March 2-5  2017

Marginal Utility is proud to present the work of Philadelphia based artist Omid Skekari at the 2017 NADA art fair in New York City.

As an Iranian artist, Omid Shekari channels the crises within the Middle East through an imaginative form of magic realism that blends banal events of daily life with the potential violence that lies just below the entire surface of the globe at any time in history. Through a dexterous command of observational drawing and direct painting, Omid depicts the horrors of the present through images that bear family resemblances to artists such as Goya, Kollwitz and Golub.

Shekari’s paintings embody an Iranian gaze that confronts Western viewers with the harsh realities of the Middle East conflict that have been sublimated and distorted by mainstream media. This glimpse into a perspective that resists co-optation into easy narratives that justify the continued destabilization of international relations is much-needed in these troubled times.

Omid Shekari received a BFA from Soore University, Tehran, Iran (2011) and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (2016). Shekari has been a resident at Ox-Bow, Michigan (2015), the 24th Process – Space Art Festival in Bulgaria (2015), and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2016).

Shekari also has a solo exhibition at the Cash ‘n’ Carry [Marginal Utility] gallery in Philadelphia on view from 3 February – 19 March.

Rob Swainston is currently a Visiting Artist at Bard College. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, healing Rob studied art and political science at Hampshire College, and subsequently lived and worked in Central Europe, pursuing postgraduate studies in political science at Budapest’s Central European University. Swainston received his MFA in visual arts from Columbia University in 2006, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program in 2009-10, and is alumnus of the Philadelphia art collective Vox Populi. Rob is a cofounder and master printer of Prints of Darkness, a collaborative printmaking studio in Brooklyn, NY. He has had solo shows with Marginal Utility, Philadelphia (2013); Neuwerk Kunsthalle, Konstanz, Germany (2012); Esther Massry Gallery at the College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY (2011); David Krut Projects, NYC (2010); BravinLee Programs, NYC (2010); and Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2008 and 2009). Rob has been in group shows at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2013,11); Arlington Arts Center, Arlington (2012); Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA (2012); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2011); NADA Hudson (Canada Gallery), Hudson, NY (2011); Mason Gross Galleries, New Brunswick, NJ (2010); Philagraphika at Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia (2010); Canada Gallery, NYC (2008); The Queens Museum at Bulova, Queens, NY (2008) and the Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL (2006). He has been featured in V-magazine and contemporary Printmaking books as well as the Printeresting, and Art21 blogs. Rob recently finished a fellowship with the Provincetown Fine Art Work Center (winter 2011-12), a fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printshop (summer 2012), and is presently a Research Fellow at the Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee Belgium (summer 2014).

Rooted in sculpture, my practice traverses a range of themes focused around the problem of the “self’s” enigmatic status as a habit that can only be observed in its material effects, its attitudes, its likes and dislikes, in the slow accretion of its identifications. By dramatizing subjectivity and allegorizing the processes of its reification, my work attempts to come to grips with a subject that can only be staged through the deformations of the object and glimpsed in the inconsistencies that plague its consciousness.  Playing with the notion of “subject matter” as the literal objectification of the subject—the matter of the subject—I treat the “self” as a “thing” amongst things that can only be grasped evasively, through distortion, failure, violence, alienation and abstraction. My engagement with a wide range of media is an on-going experiment with the composition and decomposition of the self whose status is never quite clear, like a joke delivered so dead-pan that its own status as a joke seems to be in question.

Eric McDade is adrift, fending off bitey sea-critters and exchanging fluids with the great sea, while trying to focus all his powers on the difficult task of conveying a cogent thought or two.

He is taking on more than he is letting go of. He is sinking.

4 February – 27 March

Opening reception: Friday, 4 February, from 6:00pm – 11:00pm

Marginal Utility is proud to present NEOTENY | THE HARD SELL, a solo exhibition of the Philadelphia based artist Jayson Scott Musson.

