Explaining Magic
Curated by Janet Riker and Meridith McNeal
Thursday, November 13, 2003 through Saturday, December 27, 2003

Admission is FREE

OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION:
Thursday, November 13 - 6pm-9pm

SPECIAL EVENT:
Friday, December 12 - 7pm
Writer Nelly Reifler organized a free evening of interpretive readings from new and classic literature.

Curatorial Statement
Exhibition Checklist
Gallery Location/Directions
Acknowledgements

Curatorial Statement

Conjurers, illusionists, enchanters-like these evocative entertainers, the artists in Explaining Magic changed the known into the unknown. They ground their work in the everyday world in the same way that fairy tales and dreams often have their roots in the familiar. Stepping into the gallery space, each viewer was reminded of his or her own creative capacity to wonder. Explaining Magic included three large-scale installations created specifically for the Rotunda Gallery by Kanik Chung, Ik-Joong Kang and Mary Temple.

Kanik Chung's works included his construction Martha Stewart Celebrating the Birth of Christ, a witty, visual surprise that turns the pop-culture icon and her Christmas decorations into a rose window for a consumer cathedral. His installation turned viewer expectations upside-down with a full-sized crystal chandelier springing from the floor of the gallery.

Dawn Clements's black and white drawing meticulously recreated a bookshelf in the artist's home in a surreal combination of realistic detail and skewed, cartoonish perspective.

Michael Houston creates mixed media images that might be called graffiti still-lifes; they evoke the thick black lines and overlapping, colorful images of street taggers. Houston's work was also represented in a video piece by the Barnstormers art collective; the group paints graffiti-inspired images on a floor, layer after layer, until they become a breath-taking time-lapse ballet of swirling movement and color.

Ik-Joong Kang's awe-inspiring installation Buddha Learning English was a curving wall of small painted wood tiles, each adorned with small objects of personal significance, literally humming with movement.

Peter Krashes's oil paintings evoked the distorted, liquid view of reality found in fun-house mirrors and rippling water, or landscapes glimpsed in the corner of one's eye.

Zoë Sheehan Saldaña makes tiny works in cross-stitch that defy the typical approach to this craft, with mysterious images of crowds and flights of birds lifting off from a field. Also included were ink drawings from her series about the most dangerous areas of American life-most dangerous herb, career or city-each of them shown to be shockingly banal.

Rachel Selekman breathed new life into antique materials, building sculptures from vintage brass, steel and metallic thread that recreate the shimmering flow and spray of water.

Mary Temple created illusory wall paintings, startling in their convincing rendering of shadows cast by window light. Shapes in bright relief fall across the angles of a wall, confounding the viewer since there is no window light to create them.

Unless otherwise noted all works are from the collection of the artists; dimensions are given in inches (height x width x depth).

The purchase of artwork is an important way individuals can support contemporary artists and share their work with others. The Rotunda Gallery is a not-for-profit exhibition space and retains 20% of the proceeds of sales to help underwrite its exhibitions and educational programs. Please ask the gallery sitter if you would like additional information.

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Gallery Location/Directions

The Rotunda Gallery (33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights), housed in an award-winning space designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, showcases the work of Brooklyn artists. The Rotunda Gallery's educational programs reach 6,000 students each year with gallery visits and in-school art making projects. The Rotunda Gallery is a project of the not-for-profit BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, Inc.

Located in Brooklyn Heights, just over the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Gallery is also easily accessible by public transportation. It is a short walk from the 2,3; 4,5; M; N or R trains at the Court Street/Borough Hall station; or the A, C trains at High Street.

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