Presented in Collaboration with Mobius Inc.
Show Dates: June 8 - July 30
Reception: Saturday, June 18, 6-9 PM
James Ellis Coleman
Altered Ephemera: Unearthing Histories of Racism and Acculturation
“We owe it to ourselves not to re-write history just because we take offense to it. Rather, by continually contextualizing what history has produced, we can better understand its intentional and unintentional impact and intent. Altering the context and format of historical works enables me to highlight the content and meaning of the original expression and provides understanding of the past in our present. I believe there is integrity to original materials and objects produced for/in another age, no matter how offensive I, or others, might find them to be (for example, black memorabilia or hate literature produced throughout the 19th and early 20th century).
Many individuals have denied historical events including the Armenian genocide, Darfur, the Holocaust, and the cruelties of American slavery. Often the only proof survivors and/or witnesses have are facts which can be leveraged in efforts to call for justice. We must for their sake, as much for ours, preserve history and remind others of any attempt to alter it.”
- James Ellis Coleman
James Ellis Coleman’s work takes form through a variety of practices including, photography, collage, video, and sculpture. His mixed media and time-based digital alterations (re)contextualize commercial, political, historical and personal ephemera. James Ellis Coleman has been a Mobius artist since 2010.
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
DOWNWARD SPIRAL: Zines Today
Featuring zines by:
Adolfo Reyes
Anuj Shrestha
Elaine Bay
J. Morrison
Josh Bayer
Karl Stevens
Martine Workman
Rhonda Ratray
Tahnee Udero
Tim Devin
Tim McCool
Ron Rege Jr.
and video art by:
GJYD
Jeff Mack
Curated by Dave Ortega
Special Thanks: Adam Bernales (Seite Books - Los Angeles)
Show Dates: April 25 - June 4, 2016
THERE IS A GARDEN, AND IT EXISTS
THERE IS A GARDEN, AND IT EXISTS, a pop up show organized by the students of MassArt's FA2D Professional Practices.
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THERE IS A GARDEN, AND IT EXISTS seeks to explore the notion of paradise, its various attempts of entry, and our own crushed expectations upon arrival. What was intended to be paradise simply ends up becoming a rearranged version of our own mundane hell. Regardless, the dream endures, and the search continues despite the mounting proof of this dream of paradise being just that – a dream.
ARTISTS:
Yael Ben-Zion
Ashley Billingsley
Kelley Donahue
Adam Eddy
Christopher Frost
Debra K Jayne
Sascha LaFave
Eung-Sun Lee
Michelle Long
Leeanne Maxey
Matthew Noonan
Adam Jaye Porter
Kara Skolnik
______
EXHIBITION DATES:
April 18th - April 24th
GALLERY HOURS:
Monday - Tuesday: 12 - 5 PM
Wednesday: Reception
Thursday - Saturday: 12 - 5 PM
______
CURATED BY:
Victoria Marie Barquin & Pauli Mia
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Maureen Anderson
Amanda Baker
Erin Kenny
Masha Keryan
Faust Lacrimosa
Brooke Lambert
Camila McCarthy
Lauren Olsen
Grace Shand
POST-GAY?
Post-Gay? considers the consequences of assimilation and progress. Where does growing mainstream acceptance leave more marginalized queer identities, and how do the myriad of LGBTQIA identities conceptualize themselves in the face of shifting cultural opinion? Who gets represented?
The twenty artists in this show are in contestation and dialogue with the idea of received representations, and are doing and undoing their own ideas of self and desire. Post-Gay? emphasizes the inventiveness of the LGBTQIA community as thinkers and artists who have the capacity to reshape society with new propositions. There are daring and confident assertions by the artists to paint new realities and lives, to re-imagine gender and sexuality in playful, thoughtful ways.
