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It’s time for the 4th annual OPEN SOURCE SOUP KITCHEN. So if you want to participate, please reserve a date. We are looking for artists, cooks, friends and neighbors to join us for SOUP KITCHEN, where for as many days as we have volunteers, we will be offering a “one-pot meal” to all on a first-come, first-served basis. The cook is responsible for the night. Unique dishes from any ethnic tradition are more than welcome. We will provide cookware, utensils and help with logistics. We ask that you supply the love. LET’S EAT!!!

view December calendar

Each night in December, a different person signs up to cook a meal for approximately 15 -20 people to be served between 7 and 9pm every night. Kind of like an advent calendar for food. Most of the dishes are a one-pot meal–either a soup or stew which can be served in bowls with bread on the side.
Mostly, people from the neighborhood or artist or musician friends sign up to cook, but occasionally there is the new person who sees the sign up sheet and is up for a challenge. The people who come vary from working class people to self-employed artists and occasionally a neighborhood person who is down on their luck or simply hungry.
2009 was the second year of soup kitchen. Some nights up to 50 people were standing in line for the delicious food, other nights the conversation, wine and beer kept us up until 3am in the morning. Sometimes, the chef did incorporate an artistic element to the evening, either displaying photographs on the stark, white gallery walls or reading a monologue from a play he or she has written.
Sometimes the conversation flows easily and sometimes not, but the food is nearly always tasty (it’s new York after all–we have standards!)-Lily White

Opening Reception: November 5th, 2011: 7PM-10PM

In late October, artist Jason Reed (director of social art project Borderland Collective) will take residence for 10 days in Brooklyn to collaborate with Open Source Gallery in Park Slope and youth from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies.

The project will function as a means for a diverse group of young people to explore place and identity in Brooklyn through map-making and photography. The youth will individually and collectively explore their personal geographies, illuminating spaces and places of comfort, contention, and possibility.

The resulting work will be exhibited at Open Source Gallery for one month, presented on the Borderland Collective website, published as an on-demand zine, and preserved in the Borderland Collective archives at Texas State University.

Borderland Collective is a social art project that facilitates the participatory exploration and documentation of geographic and sociocultural borders. Fueled by collaborations between artists, teachers, youth, and families we use art as a means to trouble notions of who holds knowledge and what stories are told, providing an inclusive representation of the contemporary American experience.

More information: borderlandcollective.org

Opening Reception: October 8th, 2011 7PM-10PM

Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been” 2010

The work being presented by Jason Reppert for his exhibition Parlor Tricks at Open Source is a group of narratively driven sculptural objects. Each distinct, yet interconnected formally and conceptually, together create a Meta narrative of their own. Materials from rubber to wood were used to construct these pieces, including the use of certain “found” and recognizable “real life” objects. Yet the work retains a loose formal continuity. Although he relies on his own phantasmagoria and poetics, the literary form of the short story has long influenced Reppert. He has said of American Author Flannery O’Connor “I am particularly interested in O’Connor’s work because of her use of the grotesque, through which she reveals the ambiguous and contradictory nature of ideas pertaining to good, evil, morality and mortality. Through her unflinching descriptions of the ugliness and decrepitude of the mundane, O’Connor exhibits a peculiar ability to display the physical as a reflection of the psychological”.

Unlike much contemporary sculpture, Reppert’s constructions are of modest scale and only achieve their full effect when mounted on the wall. The use of the wall to display these objects has an isolating effect, because it removes them from interaction with other environmental elements, thus leaving them to function on their own. Despite the fact that these objects are wall-mounted, often with painted surfaces and are generally abstract, they should not be interpreted as the now typical painting/sculpture hybrid. Their conflicted relationship to the wall with which they seem comfortable yet poised for escape, as well as their raw materiality, makes them something quite their own.

Reppert states “the work I construct is the result of a longstanding preoccupation with a visual expression of the pathos and anxiety underlying the values, aspirations and ideologies of American culture. I do all of this using a quasi-narrative approach. However, the construction of the work is a very fluid process. Even if I was inspired by a specific idea or event, it is through the process of creating a piece that reinterpretation occurs, which leads to digression, mixed messages, etc.”

