V1 GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT
I Am A Scientist
An exhibition curated by Sadie Laska
Eric Palgon, Spencer Sweeney, Amy Gartrell, Tony Cox, Bianca Beck, Lucky De
Bellevue, Marc Hundley, Aurel Schmidt, Sara Magenheimer, Trevor Shimizu, Agathe
Snow, Emi Winter, Sadie Laska and Leif Ritchey
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY 19.01.2018. TIME 17.00 – 21.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD 19.01. – 24.02.18
I am a scientist - I seek to understand me
The exhibition presents 14 artists from New York and artworks in a variety of media; painting, sculpture,
drawing, stitching, and printed media. The show’s title refers to the lo-fi pop anthem, “I Am A Scientist,” by
the band Guided By Voices. A song about self-examination, wandering existentialism, questioning and
embrace of the self, and a type of romantic questing that searches for and buts up against the notion of
ourselves as 'lost souls'.
Staring at the computer screen you hear the ticking clock, a flicker of shadows, in your vision an imprint,
markings on the wall resemble cave paintings, there is an image of the face, a human hand, an
insomniac, scientific drawings, a skull, bats and flies. Entering wandering landscapes, with stitched forms
– boats adrift at sea, flags and fists are raised in defiance of the ocean void – a sensitive cloud watcher,
forms coming and going.
Eric Palgon’s small slippages between figure and ground, invite a sensitivity akin to cloud watching. Tony
Cox’s meta-physical stitches become fetishized forms. Amy Gartrell invites us to enter Plato’s cave
through the nostrils of a horizontal nose sculpture. Sadie Laska’s incidental marked and hand smeared
paintings are reminiscent of the cave wall. Lucky DeBellevue’s clocks are frozen in mid motion. It is all
summed up in Agathe Snow’s female breast plug, which is giving form to a common need for an entrance
to a black hole/suck hole in life.
In I Am A Scientist art’s material strangeness and its visceral erotics are raised to a visuality, a language
closure within the allegory of Plato’s Cave, where the flickering light becomes man’s way to try and mark
time. The human hand, its mark, becomes motifs of nature, emotive wandering landscapes.
Art should not be separated from the social spheres; the contributing artists are a current generation of
New Yorkers, friends, collaborators, personal connections or some Laska has shared studio with. They
are all informed by music, pop culture, mass media, and politics. I Am A Scientist is a complex
representation of institutional, social, and personal values.
Sadie Laska (born 1974, West Virginia, US) lives and works in New York as an independent curator,
musician and visual artist. She holds a MFA from Bard College (2014) and a BFA from West Virgina
University (1992). In 2017 Laska curated the critically acclaimed show Animal Farm at Brant Foundation,
Greenwich. She has been shown internationally with CANADA, New York, Office Baroque, Brussels, KS
Art, New York, and Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris, Luxemburg and Geneva. Laska makes up half the
drum-centric duo I.U.D. (along with friend and fellow BFA student Lizzi Bougatsos), who has been
performing at international venues including Whitney Museum, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and
Kunsthalle Zürich.
