Curator Carrie E. A. Scott. Photo: Jon Huck

Curator and arts writer Carrie E.A. Scott has become a prominent force within the Seattle arts community. Scott is currently the director of the James Harris Gallery, having brought recent shows to the space such as the Rashid Johnson exhibition Dark Matters and recent paintings by Seattle-based artist Scott Foldesi. Additionally, Scott is the curator of the Hedreen Gallery, a non-profit arts space housed in the Lee Center for the Arts at the Seattle University. Scott has produced numerous exhibitions there, including Screen Shots: Selected works on screen by Justin Beckman, James Coupe and Tivon Rice, and Intricate Matter: Sculpture by Artist Eric Eley. Seth Curcio recently caught up with the young curator to discuss her ideas.

Seth Curcio: Carrie, you were born and raised in the U.K. and came to the U.S. before high school. When did you develop an interest in contemporary art?

Carrie E. A. Scott: When I was applying to graduate school, I drafted two essays: the quintessentially heart-felt (and cliched) one that answers your question and the academic one that has little to do with why I like art, but has a lot to say about why I want to pursue it. I didn’t go with the heart-felt one for obvious (again cliched) reasons, but I think it might explain why I got into the art business: When I was a kid, in addition to being dragged to museums by both parents all the time, my father also used to drop my older brother and me off at the Wallace Collection in London while he met with a client who lived nearby. Exploring the collection on our own meant that we had to come up with our own narratives for what we were looking at. At least, that’s what I did, and I think I’ve simply kept doing that, looking at things and trying to garner the story or message behind them. I can tell you that seeing Gerhard Richter‘s retrospective at MOMA compelled me to apply to graduate school. I went to the show more times than I care to count and, on the umpteenth time, realized that if I was this interested in one artist’s show, maybe I should figure out how to look at art all the time.

SC: This year you became the director of the James Harris Gallery. Are there any particular shows or artists that you have wanted to present since you took that position?

CEAS: I became director at JHG last month (I started out as the owner’s assistant). This was in fact the first month where both artists showing in the gallery—Scott Foldesi and Rashid Johnson—were people I brought to the attention of Jim, the owner of the gallery.

SC: Tell me about the current exhibition at the James Harris Gallery that features Rashid Johnson, and what was your role in bringing this artist to Seattle?

CEAS: It’s a pretty great story actually. Jim, the owner of JHG, sent me to New York for the Armory Art Fairs in February, and, while I was there, my brother, Edward, who’s the associate creative director for a firm in New York, needed some help. He puts on concerts and events, and one of the nights that I was in Manhattan happened also to be an evening wherein he needed someone to work the VIP guest list for him. I resisted at first. After all, I was there for work and didn’t have much time to help him out. But the prospect of a few extra dollars and some time in the proximity of my big brother were enough to sway me. Later in the evening a huge group from Art on Paper magazine showed up and wanted to get in even though they were not on the list. I explained several times that there was nothing that I could do, thinking the whole time, “If only they knew what I really did, they’d laugh.” I mean, seriously, I subscribe to the magazine. But then one of them said, “What if one of us is a famous artist? Will that help get us in?” “Try me,” I curtly replied.The rest, as they say, is history. Rashid said his name, and I said I loved his work (I’d actually spent some time in grad school writing about a portrait he did called My Ex-wife as the Tragic Mulatto, and he’d done a site-specific work in Seattle about a year before). So I gave him my card and hoped he’d get in touch. And he did. And once he did, I explained the whole story to Jim who immediately said that he also loved Rashid’s work, which meant that within weeks, we were all on the same page planning the current show.

Tivon Rice

SC: You have curated for both non-profit art spaces as well as commercial venues. What do you feel are the inherent limitations or benefits in working with spaces where profit is a driving component?

CEAS: You know, I think both have limitations. While the commercial gallery is restrained by having to think about what will sell, the non-profit is restrained by budgetary constraints. Sure, I can let artists at the Hedreen Gallery, the non-profit, do what they want in terms of ideas. I don’t have to think about conservation issues. And they can make site-specific work because they don’t have to think about creating a product that can be sold. That being said, however, they do have to produce work that doesn’t cost much to make, because I don’t have a big budget.

