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For Immediate Release
Prickly?/ @ Pulse Art Fair/ SPRING/BREAK
Causey Contemporary artists and director have busy March Media Contact: Name: Tracy Causey-Jeffery Title: Owner + Director, Causey Contemporary Contact: 212-966-2520/ [email protected]
29 Orchard St.
New York, NY 10002
t. 917.328.3140
[email protected]
AYAD ALKAHDI - JAMES BALMFORTH JORDAN EAGLES - NORMAN MOONEY - HYUNJU PARK
Prickly?
March 5 - April 6 2015
Curated by Tracy Causey-Jeffery
© Ayad Alkadhi, Thu Alfiqar I, 2013
New York, NY, January 2015; Causey Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of
Prickly? curated by Tracy Causey-Jeffery and featuring works by Ayad Alkhadi, James Balmforth, Jordan
Eagles, Norman Mooney and HyunJu Park.
The exhibition will opening during Armory Week in New York City at the gallery’s Lower East Side location
of 29 Orchard St. An opening brunch is scheduled for March 7th from 10 am - 1 pm and an extended
evening with projections by Jordan Eagles and readings on the idea of beauty will also take place on
March 14th from 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Curator, Tracy Causey-Jeffery had the following to say about her reasons for the exhibition:
“Everyone knows the old saying, " Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but does that hold true when the
beholder is viewing art? It has been my observation that often viewers initially describe an artwork as
beautiful only to change their minds once they ﬁnd out more about the materials used to create it, the
concept behind it or the physicality of the piece. With the added knowledge, the viewer is then faced with
deciding whether or not they can live with this more uncomfortable aspect of the work and indeed
whether or not they can still consider the beauty of the piece or whether it has become too "prickly" for
them to live with.
With this exhibition, Prickly? I have included works created from blood, from gallium and fat, from sharped
polished aluminum spires and jagged polished steel, from hair and nails and from a combination of words and sword images. The works by Ayad Alkahdi
(on loan from Leila Heller Gallery), James Balmforth (on loan from Hannah Barry Gallery), Jordan Eagles, Norman Mooney and HyunJu Park are all lovely
in appearance but each may, depending on the viewer, provoke a sense of unease with regards to their material usage, concept or physicality. My hope is
that the exhibition will invoke a dialogue on why one viewer is uneasy while another sees the inherent beauty and how some overcome their initial
reactions and are either able or unable ultimately to live with such beautiful but challenging works of art.”
The artists included are all contemporary artists working in varying parts of the world: Korea, London, the Middle East and New York.
Ayad Alkadhi’s work focuses on cultural and political topics of Iraq and the Middle East. The work is mainly biographical and sometimes incorporates his
painted image. His use of Arabic newspaper on mixed-media canvases, as well as his use of calligraphy, connects elements of traditional medium to
contemporary art. The collision produces images that ultimately express the artist’s perceived existence at the crux of East and West polarities.
James Balmforth’s work has a basic interest in chemistry and physics. He often exploits the physical properties of materials and their interactions to
accumulate meaning around the physical metaphors produced by the materials.
Blood, procured from a slaughterhouse, is the primary medium in Jordan Eagles’ works. Through his experimental, invented process, he encases blood in
plexiglass and UV resin.
Norman Mooney’s work from the Wall Flowers and the Sun series feature pigmented aluminum or polished steel formed into beautiful natural shapes but
with a sharp physical presence. His works explore the elemental and cyclical synergies of nature.
HyunJu Park’s works are created from hair, tiny nails, sumi ink and are occasionally subjected to burns. She began by using her own hair to make a selfportrait. To HyunJu, hair became an intensely physical thing, but one that outlasts the rest of the physical body. At the same time, it evokes the spiritual
qualities of a human being, thereby transcending physical existence.
Prickly? will open at Causey Contemporary on March 5 and run through April 6, 2015 with an opening brunch on Saturday, March 7th from 10 am - 1 pm
and an extended evening featuring projections by Jordan Eagles and a reading on March 14th from 6:30 - 8 pm.
MELISSA MURRAY JOHN J. RICHARDSON
PULSE New York 2015
5-8 March 2015 - Booth C7
Causey Contemporary will feature mixed media works of
Melissa Murray and sculptures of John J. Richardson at PULSE
NY. Find the gallery’s presentation in Booth C7.
Murray's work focuses on the idea of freezing an active moment
of thought. Walking the daily line, events occur that shift our
paths in drastic ways, creating a pattern of personalized images
that are swiftly tucked away in our subconscious. She makes
each of her works a collection of coded memories quieted yet clariﬁed by capturing the slightest moment in thought. At present, she is working from a
letter that was found among the papers of her grandfather, Flight ofﬁcer, John J. Murray who was killed over France on June 22, 1944. Each piece from
this new series focuses on one line from the letter.
