ARTWEEK : INTERVIEW WITH JASON PATRICK VOEGELE, THE LODGE GALLERY

Thanks so much to Artweek.com and Artjobs‘s Liza SKova for this interview from early August about new ideas, partnership and the unique purpose of The Lodge Gallery

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http://www.artjobs.com/arts/interview/manhattan-art-space-new-ideas-healthy-debate-interview-jason-patrick-voegele-lodge#

By Liza Shashkova @ ARTWEEK, 2016

1.  Jason, you are an NYC based curator, creative entrepreneur, director, producer and public speaker but you started out as an artist, am I correct ? 

I did start out as an artist. When I was 13 years old I was growing up overseas in Taipei, Taiwan and I had an amazing teacher who showed me how to use oil paint. She encouraged me to think critically about art and seek to discover my own voice. From there I came to New York in 1991 to study painting at Pratt Institute. When I talk now about process, studio rituals or creative development, I still like to use the language of painting.  I haven’t painted in quite a long time though. After I left Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2009, I was primarily writing and curating and from that came Republic Worldwide, followed by The Lodge Gallery after Keith and I finally met. I feel like it was all a fluid transition and each step along the way had informed the next.

” In a way, many of the questions and subjects I like to explore as a curator and a producer are the same subjects I found fascinating as a painter and a maker. “

2.  What was the inspiration & motivation to open The Lodge Gallery with your partner, Keith Schweitzer ? 

Keith and I worked together many times before we decided to move forward and open a new gallery together. When Keith and I met, he had just left No Longer Empty as a founding member and was the Director of Public Arts for F.A.B. in the Lower East Side. We teamed up to curate a few shows and served as the development directors for the last few iterations of the Fountain Art Fair in Miami and New York before we agreed to open The Lodge. We have always been interested in what the purpose and function of an art gallery should be and how we could make the most of the opportunity.

” We wanted to build an exhibition space with an alternative business model that could become a gathering point for our community to explore new ideas and engage in healthy debate. Our unusual hours accommodate all sorts of collectives and creative events that encourage and support that kind of discourse and experimentation. “

I think that if you look back at all the work we have done over the last four years, you will see repeated thematic patterns in our programing and that speaks for itself about the inspiration that guides our direction.

3.  The Lodge Gallery began exhibiting and promoting mid-career artists in 2012. How has the gallery expanded in recent years and what is the next step ? 

That’s true. Since 2012 we have been primarily promoting the work of mid-career representational artists who have already had a solo exhibition or two under their belts and price points based on existing sales histories. In addition to the average four solo exhibitions we produce each year,

” we also curate around five or six group exhibitions that allow us to open up opportunities to work with both younger emerging creatives and more established artists who are interested in a particular project or curatorial vision rather than long term obligations and contracted relationships.  “

We have a loose stable of artists that we work with pretty regularly but our flexible approach has allowed us to develop projects that have attracted hundreds of the best working artists in New York and abroad. Each one of them is a different evolving relationship with respect to each artists needs and career goals.

There are a few interesting changes in our programing this year. Lately we have had a heavy focus on two person shows and have opened up at least three month long projects that bring in outside curators to the space. For example, in September we will be working with Michael David from Life on Mars Gallery in Brooklyn and in October, we are working with Dina Brodsky to install a fifty-person invitational group exhibition titled, Point of Origin.

4. Who is the most recent artist you exhibited and why did you choose them ? 

Our current exhibition, Unintended Archeology, by Levan Mindiashvilli and Uta Bekaia is about screen memory.  It is focused around the idea of remembering the past; even the most certain memories of your childhood, what you are really remembering is the last time you remembered remembering it. Now that sounds a bit confusing but it’s like playing a game of telephone with the memories of your life. The reality of your memory transforms each time you recall the thought. Levan and Uta are from The Republic of Georgia so many of the images are references to the post-Soviet era of Eastern Europe. Most of the work struggles through the effort to reconcile ideas like national identity and attempts to accurately recall transformation on both the personal and cultural levels.  We’ve worked with Levan before. He did his first NY solo exhibition at The Lodge about two years ago.  The decision to put this show together definitely comes out of our own curiosity about cultural identity and how to manage information inundation.  There are also undertones of ideas about the relationship of the body to architecture and we have done a number of projects on that subject over the years. Our next show is titled, A Peculiar Nature, and features Sirikul Pattachote and Tawan Wattuya from Bangkok, Thailand. That opens August 3rd through September 4th.

