Forum of 40 Champions

THE LAST MINSTALLATION!

Gary Kachadourian's Forum of 40 Champions, our final exhibition, opens tonight, February 26, at 7P.M.

After two years and twelve shows, the Minstallation Gallery at the Creative Alliance is ending its run. Going out with a bang, we've brought in the big guns! Gary Kachadourian, well-known for his massive and creative curatorial projects, has asked forty artists to battle for supremacy in the tiny confines of the Minstallation Gallery.

Forty champions, each possessing a special power, have been invited to create a warrior to enter the Minstallation Gallery and face the special powers of their peers. Participants will create their warriors to occupy a 4 square inch hexagon of space, flying included, working with the size and shape parameters of Warhammer 40,000 and Dungeons and Dragons. Participants may use Warhammer stands and modify figurines from any of the gaming and fantasy products or may create their own using Sculpy or other materials. 20 sided dice and measuring sticks will be provided. Gaming rules and booklet will be developed during the course of the exhibition.

Participating Artists:
Seth Adelsberger
Christine Bailey
Kelley Bell
John Bohl
Dustin Carlson
Dearraindrop
T. W. Dixon
Lara Emerling
Michael Farley
Taylor Fischer
Dennis Garcia
Zak Greene
Sam Christian Holmes
Dina Kelberman
Lisa Krause
Stefani Levin
April Danielle Lewis
Andrew Liang
Sarah Magida
Sebastian Martorana
Mayplez
D. Neal McDonald
Jason Q. Monberg
Michael Moore
motobus
Lexie Mountain
Katrina Navarro
Hermonie Only
Audrey Lea Collins Petrich
David Purcell
Ric Royer
Chuck Sehman
Emily Slaughter
Nolen Strals
Antoinette Suiter
Virginia Warwick
Erin Womack
Karen Yasinsky
Andrew Yff
Ming-Yi Sung Zaleski

UPDATE: Gary Kachadourian was interviewed by Radar Redux about "Forum of 40 Champions."

Jessie Lehson, "Barren"

Jessie Lehson's Barren is on view at the Minstallation Gallery from January 16 to February 13, 2010.
Whether it's a simple wall of sod bricks sprouting heirloom grasses in Patterson Park, or floor patterns of multi-hued soil, elegantly laid out like a Sol Lewitt painting, Jessie Lehson refocuses our attention on the earth beneath our feet. Barren draws a connection between the salted fields of medieval conflicts and the increasing salinity of overworked contemporary farmland. Lehson received her MFA from MICA's Rinehart School in 2008. She recently took 3rd place for the Trawick Prize and was a finalist for the Sondheim Prize in 2009.

Matthew McConville, "Minument"

Matthew McConville's Minument is on view at the Minstallation Gallery from November 7 – December 19. There will be a reception Thursday December 3 from 5:30-7:30pm.



Every day, hundreds if not thousands of Baltimoreans pass by the Mt. Vernon Square monument to Roger B. Taney, who penned the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, denying the rights of African Americans to citizenship. Here, painter Matthew McConville reimagines the statue’s fabrication, with Taney’s head toppled on the ground and replaced with Scott’s. Minument: Reconstruction is a diminutive installment in the artist’s gently absurd series of works looking at the place of monuments and natural wonders in the American landscape. How and why do we construct our monuments? Where do we place them, and how does that speak to our culture’s priorities? Finally, what do a people choose to remember, and what happens as the memories – but not the object – change or fade over time?

Don't miss this minstallation!

Cornel Rubino, "Crying"

Cornel Rubino, "Crying" OPENS SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 12 5-7 PM

THE MINSTALLATION GALLERY RETURNS FOR ITS FINAL SEASON!


...And Cornel Rubino returns to the Creative Alliance to inaugurate this special arts event.

Why do we cry? Our best efforts at understanding come from the realms of poetry, drama, fiction and cinema. Tears of happiness, tears of joy, tears of frustration and defeat. The tears of repentant politicians; the needs and demands expressed through an infant’s cries; the tearful hysteria of the masses over celebrity deaths. Cornel Rubino’s minstallation, CRYING, speculates on the mystery of crying, suggesting that it continues to resist explanation and interpretation and that the redemptive pleasures one experiences are reason alone to weep. A winner of awards including the Society of Publication Designers and Communication Arts Award for his work in The New Yorker magazine, Rubino’s 2003 drawing installation, MOBTOWN, covered 2000 sq ft in the Creative Alliance’s Main Gallery.

