Returning the Engineer’s Office Gallery to its former glory— a hole in the wall that once held a water fountain— which in the artist’s Wisconsin parlance was called a bubbler— Scott Zieher plumbed a six-foot-high-stack of 1960’s and 70’s architecture magazines, selecting 15 of the finest examples of wellspring salesmanship. The original source material, hereby affixed to foam and taped inside the cubby, was found one blustery night in the garment district, a block away from the flower district, and two blocks away from the (1957-1965) apartment where Eugene Smith shot 1,477 rolls of film and recorded 4,000 hours of audiotapes of jazz musicians and 6thAvenue passersby (still extant). Architects love to compare water fountainheads; apparently, and Sixth Avenue is the essence of Midtown Manhattan. Thereby, this time-based, faith-based vignette, seen officially by 4 people, celebrates the spirit of the throbbing metropolis as it once wasn’t— clean and free, unadulterated by commerce, old as Rome, and just as filthy.
Grayson Cox presents sculptures that represent a platform for production; subjectively framing space for artist Blake Carrington to work. The sculptures are placed in the space with photoshop because of the lack of access to space over an long period of time. It was then presented to Blake Carrington to be worked in. Blake has chosen to present “LEISURE TIME”.
This Friday Next Friday, Christopher Ho’s Studio and Engineer’s Office Gallery
Grayson Cox exhibits a time-based, temporary, site-specific installation at This Friday or Next Friday, Christopher K. Ho Studios (39 Bridge St.), and The Engineer’s Office (Rockefeller Center, basement). Each space will be outfitted with facilitation sculptures, which act as tables, quark boards, and tool storage and available for rent via Listings Project during the run of the show for artists looking for affordable studio work space. The tenants are free to use the facilitation sculptures as needed.
Collaborating Artists (Using the space as a starting point to make new art work)
-AV Ryan at TFNF
-Blake Carrington at Engineer’s Office Gallery
-Christopher Ho at Christopher Ho’s Studio
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“LEISURE TIME”
(Facilitated by Grayson Cox), Engineers Office Gallery…
“Theodore’s Drawing Salon” by Ted Barrow
Curated by Alise Tifentale
These Drawing Salons began with a fascination of 19th century parlor culture combined with an innocuous and particular pleasure taken from drawing with friends. Calling it a Salon, of course, brings to mind many high-falutin’ notions of propriety and exclusivity, which, as a selective group of friends, only somewhat fits. The project will involve a group of artists meeting at the Engineer’s Office Gallery, touring the galleries of Christie’s and drawing a selected group of objects or images on auction, then installing their renditions of these images in the space provided. Alise and I were thinking of doing Diego Rivera for the second installment, and then selfie’s for the third. The drawings, once installed, can be photographed and documented however each artist wants, but left in the space with the understanding that they will likely be taken down and destroyed by a third party. Although the format and size of the paper will not be regulated, ink drawings are a must.
Theodore’s Drawing Salon is an attempt to reflect on the seemingly victorious digitalization of the present-day culture. As a comment to the era of easily accessible tools of digital image-making and platforms for image-sharing, the Salon proposes an explicitly analog image-making and image-sharing environment. Yet the Salon will have its online presence and the team will happily engage in discussion and dissemination of the drawings.
Geological find of the century has been uncovered. Rare stalactites and stalagmites discovered in the lower levels of Rockefeller Center. Over many years of drip, drip, drip, very tiny fragments of many things have filtered down through the cracks and spaces. Small stalactites and stalagmites are not unusual in urban underground spaces. You can see small ones in the subway near Rockefeller Center. It is reported in Wikipedia, that stalactites and stalagmites can also form on concrete ceilings and floors and they form very rapidly.
Analysis has identified: aspirins, heartburn medicine, antidepressants, cocaine, money, alcohol, coffee grounds, condoms, hairpins, wires, carpet tacks, stamps, electronics, plastic, pencils, pens, Christmas ornaments and lights, tickets, buttons, wax, corks, cigarettes, unspecified metal and concrete fragments and many fragments of documents. Of course, they are the tiniest fragments, but the most amazing geological formations. What comes through all the layers… the history, the pure essence of the Rock is in those forms.