Through his sculpture, Richardson investigates a notion of mind/body duality where a created object begins as an extension of the maker and then
emerges as a separate entity that may or may not be interdependent. He works in a variety of media including cast and welded metals, rubber, glass,
wood, plastic, and stone.
Melissa Murray is an up and coming artist living and working in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her works are large scale mixed medium on paper, with concepts
focused on the combining of multiple environments in one still image. Selected group exhibitions at the MOSI Museum in Tampa, Florida, the Target
Gallery in Alexandria, VA, Chashama in New York, NY and Causey Contemporary, and 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, NY. Solo exhibitions at Fuse Gallery, AdHoc Art
and Causey Contemporary and Gallery SAS in Montreal. Her work has been published and or reviewed several prominent magazines such as the L
magazine, The Village Voice, and the NY Arts Magazine.
John J. Richardson earned his graduate degrees in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his undergraduate degree from the University
of Puget Sound, Tacoma WA. He currently teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he is the Chair of the department. He has
participated in over 50 national, group exhibitions and held many one-person exhibitions – including a one-person exhibition at the South Bend Museum of
Art, an exhibition at the University of Minnesota-Morris and at the Finlandia University.
BEN BERTOCCI - KEVIN BOURGEOIS - STEVEN DOBBIN - GREG HABERNY CHRIS HIPKISS - KEN LITTLE - O ZHANG SWOON
Spring/Break Art show 2015
Implausible Exchanges
Curated by Tracy Causey-Jeffery
5-8 March 2015
It seems that in this period of our cultural, economic and political history the
transactions that take place between business, governments and people are most
often an impossible undertaking or exchange with missing components, hidden
agendas and often with one side coming out much better at the end of the deal
than the other. As always the artists are the ones willing to speak up about these
unbalanced transactions, point them out and or poke fun at them. The exhibition,
Implausible Undertakings will feature works by artists who do just that: Ben
Bertocci, Kevin Bourgeois, Greg Haberny, Chris Hipkiss, Ken Little, O Zhang and Swoon.
Ben Bertocci received his Associates Degree from Simon’s Rock College, his B.F.A. in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts
and his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University, where he was later employed for a year as a visiting assistant professor in printmaking. His
works have appeared in exhibitions at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Arts, the Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, Boston
Univeristy’s Gallery 808 and at Fuse Gallery among others. Currently he lives in Brooklyn and works as a studio painter and vinyl area
supervisor at Jeff Koons Studios.
Kevin Bourgeois has been working as a self taught contemporary artist for over fifteen years using all available means to educate and
expand his vocabulary in Modern Art. In 1991, Kevin held his first solo and group exhibitions in a gallery. Since living in New York Kevin has
exhibited locally and internationally.His work has also been exhibited at Collectors Contemporary in Singapore, the Virginia Beach Museum of
Art and the Orlando Museum of Art. He was also part of a group exhibition at Collector’s Contemporary in Singapore alongside art by Man Ray,
Andy Warhol, Donald Baechler, Richard Serra and Thomas Ruff. His work can be found in prominent private and public collections in California,
Florida, New Jersey, New York, London and Singapore. Additionally, Kevin’s work has been published in Swindle Magazine, Wallspankers
Magazine, Vapors Magazine, and others.
Michel Demanche, a native Texan, currently a professor of photography at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore is known for a multi
media manner of visualization. For 25 years She was interested in the subjects of eminent disaster, storms, man made destruction to
themselves or nature. Her work has found it's way into many venues such as the Whitney Museum of Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The
Levinson Collection of Sheppard Pratt Institute, The National Women's Museum, E Systems, Chase Bank and Franklin Furnace among others.
Additionally her photography has won her the grand prize at the 2003 Florence Biennale and a ﬁrst place award in the national
Holgapalooza competition.
Steven Dobbin is a sculptor working in lead, copper, and steel with plaster and pigment. His conceptually based creations have appeared in group
exhibitions in Maryland, Chicago, New York, Washington DC, California, and London. Steven was included in The Language of Objects at Catholic University,
The Ordinary Expands at Goucher College, Art from Found Objects at the Monmouth Museum, juried into the Meijer Sculpture Gardens for ArtPrize 2010,
Delaware Center for the Arts, At Pulse Art Fair L.A., in the 2nd Biennial Maryland Juried Art Exhibition at UMUC and at the DC Art Center. Steven cofounded Artomatic Frederick which proved a resounding success with press coverage in the Baltimore Sun, The Frederick News Post and the Washington
Post among other publications. Additionally, Dobbin has been published in the Arlington Connection, Washington Post, The Frederick Gazette, Channel 51,
and the Los Angeles Times.
