Around 30,000 years ago, humans built the first permanent walls. Now, they surround us. Walls give form to our lives, our institutions, and our dreams, protecting us, penning us in and orienting our thoughts. It truly is a wally world we live in.

Wally, at MASS Gallery, presents works in painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, and sculpture by six artists from across the U.S.: Leah Bailis (Philadelphia, PA), Kyle Bravo (New Orleans, LA), Ryan Davis (Austin, TX), Yashua Klos (Brooklyn, NY), Isaac Lin (Philadelphia, PA), and Lee Piechocki (Kansas City, MO).

The artists in Wally are linked by an interest in bold color, shaped canvases, and the creative use of walls and physical space. For some, this engagement means eccentric wall placement, explicit relationships between the wall and the work, and a desire to engage with and take over surfaces. For others, it simply refers to the relationship that any ‘hung’ work has to the architecture that contains it and influences its perception.

Other themes that crisscross the show include fragmentation, unconventional printmaking, memento mori, and the tension between the natural and man-made world.

Wally runs from May 18 to June 22, with a full-day opening in coordination with other East Austin galleries as part of Frame. Join us on Saturday, May 18, from 12pm to 10pm, for art, live music, lawn games, refreshments and more. The event is free and open to the public.

ARTIST BIOS:

Leah Bailis was born in Cleveland, Ohio.  She received her BA in Film from Bard College and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.  She was a member of the artist-run gallery Vox Populi from 2005 to 2012, where she served as Member President from 2008 to 2011.  She has exhibited her work at Vox Populi, Lump Gallery (Raleigh), Fleisher Ollman (Philadelphia), ThreeWalls (Chicago), Cell Project Space (London), Field Projects (New York), The Front (New Orleans), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (Wilmington).  She currently live and works in Philadelphia.

Kyle Bravo lives and works in the upper 9th Ward of New Orleans where he is a founding member of the artist-run gallery The Front, and a co-founder of Hot Iron Press, a print studio and hub for grassroots arts endeavors. He is also the editor of the book Making Stuff and Doing Things: A Collection of DIY Guides to Doing Just About Everything, published by Microcosm Publishing and when he has a spare moment, he also plays music, most recently with his projects Kay Swiss and the Keddz and Okay Failures.

Ryan Thayer Davis was born and raised in Austin, TX. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Studio art in 2006. From 2004–2006 he was the intern at Slugfest Printmaking Workshop in Austin, TX. In 2011 he had his first solo show at the Gallery Black Lagoon in Austin, TX. He was invited to the Jentel Artist Residency Program in North Central Wyoming in the summer of 2012. He lives and works in Austin, TX.

Born in Chicago, Yashua Klos currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and teaches at Hunter College where he received his MFA, and at Parsons The New School for Design. He was a resident of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2005 and at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in 2012. Klos recently had a solo exhibition, We Come Undone at Tilton Gallery in New York. His work was also included in Fore at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and in Bigger than Shadows at Dodge Gallery in New York.

Philadelphia artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin makes prints, sculptures, and installations that explode with layers of calligraphy, cartoons, color, and pattern. Lin graduated with a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and has an MFA from California College of the Arts. He is an alumnus of Philadelphia’s artist collective Space 1026 and is represented by the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery.

Lee Piechocki is an artist living and working in Kansas City, MO. He has exhibited his paintings in Kansas City, St Louis, Austin, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago. His work has been featured in New American Paintings in 2010 and 2012. Piechocki has a BFA from Ball State University and will begin the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University later this year. Piechocki is currently an instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute and cofounder of the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC).

MASS Gallery is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com

FULL LISTING OF ACTIVITES AT MASS

12PM   All galleries open for FRAME complete with a handy map to plan your route!

12PM TILL DUSK Urban lawn games on the MASS back lot, with croquet, washers & pepperoni toss?!

2-4PM  T-Shirt printing with MASS members Scott Eastwood and Drew Liverman. Shirts for sale or bring your own!

4-5PM Monofonus Press at MASS presents live music in the gallery with $hit and $hine

5-7PM  Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) host an Open Session as part of our Close Encounters series. Paint, draw or write outside with visiting artist, Lee Piechocki. Supplies provided by Jerry’s Artarama while they last! Learn more…

7-10PM  Opening receptions at all galleries

8-10PM  Outdoor screening of wall-themed films to complement Wally.

EXHIBITION ON VIEW

Wally, at MASS Gallery, presents works in painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, and sculpture by Leah Bailis, Kyle Bravo, Ryan Davis, Yashua Klos, Isaac Lin, and Lee Piechocki. Wally runs from May 18 to June 22.

