Pamela Valfer
Saturday April 27th, 2013 6pm

The Bindery Projects is excited to present a gallery talk with:
Harold Mendez, Pam Valfer and Nate Young


Mendez’s Texts for Nothing is a fictional conversation between two characters: BrailleTeeth and Nobody as they maneuver an uncertain, barren landscape and a navigation of their self and identity. These individuals confront the metaphysical desire for meaning while sharing a difficult journey across a landscape abstract and universal yet sharply particularized. Questioning the definitions of representation, specifically in addressing the real with the imaginary, this work attempts to depict a story of the self and the struggle of rendering into language how one recognizes, defines, and constitutes oneself and the world.
With appropriations from Jean-Paul Sartre, TV on the Radio, Deadwood, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvior, Shadi Abdel Salam, The Night of Counting the Years, Al-Mummia, Ralph Ellison, Stephen Wright, Cormac McCarthy, Kay Ryan, Jacques Lacan, Franz Kafka, Henry James, Albert Camus, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, Edward Albee, Kobo Abe, W.G. Sebald, Arundhati Roy, and other sources.

Pam Valfer uses Constructivist design and Brutalist architecture as the tableau to explore the dystopia of modernist social design. Cabrini Green (as seen through the set of TV show Good Times), and Riverside Plaza (built by Ralph Rapson emulating Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation), become the starting point for this “simulation”. The drawings become both code and coded. It is both the abstraction and reality simultaneously; a self-subsuming appropriation.

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The Bindery Project presents:

4 Fragments
Opening Reception Saturday, March 30th
7 - 9 pm

Artists:
Pamela Valfer (St Paul)
Harold Mendez (Chicago)
Andy Robert (Los Angeles)
Matt Siegle (Los Angeles)

From Chaos, Milieus and Rhythms are born… Rhythm is the milieus’ answer to chaos. What chaos and rhythm have in common is the in-between – between two milieus, rhythm- chaos or the chaosmos: “Between night and day, between that which is constructed and that which grows naturally, between mutations from the inorganic to the organic, from plant to animal, from animal to humankind, yet without this series constituting a progression…” in this in-between, chaos becomes rhythm, not inexorably, but it has a chance to.
- Gilles Deleuze

The Bindery Projects is located at:
708 Vandalia Street 4th floor
Saint Paul, MN, 55114

Gallery Hours are:
Monday
10am – 7pm
Friday
10am – 4pm
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Artforum Review
ARTFORUM Critic's Pick 10/2012

Pamela Valfer and Christina Empedocles
BURNET GALLERY

901 Hennepin Avenue

September 14–November 11

“Exactitude,” the title of Pamela Valfer and Christina Empedocles’s elegant exhibition, may capture the artists’ impeccably precise technique, but it misses the point: What makes the drawings compelling is not craft per se but, especially in Valfer’s case, the works’ haunting conceptual complexity. Both artists create an afterlife for the objects they depict. For Empedocles that means patiently drawing crumpled-up notes, old movie posters, cutouts, and paper dolls, while Valfer conglomerates images familiar from popular culture, iconic tourist landmarks, and pieces of architectural history into what she calls “landscape simulation.”
The elements of Valfer’s self-conscious simulations are diligently identified without fault: The mountain vista from The Shining here, a postapocalyptic Planet of the Apes reference there; geologic sights—England’s Gordale Scar, the Wisconsin Dells—combined with Checkpoint Charlie or the Villa Savoye. Valfer’s point, in part, is that actual and virtual experiences have become inseparable, even indistinguishable. Through the lens of popular culture, we see landscape not for what it is but for what it reminds us of: Devil’s Tower leads straight to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The result is a series of ghostly, uncanny drawings that play on the tension between déjà vu and a calculated strangeness.

