Good Ship Lollipop @ CTRL Gallery, Houston

Good Ship Lollipop
Seth Adelsberger
Richie Budd
Dan Kopp
Jayson Musson
Michael Reafsnyder

Opening Reception

at CTRL on Friday, Nov 6, 6 - 8 pm

--exhibition continues through Dec 19, 2009--

In 1934, what Depression-era Americans wanted more than anything, besides a paycheck, was to watch Shirley Temple sing a saccharine ode to escapism and almost psychedelic excess. Here at CTRL we also believe that the best cure for not enough is just a little too much, so on November 6th we'll be high above Houston 'On the Good Ship Lollipop'. Seth Adelsberger, Richie Budd, Dan Kopp, Jayson Musson and Michael Reafsnyder will serve a variety pack of eye-candy that melts in your retinas, not in your hand.

Seth Adelsberger's paintings are loaded with the crystalline geometries and hard-candy colors of a utopia we've never quite believed existed. His imagery occupies a spatially elastic scale somewhere between a computer screen and a black hole. As familiar and foreign as a Space Invader, Adelsberger's shimmering, flying temples to excess beckon us aboard. Before we know it we are inside looking out, speeding along and cutting through all things dull and tiresome, on a sweet trip back to an idealized future.

Richie Budd's deliciously deranged sculptures are literally dripping with goodies. These messy, modern-day cornucopias spew forth everything from preserved snacks - runts, skittles and cheetos - to space heaters and cell phones. During these lean times, Budd's sculptures are reassuring symbols of material abundance, albeit laced with a swirl of pathological hoarding, sprinkled with nostalgia and dusted with irony.

Dan Kopp builds up his kaleidoscopic characters, layer by gelatinous layer in the late night isolation of his studio. With their slightly vacant, glazed expressions, they are either suffering from serious sugar crashes or waiting for the next rush to kick in. There is an inescapable sense of alienation in these paintings that resonates with the solitary practice of the studio artist. Yet, despite the gloomy state of their characters with their molten postures and stares as empty as candy calories, Kopp's paintings exude a luscious allure.

Every far off, magical place needs a benevolent, all-powerful leader and Jayson Musson comes through big time with his hilarious, yet incisive renderings of Obama. Painted with intentionally child-like devotion, Barack goes to battle with a crude oil monster, re-freezes the polar ice caps and even helps a white guy last longer in bed by the power of his magic tears!

Michael Reafsnyder's acrylic paintings and glazed ceramic sculptures are squeezed, smooshed, squeegeed and drizzled into existence. Like the melty-sweet landscape of the mythical candy mountain and the affable critters that poke about, Reafsnyder's works are all about playfulness and excess. His particular form of playfulness however is a highly developed and structured one involving many measured decisions, all expertly disguised by a slippery orgy of color and form.

CTRL is located at 3907 Main Street in Midtown Houston 
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am - 6pm 
For more info: 713-523-2875  -or-  www.ctrlgallery.com 

Dual Dimensions @ Infantree Gallery

Seth Adelsberger, Ship Faced, 36inx40in

Edward Max Fendley, Untitled, 24inx30in

Dual Dimensions:

Edward Max Fendley and Seth Adelsberger 

@ The Infantree Gallery, Lancaster, PA

Opening Reception: Friday June 5, 2009

Show Runs: June 5- June 28

21 N. Prince Street

Lancaster, PA 17603

www.theinfantreegallery.com

CHROMATOSE: Call for Entries

Erik Parker, New Freedom, Acrylic on Canvas, 2008

CHROMATOSE

Call for Entries

Submission Deadline: Postmarked by July 10^th

Exhibition Dates: August 21^st – September 19^th 2009

Nudashank Gallery of Baltimore, MD presents:

CHROMATOSE- an open juried, painting show.

Juried by Erik Parker:

German born, New York based painter, Erik Parker has been featured in Artforum, Beautiful Decay, The New Yorker (to name a few) and is represented by Honor Fraser (LA) and Paul Kasmin Gallery (NY).

Awards:

-Best In Show: a $500 Liquitex grant to be presented by Baltimore painter- Dale Ihnken

-Two artists will also be selected by the gallery’s co-curators, Seth Adelsberger and Alex Ebstein, for a two-person show at Nudashank in 2010.

Postmark Deadline: July 10^th, 2009

Application Requirements:

-One CD with 3-5 images (jpeg) of available work with the larger dimension set to 800 pixels, 72dpi. Jpegs should be labeled- Lastname_Title.jpg.

