Opening: Sat, July 24th 6-11pm

Info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/163115838865

Beginning July 24, 2021, Synesthesia Gallery will present Schillaci’s : The Labour We Delight In Physics Pain, the first New York solo exhibition from the Brooklyn-based artist. TLWDIPP will debut a new series of paintings and a video installation devoted to the psyche of the human mind during extreme moments of violence and pleasure. The exhibition grapples with wether one is fully conscious during these acts or if a persons being removes itself in a sort of disassociated state.

The figures in Schillaci’s work are often vague, hollow and without definitive gender offering the viewer to place themselves within the work or gaze upon the figures with a numbness similar to the way in which images of pornography and violence are consumed in today’s world, briefly and often scrolled through.

Schillaci imagines the works as theatrical stagings with an intentional feeling of menace threaded through the narrative of each piece. Drawing inspiration from the Pinteresque “Comedy of Menace” a play on the Comedy of Manners style, the work is suspended in the pauses between dialogue and action. This creates a form of forbidden humor stemming from the uneasiness of the pause itself.

Confronting these themes Schillaci exhibits paintings titled SHH 1, SHH 2, SHH 3 and SHH (ROUGH EDIT) with the video respectively SHH 4.

SHH 1, SHH 2 and SHH 3 are plagued in darkness, the light from an open door illuminates only a partial area of the room in which we see a body confined by rope. In the doorway we see another figure making its final step before disappearing completely from view. The viewer must decide if these bodies are separate entities or one and the same and if the acts committed are consensual or not.

If SSH 1-3 are concrete events happening in present time and space SHH (ROUGH EDIT) is the idea of such events not yet come into fruition. Large portions of the canvas is left untouched, like an idea not fully fleshed out, beneath the paint we see graphite scribbles alluding to scrambled thought. The borders of SHH (ROUGH EDIT) are white, as opposed to bathed in black, signifying the thought not entirely constructed and we see the body here not bound by rope but by reflective duct tape allowing the viewer to see their reflection within the painting.

SHH 4 follows the same concept as the paintings but shot on 8mm film. If the paintings dealt with the present and future, the film explores memory and past. The bodies are static and hold their position for the entire roll of film, this suspension of movement creates a build up of energy which is expelled in subtle wavering movements showing the precariousness and fickle nature of memory.

Schillaci was born in Limerick, Ireland and is a self taught artist and filmmaker working in Brooklyn, NY.

S C H I L L A C I
SCHILLACIII.COM

Opening: Saturday, April 3rd, 5pm-Midnight, 2021
Closing: Saturday, May 29th, 2021

TR7 creates an "Art Happening" that an agency for improvisation & ephemeral matrix of modalities. Maneuvering sculptural metaphors & activating social commentary works as signifier of the surveillance state and questioning the autonomy of self.

Accompany by Raoof's 11th iteration of the Micro Film Festival's immersive video installation are works who origins speaks to specific events/individuals. However, as in language, they have morphed to mirror the current state of the union & beyond. " It's like these works have an etymology of their own".

The use of assemblage works (of readymade materials) placed in conversation & or merged to speak to symbolic meanings & gestures that contain & question notions the human condition.

Furthermore, the a/v activation of installation will be conducted in 4 measures.

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Taji Ra'oof Nahl aka TR7 is an American interdisciplinary artist whose vocabulary delves into social commentary via historical & futurist aesthetic. Installation, video, performance , soundscapes, sculpture, painting, are utilities that embodies poetic & abstract narrative for his oeuvre.

His work has been in exhibitions at, The Italian Palace - Tangier Morocco, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Kelly Writers House at University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery at Columbia College of Chicago. African American Art Museum Philadelphia, & Fleisher Art Memorial.

Solo exhibition which include; Pageant Soloveev Gallery Philadelphia, Indigo Bleu Design & Cultural Center, Little Berlin Annex Space & Icebox Project Space, Marginal Utility Gallery, Philadelphia and Velocity Fund grant recipient for 2019.