Reppert is a cagey artist. His intimately sized, mildly grotesque forms most often leave the viewer with a nameless sense of mild discomfort. And that is the point. Reppert is not a social satirist or critic in an obvious way. Through his work he materializes the anxiety and dread he perceives and then with a little humor he feeds it back to us through a skillful manipulation of material and form.

Mattress Study, 2011

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
- Flannery O’Connor

The curtain “One Day This Will All Be Yours” was inaugurated on November 30th, 2011 and will be on view until April 2012 unless otherwise announced during certain exhibitions. (No viewing during Leigh Davis’ show: Jan 14th – Feb 8th)

One Day This Will All Be Yours is a winter curtain. A fabric installation specially conceived for Open Source Gallery. It’s main objective will be to serve as a heat insulator during the cold months of winter and also as a visual and conceptual background for other projects to be produced and displayed in the exhibition space during the winter of 2011-2012.

The piece is part of a series of works made out of fabric-panels that hang dividing and organizing space. Part of a larger and ongoing project these panels must be considered as a flexible and adaptable idea, one that materializes differently depending on the context in which it is set. The project focuses on the notion of temporary architecture as a critical and fragile fabrication of space. The situations Felipe Mujica create aim to catalyze encounters, moments of collaboration: between people, people and space, people and art objects and finally between people and systems of communication.

The title of this exhibition is taken from a song by the English band The Wedding Present and it has been used by Felipe Mujica in two previous projects, as the title solo exhibition in Chile and as a title of a piece in a group show in New York. The repetition of the same title is intended to create a unifying element for three different projects, which represent the three main bodies of work developed by the artist (wall-curtains, silkscreen prints and ephemeral sculpture).

Felipe Mujica (born in Santiago, Chile in 1974) studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile. Just out of art school, in 1997, he co-founds with Diego Fernández and José Luis Villablanca the artist run space Galería Chilena (GCH), which operated between 1999 and 2005, first a nomadic and commercial art gallery and later as a collaborative art project, a curatorial “experiment”.

In early 2000 Mujica moved to New York City where he currently lives and works. He has exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America, having solo shows at Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago; The Shop – Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing; Message Salon -Perla Mode, Zürich; Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago and Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne. Recent group shows include “Critical Complicity”, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; “The Nature of Things – Biennial of the Americas”, Denver; “Third Guangzhou Triennial”, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou and “Linea de Hormigas”, at A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro.

One day this will all be yours, , 2011, Drawing/Collage, 8.5 x 11 inches

Events:
Saturday September 17th, 8pm – if you look up” buy Anna Azrieli and Performance by Joseph Keckler
Wednesday Sept 21st, 3:30pm – James Leonard is introducing the program “Vagabonds!” with a FREE class. Sign up
NOTE: New Date! Sunday October 2nd, 7pm – Miho Suzuki: 100 Days After

James Leonard’s multi-disciplinarian works are drawn from his interaction with the world around him, touching on themes both timeless and urgent. At Open Source Gallery, Leonard is presenting “927 Days at Sea.” Witty and politically charged, the exhibition includes his “No Fishing” paintings, “Anchor and Chain” sculptures, and an “un-Suicide Note”, which “unless between now and then he has died of causes unforeseen,” still holds true.

In presenting these odd elements of Americana and distorting them through subtle shifts in form, context and scale, Leonard creates a dynamic between the viewer and the work. He writes: “I want my works to generate complex meanings, meanings that tumble from clarity into contradiction: chaos and then back again.”

Confronting the mystery of human cognition is at the heart of Leonard’s studio practice. Unable or unwilling to work consistently in one medium, he chooses the material that best suits his conceptual needs. The “No Fishing Signs” are painted on cardboard remnants, words are crossed out and others added, creating an overall affect of ironic discomfiture. His handcrafted “Anchor and Chain” contains a subtler humor. Woven from delicate wire and hot sculpted and hand ground glass, their fragility undermines the object’s traditional use, to anchor. The “un-Suicide Note” communicates with the viewer in the form of a suicide note. Leonard, however, declares his intention to live.

James Leonard’s serious concerns and cynicism regarding humanity are buoyed by a lively sense of humor. This is an artist adrift in a sea of complexity, who endeavors to fish for meaning in an absurd world.