But if the drawings suggest a certain blending together, a disappearing act into a world of digital sameness where anything can be reformatted and reshuffled endlessly, the insistence on naming belies a sensibility troubled by the specter of loss. The look of Valfer’s drawings, pale as if on the verge of fading into white paper, suggests a similarly vested melancholic tinge. Unmediated experience may be out of our reach, but have we truly become unable or unwilling to distinguish actual from virtual? Valfer’s process, obstinately analog, suggests an insistence on the artist’s hand, a desire to linger, tangibly, with the tableaux of lost worlds and bygone histories. Ultimately, Valfer’s drawings resonate with a strange cautionary twist: Will we truly understand what is at stake in the disappearance of distinction before we are left to mourn its loss?
— Christina Schmid


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Christina Empedocles and Pamela Valfer / Exactitude
Exhibition runs: September 14 through November 11, 2012
Opening reception September 14th, 6 - 9pm

Burnet Gallery at Le Méridien Chambers Minneapolis
901 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN, 55403
612.767.6900
www.burnetgallery.com
www.lemeridienchambers.com/art

Painstaking, meticulous, almost photographic detail connect the works by Christina Empedocles and Pamela Valfer in “Exactitude” the new show opening Fri., Sept 14 at Burnet Gallery in Le Méridien Chambers, Minneapolis. Both artists also explore the concept of memory and reality.

Valfer creates hyper-real, hybridized landscapes that merge real and imaginary landscapes giving equal weight to nature and fiction. She juxtaposes scenic natural elements with iconic urban landmarks. In one piece the cliffs of Gordale Scar, North Yorkshire blend with Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, Germany. Another drawing blends the pastoral serenity of Little House on the Prairie with the urban, tenement apartment of Good Times.

Empedocles’ work plays with the concept of memory and the questionable veracity of its imperfect nature. Everything she depicts is almost three-dimensional in its realism yet incomplete. The subject is frequently obscured, or partially hidden. Letters are crumbled, comic strips torn away, illustrations cut, curled about the edges or torn. She only reveals part of the story leaving the viewer to ponder the possibilities of what is left untold.

Pamela Valfer (www.pamelavalfer.com) received a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art & Design and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from University of Minnesota. Valfer has received grants from The Bush Education Fund & the Minnesota State Arts Board, as well as a residency grant from the Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited her visual artwork in Australia, Japan, the United States and was recently included in EVA International Visual Arts Biennial (Ireland). Since 2004 Valfer has been an instructor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, College of Visual Arts and Metropolitan State University.

Christina Empedocles (www.christinaempedocles.com ) has been awarded public art projects at the University of California, San Francisco, and with the San Francisco Arts Commission. Her work has been included in New American Paintings, Studio Visit Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine, Manifest’s International Drawing Annual, and Curvy. She was a finalist for the Tornesol Award for 2010, and currently shows in New York, Denver and San Francisco.

For questions and/or sales inquiries please contact: Jennifer Phelps at 612.767.6824 or jphelps@burnetgallery.com

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Artists talk: Pamela Valfer at Occupy Space's exhibition "Common Place". Chris Hayes Art
Interview from "Common Place" Exhibition @ eva International Biennial of Visual Art; Occupy Space/Istabraq Hall, Limerick Ireland
(See Links Page)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUafh5NsDVw&feature=relmfu

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Local Artist Interviews - Pamela Valfer
(See Links Page)
http://www.local-artist-interviews.com/2012/04/pamela-valfer-drawing.html
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COMMON PLACE
ALLEN BREWER PAMELA VALFER

LOCATION: OCCUPY SPACE (ISTABRAQ HALL), LIMERICK CITY COUNCIL BUILDINGS. MERCHANTS QUAY, LIMERICK CITY
DATES OF EXHIBITION: JUNE 15 - JULY 30
OPENING EVENT: 5 - 7pm JUNE 14TH 2012

Artists and spouses Pamela Valfer and Allen Brewer are pleased to announce their upcoming exhibition COMMON PLACE, to be held at Occupy Space (ISTABRAQ HALL), Limerick City Ireland. In January 2011 the couple spent 4 months in residence at the Burren College of Art, an experience that challenged their notion of “place”. The work in this exhibition seeks to explore this topic through questions of contemporary landscape, memory, beauty and overall questioning of one’s “authentic” experience.

Brewer’s work involves renderings and readymades based solely on other’s descriptions of an experienced place. His process is predicated on the use of language as the only formal cue for image making, thus abolishing traditional landscape tropes of romance and emotion. The work addresses our emotional attachment to objects and environments, highlighting awkward linguistic limitations attributed to memory and place.

