Upcoming

Join XYandZ Gallery for the opening reception of "Vadim Gershman: Alternative Cloud Research" opening Saturday, March 31st from 7-10pm.

Alternative Cloud Research is a response to the experience of virtual tourism and an exploration of spiritual potential of digital media. This project consists of an automated web archive, which continuously searches, processes, displays and archives images of clouds from Google Earth. Another component of the exhibit is a series of printed works on canvas, which confront the spiritual/transcendent dimension of Google.

Gershman's concept for Alternative Cloud Research came spontaneously during a Google Earth excursion to Sao Paolo in the Summer of 2011. In an attempt to navigate out of a tunnel, Gershman accidentally found himself facing the clouds, arrested by an unexpected richness of color and light. He was inexplicably struck by this experience and consequently began to travel inside Google Street View with a specific purpose of seeking out and capturing compelling skyscapes. During busy workdays the process of virtual travel would often become a much needed meditative reprieve and the purpose of these excursions, a valuable destination. To behold a vivid, vast yet entirely lifeless sky is at once exciting and slightly unsettling. In a world where more and more experiences are re-directed to and mediated by digital media, a place where virtual reality persistently seeps into the physical world and vice versa, how clear is the line between the real and the virtual?

The automated aspect of this project was created with support from Jayesh Iyer.

See our studio visit video with Vadim here: http://vimeo.com/38515073

Celebrating two years of business, XYandZ Gallery presents TWO an exhibit that focuses on the relationships that have been developed between artists both inside and outside the space. Turning back the clock to our earliest exhibits and those throughout the past two years, XYandZ has invited former exhibitors to curate their own section of the gallery by presenting two artists of their choosing: One emerging artist and one established. From internationally recognized street artists to locally-bred art darlings, the exhibit will offer a truly eclectic array of work, hand-selected by XYandZ artists.

OPENING RECEPTION (Dec 2): 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: buZ Blurr aka Colossus of Roads, Allan Packer, Adam Garcia, Mia Nolting, White Cocoa, Jennifer Davis, Ellen Mueller, Michael Gaughan, Oakley Tapola, Dane Klingaman, Alex Chitty, Lee Relvas, Eric Ruby, Charlie B. Ward, Ben LaFond, Brian Aldrich, Nick Howard, Paul Kaloper, David De Boer, James Boyd Brent, Rachel James, Matt Yaeger, Ryan Brink, Jesse Peterson, Vaughn Bell.

CURATORS (former XYandZ exhibitors): Eric Burke (OverUnder/Reno, NV), John Grider & Mike Fitzsimmons (Broken Crow), Drew Peterson (Chicago, IL), Keegan Wenkman (Portland, OR), Tonja Torgerson (Syracuse, NY), Dane Johnson (Los Angeles, CA), Dan Luedtke (Chicago, IL), Brian Borlaug (Los Angeles, CA), Josh Winkler, Carrie Thompson, Anna Tsantir, Sean Connaughty, and Nate Young.

Opening: August 5th 7p-10p

Fantastic Realities takes a cue from American culture, with a focus on bizarre national monuments and historical political figures.

Fresh off an installation made up of components from the the Reagan Library at Raid Projects in Los Angeles CA, Borlaug will exhibit objects and print installations on the walls and floors of XYandZ that revolve around political history. His work examines the iconographic and the sentimental, the propagandistic and the personal, towards deconstructing various modes of historical representation. The tension between these separate but related approaches is introduced through a juxtaposing of personal family portraits with memorable images and descriptions of political history. From the original photograph, history book page, television still, or Internet reproduction, to the stylized drawing, to the reversed printed image, Borlaug aims to express the dissonance that exists between an event and its documentation.

Winkler's satirical large-scale woodcut prints focus on obscure national monuments that incorporate nature and how humans interact with it. Winkler's images and texts emphasize the growing disconnect between Americans and the earth, the physical shaping of the land by machines, and also the quirky human objects and curiosities of the landscape that highlight our presence on the world's surface. More interested in a creative perspective of a place than the photographic reality, Winkler's drawing with wood gouges facilitates revelation, abstraction, and provides a narrative to the hand of the individual as well as the constantly shifting perspective of a traveler.

XYandZ is proud to present Building on Building, an exhibition of new works by New York based artist Erik Burke. Burke, who works primarily on the street under the name Over Under, is an artist focused on bringing art from the pedestal to the people. But, in the process has realized you can't do it if you set out to do it. So in order to make art a part of every one's daily life Burke has had to make art a part of his everyday experience.

Burke’s more recent portraits are modern reflections of the city itself. Using spray paint on thin and inexpensive paper, he creates figures restricted in architectural imagery where anonymous limbs jut out of doors, windows, and storefront gates. His masked figures, characterized by talking doors and winking windows, express the comforts in shelter, while also highlighting the restrictive nature of our built landscape. These works on paper return full circle as he pastes the paintings on the very buildings that were their inspiration.

Giving the work over to the street, and letting go of ownership, has given his portraits a new life and purpose unachievable in the controlled spaces of the studio or the gallery. As his works weather and age, accumulate tags and tears, or disappear altogether, the fate of the art becomes the art.

However this new body of work faces an inevitable dilemma. When moved into the gallery how does one show the same work without all the personality of an always changing, fading, tearing, and smudging backdrop? His answer, move the backdrop to the forefront.

In these new works on paper, Burke creates mash-ups of the NYC everyday with glowing detail. He samples pieces of architecture, actual graffiti, and ornamentation, then stacks them into physically impossible totem poles. The structures mimic the dense look and feel of a contemporary metropolis, yet seem altogether out of this world. Limbs occasionally appear out of windows but even without their presence the buildings become anthropomorphic. The work may regard the truth but its strength comes from fabricating beautiful lies.