ThreatdownPPMEatItUpYum!

Typhoon. Cyclone. Everything you’ve ever wanted.
Big boom. Hiss Bah. The music of collapse.

Deepwater. Pee Pee Em. Batten down the hatches.
Storm rising. Storm surge. Filling up with trash.

Broken reefs. Bones don’t float. Taking on some water.
Redstate. Bluestate. Blow it out your ass.

Pedigree. Filigree. Falling off the wagon.
Save your soul. Save yourself. Vessel’s sinking fast.

Get away. Got a way? Take it to the ocean.
Joyride riptide. This night could be our last.

At the Soap Box Camp children aged 7-12 are learning to construct functional soap box racers out of recycled material. We introduce the campers to a variety of tools and supervise them closely while they build their contraptions with hammers, nails, handsaws, screws, etc. ALL TOOL USE UNDER STRICT ADULT SUPERVISION. The artists Hubert Dobler, Raphaela Riepl and Monika Wuhrer are conducting the workshop following last 3 year’s rave reviews: [Daily News (2-page spread!!!), Brooklyn Independent Television, Popular Mechanics, Park Slope Courier, Brooklyn Paper, among others].

The culmination of the camp is the annual soap box derby on 17th street .

Open Source is proud to announce its first show in our new space. “Mi Tigre, My Lover,” is a multi-media installation by Naoe Suzuki, originated out of a series of Naoe’s paintings, and the related play by Anne Phelan of Dramahound Productions. Phelan’s play, of the same name as Suzuki’s paintings, was inspired by the paintings and uses them as a backdrop for her production. This is the third play at Open Source Gallery by Dramahound Productions and we are very excited to host the fusion of artworks and live theatre by these two talented artists.

Suzuki’s paintings were inspired by the life of Mabel Stark, a renowned female tiger trainer in the early 1900s, the golden age of the circus. During her research, she also came across “The Final Confession of Mabel Stark,” by Robert Hough, a fictional biography based on Mabel Stark’s life. For Suzuki, Hough’s novel provided another interesting layer to the life of the famous female cat tamer.

photo: Mike Duva

Mabel’s life was certainly a tumultuous one. In 1909, Hough writes, she joined the circus as a sideshow dancer, leaving her short career as a nurse. She then married a rich man from Texas only to leave him a few months later to join the Cosmopolitan Amusement Company as a cooch dancer. It was not long before she had her own cat act, with a pair of both lions and tigers, with the Al G. Barnes Circus.

By the early twenties, Mabel’s wrestling tiger act became the best-known cat act in the American Circus. In the novel she also raised a tiger cub into adulthood–her favorite tiger, Rajah. She bottled-fed Rajah and let him sleep with her in her bed. Although having been mauled several times during her career, Mabel kept returning to the tigers’ cage time and time again.

Mabel Stark committed suicide on April 21, 1968. According to a show-business newspaper, she died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-nine. Having always lied about her age, Hough says, Mabel’s true age at the time of her death was actually unknown.

Despite having five husbands and surviving many severe maulings by her tigers, Mabel seemed to have preferred her tigers over her men. Mabel’s relationships with both tigers and men were no doubt complex, and it is this idiosyncrasy of Mabel’s life that fascinates Suzuki.

In her artist’s statement Suzuki states:
“It was this ‘love affairs’ aspect of her relationships with tigers that fascinated me, as well as her wild career and private life. In Mi Tigre, My Lover, there’s a complex play of love/power relationship between a woman and her tiger. Obsession, control, submission, passion, tension and love filled the space between them.”

photo: Nick Kline

Dramahound Productions is thrilled to produce the first play in Open Source Gallery’s new space entitled “My Tiger, My Lover,” written by Anne Phelan as inspired by Naoe Suzuki’s paintings. The cast includes Cotton Wright as Mabel Stark and Jacob Grigolia- Rosenbaum as Rajah the tiger, both featured in last year’s “Deconstruction.” It will be directed by Tamara Fisch, with costumes by Sidney Shannon. Jacob has graciously volunteered to choreograph the whip violence, so we hope it will be a feast for both your eyes and ears.

