For Immediate Release September 10, 2001.

Jessica Murray Projects is proud to announce its inaugural exhibition Souvenirs featuring paintings by Alejandro Diaz. Join us for our opening reception, Friday, October 12, 6-8 PM. These seductive black and white paintings, executed entirely in glitter, capture the viewer's attention while investigating some of " the rubs" in the production, consumption and historicizing of culture. Taking images from sub, popular and high culture, Diaz sets forth a stunning exploration into the beauty, failure and humanity in cultural production. Sampling from icons of fashion and religion, American Pop, Mexican Folk Art, New Yorker-style cartoons, as well as gay and ghetto sub-cultures, Diaz uses the power and allure of these established vocabularies to investigate their own creation and operation.

In Mexican Landscape, Diaz selects an image from Tlaquepaque, a style of Mexican pottery created for the Anglo market in the 1950s that featured images of Mexico and Mexican life. This pottery originated from an area called Tlacapan, translated into English, " men who make clay utensils with their hands." Depicting the landscape in bold, geometric forms this pottery linked Mexico's modernist vocabulary with this exported, popular art form. By appropriating this imagery, Diaz calls attention to the complexities of the comodification of Mexican life as well as the cross-pollination between Latin and Anglo cultures. Reproduced as a painting in glitter, the image is again as irresistible as it is challenging.

In LOVE (Mexican Style), Diaz puts himself on the plate, reproducing Robert Indiana's 1960s Love, replacing the " L, O, V, E" with his own D, I, A, Z." Poking fun at his own admiration of art and culture, his aspirations to participate in the production of high art, and the risk of rejection, Diaz touches the nerve of all who hope to succeed whether in art, money or love.

To compliment the main gallery's exhibition, in the drawing room, Jessica Murray Projects proudly presents Kipple, a selection of drawings by Scott Teplin. Unlike Diaz's Souvenirs, which concern themselves with images that survive history, Teplin is consumed with portraying the uncomfortable, unappealing leftovers, the dust, and decay of everyday life. Kipple, a reference from Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, refers to the detritus the characters in the story found upon arriving home from work. In the story, time was so accelerated that when you returned from your day, your home would be found in a state of decay, desiccated and covered in dust as if you hadn't been there for hundreds of years. Teplin takes this as his starting point and creates a series of exquisite minimalist piles and explosions.

Located at 210 North 6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, two blocks from the Bedford stop on the L train, Jessica Murray Projects will feature emerging work in several formats: curated and solo exhibitions, drawing room presentations, performances, and publications. Housed in a renovated 19th century garage, these exhibitions will feature work in all media including sculpture, painting, works on paper, installation, video, performance, and other media arts. This is Murray's third exhibition space following her Salons, 75 and 300, the first of which opened in 1996 on Roebling Street in Williamsburg. Both Salons presented curated thematic exhibitions featuring some of the best work of emerging artists. In 1999, Murray closed Salon 300 and joined Simon Watson to co-curate the video and performance programming of the Downtown Arts Festival 2000 that included a selection of both emerging and established artists.

Both Souvenirs and Kipple will run through November 11, 2001. Gallery Hours are Friday-Monday, 12-6 PM.

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