text /// Chris Rusak

05-15-12

Directory Assistance

A new series of work titled “Directory Assistance,” which examines an antiquated corporate practice that harms the environment, will be exhibited with Satellite66 Gallery at the ArtPadSF art fair, from May 17th to May 20th in San Francisco, CA.

After a recent city-wide blanketing of new telephone directories from AT&T, I collected over 100 unclaimed books from my neighborhood for a response to their production. In the internet age, when information is readily available at the query of a search engine, the continued mass-distribution of these antiquated objects is absurd. As corporations continue to produce such products, an addiction to squeezing profits by any means possible, environmental harm persists. The absurdity not only lies in the fact that AT&T, a major seller of thoroughfare to the internet, prominently advertises its own search engine of the front cover of each book, but also promotes their composition of mostly-recycled paper to justify their continued production. Although local governments may do their best to collect old and unclaimed books for recycling, and AT&T itself promotes recycling in an effort to “green” their image, the EPA estimates that only 34% of actual recyclable material is collected in the United States, tons of remaining waste heading for landfills or polluting local environments. Especially in the epicenter of tech, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, this persistent annual tradition is just another corporate farce that selfishly benefits shareholders as it recklessly litters communities.

202-551-6200
Boiled AT&T telephone books, silkscreen ink, and acrylic on masonite
2012 – 12-012

ArtPadSF Art Fair
Satellite66 Gallery
The Phoenix Hotel
San Francisco, California
May 17-20, 2012

04-10-12

Source Material: Works by Brian Dupont and Chris Rusak

My work will be in a show at SKYDIVE Art Space in Houston, TX this May, in a new exhibition titled Source Material. I am honored to be paired with Brian Dupont, a talented artist based in Brooklyn, NY, for this two-man show that opens Friday, May 18th, 2012. Brian and I share similar pursuits in that we both incorporate elements of text into our compositions. His elements are often derived from personal information and are painted onto the surfaces of his objects, while mine derive from deconstructed books and are intended as linear abstractions of glyph.

We have also initiated a Kickstarter campaign to help offset production, shipping, and exhibition costs. Anyone who contributes $20 or more is rewarded with art; higher levels of contributions offer large, formal works that we collaborate on. As of this publishing, we have had our campaign funded by eleven wonderful donors, qualifying us for payment as part of Kickstarter’s fundraising scheme. However, we both hope that you’ll consider adding to that support and extend the possibilities of our practice. Both Brian and I are very excited to be working on some new pieces together, and I can’t think of someone better to be commissioned by than those readers who have supported me for many years. Please take a moment to click on the above link and consider supporting the practices of emerging artists.

A preview of the collage work I will have in the exhibition is currently live on the website. This piece, Chloroform, is one of the new rhomboidal compositions I have been working on.

Chloroform
Collage on masonite
2012 – 12-003

Source Material: Works by Brian Dupont and Chris Rusak
SKYDIVE Art Space
Houston, Texas
Opening reception: Friday, May 18th, 2012, 7 to 10pm

03-30-12

Itsa Small Small World at Family Business, Chelsea, NY

In the spirit of Hennessey Youngman’s (one of the many alter-egos of artist Jayson Musson) taking over of Family Business – the new pop-up gallery by artists Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni – my work “Hijack” will be infiltrating its way into the next show, “Itsa small, small world.” It only seemed appropriate, not that Youngman is hijacking the gallery, but he’s hijacking the hegemony.

“Itsa small small world.”
Family Business Gallery
520 W 21st St
Chelsea, NY

Opens: Tuesday, April 3, 6pm
Until Monday, April 16

Hijack
Collage on canvas board on masonite, artist’s frame
2011 – 11-026

03-27-12

On percussion.

“Most people think that percussion is the art of striking things, but it really is an art of positioning oneself for the strike. About a related genre Toshio Hosokawa once told me that the most poignant moment in Japanese calligraphy comes just before the pen lowers toward the paper. In other words expression comes not by making a mark but by positioning yourself to make a mark. The same is true with percussion: every quality of sound from loudness, to color, to intensity, to rhythmic accuracy is a property of preparing, not executing, a stroke.”

- percussionist, UCSD professor, and conductor Steven Schick.

This passage was part of Schick’s introduction in last night’s program from the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, an organization I subscribe to in support of their fabulous work performing contemporary classical music. These particular words stood out, and I received them not only from the perspective of a listener in the audience, but as a painter with a stick in his own hand. Schick performed the first work of the evening, Bone Alphabet (1992) by Brian Ferneyhough, a wonderful, palpable construction that oscillates the listener on their axis. Here, percussionist Morris Palter performs an iteration of the work:

03-20-12

Story Time: Gregory Eltringham at Satellite66

Painter Gregory Eltringham opened his exhibition “Something for Everyone” at Satellite66 in San Francisco this past weekend. Forty-five paintings comprise the show: mostly acrylic on panel, sizes ranging from postcard-intimate to life-size portraits, the two largest works on stretched canvas. The show’s title is allusory and fitting for the collection of paintings Eltringham presents us, moments drawn from suggestive tales.

Eltringham loves color and each figure wears their chroma well. A fleshy pink cuts through the series and the artist’s use of contrast stands out immediately. Complementary color clashes and confusing light dominate the compositions. Anxious shadows gnarl in cornered spaces. A candied, phantasmal domesticity inspires each form; we can even hear the pound cake baking in the kitchen. Soon, we see it. Emotion heats up, like a john’s blood flowing through his thighs, once the viewer begins to weave a story between the pictures. Furthermore, Eltringham calculates the hue of each work, playing with our feelings, leading us around the gallery to make visual connections between the characters.

These characters appear to be a family, a menagerie of personalities somehow interconnected in their domestic settings, though, we never see them directly united in the same work. On the occasions where they join, the figures dress in costume or fetish garb, and it is indiscernible who participates in those scenes. Masked as animals, perversion abounds in moments of frottage and fellatio. Legs nervously tilt askew affected by voyeuristic glances. The viewer is never clear as to whether there is an assailant or a victim here.

However, the presence of two adolescent children incites confusion and horror of their inclusion at this masquerade. The children innocently wear costumes, possibly removed from the spectacle in time and space, at least one hopes. For the adults, though, detachment and diversion are their goals, as we catch glances up short skirts and participate in masturbation happening in front of a mirror. Two older figures – grandparents, perhaps – and the depiction of an outsider of a different race add to this familial enigma.

All this confusion is resolved in Eltringham’s execution of his surfaces. Flat, textureless paint thinly coats the panels, applied in a vibrato of brushstrokes characteristic of a cold hand scratching a wanton lover. Our characters have become all surface, locked inside dimly light chambers, creatures of fantasy in corporeal escape. We see them composed, we see them exposed, we see them fractured. Cartoon roles surrogate for real intimacy. Faces removed of their costume are austere, glib, or lost, if not totally blurred and scratched away.

Eltringham’s work is dirty, deviant, and daring. There is something for everyone inside this family unit, no member exempt from duality or subjugation. Panels that present the outside world – a barn, a fenced-in backyard – suggest this world may not exist. However, this series of work reminds us what does exist, hidden in the shadows of society.

Pondering each painting separately, we can appreciate the singular emotions that emanate from each panel – a charismatic son, the beauty of a morose contemplation, or the excitement of a kinky, living-room blowjob. Yet shocking scenes only demonstrate compensation for some unknown sense of loss. With this family, our fraught need to interject is muted by a sense of their emotional vacancy and a sad indivisibility. These people are just shadows in their own world and their assemblage evokes a sense of irreparable collapse.