On the other side of the coin, at James Harris Gallery, our production costs can be much higher, and so artists can think bigger. But they have to think bigger while also thinking about value. For example, if they are going to make a work that costs $6,000 to produce, we all have to be pretty sure the work will sell to someone for at least twice as much. While the commercial system feels a little more sticky than the non-profit (as though it’s going to sully the art produced), it’s dictating no more than the non-profit. And really, neither are bad per se. What I’m describing is simply the oldest system in the art book—patronage. Art only gets made if there are patrons. That’s how the capitalist world works. In a perfect world, artists would be able to make whatever they can dream up. But we all know it’s not a perfect world.

SC: If you had unlimited resources and connections, what kind of show would you like to put together, and which artists would be first on your list?

CEAS: Honestly, I would pull together a show in which Manet’s Olympia is juxtaposed against work that responds to that piece. I’ve been trying, for a long time, to digest just how influential that work actually has been on art production, and then when I saw Rashid’s White Girl, which pretty directly references Manet’s painting, I realized how interesting it would be to build a show that opens up our definitions of feminism. Instead of pulling together a show that starts with someone like Judy Chicago, I’d want to exhibit works that visually or conceptually resonate with Olympia, pieces like Sophie Calle’s Take Care of Yourself or Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker. I might even want to show all the reclining nudes that led up to Manet’s piece. Clearly, I’ve not pinned down the specifics, but I know the show would be huge and would visually look at the way feminism really took shape and where it is today without focusing on the very specific feminist movement. I mean, seriously—that Rashid, a young black man, took the White Girl image, that it wasn’t a young woman who did it, is a compelling thing.

SC: Who are some of the curators out there you feel are pushing boundaries and organizing exhibitions that are as equally interesting as the work they contain?

CEAS: Matthew Higgs just might be my hero. Not only does he make really smart art, he curates really smart shows (now at White Columns) and has written more brilliant criticisms than I care to cite. Like I said, heroic.Especially when you consider that I’ve been asked more times than I care to talk about whether or not I struggle with “conflicts of interest.” To them, I say that I’m hoping that the format’s changing and cite Higgs as someone who’s doing it all with no problem whatsoever. That’s not to say that we all don’t have to be careful. We do. I don’t show artists we represent at James Harris Gallery at my non-profit, and I never write about an artist I have shown. But really I think that people like Higgs and me, and indeed you, the people behind Daily Serving, are carving out new positions in art. No longer does the critic just criticize. No longer does the curator just curate. No longer does the artist just make art (though you’ll never see me dipping into that side of things). We do it all. And honestly, I can say that each of my jobs makes me better at the other.

SC: Do you feel that the role of the curator should encompass a social responsibility to reach out and engage a particular community who is otherwise unwilling or uninterested to view art in a conventional space?

James Coupe

CEAS: Yes. One of the best things about the Hedreen Gallery at the Lee Center for the Arts is that the entire gallery can be seen from the street. As a converted car garage, the space has a window that spans the length of the gallery. In curating shows there, I try to always think about how to leverage this exposure, how to grab all those people who are driving by on any given day, but not necessarily looking for an art experience. For instance, with a show I did called Screen Shots, which was all video based, I’d lower the blinds during the day so that the work could be viewed only from inside the gallery and then, at about 4 p.m., we’d open the blinds so that the work could be seen running all night. Then during the day, the blinds would go down again. It was as if the work disappeared. And you know what? It worked. Many people commented that the only reason they came in to see the show was because they’d seen it at night first.

As a result of that success, I’ve been thinking lots about how I can curate the space so that the audience outside is engaged in the work. Which means I have to figure out how not to sequester the art experience to the inside of the gallery. Early next year, I’ll be testing out one possible model when Matt McCormick‘s videos are shown in the space. His work will be projected on the main 40-foot wall of the gallery and will be just as easily, if not better, viewed from the street. To add to the experience, we’re exploring the idea of having the soundtrack play only outside of the gallery. That way, pedestrians won’t be able to avoid the art experience (while eyes can look away, ears can’t shut off). It should be pretty interesting. Now, I’ve just got to work out how to get people’s attention with non-video work.

SC: What are some of the qualities that you always look for in a successful show?

CEAS: Simply, my biggest hope is that the art speaks for itself. That I don’t have to put up artists’ statements or curatorial texts to explain the work, but that the work engages the viewer without anyone telling them why it should.

SC: What advice do you tell emerging artists who are trying to reach curators and galleries or simply expand their audience? Do you feel there are any new and successful models for artists looking to reach a new and non-localized audience?