Maximum work size: 36inches x 36 inches.

-A works list sheet including Name, Contact Info (email, website, and mailing address). For each piece please list title, media, dimensions, and year created.

-$15 entry fee in the form of a check made out to Nudashank Gallery.

Please mail your applications to:

Nudashank
C/O Seth Adelsberger and Alex Ebstein
405 W. Franklin Street, 3^rd Floor
Baltimore, MD 21201

15-20 artists will be selected for the exhibition
Artists will be notified about selections via email by July 31^st.
Selected artists are responsible for shipping their work to the gallery. The work must arrive by August 16^th.
Nudashank will cover return shipping costs.
Nudashank receives a 35% commission on all sales.

Questions/ info can be sent to nudashankgallery@gmail.com.

Landscape Affected @ Haggerty Gallery, University of Dallas

Jargon in Smog, 2005

A group show I will have work in, along with a handful of great artists.  Jackie Tileston's paintings are always impressive.  

April 3 - May 3, 2009

Artists:
Seth Adelsberger, Baltimore, MD (Civilian Art Projects, Washington, D.C.)
Scott Anderson, Chicago, IL (Light & Sie, Dallas, Kavi Gupta, Chicago)
William Betts, Houston, TX (Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas)
Daniel Blagg, Fort Worth, TX (Artspace 111, Forth Worth, TX)
Tommy Fitzpatrick, Arlington, TX (Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas)
Michael Francis, Dallas, TX
Russ Havard, TX (George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles)
David Linneweh, IL (currently in residence at Central Trak, Dallas, TX)
Christopher Schade, Brooklyn, NY (Conduit Gallery, Dallas)
Jackie Tileston, Philadelphia, PA (Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas)

Artists paint landscape as subject or point of departure. The works in the show range from observed places, simulated environments, to complete fabrications of place. All the artists deal differently with space and illusion but the content of each is informed by some form a lens through which the artist looks. This lens may literally take on the form of a camera, the minds eye, or may involve a technology or technique which makes evident a form of mediation. No matter the method, the imagery and sense of space is undoubtedly affected by the way each artist embodies the transformation through painting.

http://www.udallas.edu/art/haggerty/index.cfm

Essay by Jack Livingston

Semi-Final Frontiers
recent work by Seth Adelsberger

"Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien."
— Terence McKenna

Following his commercially successful album Transformer1 seminal New York

musician/songwriter Lou Reed released his harrowing album Berlin2, a song cycle detailing a triangular relationship fraught with abuse and addiction—not because he was contrary or artistically brave but because it simply was what he found himself writing. He recently elaborated, “That’s what got written down. That was what was there. When there’s something to work with…that’s what I’m gonna do3. ”

Seth Adelsberger, a Baltimore artist, has never been a theorist and has always avoided dogma, he, like Reed, instead trusts and follows his artistic instincts. “I don’t analyze it all too much when I work” he says, “I do what I am interested in at that moment and consider the ramifications later. It comes together.” In 2008 he made a trip to the capital of Germany—a city Lou Reed had, in fact, never even visited when he wrote his tragic opus. Seth had been awarded the Maryland State Arts Council top honors in painting that year. The prize was six thousand dollars, no strings attached. He used it to travel abroad for the first time and when he hit Berlin he found he felt very much at home. Stoic Euro-mechanist structuralism and wild bombed out communal flair thrive together in this fast paced art colonized post-millennium epicenter. The powerful often transgressive art of Berlin does not shrink from any subject, no matter how taboo or silly. He came back with a newfound sense of purpose. An earlier sojourn within the United Sates had had an even more pronounced, transformative effect on Adelsberger. He spent some time in San Francisco soaking up the cultural atmosphere. Frisco is like no other American city, the long continuum of US bohemianism flourishes through generations and remains intact there—in fact dominating the city. Psychedelia continues to be a surprising dominant influence there. Aspects of classic psychedelia and op art in general appealed to Adelsberger and would begin to seep into his work soon after his return.

