TONIGHT: Dubai Underground Opening

Hey y'all. We're opening our awesome collaborative exhibition tonight, in partnership with Mezze! It's been a long install for Rahul and Liz, but we think it's totally worth it!

From political photography to tongue-in-cheek advertising, "Dubai Underground" exposes the complex underbelly of a place steeped in wealth and culture. What ancient roots and odd contradictions still turn the wheels of this seemingly cosmopolitan city? The seven artists presented in this exhibition seek the answers to these questions, and more.

We'll be pulling out all the usual stops on this opening! Come by for a drink and some inspiration! If you missed Jenny Morgan's "Abrasions", have no fear. Her gorgeous portraits are on display in the downstairs gallery, alongside the usual show of brilliance from our cast of artists.

Be sure to RSVP for Dubai Underground's special artist dinner - "Du-Licious", Friday, February 20th, 2008. Dinner's served at 8:00pm, and RSVPs are required. This month's dinner is created by the chefs of Falafel Chulo, serving up a delicious spread of Middle Eastern cuisine! Go here to reserve your spot!

Towering above the rest!

Rachel Beach: Towers and Portals
March 7th - March 29th, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday March 7th, 6:30-10pm
Artist's Dinner: Knives & Glasses: March 13th, 8:00pm
Like the Spice is pleased to present Rachel Beach: Towers and Portals, an exhibition of the artist's conceptually elegant self-referential works.

Situated firmly in the border between sculpture and painting, illusion and reality, masculine and feminine, representation, abstraction and decoration, Rachel Beach's wooden portals and towers are crafted around cultural and biological limits. By playing painted illusion against sculptural reality each sculpture/painting creates a crisis of perception, an irresolvable tension between what you see and what is possible.

Top Five Reasons You Love Like the Spice

So, we've always known that Like the Spice is unusually awesome, but lately life has been pushing REAL hard to get the message across. Our First Friday New Artist Auction was a resounding success. Jenny Morgan spoke (that's her above, in a classic example of life-imitating-art), art was bid upon, and what with one thing and another it seemed like the time was ripe for us to put together a list of the top five reasons you LOVE Like the Spice.

On we go!

Reason #5: Our Fans Are Hot

I mean, look at them. Just look. Colette Robbins, Jenny Morgan... the hotness is undeniable. And as if that wasn't enough, almost every single person in this photograph is ridiculously good at making art. Look in the mirror. Are you Hot? Look around your studio. Do you make ridiculously good art? If you answered yes to both of these questions, congrats! You're probably a fan of Like the Spice.

Reason #4: You Are Related to Us in Six Degrees or Less

We are reminded constantly here that the art world is small. Showing here means coming to your own opening and realizing that your piece is installed next to a painting by your ex-boyfriend from college, and that your personal assistant is roommates with the girl serving wine behind the bar. It's like this crazy social vortex of AWESOME.
(By the way, Like the Spice shows work by Jason Bryant, who works for Kehinde Wiley, who's done a portrait of Ice-T who lent his voice to "The Magic 7" alongside KEVIN BACON.)

Reason #3: The Internet Loves Us

Did we tell you that we've been featured in FOUR different blogs/articles in like two days? Yeah. Domestic Attempts, ARTMostFierce, ArtNews, and HeartsArena have all joined LTS's fan base. 'Cause we're cool.

Reason #2: Our Interns are Hot

These are more than just the smiling enablers of your drinking habit. They're also the finely tuned team that aligns the wheels and shines the sleek body of Like the Spice. You know, like those whaddoyoucallem maintenence teams who run alongside race-cars? In jumpsuits? Anyway. These are the souls that daily face the purgatorial cleaning of the storage closet. Who run to pick up the packages of others at the post-office armed with false identification information. Who dig in their heels to tightly hold the leash of Tabitha the Dog, saving the Chinese delivery guy from her slavering jaws and barely-concealed racism. Yes, without them, LTS would be a far sadder place.

