OverKill Studio

For Immediate Release:
Salt Gallery Presents:
“Grew Up & Blew Up: Character Rehab”
An exhibit of new works by:
Thomas Buildmore, Scott Chasse, Chris Clark, Dan King, Kenji Nakayama and Morgan Thomas
September 3rd – October 22nd, 2010
Opening Reception: Sept 3, 6-9:30pm (Philly First Fridays)
Contact: Michael Veneziale
saltartgallery@gmail.com / (215)939-7426
www.saltgallery.com

Does stardom have an inevitable shelf life? As today’s technology and hyper-interconnectedness allow everyday people to become stars, Hollywood types and formerly untouchable CEOs are being uncloaked to reveal the everyday person within, complete with imperfections, shortcomings, and vices. With the playing field leveled to a certain degree by a media obsessed with celebrity faults and disaster, one has to consider the mortality of a career in or near the limelight.

With this in mind, Salt Gallery director Michael Veneziale has teamed-up with artist/curators Thomas Buildmore and Scott Chasse to present a body of work themed on the dark side of pop culture. In addition to Buildmore and Chasse, artists Chris Clark, Dan King and Morgan Thomas (all from Philly) along with Boston’s Kenji Nakayama will present works which reflect the over-saturation of the celebrity image, downfall of American icons, and public lynchings by the main stream media. Although the theme may sound grim, much of the artwork by these six artists visually contradicts the darkness with bold imagery, color, and/or humor. Including references to Tiger Woods, Henry Winkler, and Big Oil, the show contemplates whether or not the term “celebrity” itself, has indeed, jumped the shark.

Please join us for the opening reception on September 3rd from 6-9:30pm as part of Philly First Fridays.
Free and open to the public.

For Immediate Release:
OverKill Studio & Stupid Easy Present:
“Moustache Bar”
An exhibit of recent works created by Scott Chasse, curated by Thomas Buildmore
August 6th – 27th, 2010**
Opening Reception: Friday, August 6th, 5-10pm
RSVP for opening: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100192750034715
307 Market St., Philadelphia, PA
contact: Scott Chasse
(978) 270-1904 / scottchasse@gmail.com
www.stupideasyideas.com
www.scottchasse.com
**exhibit is viewable by appointment only after the opening; contact stupideasyideas@gmail.com to schedule a visit

Scott Chasse is a painter who, based on his most recent series of portraits, seems to be obsessed with two things: a painstaking process which requires accurate placement of thousands of black “dots” of paint to create an image, and Burt Reynolds.

“Moustache Bar”, the first solo exhibit for the NYC/Boston based artist, will delve deeper into a body of work which the artist has yet to explain beyond mere aesthetics. As complement to over twenty pieces featuring the likeness of Burt Reynolds, Chasse draws upon childhood memories to construct an installation consisting of found objects, sculpture, and artwork by other artists, forming a “basement bar” atmosphere, circa 1974 (the artist’s birth year). With potentially the most famous moustache in recent history anchoring the show and a 70’s bachelor pad being fabricated, Chasse aims to drown the viewer in themes of masculinity and machismo while considering the present day meaning of both. “I see young guys donning moustaches these days, and I often don’t know what to make of it,” he admits.

Whether you appreciate a good dose of upper-lip facial hair or not, “Moustache Bar” promises to be an entertaining presentation worthy of investigation.

Please join us for the opening reception on Friday, August 6th, 5-10pm.

Stupid Easy is located at 307 Market St. 2nd floor, Philadelphia, PA.

–
Scott Chasse
Community Arts Coordinator
The Distillery
www.distilleryboston.com

www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=132781236736733

ARTSCOPE 4/10

The immediacy of the show title reflects the medium of choice: Paint it Now at the Distillery Gallery in South Boston makes street art the focal point of its interior walls. Famously created quickly and anonymously on the sides of buildings with the aid of stencils and spray paint, street art has gone from vandalism to valid outsider art form to gallery-worthy over the past decade. Over twenty artists from the northeast were contacted to take part in this year’s show, the second in what may became an annual tradition at the Distillery Gallery. Each invited artist helped fill the main space with a floor to ceiling, wall to wall, wrap-around corners mural painted in black and white: the ultimate exquisite corpse in the form of graffiti art. With allusions to pop culture and current issues, the completed work keeps with the spirit, as well as the methods, of the medium. The show comes down–or should I say gets painted over–on April 23rd.

BOSTON PHOENIX3/10

Street art recently made the acquaintance of the conventional art world during the second ever “Paint it Now” at South Boston’s Distillery Gallery, where for the past two weeks, artists from NYC and Boston have been going to town on the gallery’s walls. During tonight’s opening reception (the installation will hang through April 29), you can check out the 22-artist collaboration as well as meet a host of folks much more talented than yourself. Distillery Gallery, 516 East Second St, Boston | 7-10 pm | Free | gallery.distilleryboston.com

BOSTON GLOBE 4-8-10

PAINT IT NOW The Distillery Gallery and OverKill Studio present their second collaborative painting installation, a black-on-white mural made by more than 20 artists. The seamless piece buzzes with poppy imagery, and individual works have gritty appeal. Through April 23. The Distillery Gallery, 516 E. 2nd St., South Boston. 978-270-1904, www.gallery.distilleryboston.com

By Edith Newhall

For The Inquirer

Wonderful shows used to be unheard of in August. No more. The energetic, free-association painting covering the interior of Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery makes for one of the most engaging, memorable shows this gallery has ever seen.

“Semiopticon,” a black-and-white mural painted directly on the gallery’s four walls by Thomas Buildmore and Morgan Thomas, takes its title from semiotics and the Panopticon. Semiotics, the study of sign processes, or signification, and how meaning is constructed, has inspired the bizarre but intuitive flow of imagery this mural depicts as you enter the gallery, look to your left, and begin to follow its trippy narrative, which eventually ends at the right of the entrance.

Its structure, one learns, is based on the Panopticon, a prison design that allows observers to view prisoners without the prisoners’ knowing whether they are being watched.

As this crisp, cartoony spectacle of creation, religion, pop stars, profanity, and undefiled nature unfolded, I was reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and its ambiguous sense of time. Like that novel, “Semiopticon” seems to suggest that different periods of time can be experienced simultaneously – a collapse that, in “Semiopticon,” takes place literally on the same plane of time. In Buildmore and Thomas’ story, Jean-Michel Basquiat comes right after the American Indians, but before Marilyn Monroe and L’il Orphan Annie.

But it’s the shadow of Andy Warhol that looms most powerfully over “Semiopticon,” and not just for its portrayals of Basquiat and Monroe and its clever imitations of screen-printing. The 15 minutes of fame the pop artist so famously predicted for everyone, some day, have finally met their mural.

Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University, 3215 Market St., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. 215-895-2548 or www.drexel.edu/westphal. Through Sept. 11.