CS: In my opinion, which is different from many of the older curators out there, the worst thing you can do is send slides. I don’t want to have to do work when I look at art, and slides are a lot of work. Not only do I have to get to a light box and squint to see details (I don’t have a slide projector), but when all is said and done, I have to send them back. Whereas, with websites or jpegs I can simply look at the work on my computer, decide how I feel about it and then either send you an email saying I’d like to see more or say that I’d like to do a studio visit. So, send jpegs. Curators like to look.

Claude Zervas

SC: Who are some of the Seattle-based artists you think are producing the most challenging work today?

CEAS: Challenging is an interesting word, as there are lots of people in town whose work I find really stunning, but challenging is a whole other issue. I’d have to say that Claude Zervas has one of the most interesting aesthetics developing right now in town, and he and Tivon Rice share some sensibilities that will be exciting to watch develop as years go by. They are doing entirely different things, but I have a feeling that they are both capturing a zeitgeist that we will one day look back at and see the thread. And then there’s the entire DXARTS department at the University of Washington who nobody in the art world is really sure what to make of, but who, I am sure, need to remain on our radars.

Diana Al-Hadid. Spun of the Limits of My Lonely Waltz, 2006; wood, polystyrene, plaster, fiberglass, pigment; 72 x 64 x 64 in.

The sculptures and installations of artist Diana Al-Hadid are “propositions for an imaginary world,” ambiguous works that often reference themes of self, place, and history. Recently the artist has drawn upon imagery from her birth city of Syria by recreating the Aleppo citadel, a 10th century fortress and eventual Muslim holy site. Her new sculptures combine fiberglass and polystyrene to create ambitious structures that seem to be unearthed from afar. The artist was awarded a Sculpture Department Graduate Fellowship to attend Virginia Commonwealth University, where she received her MFA in sculpture. This month she is exhibiting with Priska Juschka Gallery in Williamsburg, NY; in spring of this year the artist participated in the Bronx Museum‘s Aim 26 (Artist in the Marketplace) program and exhibition, which was noted in an article in the Art in Review section of the New York Times (April 9, 2006).

Daily Serving’s founder, Seth Curcio.

What you were thinking when you started Daily Serving:

Daily Serving was designed to be an archive of ideas. My brother Ian, who is a photographer, and I were brainstorming ways to research and catalog this information and share it with others. When we started the publication, I had a few specific things in mind: First, I wanted an easily accessible repository for my interests. Second, I was living in Charleston, South Carolina, and I wanted to build a global community from a place that doesn’t always provide that type of opportunity and access. Third, I wanted to keep my research and writing as active as possible. So, Ian and I named the site Daily Serving, and he and I worked with a designer to build it, and I started writing the content immediately. It was really fun to collaborate with him in the early years.

Around this time, I was also the Executive Director of Redux Contemporary Art Center, and I used the site as a curatorial resource for our program. Often I would write about an artist that I really respected, and then follow up with an interview. If we clicked, I would invite the artist to come to Charleston and do a project, exhibition, or residency at Redux. This worked well, not only to archive the work that I found relevant, but to create wonderful connections and lasting friendships in the process.

How the skills that you cultivated at DS serve you now:

I’ve held several positions in the art world since I founded DS. In 2005–08, while I was still running Daily Serving, I was the Executive Director of Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, and from 2009–15 I was the Associate Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco. I’m now the Senior Director of Shulamit Nazarian, a gallery in Los Angeles. In all of these positions, I’ve used many of the skills that I learned from my time with DS, such as how to problem-solve big issues, how to build a network of collaborators and supporters globally, how to work collaboratively to achieve goals that are bigger than any one person. Most importantly, it taught me how to be ambitious, take risks, and continue to push myself with the things that matter most to me. And most of all, for all of those days fighting to make sure there is content on the site, it taught me to just get up and make sure the work got done. These core skills, if you can call them that, will be with me forever.

Read the full interview here.

The mysterious and psychologically challenging images created by Denver-based artist Mario Zoots are produced by applying a visual barrier between the viewer and the appropriated image. Each work carefully alters an existing picture and challenges our perception of and relationship to everyday mundane imagery.  Zoots opened his first public show this month, offering viewers the unique opportunity to engage his images in person. I Miss Mystery is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, which is currently on view at Illiterate Gallery in Denver. Daily Serving founder Seth Curcio recently spoke to the artist about how he interrupts his found images, the advantages of working online and in print, and his sound project Modern Witch.