5. Do galleries really need to have a physical space anymore, when business is mainly conducted at art fairs, phone or email ? 

I suppose it all depends on how you define the purpose of a gallery. If a gallery is meant to be a purely commercial venture then I do not see much of a future in that for young gallerists or curators.  It’s true that the business of selling art has transformed in ways no one ever saw coming 20 years ago. It’s funny to think about how the old gallery model has been surrounded by extremes of change on both sides. On one side you have the art fairs that satellite around the bigger art fairs with big money investors and art world insiders with all of the fruits of success and excess on display, on the other side, you have websites like Instagram and Facebook and other sites like Artnet and Artsy that empower the individual artist and turn painters and sculptors into creative entrepreneurs.

” It’s fair to say that an ambitious creative entrepreneur with a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and access to art fair exposure could do very well in the current climate without traditional gallery representation. “

This brings me back to how you define the purpose of a gallery. Business is business and bills need to be paid at every gallery but we have never believed that the purpose of a gallery should be purely commercial. It needs to have a philosophy too and a vision that artists and patron both feel an intimate connection with. A place to return to often and look forward to in between visits.

” My favorite galleries are like anchors to the real world. Like temples to secular awe where shamans and the tribe come together to experience the theater of human imagination.”

6. Any tips or lessons from the digital marketing side of things ?

Three tips. First, update your website often and link it to all your social media outlets. Update your website, post about it online. Repeat ad nauseam. Second, shows come and go but the documentation lasts forever. None of that will matter if you don’t photograph your projects well and organize them on your website. Third, It’s important to remember that the ultimate goal of digital marketing is to garner real world results.

7.    What is “hot” on the New York Art Scene at the moment and what upcoming show are you most excited about ?

Well the Lower East Side is having its official moment now so it’s pretty hot all over down here. If you head over to the Bowery there is a great show open at The New Museum called “The Keeper” that was really inspiring. Also, the new site of the International Center of Photography just opened nearby there too so that’s worth a visit.

” Other than that everyone is still getting all set for the opening of the fall season in September and that’s always one of the most interesting times of the year. It’s often indicative of what to expect from the Art Basel art fairs in Miami in December. “

Until then the city is full of some really great representational painting exhibitions because representational painting is finally back in the “hot” zone.

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Elizabeth Livingston; Night Fell – August 5 through September 6

Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adrian-margaret-brune/elizabeth-livingstons-pai_b_7974756.html

Visionaire:  https://www.visionaireworld.com/blog/elizabeth-livingstons-night/

Before I Could Answer

Elizabeth Livingston “Night Fell”

August 5th, 2015 – September 6th, 2015

Opening Reception, Wednesday, August 5th, 7pm-9pm

The Lodge Gallery is proud to present “Night Fell,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth Livingston, on view August 5 through September 6, 2015.

Alfred Hitchcock and Johannes Vermeer both took great delight in peeling back veneers of suburban order to capture intimate moments, exposing the vulnerability of domesticated middle class life. Elizabeth Livingston’s most recent body of work evokes all the same cinematic emphasis on visual scrutiny, moments of false security, and entrapment by employing hyper-detailed patterns of juxtaposed fabric to adorn her subjects against stark planes of color and narrative light. There is a shared suspense in these voyeuristic moments, a sense of the quiet before the storm or the last rays of dusk light before night falls.

As Livingston explains, “[the paintings] are both safe houses and defenseless outposts about to be consumed by night.”

This ominous undercurrent of isolation is both palpable and intentional in her most recent work as well. In “Night Fell”, the title work of the exhibition, we glimpse a dim glow of light from the porch of a quaint two floor home that is both inviting and fragile, stable but vulnerable, and surrounded by the obsessive detail of the lush encroaching rural landscape.

As described in her own words, “In more recent work I’m pulling back from the figure, to focus on exterior views of a larger scene. In these paintings, the figure is no longer visible, but a human presence is clearly felt through dimly lit windows. A small country home at dusk with the porch light on reads both as a safe house and as defenseless outpost against the dark woods surrounding it. The tension in this divergence, to me, is a reflection on how beautifully fragile our lives are.”