Group showing at West Chester University, Goggleworks Reading Pa., Ice Box Project Space, Philadelphia Pa., National Archive Philadelphia. Pa., University of Pennsylvania. James Dupree Gallery, Philadelphia City Hall, Moore College of Art, and others.

Also includes in 2015 Artblog People's Choice awards PEW Fellow (wish list), and (By way of - Kali Yuga Zoo Brigade ) 2015 Best Exhibit .

Artist -In- Residence Icebox Project Space 2017 along with creative director at American Muslim Museum & Archive. Commissioned projects with Paul Robeson House, John Coltrane House - Philadelphia, & Fairmount Park Conservancy. With Performative works at Kimmel Center, Vox Populi, ICA Philadelphia, Harlem Gatehouse, & Masjidullah Cultural Center.

Furthermore he was founder & director of acclaimed Taji Modern Gallery in Philadelphia circa 1998 - 2009. Also he a member of Philadelphia Dumptser Divers.

As TR7 social engagement base expands, so does his collaboration list; Jamaaladeen Tacuma, George E. Lewis, Amber Arts Collective, Kali Yuga Zoo Brigade, Yoichi Uzeki, Charles Lloyd, June Lopez, Eva Peston, Meg Foley Erik Honesty, Bariq Combs, Sebastienne Mundheim, Embarker, Chaka Benson & others.

Taji also spearheads 2Spiral Art Collective, collaborates with artist of vast disciplines to develop art that explores the transformative elements of compassion, freedom, justice and productive activism.

https://www.araoof.com/

Opening: Nov 7th Saturday 6-11pm

Synesthesia is pleased to present “SAFE SPACE,” the first solo exhibition of Walid Shaharul curated by roosi. A total of 10 oil paintings and several works on paper will be shown in Synesthesia’s gallery space in Bushwick, New York City. 

Shaharul’s paintings at once attract and confront viewers with their distinctive aesthetics of familiarity, perversity, and opposition. Often working with oil paints, Shaharul combines subconscious impulses with scenes of everyday life, resulting in what he describes as “visual contradictions.” The title of the show “SAFE SPACE,” is in itself a contradiction. Shaharul’s paintings that portray his friends and loved ones in brightly-colored rooms and comfortable settings are not what they appear to be. The figures, some standing and some supine, have distorted facial features to evoke a sense of emotional isolation or imponderable problem. The compositional mystique is only enhanced by the swaths of heavy color-blocking that entraps these figures as they seemingly undergo subtle social shifts that accompany life in a period of crisis.

A noticeable chasm that divides the subjects from their surroundings is Shaharul’s selection of bright background colors. “The colors I choose are bright and attractive. Bright colors, in some sense, are meant to bring positive and joyful feelings. But there is a sense of distress in the compositions because the walls, the floors and ceiling are all one color. So instead of those joyful feelings, it feels overwhelming, torturing and exhaustive. A not so safe space,” says Shaharul. 

While these paintings are marked by Shaharul’s restrained nature and lurid sense of the absurd, they also attest his abilities in capturing the intricacies of the human form in oil paint. The artist toys with the intimacy and vulnerability of his subjects and their appearance through surrealist variations on mundane routines such as sitting, working, running, swimming and sleeping. He brings these attractively unusual images to life by digging deep into his mind to translate prosaic moments into well-articulated profundities. 

Artist bio

Walid Shaharul is a painter born and raised in New York City. Entirely self-taught, Shaharul began painting oil on canvas works back in 2018. The artist specializes in creating figurative paintings that depict family members, friends and imagined subjects. Across his works are geometric and surreal impositions that introduce varying moods. Oftentimes, there is an underlying ominous presence in his works that recall the motifs found in the tormented and unsettling imagery of Francis Bacon. When he is not painting, Shaharul develops works on paper that act as studies for his next paintings.