Seth Curcio: When did you first begin to create collages and prints? What was the initial idea that got these series going?

Mario Zoots: I began making collage because I didn’t have enough space in my apartment to paint anymore. Brian Bamps was living in an attic apartment in Denver for a short time. I visited his house and saw his small American school desk that was attached to a chair where he made all of his drawings. He had a box that he’d place the finished drawings in. I knew I must work smaller because I was at risk of losing my living space. So I began to make collage and pen illustrations. We’re not artists with studios, we’re artists with homes. I consider myself an appropriation artist and a network artist. I am interested in making pictures reflect contemporary feelings by subtracting and distorting them. I’ve been preparing for my first solo show, I Miss Mystery, which opened in Denver at Illiterate Gallery on February 5th. I printed large giclee reproductions of my collages for the show. In addition to original and printed collage, I’m showing an experimental video and creating an installation out of hundreds of pages of porn, all slightly altered. It feels cinematic. My ideas for the work come from movies, long internet conversations with my contemporary girlfriend, and my own studies of archives.

SC: There is a mix of vintage and contemporary imagery used in your work. Where do you find your source material, and what qualities do you look for when selecting an image?

MZ: I find my source material in libraries, in thrift shops, and on the internet. I’m constantly working and constantly picking things up. The mix of vintage and contemporary material is not significant. I don’t feel that using baseball cards from 1971 makes them more meaningful or valuable. Thousands of the same cards were printed and are lying around in hundreds of basements. I use popular materials because I’m attracted to them. I like the idea that there are multiples of the images in existence, that others have seen them in print too. The Pop Era has existed for so long, it’s inescapable, and it’s married to reproduction, duplication, and multiples. I feel by putting my art online and working with print that I am also participating in this type of reproduction culture, albeit digitally.

SC: In many of your works, the composition seems to be deconstructed, and sometimes even aggressively interrupted. When constructing your imagery, do you intentionally obscure your subject to heighten the mystery or psychology of the image? How is the viewer’s relationship to the original source image altered by your manipulation?

MZ: There is an inherent psychology in popular media. Magazine pages are rich with meaning that’s been devised by advertising agencies or publishing groups. I believe the meaning in popular data is always heightened by audience. I can’t say that my collage or illustration heightens the psychology because I believe it’s already there.  Change causes mystery. When I change images, I believe the psychology of the image is still intact for the most part, but then I find the disruptions and interruptions in my art to be haunting and mysterious. Perhaps the change, the deconstruction, the mystery is what my audience feels the most.

SC: Many of your works embody dark and disturbing qualities while utilizing a playful and irreverent humor. This seems to work as a tool to lure your viewers into the often absurd images, while causing them to confront their expectations of commercial imagery.  How do you want this visual jarring to affect the viewer?

MZ: I find humor in what I create but don’t necessarily feel like I need an audience to share that sensibility. I borrowed a family portrait from the internet and disrupted the faces. While sitting at my desk one day, I received an email from a man who said he really liked my art and that he was writing to tell me that one of the family portraits I’d used was his own. It made the collage feel so different. It felt like a lifting of the curtain, synchronicity. Someone from this hyper-multiple meme on the web spoke out. There are real people behind those faces!

SC: Most of your artwork is displayed digitally through the internet. It is rare to experience the work in person in a gallery setting, however you do create a series of zines that feature the works. I am curious about both the production of your zines and how you feel the work is best displayed, over the internet, in person, or as a publication?

MZ: Most of my art is viewable online. Some of the digital collage only exists on the internet and nowhere else.  I make zines with Kristy Foom and Keenan Marshall Kellar under the publishing name Drippy Bone Books. Zine publishing gives me an opportunity to curate and work collaboratively. I just finished printing a new zine called Rescreened that features the work of Natalie Rodgers, Daniel Hipolito, and myself. It’s a book of photographs taken of televisions screens and screenshots on personal computers of YouTube. I printed thirty copies. Kristy is tabling for Drippy Bone Books at the Lancashire Zine and Multiples Fair. We’re releasing Rescreened there at the end of this month. I like working in both the online, print, and gallery realms. They’re all very different. When I need a break from one, I move to the other.

SC: What are the main sources of inspiration that you constantly return to?

