$AVE/PRODUCE by Elisha Sarti and PROFONDO GIALLO by Scott Lickstein

01 August 2008

$AVE/PRODUCE by Elisha Sarti and PROFONDO GIALLO by Scott Lickstein

Our show opens SATURDAY AUGUST 2, 2008, 4PM at NOWhere Limited in Ned, Colorado!

Here's preview images of work by both of us:http://www.nowherelimited.com/scott_lickstein_and_elisha_sarti

PROFONDO GIALLO by Scott Lickstein:
Scott Lickstein's Profondo Giallo project began as an obsession with movies, particularly those from the Italian pulp/horror film genre, known as Giallo. The artist, who studied video art under a professor from M.I.T., used a computer program to capture more than 20,000 individual frames from a vast assortment of movies on DVD. He then digitally combined and altered selected "stills" to form collaged images. Many of the Profondo Giallo images have previously been produced as prints and as purely digital art. For the latest version of the project, the artist rendered the digital mash-ups in paint, adding another layer of depth and strangeness to these striking compositions.

SAVE/PRODUCE by Elisha Sarti:
Elisha Sarti's SAVE/PRODUCE features The World According to Gooogle, a new series of collages on canvas. The source images for this series were derived from Google Image searches for subjective words like "pretty," "worst" and "perfect." The resulting canvases read as a bizarre yet captivating "pictionary."

Also exhibited in SAVE/PRODUCE are Elisha's large scale paintings: ENVY(Printed Line) and SAVE/PRODUCE. These two 7 foot x 7 foot paintings depict imagery taken from the materials the artist used to build their surfaces: saved junkmail and paperboard boxes that once contained food or other goods. The pictures and symbols in these works are based on advertisements and marketing designs so the colors, shapes and phrases have a familiar quality. They are recycled images on recycled surfaces, transformed by scale and collage into something new.

MAKE ART/TAKE ART:
Make Art/Take Art is a collaboration between Scott Lickstein and Elisha Sarti and perhaps...you! For this project, the artists created 12 black ink drawings on collaged backgrounds as well as a stack of "blank" collaged surfaces. The drawings are displayed in a grid formation; interested parties are invited to take one of the exhibited drawings in exchange for their own drawing, which must be completed on site using one of the provided blank surfaces and black ink marker or can choose to buy one instead. The drawings on display will be constantly changing, so that a participant may take a piece that has not been drawn by Elisha or Scott but by a random participant. For the duration of the exhibit, random drawings will also be available for sale (blind - you don't know which piece you will get) online for $15.

Bio:

Elisha Sarti is a painter who loves to collage. Her paintings often mimic the deterioration of mass-produced items; popular advertisements, magazines and other ubiquitous commercial papers provide Elisha with a wealth of raw material for imagery and art supplies alike. She’s currently building a new acrylic on canvas series featuring odes to junkmail, supermarket circulars and tabloids. Follow her progress on this project and more via the links from her website: ElishaSarti.com

In addition to working as an artist, Elisha is co- founder / co-director at NOWhere Limited – Contemporary Art, a retailer and publisher of fine art prints and other artists’ multiples.

She's in the process of moving from Boulder, Colorado to New York, along with her husband artist Scott Lickstein, and Tycho, the dog who acts more like a cat.

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Artist's Statement:

Flukes enchant me. I collect them like treasures. Many of the oddest make their way into my paintings and mixed media pieces.

My artwork often contains subtle odes to small oversights in quality control such as a misaligned print in a supermarket circular or seam lines in a plastic product. Similarly, I’m fascinated by word combination and layers of meaning. Idiosyncrasies, like an unusual phrase from a marketing slogan or a snippet from an errant translation between languages, can mutate into imagery or textural marks that appear in my work. I sometimes fancy I can divine mystic subliminal messages from seemingly ordinary advertising copy. It’s a lot of fun!

There’s beauty in garbage. As a mass-produced item deteriorates the specific course of its decomposition renders it unique. The irony of this cycle appeals to me and is the basis for many of my ideas. I am captivated by the sensibility of decay as well. Simulating an eroded texture is often where I begin my creative process. To achieve these decayed effects, I build up a surface from layers of paint and collaged elements.

The series $AVE/PRODUCE and Junkmail² are literally fashioned from trash: used tape, junkmail and paperboard boxes that once contained food or other goods. The imagery in these pieces is also recycled; I coaxed it out of the very matter I used to make the surfaces.

On occasion I stage experiments to generate weirdness instead of allowing the surface layer to determine the content. In one series I asked Google Image Search to make value judgments by searching for pictures representing subjective words like pretty, worst and perfect. The distinctly non-human results were collaged and transferred to canvas.

I’m currently forming a new body of work. In this as yet untitled series I paint acrylic on canvas with imagery from my recent junkmail collages and sketches.

01 August 2008