Café

Due to the process-based nature of the Session program, this project will undergo constant modifications; the features of this page provide accruing information on the project’s developments.

On May 1, 2012 Rose Marcus and Andy Meerow will begin work on Café, as part of Recess’s signature program, Session. Session invites artists to use its public space as studio, exhibition venue and grounds for experimentation. For Café, Marcus and Meerow will work in ways that address specific economic conditions that inform their collaboration and autonomous creative practices in New York City.

Structural collapse can be very beautiful. Marcus has been photographing abandoned storefronts in midtown Manhattan for years. During the first stages of Café, the artists will adhere these photographs to standard construction panels; objects doubling as furniture and décor become the exhibition. These estheticized signs of failure and opportunity, act as a physical and theoretical site for an existing body of paintings by Meerow. They are the foundational gesture into which both artists will fold their subsequent work throughout Session.

What is self-portraiture in the expanded-field? A charcoal drawing is one example, but this research will probe more direct and physical forms of self-positioning. The artists will review the supposition that they are working just by correctly moving their bodies around and assess their role as part of a larger body of people helping each other make sense. Together, the creative populace projects bolstered self-images into the void, or rather, the bounty.

The final character in this triangle will be New York City itself. In a city built for and by the driven, coffee becomes both the medium and metaphor for collective ambition. Coffee will also be the “wet media” these two non-painters start with: there will be brown wall treatments and flowing art. The pair will be working with issues of class and classiness, with roles and goals that feel at times feel too thin, but then…

Session invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist’s project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.