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The Misty and Christy Show
2010 acrylic, bottle caps, plastic jewels, rope and canvas on canvas 84 x 70 inches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spring Snow
2010 underwear, t-shirt, fuzz and acrylic on canvas 76 x 68 inches
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City Snap
2010 paper, toilet paper roll cardboard, Silkies, tape, enamel, watercolor, and acrylic on paper 84 x 59.5 inches

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hunter s. depp (nee johnny thompson)
2010 foil, bottle caps, silk, canvas, acrylic, cigarette filter paper, tube sock and yarn on pleather-backed fabric 45 x 30 inches
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I Am Woodstock (Yellow)
2008 acrylic, rope, canvas and yarn on linen 42 x 36
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The Estate of Chris Vasell

Chris Vasell
October 28th – December 18th 2010
83 Grand Street

Team is pleased to announce our first solo presentation of work by the Los Angeles based painter Chris Vasell. The exhibition, entitled The Estate of Chris Vasell, will run from the 28th of October through the 18th of December 2010. Team Gallery is located at 83 Grand Street, cross streets Wooster and Greene, on the ground floor.

Chris Vasell’s abstractions are informed by elements of color field painting, op art, figuration, and the abject. His paintings and collages are structured with a keen cerebral control that exists alongside a constant flirtation with chaos, repeatedly blending slapstick humor with a serious encyclopedic knowledge of his medium’s historical lineage. His consistent refusal to settle into a signature style is reflected in a malleable practice in which divergent bodies of work display an optimistic restlessness, revealing a playful and open-ended engagement with materiality. 

Vasell’s process can be characterized as an aestheticization of temperament.  In his shifting methodology, an attitude of non-conformity elicits a jovial poetics of dissonance. One could argue that Vasell’s meandering stance is consciously subversive and an examination of his output to date elucidates this thesis. In earlier works, a concern with the perceptual space of painting juxtaposed abstracted human faces with overlapping skeins of color. These representational avatars reflected the act of looking back onto the viewer. Strong references to spirituality and psychedelia led to works that borrow freely from the history of optical painting, with treatments of softly vibrating concentric rings. He has riffed on the sublime trajectories of color field painters such as Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis in paintings that hybridize a hippy tie-dye Camp with a philosophical contemplation of the void. Recent works have shown an engagement with the relationship between fine art and craft, yielding paintings made from collaged remnants of painted canvas.

For this exhibition, Vasell furthers his idiosyncratic project with a new body of work that utilizes detritus scavenged from life, which is then frequently appliquéd to corrugated cardboard sheets. By turning to cardboard as both a support and a surface material, Vasell recalls artists such as Daniel Spoerri, Robert Rauschenberg and Al Hansen in his process. The resultant bricolage includes bits of underwear, bottle caps, cigarettes, fuzz, and lace, and suggests a coyly off-hand, punk sensibility. By using discarded common materials alongside the standards of paint, canvas, and stretcher, Vasell’s new work performs another shape-shifting coup. These painterly aggregates toy with the forms and functions of a recycled vernacular, inviting a celebratory critique of traditional notions of style. His is not the mechanical mode of recycling that dominates contemporaneous dialogues surrounding appropriation, reproduction, or distribution.  Instead, a strong engagement with the physical properties of materials is a starting point for his survey of repurposed painterly tropes.

Vasell has had numerous solos in galleries both in the U.S. and abroad, and has participated in exhibitions at several museums, including The Aspen Art Museum and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. His work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

Team is open from Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For further information and/or images, please call 212 279 9219.

  

 

 

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« Frieze 2010 Exhibition history Art Basel Miami Beach - Art Galleries 2010 »
Cv%2010%20neue%20paranoia%2020x16_129_0
Neue Paranoia
2010 Q-tip, matches, key chain, electrical wire, paper, New Balance Ns, cardboard, plastic Superman ring, Disney toy, foam tops, bleach and t-shirt found painting 20 x 16 inches
Cv%2010%20the%20soft%20route%2020x16_129_0
The Soft Route
2010 YSL Spring/Summer 2010 "Manifesto" tote canvas and farmer's market strawberry container cut-outs on found painting (Edgecliffe St. south of Sunset a.k.a.The Soft Route) 20 x 16 inches
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Melissa's Quick Crack Coconuts
2004-2010 Melissa's Quick Crack Coconut labels, watercolor, cigarettes, cardboard and Prismacolor on paper on acrylic on canvas 44.5 x 39.5 inches
Cv%2008-10%20sir%20walter%20raleigh%2072x54_129_0
Sir Walter Raleigh
2008-2010 paper, cigarette filter paper, tube socks and acrylic on canvas 72 x 54.5 inches