SHIFT
Ryan O'Conner
Tara Smith
Eric Ayotte
curated by Walker Waugh
and Emily Driscoll
September 1st - September 27th 2007
WORK
redtinshack.com
WORK is pleased to announce the opening of its inaugural exhibition – SHIFT – a show of new
art by 2007 Goldsmiths, University of London M.F.A. graduates Eric Ayotte, Ryan O'Connor,
and T.L. Smith. Paintings by both Ayotte and Smith and sculpture by O'Connor will activate
WORK, a new viewing station and project art space on the Brooklyn waterfront.
The red tin shack of WORK is sanguinely set where the northern stretch of Red Hook's Van
Brunt Street meets the westernmost end of Union Street. As both compliment and alternative to
the heavy industry of its immediate neighbors, WORK endeavors to conscientiously provide
itself as a conveyance for artistic labors.
SHIFT is based on the concept that galleries are both vehicles for ideas and temporary
repositories reliant on fixed intervals in time. By showcasing the work of three American artists
immediately following their completion of the Goldsmiths M.F.A. program, the show reflects the
moment when artists change gears and perspectives are refocused. Guest curator Kathleen Smith
has selected complementary work for SHIFT that probes interstitials of time, place and pattern in
conjunction with the mobilization of WORK.
Ayotte's Afterward (divided) (2007) unfolds in time across a glossy surface through parcels of
paint, which reference the pixilation of a television or computer screen. An abstracted image of
a deadly car crash, culled from the media, moves from cold geometrical pattern to transcendent
mortal order to reveal a drama of speed, disaster and death. Similarly, T.L. Smith's work starts
with an image that references the material world and ends with paint and its materiality as
subject. Smith's Communication at its Best 2 (2006) is composed of lines and the space between
them, which reference lines of communication transporting information over time from one
space and form to another. O'Connor's site specific sculpture, approaching the interactivity of
performance, references the physical oddity of the red tin shack by making use of geometrical
yet absurdist forms built from everyday materials.