The artist, a small town kid from the East coast, had already made his mark in the big city closest to where he grew up. In Baltimore his visually astute hyperactive thick brush loaded multi-layered biomorphic abstract paintings, created after he graduated from Towson University, quickly found an audience. Young artists, older practitioners and regional critics, all took appreciative notice. He could have easily stuck with this style of work, refined it and garnered more acclaim. But over the past year his work moved in a significant new direction. As with the aforementioned Reed, it was not career strategy that drove this change; it was the result of the artist’s personal studio practice. Like many painters, the truth is he plays it as it comes and sticks with what pleases him, with what he finds compelling as he digs around. He found himself guided by the detailed geometric structures that emerged in his new work; the results contained a striking new subset of psychological underpinnings.

Recent paintings Red Dawn and Plastic Galactica are emblematic of this change, with their intricate hard edge linear overlays and symmetrical triangular shapes painted in a dominant bruised purple to red palette they gaze outward shifting, possibly menacing insect like. The viewer is intentionally given a choice as to how to interpret these paintings. Are these elaborate non-representational works formal in intent with no other meaning, a playful sparring by the artist? Or are they cool skittering emotive, full of slippery representational visage—images of disembodied, faces, bodies, eyes—a revelatory spewing rumination of domination, flux and psychosis? The artist sees it both ways with meaning shifting between the two extremes.

Employing a cut-up neo-visionary style, he vanquished much of his previous influence (Philip Guston and Cy Twombly4 —though ghosts remain) in order to embrace a new flat synthetic formula. By combining stoic German utilitarian form and freewheeling California acid test disorientation—along with bits of the artists autobiography (primitive video games of the nineteen eighties, current art warehouse communal lifestyle, fringe sci-fi such as Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs and his own droll, humorous and anxious persona) Adelsberger’s once expansive landscape meets internal rollicking rollercoaster derived work is now deeply internal, jammed through pulsing windows of distorted reflective portraiture. With the painting Let Cyclopes Be Bygones he pushes the new formula into high gear, doubling the symmetry and increasing the color key. The hidden fractured images mimic those found in worldwide shamanistic practices. They have a layered gaze that pays witness to the dark shadow of calamity. But Seth’s examination of calamity is of the giddy manic sort that results from “button mashing5”—a form of aggressive gaming strategy play employed in the 8-bit action side-scrolling video games of his youth — and here, when the game is over, the player resets the game for another round.

A key addition to the aforementioned work is Adelsberger’s expansive wall paintings. These large temporary installations envelope the viewer, further immersing them in his brave new synthetic world, broadening their perspective. The wall works, contain angular girder form geometrics as well, though these are more askew, piled high with linier debris. Grounded in earth tone this work is central to understanding the epistemology the art is engaged in—the feel is less claustrophobic, here the external returns, the world sighs. Hints of Guston reappear in the central absurd stacking and piling of form. This is the incongruous cosmic carnie world we and his other works inhabit.

With its increasing flat color composition and detailed cosmic goof Adelsberger’s new work then is ultimately derived from a mash up of many strains of contemporary pop culture. Aligned with graphic art, video games, cinema, online music, skate culture, computers graphics, etc. Strains of high and low art, popular culture and counter culture coalesce, blend and bleed together permeating most every aspect of our lives. It is here Adelsberger's recent work situates itself, in the ever-evolving interconnected world of the popular now—a contemporary collective place where an individuals creations become a part of a greater expanding whole.

1. The 1972 David Bowie produced album was Reed’s second solo effort and contained his signature cool do-wopish ode to the Warhol set “Walk on the Wild Side”, a song that despite its often overlooked adult subject matter made its way up the charts becoming an international mainstream hit.
2. Reed recently revived the Berlin song-cycle, now a recognized masterwork, via a series of live performances with a follow-up film by artist Julian Schnabel who also served as the performance set designer.
3. From a January 2009 interview with Lou Reed by Holly Gleason for American Songwriter magazine.
4. Phillip Guston (1913 –1980) and Cy Twombly (Born 1928) both use thick brush strokes of loaded oil paint and suspend imagery on fields of white or off white.  Their later work is full of abstract imagery, often humorous with pop and sexual pathos. They heavily influenced Adelsberger’s earlier work.
5. Button mashing is a term used in console gaming contexts to refer to quick, repeated, and generally random button pressings. The technique is used often out of desperation, to barraging the opponent to win, or just because the "masher" likes the reaction he/she gets while mashing. — From Wikipedia

Jack Livingston
January 2009

Semi-Final Frontiers @ Civilian Art Projects

CIVILIAN ART PROJECTS is pleased to present solo exhibitions of new work by emerging American artists Seth Adelsberger (Baltimore, MD) and Chris Sims (Durham, NC).
February 13 - March 14, 2009
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, February 13, 2009
7pm to 9pm