“My Tiger, My Lover” will be presented on June 25th at 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM as part of the reception for Naoe Suzuki. Admission is free.

“Associated” is a site specific show in a severely damaged brownstone on 17th Street in South Slope, Brooklyn. Just past noon on November 12th, 2010, a boiler exploded at the Associated Supermarket on 5th Avenue and 17th Street, igniting a fire that tore through the block, destroying Open Source Gallery. Next door, a three family house–the gallery owners’ home–was also rendered uninhabitable despite firefighters’ efforts to stop the blaze. The exhibition, “Associated”, curated by Monika Wuhrer, Raphaela Riepl and Frank De Leon-Jones resurrects and repurposes the derelict house with projects by 30 artists listed below.

Participants
Sara Bouchard, Christian Brown, Reamonn Byrne, Wendy Chu, Anja Conrad, Ethan Crenson, Hubert Dobler, Peter Feigenbaum, Pirmin Hagen, Fumie Ishii, Der Kommissar, Stefanie Koseff, James Leonard, Loadingdock5, Katerina Marcelja, Amanda C. Mathis, Patrick May, Nolan McKew, Annelise E. Ream, Jason Reppert, Raphaela Riepl, Evan Robarts, Frank Scheiderbauer, Allison Read Smith, Miho Suzuki, Kathleen Vance, Letizia Werth, Lily White, Monika Wuhrer

more information about the artists

http://open-source-gallery.org/2011/03/1081/

174 Franklin Street, Brooklyn 11222 (G Train: Greenpoint Avenue)
Opening Hours: Wed/Thurs: 11am-3pm; Fri/Sat: 3-7pm

adorable steamed sea urchin

The Final Feast
Flying Teeth (Aaron Diskin, William Haugh) in concert
Sat March 26th 7pm – midnight

OPEN SOURCE GALLERY is currently presenting Raphaela Riepl’s new installation in a pop-up space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. Her work is made of boxes, drawings, words, Christmas lights, various found objects and detritus. In an attempt to catch the intensity of the moment, Riepl finds ways to realize an idea in a very simple and raw style. Simple but not simplistic, her installation cleverly pictures an idea in unadorned beauty.

It is a collection of Riepl’s mind, seemingly placed at random and constantly moving, revealing itself fully over a period of time. Wacky strategies form a logic which can only be seen as the artist’s very individual and intuitive system. The work seemingly adjusts itself to one’s angle or mood, allowing an emersion into one narrative stream or another as dark irony and humor abound. Riepl’s work does not try to tell a story but rather is a puzzle to be completed by the viewer.

“I get started with whatever can drive me there,“ Riepl says about her approach. “Probably I get somewhere else pretty soon, because it evolves every second. And I can’t deny that I like entertaining myself, so you really gotta be tricky to surprise your own mind. I guess it’s all part of a process, which doesn’t mean it can’t feel awesome in the state it is. ”

The reoccurrence of sea creatures in her work can be taken as a desire to float through bright colors surrounded by dull sounds. “The vast area of water surface on the earth is very fascinating”, says Riepl. “I like to combine my imagination of underwater life with what’s going on in the city. To some extent it might be a drifting from reality, but rather I see it as my freedom to perceive the world in my own way. I don’t believe there exists this one kind of reality that makes a universal truth.”

In her 2010 Greenpoint Open Studios installation she fashioned packaging peanuts to resemble shrimp, some having wings and flying from the ceiling, others stuffed in a pot and ready to be cooked and one holding a martini glass with a handwritten note: “Shrimp Heaven“.

Riepl developed a very unique handwriting which appears in many of her graphic works. Somewhat misshaped, the letters comment on drawings and objects. There might be mistakes in the spelling or visible corrections, which does not seem to bother at all.

In OPEN SOURCE GALLERY, Raphaela Riepl’s installation will also host a night of concerts. The performance, titled THE FINAL FEAST*, will not only integrate the band into the show, but also the show in the band. The whole exhibition will be reinstalled and the works will be modified. After the original set up was on view for three weeks, the objects will come to live and dress up for the final show. The performance is a collaboration between the artist and musicians Aaron Diskin and William Haugh.

www.raphaela.cc

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