Williamsburg

Williamsburg

Photographs and Drawings by
Anders Goldfarb, Don Burmeister, Gail Thacker,
Rachael Street & Susan Hamburger

April 1 to 30, 2005
Opening Reception March 31, 6 to 8 PM

Safe-T-Gallery is pleased to announce the inaugural exhibition in its new Dumbo location. As a salute and a look back at its home for the last 3 years we present “Williamsburg” a show by five artists who use the sights and people of North Brooklyn as inspirations in their art. The five vary widely in their approaches, four are photographers, one will be presenting drawings, yet all share a common interest in the ramshackle, un-designed, working class vitality that is relentlessly being squeezed out of this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The five, Anders Goldfarb, Don Burmeister, Gail Thacker, Rachael Street and Susan Hamburger will share space with at least one piece of Williamsburg street art, rescued literally from the teeth of a chain saw at a local condo-ization.

Of the five artists Anders Goldfarb is perhaps the most classically inspired. With an Atget-like devotion he has bicycled his camera throughout North Brooklyn recording both unique and iconic views and presenting them in beautifully crafted black and white prints.

Don Burmeister also presents straight-forward imagery, showing some of the prints from Safe-T-Gallery’s very first show “Every Gallery in Williamsburg and Greenpoint.” This is series of color photographs equally inspired by Ed Ruscha, the Bechers and various Irish tourist posters of pubs. Unlike the pubs though, almost all the galleries seem to be closed.

Gail Thacker’s images present a stormy and emotional jolt. The streets of Williamsburg are seen through a matrix of chance deterioration and chemical instability, her images containing areas of both dream-like clarity and apocalyptic beauty; they may be the closest we come to seeing how people in the 23rd century look back at our world.

“Viewer Discretion” is a series of large color, process-driven diptychs by Rachel Street that very much capture the artistic climate of Williamsburg today. Viewers are invited to name the photographs themselves, but only from a list of 3 provided by the models who were in turn prompted by the photographer. Street writes, “We have an obsession with meaning and purpose; I challenge the viewer to attribute definition to my images, to answer the question of story and purpose.”

The witty and deceptive drawings of Williamsburg scenes by Susan Hamburger, round out the show. Working in a style that combines designs from Spode china, the traditions of tourist site tchotchkes, and the pleasures of the19th Century American tromp l’oeil tricksters, Hamburger produces drawings that have been described by one reviewer as “wickedly en pointe.”