WESTERN EXHIBITIONS: Crust and Dirt plus "The Fourth Floor"

April 30 to June 4, 2005

CRUST & DIRT
Gatherers
Images from the show are here

Plus

The Fourth Floor
Curated by Pedro Velez
Images from the Fourth Floor here

On April 30, Western Exhibitions introduces Chicagoans to the fantastic, complex, community-and-nature-inspired world of San Francisco based-collaborative team, Crust and Dirt. Crust and Dirt's paintings, installations and happenings use art to integrate life and nature through a variety of visual languages. The muted, complex psychedelia of their paintings and installations visually refer to phenomena observed in natural and urban settings, including growth, accumulation and temporality. In community projects and happenings, Crust and Dirt look towards engaging the audience, not as viewers, but as participants. Addressing themes of identity, chance, space and time, Crust and Dirt's happenings are play rituals that utilize materials and technology at hand, hoping to plant seeds of action that may grow art back into daily life.

Crust and Dirt (Oliver Halsman Rosenberg and Clint Taniguchi) have shown at Big Pagoda and New Langton Arts in San Francisco, at Western Exhibitions last summer and at Samson Projects in Boston. They run Triple Base, a storefront gallery in San Francisco's Mission District, where they stage their ideas and interest in the arts, community and life. Crust and Dirt and Triple Base activities have been written about in SF Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, El Tecolote and Planet Magazine.

Pedro Velez presents a trailer for The Fourth Floor, a documentary/reality tv show/episode in WX's PLUS Gallery. The Fourth Floor is a tough-minded and humorous examination (realer than reality TV) of the artists and personalities behind the new conceptual art being brewed in the island of Puerto Rico. For 6 months, artist/ curator /writer Pedro Velez will follow a group of artists as they navigate the bureaucratic rainforest, religious hang-ups, and undefined political status of the island, while striving to create new work within the intense pressures of society, family and the hard realities of their dreamy tropical setting. Velez will include his own photos of the participants as well as drawings from selected artists in the installation.

Artists included:

Claudio Chea
Stephanie Diamond
Dildo y Culo
Fofe
Luis Leduc
Michael Linares
Gean Moreno
Angélica Negron
Jesus "Bubu" Negron
Gardy Perez
Quintin Rivera -Toro
Carlos Ruiz
Edra Soto
Jorge Zeno

Pedro Velez is an artist, educator, writer and curator currently on an extended vacation in Puerto Rico.