I’m inspired by the internet, and the many blogs I follow on a regular basis, my internet footprints. I watch a lot of B films, just last night I watched Virgin Witch, a film from 1972 about two sisters, Christine and Betty, who have dreams of becoming fashion models. They sign with an agency and go to a castle for a photo shoot, but it’s not just any photo shoot—the real reason they are there is to serve as virgins in an induction ceremony for a coven of witches! I am inspired by music, too, a record I can’t stop listening to is Songs by John Maus, it’s insanely epic.

MZ: Do you have any new projects lingering around the corner. Anything that we should look out for?

Modern Witch is my sound project. I work with artists Kristy Foom and Kamran Kahn as a band. We use electronics and synthesizers, and most times record straight to tape. We play DIY venues and art galleries.  Disaro Records is releasing our CDR!   We hope to put out a 7” record later this year.  One of my favorite Modern Witch shows was at Show Cave Gallery in Los Angeles. I think there are special things happening in Los Angeles right now, and I’m excited to have the connection to the L.A weirdos.  We’re planning a return to Show Cave in March 2010 to perform music and curate a Drippy Bone Books group art show.  The name of the show is WE OOZE. I feel like it’s going to be a mysterious year.

Robert Heinecken is an artist who is hard to pin down. A photographer who rarely used a camera, he founded UCLA’s photography department in 1964. Skeptical of the documentarian role of photography, he mined images from mass media, prefiguring the appropriation strategies of Pictures Generation artists like Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine by at least a decade. Despite this, he was never able to achieve the notoriety accorded these artists. The exhibition Robert Heinecken: Sensing the Technologic Banzai, now on view at Cherry and Martin through November 16^th, aims to set the record straight with a reconsideration of his oeuvre.

Robert Heinecken, P.P. Three Women A, 1990; Cibachrome photogram; Edition of 3; 14 x 11 inches, 35.56 x 27.94 centimeters. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Covering work from the 1980s—the second third of Heinecken’s career—the show features four main bodies of work, each showcasing a different artistic technique. Perhaps most well known are his magazine photograms, which he began making in the 1960s (the ones in this exhibition are from around 1990). To make these, Heinecken treated magazine pages like negatives; the resulting image is a composite of both sides of the page. Using mostly advertisements, Heinecken’s only artistic intervention is the selection of the pages. The final images appear natural at first—front and back unified by the common language of seductive luxury—but the more one looks at these, the more an awkward dialogue between the different sources causes an unsettling disjuncture. Heinecken’s skill as an editor is what makes these images so compelling; they attract us with the aesthetics of advertising, and then thwart our gaze by subtly complicating their messages of desire.

Robert Heinecken, Socio Fashio Lingerie #5, 1981; Found image and incised found image, pencil, found magazine text, masking tape on matboard; 18 x 14 inches, 45.72 x 35.56 cm each. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer

The earliest works in the show also deal with sex and commerce, albeit in a much more obvious way. Socio Fashio Lingerie #2–#9 (1981) are collages of a sort, featuring pages torn from lingerie catalogues. In each of these small works, a model strikes a pose and looks out at us invitingly. Instead of wearing a nightgown or bra however, each model’s naked body can be seen where these garments should be. Heinecken has carefully cut out the clothes and positioned the catalogue images over bodies from pornographic magazines. The seductiveness of these images is hampered by the unnerving juxtaposition of body parts that never quite match. These works pull back the curtain on the sexuality lying beneath the surface of everyday marketing images. Heinecken manages to critique visual culture while at the same time indulging in its basest aspects. These are cheeky one-liners that, while entertaining, lack the nuance of his photograms.

Robert Heinecken, Misc…Newswoman (Blue), 1984; Dye bleach print videograms, plexiglas frame; 1 of 5-part; 11 x 14 inches each, 27.94 x 35.56 cm each. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

The third series in the exhibition focuses on television news as another aspect of the barrage of contemporary media images. These works from 1984 all feature gauzy images of newswomen that seem to be illuminated from within by a blue or purple light. Heinecken made these videograms by holding a piece of photographic paper up to the television during a newscast, capturing a visual trace of the newscaster. As with his photograms, he has removed himself almost completely from the act of creation. Divorced from their original context and floating uniformly in their inky backgrounds, these striking ghostly visages are at odds with the supposed transparent truth provided by accepted news sources. This message must have seemed especially prescient at a time when cable news was just becoming big business.

