The Bureau of Apology
By Brent Birnbaum
Curated by Daria Brit Shapiro
April 6-27th 2012

Subscribing to the belief that the contemporary artist is an entrepreneur, Brent Birnbaum channels the infamous and legendary traditions of snake oil salesmen and street psychics, in his performative installation, The Bureau of Apology. A real, functioning business in which viewers can partake to absolve themselves of guilt and burden, The Bureau of Apology is as credible as a vision in a crystal ball: it is out of our own necessity that we believe.

A site-specific installation for The LAB Gallery’s “fishbowl” space, The Bureau of Apology is a “family-run” organization, spearheaded by the ever-engaging Brent Birnbaum, clad in an unforgettable purple suit. Considering himself to be “a traveling salesman, snake charmer, and street preacher” rolled into one, the artist has created his own unique brand, that is as relevant as it is irreverent.

A “walk-in sculpture”, that resembles a defunct office, The B.O.A. is replete with outdated consumerist bric-a-brac, re-imagined into sculptural objects- a hallmark of Birnbaum’s work. The artist will appear for a limited number of performances, offering Bureau services to passersby. For the first time, The Lab Gallery will open its doors to admit a limited number of guests to interact with the artist and essentially become part of the performance.

Studio visit with Brent Birnbaum

In an effort to break down the boundaries between viewer and artwork, Birnbaum’s work is often interactive, daring visitors to engage on a personal level. The Bureau of Apology will offer conscience-clearing services that range from hand-scribed pre-written and custom apologies, to “house callz”, wherein Birnbaum will appear at a prescribed location to apologize on your behalf.

To ensure that apologies are indeed authentic: all correspondence will bear the official Bureau seal, however, there is no guarantee of honesty, as each participant will ultimately be required to confront themselves in the process.

Brent Birnbaum was born in Dallas, Texas in the year of the snake. He received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2004 and has since been exhibiting internationally to much critical acclaim. Birnbaum’s work has been seen at Stux Gallery, NYC; Winkleman Gallery, NYC and Marianne Boesky Gallery; NYC, in addition to several group shows in Los Angeles and Detroit. With the support of the SCOPE Foundation, Brent Birnbaum’s work was selected by curator Daria Brit Shapiro for a solo feature in SCOPE Miami 2011 and SCOPE New York 2012, where it was met with critical acclaim. Birnbaum’s work is slated to appear in a museum exhibition from the esteemed Sammlung Schroth collection in Germany this Spring.

Daria Brit Shapiro is a Curator, Cultural engineer and Critic of Everything. Currently the Public Relations Director of SCOPE Art Show, Daria is also the Founder & Curator of A.M.F. Projects, while publishing widely on contemporary art, fashion, design & beyond.

PUBLIC EVENT: April 5th 6-8pm (More Information Here)

Bear Forest
By dEmo
March 7-30th 2012

THE LAB is pleased to present Bear Forest, an installation comprised of 30 over-sized bear sculptures of different colors and different sizes.

dEmo is one of Spain’s most original and internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artists with an unmistakable aesthetic rooted in pop. In recent years his public work has become a consistent presence outside museums and galleries throughout the world. dEmo strives to uncover hidden meanings in everyday objects, transforming them into veritable icons.

All works of art and performances in The LAB: GALLERY are shown within the confines of the space, and are intended to be viewed by the audience from the sidewalk.  This event is free and viewable 24/7.

Bear Forest: The Teaser

Bear Forest: Installing (In time lapse)

Check out this video of the cast talking about Agamemnon, you’ll get some awesome insight into the process, its a great introduction to the story, and this version of the play specifically.

We hope to see you there!
Warmest,
Danika

Enjoy!

Come and see it!  February 23-18.

BUY TICKETS HERE
Want to know more? CLICK HERE!

THE LAB is pleased to announce the upcoming production of Robert Auletta’s  AGAMEMNON:REDUX, a modern adaptation of Aeschalus’ Agamemnon. Staged in the penthouse of the Roger Smith Hotel, this play will be performed to an exclusive audience of 40 people a night for a limited run of 16 performances only.

Experiential theater in its most raw form, this famous Greek tragedy will unfold around audience members in the hotel’s intimate penthouse. One of the most unusual and private spots in the city, this space is most notable for its domed ceiling that inspired the famed architect Buckminster Fuller to design his Geodesic Dome. The distinctive room provides for a dramatic staging of the play as actors unexpectedly emerge from side rooms, back rooms and even exterior balconies, sharing the close space with the audience, bringing a fresh immediacy to this re-telling of an ancient classic.

“I’m a New Yorker, born and raised. And the clarity of language is important to me” says  Obie Award-winning playwright Robert Auletta (Peter Sellars’ AJAX and THE PERSIANS). “Language needs to be visceral. I’m trying to do something that brings the story to today’s audience and makes it accessible in the same way it may have been experienced by a Greek audience in 485 B.C.”

Director Kenneth Ryan (founding member of American Repertory Theatre) says “This is a lean, mean fighting machine performed by six actors, using a raw poetic text that brings the traditional elements of Aeschelus’ work into the vernacular of today. The Wild Bunch takes on the Greeks.”

THE LAB Presents “Actors: On Acting” The Cast of Agamemnon:Redux

Agamemnon:Redux opens Thursday February 23^rd  and runs through Sunday March 18^th, Thursdays through Sundays at 8PM. Seating is extremely limited and tickets are $18. There will be a “Tweetview” performance (open to anyone reserving their seat through Twitter) on February 21^st,  Send them a tweet! @AgaRedux

For further information visit www.agamemnonredux.com

Purchase Tickets HERE

By Pat Badt and Scott Sherk
Curated by Creighton Michael
February 10-March 2 2012

The LAB: GALLERY is pleased to present Intersection, a sound-based, site-specific installation by Pat Badt and Scott Sherk.

