Opening: Saturday, May 7th, 2011 7-10pm
On View: May 8th – June 12th, 2011
Hours: Thursdays & Fridays 3-6pm; Saturdays & Sundays 12-6pm
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Observatory and Phantasmaphile’s Pam Grossman are proud to announce ALCHEMICALLY YOURS, a group show of alchemy-themed artwork, on view from May 7th through June 12th.

Alchemy is the art of transmutation. Of taking the rough and raw, and rendering it more precious. Rather than accepting the literal “lead into gold” definition, Carl Jung believed that alchemy is a process of individuation, a symbolic and active language which guides one’s personal journey toward the realization of selfhood. An alchemist is a shape-shifter, a mystic chemist. A patient and meticulous devotee who turns the base into something resplendent.

Like dreams, alchemy speaks in pictures. At first glimpse, alchemical manuscripts from the 16th and 17th centuries look like a panoply of hallucinations. They feature images of fornicating kings and queens. Suns and moons shining in stereo. Lions and serpents and eggs, oh my. Black and white and red all over. Secret codes and effulgent iconographies teeming with meaning, yet ultimately ineffable. These pictures beget picturing. They’re signs that beg to be resignified; to be reinterpreted and refined.

The participants in ALCHEMICALLY YOURS have done just that. Varying in medium and style, each piece in this exhibition pays homage to the alchemic tradition — all the while affirming that the artist fills the role of alchemist in the present-day. For who better can elevate the mundane, turn the sub- into the sublime? From the prima materia of color and canvas comes great and vivid work.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Jesse Bransford
Molly Crabapple
Ted Enik
Marina Korenfeld
Adela Leibowitz
Sara Antoinette Martin
Ann McCoy
Robert M. Place
Ron Regé, Jr.
J.L. Schnabel
Hunter Stabler
Panos Tsagaris

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Pam Grossman is the creator and editor of Phantasmaphile, the premiere online destination for art aficionados with a passion for the surreal and the fantastical. An internationally beloved art and culture blog, it features daily spotlights on artists and events, as well as interviews with such visual luminaries as Thomas Woodruff, Nils Karsten, and Richard A. Kirk. Phantasmaphile was written up two years in a row on the Manhattan User’s Guide Top 400 New York Sites list, and Grossman’s previous shows, “Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists” and “VISION QUEST” were featured by myriad taste-making outlets including Juxtapoz, Arthur, Upper Playground, Reality Sandwich, Urban Outfitters, Creative Time, and Neil Gaiman’s Twitter page. “ALCHEMICALLY YOURS” is her latest curatorial effort, and she is proud to have it hanging at Observatory, the art and events space she co-founded.

Idée Fixe : Drawings of an Obsessive Nature @WINKLEMAN GALLERY

WINKLEMAN GALLERY
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Featuring work by Man Bartlett, Astrid Bowlby, Jacob El Hanani, Dan Fischer, Shane Hope, Joan Linder, Aric Obrosey, Michael Waugh, Daniel Zeller

Opens May 6 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Idée Fixe: Drawings of an Obsessive Nature, a group exhibition of black and white drawings by Man Bartlett, Astrid Bowlby, Jacob El Hanani, Dan Fischer, Shane Hope, Joan Linder, Aric Obrosey, Michael Waugh, and Daniel Zeller. The drawings in Idée Fixe either build toward or seem to disintegrate away from complex systems and through what is obviously a time-consuming, perhaps even obsessive process. Running the gamut from highly photo realistic representation to abstractions that suggest imagined landscapes or fields, these works are created from intense, often repetitive gestures.

Jeff Whetstone “Seducing Birds, Snakes, Men”
at Julie Saul Gallery, Chelsea. Closed Sunday/Monday. Through May 21.
Jeff Whetstone’s second exhibition with the gallery explores the nexus of language and wilderness through narrative video, 16mm film, digital animation and photography. Hunters transcend gender, men draw with snakes, and a landscape is made from sound-waves. (READ MORE.)

3rd Ward Member Group Show
May 6, 2011, 7-10pm
195 Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn NY
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FREE Admission
3rd Ward Members are some of the most creative and ground-breaking people we know. Now they’re taking their work out of the media lab, shop, and photo studios, and showing the world in our biggest 3rd Ward Member Group Show ever. 

(READ MORE.)LOST WAX CASTING @3rd WARD

Lost Wax Casting is the process in which an object, preferably wax, is turned into a metal form. The process is useful for jewelry or small scale metal fabrication.  Your object can be made out of other materials such as resin, plastic, or a variety of found objects. The exact surface that is on your initial model is going to be the surface of your metal piece.
(READ MORE.)