James Westwater @ kork

Be sure to check in periodically to the kork blog to catch James Westwater's Evidence Bags which will be rotating on the board through the end of April.

Untitled (Mark Rothko 2), 2011

found items and rubber oval in 

zip closure polyethylene bag, 16 x 12 inches

As the kork turns...

There are yet a few moments left this weekend to engage in a bit of remote viewing of Matthew Hereford's kork project, Highland Path, while it is still on the wall in Poughkeepsie.

Up next on kork:   Unfolding the mind of Robert Lomblad.

Kork: Matthew Hereford, through April 30, 2010

As if unwilling to relent to the very notion of spring and vivacity it embodies, Mother Nature delayed by several days the installation of Matthew Hereford's installation at kork earlier this month.  "Highland Path" is testament to the coming of a new season. 
The work is a sort of visual onomonopoeia.  It is what it looks like.and it looks like something real.  And it is real; real components are playing themselves as if in a walk on roll in a sitcom in the formation of a fictionalized representation of a view of itself, of nature.
The scale is a little disorienting.  This is a God's POV and  the size relationships between elements and composition engender a frenetic blurring and refocusing of the eye as it works to discern what is in the fore and what is receding.  It's this constrained view finder onto a distant pastoral scene lends the entire kork board a sense of receding.  Even as the work itself is a dimensional and additive amalgam of collaged elements, the work as a whole functions as a negative; a removal of the constructed office interior to reveal that natural scene through or within the wall mounted portal.
 

The components of Highland Path were collected during the many walks Matthew takes in the Hudson Highlands. 
Maybe it's just me, but the more I look at this work, the more I get the sense  of time and space folding in on itself over and over again.

Matthew Hereford's work will remain on view through April 30, 2010.

Anthony Easton's pilgrimage to Poughkeepsie - and kork

kork's current offering is a collection of snapshots by Toronto based artist Anthony Easton (his blog).  I met up with Anthony and his friend Pat at Dia Beacon on Jan 17.  The two had conceived a multitasking road trip, the first portion of which focused on visiting religious pilgrimage sites in upstate NY, like the Sacred Grove in Palmyra where Joseph Smith received the revelation that gave form to the Book of Mormon and the Mormon church.  The trip culminated in the installation of Anthony's work on the kork board in Poughkeepsie.

Anthony Easton placing photographs on the board of kork.

Anthony's project on kork consists of the photographic documentation of his vacation/research trip in upstate NY. 
In his statement, Anthony cites the recognizeable experience of suffering through a viewing someone else's vacation photos.  This curse of living vicariously through representations of other's experiences has only been magnified through proliferating technology and the annointment of all as producers of content, banal though that content may be. Anthony invokes the traditional banality of this form of vacation documentation, and gives it the pride of place that any individual gives to the relics of their fondly held memories.  These photos are the very same vestiges of leisure time that find their way into office cubicles on on to desks as rememberences of places visited and things during those non-work times spent away from the workplace.  They're emblems of experience and of the personal flown as flags of home in the pseudo home of the office. 

My contact with Anthony had been limited to short email exchanges until we rendezvoused at Dia the day before installation.
His endeavor of vacation as form of pilgrimage strikes a chord with one of the underlying tenets of kork:  how do we experience art?  Can a bulletin board in an accounting office become a cultural destination?  For me, the nature of pilgrimage and primary experiences plays a role in the broader implication of this work in this office in Poughkeepsie.  Would someone venture to POK to view the expression of an artist on a bulletin board in an office? Does the percieved value of such a site warrant such a trip? Is it sufficient to simply experience it remotely?  Is it enough to know that something is going on somewhere, and get the gist of it rather than making the effort of getting there?  Maybe, and yes - sometimes no.  Folks are more than welcome to stop into the office and check out the artworks.  They are equally welcome to feel satisfied that what they see online gives them some form of full experience.
The kork project as a whole partially rests on the calculation of reward divided by effort exerted - both in the creation of the works and the viewing of them. In this case the artist tested that calculation for himself.  
I'll admit to some anxiety when Anthony contacted me last year, interested in creating a project, and willing to travel to POK from Canada, and making that travel part of the piece.  I felt, but restrained, the need to inform him fully of the informality of the project and  he might not want to knock himself out over it.  But his coming is the realization of the kind of primacy of the primary experience that is self rewarding and not dependent on a climax resolution for validation.  I respect that attitude.  I know I'm projecting here, but I read it as an imperviousness to futility. It's a key to living, and making art; to dig a hole, not to retrieve something, nor to deposit something, and if something is found, to feel free to leave it in place, then fill in the hole once again and take something away from the whole endeavor.

This array of office implements and corresponding newsclippings is the most naturally sculptural and consistently enjoyable vision I behold whenever visiting the office of Bailey Browne CPA & Assoc.

This Summer of Kork

 Mark Creegan, Untitled, 2009.

Summer is a time of hiatus for many an art space, but not so for kork, the everpumping, everchurning cultural juggernaut in an accounting office in Poughkeepsie, NY.

The post Labor day gearing up of labor came early this season. For the months of May and June, Mark Creegan of Jacksonville FL, labored daily, and made labor daily for the accounting office staff, enlisting them in the creation of artwork with daily requests via email create and post photocopies of various subjects. There's a slide show of the collaboration's results on the kork blog.

Since the beginning of July and still up through Aug 31, Denver based artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy presaged the weirdly wet Summer we've experienced by imagining the outcome of a clash between the forces of nature clashes and the manufactured atmosphere of the office space environment. What she's come up with is a bio/botanical form that look like animated shrooms sporting a margarita's salted rim.

