Artspace t-shirt designed by Phil Lique, 2010

We've asked artists to design Artspace gear and unique apparel for our Shop. Come by the gallery and check out our bags, designed by Martha Lewis; t-shirts by Phil Lique; tank-tops designed by Laura Marsh, and mystery boxes, decorated containers filled with surprises specially designed by a variety of Artspace artists. Stop in at the gallery or shop online!

More Artspace products coming soon!

Thanks to Incessant Rejuvenation (for Yang Ming) from Journey from Longjiang, 2010

In her site-specific installation, Sarah Bliss unites distinct cultures and historical moments through ordinary materials and subtle gestures. Journey from Longjiang uses the history of the Artspace building, originally a furniture store, to comment on the effects of globalization and consumption in contemporary society. The sculptural forms suspended from the ceiling and situated on the gallery floor and wall are constructed from the packing materials that protect furniture during transport from China to the U.S. The video loosely documents the journey of the furniture from a manufacturing facility in Longjiang to the United States.  Typically, landfilled or burned, Bliss repurposes the packaging materials into handsomely crafted abstracted forms that echo those found in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Evoking the extraordinary from the mundane, Bliss's work speaks to the realities of capitalism in the 21st century, yet offers moments of quietude during anxious times. 

I'd Rather Be Fishing, 2010, Custom-printed ceramic

Window A, 2010, Aluminum, formica laminate, fluorescent lighting

Under The Desk Escape Unit, 2010, Found objects, laminate, MDF, polystyrene, epoxy, aqua-resin, video

Under The Desk Escape Unit (interior detail), 2010, Found objects, laminate, MDF, polystyrene, epoxy, aqua-resin, video

Lisa Dillin creates sculptures and installations that question viewers’ relationships with the physical and conceptual environments that they inhabit.  In Office Units: Surrogate Prototypes, Dillin’s spatial intervention takes the form of a modern-day office cubicle. Ordinary office products and personal effects appear: a desktop computer, file folders, pens, pencils, and snapshots sit atop the cubicle desktop. Large file folders and potted plants stand behind the fabric partition, and an illuminated, wood-laminate paneled wall sculpture mounted on the adjacent wall. complete the office-inspired environment.  Although the installation emulates a typical modular office cubicle found in any commercial setting, the small, half-opened door underneath the desk suggests otherwise. A strange vista appears through Dillin’s carefully constructed aperture: a milky mass covers the walls and floor of the small hollow space into which curious viewers are meant to crawl. Once inside, viewers enter an alternative reality—a grotto. Small stalactites and stalagmites appear and the sound of running water fills the space.  An absurd and literal escape, Dillin’s artificial grotto speaks to the increasing disconnect from nature that human beings experience. The constructed environment functions as a stage set of sorts where viewers observe the blending of past with present, and the fantastic with the mundane. A wry comment on consumer culture and the artificiality of the economic and structural systems that humans entangle themselves within, Office Units: Surrogate Prototypes questions the legitimacy of our current raison d’etre.

Utilizing the landscape as his medium, Fritz Horstman creates works that bring new awareness to our physical surroundings by intervening in nature in subtle ways. Horstman’s contemplative installations and interventions have taken the form of large geomentric cuts in the ground, undulating paper arches in a field, and a musically-inspired arrangement of charred tree trunks in a forest. With Guerrilla Trees, Horstman directs our attention to our relationship to New Haven. Fondly known as “The Elm City,” Horstman’s installation invites viewers to participate in the transformation of New Haven through guerrilla-style planting. A wooden  planter with elm saplings inside, sits in the middle of the room. On the wall in Gallery 2 Horstman has drawn an enlarged map of New Haven. Next to the map, Horstman has installed a column of push pins with green strings attached. Each viewer is invited to take a pin, which is also attached to a seed holder on the white cube, and place it somewhere on the map. Viewers are meant to plant the seeds (when the ground thaws) in a place of their choice; Horstman will then also plant one of the saplings from the planter in the same location. At the end of the exhibition, Horstman will collect information about each of the selected planting locations, and create a map that will eventually live on the Artspace website. Part performance, sculpture, and public intervention, Guerrilla Trees poses questions are individual assumptions about place, while emphasizing how our collective acts physically transform our community.

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Utilizing geometric forms, hardware, and synthetic materials, Colorado-based artist Susan Meyer has installed a series of ceiling mounted abstract sculptures to create a fantastical yet looming sci-fi environment.  In Together, Meyer employs the techniques of map-making and modeling to create Modernist-inspired structures that explore the existing tensions between the communal and individual.  The glistening vibrant sculptures assume a singular landscape that overwhelms the gallery, creating an alternative, insular world.  Drawing on a variety of philosophical views on notions of communal living ranging from those of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus artists to Buckminster Fuller to the inhabitants of Colorado's commune, Drop City, Meyer juxtaposes the idealism expressed through geometric form with the stark reality of human behavior.  Indeed, her miniscule inhabitants reflect a range of attitudes and emotions that appear at odds with the utopic idealism long associated with Modernist endeavors.

A video component remixes the last scene from THX 1138, the George Lucas film.  In the original version, the main character escapes the "safe" underground civilization and emerges to the open earth, giant sun blazing behind him.  The remixed version repeats and reverses the sequence; the tiny figure emerges and retreates endlessly, enduring a Sisyphean existence.

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