About Synesthesia 

Synesthesia is an art gallery located in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Synesthesia presents exhibitions, experimental music, film, and cultural workshops. Our mission is to build a local community through the arts in Bushwick and to provide a platform for artists to showcase experimental works. http://synesthesia.space/

About roosi

roosi was formed with the intention to connect fine art to everyone. The art industry is often perceived as “exclusive” or “unreachable” by many people, roosi aims to shift traditional views of fine art and dismantle its longstanding ideals. roosi values diversity, community, and aims to bring the luxuries of the art world to those who don’t fit the conventional mold. https://roosi.org/

Sinejan Kılıç Buchina

From Place to Non-Place

Opening : July 25 th 5pm

For the inaugural opening of our new space, Synesthesia is proud to present Sinejan Kılıç Buchina’s solo show, From Place to Non-Place. 

Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is an artist who uses topographic and political mapping to investigate issues of borders and displacement. Her pieces are layered and kinetic--composed of both organic and synthetic materials such as horse hair, flowers, plants, spices, dust, metal, concrete bonding agent, and black tea. Oxidation and disintegration of these elements on the canvas surface have the effect of a ceaseless shifting, merging, forming, and erasing, much like nations over time. 

Buchina questions the geography and existence of disappearing nations such as Abkhazia, by evoking the theory of “non-place.” This term, coined by the French Anthropologist Marc Augé, refers to anthropological spaces of transience. In “non-places”, human beings are considered to be anonymous; as the site of their existence does not hold enough significance to be regarded as "a place", which we tend to think of as being relational, historical, and identifiable. “Non-places” can not integrate within the earlier “place”, as an event has occurred rendering it now a “place of memory”.Presently, Buchina has started a new series, debuting here at Synesthesia. Since the onset of the current pandemic, she has begun assembling miniature structures using fragments of earlier works. Meticulously pulling apart her previous pieces, Buchina reforms them. It is a sensual exercise mobilizing these elements of identity by igniting smell, taste, and touch to sift through memories attached to certain places and times of a near and distant past. 

Describing her works as organisms, Buchina enlivens them as being full of “languages vanishing from the earth as lakes dry out” or a body “losing limbs and organs, in the way countries are divided and claimed after a conflict.” 

BIO:
Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is an artist and arts educator, working in both New York and Istanbul. She holds an MA from City University in New York (2019), a BFA from Marmara University in Turkey (2007). Buchina has exhibited work internationally in: Walter Meade Gallery, NY (2020), Küf solo show at Amos Eno Gallery, NY (2019), The Every Women Biennial, NY (2017), When Black Swallows Red at the La Mama La Galleria, NY (2018), Arts Depot, London, United Kingdom (2019),  Brighthill New York, NY (2017), Tattoo Circus, London, United Kingdom (2019).

She is a recipient of several awards, including the Connor Travel Fellowship, granted to present her academic paper in International Conference at the Madrid Carlos iii University; the Light Space & Time Award for excellence in painting; a P.E.O Education Grant; as well as President's Fund for Excellence scholarship. She has also participated in the following residencies: Critical Feedback Program Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, New York (2019), Twin Oaks Residency, Treadwell, New York (2018), Node Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlin, Germany (2012).

Exhibition: Friday November 15th-Sunday, January 5th
Opening Party: Friday November 15th 8pm-11pm

Synesthesia is pleased to present this selection of large-scale sculptures by Brooklyn-based artist Chris Marshall.

There is an uncanny “stage-like” and theatrical quality to Marshall’s sculptures. Incorporating everyday objects such as refrigerator bags, rusting pipes, bathtubs, sheets, beds, and more; Marshall builds an architecture of the unconscious, which is simultaneously familiar and surreal.

Corporeal forms, draped-over, housed-within, and emerging through space, appear suspended in a timeless battle with gravity, utility, and individuation.

Marshall renders his sculptural compositions via a process of dissecting, fragmenting, and then reconstituting each element into a unified whole. Often painting, stripping, bleaching, binding, or corroding the surfaces of these elements, his practice is akin to a patient and durational alchemy.