Elizabeth Livingston attended Yale University, where she received a BA in fine art in 2001 and an MFA from Boston University in 2006. Livingston has been included in numerous exhibitions in Boston, MA, New Haven, CT, Fort Worth, TX, and New York City, among others. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming and recently closed a solo exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art. Her work has been widely collected throughout the U.S. and Europe. Livingston currently lives and works in New York City.

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From The Ridge

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Hannah Cole; Back to Earth – July 1 through August 3

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Hannah Cole “Back to Earth”

July 1st, 2015 – August 2nd, 2015

The Lodge Gallery is proud to present “Back to Earth,” a solo exhibition of paintings by Hannah Cole featuring a groundbreaking new series of hand-cut works.

Cole is known for acutely observational paintings that depict concise fragments of her everyday surroundings. She has an uncanny ability to glean lyrical visual moments from otherwise mundane settings. Although her depictions of urban fixtures and studio debris approach hyperrealism in terms of rendering, there is a perceived emphasis on the abstract geometry defining the picture plane. Patterns and textures take center stage as context is cropped away and the ordinary transcends.

“In all of my work, I’m interested in exploiting the tension between ‘observed’ and ‘abstract,’ and similarly, I enjoy playing with the expectation of reality by inventing where the viewer may not expect invention,” Cole explains, “My paintings are at once rooted in the unique experiences of my own life in Brooklyn, and in conversation with the larger history of American painting. I make every mark by hand, without shortcuts. This practice is one part meditation, one part Yankee work ethic.”

Cole’s most recent works push new ground by slicing through the surface. Meticulously hand-cut tyvek, paper, and canvas surfaces are layered and painted upon. Actual shadows are created and presented alongside painted shadows, furthering confusion between perception and reality. As a whole, the exhibition provides a portrait of the artist, challenging us to see what she herself sees, as she sees it.

“Despite the common things that inspire her, Cole’s works are very much her own, and anything but ordinary.”
– Evan J. Garza, New American Paintings

Hannah Cole is an American artist based in New York. Cole holds a MFA in painting from Boston University, a Post-Baccalaureate degree in painting from Brandeis University, and a BA in Art History from Yale University. Her work was shown recently at The Drawing Center and at Volta, Basel. Last year she had her first solo museum show at the University of Maine Museum of Art. She is currently working on an upcoming show for this fall at Boston University’s Sherman Gallery

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Heathen Fundamentalist ; An Ode to Phillip Guston – June 3- June 28

Rhino: https://rhinohornartists.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/the-heathen-fundamentalists/

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Heathen Fundamentalist; An Ode to Philip Guston

June 3, 2015 – June 28, 2015
Opening Reception Wednesday, June 3rd, 7-9pm

Artists: Paul BrainardDawn FraschAaron JohnsonLaura MoriartyDoug ParryLeonard Reibstein, and Tom Sanford.

Underlying his iconic imagery and heightened sense of primordial time, beyond the movements between figuration and abstraction, there is a general optimism in the post-50’s work of Philip Guston. Behind each oddly described object there is a desire to like the world and discover little pleasures in the unfamiliar and sometimes darker recesses of reality. Guston’s post-50’s studio was a menagerie of masterful deconstruction and then obliteration of formal painterly concerns. It was through this transformation that he learned to navigate the difficult science of color and began to experiment with non-hierarchical configurations of order.

As an artist who was made famous for work that was stubbornly eccentric to the contemporary enthusiasms of his day, his style and unique voice have proven to carry some serious lasting power. But it was over forty years ago that Guston’s work transformed the world of painting. If legacy is built on the influence of future generations what sort of influence has Guston’s work had on the imagination of today’s studio artist? What has Philip Guston done for you lately? To answer this question The Lodge Gallery presents “Heathen Fundamentalist” on view from June 3rd through June 28th.

