Exhibition Dates: March 9 – 31, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday March 9, 6-8 pm
Viewing Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 1- 6 pm and by appointment
Curated by: Alexa Hoyer
Participating artists:
Liz Atz – Alexandra Borovski – Lee Cannarozzo – Matt Freedman – Alexa Hoyer- Katarina Jerinic – Ethan Shoshan – Jude Tallichet – Alexander Zev
Fallow Frames
A tree bed is a small plot of land carved out from the solid pavement of the sidewalk — a common sight across numerous neighborhoods in New York City. While many nurture trees, plant life, and vegetation, a significant number are neglected or abandoned — overlooked corners in a city that typically puts great value on space. Ubiquitous yet enigmatic, they appear like gaps or voids in the city’s concrete landscape with questions about their nature and purpose. In 2023, Alexa Hoyer meticulously mapped and documented these spaces in various states of dereliction in her neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, capturing a unique perspective on the distinctive topography of New York City. The exposed earth, sometimes weathered and strewn with debris, becomes a canvas for contemplation, unveiling new layers of meaning within the material of our everyday environments. The project inspired her to curate “Fallow Frames,” a group exhibition exploring these pervasive yet mysterious spaces in terms of form, culture, and architecture.
Fallow Frames, PS122 Gallery, 2024, Installation View
Liz Atz, Various Chitosan Paintings, 2021 – 2024, Installation View
Liz Atz’s recent Chitosan bioplastic paintings mirror the rectangular form and texture of abandoned tree beds. The works delve into sustainable alternatives for traditional art materials, employing Chitosan as a versatile and unconventional binder. The artworks reflect both natural and chemical processes, achieved through experimental techniques like layering, casting, and washing, resulting in an aggressive organic materiality. Atz is a multidisciplinary artist currently investigating the possibilities of biomaterials—particularly the use of Chitosan bioplastic as a replacement for petroleum-based plastics in studio art, design, and material science applications. Her works are experimental,process-based abstractions that explore the opportunities of innovative material applications.She was born in Columbus, Ohio and holds a BFA in painting from The Ohio State University and an MFA in painting from Tyler School of Art. Atz has held solo exhibitions at the Pace University Gallery, as well as the R. Jampol Projects, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout New York and the country. An educator and curator, she was a co-director and co-curator of the AIRPLANE gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn,and serves as a founding Member of the El Garden Community Garden. She currently teaches at Pace University, Pratt Institute and SUNY, and lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Alexandra Borovski, “136” and “137”, 2024, Colored pencil and ink on antique ledger paper, 18 x 24 inches
Alexandra Borovski’s drawings transform the traditionally perceived emptiness of a void into a space of limitless potential. The use of ledger paper, typically associated with order and categorization, is disrupted by images of meticulously rendered landscapes in flux, space rocks, and cosmic phenomena. Alexandra Borovski is a Moldovan-born, Queens-based interdisciplinary artist whose work intertwines personal experiences of the Post-Soviet diaspora with broader ecological and global themes of displacement and fragmentation. Borovski holds a BFA from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MFA from Tufts University (School of the Museum of Fine Art), Boston. She has been granted a residency at the Wassaic Project, and her work has been shown at the ICA Boston, the Boston Center for the Arts, as well as in numerous group exhibitions nationally.
Lee Cannarozzo, “Flax Estates”, 2022, Linen paper derived from Flax Estates #4 and #5 and Single channel video
Lee Cannarozzo’s “Flax Estates” consists of seven temporary earthworks in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. Abandoned sidewalk tree beds were cultivated, enriched, and sown with flax (Linum usitatissimum). The plants that survived were harvested and repurposed into a unified paper-based nonsite. The project was an experiment in producing locally sourced art materials and revitalizing overlooked public micro spaces into fleeting expressions of Land Art.
Lee Cannarozzo holds a M.F.A in Studio Art from The SUNY University at Buffalo and a BA in Art History from The University of Nevada Las Vegas. Cannarozzo’s work has been exhibited in various cultural centers such as The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, The Burchfield Penney Art Center, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and The Visual Studies Workshop. Through a protean practice that utilizes constantly evolving methodologies and media relevant to the subject of each artistic project, his work investigates the contemporary resonance of various social, legal, and ecological histories.
