Lisa Cooley is pleased to present Alex Fleming's first solo exhibition, from March 1 until April 12, 2009. The exhibition opens with a reception for the artist on Sunday, March 1 from 6 until 8 pm.
Alex Fleming's work uses a demure, elusive language comprised of reflections, double meanings and associative layering to focus attention on the perceptual and cognitive experience of the viewer. This exhibition of mirrored alphabet stickers on newsprint, layered video projections and sculpture use simple, austere means to conjure maximum meaning with minimal gesture. However, despite their apparent simplicity and ephemerality, these works evoke complex undertones of concealment and secrets.
In Rose, don't touch anything, the silvered letters A, R, O, W, S fill the center and each corner of a sheet of newsprint, inviting the reader to play with the letters, their sounds and their combinations, piecing them together to create new meanings and associations – a rose, eros, arrows. Likewise, A Mirror, features the mirrored letters A, I M, R, in a horizontal row, and interrupted by a large space where the letterform that most represents a mirror, the O, has been omitted. Went to find an end spells out its title, but minus the final word. Inspired by the poems of Stephané Mallarmé, and the word-events of George Brecht, these text works are animated and transformed through the viewer's performative act of verbal interpretation.
The lace curtains of his apartment consists of a projected sequence of slowly turning blank pages, taken from the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, his 1964 expressionist thriller about a beautiful kleptomaniac. The turning pages overlap a staccato slide projection - nuanced portraits of a mysterious, beautiful, pensive woman are interrupted by bold, fragmented images. As each page turns, another image appears, suggesting time, faded beauty, unfolding secrets or the woman’s unknown life.
The third element in the exhibition, an untitled vitrine sculpture, continues Fleming’s metaphor of solitary women. Two items of saffron-hued clothing - a small jacket and a patterned scarf - are pressed under glass as an expressive, abstract, Proustian gesture. These beautiful, silky fabrics, once enlivened by their owner, are now preserved, like flowers or memories, while two photographs, one of a pensive, solitary woman and the other of a well-attended celebration, are both formally and metaphorically connected through the clothing.
While several of Fleming’s works touch on themes of reflective contemplation, others play with theatrical, flamboyant affectations. The interplay between private exploration and public exposure articulated throughout the exhibition is akin to Fleming’s process of filtering his analytic inspirations – Fluxus approaches to artmaking, structural film and experimental poetry, – through a personal exploration of identity, beauty, sexuality and coded communication.
Alex Fleming lives and works in New York City. He was born in 1984 and received his BA in Art History from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the art editor of the critical journal, Farimani, and previously organized a series of performances at the gallery in September 2008.
The gallery is located at 34 Orchard Street between Hester and Canal in the Lower East Side of New York City. The closest subway is the East Broadway stop of the F line. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, from noon until 6 pm.
For more information or images, please email the gallery at frontdesk@lisa-cooley.com or call 212-680-0564.