Laura Moriarty

Laura Moriarty

Dawn Frasch

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Aaron Johnson

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Doug Parry

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Leonard Reibstein

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Paul Brainard

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POST HUMAN UTOPIA, April 22 – May 31

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/22/posthuman-utopia/

http://nycartscene.info/post/118565363026/post-human-utopia-lodge-gallery

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Post Human Utopia

April 22 – May 31, 2015

Opening Reception Wednesday, April 22, 7pm -9pm

Will our ever-expanding footprint on the natural world lead to an ecological collapse and a mass extinction of the human race? Will it be our meteoric advances in the development of artificial intelligence that ultimately does us in? Perhaps a biochemical calamity or a nuclear war will be our undoing. There are a lot of dark scenarios in which the world might go on without us.

In his book, “The World Without Us,” Alan Weisman poses a fascinating, thought experiment: if you take every living human off the Earth, what traces of us would linger and what would disappear? Will the footprint of humanity ever fade away completely or have humans so irrevocably altered the environment that the impact of man will continue to shape the earth’s landscape far beyond the days of our departure? This Spring, The Lodge Gallery takes a unique look into a seemingly dystopian situation and contemplates the variable repercussions of our absence in Post Human Utopia, on view April 22 through May 31, 2015.

Artists Include: Sarah Bereza, Lori Nix, George Boorujy, Kate Clark, Peter Daverington, Valerie Hegarty, Ryan McLennan, Jean-Pierre Roy, Ryan Scully and Doug Young

The Lodge Gallery, founded by Jason Patrick Voegele and Keith Schweitzer is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It is the exhibition venue of Republic Worldwide and serves as both an art space and a gathering place for hearty discourse and experimentation.

 

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Evie Falci – Voids & Invocations Jan. 28 – Feb. 28

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http://flavorpill.com/nyc/event/art/evie-falci-voids-and-invocations

http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/evie-falci-at-lodge-gallery/3129

http://nycartscene.info/post/109027476321/evie-falci-the-lodge-gallery

https://slowsoulburn.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/evie-falci-a-universe-of-rhinestones/

http://quietlunch.com/voids-and-invocations-evie-falci-thelodgegallery/

It always begins the same way. The primordial void, the vast chaotic emptiness of pre-creation before time began. And then out of nothing the void is punctured and orders are formed around the developing architecture of creation.

This is the kind of language that ancient poets and contemporary psychologists like Manly. P. Hall or Carl Jung use to correlate alchemical symbolism with the development of the psycho-spiritual life of the individual. Here our unknown selves are the void and our consciousness is born from the void ex nihilo, ready to be formed by naturally occurring archetypal orders that are universal but result in multitudinous expressions of subjectivity.

It is also an accurate account of the ritualized studio practice of Brooklyn based artist Evie Falci. Using the language of esoteric symbolism and sacred geometry, Falci’s alchemical gold is definitively spiritual and her transmutation of metals occur in complicated geometric compositions of punk rock studs and pleather. She does not plan her paintings to a definitive degree before she begins. Instead, she taps into a type of shamanistic creative invention with a loose guide of esoteric rules and a personal symbolic order of geometries to guide each unique construction.

Here, in her first solo exhibition at The Lodge Gallery, Falci continues to explore the development of insight and intuition through the arrangement of symbolic imagery. Her most recent paintings of studs on pleather act as invocations meant to conjure allusions to the spirit world and, like totems, become activated access points to other unworldly dimensions. Cross referencing multiple cultural influences, including Islamic mosaics, ritual body scarification and tattooing, South American textiles, alchemical and esoteric symbols that span from India and the ancient Levant to fraternal enlightenment period hieroglyphics, she has built a composite visual language that is as deeply personal as it is accessible to a popular cultural audience. Harnessing the familiar appeal of popular materials such as denim and pleather, rhinestones and steel studs, her completed compositions are lush and tactile, mysterious and imbibed with magical incantations and divine presence that transform the superficial into the transcendental, and ultimately elevate the baser materials so that they appear to surpasses the sum of their parts.

Evie Falci (born 1985, Brooklyn, NY) is a 2007 graduate of the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland. She participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in 2011 – 2012. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions at various venues, including, Hudson, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, Feature Inc.,New York and Gallery Diet, Miami, and is part of Art in Embassies, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Her most recent solo exhibition Everything All Night was at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York in 2013. Falci continues to live and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Evi Falci with her work

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