Shawn Bishop-Leo, Connected, 18” x 18", mixed media on canvas



Shawn Bishop-Leo, Moist , 12" x 12", mixed media on canvas



Shawn Bishop-Leo, KO, 20” x 24”, mixed media on canvas


Allison Edge, Tomorrowland at Night. 48" x 48" Oil on canvas, 2008

Gotta Love Kelso of Brooklyn. thats all we pour.

Leo Kesting Gallery Presents:
GALLERY 1: Shawn Bishop-Leo - Femme Fatale
GALLERY 2: Like The Spice Gallery - Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?
July 17 - August 3, 2008
Opening Night Reception: Thursday July 17th from 7:00 - 10:00 pm
812 Washington St (at the corner of Gansevoort) New York NY 10014
8th Ave A, C, E and L train Stop or 1,2,3 to 14th Street
Tuesday - Sunday from 11:00 am until 7:00 pm
Admission is free to the public
phone: 917-650-3760 / 917-292-8865
http://www.leokesting.com

GALLERY 1: Shawn Bishop-Leo - Femme Fatale CATALOG OF WORKS

In Shawn Bishop-Leo's first solo show, Femme Fatale opening Thursday July 17 at Leo Kesting Gallery, the artist explores the archetypal characters from Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae, through innovative mixed-media and compositional technique. Shawn's multi-layered pieces incorporate vintage wallpapers, fabrics and found objects to, as she explains, "ground the subject matter in the visual world that we are exposed to. The patterns are often repetitive and geometrical but when layered become jumbled and irrational, pushing background into foreground, object into subject and subject into symbol." In this particular exhibition Leo's use of the stereotyped feminine art as domestic craft are paired against the strong emotional portraits displaying the feminine mystique in coiled ferocity.

In K.O., 20" x 24" mixed media on canvas 2008, a woman is presented with her fist cocked back ready to strike. The under-painting’s streaked rays converge toward the star strewn edge where an imaginary victim lies just outside of the canvas. Here the swirling shapes of the wallpaper evoke vaginal shapes as they swirl from background to foreground. The embroidered brass knuckles at the bottom left turn feminine adornment into weapon as shredded fabric and tangled threads undulate over the surface. The figure seems to literally punch the stuffing out of her opponent and yet her dominance has an almost relaxed self-contained expression in the features.

Leo describes her imagery as "oscillating between the coy and the fierce, a sort of parlay between dominance and submission." In Connected, the heroine clutches a telephone gazing earnestly into the distance. The crackled “sky” of the background symbolizes the intensity of her conversation while the encroaching floral motifs seem to be a sort of feminine laurel partially adorning her features while simultaneously obscuring them. Multi-national coins lay scattered over the surface representing the universal currency of women’s coercive lingual abilities.

GALLERY 2: Like The Spice Gallery - Have you seen the Horizon Lately?

Like the Spice is proud to present Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, an exhibition featuring contemporary landscapes by
Rachel Beach, Liz Brown, Anna Druzcz, Allison Edge, Dean Goelz, Nora Herting, Eric LoPresti and Ross Racine and hosted by the always-on-the-cutting-edge Leo Kesting Gallery in the meatpacking district.

Landscape art has historically had more to do with artists and the cultures they live in than with the actual lay of the land. Today, as natural landscapes are further than ever from our day-to-day lives, landscape art is even more tenuously connected to any sense of a natural pristine beauty. Landscapes today are phantasmagoric representations of communities, ecologies, memories and consumer fantasies. Most places we spend our time in are either haphazard mishmashes of the architecture of necessity or environments purposefully designed to encourage our consumption.

The artists in this exhibition combine the fantasy of and longing for a place we belong with a deep understanding of the near impossibility of finding it. Dystopian visions of landscapes in ruins, works depicting the sublime horror of battlefields, fantasy suburban developments with nonsense layouts and abstract memories of what nature was like populate this show. There are also moments of levity. A spaceship presides over a stuntman’s ring of fire in the desert, a duck-human hybrid contemplates nature and we get a peek of Space Mountain as we stroll through Tomorrowland in a technicolored photo-memory.

Like The Spice is proud to have been invited to jump aboard the latest anti-mainstream commando operation to be organized by the Kesting/Capla/Leo trinity- originating of course, in Williamsburg, then hurtling through the L-train tunnel like a banshee on speed in order to infiltrate the Meat Packing site of the future Whitney museum- symbolically trail-blazing ahead of the establishment which will be bringing up the rear sometime circa 2012…The CK-LK work ethic of do it now in order to open up new territory (for art and artists) is based on generosity, motivation and passion, and can only be commended and admired.

Femme Fatale & Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? opens to the public with a reception for the artists at Leo Kesting Gallery on Thursday July 17th from 7:00 until 10:00 pm.

From its origins as Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn, the Leo Kesting Gallery launched in 2003 and developed an aggressive campaign to introduce new figurative artists to collectors and art supporters. Leo Kesting offers the art viewing public an opportunity to see forthcoming talents in an intimate setting where undiscovered, cutting-edge artists are presented to the contemporary art scene.

Leo Kesting Gallery is located at 812 Washington St at the corner of Gansevoort in Manhattan's Meat Packing District. A, C, E, or L train to 8th Ave and 14th Street or 1,2,3 train to 14th Street. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Sunday from 11am until 7pm.