Thursday night openings at Artspace

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Phil Lique: Traces of Things That Are Alive and Dead
Fritz Horstman: Guerrilla Trees
Elaine Kaufmann: International Design
Conspectus I: New Work from the Flatfile Collection
Cecile Chong: Unspoken Word
Peter Konsterlie: Medical Systems
Feb. 25—Mar. 20, 2010
Public Opening: Thurs., Feb. 25, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace announces four new solo exhibitions with works by both Connecticut and Brooklyn-based artists. Fritz Horstman, Elaine Kaufmann, Cecile Chong, and Peter Konsterlie explore ecological concerns, issues of sustainability, and the relationship of the human form to nature, tradition, and mortality. Artist Phil Lique's exhibition, Traces of Things That Are Alive and Dead, previously opened in January and continues to cast a flame over Gallery 1 with a large-scale performative sculpture and five equally assertive paintings.

Phil Lique's collaged paintings of bears, sharks, and deer juxtaposed with laptops and SUVs speak to a generation of artists concerned with the way the Internet and Google affect our everyday lives. Lique's performance, "Evidence of Competitive Natures," took place at Artspace this past January and is featured in our artist directory (http://artspacenh.org/artists/PLique).

Part sculpture and part performance, Fritz Horstman's Guerrilla Trees is an interactive, urban planning project that invites visitors to take an elm sapling from Gallery 2 and plant it in the city as an environmentally proactive gesture.

Visitors are invited to Gallery 3 to view Elaine Kaufmann's International Design, a series of arresting pencil drawings that connect the fantasies of first-world affluence with the production of third-world poverty (see image).

In conjunction with these five solo exhibitions, Artspace presents Conspectus I, a group exhibition of Flatfile drawings, paintings, and photographs in Gallery 4. The exhibition showcases the diverse techniques and approaches of 40 Flatfile Collection artists working in diverse mediums and subject matter that range from small-scale drawings to large-scale photographs. This group exhibition represents the first of many of Artspace's upcoming Flatfile exhibitions.

Cecile Chong's Unspoken Word series recalls the fantastical foreign worlds frequently found in children's books in her intricately designed painting assemblages in Gallery 5. Chong's pictorial vignettes speak to notions of cultural identity and assimilation in the age of globalization.

Peter Konsterlie's Medical Systems series in Gallery 7 juxtaposes the technical precision used in anatomical drawing with the emotional content of color.

These exhibitions are on view from Feb. 25—Mar. 20, 2010. Please join us for the public reception on Thursday, February 25, from 6—8 p.m.