JACK THE PELICAN PRESENTS

	January 17–February 16, 2004 NY TIMES REVIEW TIMEOUT NY REVIEW		Jack the Pelican is pleased to present Wry Material, a group exhibition featuring the work of Margaret Evangeline, Fariba Hajamadi, Elana Herzog and Samm Kunce. These four important mid-career artists look askance at heroic precedents in post-war art, with re/presentations of raw stuff served up al dente. Runs through February 16 Location: 487 Driggs Ave. between N. 9 and N. 10 Bedford stop on the L train, Williamsburg Dates: January 17–February 15, 2004 Gallery hours: Friday–Monday, 12-6pm Contact: Don@JackthePelicanPresents.com, 718-782-0183

Margaret Evangeline, Simoon #8, 2003, 42 x 42"

Margaret Evangeline uses highpowered firearms in the desert of New Mexico to blow holes into highly polished stainless steel panels. The terrific force of impact is palpable in the gorgeous molten swell of the mirrored surface. These works recall in their wanton elegance the slashes of post-war Italian Lucio Fontana. In their empowered posture, the bravado of gun-toting Nouveau Realiste, Niki de St. Phalle. Evangeline’s dark dance with the terrible beauty of “irrevocable action” is a radical distillation of concerns she has explored in 33 solo and numerous group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Recent solo venues include ICA, Palm Beach, Howard Scott/M13 Gallery and Paul Rodgers/9W in New York, the Harfnarborg Museum of Fine Art in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Galerie du Tableau in Marseille, France. Currently, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts is exhibiting a three-year survey of Evangeline's work.

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Read essay by Dominique Nahas

Fariba Hajamadi Red Tank Oil Painting digital print, 2003
		Noted Iranian-born conceptualist Fariba Hajamadi’s “Oil Paintings” are dominated by lustrous globules of raw petroleum. They are digital apparitions, catching the reflections of domestic interiors and blue skies and veiling faintly discernible, underlying media images of war. This doubling of the currency of the moment with the languageof a visceral and organic abstraction (e.g., Lynda Benglis) is a departure for Hajamadi from her recent concerns with cultural hegemony. The layered interference of abstraction and representation relates most directly to her “Landscapes” of the late 80s in which she photographed abstract paintings in museums dead-on at odd angles, to produce illusions of land and sky. Fariba Hajamadi has had one-person shows at museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, including three at Christine Burgin Gallery, NYC; Max Protech Gallery, NYC; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL; I.C.A., Philadelphia, PA; the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; FRAC, Orléans, France; and Interim Art, London. View images


Elana Herzog, Untitled #3, 2001, chenille bedspread, staples, 9 x 7'.		Elana Herzog’s gigantic tapestries are so assiduously torn and staple-gunned down to the wall—thread by thread—as to become one with it, and they breathe in its whiteness. Her intensive process of decomposition follows the simple geometric integrity of the patterns woven into the fabric. And in places, where her repeated attentions have entirely erased all residue of the original threads, the skeleton of the pattern remains in a rhythm of gleaming staples. Herzog has long worked with fabrics and other domestic materials to explore the languages of installation and abstraction. Unstretched, with gentle, liquid folds and soft, luscious surfaces, these new, largely monochromatic works openly defy the high formalism of color field painting, and in particular the work of Barnett Newman, which they so convincingly evoke. A longtime Williamsburg artist, Herzog has had one or two person shows throughout the US and abroad, including: DiverseWorks, Houston, TX; the Richard Nelson Gallery, UC Davis, CA; GAGA, NYC; PPOW Gallery, NYC; ArtNation Projects, Inc., NYC; and Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada. Hers was the inaugural exhibition at Black and Herron, NYC.

Samm Kunce Installations at John Gibson Gallery, NY Top: Dune, 1999 Bottom: Field #1, 1997	Site-specific installations by Samm Kunce engage the space of the front gallery and rear atrium with a concrete cinderblock trough and cascading drifts of sand. Kunce insinuates live plants and animals into the language of minimalism. Her massive, sculpturally elegant mounds, dunes and pools seamlessly integrate such elements as hanging vines, rabbits or lettuce plants. The effect is startling. Notes Susan Harris in Art in America, “Imagine a set designed by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Eva Hesse for a movie that is a cross between Lost Horizon and Blade Runner…” In addition to exhibiting regularly throughout the 90s at the John Gibson Gallery in New York, Kunce, a native of California and the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, has produced installations at numerous venues internationally, including: the Bauhaus Kunstlergarten in Weimar, Germany; SECCA in Winston-Salem, NC; the Tweed Museum of Contemporary Art , Duluth, MN; the Polish Center for Contemporary Art in Oronsko, Poland; and the Medici Palace, Rome.
	For more information, please contact Don Carroll, 718-782-0183.