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The stalagmites and stalactites will only be on display for two weeks. Even though they are amazing finds and only recently revealed to the press, but economics mandates its removal now. Ground floor spaces at Rockefeller Center are some of the most expensive in NYC. Offers have been made of the space. At this time rumor has it that it is new location for flexible shared office space, fast food restaurant, a souvenir shop, or sock boutique. Management did not want to discuss their negotiations. Discussions are under way with the Natural History Museum and the City of NYC for display of the stalactites and stalagmites. They maybe too delicate to remove without destroying it, it seems very site specific. There is nothing more to report at this time.
“Well I think everybody has at least a couple musical albums they experience that change their life. The Bad Brains self titled first EP was one of those for me. I was eleven, it was 1985 in New Brunswick, New Jersey and I was a skateboarding fiend. A random skateboarder was playing the cassette and the aggressive music and eerie vocals playing through the boom box intrigued me. I asked him who it was and he ended up giving me the tape.
It was the Bad Brains first album. The cover artwork struck me because it was during the times of the crisis of Reagan being President, or more appropriately acting like a president and I thought and still do that the image of a lighting bolt striking the Capitol Dome in D.C. was awesome. The music threw me on my head as if I was in a mosh pit and picked me back up again. It was like nothing I had heard before. To me it sounded like Punk and Metal combined and then the Reggae kicked in. The lyrics, the music, the attitude, the art, the band are what embodied the beginning of a musical movement called Hardcore.
What I learned from that experience is to not conform, to express yourself especially in the face of oppression and hypocrisy and to be tough and compassionate about doing so. One of the most important aspects I learned from that album though is to keep that P.M.A., the positive mental attitude. With all musical works of genius they stand up to the test of time and the test of bullshit. This one has in so many ways. That is why I am doing a tribute sculpture to the Bad Brains, to their musical and many other endeavors, but most specifically that first album that somehow found its way into my life and changed it to be more aware, more hardcore.”
“Now Look Here” is a one painting exhibition by Adam Winner. The painting, traditionally executed in oil, hung at a standard height, and representing the space in which it is hung, as well as itself, as well as the viewer, is an experiment in the subjective nature of perception.
Hung facing into the shallow space of the Engineer’s Office, a casual passer-by will see only the backside of the painting. That it is a stretched canvas will imply an invitation to step under and into the gallery space itself, where the abstracted and fanciful depiction of the space will be dimly visible in the low-light of the interior. While one is engaged in the act of viewing the picture, one has also become a performer in the piece, completing the picture and adding a layer of content for concurrent passers-by. Operating within its own metaphysical logic, the painting presents metaphorical depictions of floor as flowing river, wall as slice of celestial sphere, and tightly confined alcove as infinite landscape. The image acknowledges the existence of the multiverse, and questions where or if one place, object, or space ends, and allows for and encourages multiple and fluctuating perceptions.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER GENERATES VAST NEW WEALTH WITH URANIUM-POWERED QUANTUM ATM
Unprecedented Quantum Banking System Will Reconcile Economics and Physics… Novel Technology Exploits Famous ‘Schrodinger Cat’ Phenomenon… ATM Prototype Scheduled For June Installation…
A pioneering new banking system in Rockefeller Center promises to fix the world economy by bolstering finance with quantum physics. Fueled by atomic decay, a prototype quantum ATM will be installed in the basement of 20 Rockefeller Plaza on June 11th under the direction of experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats. The public is invited to test the new technology during an exclusive 96-hour trial period.
“The problem with the economy is that it’s Newtonian,” says Mr. Keats, who has previously applied string theory to real estate development. “Over the past century, physicists have learned that the universe is quantum. It’s about time that money started following the same laws as everything else in the cosmos.”
According to Mr. Keats, the Quantum Bank at 20 Rock will be the first financial institution with the technological means to make money quantum, resulting in a nearly infinite proliferation of wealth. “The principles we’re applying have actually been well-established for decades,” notes Mr. Keats. “A quantum particle doesn’t have a definite location unless it’s measured. It’s everywhere at once, subsisting in a so-called quantum superposition. At the quantum bank, our idea is to achieve the same thing with cash.”
