NAPOLEON

Napoleon and Tiger Strikes Asteroid are pleased to present F(L)AT, featuring artworks by members of the artist-run gallery SOIL, located in Seattle, Washington.

F(L)AT – Flat or Fat – is a response to the complications of shipping artwork across the country. The members of SOIL were tasked with creating artwork that could ship flat and then be fattened once it arrives at the gallery for installation. The work ranges from flat paper that folds into sculptural objects, 2D renderings of 3D spaces, photographs with hinges that become a sculpture, and fabric pieces that take up unexpected volume in the space.

This exhibition is the second half of an exchange, started in March 2016 when Napoleon and TSA exhibited at SOIL. The following are excerpts from SOIL’s artists’ statements.
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(Don’t) give me (any) more of your (f)lip. Twixt Seattle and Philly these artists have swapped. When a (large) group of artists in a collective exhibit (to)(get)her theme(s can) become logistically based. Air flights (of fancy)(of plain)(of plane) central to crossing the center of the USA. Coast to coast (and considering costs) we went for a flat pack.

Thom Heileson, Construction (Marrows)

I like learning and art, conversations, making, reusing, science, flaunting, dancing, run-on sentences, and oxford commas… Recently I have been looking at stories, at histories, and information. My performances address these topics, and then I think about how to document these Live activities, which often end up as sculptures or publications (or mended sweaters).

Morgan Cahn
Untitled (Ziv quilt 2)

We are many (eyes) working together. We Sea(t(ur)tle) and ( (surrounds) ) hear(here) ((t)here(t)here!) and bring (un)to the(e) F(l)at pieces (a) jigsawing with hemming/hawing/(sewing)/heaving. piece(peace)s of (s)hell.

  
Nola Avienne, Ofd                                                                                 Paula Rebsom, TBA

I recently came across this quote attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” It suggests to me a desperate yet hopeful kind of optimism, which is the feeling I was attempting to conjure up for this installation. I’m not sure how successful I was, but if you line yourself up just right you might be rewarded with a smile.

Paula Rebsom
TBA

Sunlight falls on a musical instrument, yielding a three-dimensional shape within a two- dimensional surface. This view of the instrument of brilliant, improvisatory musician Lori Goldston is in both two- and three-dimensions, and at the same time, visible only as a shadow.

Ellen Ziegler
Lori Goldston’s Cello

(((((b((((r(((e((a(t)h))i)))n))))g))))) in >and< out
going all _((concave))_ & _))convex((_
Flexing our combined muscles from ((share)) to ))sure((
Sprinting, marathoning, and juggling in the ()0()0()Peloton()0()0()
Allowing for experimentation and eruliaf_         because
()<>()w_e _h_a_v_e (each other’s) backs()<>().

 

Moxie Lieberman, Lost at Sea: Isle of Aisle

I’ve spent a lot of my life so far feeling terrified and confused. I think a lot about what it’s like to be a person; who we think we are, how we got here, and what we can’t know about each other.

I make art out of soft materials and hard feelings. My work is a survival response, an attempt to deeply examine what’s “real” in order to discover what’s universal.

Moxie Lieberman
Lost at Sea: Isle of Aisle

In 2005, I installed the piece Escape Route at Soil Gallery. For this show I’m returning to the series, as the sociopolitical climate again begs for flight or flight. Knowing that escapism has consequences doesn’t remove the basic urge to run screaming, no matter how irresponsible. This piece ties together my love of sci-fi, setting the stage, playing with human nature and changing scale to take you out of your normal world.

Jana Brevick
Escape Route

 

  

          Margie Livingston, Dragged Orange Drawing      Catherine Cross Uehara, Lady Arrow DT

The Dragged Paintings are a hybrid of painting, performance, and land art. I feel an affinity with Michael Heizer’s drawings where he carved circles in the desert using his motorcycle. I too am claiming land as artist’s materials, but am using the ground to inscribe the surface of the paint.

I see my current work as non-painting painting. I am seeking ways to surprise myself and expand the possibilities of my chosen medium. That the ideas change and evolve as I get into the work is inherent to my process.

Margie Livingston
Dragged Orange Drawing

I don’t know who made this TINY QUILT FOR A BABY with WAR MACHINES on it…

All I know is when I saw it, I grabbed it and held onto it; I looked at it, puzzled over it, and wondered about it – not for any specific baby – but for humankind.

When DJT was elected took office, it felt like time to both take a stand and start letting go. I knee-jerk-edited the quilt with ceiling texture and orange spray paint. I’d been holding onto this shirt which happens to be Lady Arrow brand and which came to me marked in permanent marker on the label “ D T ”. As someone of mixed ancestry/mixed feelings about a lot of naturalized perceptions/commodifications of Asian-ness, WWII, implied violence, etc., something clicked for me when I saw the two fabrics together. The desire to connect the two got me sewing. I love the gesture of the shirt in relation to the sky – like a lady arrow in flight – free falling.