SETH ADELSBERGER: Semi-Final Frontiers

In his first solo exhibition with Civilian, Seth Adelsberger exhibits new paintings and a site-specific mural. Combining visual ingredients inspired by everyday occurrences and memory, Adelsberger creates complex, unconventional paintings of wild, exotic color. In the words of the artist, the new work "is where geometric architecture builds psychological masks and futuristic spaces. Elementary shapes and electric colors vibrate in a structured game of optical pinball." His work recreates the language of landscape inspired painting and takes it to another level, repeating symbols and shapes much like those found in the multi-colored vector graphics of 1980's video games. This personal glossary combines graffiti and nostalgic images to create a visual hypnotic language.

A graduate of Towson University, Adelsberger has shown work at Baltimore's CURRENT Gallery, Flashpoint in Washington, DC, and the Esther Prangley Rice Gallery at McDaniel College. His work has been juried into New American Paintings in 2003 (issue #45), 2005 (issue #57) and 2007 (issue #75) by Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art at University of Pennsylvania; Jonathan P. Binstock; and Jenelle Porter Associate Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, respectively. An essay by Baltimore based critic and writer Jack Livingston will accompany the exhibition.

Guantánamo Bay: Photographs by CHRISTOPHER SIMS
Curated by Amanda Maddox & Jayme McLellan

Civilian presents photographs by Christopher Sims depicting everyday life at the naval base and joint detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It took Sims nearly three years to gain access to the base, which can be visited by civilians determined and patient enough to find the right channels to gain entry. A condition of his visit was that he was only permitted to shoot digital images, not negative film. Upon leaving the base, his work was inspected by military personnel and, with the exception of a few images, was deemed acceptable.

Shot in 2006, the images will be on view in the United States for the first time in this exhibition at Civilian. Unpopulated and lacking an overt political message, this work reveals a much-talked-about (but rarely seen) landscape as an outpost of the American commonplace: fast food restaurants and parking lots, prison cells, playgrounds, and cul-de-sacs. The subtle strength and candor of this work provides a counterpoint to passionate rhetoric about this infamous military base, yet adds its voice to the on-going debate about American values in a time of war and transition.

Sims received his BA in history from Duke University in 1995. He completed an MA in visual communication at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 2003. He completed his MFA in studio art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, MD in 2008. His work has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography; Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC; the Center for the American South at UNC, Chapel Hill; and the Decker Gallery at MICA. He is currently teaching at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
For more information or high-resolution images, please contact the gallery.
Public exhibition hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m.

New Painting: Red Dawn

Red Dawn
Acrylic and Enamel on Canvas
30inx27in
2008

Review from the Carroll County Times of Joy and Panic @ McDaniel College

Geometry rules in artist Adelsberger's world
By Pamela Zappardino, Art Critic

Geometry rules. That's what came to mind as I walked around the Rice Gallery in McDaniel's Peterson Hall last week.

Electric colors are everywhere in Seth Adelsberger's paintings, which pay homage to the array of geometric forms, none more so than the triangle. Triangular shapes recur in many of his works, creating linear perspective in a world where perspective might seem to have run amok.

Adelsberger describes a process where his "most recent paintings are layered ... diagrams, composed of simple primary shapes." These "basic shapes interact," he says, "forming larger and more complex systems of geometric scaffolding" that defy easy deconstruction. His abstractions are architectural, like visions of a futuristic city, moving with intersecting shapes and those pulsating colors.

Citing influences from cartoon and sci-fi imagery and the video games that came of age while he was growing up, Adelsberger relies on drawing as a base. "The paintings," he continues, "are about finding a way to transform and elevate automatic/notebook drawing processes using full color." He seems to have found it.

"No Tiki, No Whammy" is built so skillfully that the painting feels three-dimensional; you know you see it bend near the top, leaning away into the distance finding every color along the way. The central structure in "Big Night" might be the Eiffel Tower, truncated, needing more room to rise to its full height, or perhaps a space station, grounded out of place, out of time.

Using a limited palette - turquoise, red, yellow and black - Adelsberger paints "Vision Quest 4," triangles lead to an unexpected central form, so organic it is startling. "Vision Quest 3" more brightly colorful and full of life with eyes peering out from a crystalline form, insectlike, intelligent.