—

About the artist:

Christopher Scott Marshall (b.1980, in Spokane, WA) is a Brooklyn based sculptor, painter, and illustrator. Academically trained as a painter, Marshall made a bold transition to sculptural media approximately 10 years ago. Seeking out a more embodied methodology for his practice, sculpture became a revitalizing and dynamic vehicle to execute his concepts.

He has been featured in solo and group shows in both New York and Los Angeles, as well as internationally. Marshall received a Master’s Degree at the New York Academy of Art in 2009, and has been awarded residencies in Germany, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. He will be a part of the Pouch Cove Foundation residency in the summer of 2020.
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Website: christopherscottmarshall.com

Damien Olsen
Fragments of Unknown Civilizations
October 17th, 2019 - November 9th, 2019
Opening: October 17 // 7-10 PM

Synesthesia is pleased to present Fragments of Unknown Civilizations; a solo exhibition showcasing 40 years of sculpture by New York-based artist Damien Olsen.

Recognizing life as artistic trial-and-error, Olsen views his career as a lifelong exploration of sculpture as an extension of his personal experience. Much like an autobiography, his sculptures and their environments communicate with one-another to form an intimate dialog.

The pieces on display are part of an extensive body-of-work that exists in its own realm--a personal realm, which is independent of a linear narrative or chronology.

Olsen imports that the works, in themselves, occupy parallel realities that he accesses through a process of “conscious dreaming”. Creation thus exists as both a ritual of taking dictation and acting upon the reception of a “call to action” from a higher source. The character of the artwork is evidenced by an overwhelming amount of detail and textures. One could say that his works reveal the environmental conditions that they were created in and subsequently reflect private moments of creation, back to the audience in an intimate way.

Discovering haunting and forgotten architectures, striving for nature to be reclaimed, the viewer might feel like a wandering spirit, exploring galleries like labyrinths. For Olsen, the endless puzzle, inter-connecting fragments, relics and artifacts, express the process of excavating unknown civilizations--of understanding any given individual or artist, as they document their experience.

“Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light.”-- (To quote Max Ernst, Olsen’s spiritual artistic mentor)

About the artist:
Damien Olsen, is an American, interdisciplinary artist, based in New York City. Born to a migratory Russian family, his family relocated to Brazil where he resided until the late 90’s. Olsen grew up experiencing many cultures and languages. Although he never formally studied art, he started selling drawings and paintings at a very young age and later on developed professionally as a sculptor and photographer.

In the mid-70’s, while studying psychology and contemporary dance, he earned a living operating as both a photography assistant and advertising designer. A few years into his college degree, he dropped his psychology studies to pursue a career in contemporary dance. His study of dance thus became his continued focus for the next 12 years.

Olsen took an interest in studying Zen and Taoism at a Zen Center run by Robert Aitken Roshi. There, he pursued the study of Capoeira, overseen by several academies in the Brazilian state of Bahia.

In the late 90’s, Olsen relocated to New York and continued on to engage in various visual arts and musical practices. During this time, he was supported by art dealers, Ivan Karp of Ok Harris Gallery and Cecilia de Torres, a specialist in Constructivist art.

From 2003 to 2006 Olsen studied music composition and Jazz improvisation, training with ECM Records guitarist and composer, Raoul Bjorkenheim.

With over 4 decades of devoted interdisciplinary activity under his belt, Damien Olsen has developed a vast and dynamic collection of paintings, artist books, found-objects, assemblages, photographs, and sculptures. His series of shelves or “cabinets of curiosities” are exemplary of the breadth of his work. Taking on the character of geological/anthropological displays, which exhibit no subtle likeness or mere symbolic allusion to themes in Architecture, Philosophy, Sexuality, Psychology, Paleontology, and Natural History.

