Moon in the wall, hope it don't dissolve: new work by Joey Versoza

moon in the wall, hope it don’t dissolve:

new work by Joey Versoza

 

 

 

January 8th—29th, 2010

Opening reception: Saturday, January 8th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

Cincinnati, OH—U·turn Art Space is proud to present moon in the wall, hope it don’t dissolve, a solo exhibition by Joey Versoza. The exhibition will feature seven individual works that allow shadow play, the outdoor weather and overlaid soundtracks to augment seemingly ordinary objects on display in the space and in video. The physical world of objects is never without an underlying politics, and Versoza suggests as much by lighting the exhibition with only a series of house lamps that cast large shadows of the gathered found objects across the walls of the space. The work strikes upon the roles of memory, desire and the signification of inner psychological information that we inscribe onto our material environment.

By combining, say, a video of a red upholstered chair with excerpted sound clips from a Transformers animated film in which Orson Welles portrayed the voice of the devious Unicron, a planet sized robot, Versoza calls attention to existing tensions in our everyday environment, to how drastically different experiences can occur side by side, and to possible meanings that can be found in absurdist mash-ups. 

 

As part of the exhibition in the month of January, a window will be left open in the gallery. Please dress accordingly.

Artist Statement

My primary concern in this show is with the object & its oscillating efficacy, moving between brute generic symbolism & wild over-determination. The pieces on exhibit here are bound up with my concerns with futurity, community, & love. The ability of these objects to clearly communicate these ideated concepts is integrated literally into the show by subjecting the objects to interrogation through deliberate use of lighting that both produces auratic effects and effaces them by locating this production in malignancy--the harsh, unsentimental light of administrative power. "Dear Summer" investigates the absurd lengths one goes to in order to achieve pleasure & the often humiliating, disappointing results of this pursuit while keeping in mind the poetic intensity & openness attention to this fact yields. "Talking Chair" acts as a brooding, quixotic antagonist refusing the received terms & assignations of the show more generally. All of these operations are undertaken in hope—the hope that rigorous attention may continue to problematize our relationship to the object as a site of perpetual folly along the fault line of our critical minds & our subjectivity. 

Artist Bio

Joey Versoza was born 1978 in Marquette, MI, and currently resides in Covington, KY. He earned his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and did course work at University of Illinois at Chicago. He has presented solo exhibitions previously at Warsaw Projects Space, Linda Schwartz Gallery and Publico, all now defunct Cincinnati galleries. Last summer, Versoza presented a one evening project at the Art Damage Lodge entitled J.O.S.E (Jealous Ones Still Envy). It featured a cycle of the artist’s video project, a construction paper sculpture and collaborations with poet Dana Ward. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in spaces such as The Nightengale (Chicago, IL), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), New Center for Contemporary Art (Louisville, KY), Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago, IL), Linda Schwartz Gallery (Cincinnati, OH) and semantics gallery (Cincinnati, OH).