MASS Gallery is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com

ABOUT KANSAS CITY PLEIN AIR COTERIE

KC PAC erupted out of a long, cold, winter spent alone in the studio—toiling away at new work for new deadlines. In need of some balance to their rigorous studio practice, Lee Piechocki, Robert Josiah Bingaman, Kelly John Clark and Nicole Mauser set forth on March 4th, 2012, to get some fresh air, slow their pace, and make marks from direct observation en plein air. To date they have completed 63 consecutive weekly plein air sessions and have accumulated 43 Jr. members, 11 Members, 2 Sr. Members, 1 Scout and 1 Journeyman.

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

As an expression of MASS Gallery’s mission to create meaningful and significant moments for artists and viewers to connect, MASS introduces Close Encounters. In line with the continual effort to provide artists with the physical and mental space to challenge and develop their practice, Close Encounters will be a platform for them to reflect on their process while providing new avenues for gallery audiences to experience contemporary practices.

With each exhibition, MASS will solicit participating artists to devise a program designed to provide new methods of engaging the public’s curiosity, inviting them to participate intellectually or physically with the exhibition space, as well as the artist’s work and concepts. Open and broad, this prompt can be approached in a multitude of ways: performative, passive, or completely radical in execution or thought. Close Encounters is a challenge to the artist, as well as the audience, and is designed to provide a new way of encountering and understanding the creative process.

A site-specific installation built in the gallery includes such archetypal public access spaces as: a kitchen/cooking set, a living room set, a green screen, as well as a technical control room with video and audio equipment running previously captured footage. Using canvas backdrops, digital scenery, cardboard, found furniture, and artist-created objects, the spaces in the transformed gallery space exist somewhere between sculpture, drawing and plausible sets.

Performers have taped shows of varying lengths using the sets, props and backdrops as the environment for their performances. These are in turn screened on televisions in the gallery, set up in the sets where they were shot. In this way, Public Access acts as a multi-disciplinary experiment where artists from different backgrounds come together to produce challenging and inclusive multimedia experiences that expresses what “public access” means to them, both as a historical phenomenon and as a broader concept. The gallery installation has allowed for many different types of live and taped performances, from traditional interpretations of what public access television might mean — Bob Ross, Julia Childs or Charlie Rose — to more satirical, abstract and nonsensical performances that push the boundaries of the medium and seek new paths forward.

The show pays homage to the rich tradition of contemporary artists, such as Austin’s Michael Smith and performance icon, Ann Magnson, who have used the structure of public access television to address issues often marginalized in the art world and popular culture. Historically, public access television, through its openness, low cost-of-entry, and low-pressure atmosphere, ended up presenting an eccentric portrait of a community, especially its subcultures and marginalized groups. This exhibition hopes to do the same: to capture a subset of the artistic and performance community of Texas in a casual, egalitarian context. From feminist workout videos to cooking with dogs to a special meeting of the Animal Facts Club, the performers in Public Access showcase the oddness that underlies the friendly freshness of the Lonestar State.

The exhibition has been conceived and organized by Erin Curtis. Performers participating in Public Access include, but are not limited to: Adrian Mata Anaya, Max Juren, Jules Buck Jones, Lauren Klozman, Drew Liverman, Erick Michaud, Erica Nix, Gretchen Phillips, Andy Rihn, Xochi Solis, John Totman, Tamara Valdez, and Leah Meltzer.

The project is supported by a grant from the Idea Fund though DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show and Project Row Houses, funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation.

This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Max Juren makes objects and environments in the form of video, installation, and attempted pop phenomenon product sculptures. He believes in the power of novelty, the gimmick, the absurd, and snacks. His work is concerned with transforming impulse into coherence, and the obvious into entertainment. He lives and works in Austin.

Erica Nix is a photographer and performer. Her main project is Workout with Erica Nix! which combines dance, comedy, and gender politics into a potent and contagiously fun experience.

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

As an expression of MASS Gallery’s mission to create meaningful and significant moments for artists and viewers to connect, MASS introduces Close Encounters. In line with the continual effort to provide artists with the physical and mental space to challenge and develop their practice, Close Encounters will be a platform for exhibiting artists to reflect on their process while providing new avenues for gallery audiences to experience contemporary practices.

With each exhibition, MASS will solicit participating artists to devise a program designed to provide new methods of engaging the public’s curiosity, inviting them to participate intellectually or physically with the exhibition space, as well as the artist’s work and concepts. Open and broad, this prompt can be approached from a multitude of ways: performative, passive, or completely radical in execution or thought. Close Encounters is a challenge to the artist, as well as the audience, and is designed to provide a new way of encountering and understanding the creative process.

