New Members Exhibition February 14, 2008

NEXUS/Foundation for Today's Art will be presenting the second of two new members exhibitions for the 2007-2008 season. This exhibition highlights the work of J. Makary, Leah Reynolds and Blaine Siegel, three new members working in performance, video, sculpture, installation and drawing. This exhibition opens Thursday, February 14 and runs through Friday, March 7.
Twice a year in September and February, applicants are reviewed by existing NEXUS artists for inclusion into the artist membership. Due to this peer review process, the original motivation for a collective and venue for experimental, non-commercial artists has sustained for over thirty years.
Most of J. Makary’s work involves performance and video, sometimes with costuming, music, and dance. In that way, her projects are like an introduction – getting dance to meet cinema, getting performance to meet digital effects – and she is mostly concerned with guiding these elements to a topic and having them connect through conversation. She enjoys making cross-disciplinary work because its nature is to explore the concepts of safety and risk, allowing the artist and the audience to face the unfamiliar through the security of what we already know.
Leah Reynolds’ installation, “Tidal”, was made specifically for the Nexus gallery space. Color, light, pattern, buoyancy and weight are all factors in this new piece. Reynolds’ most recent work includes an installation at the Philadelphia Airport, and a solo exhibition at 55 Mercer Gallery in New York City both in 2007.
The drawings and sculpture in Blaine Siegel’s recent work are influenced by the Mughal sixteenth century illustrated manuscript, The Book of War.
Throughout time man has had to conduct life amidst war. Not everyone will fight in a war yet everyone must confront war and its repercussions. In contemporary society this confrontation often takes place through the media and its catalogue of war imagery.
The screen displays victims of war. A man drags a woman, her body blown apart. How do we digest this horrific image? How do our memories, knowledge and personal experience affect how we integrate this imagery?

NEW MEMBERS EXHIBTION
Thursday February 14 through Friday March 7, 2007
Opening Reception – Thursday February 14, 6 to 9 PM
paraphrase/NEXUS – Wednesday, February 27, 8 PM featuring Bianka Brunson of Lillie Ruth Bussey & theater artist Kathryn TeBordo
NEXUS is open 12 to 6 PM, Wednesday through Sunday.
Admission is free.

Official Website: http://www.nexusphiladelphia.org