Featuring: Robert Chamberlin, Daniel Corral, Dave J Bermingham, DEAD ART STAR, Giancarlo Corbacho, Jamieson Edson, Jeremy Endo, Gordon Feng, David Hannon, I.B.E., Jamezie, Liss LaFleur, Christopher Lineberry, Kirk Lorenzo, Dino Rowan, Hogan Seidel, Randi Shandroski, Warith Taha, Sarah Washburn, Zoe Perry-Wood
Show Dates: March 18 – April 16, 2016
Reception: Friday, March 18, 7-9 PM
Performance & Artist Talk: Saturday, April 9, 4-6 PM
WISH YOU WERE THERE
The title of the show is a riff on Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here. That seminal album was composed of songs that expressed loss and disenchantment, much of which was directly about the absence and tragic life of Syd Barrett. Wish You Were There was chosen because of its power to suggest the past tense, alluding to an event that once was. Perhaps an event that was missed can never truly be understood or appreciated by the absent individual(s). The collective works in this exhibition strive to re-create or examine a shared experience that is hard to quantify or represent. These experiences all come from populist events such as: live music, theatre, film and sporting events.
Featuring:
David Armacost
Melanie Bernier
Jason Kalogiros
Middle Kingdom
Okay Mountain
Rhonda Ratray
Organized by Jack W Schneider
Show Dates: February 5 – March 12, 2016
Reception: Saturday, February 6, 7-9 PM
YOUR TICKET OUT
Your ticket out. It's with you during rush hour in the back of your head, pulsing just loud enough to be audible over that new Drake song. At the movie theatre when the screen takes over your vision and fills your ears with the sounds of a story that keeps you awake the whole night. Since that afternoon you spent reading Cat's Cradle and laughed out loud at a book for the first time. In the sounds that stick with you from that song you heard in the record store that you just had to bother the clerk about. Ever since you spent the weekend at your friend's apartment in the city and saw so much more of the world in a single day than you had in your entire life; except you didn't want to cash in on it. You hid it behind a safer career path, a savings account built for the inevitable, suburban practicality, Netflix and chill, a keen interest in fine beers; but it's there. Sitting in the front left pocket of your favorite pair of blue jeans, crumpled and bent, playing neighbor to a ball of indigo lint, your ticket out.
Featuring:
Kari Byron
Thomas Dupere
Kyle Falzone
Eben Haines
Rory Hamovit
Elizabeth Harper
Ryan de la Hoz
TJ Kelley III
Simon Kercz
Mariel Kon
Paige Mulhern
Russ Pope
Skye Schirmer
Andrew Scripter
Chelsea Teta
Kristin Texeira
Paul Urich
Devonshire Yaw
Show Dates: December 7 - January 30
Opening Reception: Friday, December 11, 7-9 PM
... MOBIUS HALLOWEEN
MOBIUS HALLOWEEN
Join us on Halloween for ..., presented by Mobius.
On October 31st Mobius will host an epic costume party at the Distillery Gallery in South Boston. Costumes will be the ambient audio, visual, haptic, olfactory and experiential elements that will make for a complete night. Guests and host artists will create a constellation of interactions through their costumes.
Saturday, October 31, 8-11 PM
KATE DREWNIAK - FRAGMENTS AND SHORTS SENTENCES
Fragments and Short Sentences
Artwork by Kate Drewniak
Show Dates: September 12 - October 24
Reception: Saturday, September 12, 7-9 PM
Fragments and Short Sentences explores the mutable nature of memory and the desire to make order of existence. Kate Drewniak combines found materials such as blueprints, discarded books, and fabric remnants to create collages. These pieces act as a tangible record of memory as it relates to decay, accumulation, and preservation.
KIRK AMARAL SNOW - THE LONESOME CROWDED...
The Lonesome Crowded…
Work by Kirk Amaral Snow
Opening Reception: Friday June 26, 7-9 PM
June 26 – July 31, 2015
WINTER BLUES
Winter Blues
A group show featuring monochromatic work in shades of blue.
Bahar Yurukoglu
Jamie Horgan
Julian Guzman
Kristin Texeira
Nicole Duennebier
Randi Shandroski
Ross Normandin
Sarah Gay
TJ Kelley III
Vanessa Irzyk
Wayne Stokes
Show Dates: February 26 - March 28
Reception: Thursday March 5, 7-9 PM
SECOND SELVES
Text me back, I want to feel you vibrate in my hands*
When it’s late, you’ve been drinking, and you happen to find a dead iPhone in the back seat of a cab, you have a few options:
1) Return the iPhone to the driver, and trust they find its owner
2) Take the iPhone home, charge it, and promise to mail it back the next day
3) Steal the iPhone, remove its sim card, wipe its data, claim it as your own
You decide to take it home, though, you’re not quite sure what to do with the device yet. You look at your own phone and imagine it must be impossible to be selfish enough to steal someone else’s. Its sleek glass body holds so much personal data that you’ve come to identify as integral to your being; lengthy text threads with a former lover which you enjoy reading when you’re feeling lonely, a history of your endearing plights to receive attention on various social media channels, and thousands of photographs, of yourself, of your naked body, of your “experiences,” however you wish to define them. It is as personal as it is detached, and as romantic as it is cold. Willingly and habitually, you provide this device with as much attention as you would something sacred.