Website: http://www.damienolsenarts.com/

Discography: http://damienolsen.bandcamp.com/

Video works can be seen at: https://vimeo.com/damienolsen

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DamienOlsen

September 6, 2019 - October 5, 2019
Opening Friday September 6, 7-11pm

Synesthesia Space is pleased to present We Came From The Stars, a solo exhibition at the gallery by New York-based artist Richard Sylvarnes. This work consists of eighty photographs and a feature film titled Here Comes Everybody. Using the mediums of photography and video, Sylvarnes explores the underlying question of why we tell stories and how they shape our identity. In an elaborate network of storytelling that weaves together history, mythology, literature, fables, religion, and comic books, Sylvarnes plunges us through 4,000 years of Western civilization presented as a kaleidoscopic dream, or nightmare - depending on the viewer’s interpretation. The photographs were created utilizing a combination of processes using numerous chemical combinations and darkroom strategies; incorporating large doses of Potassium Ferricyanide, Sodium Thiosulfate, and Potassium Aluminum Sulfate, then rephotographed for further computer manipulation. The gallery will present twenty nine of the original eighty photographs that comprise the work as a whole. The accompanying film Here Comes Everybody is entirely composed of stills, most of them photographed in the style of nineteenth-century tableaux photography, manipulated through stop-motion animation, flicker, and rotoscoping. The film plays like an early magic lantern show, as if Eadweard Muybridge had gotten his hands on Final Cut Pro. "The most merciful thing in the world," says an angel-winged child in a scene from the film, "is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." As Sylvarnes says, “This exhibition chronicles the stories I was told that eventually became a part of who I am and of which I can not escape.”

On opening night there will be a special screening of Here Comes Everybody, along with two short films, Die Nacht Ist Leben and Cupiditas, which will feature live text and musical accompaniment.

Friday September 6, 8:00-10:30
●Die Nacht Ist Leben (19 minutes)
●Cupiditas (12 minutes)
●Here Comes Everybody (90 minutes)

During the exhibition there will be a series of related screenings and performances.

Richard Sylvarnes is an artist that works in the mediums of film, photography, and music. His work has been shown internationally at museums, galleries, clubs, performance spaces and cinemas. His first feature film, “The Cloud Of Unknowing”, premiered in the International Dramatic Feature Competition at the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 continuing on in festivals throughout Asia and Europe and was released by Possible Films in 2004. “Here Comes Everybody”, his second feature, also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the NYNY Narrative Competition in 2006. His third feature, “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz”, is a found-footage film that featured live music accompaniment premiering at The Microscope Gallery in New York City and then at the Anthology Film Archives. In 2009 he received a Creative Capital Grant to work with the four-time Bessie Award winning choreographer David Neumann on a work titled “Big Eater” that premiered at the Kitchen in 2010. In 2008, he was nominated for a Rockefeller Renew Media Fellowship. Richard has released music through the Skrymir Label and 3D Media under various monikers and bands including “Zero Times Everything”, the “Underworld Oscillator Corporation”, “Sylvarluxe”, and Berlin based “KaiSaR”; and is a member of the expanded cinema collective “Optipus”. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and has studied film making at New York University, music at Berklee College of Music, guitar with Robert Fripp, and art at the School of Visual Arts. He has been a guest Lecturer at Harvard University and he presently serves as Vice President on the Board of Directors for the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

http://www.sylvarnes.net/

“WE CAME FROM THE STARS” runs from September 6th through October 5th, with an opening reception and special screening on Friday September 6th from 7-11pm. For additional information please contact the gallery at synesthesia47@gmail.com or by phone at 917-789-2252

Opening Party August 17th 7pm~10pm (Performance from Yogyakarta at 9pm)

The Indonesia-based Artspace ASP (Artist Support Project) proudly presents to you our persepective on the contemporary art scene in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Through this work, we hope to reveal the significant differences between various sociocultural backgrounds by creating a visual dialogue without the boundary of nationality. We hope that you will be inspired to rethink the variability of life through the work.

