Opening Reception:
January 10th, 2019, 6-9pm
On view through February 16th
WAITING ROOM
JAMES PREZ | PLAY BALL!
PROJECT SPACE
JG THIES | New Paintings
SAM WINKS
MELANIE’S OFFICE
NEW YORK – 57W57Arts is pleased to present two solo exhibitions of works by James Prez in the Waiting Room and JG Thies in the Project Space. A featured furniture piece by designer Sam Winks will also be on view in the Project Space. The gallery has expanded programming for the start of this New Year with a group show in our third viewing space - Melanie’s Office. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, January 10th, and the exhibitions will be on view to the public through February 16th.
James Prez ’s Waiting Room exhibition “PLAY BALL!” features a selection of mixed media paintings and drawings composed on torn book covers. Prez’s imagery consists of silhouetted baseball players loosely captured in various states of play. Closely installed in a delightfully jaunty line up that carries the viewer around the space, these pieces coincide with Prez’s humble renderings of assorted plant life, each of which contains a hand-scrawled title or descriptor as though culled from an encyclopedic field guide.
James Prez was born & raised in Pennsylvania and received his MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. He has shown at the Center for Book Arts, DUMBO Arts Center and Printed Matter, Inc among other venues. Prez’s work can be found in major museums and artist’s book collections throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Internationale Bibliothèque in Paris, and the National Gallery of Canada. Drawing inspiration from the many places he has called home, Prez has lived in Denver, CO, San Diego, CA, Mexico, Jamaica, Tallahassee, FL, Santa Fe, NM & Port au Prince, Haiti. He currently works and resides in Brooklyn, NY.
In the gallery’s Project Space, JG Thies will present “New Paintings”, a collection of five works that consist of discarded promotional artist’s banners that have been cut-up and re-appropriated as paintings. Each painting consists of a closely cropped section of perforated vinyl installed by zip-tie to the face of store-bought pre-stretched canvas. It is a subversive interaction between advertisement, urban construction, and painting. The newly appropriated, heavily pixilated images illustrate geographical landscapes and topographical maps in painterly pointillist detail. This tongue-in-cheek collection of work is Thies’ own entry into painting.
JG Thies was born in 1982 in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from the Hartford Art School with a BFA in Sculpture in 2005. He has exhibited work in Hartford, CT and New York, NY since 2002.
Sam Winks is an artist and designer living and working in Ridgewood, Queens. He earned his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Winks’ work has been included in group shows and video screenings throughout New York and Virginia, and he has had solo exhibitions at The Lumberyard in Marfa, TX and The Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA.
In our third viewing space, Melanie’s Office, 57W57Arts has brought together a serene collection of works that engage the white color palette and its many subtle and varied gradations. The artists in this exhibition are Guy C. Corriero, Benjamin Echeverria, Matthew Feyld, Daniel Levine, Joseph Marioni, Jason Pickleman, Patric Sandri, Howard Schwartzberg and Michael E. Smith.