Please join us on Saturday, September 12, from 5 - 7 PM to celebrate Cornel Rubino's minstallation, and to kick off the gallery's FINAL SEASON!

HIATUS

The Minstallation Gallery at the Creative Alliance is currently enjoying a well-deserved summer break.

We will return in the fall for our triumphant final season. Expect great things!

Ramsay Antonio-Barnes, "Undercurrent" CLOSING RECEPTION APRIL 10, 5-7 PM

CLOSING RECEPTION FRIDAY APRIL 10, 5 - 7 PM!
Please join us for a reception in honor of Ramsay Antonio-Barnes' minstallation "Undercurrent," now on view at the Creative Alliance. Ramsay will discuss his piece at the reception with Joseph Young of Baltimore Interview.

Standing at the heart of Antonio-Barnes’ timely minstallation is the Nike-Hercules nuclear missile, designed at the height of the Cold War to intercept incoming Soviet missiles, and based on a grim calculation that widespread nuclear fallout was preferable to a direct hit.

"The piece is about the undercurrents of violence and the possibility of violence in our normal day to day lives. Whether a threat from across the globe or petty crime in the alley behind my house, a mental attitude of self-defense and naivety that nothing will ever happen are always battling."

Ramsay Antonio-Barnes currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland after receiving his MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art and continues his studio practice. His work has been exhibited internationally and nationally throughout the United States.

Jennifer Strunge, "Eyepiece" OPENS THURSDAY NOVEMBER 6

Please join us this Thursday evening to celebrate the opening of "Eyepiece," a new minstallation by Jennifer Strunge.

An indisputable phenomeon the DIY art/craft scene, Jennifer Strunge’s goofy, stuffed Cotton Monsters are instantly recognizable and have been shipped throughout the world. With Eyepiece, her creatures inhabit the space like a dark corner of your imagination, peering back out at you. A Baltimore native and practicing artist and puppeteer since preschool, Strunge’s work begs to be touched and doesn’t take itself too seriously. She works almost exclusively with recycled cloth, giving old clothes, blankets, and linens an entirely new life as they are reconstructed into comforting (if bizarre) quilts, monsters and soft sculptures.

The reception is Thursday, November 6 from 6 PM - 8 PM. Eyepiece will be on view until December 20.

Best City Paper

Thanks to Baltimore's City Paper for mentioning the Minstallation Gallery in the '08 "Best Of Baltimore" issue. Credit is due not only to those folks mentioned in the article, but to Jed and everybody else at the Creative Alliance; thanks also to Matt McConville who made the space look so great.


Keep an eye out for more excellent shows, including let it out and let it in, our season-opener by Geoff Grace.

Geoff Grace, "let it out and let it in" OPENS SEPTEMBER 13

Geoff Grace inaugurates the fall season with a new minstallation opening this Saturday, September 13, from 5 - 7 PM.

let it out and let it in is the artist's first project since winning the 2008 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize. In this quiet celebration of the wide open spaces of pop songs and the American highway, billboards pass by with the gentle rhythm of a road trip, slowly unfolding the lyrics to "Hey Jude."


An artist, musician, and teacher, Geoff Grace has exhibited frequently in the galleries and alternative spaces of Baltimore, including exhibits at the BMA in 2005 and 2007. He has also shown his work in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Grace is known for packing grand statements into elegant packages, and his understated sensibility is a natural fit for the Minstallation Gallery.

Video Killed the Minstallation Star

I know what you've been thinking this August.

You've been thinking, "I'd like to hear Minstallation Gallery curator R.L. Tillman squeak out some semi-coherent thoughts about minstallation art, and more specifically, about Laura Amussen's Lady Chapel. "

Well, it's your lucky day! RadarRedux has posted some images of the show, along with a phone interview with yours truly.



Thanks to RadarRedux and Joan Spirytus. Lady Chapel runs through August 16.

Laura Amussen, "Lady Chapel" OPENS JUNE 21

Lady Chapel, a new minstallation by Baltimore sculptor Laura Amussen, opens Saturday June 21 with a reception from 4 - 7 PM. The piece will remain on view through August 16.

ABOUT THE SHOW:

Peeking through the gothic windows of Amussen's minstallation, are images of Madonnas, Virgin Marys and other various women cut from old art text books. Amussen has displaced these women, literally cutting them from their roles as mothers, lovers, friends, and wives.
Now their gazes and bodies are redirected towards one another in a semi-erotic fashion. The title Lady Chapel references the eastern end of a gothic church which is usually square and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Influenced by environmental concerns as well as the rapaciousness of globalization, Amussen's work has evolved to encompass aspects of landscape and architecture in order to create metaphors of psychological space. In an increasingly globalized culture, a growing sense of placelessness makes it more and more difficult for us to place our own identities. Amussen studies both geographical and psychological dislocation and its attendant complexities, as well as antidotes to the prevailing need to belong somewhere.

