more about the individual works than about what abstraction can holistically contribute to one’s sense of experience.  This is not the case here.”

[TWEE ABSTRACTION, BY ALEXANDER CONNER]

“There’s something about the descriptor “twee” that seems to welcome detractors. Haters will prattle on about how it’s just so sickly sweet and then knock its perceived lack of ambition. Granted, this debate is mostly a matter of taste, but if these cold-hearted hepcats want nothing to do with a return to playful innocence where jangly, lo-fi guitars and cooing vocals provide the soundtrack, then so be it. For everyone else, there’s “Twee Abstraction,” the latest group exhibition from Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Alex Paik curates and exhibits as he and eight others (including Andrew Masullo, who was just tapped to show at the 2012 Whitney Biennial) “take the mentality of early twee-pop and apply it.” Primarily using fragile materials such as found wood, wire, fabric and folded paper, the exhibition isn’t so much in-your-face as it is please-look-at-this, for it was made with care.”

[TWEE ABSTRACTION, BY CHRIS BROWN]

Congratulations to Andrew Masullo and Joanna Malinowska, who were both picked for the 2012 Whitney Biennial!  Andrew Masullo is currently in Twee Abstraction, and Joanna Malinowska was in Summer Above in June 2011.

Twee Abstraction
curated by Alex Paik 
January 6 - 29, 2012

It makes sense that a show called Twee Abstraction would take place in an artist-run exhibiton space, since its birth is rooted in the DIY, independent music scene of punk and post-punk. Abandoning the political overtones of punk, the early twee pop bands combined the DIY attitude and straightforward, three-chord rock of punk with childish lyrics and bright 60s girl group harmonies. Their music was called a “revolt into childhood” by some commentators, but branding these bands as a faux naive movement doesn’t do them justice. While there were often childish elements to twee pop, it is really the way that these musicians combined a serious playfulness with a punky, DIY approach to their instruments and song structure that is the focus of this exhibition.

The artists in Twee Abstraction can be seen as descendants of the Post-Minimalism giant Richard Tuttle, who responded to Minimalism in a way not unlike how the twee bands responded to punk rock – by replacing the endgame philosophy of Minimalism with a radical playfulness and restless search for serendipity from humble materials. Thirty years on, this radical playfulness permeates the processes and materials of many contemporary artists working today . Raphael Rubinstein called this “Provisional Painting” in an eponymously titled Art in America article, while, more recently, Sharon Butler explored this idea in a Brooklyn Rail article entitled “The New Casualists.”

One can feel this “revolt into childhood,” in the work of the artists in Twee Abstraction. Lauren Collings’s Capton Bunc is literally finger painted and crudely collaged, recalling arts and crafts time in elementary school, while Tamara Zahaykevich’s Pumpkin Queen feels like an oversized toy with colors pulled from a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Alex Paik’s Prelude and Fugue (Cootie) feels like a child’s clunky origami interpretation of an early Frank Stella and is, in fact, named after a “cootie catcher.”

The more “straightforward” artists in the show mirror the simple, three chord rock that the twee pop bands inherited from punk. Andrew Masullo’s 5236 reveals an elegance in its seemingly straightforward composition, while the loose brushiness of Brooke Moyse’s Small Yellow Diamonds with Pink Lines creates a complex painterly space through deceptively simple means.

The artists in Twee Abstraction emphasize the slight imperfections of non-mechanical mark making, much like how the slightly out of tune guitars or the hissing white noise from lo- fi recording methods permeate the music of early twee pop bands. Siobhan Liddell’s Untitled combines casually crumpled up paper with decidedly hand-cut forms, while Jeffrey Scott Matthews’s strange rug-quilt’s beautifully sewn triangles are stained with grit and paint splatters.

