Bradley Eros
All that is solid melts into eros
March 16 – April 22, 2018
Opening Friday March 16, 6-9pm
Image courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery
Microscope is very pleased to present All that is solid melts into eros, the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Bradley Eros. In this exhibition devoted to ephemerality – a concept the artist has been radically engaging with, especially in film, video, collage, and performance, since the 1980s when he arrived in New York – Eros presents a new body of work “made of ice, ash, paper, foil, and plastic that will be altered, or disappear and be remade daily”.
A détournement of a known Karl Marx quote, All that is solid melts into eros finds the artist asking for the visitors’ complicity in the physical transformation of the works themselves – which are to be burned, melted, crumpled, or flown – including in some cases their eventual disintegration. With Arte Povera as one of his longtime influences and appropriation as a recurring practice, the artist here calls into question the ideas of possession itself and of artwork as a stable and definable entity.
“The show is an attempt to discover the simplest means possible to examine dematerialization and transient states of matter. The process poses an open question or inquiry into the social economy and ecology of art, through play, ritual or exchange”. – BE
The works on view reference the natural elements of water, fire, earth, air and are made to be periodically replaced by the artist. Ice assemblages of celluloid film, slides, and gels are left to melt. Works on paper containing words from languages now extinct are burned. Sculptures made from magazine ads are handled, crumpled, and reshaped. And, paper airplane work – in a heavy nod to Harry Smith – are to be thrown.
The ephemeral, by definition “lasting only briefly” is also considered as an alternative to the traditional assumptions, models, and struggles for the everlasting life of the work of art, as acceptance of change. Eros states: “Choosing liveness over permanence, I point to a philosophy of the living process, the present moment, non-possession, non-attachment and energy exchange”.
All that is solid melts into eros runs from March 16th through April 22nd, 2018, with an opening reception on Friday March 16th, from 6 to 9pm. For additional information please contact the gallery at 347.925.1433 or by email at inquiries@microscopegallery.com.
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Bradley Eros is an artist working in myriad mediums including film & video, collage, performance, expanded cinema, and installation. Eros has been a catalyst of the New York film community since the 1980s and his works have exhibited and screened extensively in the US and abroad including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (in “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art: 1905-2016”, “The Whitney Biennial 2004”, and “The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000”) as well as at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), MoMA PS1, New Museum, The Kitchen, Participant Inc., Pioneer Works, Performa09, Exit Art, Anthology Film Archives, Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, PA), Camden Arts Center (London), Arsenal (Berlin), and The New York, London and Rotterdam Film Festivals. His work has been written about in ArtFCity, Artforum, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, The Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice, among many others. Collaborations include the Alchemical Theater, the band Circle X, Voom HD Lab, and the expanded cinema groups kinoSonik, Arcane Project and currently with Optipus. Grants and Awards include: Acker Award, NYFA Fellowship, Experimental Television Center (ETC), and Issue Project Room’s artist in residence, among others. His work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Eros currently lives and works in Queens, New York.
Bradley Eros, “waterworks: ice (3.16.18 A, B, C)”, 2018, water, plastic, celluloid, metal, dimensions variable – Image courtesy of the artist and Microscope Gallery