Matt Freedman, “Chainsaw Babies”, 1992, plaster cast, acrylic paint, 6 x 4 x 31/2 inches, Installation View
In “Chainsaw Babies,” Matt Freedman mirrors marginalia in illuminated manuscripts, offering a space where artists blend absurdity and irreverence with poignancy. Innocent babies, seated on tree stumps in tree wells, mimic right-wing politicians with assault rifles, prompting contemplation on whether these seemingly threatening infants symbolize a campaign against urban trees or a denial of climate change, transforming the city into a cartoon battleground.
The artist Matthew Freedman died in October of 2020. He left behind a body of work that is ecstatic, wild, monstrous and raucous, yet full of generosity, tenderness and harsh comedy. He had solo shows at Philadelphia’s Fjord Gallery in 2019, Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, LIU Gallery, Brooklyn, The Museum of Art at Denison University, Granville, OH, Studio 10 Brooklyn, The Kitchen, NYC, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art,
He performed widely with Tim Spelios creating the Endless Broken Time performance series. He was a prolific writer creating catalog essays for fellow artists and reviewing exhibitions for Review Magazine among others. From 1978 to 1991 his cartoon strip “Free Associates” ran in the Chicago Reader, the Onion, and Philadelphia City Paper. He worked with Cabinet Magazine to curate the Paper Sculpture Project that debuted at the Sculpture Center, LIC Queens, and was exhibited at nineteen venues nationwide. He was a Lecturer in the Graduate Sculpture Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2020. He received a fiction writing grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2000 and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1991.
Alexa Hoyer, “Fallow Frames”, 2023, Glicee Prints on Exhibition Fiber Paper, Each print 10 x 15 inches, Installation View
Alexa Hoyer is a NYC-based German Visual Artist working in photography. In her most recent work, she meticulously creates photographic archives of ad hoc systems in everyday environments. Alexa exhibited internationally, including at Mana Contemporary, NJ, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX, Arles Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France, PHOTO IS:RAEL, the Inside Out Arts Museum in Beijing and a video installation at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA. She participated in LMCC’s Governors Island artist residency and was recently awarded the 2023 Queens Arts Fund (QAF) New Work Grant. Her photography has been published in Hyperallergic, Vice, Urban Omnibus, DOMUS, and Harper’s Magazine. In 2022 her project “Wegweiser” was published by Kenektid in Seoul, Korea. Alexa received a BFA from Webster University in St Louis, MO and an MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA.
Katarina Jerinic, “Beautification This Site”, 2014, Installation View
“Beautification This Site” centers on a neglected landscape at exit 30 off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which Katarina Jerinic acquired through the Department of Transportation’s Adopt-A-Highway Program. Part earthwork and part self-assigned residency, the project highlights how the land is shaped by urban bureaucracy, natural forces, passers-by, and the artist’s own efforts in maintaining the area. Jerinic also staged on-site interventions and produced a series of photographs, videos, and ephemera focused on ideas of wild spaces, urban places, and land art.
Katarina Jerinic makes photographs, maps and ephemera about built landscapes and past and present phenomena of particular places. Solo exhibitions and projects include SPACES, Cleveland, OH; Baxter St at CCNY, New York, NY; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at University of Nevada Las Vegas; and a public project along the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, NY supported by NYC Department of Transportation Art Program and neighborhood partners. Her projects have been supported by Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ; Times Square Alliance, New York; Brooklyn Arts Council, NY and chashama, New York among others. Residencies include Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York; Typa, Tartu, Estonia; Center for Book Arts, New York; and MacDowell, Peterborough, NH. Her work has been discussed in Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, Washington City Paper, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer. Jerinic has an MFA in Photography and Related Media from School of Visual Arts and a BA in History from American University.
Ethan Shoshan, “Signs”, 2020, charcoal on paper, 9 x 12 inches, Installation View
A group of drawings depicting tree beds were selected from Ethan Shoshan’s “Signs” series, a 15-year exploration of public and private spaces undergoing gentrification. Within this collection, the artist meticulously examines signs, contextual contrasts, deserted storefronts, scaffolding, and development. The outcome is a series of line drawings that convey the unfolding instabilities in a beautiful and almost hypnotic manner.