Chaos reigns in "Witness" as Adelsberger seemingly abandons geometry for random juxtaposition as elements pile near the bottom, a cartoonish face among them. The triangles are there, though, to connect the dot pathways. This is among his less successful works, lacking the force and movement of the architectural pieces.

Other, more organic, feeling works do succeed. A skull-like "Apparition" drips fuchsia, obscuring geometry, bulging eyes looking opposite ways. "Crystalline Dream" is mesmerizing, a cross between medusa and the green man, sets of eyes peering from the center of intricately handcut and painted museum board. Geometric and organic forms swirl around, peripheral eyes emerging from every angle. Remotely sinister in black and white over pinkish taupe ground, there is something personal here, and attractive.

Adelsberger's work may seem too simple at first. But give it time. It will take you to an inner world that is mysterious and intriguing.

Baker Artist Awards

I am competing for the Baltimore-based Baker Artist Awards!
www.bakerartistawards.org

Sign in and vote! Or nominate yourself and vote if you are a Baltimore artist. The "polls" are open until February. You can gain more votes by viewing nominations and making comments. There are three jury awarded $25,000 prizes and one $5,000 Baltimore's Choice Award.

Some info from the site:
Artists are invited to nominate themselves for the 2008 Baker Artist Awards consisting of the privately juried Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and the voter selected Baltimore's Choice. The process is designed to open the nominations to the broadest possible community participation using the Web. The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund intends the Baker Artist Awards website to be an ongoing exhibition, archive, and definitive statement about Baltimore as a creative richness and vitality as place to live and community that values its individual artists.

Transformer Auction, Saturday November 15th

This piece will be available at this year's
Transformer Auction.

Vision Quest 5
Acrylic on Canvas
15inx13in
2007

The 5th Annual Transformer
Silent Auction & Benefit Party

Saturday, November 15, 2008, 7-10pm
John Dreyfuss' Sculpture Studio at Halcyon House
3400 Prospect Street, NW
Auction entrance is on 34th Street
between Prospect and M Streets, NW

Transformer proudly presents The 5th Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party taking place Saturday, November 15, 2007, 7-10pm in John Dreyfuss' Sculpture Studio at Halcyon House, 34th and Prospect Streets NW. This very special, one-night only event features an exciting array of over 125 artworks in a variety of mediums, dimensions and prices by more than 100 of DC's leading emerging and established artists.

Expanding Transformer's mission of artist-centered programming, we are thrilled to have the Auction taking place at Halcyon House in the gorgeous studio of Washington's leading sculptor, John Dreyfuss for the second year in row. In addition to viewing and bidding on an eclectically curated mix of salon-style hung artworks, patrons are encouraged to groove to the beats of Djs Yellow Fever and enjoy delicious complimentary hors d'oeuvres, wine and beer throughout the evening provided by some of DC's finest restaurants, including: Bar Pilar, Bistrot Lepic & Wine Bar, Bombay Club, Buck’s Fishing & Camping, Café Saint-Ex, Comet Ping Pong, Jaleo, Leopold’s Kafe + Konditorei, Local 16, Mandu, Marvin, Melt Catering, Old Ebbitt Grill, On the Fly, Oyamel, Paisley Fig, Posto, Sea Catch, sweetgreen, and Whole Foods.

With a growing reputation as an awesome party and fantastic opportunity for both beginning and seasoned collectors to purchase some of the best visual art DC has to offer, attendance to the auction is already close to sold out, so buy your tickets now! Attendance is $150 if received by 10.27.07; $175 after this date. Attendance is on a first paid, first secured basis – space is not guaranteed.
Providing essential support for this dynamic organization's year-round programming, exhibitions, and services, The 5th Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party is an ideal place to experience and purchase an informed sampling of work by Washington's top contemporary artists while connecting with a fun, sophisticated and smart audience. The Annual Auction & Benefit Party celebrates and supports Transformer's programming and raises the visibility of a diverse range of contemporary art and artists in the Washington, DC area.

Proceeds from The 5th Annual Transformer Silent Auction & Benefit Party will match recent grant awards, directly supporting artists through artist honoraria, exhibition material coasts, and related programming support. In addition to supporting exhibitions, proceeds will support artists through the funding of Transformer programs such as The Exercises - a peer-mentorship program for emerging artists, as well as The Framework Panel Series, and our ongoing professional development work to help artists help themselves.

For more info or to buy tickets, go to:
www.transformergallery.org
Click on the Auction tab at the top.