Our Barricades by Greg Sholette

Station Independent Gallery
Opening: October 10th, 6-9 pm
On view through November 1st, 2014

For his second solo show at Station Independent the New York based artist Greg Sholette presents recent sculpture, drawings and design prototypes from two overlapping bodies of work: his ongoing graphic novel series “Double City,” and “Our Barricades,” a multi-faceted research project for and about the precarious 99%. Both reflect the artist’s response to complex struggles in search of political and economic justice from New York City to Ukraine to the Gulf region in the Middle East.

“Our Barricades” consists of a series of stark black and white bas-relief pieces graphically linking the oily materiality of street barricades to global petro-politics and the war on terror. Taking their queue from urban struggles and DIY barriers constructed out of tires in the city squares of Istanbul, Oaxaca and Ukraine Sholette’s graphic novel inspired imagery comments on the environmental afflictions of the Anthropocene while making allusion to the Pergamon Frieze as well as the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and Reza Negarestani. Throughout the exhibition Sholette will invite Station Independent visitors to collaborate on imagining their own modern barricades capable of defending against surveillance,  data mining, and the general precariousness of early 21st Century existence.

Hanging above these works is the latest chapter of “Double City,” a serialized sci-fi narrative in the form of a graphic novel that revolves around three, down-and-out creative workers who get caught up in a growing underground mutiny organized by disgruntled artists, interns, exhibition installers and struggling MFA students. Drawn with brush and ink on a continuous thirty foot scroll chapter three focuses on Karl Lorac, an aging, white male artist who works days as a museum preparator. Feeling increasingly marginalized Karl’s sense of resentment mingles alarmingly with the inevitable paranoia generated by our total surveillance society. His response is to barricade himself behind a sculptural barrier made up of artworks, plywood, automobile tires and other assorted materials both real and imagined.

And please join us Wed, October 15 at 6:30 PM for a special presentation on the history of barricades with Andrew Hemingway (Emeritus Professor in History of Art, University College London).

Station Independent Gallery Page 

Gallery