press release
David Schafer
Roundabout/UEBA
Studio10 is pleased to announce Roundabout/UEBA, an exhibition of new sculpture, sound work and drawings by the New York-based artist David Schafer.
Since the late 1980’s, Schafer has worked in both NY and LA producing public and small-scale sculpture and sound works while exhibiting in Europe and the United States. Producing work across a variety of media, he has previously collaborated with architects, graphic designers, voice actors, digital engineers, fabricators, and sound studios. Schafer’s work is driven by a wide range of theoretical and personal references, which manifest around the idea of site, language, and the built environment. Sometimes incorporating humor, he appropriates from the vocabulary and motifs of Modernism, and an array of idiosyncratic subjects from popular culture and theory, Schafer develops projects that are sculptural as well as text, graphic, and sound based.
The exhibition Roundabout/UEBA includes two metal sculptures with accompanying sound, photography, 3d animation video, and drawings. “Roundabout” involves the translation of data and space into abstract sound. It is comprised of a large, freestanding steel sculpture with an iPod mounted to it. The iPod presents a digitally produced 3D animation of the same sculpture rotating from two different views at two speeds with accompanying sound. The tones created comprise an abstract computer graphic score. The sound from the animation is generated from uploading the elevation graphics of the sculpture to a software program that converts visual data to sound. “UEBA” presents the idea of promise with the possibility of failure. A PA speaker mounted to the small aluminum sculpture plays an 11-disc audio book “Magnificent Desolation” by Buzz Aldrin. The disks may be played in any order or repeated as desired. Accompanying the sculpture and audio are three portraits of Aldrin. They represent the time before, during, and after the first Apollo moonwalk of 1969. The third portrait is from a Volkswagon ad where Aldrin was reluctantly endorsing the new 1972 VW Beetle. The two sculptures perform as an installation in the gallery space that allows the simultaneous sound from both sculptures to sonically blend together. One sounding abstract and mechanical while the other is spoken word, as both works implicate the status of sculpture on varying levels.
Schafer's recent projects include: “Floating Points” a collaborative installation and sound work at the Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, “LOL: A Decade of Antic Art”, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD. Last year, he installed a permanent sculpture for the Huntington Hospital in LA, where he 3d scanned and remixed a Henry Moore sculpture. Recent publications include “Separated United Forms” by Charta Press, Milan, and “Site of Sound #2: Of Architecture and the Ear” edited by Brandon LaBelle, Errant Bodies Press, Berlin. His sound performance in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial of 2010 was recently included in “Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture”, by Peter Krapp, Minnesota Press. Schafer is currently a visiting critic for the Cornell Art and Architecture program in Manhattan. Upcoming projects include “Bodypoint” a sound installation at the Edinburgh College of Art Gallery, Scotland, “What Should a Painter Do?” a one person show at the Glendale College Art Gallery, and “STATICAGE”, a John Cage remix performance/radio broadcast and sculpture installation at the MAK Center in LA.
For more information and images, please contact Annelie McGavin at (718) 213-2469.
Gallery hours: Thursday through Sunday 1 – 6 pm or by appointment
Contact: studio10bogart@gmail.com (718) 852-4396 www.studio10bogart.com