Greg Haberny is an American ﬁlmmaker and artist based in New York. Known for his wild, radical and controversial style, Haberny's work is highly
political and created using unconventional means. Greg shows his work throughout the United States and internationally. He is afﬁliated with Catinca
Tabacaru gallery, Pictures On Walls (POW) U.K., and Woolf Gallery in London. He currently sells in the auction house Phillips de Pury and sold at Christie’s
last fall. His work is part of many prestigious private and public collections. His work has been reviewed by Artforum, artnet, Nylon, Juxtapoz, the Miami
New Times and additional publications.
Chris Hipkiss Christopher Payen and Alpha Mason met at the age of 18. since the eighties, the couple has worked under various names in parts of
the United Kingdom before breaking from British Suburbia in 2001 for the French countryside. Now under the pseudonym “Chris Hipkiss”, the result of their
20+ year collaboration is a singular and multifarious visual language. Populating these vast, subsuming metropolises their vocabulary reﬂects long developed interests in
politics, travel, ornithology and feminism. Works by Chris Hipkiss are represented in collections such as the Collection Antoine De Galbert, Paris; the Cindy Sherman
Collection, New York; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Ken Little was a graduate in the ﬁrst Bachelor of Fine Arts class at Texas Tech University. He went on to earn a Masters of Fine Arts at the University
of Utah. Since 1988 he has been a professor of Art in Sculpture at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Over the years, Little’s work has been featured
in over 40 one person exhibitions in national and international venues such as: The Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC; The John Michael
Kohler arts Center in Sheboygan Wisconsin; The Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis; Diverse Works in Houston; and The Honolulu Academy of the
Arts. His work has also been featured in over 200 group exhibitions at institutions like: The Contemporary Art Museum in Houston; The Renwick Gallery
of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC; and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
O Zhang is an artist working in photography and mix media. A graduate of Royal College of Art in London and Central Academy of Art in Beijing, she
moved to New York in 2004. O Zhang was the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Artist Fellowship (NY), Wilson Centre for
Photography Fellowship and Fuji Film Awards (London), winner of RCA Photography Graduate Award (London), and nominated/short listed for numerous
awards including Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (Beijing), Beck’s Future Award (London), Creative Capital Awards and The Louis Comfort Tiffany
Biennial Awards (New York). O Zhang has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, Istanbul, London, Manchester, Vancouver, Philladelphia and New York,. Her work
has been included in group shows throughout Europe, America and China, including Kunsthalle Museum (Hamburg), Miro Museum (Barcelona), Museum
of Contemporary Art (Shanghai), and is in the collections of Guggenheim Museum (NY), Millennium Monument Art Museum collection (Beijing), and other
private collections including Uli Sigg collection in Switzerland.
SWOON or Caledonia Curry is a classically trained visual artist and printmaker who has spent the last 14 years exploring the relationship between
people and their built environment. Her ﬁrst interventions in the urban landscape took the form of wheat-pasting portraits to the walls of cities around
the world, a project that is still evolving. She co-founded Konbit Shelter in 2010, an artist’s response to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti that
same year. Other community based endeavors include collaborating on the construction of musical architecture in New Orleans, a neighborhood
revitalization project in North Braddock, PA, and work within the ﬁeld of mental health/addiction recovery in Philadelphia. Alongside her place-based
work, she has a studio practice of drawing, printmaking, architectural sculpture and installations. Callie’s work has been collected and shown
internationally at galleries and museums, including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn
Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Sao Paolo Museum of Art.
Curator: Tracy Causey-Jeffery is the owner and director of Causey Contemporary, a NY based gallery which she established in 1999 under
the original name of Chi’ Contemporary Fine Art. Over the past 15 years, Ms. Causey-Jeffery has curated some 135 exhibitions for the gallery as well as
one two-city exhibition, Falling Short of Knowing for in New York and in Singapore. She helped organize the ﬁrst exhibition of Designer, Joseph Walsh at
the American Irish Historical Society in 2008; followed by Material Poetry; working alongside London curator, Brian Kennedy and designer, Joseph Walsh
in partnership with Culture Ireland, The Crafts Council of Ireland and the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Art and Design.
Outside the gallery itself, Ms. Causey-Jeffery has been on the committees for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s beneﬁt auctions, Momenta’s beneﬁt art
auction, the Chashama gala, served on the board of the Williamsburg Gallery Association and currently sits on the Creative Review Board for the
Salisbury University Art Galleries. Additionally, she is a member of ArtTable.