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Rotunda Gallery invites you to spend
some quality time with A Slow Read

The Rotunda Gallery, at 33 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, presents A Slow Read, an exhibition about the process of discovering a work of art, which requires a commitment of time by both artist and viewer. A Slow Read opens on Thursday, January 15, 2004 with an opening reception from 6 to 9 PM, and remains on view through February 28. The guest curator is Katarina Wong.

The artists in A Slow Read offer different ways for viewers to experience, or "read" their works, in media ranging from minimalist installation to expressive large-scale painting, photography and collage to sculpture. Each artist's painstaking process of discovery is mirrored in a similar process of discovery on the part of the viewer. These works resist being "read" at first glance, but instead give the audience an unexpected experience, sometimes unsettling or challenging, sometimes revelatory. The viewer becomes an active participant in the visual unfolding of each work through the process of looking.

Guest curator Katarina Wong is a visual artist based in Manhattan. She received her MFA from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Masters in Theological Studies with an emphasis on Buddhist Studies from the Harvard Divinity School. A Slow Read is her first curatorial endeavor.

A Slow Read is part of the Rotunda Gallery's Curatorial Initiative Program, which supports new and emerging curators and provides opportunities for them to realize their vision in a professional gallery setting. The program is supported by the Lori Ledis Memorial Fund, named for the respected member of the New York arts community and long-time supporter of the Rotunda Gallery. Previous exhibitions selected through the Curatorial Initiative have included What Happened in Lime Mills? (2002) curated by Nelly Reifler, and Critical Consumption (2003) curated by Jonathan Allen.

Artists include:

• Hovey Brock slowly layers barely visible strokes of watercolor, creating paintings that seem translucently veiled. The viewer must become comfortable with the experience of imminence, as the work seems to be perpetually becoming.

• Gema Alava Crisostomo's subtle site-specific installations emerge out of an agreement between light and shadow, material and the gallery space itself. Using sewing implements and clothing patterns, her installation plays on the idea of fabrication.

• James Cullinane's two works refer to school primer illustrations from the Franco era in Spain, and play with the idea of traditional drawing methodology as well: a large-scale drawing presented on hundreds of uniform, wall-mounted white plastic cards, and an image produced by hole-punching.

• Elizabeth Fleming finds what is not obvious by closely looking at the most common of objects. Photographing dustballs, the inside of shoes, and dishrags in water, she captures quiet moments we are accustomed to ignoring; her intense gaze reveals moments of unexpected, transitory beauty.

• Adam Henry creates collages and photographs that upon first glance look plausible enough, but are actually the opposite: literally deconstructing and reconstructing images of cityscapes and melding them into landscapes, he creates a playful, sometimes ominous take on the urban experience.

• James Huang works with the play of proportion and physicality. His sculpture redefines and invigorates an existing space in unexpected ways, through unlikely scale and use of materials.

• Carey Maxon's color-rich, intricate drawings begin with simple, everyday "doodles" that grow, mutate and explode into lines, shapes, and forms. Bordering on the obsessive, the repetition of Maxon's drawing builds on the inherent repetition that she finds everywhere in her daily visual life.

• James Nelson's drawings result from a process of subtle addition and subtraction; by repeatedly drawing and erasing, he creates subtle textures that become more complex topographies of the imagination.

• Stephen B. Nguyen paints virtually black night scenes that concentrate on the ambiguous feeling of what may be visible, rather then what feels concrete. Just as one's eyes grow accustomed to darkness, the viewer sees a world in his work that lives between suggestion and explicit expression.

• Alex O'Neal's mixed media works first overwhelm the viewer with an abundance of color, line and imagery, but the detail and complexity of his vision becomes clear with time. He combines disparate cultural elements to remind us that harmony is sometimes created from the unexpected.

• Mark Sapir's meticulous paintings refer to the divide between digital and analog images. By downloading images and then painting a reconfigured version of them with traditional materials, he investigates the imperfection of translating any data, whether visual imagery or text.

• Leigh Tarentino's layered, monochromatic works on paper resemble abstract line drawings that, upon closer viewing, are delicate mirror-image renderings of urban street scenes in which all four directions vanish into a single point.