And finally, Reason #1 that YOU LOVE LIKE THE SPICE:
The Party Never Stops, and You're Always Invited

If you haven't got anything to do on weekends, it SURE ISN'T OUR FAULT. Openings, closings, First Fridays, Exhibition Previews, Meetup Tours, Artist Talks, Dinners! We've always got something cooking - next Friday, for example. It's the opening of Dubai Underground, and we want to extend a very personal invitation to you as a guest of honor. All you supporters, friends, and artists who give so much are the reason that LTS keeps on rocking, and we're gonna keep making sure that your schedule is crammed with as much art and awesomeness as you can handle.


Lots of <3 (but screw Valentine's Day),

LTS

IT'S Gettin', IT'S Gettin', IT's Gettin' Kinda Hectic

The Lucky #7 of ARTmostfierce's The Current State of the ART Market Series goes to Marisa Sage, Gallery Owner of the Like The Spice Gallery in Brooklyn, NYC. Marisa has some interesting concepts and approach to the gallery business. Let's see what she is sharing with us!

Ruben Natal-San Miguel- Please tell us about your Gallery...Location? Type of gallery?


Marisa Sage-I opened Like the Spice Gallery in June of 2006 with the aim of fostering the careers of emerging artists by allowing them to show in public group and solo exhibitions. I exhibit both Digital formats as well as traditional methods. Our artists push their medium; our paintings are fresh and our digital art is not just about the pixels, as stated in our mission statement. I would say that my artists primarily create works with a very specific marriage of technique and aesthetic prowess, as well as a compelling conceptual agenda. Each artist has learned to balance their technical mastery with a sound conceptual statement. We are a commercial gallery with roots in the Williamsburg neighborhood, Over 80% of our artists make work within 15 miles of the gallery.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW BETWEEN MARISA & RUBEN!


Above, "a digital photograph from the series “Held Back,” 2006, by Dubai artist Reem Al Ghaith". Reem will be one of the artist featured in the next group exhibition Dubai Underground, here at Like the Spice Gallery. Opening Friday February 13th 2009. 6:30-10:00pm.
Reem also featured further in ‘An Oasis in the Desert’, an article in this months Art News.

COURTESY THE ARTIST
Governments in the United Arab Emirates are spending billions of dollars in an ambitious, unprecedented effort to create cultural districts with world-class museums—along with a support system of creators, dealers, and collectors. But many Western art professionals wonder if this massive undertaking, launched at a dizzying scale and pace, can be successful
by Sharon Waxman


CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE on artnews.com.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL PRESS FOR DUBAI UNDERGROUND AT LIKE THE SPICE GALLERY.


Domestic Attempts
The Weekly Picks, One Day Late
Our third pick of the week comes to us from Like The Spice Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. This piece has the potential to offend some of you, and if it does, I apologize. I believe that art should be challenging, and serve to open up dialogue between people. The purpose of art is not just to be pleasant to look at - artists have a responsibility to address issues, which in this case, is religion.

CLICK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

LASTLY GREAT NEWS!!!

Like the Spice Gallery Owner Marisa Sage was chosen by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Ms. Sage will be seated on stage to represent Like the Spice Gallery and the other Williamsburg Galleries as one of 40 noteworthy Brooklynites, during Mr. Markowitz's State of the Borough Address.

We've Only Just Begun: A Studio Visit With David Mramor

On a very snowy night David and I met at his studio for what turned out to be a splendid way to spend a blistery winters eve.

We started out with David's Bio: born and raised in Cleveland Ohio, David took to painting at a very young age going on to earn his BFA from Ohio University, studying under many great painters including Guy Goodwin . Upon entering grad school at SVA David began to experiment with installation, video and drawing, soon realizing that his true love was reveled in the excitement gained when he created paintings. He came upon a new method of collaging paint starting with the flat fast process of acrylic, adding oil directly out of the tube, bombing with spray paint, scratching with marker, and intuitively piling on gesso.





