Sasha Wolf Gallery is proud to announce our first solo exhibition by photographer Guido Castagnoli.

Guido Castagnoli's photographic investigation of the urban landscape of small Japanese towns takes us far from the stereotypes associated with contemporary Japan. There is no frenzied megalopolis, no rapidly expanding techno-city. Nor are there signs of the kind of extreme minimalism often associated with Japanese culture. Instead we encounter an atmosphere of quiet and refined suspension amid the somewhat surrealistic landscape of the Shizuoka district.

Although the settings depicted in the photographs will likely be unfamiliar to American audiences, the subjects, the focus on space and structures, and the conspicuous absence of people are reminiscent of the work of photographers like Stephen Shore, Robert Adams and others from the New Topographic movement. Provincial Japan is a series about the Japanese vernacular landscape. It is all the more noteworthy in the context of an American audience as it references America's own kitsch and vernacular culture in ways that resonate.

Guido Castagnoli was born in Turin, Italy in 1976. After receiving a degree in Advertising Graphics and Communication he began his professional career as an art director of a prominent advertising agency in Milan. His interest in photography began when he shot his first images using an old family-owned Leica. During the following years he left his position at the advertising firm to devote himself entirely to photography. His works have been exhibited in public and private institutions in Italy, Germany, England and Japan. He lives in Genoa with his wife Seiko and their new baby, Mei.

Lyons Wier • Ortt Gallery, New York, is pleased to announce Debutant, Melodie Provenzano's first New York solo exhibition at Lyons Wier • Ortt Gallery on view from September 5th – October 4th, 2008.

Still-life paintings of toys, figurines, and printed fabrics are the subject matter of Melodie Provenzano's Debutant exhibition and the arrangement and iconography of these items is the crux of it. These meticulously rendered compositions allow a brief glimpse into the artist's personal world. They function as dreamscapes that offer many interpretations based upon root emotions such as love, longing, and hope.

Set up as ‘mock dramas', the paintings tell a tale that oscillates between fantasy and reality, accomplishment and disappointment, understanding and bewilderment. At further inspection, the works build narrative momentum as the audience assigns meaning to the portrayed objects and unravels the significance of the icons.

Deciphering each painting and drawing, the viewer begins to see the ‘bigger picture' within the image to realize that these set-ups drawn from life actually imitate it.

Melodie Provenzano graduated with a BFA from the Parsons School of Design in 1996. She currently lives and works in New York City.

“I think of this exhibition as a jam session between an artist, a musician and a tap dancer. You can join in with whatever you bring.”

Stefan Saffer had the pleasure of seeing Derek Bailey perform live on three occasions before the jazz musician’s untimely death in 2006. Each show was a completely unique and pure experience, inspiring the artist to strive to recreate in his own work the intense momentum of thought, experience, knowledge and wisdom he felt watching Bailey. This initial inspiration led to the eventual “collaboration” one guitar, two shoes and countless holes.

For this exhibition, Saffer creates and arranges his intricate cut out and folded works on paper around a video performance of Derek Bailey and legendary tap dancer Will Gaines. The installation, dynamic as a whole, is comprised of individual works, each with its own momentum and mood, an improvisation inspired by, and in homage to the experience of losing oneself in ones art while inviting others to lose themselves in the final creation.

Stefan Saffer’s work has been exhibited worldwide at galleries including Kate MacGarry in London, Andrea Rosen in New York and Villa Grisebach Gallery in Berlin. He earned his MFA from Goldsmiths, London and has received several prestigious grants and awards including Art for Architecture Award from the Royal Society of Architecture UK and the Whitney ISP Program. Currently, Saffer lives and works in Berlin.

Running concurrently with one guitar, two shoes and countless holes, new paintings by Jill Simonsen will be on view in the gallery’s project room. Simonsen travels extensively throughout the United States photographing the architectural landscape. She then breaks the images down to their purest forms to create her bold, flat acrylic on canvas interpretations. Simonsen earned her BFA from Penn State University. She now lives and works blocks from the gallery in New York City's Lower East Side.

Number 35 is pleased to present Bends Back On, a two-person video and photography exhibition curated by Brad Silk. Bends Back On discusses the relations between self and society from the position of artist in reflection and artist as commenter. These artists develop a circular relationship, like the sociological condition known as reflexivity, where observer or actions implicate findings. In their visual analysis we discover the artists' fingerprint on society as well as the inverse.

Robert Dupree uses his body as a tool in his Torture You/Torture Me series, where we join him in discovering the limits of body and mind. Documenting acts of sadism and struggle, he grasps at social oddity within normality. Next to his still images, Dupree stacks five discarded television sets, playing videos that invite the viewer into his journey. Dupree travels through pain and whimsy in photography and video with a humorous yet concerning eye on modern society.

Claudia Saimbert studies the connections found in diverse backgrounds. Her raw portraits of young women on top of mounds of earth, call upon the idea of first female. Accompanying her portraits, Saimbert installs a mound which emits an haunting sound collage, woven together from subject interviews. Seemingly sterile, Saimbert's images depict the deep wounds within a diverse sisterhood, which she explores, finding similarities in varied experiences.

"Begin Again Right Back Here," curated by B. Wurtz

Artists include John Beech, Anna Castelli, Taylor Davis,Vincent Fecteau, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Wayne Koestenbaum and Greenblatt-Wexler, Fawn Krieger, Michael Krumenacker, Gareth Moore, Richard Rezac, Robert Rhee, Sterling Ruby, Nancy Shaver, Diane Simpson, Ceasar Stoffi, and Alan Wiener.

White Room

Mark Barrow

White Room and Project

Dan Asher

Lobby

Violette Alby

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday noon to 6 pm

White Columns, 320 West 13th Street (enter on Horatio), NY, NY 10014 www.whitecolumns.org