MEATSTORE


Exhibited @ www.gallerythe.org
March 16, 2006 through June 26, 2006
Work by: 

John Wolfer
Josh Goldstein
Mike Geno

The "meatstore" exhibition is a culmination of approaches by 
three artists that draw from their experiences and react to 
the world around them.  The commonality of the market, and 
more specifically the meat market industry, has an extensive 
effect on our culture and connects to reflects both our lives 
and roles in the art world on multiple levels.

The opportunity to display the products of their world, their 
studio, in this setting, under glass for the outside world to 
browse, produces meatstore.

John Wolfer-
John Wolfer's current work has its origins in his personal 
connection to meat, he spent his formative years cutting meat 
in his father's meat store. This series of paintings uses 
metaphor and parody to raise questions about meat and its role 
in art and society. His intention is to study meat as a subject 
for still-life and parody in art throughout history and create 
work which combines and extends each of these genres. The 
paintings juxtapose traditional still-life painting and the more 
contemporary process of screen-printing. The idealized images 
and text are adopted from advertising collateral from the 1940s 
and 50s. The meat itself is painted from life in a more realistic 
manner. The result is intended to raise questions about the 
complexity of beauty, humor, and society at large. There was a 
time when meat wasn't the culturally divisive subject it is today.
My work attempts to bridge and blur the distinction between then 
and now. This comparison is made by stylized screen-printed images, 
contrasted by realistically painted meat and further emphasized by 
the double entendre present in the slogans.

Mike Geno-
This extended series of meat paintings involves the sensuality and 
seductiveness of meat. Having worked in meat rooms at supermarkets, 
as both a clerk and apprentice meat cutter, long enough I see the 
aesthetic values in a wide range of cuts of meat. As an 'artist/meat 
cutter' I recognized the necessity for meat to be abstracted in order 
to be swallowed, therefore, it was natural for me to objectify meat 
and approach it with the same focus as my other still-life objects. 
I found it most enjoyable to work with subject matter that attracted 
a diverse audience consisting of vegetarians and carnivores alike.

The more recent additions to this series approach the beauty of meat 
as a subtle decorative element that heightens the weight, color and 
over all fleshiness of the subject. Beyond simply describing, I 
enjoy the language and substance of oil paint and make use of its 
inherent qualities to explore and experience the world around me 
more fully.

Josh Goldstein-
Born in Indiana to a Mexican mother and a Jewish father, Josh 
Goldstein has lived in New York City since 1994. He studied 
architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and has worked 
at several architecture firms, while pursuing his real passion 
of biking around the city photographing signs and storefronts, 
from Chinese fish markets to Hasidic hat shops. The New York 
bodega especially interests him. He is attracted by the bodegas' 
"bright colors, bold graphics, rotating set of key words and 
phrases, and strong horizontal banding, as well as by their 
current state of faded glory." Josh has been frantically 
photographing these signs for over four years, collecting 
thousands of images using his outdated digital camera and 
beat-up bike.

Josh has photographed over 1000 bodegas in Brooklyn, Manhattan, 
Queens, and the Bronx.

His favorite bodega items are: 1. Ting, 2. Coco Rico, 3. bananas,
4. Goya black beans, 5. dill pickle