Pet Names For Wastelands

Jordan Barse

Jack Henry

Andrew Laumann

Miles Pflanz

Small Editions is pleased to announce Pet Names For Wastelands, the exhibition organized by Alt Esc—Small Editions' first Curator-in-Residence.

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

- Song to Myself. Whitman. 1888

We scavenge our landscapes sentimentally, reappraising refuse, and finding hidden potential in the abandoned or undervalued. There is subjectivity of a value in art and daily life. One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

Pet Names For Wastelands revokes the traditional phases of consumerism through denying it’s linear chronology. American consumerism choreographs an object’s transgression with a finite start and finish. It amalgamates the new with the coveted and operates under the belief that an object will erode physically and sentimentally to detritus. We are taught to think, “That’s it. Let’s buy the new thing!” However, through recycling of material, there is a chance to rebel and move past our economic model’s systematic constraints.

Through the re-appropriation of the object, Pet Names For Wastelands countermands the linear transgression of commodity. An object’s life is duplicative and cyclical: the line between the old and the new blurs. New life tangles with decay. The psychic practice of psychometry is the belief that objects hold onto their past life. Identity can change, but history cannot be reversed. Energy dims, but also lingers. Marx’s theory of value claims that the value of a commodity can be objectively measured by the hours of labor required in production. Following that argument, if new labor and energy is directed into an object, value can be restored and (even) expanded. There is chance of rebirth and to diverge from an original purpose.

The artists in the exhibition find the silver linings in the wastelands and use wreckage of the excess to create objects of new meaning. Andrew Laumann’s work is rooted in an energetic and responsive process that is at once an index of place as well as an encryption of its content. His large paintings are constructed from commercial materials, mainly advertising posters that appear in serial patterns around New York. Laumann receives them new and in bulk as they are a result of excessive production practices. The works hold the aura of the materials' original imagery, now latent in character, and are composed of electrified labyrinths that exist as a visually active meditation. Jack Henry scavenges for materials around his studio in Brooklyn. He creates molds, vertically pouring traditional art materials (like paint, cement, and resin) onto urban debris, which results in multi-textured sculptures he calls reflections of “a post industrial America.”

The artists in the exhibition also exemplify a benevolence to the lost and discarded. Jordan Barse’s work narrates the anticipatory anxiety of environmental disasters and investigates “myopically living in the anthropocene.” She renders mermaid purses (beach waste), reflecting that they are “little monuments of stale potential.” Miles Pflanz’s video Reverse (2015) reflects a geographical nostalgia. He depicts a woman tranquilly spray painting a drowned city. She acts alone, vandalizing a ghost. The paint catches onto waves.

The title, Pet Names For Wastelands alludes to our tenderness to the discarded. It stands for material reappraisal, but also the abstract notation that even if surrounded by garbage you have power, you are the élan vital, to create evolution. The exhibition is reflective of the sub communities that grow stronger during dark times, and find beauty and hope in spaces where other’s have forgotten or lost hope. It reminds us that there are second chances, that we can’t erase our past, but we can move forward and change who and what we are.

The world falls apart and comes together simultaneously.

Jordan Barse (b. 1992, New York, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn. She has recently exhibited with 15 Orient (New York) and Young Professionals (Cincinnati). She is also the director of Theta, an itinerant exhibition space.

Jack Henry has had solo/two person exhibitions at Storefront (New York), Nudashank (Baltimore), and Greenpoint Gallery (New York). He has been featured in group shows at The New Gallery for Contemporary Art at NOVA (Virginia), Idio Gallery (New York), Centotto (New York), Last Daze (Maine), Kunsthalle Galapagos (New York), Dodge Gallery (New York), Radiator Gallery (New York) the Stamp Gallery (UMD, College Park), and Fjord (Philadelphia).

Andrew Laumann (b. 1987) has had solo exhibitions at Terrault (Baltimore), Farewell (Austin), Galerie Jeanroch Dard (Paris), and Penthouse (Baltimore). His work has been included in two-person and group exhibitions at New Museum (New York), Outpost (Brooklyn), Signal Gallery (Brooklyn), Springsteen & Nudashank (Baltimore), 12 Mail Gallery (Paris), Pre Teen Gallery (Mexico City), Reference Gallery (Richmond) among others.

Miles Pflanz (b. 1988) is a video and installation artist. In 2012, he founded Fitness Center for Arts & Tactics (New York), a beloved and now defunct venue for for art and music. In 2014, he ran new media workshops for prisoners at Lincoln Correctional Facility. Since 2015, his work has screened at Satellite Art Fair (Miami), MoMA PS1 Printshop (New York), Pace University (New York), at dozens of DIY venues including Trans Pecos (New York) and Grace Exhibition Space (New York), and at festivals in Cuba, Ethiopia, Germany, and China. He is currently making feature length remakes of popular apocalyptic franchises like the Purge and Left Behind.

Alt Esc is a Brooklyn-based, artist-run curatorial team and publication started by Alison Sirico and Irina V Makarova in May 2016. Sparked by the realization that disparity exists between the institutionalized art world and the new wave of rising artists, Alt Esc was founded to vocalize the leading ideas and trends in young contemporary studio practice. We are interested in individuals and collectives who are players in the art world’s subcultural framework and those who are community oriented. Equal parts publication and event production team, we seek to communicate dialogues that manifest into praxis. Through publication and curating exhibitions, we strive to connect rising artists with new opportunities, while honoring and sharing their current achievements with a broader audience. Using the studio visit as a model for a narrative, we hope to communicate, foster and archive today’s young cultural landscape.

Alison Sirico is an artist and curator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from NYU in 2011. After graduation, she worked under land artist Charles Ross at Star Axis in New Mexico. She was an organizing member and original founder of the new Silent Barn. She was founder of Big Law Country Club Gallery, an artist run gallery, located within the Silent Barn. The gallery offered emerging installation artists, working in a variety of mediums, a platform to showcase their work in a high-traffic, non-commercial environment. She contributed to “Death by Art,” Death by Audio’s eviction art show, and organized ‘Thaw” with Ruffeo Hearts Lil Snotty in a three-story, abandoned furniture factory. She was a resident and co-founder of the Ho_se, nominated for Paper Magazine’s 9th Annual Nightlife Awards, “Best DIY Space.” She was involved in similar minded projects Babycastles and Showpaper Gallery. She is currently a curator at the new Secret Project Robot. She is interested in art in alternative spaces, DIY communities, and art’s relationship to nightlife and music.

Irina V. Makarova is a Kazakhstan-born and Brooklyn-based fine art journalist and curator. She holds a B.F.A. from NYU. She has organized exhibitions with Big Law Country Club at Silent Barn and Live with Animals. She has exhibited at the Ho_Se, as well as Temp Gallery and Tatwerk Berlin during the Berlin Performance Festival. She has contributed to ArtAsiaPacific Magazine, Garage, Bullett Media, Electronic Beats, Dazed Digital, Wonderland, Metal Mag and more.