BE THERE
The Common MindPresented by Cueto Project June 25, 2009- September 19, 2009Reception: June 25, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pmElinor Milchan, Christina Kruse, Tatyana Murray, Eve BaileyJune 25 - September 10 2009 Opening reception: Thursday June 25 2009 6-8pm Gallery summer hours: Monday-Friday 10am-6pm When reading over an article in Frieze magazine about the British artist Eric Bainbridge, I came upon an inspiring note that accompanied his works during a previous show: art critic and curator Greg Hilty states “We donʼt all choose our neighbors but they affect us. We donʼt always choose our thoughts but they also have a bearing.” The title of this text is “The Common Mind.” This equivocal notion, characteristic of our times, which claims all and avoids responsibility, operates as an entryway into the exhibition of the same title at Cueto Project NY. It encapsulates all that simultaneously links and distances the four artists who show their works in Valerie Cuetoʼs art gallery. Elinor Milchan, Christina Kruse, Tatyana Murray, and Eve Bailey. Their work, exhibited together for the first time, presents a great Jungian lava that fuses the collective subconscious with the personal subconscious. The product is a common spirit that embraces multiple artistic discourses and processes. Here one can say that the collective subconscious plays the role of an excuse because what stands out is what differentiates these women. In no way does the fact that they all live in New York City, that they are of the same sex and from the same generation, or that they speak the same language interfere or provoke this dialogue of creativity in a range of artistic media. Sculpture, performance, photography, installation, drawings: all mediums twisted, magnified, abused, and galvanized by the artists' incessant energies. Elinor Milchan walks through luminous fields with her photographic works. With a technique that she developed herself, she brings her light to touch the observer whether the images are in larger-than-life format or closer to the human scale. The eye looses its familiar habits, taken away by opposing currents, colorful streams and sensual waves. Whether they are named “LightLands” or “UrbanLands” these abstract scapes urge the viewer to surrender to their grandeur. On the other hand, Christina Kruse cannibalizes her image. She photographs herself, moving between glossy and matte paper, in such a way that the particulars, the figure herself, are absorbed and lost. The effect is superposition works in which detached body parts are intruded by diagram, when the body becomes measure, and then is displaced beyond said measure. In “Weeds” and “Ghost Trees,” Tatyana Murray presents for the first time a series of installations that are luminous and evolving. Her works are memories of trees that disappeared with childhood, plants that are often equivocally despised, whether this scorn is rightful and merited or not. With this subject matter and the solitary cardboard pieces that she pierces, embroiders, and adorns with many refinements, the artist achieves the necessary work of a memoir of the natural world. Eve Bailey conceives sculpture, performance and drawings at the measure of her body. A strong presence and fluid movements are perceived as innate within her mobile form, remains of the intensive practices of dance and martial arts. Hers is a body that finds itself confronted by the city and its industrial architecture, which above all seems to never let her out of its confines, and that sometimes, as in Bailey’s “Drunken Body,” melts into the structure of her constructions. Four artists who, during a long summer, rather than having a common discourse, summon the spirit of community. -Julie Boukobza
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