This “casualist” approach to materials and markmaking mirrors twee pop’s DIY aesthetic. Whether it is through Suzanne Goldenberg’s gracefully underproduced The Lovable Pauper, which feels almost accidental in its construction, or through Caroline Santa’s radically under-composed bulletin board that blurs the line between found and constructed object, the artists in Twee Abstraction exhibit an extreme trust in their materials and a distaste for overproduction.

Country musician Harlan Howard once said that all you needed to write a good country song was “three chords and the truth.” In many ways, the artists of Twee Abstraction follow this maxim – by taking a lo-fi and straightforward approach to artmaking, these artists manage to reveal some truth about their materials or about the process of artmaking through work that is refreshingly sincere, graceful, and playful.

— Alex Paik is an artist and was the founder and director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Congratulations to Ethan Greenbaum, who was recently picked as one of Modern Painters’s “100 Artists to Watch in 2012.”  Ethan’s work was in No Objective in August 2009.

Gerard Brown: “     ”
November 4 - December 18, 2011
Reception: Friday, November 4, 6 – 10pm

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PHILADELPHIA – Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia’s artist-curated exhibition space presents “      ”, an exhibition of new works on paper by Philadelphia artist Gerard Brown. The show opens with a reception on First Friday, November 4, 2011. The gallery is located at 319 N. 11th Street, Philadelphia, PA.

The exhibit of paintings and prints continues Brown’s exploration of the intersections between reading and seeing, and its punctuated title (which can be read as “blank quote” or “smart quotes”) alludes to the use of others words in the work. Two large pieces dominate the show; a multi-panel drawing in gouache on paper translates Frank O’Hara’s 1957 poem “To the Harbormaster” into nautical code flags, and a 32-part digital print conflates images of oceanographic satellite photography with James McBride’s bestselling 1996 memoir, “The Color of Water”. “I want to know what happens when things are misunderstood,” Brown says, “when messages that are encoded are not seen as meaningful, or when an attempt to communicate directly is seen as a formal gesture.” During the run of the exhibit, the gallery will release an essay by artist David Stephens and art writer Robin Rice that discusses the works.

Gerard Brown is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Foundation Department at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. A longtime participant in the Philadelphia art community, he contributed art reviews to the Philadelphia Weekly and Seven Arts magazine in the 1990s and, with City Paper critic Robin Rice, began eyelevel, a newsletter of art criticism that appeared occasionally throughout the late 1990s. He has organized exhibits and contributed essays to galleries and museums throughout the region, and is currently the Resident Scholar at the Center for Art in Wood, where he organized “Turning to Art In Wood: A Creative Journey” in observation of the newly re-named organization’s 25th anniversary. This is Brown’s third one-person exhibit, and his first in Philadelphia.

Gerard Brown: “     ”
November 4 - December 18, 2011

Alex Paik: Start to Move
October 7 - 30, 2011
Reception: Friday, October 7, 6 – 10pm

[MORE IMAGES] [INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW SEPIELLI]

PHILADELPHIA - Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce the opening of its October exhibition, Start to Move, featuring new work by New York based artist Alex Paik.

“Start to Move” is a song from post-punk band Wire’s seminal album, Pink Flag. Trouser Press said of the album: “The group manipulated classic rock song structure by condensing them into brief, intense explosions of attitude and energy.” Similarly, Alex Paik’s new small-scale paper assemblages feel like dense clusters of brightly colored forms that threaten to simultaneously explode and collapse. The new work hugs the line between being tightly composed and loosely improvised and recall the early formal experiments of the 60s and 70s and the inventive abstraction of Paul Klee or, more recently, Thomas Nozkowski . There is a sweetness about the work in the twee color palette and the toy-sized scale, but at the same time a fuck-all swagger in the laughably lo-fi paint handling and angular, chopped up forms.

Alex Paik received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and his BFA from Penn State University. He was the founder and director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid and currently lives and works in New York. He has shown throughout the United States, including a recent solo exhibition at U-Turn Art Space in Cincinnati, OH and a group show called Get on the Block at Camel Art Space in Brooklyn, NY.