Learn more about the work of Laura Amussen at the artist's website.

"View from a Vista-Dome: Dazzle Cities" minstallation views

James Reeder has created an illusive, elusive, and genuinely magical world inside the confines of our tiny gallery, and it must be seen to be believed.

In other words: View from a Vista-Dome: Dazzle Cities is a MUST-SEE!





* My apologies to James Reeder (a gifted photographer) for these 'hack' images. I took the photos tonight and just had to post them. James did a marvelous job with his minstallation, and it must be shared!

James Reeder, "View from a Vista-Dome: Dazzle Cities" OPENS MAY 3

James Reeder is a photographer and sculptor living in New York. Reeder brings his singular point of view to the Creative Alliance with his new minstallation View from a Vista-Dome: Dazzle Cities. The exhibition opens May 3 and runs through June 13.

Please welcome James to Baltimore this Saturday May 3 at an opening reception from 4 - 6 PM. Refreshments will be served!

ABOUT THE SHOW:

NYC’s James Reeder is known for his small, atmospheric photographs of delicately constructed model environments. Though related in concept to photographers like Thomas Demand, whose images of constructed spaces are mistaken for the real thing, Reeder’s images are distorted and the models clearly handmade. Depicting blurry cityscapes or the aftermath of epic natural events, they feel simultaneously archaic and timeless, reducing colossal and long-enduring structures to fragile and transitory symbols of utopia.

Learn more about the work of James Reeder at his website.

Public Print Lab Closes Tomorrow

Thanks to Bruce, Nolen, and Justin for an amazing, innovative minstallation!

Public Print Lab images

Public Print Lab, minstallation by Post-Typography. Email images to print@publicprintlab.com.






publicprintlab.com

Public Print Lab by Post-Typography OPENS MARCH 15

Public Print Lab, a new minstallation by Post-Typography, opens Saturday March 15, 4-6 PM.

Avant garde design subversives Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, aka Post Typography, convert the gallery into a miniature, quasi-automated, open source publishing house. Images emailed to print@publicprintlab.com during the run of the exhibition will print out in the gallery and be bound and published as a book at its end. Making waves nationally since 2001, Post Typography has received numerous fancy design awards and been featured in such publications as Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type and D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, The Art of Modern Rock, Metropolis magazine, and Taschen’s Contemporary Graphic Design. They specialize in conceptual typography and custom lettering, with forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work and vandalism. Technical assistance for Public Print Lab provided by Justin Blemly of beatbots.com, DIY media resource for Baltimore, DC and beyond.

ABOUT PUBLIC PRINT LAB:
http://publicprintlab.com/

ABOUT POST-TYPOGRAPHY:
http://www.posttypography.com/

ABOUT JUSTIN BLEMLY/BEATBOTS:
http://www.beatbots.com/mission.php

Eric Dyer, Bellows Organ

ERIC DYER
Bellows Organ
Feb 2-Mar 8
Film phenom and 2-time Sondheim Prize finalist Eric Dyer inaugurates the Minstallation Gallery with Bellows Organ, the zoetrope/sculpture that forms the climactic scene of his latest film. Dyer’s unique animation process combines the zoetrope, a pre-cinema optical toy, with rapid-prototype 3-D printing to create installations and unnerving films that feel archaic and futuristic at the same time. In the film version of Bellows, concertinas breathe like humans and share both their expressive and destructive potential.

Minstallation Gallery Photos

The beautiful gallery under the stairs:


A little bit closer now:

Minstallation

minstallation, noun
1. in art, a miniature installation.
2. an exciting new art form.

The Minstallation Gallery at the Creative Alliance is now open. The space is Baltimore's only exhibition venue dedicated to the miniature installation, or minstallation. As described by Creative Alliance Artistic Director Jed Dodds:

Presented by artist/impresario R.L. Tillman, the newest addition to Baltimore’s cultural landscape has already staked its position as the region’s most vibrant miniature installation space. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to spread their wings in this intimate yet ambitious gallery, with 225 square inches of floor space and generous 14 inch ceilings.

Creative Alliance at the Patterson, home to the exciting new Minstallation Gallery, is located at 3134 Eastern Avenue.