Table Top

The world deserves a break. A table and chair help resist the summer heat in Chelsea. Josee Bienvenu Gallery is pleased to present Table Top, an invitation to slow down and take a seat.  The exhibition, on view from July 13 to August 18, includes works on paper by 20 artists.

Table Top is a show of horizontal drawings, the negation of the tablecloth. Passing from table to table, one experiences the intimate relationship between the paper and the artist as the works are seen from the perspective they were made at. Most of the artists created a work specifically for the exhibition using 29 inch square sheets of paper, the size of the tabletops.

Some of the drawings are to be read: Raymond Pettibon’s watercolors with text; Amy Wilson’s cartoons; Beth Campbell’s Potential Future drawings or Nicolas Touron’s complex scenarios. Others are also meant to be examined carefully but with no hope of being informed: The International Herald Tribune, Alex Hamilton’s abstract newspaper; Xylor Jane’s mathematical textures of intersecting lines; Marco Maggi’s insignificant codes on kitchen foil; David Moreno’s visual translations of sound waves or Annabel Daou’s rotating concrete poem Truth and Beauty. Alexander Gorlizki presents humorous drawings of imaginary artifacts.

Fidel Sclavo’s watercolor classifications of anonymous fragments; Marti Cormand’s Table of Contents, an aerial view of the leftovers of a conversation; David Payton’s daily paintings of Diet Coke cans and Ken Solomon’s video projection of a month’s worth of meals are all arbitrary inventories of mundane life. Ricardo Lanzarini’s frantic little men in extravagant attire swarm around the tabletop like colonies of industrious insects. Adam Ogilvie, Jason Middlebrook, Fabian Birgfeld and Erica Baclawski’s landscapes are to be contemplated from above. The resulting show recalls the eclectic population at lunchtime in a busy cafe.