I found an iPhone last night. I took it home and charged it, planning on trying to return it. It was unlocked. It hadn’t been updated, it was still running iOS6. The last text message was from 4 months ago. The owner had gotten a new one. There were less than 100 photos. It had been discarded as obsolete, cast off, shut out, forgotten in a cab. In that moment I felt bad for it. “Is it healthy to feel more sorrow for this object than for the owner who may be wondering where it went?” I thought to myself. “It’s better off with me.” I’ve justified being naughty by instead deciding that I would become a godmother to this sad little iPhone.
It’s almost impossible to discuss intimacy without also referencing the role consumer technology has in orchestrating it. My own former devices, while rarely activated, serve me as cherished diaries; I turn them on and flip though their contents in an effort to retreat to a distant past, some archived secondary self that I can never quite remember unless prompted in the present tense. I inadvertently associate the soft vibrations of my current devices with passion, touching its glass becomes as sexy as touching skin, waiting for updates as emotionally taunting as longing to feel loved.
A few months ago, I was invited by Pat Falco of the Distillery Gallery in Boston to organize an exhibition around networked culture. Having just uprooted my known existence and moved to New York, I had found myself in a tumultuous state of both utopian freedom and nostalgic sorrow for what I had just left, both selves fighting against the other. The artists I approached for this project make work that project a certain exposed duality of being, altering their publicly preserved image to portray inner struggles with sexuality, placement, mortality, and undecided fate, often mirrored against their private ideal self.
The exhibition, Second Selves, is a minimal group show of six artists—Leah Schrager, Blake Hiltunen, Julie Nymann, Sam Metcalf,Philip Fryer, and myself—with each artist presenting one work from a larger series. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with these artists, outlined below, and look forward to bringing these works together in Boston.
Artists:
Leah Schrager
Sam Metcalf
Julie Nymann
Philip Fryer
Blake Hiltunen
Alexis Anais Avedisian
Curated by:
Alexis Avedisian
http://holyurl.co/
Show Dates: January 15 - February 21
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 15, 7-9 PM
BACK TO SCHOOL
Back To School
A selection of undergraduate work by academically trained artists
Dana Woulfe
Mike Dacey
NINETA
Andrea Evans
Maria Molteni
Randi Shandroski
Thomas Buildmore
Lina Maria Giraldo
Percy Fortini-Wright
Jamie O’Neil
Stephen Hamilton
Brian Buttler
Derek Hoffend
Paul Todd Sullivan
Adam O'Day
Curated by Thomas Young Gallery
Show Dates: September 18 - October 25
Reception: September 18, 6-9 PM
SONANCE
Opening Reception: Thursday August 14, 6 - 9 PM (Live Performances 8-9 PM )
Show Dates: August 14 - September 14
An exhibition featuring installations of sonified forms and interactive audio objects.
Featuring works by:
Jason Sanford
Vic Rawlings
Derek Hoffend
Curated by Derek Hoffend
Sonance brings together three Boston-based artists who maintain creative practices that cross boundaries between musician and form-maker, such as in the construction of instruments and objects for use in live performance as well as stand-alone sculptures and installations that combine the physical with the sonic.
Each artist produced audio-oriented works responding to the gallery site, emphasizing the acts of listening, exploration, and interaction. Resting in silence until activated, each work is brought to life through active viewer engagement.
Jason Sanford is an artist working with sound. For 20 years he has made instruments for and performed with his band, Neptune. Sonance presents nine new sculptures by Sanford, which use sound to negotiate between instrument, architecture, action, and object.
Sanford displays sound sculptures from time to time in gallery settings, and he collaborates occasionally with dancers or other kinds of performers, but his work can most frequently be experienced in the context of his musical performances, solo, with Neptune, and with E.
www.neptune-band.com
www.j-s-sanford.com
www.abandcallede.com
Vic Rawlings engages with sound as a musician, instrument builder, teacher, and through installed objects.