While Brewer’s limitations affect the outcome, Valfer’s interests lie within possibility. This investigation is articulated through pinpoint accurate drawings and collages of constructed vistas, monuments, ruinous modernist inspired memorials and architectural models. These newly constructed forms are a clearer representation for Valfer, who acknowledges her distance to nature as dystopic yet nostalgic.

Coinciding with the exhibition COMMON PLACE at Occupy Space will be the Eva International Biennial of Visual Art, (19 May-12 Aug), curated by Annie Fletcher.
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The Critic's Show - Hopkin's Center for the Arts
Four Critics Highlight Their Picks for Emerging and Underexposed Artists
Redepenning Gallery, Hopkins Center for the Arts
April 19 – May 20, 2012

1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins MN 55343

Gallery hours: 8 am-8pm Monday-Friday, 10am-8 pm Saturday, noon-5pm Sunday
Opening reception Thursday, 4/26 6-8 pm, Panel discussion at 7 pm

What makes art compelling and who are some artists to watch over the next couple years? This is a question that “The Critics’ Show” strives to answer. Four critics, who are all local arts scene notables and practicing artists themselves-- Sean Smuda, Dan Noyes, Stephanie Xenos, and Andy DuCett, were asked to select artists who they felt are underexposed in the region and deserving of greater attention. The resulting exhibition will cover a wide range of genres and styles. The show is on view starting April 19th.

A reception on Thursday, April 26th will feature a panel discussion at 7:00 pm by the critics to explain the what moved them to select the artists on view. The artists will also be on hand at the reception, providing an opportunity for guests to discuss their work with them.

Andy DuCett teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Wisconsin-Stout. His work has been shown in galleries in around the US, as well as many Twin Cities locations. He has been published in New American Paintings, Vita.mn, Paper Darts, The Portland Mercury, Illiterate Magazine, DailyServing.com, as well as internationally. He recently was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to make a drawing for their First Free Saturday Program, and is included in the curated registry of the Drawing Center in New York City.

DuCett’s selected artists are: Allen Brewer, Ryuta Nakajima, Pamela Valfer

Sean Smuda is an artist and curator living and working in Minneapolis. Last year he was appointed the Cultural Liaison to Minneapolis's sister city of Tours, France and Minnesota State Fair Photography Juror. He runs his non-profit gallery space The Shoebox Gallery, he has served on the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program panel at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and has had over twenty published articles.

Sean’s selected artists are: Katelyn Farstad, Nate Young, and John Fleishcher

Dan Noyes is a professor and a practitioner of architecture. He is the founder and academic dean of Vesper College. He has been involved in teaching design for 15 years and is committed to bridging the gaps between design focuses. The title he is most proud of however, is that of sculptor.

Noyes’ selected artists are: Shannyn Joy Potter, and Kevin Fitzke

Stephanie Xenos is a regular contributor to the arts section of Mpls/St Paul magazine. Stephanie has also written about visual arts for mnartists.org and the online journal Quodlibetica. In addition to arts writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in Arts and Cultural Leadership at the University of Minnesota and working on her first novel.

Xenos’s selected artists are: Chuck Avery and Jenn Ackerman







CUBE Open 2011 Exhibition
CUBEOpen 2011 Exhibition
16 December 2011 - 4 February 2012

Preview: 15th December 2011 6-8pm
Exhibition runs: 16th December 2011 - 4th February 2012
The University of Salford's CUBE gallery is delighted to be announcing its annual CUBEOpen 2011.

Participating artists:
Andrew Brown, Samuel Capps, Mark Clare, Justine Cook, Aideen Doran and Fionnuala Doran, Kelda Free and David Brazier, Becky Gee, Isabelle Hayeur, Flis Holland, Philip Kennedy, Seulki Ki, Ian Kirkpatrick , Elizabeth Kwant, Hannah Leighton–Boyce, Manchester Modernist Society, Fabien Marques, , Katie McGown, Rosalie Monod de Froideville, Charlotte Mortensson, Lauren O'Grady, Simon Parish, Nathan Pendlebury, Kristin Posehn, Rosey Prince, Robin Pugh, Amanda Rice, Ailie Rutherford, Jennie Savage, Shift (from Shift//Delete), Jon Spencer, Jenny Steele, Matthew Thompson, Tristan Thomson, Pamela Valfer, Mary-Ruth Walsh, Peter Ward, Jiho Won.