Beck’s large-scale works of ink on paper can be read as studies of geologic forces and maps of the immeasurable. Presenting large-scale ink drawings and cast gelatin sculptures inspired by his recent experiences in New England, Beck brings subtle energy to natural forms.

Berger’s photographs each present a mysterious space that at first glance suggests a rich otherworldly landscape and slowly reveal themselves to be constructed of common and discarded building materials. Luminous, wild, and yet rigorously fabricated, the images bring wonder to construction site aesthetics.

Krachey presents glimpses of larger constructed worlds through her lush and tightly edited photographs, which are both dark and funny at the same time. Capturing images from backyards, cinema and Las Vegas, the photographs map an uncertain relationship to beauty, glamour and the captured image.

Brought together in Surface Tension, these three artists present reflections of a physical world rationally examined.

BIOS:
Jarrod Beck is an artist with a background in architecture and printmaking. He has been a resident artist at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and the MacDowell Colony. Beck’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker and the Austin Chronicle. Beck earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Architecture degree from Tulane University. He is currently a resident at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. His work can be found atjarrodcharlesbeck.com.

Brooke Berger is an artist and teacher living and working in San Diego, California. Berger attended the artist residency Skowhegan in the summer of 2010. She is a graduate of The University of Vermont, where she received her BA in 2002, and Columbia College Chicago, where she earned an MFA. Berger has had recent shows at Zora Space and Tompkins Projects in Brooklyn, 92Y in New York, and a public art installation in Chicago IL. Her work can be found at brookeberger.com.

Anna Krachey was born in Nashua, NH, and earned a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY (2002), a Post Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2005) and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin (2008). Her work has been featured in Humble Art Foundation’s 31 Women in Contemporary Art Photography, New York, Post-Now at Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas and Perspectives 168 at The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Krachey resides in Austin, Texas and is a lecturer at St. Edward’s University and the University of Texas at Austin. Her work can be found at annakrachey.com.

In They Never Die They Just Go To Sleep One Day, Eastwood presents an exhibition of new drawings, sculptures, and installations. Eastwood focuses on images and forms that mirror one another, formulating equations—living tissue and dead matter, something with nothing, and the jumble of the material world forced into equivalence with the void. Eastwood encourages the tendency to compare and contrast, and through these paired images invites us to investigate varied meanings, gushing vulgarities, and curious complexities.

Scott Eastwood’s work has been exhibited at Okay Mountain, Austin; Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin; UT Visual Arts Center, Austin; and MASS Gallery, Austin. Eastwood (b. 1978, Framingham, Massachusetts) received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond Virginia in 2000 and his MFA from the University of Austin at Texas in 2011.  More work can be viewed at scotteastwood.com

Read the exhibition essay by Andrew Bourne

In Scott Gelber’s exhibition, DOOM II: Hell on Earth, Gelber invites audiences to “kneel at the altar of The Teenage God, peer into the secret window, visit the Omega-mega-church food court, exit through the gift shop into the starless wasteland.” Gelber’s work in video, performance and sculpture combine shamanistic and spiritual imagery with the tropes of consumer culture. At 8 pm on the opening night, Gelber will launch the exhibition with a special performance.

Scott Gelber is an artist who lives and works in Austin.  “DOOM I” was presented in May 2012 as part of the Sound + Vision program at the UT Visual Art Center. Gelber received his BFA from University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA and he currently serves as Assistant Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity II.  More work can be viewed at stateofeternity.com

The set will be DJ’d live during the event. Copies of the mixtape will be available for donation upon request. Some blankets, chairs, and pillows will be provided please feel free to bring your own since accommodations will be limited. This is a BYOB event.

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

As an expression of MASS Gallery’s mission to create meaningful and significant moments for artists and viewers to connect, MASS introduces Close Encounters. In line with the continual effort to provide artists with the physical and mental space to challenge and develop their practice, Close Encounters will be a platform for them to reflect on their process while providing new avenues for gallery audiences to experience contemporary practices.

With each exhibition, MASS will solicit participating artists to devise a program designed to provide new methods of engaging the public’s curiosity, inviting them to participate intellectually or physically with the exhibition space, as well as the artist’s work and concepts. Open and broad, this prompt can be approached from a multitude of ways: performative, passive, or completely radical in execution or thought. Close Encounters is a challenge to the artist, as well as the audience, and is designed to provide a new way of encountering and understanding the creative process.