Catherine Cross Uehara
Lady Arrow DT

 

(S(<(h)ome)>words) (in) p/(i/nk) <GO> -ere.

Jessica Hoffman, Alternative Mode of Communication in the Era of Digital Surveillance

My work focuses on ideas of personal space, memory, sensory perceptions, and interactivity. Found source materials based on communication and memory, such as a letter, a photograph, or a video, inform my work. I am primarily interested in the disconnection and/or reconnection to the original material that exists after its function and context are deconstructed.

Jessica Hoffman
Alternative Mode of Communication in the Era of Digital Surveillance

Either Way; It’s Inevitable is a new series of work that expands on my previous art practice, one that intuitively reinterprets found technical drawings (sewing patterns, architectural blueprints, ophthalmology diagrams, etc.) and expands on the human nature of heuristic psychology. Simply put, my work is documentation of misunderstandings and imagination.

 

Bradly Gunn
Either Way; It’s Inevitable

   
Paul Komada, Bella                                                 Nicholas Nyland, Soft Painting (Moon)

I make abstract paintings. I hear the constant murmur of “Death of Paintings” and many other noises from the echo chamber of critical art discourse. I listen to them and put them in a metaphorical composting bin in my brain. In the same bin, I also deposit the dichotomy of “Art” and “Craft”, as well as my negotiating between the cultural codes of Japan and the West.

Paul Komada
Bella

This piece runs where the margins of sculpture overlap with abstract painting where it engages freely with its precedents of Early American decorative art and Modernism. In seeking visually enigmatic or historically ambiguous forms, I see an opportunity to reconsider where the lines around painting and sculpture are drawn.

Nicholas Nyland
Soft Painting (Moon)

 

Fore the purpose of interjecting pink p<rose(poems)> in context/as a color_block
Our fare narrator works into the night
Unwhittlingly un(aware) a (rare) welsh rarebit <covered in hair>
Recklessly (pre)ambles in a(n omni)shambles *at a bit of a ramble* but(t)on to something?

 

(above) Natalie Jenkins, Touch (below) Kiki MacInnis, Low Tide

Touch is my version of a holographic image; split vantages of one subject slotted together on a lightly crimped plain. In pursuits to visualize the ambiguity in subjectivity, I created this work which toys with perception through the illusion within image.

Natalie Jenkins
Touch

The behavior of bodies of water is influenced by weather, topography, morphology and other neighboring bodies of water. Invisibly, bodies of water are influenced by the presence of celestial bodies. These factors influence the floating tree, the uprooted holdfast, the tiny beach flea.

Kiki MacInnis
Low Tide

 

 

My piece is titled Balloon. SAD!, a reference to Trump’s tweeting habit. The piece will consist of a large, colorless latex balloon filled with water lying on the ground. A string made of red, white and blue thread will be tied to on one end to the balloon, and on the other end to a nail in the wall. Like the nail to hang a piece. The use of everyday recognizable materials to express metaphor is a common thread within my work.

Ben Hirschkoff
Balloon. SAD!

Clear Light is a new project that implements an electroluminescent panel, a battery, and a manually operated switch to alter the appearance of a two-dimensional surface, from opaque pink to luminescent white. Cutting lines trace the panel like the borders of a map. I am interested in the symbiotic relationship between the mechanical nature of technology and the natural phenomenon of light.

Iole Alessandrini
Clear Light

So(w) that is why (and how) we got all this over(t)here yonder<wonder>. It is a bit pi(e) in the sk(e)y(e). The mathematics of persevering when all seems (LOW). We fol(low) our hearts. We put our he(arts) on our sleeves. We sieve our hearts into the (fal)low earth and seed it with our <Fe>ver dreams.

SOIL members in this exhibition: Iole Alessandrini, Nola Avienne, Jana Brevick, Christopher Buening, Morgan Cahn, Bradly Gunn, Thom Heileson Julia Heineccius, Ben Hirschkoff, Jessica Hoffman, Natalie Jenkins, Claire Johnson, Moxie Lieberman, Paul Komada, Margie Livingston, Kiki MacInnis, Nicholas Nyland, Paula Rebsom, Catherine Cross Uehara, and Ellen Ziegler.

Text put together by Ellen Ziegler and (Morgan Cahn)(pink poem purveyor)

To download a PDF version of this essay, click F(L)AT_Essay_Ziegler and Morgan_SOIL