unraveling

Press Release:

We are in a moment of extreme unraveling; politically, socially, globally and artistically. But to unravel is also to ravel, we are constantly constructing and deconstructing, creating and destroying, pulling things apart and then picking up the pieces and putting them back together again; reordering structures in somewhat snarled and twisted ways... It seems as if Humpty Dumpty’s moment has finally arrived.

But we are artists, not the King’s men. And as artists, it is deeply embedded within us to collectively strive for changes to the old-world-order. In this charged world, the very act of being an artist is a political move, regardless of the form our works take. Despite this moment of profound unraveling we find ourselves in, we strive to supplant the current regime of idiocy with progressive ways; notwithstanding the endless protestations of a global right-wing.

Black Ball Projects is pleased to present 7 artists whose works deal with the concept of unRaveling in some manner; be it visual, phenomenological, conceptual, political, or physical.

Abdolreza Aminlari uses gold and other threads sewn directly onto paper creating abstract compositions that disrupt the hand-drawn gesture and that of traditionally female-gendered domesticity. Bibi Calderaro’s works ask us to connect with our wasteful patterns of planned obsolescence; unfolding notions about recycling as a coherent paradigm for change within the detritus of daily life. Adam Fowler’s layered pieces blur the boundaries between collage and drawing. Deconstructing and then re-constructing, he distorts and plays with our notions of traditional drawing. Andrea Merkx creates subtle and articulate pen & ink works-on-paper of famous architectural spaces and details. The works have a dissociative flair; removing the visual ownership of these locations by way of her methodical, minimal and detached yet hand-made renderings. Mark Schubert challenges the medium of steel, literally forcing it to unravel into linear forms that have psychic and physical affect. In Lauren Seiden’s work the predominant ingredient is graphite, which she applies in a relentless fashion on sculptural and pictorial elements; transforming their original character and orchestrating a process whereby the forms unravel and then ravel; exposing what drawing is and can be. Iva Simčić’s silk-screened Movie Poster stars the now convicted war criminal, Radovan Karadžić, the former Serbian President during the Yugoslav War. Simčić’s piece toys with our conception of politics, historical mythology and fame.

unRavel~Ravel~revel
(a walk)

a special event that happened on April 7, 2018 .
Led by Bibi Calderaro

The seemingly paradoxical meanings stemming from the acts of raveling and unraveling are the starting points of this walk. We will embrace the simplicity and complexity that at once becomes enacted, interpreted and (un)folded in these words’ synonymous and antonymous accounts.

I invite you to join in an experimental walk that will begin and end at the gallery, hopefully transforming one’s experience of the exhibition in the process.

During this two and a half hour physical, collective and collaborative action we will:
meet time,
sense place,
de-prioritize sight,
and open ourselves to the other.

Perception, attention, connection and correspondence will be the keys to co-creating an indeterminately scored experience whose notation will linger softly in our imaginations.

Bring water, walking shoes and most importantly:
Come prepared to think, feel, laugh and move.
*There will be no public acts of the ridiculous.
-Bibi Calderaro

About the Artists

Abdolreza Aminlari  (b. 1979, Tehran) received his BFA from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI. He has had solo and group exhibitions at Cuadro Gallery (Dubai), Taymour Grahne Gallery (New York), Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago), Jackie Klempay Gallery (Brooklyn), Longhouse Projects Gallery (New York), Storefront Bushwick (Brooklyn), and Derfner Judaica Museum (Bronx).  He also collaborated with composer Katharina Rosenberger on “Gesang an das noch namenlose Land”, a string trio composition accompanied by Aminlari’s tapestries, commissioned by Gare du Nord (Basel).  He is represented by Andrew Rafacz Gallery.

Bibi Calderaro is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and researcher whose work circulates internationally since 1995. Her participatory sensorial walks explore ideas of hybridity within epistemological and ontological grounds. Her collaborative work with the Coastal Reading Group explores the intersections of the body, the psyche and the social within the frame of post-phenomenological thinking. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships internationally. Calderaro holds a Sustainability and Education MA degree from The Graduate Center CUNY and a MFA from CUNY Queens College. She is also a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and is a trained Leave No Trace Leader (Wesleyan University, CT).

Adam Fowler received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Fowler is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Fellowship in Drawing from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2011) and a Pollack Krasner Foundation Grant (2007). His works have been exhibited in many public institutions such as the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), the Drawing Center (New York, NY), and the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC.)  His work has been published in the Harvard Review and reviewed by The New York Times, Art News, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice and many others.

Andrea Merkx is an artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 2000, and her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2006. She has performed and exhibited internationally at venues such as Cirquit, Lausanne CH, Högkvarteret, Stockholm SE, Tidens Krav, Oslo, NO, Dialogue Medical Systems Inc., Vancouver BC and locally at Swiss Institute-Contemporary Art, Martos Gallery, Ping&Perkins, Terminal 5, the Bowery Ballroom, Bureau, and Irving Plaza in New York.

Mark Schubert utilizes media in a fluid manner, creating works that live between drawing and sculpture, figuration and abstraction. Through these tensions emerge forms that are psychologically laden yet lyrical in expression.

Lauren Seiden (born 1981. Lives in New York City) received her B.A. in Painting and Drawing from Bennington College in Vermont. Her recent exhibitions include The New Minimalists at Abrons Art Center, The Times at FLAG Art Foundation in NYC, Yesterday So Fast at Denny Gallery in New York City, Action+Object+Exchange at the Drawing Center in New York City, The Mattatuck Museum, CT, Violet Burning Sunset, Curated by Todd Von Ammon, ORGANIX: Contemporary Art From The USA, at the Luciano Benetton Collection in Venice for the Venice Biennale. Seiden received the AOL and Chuck Close “25 for 25” Grant Award in 2010, in 2014 she was a recipient for The Drawing Center's "Open Sessions" program, and in 2016 was a FID Prize finalist. She has been reviewed and featured in ArtForum, Modern Painters, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Fag City, New York Magazine, Time Out NY, and Blouin Artinfo. Her work resides in numerous private and public collections.

Iva Simčić (b. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is visual artist and theoretician. She Holds a BFA in Painting/ Printmaking from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA in Painting/ Printmaking from Yale University School of Art, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow. She received her PhD in Theory of Arts and Media from the University of Arts in Belgrade. Iva is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo. Her work has been shown throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia at multiple galleries and museums. Most recently she was an artist in residence at frei_raum, Q21 in Vienna Austria.

Bibi Calderaro - Ghost Series - A Portfolio