In Sonance, he presents interactive pieces that reference his teaching practice (workshops in sound and improvised music) and his electroacoustic instrument building.
Derek Hoffend is a visual and audio artist who creates interactive sound-sculpture installations that explore sound as a medium intersecting with physical forms, bodies, and spaces to create participatory experiences for viewers.
Recent work is influenced by therapeutic potentials of combined sound, colored light, and geometric structures to create immersive sensory experiences. Hoffend currently records and performs electronic music under the moniker Aether Chroma.
www.derekhoffend.com
aetherchroma.com
https://soundcloud.com/derek-hoffend
99.99
On view from April 17-May 31
Opening Reception Thursday April 17th from 7-9pm
Featuring the works of Charlie Crowell, Garrett Gould, Gordon Holden, Molly Landman, Tyler Murphy, Alicia Riccio and Sena Wataya, 99.99 playfully explores the art object in the absence of Artʼs mythical piety.
99.99 at The Distillery
Initially assembled and inspired by the essay Frivolity and Unction by the
art critic Dave Hickey, the works featured in the exhibition build from and respond
to Hickeyʼs idea of Art as a more or less frivolous human act. Hickey builds his
claim from the idea that Art, as a cultural movement, assumes a sense of
“inherent goodness” through coded aesthetics, that other expressions of creative
media do not so fallaciously assume. Do pop music and prime time TV strive
toward the same sense of cultural significance as Art? Does a fellow frivolous
act like sport aim to contextualize and articulate the human spirit as Art might?
Hickey argues no. So where is the shame in letting Art become art?
This group of seven presents a body of work that espouses the perfectly
ineffectual poetry of art and humbly re-presents the pataphysical objects of
creative labors as just that. Together, they incite the imaginary and leisurely walk
toward the asymptotic horizon of understanding through Art, while taking the time
to stop and smell the roses. “We wont find sense by cutting deep into something,
though I suppose we might actually release it.”
THE DEPARTED
An exhibit of former Distillery artists
curated by former Distillery Gallery director, Scott Chasse
March 5 - April 7, 2014
public reception on Saturday, March 15, 7-9pm
The Departed, at The Distillery Gallery
The Distillery has been home to artists seeking raw space to create and be inspired in since 1984. Over the span of thirty years, the building has evolved to become the staple of the Boston arts scene it is today. Hundreds of artists have come and gone as full time residents or part time studio renters, each contributing the vibrance and diversity of the art community that is The Distillery.
Scott Chasse is an artist & curator based in Brooklyn, NY. He was the director of Distillery Gallery from 2007-2013 and has moved on to run his own gallery, Calico, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Chasse held studio space at The Distillery from 2001-2010.
“The Departed” features a selection of artists from Scott's term at The Distillery who have, moved on to continue creating elsewhere. The range in artwork and career paths amongst this group is wide, and this is a mere fraction of the long list of names that once called this former rum distillery “home”.
exhibiting artists include:
Andrew Mowbray
Corey Corcoran
Cristi Rinklin
Dana Woulfe
James Weinberg
John Hyde
Kathleen Bitetti
Maria LaCreta
Michael Dacey
Morgan Thomas
Nick Rodrigues
Robert daVies
Ryan Lombardi
Sarah Meyers Brent
Sarah Walker
Thomas Buildmore
SKIES, WATER & DEATH
"Skies, Water & Death" writes a new story on human boundaries. The show brings together existing and hidden worlds together with mortality, delicacy, flow and uncertainty: a collapsed environment without physical, social, emotional or tangible boundaries. "Skies, Water & Death" looks closer into the tension of physical and mental worlds creathis inviting collision through drawing, printmaking, and sculpture.
Curated by Silvi Naci
Featuring work by:
- Chris Cavallero
- Martha Oc
- Max Rose
- Joo Lee Kang
- Debra Weisberg
- Dan McCarthy
- Jacob Bannon
- Chad Chesko
- PT Sullivan
- Sarah Gay
- Joyce McDaniel
- Celine Brownin
- Melanie Peterson
SCRAPS
On view: December 6 - January 11
Reception: December 5, 7-9 PM
Tonight at The Distillery Gallery, from seven until nine, we will be hosting an opening reception for our latest show, Scraps.
