Layer Current

December 8-18, 2011

Opening December 8th, 2011 6-9pm

Monthly Artist Dinner Friday, December 16th, 2011 RSVP Required. 8pm

A group show of selected Curate NYC artworks.

Like the Spice is proud to present the exhibition Layer Current, the Curate NYC 2011 live exhibition for Brooklyn, featuring works by Wayne Adams, Mira Alibek, Joe Banish, Ian Addison Hall, Nicholas Horman, Tamiko Kawata, Rachel Kohn, Keira Kotler, MaryKate Maher, Lael Marshall, Christina Massey, Dana McClure, Hannah Mishin, Jay Paavonpera, Erik Sommer, Rosemary Taylor, and Vadis Turner. Selected from over 1500 entries submitted by artists living or working in New York City, the exhibition showcases works built up in layers over time.

Layering, as a strategy, takes on varying and multiple meanings and uses in each piece, some layers are there to hide or modify what’s beneath, other layers combine to produce startling effects, some layers allude to geological stratifications and accumulations, others mark the slow, painstaking process of their intentional layer-by-layer creation. Collage, décollage, collecting, accreting and composting are all in evidence.

Often labor-intensive and obsessive by design, the works in this exhibition do not aspire to a unified cold glossy surface, seen in so much “Blue Chip” luxury art today, but revel in the handmade humanity of their production. Even the sensual surfaces are here the result of painstaking processes, not mechanized perfection.

Several works take up mundane experience as subject matter, transforming materials, though precise attention to detail and refined technique, into embodiments of the ridiculousness and subtle hidden meanings of the everyday. Other works have their own magical arbitrariness of process, becoming systems for living through work, rather than systems for producing works; the slow buildup of layers making art of slow, incremental, repetitive, obsessive actions that are more process than product, intense accumulations of time in material form.

There is something to this idea of surface upon surface upon surface, which is distinctly of our time. In Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time there is an anecdote, possibly invented, about an old woman who confronts a scientist after his public lecture on astronomy,

"What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

When it comes to contemporary society, unlike world-supporting turtles, we get the feeling that perhaps life really is just surface layers, all the way down.

Curate NYC is an online platform designed to heighten exposure and opportunities for New York City visual artists and promote New York as a vital cultural hub. This December, Curate NYC has selected one gallery in each borough of the city to curate exhibitions from the over 1500 works submitted online by open call. In addition, the top 150 works will be featured as postcard prints in an additional exhibition. Funding for Curate NYC is provided by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Full Spectrum Experience, Inc. More information on Curate NYC can be found at www.curatenyc.org

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