Influence Ward Shelley's drawings in his sleep

20 April 2009

Influence Ward Shelley's drawings in his sleep

Ward Shelley's Who Invented the Avant Garde – and other half truths is on view at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn through May 17, 2009. The exhibit features intense painted drawings diagramming complicated relationships and timelines between people, places and events linked by an idea... like The Beats, which maps the "the lives, loves, and artistic output of the primary Beat Poets and their muses, using highway-like lines to trace their travels and travails.*" These drawings look fascinating and I hope to sometime get absorbed in them in person, but what really captured my attention about this show is the performance installation component of it: The Sleeper Experiment. *From the gallery's press release:

"From April 16 to April 30, during regular business hours, Mr. Shelley will be sleeping in the gallery inside a cabinet made for the purpose, and working during the night on drawings based on information provided by visitors.

The visitors, virtual or actual, are invited to contribute random input (in the form of words, short phrases, or images) that will become the basis for concept maps. This input will be read into the artist's mind by a speaking computer program during his sleeping hours. In the evening he will rise and begin drawing, leaving the results on view for the following day."

To contribute your sleep suggestion virtually (like me) email a word or short phrase to:
sleeperexperiment@gmail.com

Read more about The Sleeper Experiment here: http://www.wardshelley.com/sleeper/intro.asp

And check out more of Ward Shelley's work on the artist's web site: http://www.wardshelley.com

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.

20 April 2009