It has been a while since we have hosted a big, open call, group show and the gallery and we thought this holiday season was the perfect time to loosen our belts and have a little fun. We tossed around a lot of ideas in search of one that would inspire our artist friends to come up with some interesting new work for us and finally settled on Scraps.
A show of work incorporating discarded objects.
We gambled a little by asking artists to bring us art made of trash but, it paid off. We were rewarded with some very interesting and surprising pieces, created by some great artists who don't normally turn out for this sort of thing. Come on out tonight, or for the next month, and see for yourself.
Participating artists, in no particular order:
MrNvr
Brigid Watson
Mary Sherman
Jennyfer Haddad
Bradford Rusick
Bobby Anspach
Sable Matula
Maria Molteni
Mallory Biggins
Caitlin Duennebier
Scott Chasse
Sarah Gay
Fish McGill
Shannon Wallack
Nick Zaremba
Kristin Texeira
Brian Hart
Adam O'Day
Patrick Peltier
Pat Falco
Dave Tolmie
Nineta
Eric Love
Beth Redmond Walsh
Ala Dehghan
Choi Dachal
Kathleen Bitetti
Rachel Newsam
Daniel Lear
Michal McKeown
Jamie Horgan
Carolyn Lewenberg
CRYPSIS
Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept 14th, 8-10pm with DJs Stephen Decker and Giancarlo Corbacho
Imitation takes its most sincere form as surroundings soak inward, dissolving the borders that allow us to create the definitions on which we rely, while still the essence remains unchangeable. Simple camouflage is only a first step - the predator darts from light to dark, nowhere and yet everywhere at once. The phenomena explored here are far older than man - an ongoing evolutionary arms race between the hunter and hunted. A clever creature allows itself to disappear amidst its surroundings, confusing the perception of its opponent; senses now betray the predator as the essence of the cryptic one is maintained - yet simultaneously and expertly decontextualized.
In Crypsis, five artists explore the diversity of these strategies through new works this fall at the Distillery Gallery. Communication is through the language of shimmering light, isolation of that which seeks to blend in. The vocabulary of corporate suggestion is at once garbled and made plain. The implications of camouflage and mimicry in advertising, military and animal capabilities provide a focus for this exciting set of works from this international group of young, up-and-coming artists.
Victoria Duffee was born in New York City in 1988. She attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and now lives and works in Brookyln, NY. She is obsessed with movies and the possibilities of reality in pretending.
Florencia Escudero is an artist from Argentina who lives and works in Jersey City, NJ. She studied art at the School of Visual Arts in New York and earned her master's degree in sculpture at Yale. In October she will be attending the Art Farm Residency in Nebraska.
George Heintz works and lives in New Jersey. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and is influenced by the Arte Povera movement.
Carly Planker lives and works in Brooklyn. However, most of her photography is about her travels to anywhere from the beach to Russia. After attending the School of Visual Arts where she studied photography, Carly produced events for the global art non-profit Slideluck Potshow for almost two years.
Randi Shandroski was born in Thunder Bay, ON, Canada and now lives and works in Boston, MA. She graduated in 2012 with her master’s degree in sculpture at Yale. She is currently the CEO of LACTIC INC., a conceptual clothing company.
SLUMMER CAMP
August 2 - 24, 2013
featuring works by KDONZ, Adam O'Day, and MRNVR
When 3 artists camp out in a gallery, anything could happen...
After a 3-week residency where the artists use the gallery as their shared studio space,
this collaborative adventure in painting and sculpture will showcase KDONZ's gross creativity, MRNVR's bright fantasy-based illustration, and Adam O'Day's high energy backgrounds.
Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 7-9pm
TO EACH HIS HOME
April 27 - May 25, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 27, 7-9pm
The Distillery Gallery is pleased to announce a group exhibit curated by exhibiting artist, Courtney Moy.
"To Each His Home" explores the spaces and ideas of what we call home. The artists in the show share a common affinity for narrative, evoking themes of nostalgia, youth, and familiarity that define who they are individually but collectively explore something deeper and distinctly universal.
Exhibiting artists: Jes Hughes, Veronica Wells, Caitie Moore, Ian Deleon & Kara Stokowski, Molly Landman, Roland Jackson, Katharena Rentumis, Fionn McCabe, and Courtney Moy
Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, April 27, 7-9pm.