"Stolen Time" & "Yurt City" June 22, 2006

For Immediate Release: Star gazing and less famous moments... Two time sensative exhibits come to Williamsburg.

Sculpture Garden: "Yurt City" installation by: Sheila Ross & Laura Ten Eyck

Special artwork by guests: Todd Knopke, Ted McGurn & Derrick Wilson

Hot summer nights under stars. Pitch your tent under the new condo construction. Dam Stuhltrager's Sculpture Garden fills with various prefabricated tents and modified yurts. Sheila Ross and Ten Eyck create a unique "tent city" for fellow artists to inhabit and modify. Functional, fantastical and vagrantly political, "Yurt City" is both a metaphor and response to the changing landscape of Williamsburg.

In form, a yurt resembles the circular domed tents made of skins or felt stretched over a collapsible lattice framework and are reminiscent of the nomadic peoples of Central Asia. A far distance in structure from a New York condo, the yurts question the nature of sophisticated living in the shade of two towering live/work buildings (65 and 63 Hope Street) where dozens of artists were displaced within the last month. The residents and their artistically converted raw spaces are to be replaced by luxury lofts after a long battle that stemmed all the way to Albany. In "Yurt City" viewers enter to find an interior space transformed with elaborately designed panels and scrims- designs of which have been informed by a hybrid of 20th century abstraction and eastern art and architectural histories, including Ottoman miniature and architectural traditions. In the adjacent luxury condo buildings, decades of artists’ handywork converting raw space into homes, is gutted and removed.

Inspired by tent cites or Gecekondu, a the Turkish term for stealth overnight architectural squatter inventions, "Yurt City" also remarks on the collaborative spirit that is losing ground due to the highly competitive real estate market of NYC. Installation co-creator, Laura Ten Eyck, has invited guest artists to respond to this configuration of tents, altering or adding to the already existing structures.

Gallery 1, 2 & 3: "Stolen Time"* curated by Aileen Tat and Rachel Pascua Artwork by: Conrad Carlson, Paul Davies, Sara Dierck, Gianluca Fratantonio, Tamar Hirschl, Scott Listfield, Anthony Murray, Ben Pranger, Dana Sperry, Ryan Sullivan, Jeff Thompson, Arno Tijnagel, Heeseop Yoon & Lance Wakeling

America lives in a high-speed culture, where every day is a continual bombardment of the senses. Our country leads the race to fulfill the contemporary dream of fitting ever-more “quality time” into its citizens’ daily routine, by compartmentalizing and accelerating almost every facet of our existence. Witness the rise in popularity of minute meals, instant messaging, wireless communication, nonstop flights, drive-thrus, speed dating, and drugs, such as Ritalin, amphetamines, and Xanax, which are used to help deal with it all.

Is living via these chemical and technological conveniences pushing us towards a harmony of instant gratification, increased leisure, and better understanding, or does it harbor a more sinister future in which we’re doing more to keep up, and thus perpetually losing the time we’re supposed to have saved? What is the role of the contemporary artist in keeping or regulating the pace of modern life? " Stolen Time" presents fourteen artists whose work reacts to a fast world of constant stimuli or pauses to regroup the eye of the storm.

Dates: June 24- August 27, 2006

Opening Reception: Friday, June 23, 7-10pm

Hours: Fri. 3-8, Sat. & Sun. 12-6pm or by appt.

Contact: Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery

38 Marcy Ave. Brooklyn. NY 11211

718-387-9818

[email protected]

www.damstuhltrager.com

Directions: L to Lorimer. Exit near token booth.

Metropolitan under BQE.

Left on Marcy. Distance from train: 3 bl

(Corner of Marcy Avenue and Hope Street)

Official Website: http://www.damstuhltrager.com