The Homefront Gallery will close at the end of this month.  Over the course of the past 20 months, artists have made the gallery their “home” for the duration of each exhibition and visitors in turn responded with their thoughts, questions and enthusiasm.  The diversity of artists showcased and the numerous exchanges among participants constantly tested the gallery as a space of public interaction and communication.  I thank all of the artists, visitors and volunteers for their friendship and shared commitment.

Please come by to see “Childhood Homes” by Sarah Morgan before it closes on March 24.  We are open Thursdays to Saturdays, 12-6pm.

Thank you for your support,

Crystal Kui

Childhood Homes

The series of sculptures in this show are based on houses I lived in while growing up. During childhood, my family moved from home to home every year from kindergarten through third grade. Although these homes hold happy memories, the yearly resettling was also a source of trauma. The subject matter was chosen as a means to depict a simultaneous sweetness and darkness; to convey a sense of personal history coupled with the potential for these forms to be generic in their simplicity. The structure of each house is inspired by its actual architecture, but lacking points of entry, with no windows and no doors. The home becomes a block with no interior; to embody the idea that the past is solid and impenetrable, yet functions as a non-existent mirage. Executed in the scale of dollhouses, and made entirely of repurposed wood, the forms are dream shapes, the logic of which is for the floorboards to be turned inside out.

These works exemplify my interest in describing the duality of experiences that can be totally individual yet completely common, and how our human existences are dictated by experiences, especially those of early childhood. The formlessness and fluidity of memory is a concept that engages me. The first incidence of a memory is its purest apparition; each time the brain recalls the memory it is remodeled and re-remembered. The initial vividness of the memory fades with every recollection, like an ice cube that begins with crisp geometry but melts away to nothingness as it is held in the hand.

Sarah Morgan

This exhibition will comprise five sculptures recreating the homes in which the artist lived as a child.  “Childhood Homes” represents Morgan’s consideration of sculpture as a site for reconstructing lost domestic spaces.

In these works, Morgan has embraced scraps of discarded wood as building material, attracted foremost by their readymade forms and pre-existing colors.  Door panels, window frames, siding and wood beams capture and give materiality to the objects and emotions of her early childhood.

The artist has said, “The structure of each house is inspired by its actual architecture, but lacking points of entry, with no windows and no doors.  Executed in the scale of dollhouses, and made entirely of repurposed wood, the forms are dream shapes, the logic of which is for the floorboards to be turned inside out.”  Morgan’s houses are artworks for the imagination, elegant and poetic sculptures which explore notions of architecture, space, absence and memory.

The sculptures in this exhibition will be accompanied by photographs and drawings based on the houses in New Jersey where the artist grew up.  On view in the gallery will also be a wall sculpture titled, “I’m Abandoning My Fear of Abandonment.”

Sarah Morgan lives and works in Brooklyn.  She received her MFA from Yale University and her BFA from Cooper Union.

Opening Reception: Saturday January 21, 4–7pm

This event is free but reservations are required
RSVP homefrontgallery AT gmail DOT com

Conversations at The Homefront Gallery highlight the work of contemporary artists and their various responses to the concept of the “homefront”.  Join us on Saturday December 3 at 3:00pm for a conversation with the photographer Justine Reyes.  Reyes will present images from her series Home Away from Home and talk about her works and processes. Home Away from Home is a moving and poignant study of Reyes’ aging mother and uncle.  The portraits were taken over the past seven years and reveal the artist’s changing perceptions of home, family and the fragility of life.

Justine Reyes lives and works in New York.  She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 and a BFA from Syracuse University in 2000.  Reyes has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including Proyecto Circo at the 8th Havana Biennial, Cuba; Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey; Queens International 4 at The Queens Museum of Art, the S-Files Biennial at El Museo del Barrio, the Humble Arts Foundation’s 31 Women in Art Photography and the Flash Forward Festival in Toronto.  She was a recent recipient of a QCAF grant from the Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for her series Home, Away from Home and was recently named as PDN’s (Photo District News) top 30 photographers of 2011.