Neoteny | The Hard Sell is an exhibition of art stuffs by Jayson Scott Musson at the Marginal Utility gallery on Friday, February 4th 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America. Whether or not you attend is of small consequence to the “artist” (the term is employed loosely here), because, as the artist puts it: “I stays paid anyway!” However, the veracity of this claim is highly questionable, as it is widely known that even though the artist is in his early 30’s, he still rents an apartment, not even an apartment by himself mind you, but rather he shares a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate (who is a much better artist than he). Also, the artist still rides a bicycle because he doesn’t have the least bit of self-control when it comes to the management of his personal finances so he is unable to save for even the most austere of auto vehicles. In fact, one time I was at his house, pardon me, I mean one time I was at his two-bedroom apartment he shares with a roommate, and the artist, a bit drunk, spent a surprising amount of time looking at lycra superhero costumes on ebay which he claimed he was going to use for a “sculpture”. Well, whatever sculpture you could make by purchasing a costume off of ebay is no sculpture I want to partake of. Not at all. Not. At. All. But perhaps you do. You strike me as someone who consumes art only in jpeg format (while I have laid beneath Olafur Eliasson's sun at the Tate!), someone who doesn”t possess a single inkling as to what comprises a true work of art. If this is the case, and I know it is, then you would most likely find some kind of satisfaction in attending Neoteny | The Hard Sell at the Marginal Utility gallery on Friday, February 4th 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America.

Oh, as per the artist's request: please keep your children at home. Because children, unlike the divinely crafted snowflake, are not unique nor are they special, and children speak at a volume which is simply unacceptable within a gallery, and even though Marginal Utility is a non-profit gallery, the etiquette of a commercial, for-profit gallery must be adhered to lest our entire society fall apart at its most sacrosanct seams.

Thank you and good night.

-Nathanial Snerpus

www.jaysonmusson.com

Zanisnik often shoots in the artist's hometown and surrounding areas. This provides a biographical center to the work that Zanisnik elevates from private to shared daydreams of symptoms and emotional maladies that are set within scenes of suburban New Jersey and populated with artist's family and friends.

download Justin Matherly CV – September 2010

“Holidays come and go. Clothes wear out. Bank accounts go up and down. But philosophy lasts a lifetime. Wisdom leads to happiness; examines the importance of reason, sale beauty and justice; shows how to harness the power of attention. Finally leading to freedom and happiness. But philosophy is not the art of consoling the weak; it has no other aim but to bring soundness of mind and to uproot its prejudices. I do not bring consolation, health the misuse of words and the twisting of meanings were responsible for all your errors, let us now make a just analysis of this virtue wicked teachers sought to make you hate.”

Justin Matherly-at Marginal Utility-Art In America-review-Jan-2011

“This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience. Addictions and obsessions – centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings – constitute market moralities of various sorts.” Cornel West, Race Matters.

Abigail D. DeVille’s series of bricolage sculptures entitled “Universal Diagrams of Discourse” are based upon the writings of Cornel West. DeVille gives form to West’s ideas within a pictorial format that highlights issues of contemporary history, and current concerns within American society. The work is layered, dense and loaded with imagery. DeVille is interested in a vision of excess. Each composition mirrors the complexity of the black image in the US. DeVille’s sculptures address an interwoven racial subtext that highlight enduring racial tensions. These tensions are articulated in a series of sculptures that parody the idea of what constitutes blackness in America. Through the use of big noses, gold teeth, fat booties, big lips and fetishistic ideals, DeVille engenders a consideration of what black is within a larger historical framework. DeVille’s ambition as an artist is to make visible the toxic and inauthentic society in which we are enmeshed, and re-represent this wild, intense and glorious vision in concrete form.

Deville works with ideas borrowed from set theory, and is particularly interested in the notion of the “Universe of Discourse” that includes all things that are under discussion at a given time. Using the image of the Venn diagram: a rectangle comprised of all possible logical relations, Deville’s projects pose a consideration of the manifold problems within American society by tying together threads of influence ranging from African sculpture, textiles, biology, popular culture, the artist’s grandmother, and the decay of social structures found within urban centers across America.