Josh Shaddock, Press Release

For Immediate Release:

JOSH SHADDOCK
Look the other way
19 February through 28 March 2009
Selected by Alex Logsdail

The Look, 2009, inkjet print, 35 1/4 x 27 1/2 inches

Gallery-C is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by New York based artist Josh Shaddock. Entitled ‘Look the other way’, the exhibition will run from the 19th of February through the 28th of March. Gallery-C is an autonomous project space located within the walls of Team Gallery in New York, 83 Grand Street, between Wooster and Greene.

The works in ‘Look the other way’ have in common the subject of sight and seeing, and as the title implies, share a more specific concern with the discomforts and transformations attendant to looking at, and being looked at by, others. They also share as material the unnoticed and seemingly insignificant (whether through obscurity or ubiquity).

In 'The Look', a press photograph of Jean-Paul Sartre has been retouched to correct the orientation of Sartre’s badly wall-eyed (and blind) right eye, producing a stare that would have been both physiologically impossible and philosophically problematic for Sartre. With 'IS/SI' the viewer is confronted with his or her own image and gaze in the form of a row of mirrors whose proportions and colors are made to match the complete run of the journal Internationale Situationniste. In contrast to the somewhat arcane origins of the above works, other works in the exhibition are derived from common clichés. Expressions such as “Looking at life through rose-colored glasses” or “Like watching paint dry” are used as starting points and then extended or misused, generating new relations to their origins and accepted uses.

The invisibility shared by the ordinary and obscure is a preoccupation in Shaddock’s work. Through this he considers everyday objects and language, popular culture, image production, etc. to produce work that, while formally diverse, shares the humor, confusion, and delight of being shown something for the first time (again).

Josh Shaddock has exhibited his work since 2004 and has been included in many group shows at public and private spaces such as White Columns, CCA Wattis, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Small A Projects, Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, Kunstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis in Bregenz and The Arcadia University Art Gallery. He was also included in the 2007 edition of the East International, in Norwich, England.

Gallery-C is open from Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For further information and/or images please call 212.279.9219 or email alex@teamgal.com.