Justine Reyes Artist Page

Justine Reyes
November 12, 2011–January 8, 2012

The Homefront Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Justine Reyes opening to the public on November 12 and continuing until January 8.

Home, Away from Home is a series of portraits of Reyes’ aging mother and uncle taken over the past seven years at home and in hotel rooms while traveling abroad.  This body of work draws from the artist’s close relationship with her family to convey the experience of leaving and returning home and the fear of losing those closest to us.

Photographs of Reyes’ mother and uncle at home show them gazing directly into the camera while engaging in activities such as talking on the phone, sitting at the breakfast table, ironing or reading the paper.  These images allow for patient and focused observation, and “the opportunity to have an emotional dialogue with the viewer.”  Intimate portraits of her family in hotel rooms reveal the subtle underlying tensions affected by dislocation.  An atmosphere of loneliness permeates these interior spaces, designed to have the look and feel of domestic comfort.  Reyes’ portraits are filled with the immeasurable vastness of age, memory and time.  The artist has said, “I use my work to move through the fear and pain of loss and longing.”  Home, Away from Home is a poignant and personal study that invites us to consider photography’s relationship to emotional truth.

In conjunction with the exhibition Home, Away from Home, a conversation with the artist Justine Reyes will take place at The Homefront Gallery on Saturday, December 3 at 3pm.  RSVP to homefrontgallery@gmail.com.

This exhibition was made possible by a grant from Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Opening Reception: Saturday November 12, 4–7pm

Under the Hell Gate Bridge, Astoria, Queens, NY, 2011. 

The Kite Flier, Flushing Meadow Park, Queens, NY, 2011. ]]> http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/rona-chang-%e2%80%93-moving-forward-standing-still-%e2%80%93-queens-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/moving-forward-standing-still-%e2%80%93-queens-edition/ http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/moving-forward-standing-still-%e2%80%93-queens-edition/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:14:10 +0000 admin http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/?p=815

Eid Candy, Jackson Heights, Queens, NY.

Rona Chang
September 17 – October 29, 2011

The Homefront Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Rona Chang.  Moving Forward, Standing Still – Queens Edition will open to the public on Saturday September 17, 4-6pm and will be on view through October 29.

Moving Forward, Standing Still is an ongoing project that is engaged in portraying the complex intersection of people and cultures in a landscape.  This exhibition will feature photographs taken within the last year for the Queens edition of Moving Forward, Standing Still.  In the Queens edition the artist focused her lens on the neighborhoods of Astoria, Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing, Jackson Heights and the Rockaways.  These neighborhoods are some of the most culturally diverse in the world and it is the intersection of cultures that she documents.

Each photograph depicts figures in a landscape, emphasizing the arrangement of formal elements and the familiar yet perplexing moments within everyday life.  These encounters reveal the moment when a set of characters, a network of relationships, and an architecture of connections seem suspended in space.

The Queens edition of Moving Forward, Standing Still continues the artist’s interest in recording “the cumulative effect of people on their environment”.  Although Chang has produced images for the series in many parts of the world, this project goes full circle and brings together her experience of “seeing the world, re-examining [her] immediate home environment and then seeing the world within the neighborhoods of Queens.”

Photographer Rona Chang is a recipient of En Foco’s New Works #14 Fellowship.  In 2011, she was awarded a grant by Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for her series Moving Forward, Standing Still. Ms. Chang is a finalist for the 2011 Rome Prize.  In 2007 she was an associate artist at the Atlantic Center of the Arts residency under the guidance of Thomas Struth.  Her work has been showcased online and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. After receiving her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art she worked as a photographer for the Asian Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nine years, where she photographed all of the Japanese woodblock prints, Indian paintings, and Chinese handscrolls in the collection.  Her work can be seen on ronachang.com

The Queens edition is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New Works #14 Fellowship from En Foco.

Opening Reception: Saturday September 17, 4 – 6pm

Joseph Maida Artist Page ]]> http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/joseph-maida/feed/ 0 http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/718/ http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/2011/718/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:53:46 +0000 admin http://www.thehomefrontgallery.com/?p=718 Download press release as pdf

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