Opening Party: June 1st 6pm-10pm
Exhibition Date: June 1st to July 31st 2019

Synesthesia is pleased to present Insideout, a solo exhibition featuring work by Japanese photographer Miki Kitazawa. This is Kitazawa’s first exhibition in the United States and features three of the artist’s signature photo series, "Contact”, “Dust”, and “Bodyscapes”.

 Born from Kitazawa’s experience of the Fukushima earthquake in 2011, her series CONTACT(2013) explores the relationship between memory and living embodiment of the event. Her series Dust (2014), raises questions about the tenuous delineation between inside and outside, prompting viewers to consider “where does one start and end?”. Bodyscapes (2017) is a careful study of the body as the subject of a still life.

Through these series her interests shift from outward to inward--escaping categories between sensing and process. Her works shed preconception and ego--sharing with viewers, a refreshing and untethered perspective.

[see below, a selection of brief and eloquent words from the artist herself...]

--

CONTACT:
In the highway bus I was leaning against the wall, which was slightly shaking.
Suddenly, my past memory has come back unconsciously.
Vibration rips my consciousness and memories in the real world.
I made this series to connect to forgetting.

DUST:
I photographed dust floating on the surface of a colorless transparent glass and water droplets. By focusing on the dirt we don't usually care, the outer and inner worlds are intermingled through the glass. Dirt is a trace of biological activity in the environment surrounding us.

Bodyscapes:
The human body is a part of this world and exists in relation to and interacting with various entities. By placing the body in the landscape, I try to shot the body as a still life because I can’t look the person who is front of me as a same human. This series is neither a portrait nor a landscape. Bodyscapes is a combination of landscape and human body.

Miki Kitazawa

(b. 1988 in Nagano, Japan)

[Solo Exhibitions]

2018 Relation, Gallery Yukihira, Tokyo, Japan.

2018 Bodyscapes, TAP Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

2017 Bodyscapes, C7C Gallery, Aichi, Japan.

2015 CONTACT, Norton Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

[Group Exhibitions]

2019 Transparent Mirror, Theater Guild, Tokyo, Japan.

2019 New Universality 02, CCAA Yotsuya Sanchome Gallery3, Tokyo, Japan.

2017 Here is ZINE Tokyo 15, Beams, Tokyo, Japan.

2017 New Chapter of Landscape#2 -The Principles of Contemporary Landscape Photography-,

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

2016 A.W.P Selection 2016, Ricoh Imaging Square Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.

2014 SHIBUYA STYLE vol.8, SEIBU SHIBUYA, Tokyo, Japan.

2014 TAGBOAT ARTFES2014, Daihonzan Zojoji, Tokyo, Japan.

2014 Canon New Cosmos of Photography Sendai Exhibition, Sendai Mediatheque, Sendai, Japan.

2013 Canon New Cosmos of Photography Tokyo Exhibition, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan.

2012 [See-through],UPSTAIRS GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan.

2009 ASAHICAMERA Magazine Exhibition 2008, KONICA MINOLTA PLAZA,Tokyo, Japan.

2008 EPSON ColorImaging 2008 Exhibition, Spiral Garden, Tokyo, Japan.

[Awards]

2008 EPSON ColorImaging Contest. First Prize Award, Photograph Category.

2008 ASAHICAMERA Magazine Prize. Second Prize Award, First Step Category.

2013 Canon New Cosmos of Photography. Honorable Mention, HIROMIX Award.

2014 TAGBOAT ARTFEST Special Recognition Award. Toshiki Minamiguchi Award.

[Publications]

2008 [PHaT PHOTO] 2008.7-8 "NEW STEP OF WINNERS vol.1"

2009 [Fotocon] 2009.5 "NEXT GENERATION Photographer"

2010 [Fotocon Magazine] Series (2010.1~2010.12)

2015 [Pen] 2015.8/1 "Creator's file #026"

2016 [BIJUTSUTECHO] 2016.12 "NEWCOMER ARTIST 100"

2018 [Gallery] 2018.12 "for five years Miki Kitazawa"