Anybody will be able to deposit any sum of money at the Quantum Bank. While the deposit is being processed, a uranium-glass sphere will emit an alpha particle into a custom-built cylinder inscribed with seven billion microscopic boxes, each uniquely identified with a single account. Were this process being monitored, the quantum particle would be observed to pass through only one of the seven billion boxes, crediting the deposit to a single account. However the entire quantum ATM is sheathed in metal, preventing any measurement from taking place. The superpositioned alpha particle will enter all seven billion boxes, crediting all seven billion accounts. Supported by this quantum bookkeeping technique, the cash itself will effectively be in a superposition.
“We have enough accounts available to serve everyone on the planet,” says Mr. Keats. “Anyone who wants one can sign up for free. Once you’re in the ledger, you’ll be eligible to collect a quantum banknote whenever a US dollar or the foreign equivalent is deposited.”
To service the anticipated demand, the Quantum Bank will print and issue its own currency. A face value of “one quantum” will conveniently be equivalent to one dollar. These banknotes can be used wherever they are accepted, or can be redeposited at the bank to generate even more quantum cash.
“What’s surprising is that nobody’s entered into the quantum banking sector before,” comments Mr. Keats. “Even Bitcoin doesn’t use any new physics.” One bitcoin is one bitcoin, regardless of the technology used to mine it.
Back in 1935, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger proposed a famous thought experiment in which an unobserved cat was both alive and dead, its fate determined by a particle held in a quantum superposition. “We’re just putting his insight into practice, and making it useful for something more noble than torturing animals,” says Mr. Keats. “With quantum banking, we’re setting the new economy in a quantum-economic superposition so that everyone can thrive simultaneously.”
Tracy Timmins studied painting and drawing at California College of Arts in San Francisco and received her Masters in studio art from New York University, where she currently teaches painting and drawing.
Engineer’s Office Gallery is pleased to
present “THREE DRAFTS OF A POEM.”
This marks Engineer’s Office Gallery’s
second-in-a-row exhibition featuring an
artist who is also an art dealer.
Scott Zieher received his M.F.A. in poetry
from Columbia University in 1996. He is
co-owner of ZieherSmith Gallery, as well
as a visual artist in the medium of collage.
He has published 3 book length poems,
one book of found photography, and one
collaborative book with Christopher
Grimes. In this exhibition, Zieher installs
three momentary versions of a 4th book
length poem in process…
Zieher is currently preparing for a solo
show at Charles Bank Gallery in the Lower
East Side in late May. He currently lives
and works in New York City.
“One Dollars” is a piece by Klemens Gasser my father. It is a stack of one dollar bills in the middle of a one square foot open space in the wall. There is a sign above the stack of bills that says take one, people are allowed to take a dollar bill at one point the stack is gone and then resupplied. The piece lives, dies, disappears, and leaves a space of emptiness, just like human existence. When you die all there is in your place are stories, memories, and emptiness. When the stack of money is gone all that is left for other people is your story and memory of it being there, until the cycle is restarted. The sign above the bills says take one. One means something very different from a person to the next. The first person could take just one bill in total and the next could take 1 repetitively until they have the whole stack. It is not just one person’s opinion; it is their temptation that controls the amount of bills they take. Money has a control over people that makes them think and act differently than as they usually would. This art brings you to the question “Can art change the world?” Can art make the world better or worse? Art has a privilege to change the world, to make you think, to make you feel. Another thought that should come to mind when seeing this art is about the economic systems, not just of the U.S., but also of the world. You should think about capitalism and communism. Not all people get an equal chance to live. Communism has failed in the past. Could it ever work could everyone ever be equal and unselfish? For example if I asked you “If you could be born again, what century would you be born in?” You might respond “I want to live in this century.” Then you were reborn in this century but not in America, in Africa you might die at three weeks old and never get to live a fulfilling life. Where was your chance to live, where was your equality? This brings me to the statement “ART CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.”
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