LIFE DURING WARTIME: Sadie Barnette | Aaron Fowler | Farrah Karapetian | Shiri Mordechay | Tschabalala Self

For Immediate Release

LIFE DURING WARTIME:
Sadie Barnette | Aaron Fowler | Farrah Karapetian | Shiri Mordechay | Tschabalala Self
October 22 – December 3, 2016
Opening: Saturday, October 22nd from 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Life During Wartime (1979)
(By David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth)

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons, Packed up and ready to go
Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway, A place where nobody knows

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance, I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto, I've lived all over this town

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain't got time for that now

Diane Rosenstein Gallery is pleased to announce a group show of work by five contemporary artists working in California (Oakland, Inglewood, Los Angeles) and New York (Harlem and Brooklyn). Life During Wartime is an exhibition of painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and photography by Sadie Barnette, Aaron Fowler, Farrah Karapetian, Shiri Mordechay, and Tschabalala Self. These artists each present work that both directly and subtly bears witness to the political, gender, racial, and economic conflict that pervades their lives and art practice.

Transmit the message, to the receiver, Hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas, You don't even know my real name

High on a hillside, the trucks are loading, Everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime
I might not ever get home

Sadie Barnette, who lives and work in Oakland, CA, recently completed a year as Artist-in- Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Barnette’s work deals in the currency of subculture coding, magical realism, The Everyday and transcendence. Whether working in photography, drawing, collage, or large-scale installations, she turns her attention toward unexpected locations of identity construction, family histories, celebration and resistance. She creates visual compositions that engage a hybrid aesthetic of minimalism and density, using text, glitter and found objects to demonstrate the necessity for poetry and abstraction in urban life and the power of the personal as political. Barnette will create a site-specific installation in the gallery that includes collage, photography, and sculpture.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, This ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B., I ain't got time for that now

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window Somebody see you up there

Aaron Fowler was born and raised in St. Louis, and currently lives and works in Harlem and Inglewood, CA. Fowler creates mixed-media assemblage-paintings that depict his experiences and the lives of his family and friends in both a personal narrative and an epic journey through contemporary America. This exhibition includes “Trust + Respect = Love (Eric),” 2016, a new work from his ongoing series of “Money Bags”.

I got some groceries, some peanut butter, To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones, Ain't got no records to play

Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can't write a letter, can't send no postcard, I ain't got time for that now

Tschabalala Self is a painter who grew up in Harlem, and currently lives in New Haven, CT. Her recent work is concerned with the iconographic significance of the Black female body in contemporary culture. These portraits and tableaus explore the emotional, physical and psychological impact of the Black female body as icon. In this exhibition, "Pussyfoot" is a painting composed of various materials and assemblage. The work's subjects, a woman and her cat, are built from fabric and linen. The female protagonist is articulated with color pencil, acrylic paint and stuffing. Both characters equally participate in the dynamics of the painting; however, the primary subject is the woman, who embodies the attributes of both subjects. She appears delicate and mischievous, however there is uncanniness to her being.

Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock, We blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed

Farrah Karapetian, who lives and works in Los Angeles, is an artist who makes photography physical. Her methods incorporate sculptural and performative means of achieving imagery that refigures the medium of photography around bodily experience. Karapetian presents three works from different periods of her production, each of which was motivated by narratives around migration and the will to cross borders. “Stowaway”, 2009, is a large-scale silver gelatin photogram in which she devised a way to depict the images produced at the US Mexican border when cargo trucks are X-Rayed for illegal freight. The “Souvenirs”, 2009, are five chromogenic photograms rendered from a fragment of the Berlin Wall. “Moving Relief, Pacific,” 2016, is a single-channel video of one of the artist’s signature “sculptural negatives” – a life vest cast in orange ice – melting into the ocean until only its black straps twist and curl into the current.

We dress like students, we dress like housewives, Or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle, so many times now, I don't know what I look like!

You make me shiver, I feel so tender, We make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving, You ought to get you some sleep

Shiri Mordechay, who was born in Israel and raised in Nigeria, now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Working primarily with ink, acrylic, and paper, Shiri Mordechay creates lush figurative and active landscapes that live in the margin between painting and sculpture. Her work invites the viewer to experience a state of mind dominated by emotions rooted in fear and flight. Her monumental new installation - “Tempest in a Tea Cup (storm)” - enfolds the novelistic elements of “Alice In Wonderland” with Gericault’s “The Raft Of The Medusa”. The viewer is seduced into experiencing a world of roaming predators driven by their survival instincts. In opposition, there is an element of seduction in the work, which is both vivid and magnetic. The work is an invitation to experience a broad spectrum of contradictory instincts.

Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
The burning keeps me alive

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, This ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B., I ain't got time for that now

Life During Wartime is on view from October 22 – December 3, 2016

SADIE BARNETTE (USA, b.1984) is from Oakland, California. She received her BFA from CalArts and her Masters in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. Barnette recently completed a year as Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. She has shown her work in venues including Charlie James Gallery, The Mistake Room, Self Help Graphics, and Papillion in Los Angeles; Ever Gold Projects in San Francisco; Studio Museum in Harlem; and Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa. Commissions for public works include projects for UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College and for New York’s WNYC public radio. Named as one of the “Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know” by the Huffington Post, Barnette has been featured in The New York Times, SFAQ (San Francisco Arts Quarterly), The Los Angeles Times, Artnet News and Art Forum. Her work is in the permanent collections of museums such as The Pérez Art Museum, Cornell Fine Arts Museum and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

AARON FOWLER (USA, b. 1988) received his BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2011) and his MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT (2014). Exhibitions include Do You See Me?, Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University, Winston- Salem, NC, Tough Love (solo), Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH (2016), Blessings On Blessings (solo), Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles, CA, and A Constellation (Curated by Amanda Hunt), The Studio Museum In Harlem, NY (2015-2016). He is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann 2015 Emerging Artist (NY) grant and was an artist-in- residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2014). Aaron Fowler lives and works in Los Angeles and Harlem.

FARRAH KARAPETIAN (USA, b. 1978) was born in Marin, CA, and received a BA from Yale and an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles. Upcoming exhibitions include A Matter of Memory, George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY (2016); and The Shape of Things, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX (2016). Her work is included in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is illustrated in Charlotte Cotton’s Photography is Magic (Aperture 2015). Karapetian was the curator of Unsparing Quality (2014) and the associate curator of The Black Mirror (curated by James Welling and Diane Rosenstein) both at Diane Rosenstein Gallery (2013). The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

SHIRI MORDECHAY (Israel, b. 1974) Mordechay was born in Israel and raised in Nigeria, she received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from School of Visual Arts in New York. Solo exhibitions include Serpents of the Rainbow, Alter Space, San Francisco (2014), Pneuma Pleats, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles (2010) and The Mole (curated by Daniele Ugolini and Gabriele Tinti) Vanvitelliana, Ancona, Italy (with Raymond Pettibon, Marcel Dzama, and Arlen Austin) in 2008. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
TSCHABALALA SELF (USA, b. 1990) received her BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2012) and her MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2015). Self is a painter and printmaker, born and raised in Harlem, New York. Recent solo exhibitions Out of Body, at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, NY and Tropicana (The Cabin LA, Los Angeles, CA) both in 2015. She was included in A Shape That Stands Up, Art + Practice (organized by Jamillah James), Protuberence, LA><ART, Los Angeles; A Constellation (Curated by Amanda Hunt) at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2015), Perfect Day, Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, The New New, Diane Rosenstein Gallery (2015) and A Being in The World, Salon 94 Bowery, New York. Ms. Self lives and works in New York City