Appetite for Deconstruction: Jonathan Faber and Eric Harvey
The Fresh Up Club
On View through November 24

As the moon dipped into the umbra during a recent eclipse, artists Jonathan Faber and Eric Harvey debuted new work at The Fresh Up Club in East Austin. DJs provided a mixture of warm old-school breakbeats and ambient noise while attendants checked out Faber's color-charged oil pastels and Harvey's Flash animation prints. A loop of Harvey's source film pulsed on the space's rear wall. Like the atmosphere of the gathering itself, the multimedia display embodied a modern organic aesthetic free of pretension and full of sophistication.

Jonathan Faber's new works address domestic velocities and the potential energy of interiors. Their rich, vibrant hues recall Rothko's color field studies, but contain isolated and abstracted lines of movement. Juxtapositions of color and form activate sentient objects and redefine their purposes. The leg of a table becomes a conduit, and a ball of dust is a manifestation of collective intensity. Faber uses unexpected values and saturations to transform potentially mundane objects into actively engaging concepts.

The Flash-inspired imagery of Eric Harvey is also built upon juxtapositions. Harvey sequences a series of short clips: disembodied hands multiply into congregating flocks, tree branches expand and crystallize into faux flakes, streams of words coalesce as they rapidly pass by each other, and sticks of pink and green disjointedly bounce around. The culmination of images creates a sense of cohesion among disparate elements that possess an inherent naturalism when seen as a whole.

At Fresh Up Club, Faber and Harvey showcased a small, effective sampling of their respective bodies of work. Along with the lunar activity above, the artists suffused the opening with the rarified that noteworthy events deserve.

Sculptor Sarah Sze: Public Lecture
Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at Austin
Thursday, November 4, 5pm

Sculptor Sarah Sze uses ordinary objects to create strikingly original sculptures and site-specific installations. Her intricate works, each of which she constructs by hand, consist of unexpected and carefully arranged combinations of materials, such as plastic plants, candies, packing materials, nails, small desk fans, aluminum ladders, and occasional drips of water. Sze transforms these everyday objects into gravity-defying works in horizontal and tower-like formations that zigzag into the heights of gallery spaces.
Sze received a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has had solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and the Fondation Cartier, Paris. Sze has participated in group shows in venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, and the 48th Venice Biennial. This event is sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at Austin. Admission is free and open to the public. Click here for more information.

Heyd Fontenot Exhibition at OSLO
Tuesday. November 9, 7 - 10pm

Heyd Fontenot will premiere new art works on Tuesday, November 9 (7-10pm) at OSLO (corner of 6th and Lavaca). If you would like a preview or can't make this one-night event, check out Heyd's online portfolio at www.heydfontenot.com or his two upcoming shows in Houston: "Erotic Drawing", a group show at Diverseworks (opening January 28, 2005) and a solo show at the Inman Gallery (opening January 14, 2005).

White Columns: The Curated Artist Registry
http://registry.whitecolumns.org

We ran across this In a recent e-flux and thought we'd spread the word. White Columns, the oldest alternative art space in New York, offers the opportunity for emerging artists who are currently not represented by a gallery to display their work via the web. For submission details, please click here!

Interview Jeff Koons
Flash Art (January - February 2004 issue)
Deadline: Thursday, November 11, 2004

Dream of interviewing Jeff Koons? Flash Art is giving you the chance! From the Flash Art Newsletter: As we've done twice this year (first with Vanessa Beecroft, then Maurizio Cattelan), we are soliciting questions from you, the readers of Flash Art and the Flash Art newsletter. We will present the best of these questions to Jeff Koons, and he will respond to them in an interview published in the Jan-Feb 2004 issue. With your help, we want to create an interview that is curious, stimulating, entertaining, explosive and, above all, intelligent.
Please e-mail all questions to francesca@flashartonline.com before the deadline.