Brooklyn Theater and Arts

New Presentation in Brooklyn Museum Contemporary Galleries, Extended Family: Contemporary Connections,
Now on View through Summer 2010

A new installation of contemporary art presents recent acquisitions displayed along with notable works that have entered the collection over the past five decades. The recent acquisitions range from younger artists such as Nina Chanel Abney, Shinique Smith, and Isca Greenfield-Sanders to more established figures such as Mary Heilman, Mitch Epstein, and Lorraine O'Grady. The presentation focuses on familial relationships, broadening the definition of family to include larger groups or communities united by shared values, identities, lifestyles, or emotional needs. Extended Family: Contemporary Connections, now on view through summer of 2010, includes some forty works.

The intergenerational selection of works on view demonstrates that familial relationships endure as a rich source of inspiration. Each of the artists expresses fluid definitions of the family and domesticity, drawing on experiences that are private and public as well as individual and communal.

Included in Extended Family are Nick Cave's Soundsuit (2008), a mixed-media piece that transforms the human body into a still life ornamented with scavenged materials, referencing a range of rituals from African dances to Christian liturgy. In the portfolio Samar Hussein (2003-09), artist Vera Lutter commemorates the civilian deaths in the war in Iraq since the American invasion through images of a hibiscus flower's life cycle. Forbidden Fruit (2009) a painting by Jersey City-based artist Nina Chanel Abney that is part of a series of works drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, alludes to the chapter featuring a hookah-puffing caterpillar. Reception (2009), a complex installation by Vadis Turner, and The Couple (2003), an aluminum sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, make their debuts in Extended Families. Several recent, self referential photographs by the late Dash Snow are also included.

Among the other artists represented are Ghada Amer, Polly Apfelbaum, Tara Donovan, Mona Hatoum, Glenn Ligon, Joe Overstreet, Hellen van Meene, Michelangelo Pisoletto, and Andres Serrano. A few of the works were on view in the previous installation, among them Fred Wilson's Grey Area (Brown Version) (1993), and Mickalene Thomas's A Little Taste Outside of Love (2007), but the vast percentage of works are new to this presentation.

Lisa Kellner at BAC Gallery
Surfacing Beneath
September 25, 2009 – January 15, 2010

Special Gallery Hours: Saturday, September 26, 12-4pm

During DUMBO Art under the Bridge Festival Surfacing Beneath is a site-specific installation that will evolve over time by Brooklyn-based artist Lisa Kellner. Kellner incorporates wall drawing with sculpture made from silk and pigments, exploring patterns of disease and cellular structure and its relation to human behavior.

In Kellner's hands, silk becomes a bodily landscape of organ like forms. For Surfacing Beneath, these forms adapt to the architecture of the space, creeping along walls and pipes. Here, Kellner’s work proposes an alternative to that which cannot be seen but is known to exist and grow underneath the skin.

This dynamic installation will evolve over the course of the 16 week exhibition as the artist returns to the gallery often to add to the work.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lisa Kellner received her MFA from the Art Institute of Boston. She completed her undergraduate studies at the School of Visual Arts and Boston University. She has exhibited nationally, including such venues as Transformer Gallery in Washington, DC, The Islip Art Museum in NY, and 808 Gallery in Boston, MA. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Sculpture Magazine. Kellner currently has a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space Residency where she is developing and installing A Proposition Ate My Marriage. In December 2009, she will present Suspended Presence, a solo show of her work at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Visit her Website

BAC Gallery
111 Front Street, Suite 218
(Alternate entrance is 55 Washington St.)
Brooklyn, NY
Regular gallery hours are Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm