The Indispensibles: Salon des REfUSE at the Garrison Art Center, through Sept 7.

 My column of used paint rollers in the center fore.

Peter Iannarelli's wall of paper bags, Duro 8, on the right.

When I saw the list of artists on the brochure for the salon dees refuse, my first thought was of the film franchise The Expendables.  Not that the gathered group were bloated, aged relics with a legacy of notoriety behind them, but that the assembled group is largely a roster of stars who have shaped my 11 years of living in Beacon, NY and for whom I have loads of respect. Secondly, my thought was surprise at how focused the group was. While preparing my piece for the show, I had an image of a sprawling roster of the local artists who work with "real world" materials to create their works, . Lastly I felt gratified and honored to be listed among this group.

A wider view with works on the wall to the left by Karlos Carcamo, Iannarelli and 

Eleanor White.  Steve Rossi's ladder sculpture on the right foreground.

The Salon des REfUSE is curated by artist Thomas Huber who selected this group of artists who use discarded/ recycled/ non art materials fore the material of their art making.

Angelika installing her wall work consisting of bottle and jar caps.

Works by Carcamo on the left and Rossi on the right.

 My Latex Essays from 2010.

 Two works by Eleanor White.  Angelika's cap piece on the left.

One of James Murray's exterior sculptures standing in front of the art center.

The show is cool, light footed and attractive.

Salon des REfUSE runs through Sept 7 at the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, NY. An opening reception will be held on this Saturday, August 23 from 5 - 7 pm.
The artists participating are: John Allen, Karlos Carcamo, Matt Harle, Peter Iannarelli, James Murray, Angelika Rinnhofer, Steve Rossi, Eleanor White.  

Below is Thomas Huber's statement about the exhibit:

Salon des REfUSE features artists from the lower Hudson Valley, who work with found objects and industrial materials. In transcending everyday materials into art, the artists act as tricksters – forcing viewers to confront and reconsider the objects out of context.

The title of the show makes reference to the exhibition “Salon des refusés” of 1863, an exhibition in Paris of paintings refused by the French Academy, where the 19th century trickster Edouard Manet created a scandal with his painting “Le dejuener sur l’herbe”. While many paintings favored by the Academy included nude women, the nudes were all in a biblical or mythological context and followed the Academy conventions of romantic otherworldly settings. Manet’s nude however, was picnicking in a Parisian park with men in contemporary dress, mocking the conventional Academy art.

Manet passed the trickster torch, by way of the cabarets of Montmartre, to Marcel Duchamp who took it a step further by not just painting what is actually there, but by making the actual object the art -- the “readymade”. As art the readymade object is in a new context and now has a title. The object’s position is also different from its usual pragmatic stance--urinal upside down, coat rack on its side.

The torch passed to John Cage when he met Duchamp in New York and began to champion his ideas. Cage’s classes at The New School influenced a generation of artists from Alan Kaprow to Robert Rauschenberg. Cage also used everyday objects to create music and sound, removing artifice and introducing chance and silence. His students expanded on these ideas in music, dance, performance and visual art which became a major influence in the trajectory of contemporary art.

It is this readymade tradition that inspired Salon des REfUSE. As the show evolved it came to include artists using nonart and recycled materials. Re-use is an important idea for many of the artists in the show. When an object is reused in an art work, its life cycle--already thrown out of balance by the synthetic plastic materials of our culture--is interrupted. An object’s typical life cycle goes from its manufacture and use to its trashing where it is hidden away in a land fill to decompose.

In our post modern world, recycling and reuse of ideas as well as objects has become an important aspect of art theory and practice. Combining various seemingly unrelated ideas creates new ways of seeing and understanding ourselves and the world around us.