Badt and Sherk’s creative practice involves cultivating awareness of the qualities of specific spaces through the realignment of the senses. This installation, Intersection, concentrates on the stop and go of the midtown traffic outside the gallery, focusing on the pulse and energy of the city.  A hanging string column cycles between stillness and movement, while real time video  sonograms and spectrograms are projected on to the gallery walls making the sound of the intersection visual.

Pat Badt and Scott Sherk have collaborated on several site-specific installations, shown at Katonah Museum of Art, the Kim Foster Gallery, Point, Line, Lafayette College, Marshall University and Martial Arts Center, Memphis.  Pat Badt is a painter and a Professor of Art at Cedar Crest College.  Scott Sherk is sculptor who often works with sound.  He most recently completed a sound project for the Katonah Museum of Art and is a Professor of Art at Muhlenberg College.  Together Pat Badt and Scott Sherk curate thethirdbarn.org.

The Teaser

By Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse
Curated by Creighton Michael
January 13 – February 3 2012

THE LAB:GALLERY is pleased to present Breath of Water, an installation by Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse.

Breath of Water is part of the artist’s on-going exploration into the representation of water both two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally. Their work is framed by the ideas of two Presocratic philosophers: Thales and Heraclitus. Thales discusses the omnipresence of water and it’s shape-shifting ability when he claimed that everything is water. Heraclitus, by asserting that one can not step in the same river twice, argues that identity is deeply rooted in change. Breath of Water looks at winter water as an almost secret environment not unlike the world inside a snow globe.

Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse have been collaborating since 1999. During this time, they have produced large-scale sculpture, painting, and prints. Mickett comes to the collaboration from a background in philosophy, film, radio, poetry, and theater. Stackhouse followed a traditional visual arts path, and his individual work can be found in museum collections around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Australia, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Both Mickett and Stackhouse hold Ph.Ds: Mickett in philosophy and Stackhouse has an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of South Florida.  

All works of art and performances in The LAB: GALLERY are shown within the confines of the space, and are intended to be viewed by the audience from the sidewalk.  This event is free and viewable 24/7.

Installing Breath Of Water, A Timelapse

Enjoy!!

Warmest,
Matt and Danika

Video by John Birdsong

Last Wednesday afternoon, in anticipation of Hyong Nam Ahn’s December show at The LAB, Fantastic Lonely Heart,  Matt, Birdsong and I took our first road trip together.

We hopped in a Zipcar, picked up Soojung Hyun, the Curator of the show, and made our way in the crawling Manhattan traffic, over the GW Bridge, to Hyong Nam’s studio in New Jersey.

Here is our afternoon in a nutshell:

1. Hyong Nam’s studio is a vast space. To get up there, you have to pass a rather eerie pool hall on the first floor, but just one flight further and we trailed into his space to find all his light based pieces on show, fully luminous and alight, it was magnificent.

An excellent way to kick off. 2. Hyong Nam’s very impressive, if not epic, speakers 3. Possibly a new Facebook profile photo 4. Laid out for us was a fabulous spread on a table decorated, appropriately, with Autumn leaves; sushi, salad, fruit, almond biscuits. 5. I am delighted to say, the pièce de résistance was Fantastic Lonely Heart which is in its final phases before it makes it's way to us in December. It's going to look amazing in the gallery.   It's going to look smashing!

Fantastic Lonely Heart
Installation by Hyong Nam Ahn  
Curator: Soojung Hyun  
December 2nd-January 6th 2012

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is pleased to present Fantastic Lonely Heart, a light based installation by the Korean artist Hyong Nam Ahn.

Ahn uses “the magical and transcendent” qualities  of neon light as a way of exposing the arduous aspects of the human condition; much like the great Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset did in the 1920′s writing on the conflicts intrinsic to modernity and the impact of industrialization’s rapid spread, specifically regarding the increasing disappearance of human values. Despite being separated by both decades and continents, the importance of maintaining an equal balance between spiritual and material realities is a philosophy shared by both the spaniard and this sculptor here.

This exhibition was made possible in part by the support of the AHL Foundation.

Hyong Nam Ahn has lived and worked in the United States since 1973. He holds an MFA (1980) in Sculpture with Kinetics and a BFA (1978) in Painting & Experimental Art from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has worked in the fields of sculpture, installation, and public art installation.He earned Illinois Project Completion Grant (1982), Wiebolt Artist Contest, Gold Key Award Scholastic National Drawing Contest, First Prize Award (1974). He has shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Tweed Museum; MN, Jamaica Cultural Center in New York, and IHN Gallery (Korea). website

The AHL Foundation is a non-profit organization formed in 2003 by Sook Nyu Lee Kim to support Korean artists living in the United States and to promote exposure of their work in today’s highly competitive contemporary art world. In 2004, the foundation established an annual competition that is open to all artists of Korean ancestry living in the United States. AHL awards four monetary prizes each year and has been mounting bi-annual exhibitions to display the winning works. Since 2008, AHL has advanced to an annual exhibition, and this year, 2010, AHL has expanded its awards to honor five artists, thus broadening their scope of diversity and opportunity. website

The LAB (for installation + performance art) is a New York based, converted storefront producing fast paced performance art and site-specific installations. Viewable exclusively from the sidewalk and aimed at the furious midtown foot traffic, The LAB’s exhibitions seek to throw a moment of uncertainty into the predictable monotony of the midtown shuffle, forcing an interaction between the high energy, “outrospective” work it produces and the nearly 25,000 daily passersby. The LAB is located on the North East corner of 47th and Lex and is a Roger Smith Collaboration

Time Lapse of the installation

Studio Visit with Hyong Nam Ahn

See the photos!