September 7th, 2013 – September 21st, 2013
http://nycartscene.info/post/60850377096/ted-riederer-the-lodge-gallery-nyc
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 10th, 6-8pm
(Featuring performance by HOLYMAN)
The Lodge Gallery invites you to experience the work of Ted Riederer. This two week ensemble set will consist of paintings, sculpture, photography, and interactive old media analog assemblage, all of which provide a deep view into a more intimate body of work by Riederer, best known for his critically acclaimed international performance project, “Never Records.”
“In My Memories, Wheels Make Melodies,” an interactive bricolage of guitar and bicycle parts, allows visitors to produce looped melodies from a fixed set of notes and percussive elements. The melodic elements are constant, but, by varying speed and direction, an infinitely variable melody is possible. It is here that we are introduced to the leitmotif of this exhibition and Riederer’s continuing body of work: We are empowered to create our own path. Paired with a single devotional painting of a woman entitled “Rose”, we can add: love enables us to break life’s fixed loops, to find beauty within the banal.
An array of flaming guitars (“Your Love Is Never Going to Survive The Heat Of My Heart”) line the gallery, oil paintings made with old master mediums and leaded glass powder that, as Riederer explains, “is related to a quasi Shinto belief that objects can be conduits of the divine. The guitar is an existential symbol. Are we instruments? Are we being played? The flames engulfing the guitars depict transmutation. Of course there is also the rock and roll references which are tongue and cheek, but I am always exploring the redemptive power of music and music communities by manipulating the symbols of music.”
Also filling the space is the warm sound of Bing Crosby’s voice, a looped vinyl record repeating the words “Only Forever” on a vintage turntable. This repeated phrase simultaneously answers and raises questions that Riederer continuously brings forth with this work. At the center of the record is a label stamped with an overhead view of a spiral staircase which, as the record spins, infinitely ascends or descends.
A “one-time refugee from punk and sometime band member,” Ted Riederer has armed himself with painting supplies, electric guitars, amplifiers, old LPs, record players, drum kits, hard disk recorders, photography equipment, a vinyl record lathe, and long-stemmed roses as he’s ambled artistically from the Americas to the Antipodes. His work has been shown nationally and internationally including exhibitions at PS1, Prospect 1.5, Goff and Rosenthal Berlin, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery (San Francisco), Marianne Boesky Gallery, Context Gallery (Derry, Ireland), David Winton Bell Gallery (Brown University), The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, the Liverpool Biennial, and the Dhaka Arts Center, Bangladesh. His “Never Records” project has traveled from New York, to Liverpool, to Derry, to New Orleans, to Texas, and to London, which was sponsored by the Tate Modern.
Curated by Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele
