Together We Can Do It, single-channel digital video, 2010

“El Guaraguao en El Barrio”

Dimensions Varied. Around nine ft tall and three ft wide for the formless structure. Extending out from the formation is the artist arm with a two ft tall taxidermy hawk.

The art is made from found objects, trash, and anything found on a month collection journey through “El Barrio,” New York,NY.  These signified elements were brought into the studio for final construction. A formless structure/mound/blob was created. Extending out from the formless structure is the artist arm holding a taxidermy “Guaraguao”(Red Tail Hawk, indigenous to Puerto Rico and New York City). The artist is concealed inside of the formless yet cultural significant mound.  The sculptural work  floats around the streets in the community.

“El Guaraguao En El Barrio” is a play on nature, migration, and human consumption. The Guaraguao is a Taino name given to the RedTail Hawk that lives in Puerto Rico and is also found in New York City. Falconry is the sport of hunting with a bird of prey. In “El Guaraguao en El Barrio”, the artist converts himself through sculpture into a formless mound of found objects, trash, construction remains, and symbols of culture. The Red Tail Hawk is used to “lure”,a falconry term, the audience to the artwork. A metaphor on our environmental problems & humanities interaction with nature.

“Action Jackson,” Video, tennis balls, house paint, bat, baseball cards (edition of 10), cases. 2010

Action Jackson is an ongoing multimedia project that combines personal narratives, ritualistic practice, repetitive obsessions and interests in the American persona. Through performance, video, painting and sculptural residue, Action Jackson slowly builds on his legend leaving behind objects and documentation of acts that are rooted in ego driven obsessions.

WWW.JACOBGOSSETT.COM

“Zombie Weapon #2″
50x8x6″
bat, screws, resin, nail, metal, and wood
2010

It’s a random Saturday morning, toward the end of another steamy summer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I roll out of bed a bit after 11, a little hung over, and I notice more noise outside than usual as I’m taking my morning piss.  I stumble over to the one window that I have in my live/work loft, to see what the unusually loud racket is outside.  As I glance out the window, and my eyes adjust to the stark light from outside, I spot a couple of zombies staring back at me through the bars encasing the small window. HOLY SHIT!!!!!  I climb up to my lofted roof to see what is going on around my neighborhood and it looks like shear madness.  People are running crazy, fires are everywhere, cars flipped over, and people are having their brains eaten out by dirty fucking zombies!  What do I do now?

Is my space secure? Yes.

How much food and water do I have? Not much.

How long can I stay here for? Not more than a week or so.

How long will I have power for? Who knows?

What kind of weapons do I have to defend myself against zombies? Not much.

What do I have in my studio to make weapons out of?  A Ton of stuff!!!!

Do I think I will be able to fight my way out and find any of my loved ones and friends still alive?????

Still frame for “Quote from Andrew Lang’s Arabian Nights”

Looped digital video on digital picture frame

“All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation.” – Edward Said

www.JustinMata.com

study for Mapping Project #7 by Nick Fraser

Mapping Project #7: On the floor, a large, powdery white map of the lower 48 US states. On the adjacent wall, 48 black plastic stencils in the shape of these same states hang on hooks. Nearby bins of red, white and blue chalk. Fraser, dressed in white, selects a stencil and positions it in its location on the white map. The selected state is marked in either red or blue powdered chalk. The process is repeated until the color of each state has changed several times. The traces of the performer’s movements (and those of the audience) will slowly blend the layers of colors together and blur the lines between states. Gradually the boundaries of the map will smudge and blur. The colors will shift away from the either/or nature of ‘Red States’ or “Blue States’ into something more closely resembling the blended and conflicted country of individuals, each encompassing a spectrum of beliefs not so easily mapped.

Nicholas Fraser’s most recent text installation, The Paterson Project, was featured in the exhibition Escape from New York in a former silk dying factory in Paterson, NJ (escapefromnewyork.tumblr.com). Recent projects were included in Videophagy / Videofagia at Function13 & Hotshot Gallery in Toronto, CONVERSATIONS, I’m Caught Up at the Bronx Art Space and in the 2009 Art in Odd Places Festival along 14th street.

Fraser’s upcoming projects include new installations for Flux Factory and Taller Boricua in New York and The Indianapolis Museum of Art will present his Mapping Projects series in the fall of 2011. He will be a resident artist at LMCC’s Swing Space program on Governors Island in New York in 2011

His work has been exhibited at Jack the Pelican Gallery (Brooklyn) and Brain Factory (Seoul) and Eyedrum Gallery (Atlanta).

He earned an MFA at the School of Visual Art and completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in 2008.

Born in the U.K. in 1969, he lives and works in Brooklyn.
www.NicholasFraser.com