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, Untitled, 2009.

Christopher Patch and Bridget Mullen, both artists based in Brooklyn are teaming up to take the Sept/Oct shift on the board.

Exercising faith in unexpected places; Hermitage, Peter Iannarelli at kork, and visions outside of a Boston video store

On the board of kork: Peter Iannarelli, Untitled

The holidays that have just passed and a bit of ruminating on Peter Iannarelli's work currently on view at kork, in Poughkeepsie through April 30 have all had me considering notions of the search for meaning and communion, and the difference among people in recognizing whether they've found it in such a way as to suit their souls.
A wheat-paste Peek-A-Boo Jesus by Maki105 placed on a wall outside of a video store in Boston earlier this month had folks falling to their knees. I first caught wind of this, courtesy of Hrag Vartanian.
On his blog thisrecording.com, Will Hubbard chronicles the rosy patch of enlightenment he found on a recent pilgrimage to Hermitage.
These are small, but parallel items that give me an added context in which to hawk Iannarelli's recasting of his Untitled work of 2007 for the environment of the kork space in the offices of Bailey Browne CPA and Associates.
Given the pencil snapping pressure this season of tax bears as a gift under its arm every year, a genuine photocopy of Iannarelli's fully customizable correspondence with the God of one's own making could be wonderfully suitable for that loved one ready to make a deal with the powers that be.
Just shoot us an email to kork[at]maykr[dot]com with the subject line: "let's talk" before April 30th, include your mailing address in the body of the email, and we'll send you your very own copy, straight from Poughkeepsie!
Check out the press release for more details.

Currently on kork: Marc Willhite

It just occurred to me that I neglected to post information on the current exhibit up on kork in Poughkeepsie.
Marc Willhite's Tableaux will be on view through the end of February. Here is the press release I penned for Marc's project:

Marc Willhite work "Tableaux" on exhibit at kork in Poughkeepsie, NY. January 1 - Feb 27, 2009.

Basking in the glow of its newly recognized influence on the Accounting industry*, kork is mostly** pleased to welcome Marc Willhite's installation "Tableaux" which will be on view through February 27, 2009. The organizing principle of kork is to provide artists with the broadest possible opportunity to explore their visual impulses to the fullest degree, unhindered by curatorial oversight and with only one stipulation: the resulting work must fit within the footprint of the 24 inch x 36 inch bulletin board/gallery space. Now, with Willhite's project (the third to date), that singular condition has already gone out the window. Apparently unable to restrain himself to the proscribed parameters, the artist's installation incorporates a floor to ceiling photocopy of a lace curtain, creating an environment on which the bulletin board floats - and even drifts. Through the duration of the exhibit, the position of the bulletin board will change, being placed at different points around the field of pixelated lace.

Located inside the offices of Bailey Browne CPA & Associates, kork is a wholly sovereign conceptual entity; not unlike the nation of Lesotho, nestled quaintly within the borders of South Africa. Willhite's incursion into non-kork real estate manages to fix one's eye on the solidly bland-beige form of the kork space, the texture of which is equally bland compared with that of the lace working depicted in the surrounding photocopy. The mildness of the board is amplified to a nearly oppressive level. The artist's response to the installation is apt, "I almost feel like it's looking at me more than I'm looking at it!" This mildness is an insinuation of steps not taken, of a life unbegun. Bulletin boards and lace curtains are custodians of our dusty memories. The initial pricks in a bulletin board's cork are imbued with great intention, but more often than not, the surface will bloom with the overgrowth of those expired intentions. The lace curtain captures the benign history of a grandmother's kitchen; remembrances caught on the wind. Here, writ gargantuan in black and white, that past now looms. Before it sits an empty bland agenda. The surface is passive; its form, assertive. It's presence atop the ephemeral curtain is firm and undeniable. Free from clutter, free of looming tasks impaled on its face, the tan monolith is a dull mirror confronting the viewer. It's unspoken query to the viewer may well be "So, what's in your head?"

Bailey Browne CPA & Associates is located at 80 Washington Ave Ste 202, Poughkeepsie, NY. For additional information, contact Christopher Albert at kork@maykr.com or visit http://korkd.blogspot.com/ to view previous kork projects. Visitors are welcome to view the kork project space and other work on view during business hours, Monday-Friday.

*It is unknown whether the presence of kork (Poughkeepsie, NY's most provocative new art venue) in the offices of Bailey Browne CPA & Associates was actually considered as a factor which contributed to Careercast.com's
ranking of Accountant as one of the top ten best jobs in America today. Regardless, the creative minds behind the bulletin board gallery/project space will waste no time in spinning this moment of synchronicity to our advantage.

** kork enthusiastically the embraces the impulses of our artists, even when it is forced to question, then violate the laws of its own nature. Rules and laws exist for our own benefit. they protect us. Adherence to rules is a virtue. We are located in an accounting firm after all.

Coming up in March on the kork board: Peter Iannarelli.

Kork is the new Mahogany

Beautiful Dreamer by Elia Gurna.

kork, the art exhibition juggernaut that is certain to bring visual culture in Pougkeepsie to its knees received a blush enducing mention on C-monster.net yesterday.
I've mentioned the bulletin board project in passing in a post about my studio visit with Elia Gurna. Elia's work will be on the board through the end of the month, followed by Marc Willhite of Denver in January and February.
Stay tuned for more details.