Ethan Shoshan is an artist, activist, social ecologist and non-profit computer a/v technical consultant born in NYC. Ethan sees art as a part of life as well as a cathartic staging and way to shed light on social injustices. Over the years with various projects, Ethan has committed to building communities and support around social justice, art and activism working with alternative venues and institutions, including Democracy NOW!, ABC No Rio, Le Petit Versailles Green Thumb Community Garden, Visual AIDS, FEDCAP, MIX NYC Experimental Film Festival, Gene Frankel Theater, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Food Not Bombs, WRRQ Collective, Common Ground Collective, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Sylvia’s Place, Picture the Homeless, and many others. He is also the recipient of several grants/fellowships from Joan Mitchell Foundation, Open Society Foundation, NYFA, LMCC, and The Puffin Foundation. His work has been reviewed in The NY Times, Art In America, Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, ArtNEWS, Washington Post, LA Weekly, Huffington Post, among other publications.
Jude Tallichet, “Heat Map Shadow”, 2023, cast paper, methylcellulose, 52 x 27 x 21 inches, Installation View
In “Heat Map”, Jude Tallichet has cast a sprawling tree on the sidewalk outside her studio in Queens. The work is colored with rare earth pigments and other stark particulates. The pattern running across this sculpture references the heat maps used to detail weather and climate. Through color and pattern, viewers are shown that green space is not just social but necessarily political as well. As our climate continues to change, we strive to maintain the little plant life we have, even in our bustling cities.
Jude Tallichet lives and works in Queens, NY. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the Konsthallen in Gothenburg, Sweden, The Shanghai Biennial in China, The Busan Biennial in Korea, The Tirana Biennial in Albania, the “Officina America” exhibition in Bologna, Italy, and at PeriogiGallery in Leipzig, Germany. Her work was included in the 2016 Borås International Sculpture Biennial in Borås, Sweden. She had six solo exhibitions at Sara Meltzer Gallery, NYC,2000-2009 and a project room at PS1 MOMA. She has had solo shows at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, 2020, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, the Burnet Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Robert Miller Gallery, NYC. She was a featured performer in the Iron Artist Event at PS 1 MOMA, organized by Cabinet Magazine. Jude spent a year in Brazil as a Senior Fulbright Fellow and hasreceived fellowship grants in sculpture from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has received residencies at the Rosa de la Cruz Collection, MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony and at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbertide, Italy. She is Professor Emeritus, Sculpture, at the Tyler School of Art, where she taught 1987-2016. Jude was a founding member of the band Ultra Vulva and has collaborated on video and performance projects with a diverse collection of artists and musicians, including Jeanine Antoni, Kristin Lucas, Doug Henderson, and a cricket project with Adam Brody. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum and Phoenix Museum of Art.
partycrickets.com and judetallichetstudio.com
Alexander Zev, “Badlands #2”, 2023, Reclaimed Plywood, 36 x 32 x 19 inches, Installation View
Alexander Zev’s sculpture series, “Badlands,” draws inspiration from the earth’s roots. These sculptures boast a distinct tactile quality, crafted from plywood scraps salvaged from discarded materials used by cabinet and furniture makers across Brooklyn. The resulting pieces, characterized by intuitively designed organic forms and arching structures, resonate deeply with the ecological origins of post-industrial woodworking processes. They serve as a mediation of the boundaries between the constructed and the natural world.
Alexander Zev is a sculptor and installation artist based in Queens. He explores themes of intimacy, industrial processes, and the surreal aspects of the human experience through his work. Zev is dedicated to minimizing his ecological impact by sourcing found and discarded materials for his creations. Driven by a commitment to making art accessible and uplifting, Zev installs his works in overlooked urban areas, and helped found Stephen Street Gallery, a mission-driven and queer-focused art and performance venue. Zev’s artistic repertoire spans various mediums, including film, murals, curation, landscape design, puppets, and dioramas.
Fallow Frames, PS122 Gallery, 2024, Installation View