There’s No Place Like Utopia 

Curated by Matt Freedman

on view: October 25 – November 30, 2008 
Opening reception: Sunday, October 26, 4-6pm

The artists in this exhibition have created a wide variety of works that celebrate the elusive and uncanny appeal of the perfect world in our collective imaginations.  Ranging in age from twenty-five to ninety-seven, and with backgrounds that reach from the very center of the established New York art world to its furthest reaches and beyond, the diversity of artists chosen reflect curator Matt Freedman's conviction that utopian dreams, and disappointments attendant to them, are not necessarily well served by the ironic vernacular that is today's esthetic paradigm.   In the end, we hope that the show itself; its artists, its art, its visitors, and its commitment to its local community locates utopia, if only for a moment, in a very real and findable part of Brooklyn, New York: 558 St. Johns Place. 

Jude Tallichet has created a small, remote moment of perfection within the gallery, accessible only by extraordinary effort: Kim Brandt and Walsh Hansen collaborate on a series of works that compile a record of their imagined future life together; Adam Simon has created a truly democratic space within the exhibition that literally opens the gallery space itself to the public's control. Letha Wilson's installation recycles construction detritus as an elegant and enchanting fountain. The painter Gerald Jones' paintings of stylized animals painted in vibrant colors are funny, quirky and visionary.  Red Quickness' intricate drawings on wood depict a history of African peoples on this continent, from enslavement, to emancipation, the civil rights movement and beyond.  Ben Finer's video installation follows a fascinating encounter on 125th St between the artist, reading Dr. King's “I have a Dream” speech, and young man from the neighborhood. Rob de Mar will contribute a series of suspended idyllic landscapes. Janet Henry utilizes Lego blocks to create a vast model of New York City, reminiscent of the one we know, but undeniably…better. Eleanor Himmelfarb, in her 70th decade as a professional artist, contributes a complex and intense painting. 

curator’s statement:

My conception of this Utopia show is that it live up to its title in deed as well as in word.  The artists included pursue the dream of the perfect or a least the perfectible society not only in terms of the content of their work but in the way they have chosen to live their lives as artists-none of them have chosen conventional careers, all of them have enlarged on the limited definition of the word artist as it is (mis)understood in the art world itself.  We have also tried to push beyond the terrible de facto apartheid that exists in the art community,  a state of affairs that consistently separates artists not only by ethnicity, but by education and thematic content as well: we have "white art" in this country, and we have "black art."  Very rarely do the two coexist in unremarkable harmony.  The painter Adam Simon is one of the acknowledged leaders of the Williamsburg art community, the cofounder of the famous Four Walls collective and the current architect of the remarkable Fine Art Adoption Network, a truly utopian enterprise that seeks to bypass the economic imperatives of the gallery system and put artworks in the hands of collectors with little money but a love of art.  The remarkable Red Quickness, a visionary artist of the first order and sophisticated and determined outsider, has produced a large body of work of striking quality that has never been noticed by the usual suspects.  Gerald Jones of the Bronx, a disabled Viet Nam vet who has studied at the Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College, is another fascinating artist whose work has never been shown at a gallery like Fivemyles. Letha Wilson, an emerging sculptor who works with some of the city's most accomplished artists, builds installations that double as shelters of recycled materials.  Ben Finer's video depicts his amazing afternoon on 125th Street reciting Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech, a reading that was interrupted by a young local resident who engaged him in debate before eventually agreeing to complete the reading of the speech himself.  All these artists and the others who will show with them share a wonderful streak of iconoclastic, stubborn optimism.  It will be a pleasure to show them together, and to show their audience there just might be another, better model of the artworld; a shared pluralistic cultural future.  Utopian or not, here it is. 
- Matt Freedman

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The exhibition is in part supported by the Andy Warhol and Greenwall Foundations.