Anthology
Images and Words from the Twin Cities Music Scene

XYandZ Gallery and Permanent Art & Design Group present Anthology, a collection of live music photographs from Erik Hess, Stacy Schwartz, and Steve Cohen paired with words from various Twin Cities writers. At the opening reception on Thursday, February 10th, local music videos will play in the adjacent Trylon Cinema and a surprise musical guest will make an appearance as well. Featuring photos of Jeremy Messersmith, The Jayhawks, Har Mar Superstar, P.O.S., Cloud Cult, Slapping Purses, Gayngs, Chris Koza and many more.

About the exhibit:
Sound...amplified riffs, vibrating bass lines and rhythmic drum beats are branded on to us via extraordinary experiences. Images...rife with soul and spirit, are frozen in time with a single click. And words...etched like eloquent graffiti, provide permanent markers for blurred, frenzied moments.
A comrade to the continuous rock n' roll upcycle, the photographer and writer burn these epic junctures into physical memory. Oft-unsung heroes of the music scene, they willingly trap themselves into an iron-clad love triangle with their muses: shoot, document, adore, repeat. And like any obsessed lover, they keep these carefully crafted memories stitched upon their sleeves like badges of honor: I was there. I remember. It meant something. And I was part of it.
Photographers Erik Hess, Steve Cohen, and Stacy Schwartz have been there and done that. Having shot hundreds of shows collectively in 2010 alone, this trifecta sums up an unforgettable time frame in local music. Supported with heartfelt words by music writers from various publications and inspired by their iconic subjects, Hess, Cohen, and Schwartz will display a thoughtfully curated selection of their most memorable musical experiences, as shot over the past year. This is Anthology.

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 10th / 6-11pm
Runs through Friday, February 18th

Opening reception Friday August 13th 7p-11p

XYandZ is pleased to present Discard, an exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles based Artist Dane Johnson. Johnson's paintings of discarded scratch-off lottery tickets celebrate the inherent hope of potential riches found in the ubiquitous discarded scraps that litter the streets of the Artist's Hollywood neighborhood.

When these numbers don’t reveal a prize the ticket is thrown away. In gathering and presenting the losers, Johnson seizes the opportunity to highlight, in larger than life scale, the hyperactive graphic design and text that adorn these tickets. Johnson in turn reveals the construction behind this game of chance. He strips each ticket of its glossy disguise. The irrational allure of the language in its descriptive force, mirrors the bravado of the imagery. Stacks of cash, pots of gold and swinging monkeys strategically boast possibilities that lie under the scratch off ink.
The paintings’ expressive scratches disrupt the hard-edged graphic design. In this dissonance, Johnson creates a perspective that is both celebratory and aware. What becomes apparent in the discarded tickets are hopeful portraits of a human ritual performed countless times each day. The artist as collector has been let in on these solitary moments and, like a puzzle, pieces them together to accrue the ever-elusive “jackpot.”

Dane Johnson received his BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries throughout the United States including The Luggage Store in San Francisco and Sabina Lee Gallery in Los Angeles.

XYandZ is pleased to present My life as a number, an exhibition of new illustrations by Keegan Wenkman co-curated by XYandZ and Joseph Belk. Join us for the opening of My life as a number on May 7th, 2010 at XYandZ.

Keegan Wenkman is a 26 year-old self-taught illustrator, currently living in Portland, Ore via Minneapolis, MN. Keegan is the co-owner/operator of KeeganMeegan Press & Bindery and Onefootinfront illustration studio.

Wenkman's salacious, enigmatic and overtly personal illustrations are created using pen and ink on paper. The illustrations created for My life as a number, depict the symbolism of numbers in Wenkman’s personal life, and explores the emotional and spiritual perspective derived from each illustrated instance and/or context. My life as a number will be accompanied by the release of Codex Viginti Sex, a letterpress printed, hand bound, self-published book by Wenkman. The works included in Codex Viginti Sex are a document of the repetition of the number 26 in popular culture. Codex Viginti Sex is the first of a collection of 26 books that Wenkman will be self-publishing once a year, starting at 26 and working backwards to 0. The successive books will be a record of Wenkman's artistic and technical progress as an artist, printer and binder.

In addition to Wenkman's illustrations and Codex Viginti Sex, 6 silkscreen prints published by Burlesque of North America and printed by Ben Lafond will be available.

The opening reception for Keegan Wenkman's My life as a number will be held at XYandZ on Friday May 7th, 2010 from 7p-11p. My life as a number will be on display at XYandZ through June 11th, 2010.

XYandZ Presents Sick by Tonja Torgerson
Opening reception Jan. 22nd 2010 7-11p
XYandZ is proud to present Sick, an exhibition of new works by Minneapolis based artist Tonja Torgerson. Torgerson's work uses self portraits to deal with the reality of illness while balancing a thin line between expression and discretion. Please join us to celebrate the opening of Sick on January 22nd, 2010 at XYandZ.

Notions of privacy and disclosure are at the core of Torgerson's work. Torgerson's paintings analyze the altering identity of a young woman learning to live with a permanent illness. Torgerson's use of self portraits in Sick present the personal side of what is becoming an ever-increasingly political issue through a girlish lens of soft aesthetic and sad whimsy.

Sick includes five life-sized self-portraits on paper. These paintings focus on the revision of self that accompanies illness. In addition, the exhibition consists of several smaller screen prints and works of mixed media. These smaller works concentrate on the anxieties of sickness, while the larger paintings portray its more intangible effects. Torgerson's Sick creates an engaging fusion of feminism, craft, printmaking and street-art.

photos by Ted Salzman