After graduating from SVA in 2008 with his MFA Mr. Mramor began to explore the negative space in his older pieces by using his emotional visual voice on top of photographic images from the natural landscape. Specifically using images of Yellowstone National Park, he used these images to make his negative space more purposeful and points out the illusion of memory created by the use of photography, "representing energy and expressionism".











David seeks to create an interruption, questioning the reality and truth of the paint versus the supposed reality of the photograph. What is "real" what is "illusion". David's colors are taken from the body, nature, and found artificial colors. David uses paint in a sculptural abstract and ambiguous way, lust and overindulgence restrained within the canvas.

Come and see two of David's paintings this Friday February 6th, 7-9 in our New Artist Auction, here at Like the Spice Gallery. 224 Roebling Street. Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.388.5388. or call or email to set up an appointment to see any of David's pieces.

And then there were three...

Join us in welcoming our third new artist this month! Colette Robbins will be showing her work alongside Reuben Negron and Noa Charuvi at our New Artists Silent Auction We journeyed up to Harlem today to visit her studio, and it was WAY worth the trip.


Colette's paintings are acrylic on wood panel. Her work explores contradictions in sculpture vs. photography vs. paintings. In her words: "My paintings and drawings deal with remnants of the figure. Whether it's a rolled up bundle of severed legs or strange helmet-like fossils that may or may not have once been alive, my images speak about what survives."


"Within the paintings/drawings there are highly detailed manmade objects placed in natural or neutral scenes. These scenes look like they should be inhabited by the living but are not. Instead they are occupied by objects that reference the form or utility of a human. The works have many areas that are rich with intricate patterns and atmospheric textures that form type.s of known variables for the viewer to enter into. Once the viewer acknowledges the known components of the works they are faced with the question of why these elements exist within the space of the painting. The viewer soon sees that the scenes are the consequence of unknown events. Therefore they function like a story being told in reverse."


"Like the way cultural tragedies make us look backwards at the trail of clues the present hands us, my work implies a, perhaps, tragic history. The viewer is left to wonder who has abandoned this here and what should be done with it. The responsibility is to whoever stumbles across these uncanny scenes as the task falls on those which remain."



Hear Colette discuss one of her works!

New Artists Silent Auction at Like the Spice!

One of Us, One of Us, One of us!

We have some new inductees to our coven of artistry here at Like the Spice! Reuben Negron and Noa Charuvi will be exhibiting works for our First Friday's New Artists' Silent Auction on February 6th, 2009 from 7-9pm. Come for a cocktail and to bid silently on their gorgeous paintings.


Noa Charuvi was born in Jerusalem, Israel, but lives and works in New York City. Her work contains a sense of documentation but also of universality, since the places in the paintings are not anchored to a specific event.



Her paintings present the absurdity of that reality, but at the same time create a composition of color and shape that is purely formal, evoking beauty and harmony. The experience of the work is therefore a mix of pleasure and terror. In all her work, she skillfully pulls the realism out of her subjects, and selectively applies abstractions.
Reuben Negron was born in Florida, raised in the Bronx and entered adulthood in Connecticut. He began studying theater and set design at an early age but embraced the challenge of watercolor while attending the Maryland Institute College of Art. Of his work, he says "I have always been interested in the domestic and the mundane. Interpersonal relationships, the unseen and the under-appreciated have always been represented in my work. I often use shared experiences as a way to draw closer a seemingly disparate world.



In some of his work, viewers were are invited to invent or "finish" the stories for themselves thereby becoming part of the narrative process. The result, as they essentially take ownership over part of the creative process, is an elaborate emotional play between the image and the audience that is rooted at the very heart of storytelling.


A second series, Dirty Dirty Love™ is a frank look at modern relationships. This series aims to challenge social expectations by presenting taboo subjects in a mundane light.


Well, that's it for now! See you on Friday!