Doing Easy

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10th, 7-10pm
September 10th - October 15th, 2011

On Saturday, September 10th Los Caminos will present Doing Easy, a group exhibition featuring the work of Glen Fogel, Dani Kantrowitz, Gregg Louis, Mike Schuh, and Matthew Strauss. In the exhibition, curator Cole Root examines each artist’s work in relationship to The Discipline of DE, a short story by renowned St. Louis poet William S. Burroughs. The Discipline of DE originally featured in Burroughs’ 1973 publication Exterminator!, which explains:

"DE is a way of doing. It is a way of doing everything you do. DE simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in DE.”

This exhibition brings together artwork that responds to Burroughs’ philosophy, drawing from appropriation, modification, and re-purposing of found objects. Selections of Glen Fogel’s photograph series, Call me and we can buy love together, capture altered subway posters through the use of a cell phone camera. Matthew Strauss’s recent work is involved in the cancellation and reorganization of other artists’ imagery, folding found reproductions in a manner that negates the subjects, accomplishments, and larger meanings of the original objects. Gregg Louis presents drawings using ambidexterity as a means of production. In an installation by Mike Schuh, found objects and remnants of past works are resurrected and re-contextualized through a thoughtful and often playful studio practice. Dani Kantrowitz’s selection of found photographs tell the story of one man’s struggle for personal satisfaction.

Through these methods the artists exemplify varied approaches to DE and solidify its value in studio practice. The philosophy of “doing easy” is not simply a minimal approach to art making, but requires calculated, precise execution. Throughout the exhibition the artists restructure time and effort according to their own systems of logic, revealing their artistic philosophies with each gesture and action.

Artists Bios

Glen Fogel currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited at Participant Inc., Sikkema Jenkins, White Columns, The Kitchen, Momenta Art, Artists Space, NGBK (Berlin), and the Museum of Modern Art. His films have screened in the Toronto and London International Film Festivals, and in 2002, he was included in the Whitney Biennial. Fogel has an MFA from Bard College, and has received grants from the MAP Production Fund, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and was a recipient of the 2009 Princess Grace Award. Fogel’s works are featured courtesy of the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, New York.

Gregg Louis received his MFA from School of Visual Arts in New York after attending Missouri State University and the Imperial College of London. In 2009 he received the Skowhegan School of painting and sculpture fellowship in Skowhegan, Maine. His work has been internationally exhibited, and featured in several prominent art journals and blogs. Louis, a St. Louis native, currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Dani Kantrowitz graduated with an MFA from The Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University in Saint Louis in 2010. As an undergrad, she attended California State University at Chico and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA in Printmaking. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Kulturprojekte in Berlin, Atomic Todd Gallery in Las Vegas, as well as several galleries and alternative spaces in St. Louis. Kantrowitz currently lives and works in St. Louis.

Mike Schuh received his MFA from University of Chicago in 2009 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has had recent solo exhibitions at No 1, Brooklyn and Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and GOLDEN, both Chicago, and has been featured in recent group exhibitions at Laurel Gitlen, New York and Western Exhibitions, Chicago and the School of the Art Institue of Chicago’s Sullivan Gallery. In 2010 Schuh acted as an Artist in Residence at the Banff Art Centre in Banff, Canada.

Matthew Strauss lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and St. Louis, Missouri. Strauss is an artist, curator, and the founder and director of White Flag Projects, a not-for-profit alternative art space in St. Louis, Missouri. While he seldom exhibits his own work, Strauss has organized more than thirty solo and group exhibitions of other artists work at in the past five years. The most recent one-person exhibition of Strauss’s art was Dead Language, as part of the 2006 Great Rivers Biennial at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Since then his work has also been included in select group exhibitions, the last one being Jasmine + B, Front Desk Apparatus, New York, New York (2009).

Download the press release.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image caption:

Matthew Strauss, 2(2,0) and Double Fantasy, 2011. Printed paper on plywood construction, 32 x 26 x 4 3/8”.

Matthew Strauss, 2(1,0) and Éternullité, 2011. Printed paper on plywood construction, 32 x 26 x 4 3/8”.

Matthew Strauss, 1(2)+2 and This is Modern Art, 2011. Printed paper, pencil, masking tape, and stone eggs on plywood construction, 32 x 26 x 4 3/8 inches.

Photo by Serhii Chrucky.

Doing Easy

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