Robert Heinecken, Waking Up in News America, 1986; Photolithographs, furniture, mannequins, jacket, picture frames, light, and video monitor; 120 x 120 x 120 inches, 304.8 x 304.8 x 304.8 centimeters approximately. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Accompanying these modest two-dimensional works is a large-scale installation titled Waking Up in News America (1986). Seen here for the first time in almost two decades, the piece consists of a room plastered wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with photolithographs of televisions featuring images of female newscasters. They also cover everything in the room, including two mannequins, a lamp, a television, a chair, a book, etc. Although impressive in its execution, I found myself underwhelmed in the midst of this TV environment. The pervasive influence of mass media may be so ubiquitous at this point that its visual manifestation no longer has the same impact that it did thirty years ago. The photolithographs also lack the presence of the videograms, appearing dull and flat when compared with the supernatural glow of these earlier works.

Despite its unevenness, this exhibition is a welcome recuperation of a long-overlooked but influential artist. Although his source material may be dated, Heinecken’s work still feels relevant and alive. His photograms especially remain engaging as they balance elegant formal juxtapositions with a cool, conceptual distance. His work seems to ask the question: “In a world crowded with images, why make brand new ones when you can create meaning from those that already exist?”

Diana Al-Hadid. Record of a Mortal Universe, 2007; mixed media, 128 x 138 x 106 in.

Stepping into the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York City is a little like stumbling upon a musical shipwreck. Diana Al-Hadid has used plaster, fiberglass, wood, polystyrene, and cardboard to create a romantically ramshackled and dilapidated sculpture, Record of a Mortal Universe (2007), which is based on the phenomenon of a hero’s collapse. Sourcing religion, architecture, and physics, Al-Hadid’s pointed and varied references unfold within the work, from a grand staircase that leads to a decomposing Greek temple to an upside-down vaulted arch and melted pipe-organ pedals. A gramophone extends through a ring of decrepit temple columns and crumbling Gothic buttresses, making the sculpture seem as though it has appeared, tattered and torn, from the background of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

Record of a Mortal Universe also explores gravitational collapse, or the phenomenon of a massive body collapsing under its own weight. The sculpture sets up an engaging dichotomy in that the foundation’s materials, cardboard and melting resin, seem tenuous and unable to support such a gigantic mass. Yet the reference to Greek architecture and ruins suggests that this is somehow a solid structure that has been around for an untold number of years.

Al-Hadid is a Brooklyn-based, Syrian-born artist who graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. She participated in the Skowhegan residency this past summer, and her work will be at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery until the November 24, 2007.

This Saturday in Culver City, Cerasoli Gallery will present new work from three artists: Matt Phillips, Mario Wagner and Seth Curcio. The three artists implement collage to reference sound, vintage imagery and mass commerce. Each show will run from this Saturday, June 13th through July 8th.

In gallery one at Cerasoli Gallery, Matt Phillips will present a new body of vibrant paintings that play on shape, color and movement. Matt Phillips work subtly references sound, textile making and Modernism through patterned visual space that pulse and vibrate. Matt Phillips graduated from Boston University in 2007 and has exhibited with Mehr gallery, Place Space Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents, in New York City. He has also exhibited in 1000DAYS, the DailyServing exhibition at the Scion Installation Space in LA, as well as with Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC and SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine. Check out his interview with DailyServing.

Seth Curcio

In gallery two, new work by German-born artist and illustrator, Mario Wagner, depict vintage settings that combine 1960s culture with elements of modernism. The result is a surreal landscape of figures wrapped in visual elements of color and shape, alluding to a time of overindulgence and a false sense of nostalgia. Wagner’s work has been shown with 2AGENTEN GALLERY, in Berlin, the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco, and the Meat Market Gallery in Washington. His illustrations and artwork have been commissioned by publications such as Esquire, Vanity Fair and the New York Times.

In gallery three, DailyServing’s publisher and editor, Seth Curcio, will present new work of collage and painting which comment on image distribution, constructed reality and contemporary culture. Curcio’s images resemble familiar contemporary landscapes, yet quickly splinter, dissolve and reconstruct into a new environment. Implementing a complex series of collage and painting, the surface and imagery combine to create a space both familiar and unknown. Curcio is the co-founder of DailyServing and has worked as the Director of Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. His work has been shown across the Southeast and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Beautiful/Decay Magazine.