Gavan / Heller

June 6–30, 2003

Gandalf Gavan & Susanna Heller: Out of Line

Sideshow Gallery presents "Out of Line," an exhibition of line drawings, paintings and sculpture by Gandalf Gavan and Susanna Heller that explore physical space from June 6 through June 30, 2003. The opening reception for this exhibition will be held on Saturday, June 6, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Gavan throws us into the middle of a universe containing jumbled fragments of a familiar world, reconfigured to form a sprawling tangle of pulsing visual frequencies. This universe is two- and three-dimensional as Gavan moves from sculpture to the planar territory of sheets of paper laid side by side on the wall in a chaotic and irregular grid. In the sculptural portion of the work, highly unlikely clusters of transformed everyday objects grow from ceiling to wall and from wall to floor. In the two-dimensional portion of his work, Gavan uses a wide variety of mark-making techniques including prints, collage and drawing to construct a world as full of highly personalized, playful abstraction as it is of references to the mass-produced imagery of popular culture.

With no indication of orientation, Gavan's piece becomes a confused map that blurs boundaries rather than defining them and flows easily between realms of organization and chaotic visual noise. There is no one path through the territory that Gavan outlines here. There are only intertwining flows of visual information that, in their varying degrees of legibility, suggest a multiplicity of interpretations and a myriad of mental journeys.

New York City is Heller's universe. Her paintings provide a hyper-realist and abstract tour of the city, often from the soaring vantage point of her former studio on the 91st floor of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. Heller sees her paintings and drawings as very long constantly changing stories and spaces of imagination.

"I want the work to echo a person's own physical, sensual, and emotional experience of the city," Heller says. "In this way, the city itself is mysteriously figurative. Mysterious because it provides only riddle-like answers that are momentary and ever-changing. Figurative because I see the city as a living organism. Its "truth" is in its continuity of frequencies. Walking, watching, drawing and painting are spaces of enunciation."

Gavan, who earned a BFA from Bard College, has exhibited work at the Hungarian Embassy, Printed Matter and the James Fuentes Gallery in New York. He has also exhibited work at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Cusco, Peru. Heller received fellowships in painting from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She has had solo exhibitions at Museum London in London, Ontario; Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto; University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Tomoko Liguori Gallery in New York.