Performance Art to Be Presented by DIRTY CHURCHES

William Norton is presenting four artists whose works are deftly aware of the current reality, which they believe is similar to that shown in Orwell's 1984. The exhibition of visual artists and performance art by Dirty Churches will join together under the SFA Projects to run at the gallery at 131 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002. It will run from Thursday February 10, 2022 through Sunday March 13, 2022. The gallery is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6 pm and by appointment. The official opening will be held on Thursday, February10, 2022 from 6-8 pm. The live performance will be scheduled as covid restrictions allow. For more information about the SFA Projects, click here. For more information about the artists whose work will be present, click here or here.

"Promote Peace", "Left Curve", "Do Not Enter", "Dead End", "South and North", "Blind Drive" are just a few of Tom Burckhardt's recent series of Road Sign paintings created during the covid lockdown. When viewed in today's acrimonious political climate these seemingly innocuoueveryday signs develop new interpretations. They take a turn into the realm of the sinister and become a wry look at the world we are daily passing through. Does the "Left Curve" suggest a political course or is it really just a sign we see so often we no longer think about its other potentials? The art critic John Yau described Burckhardt's aim as to "destabilize the grand tradition of painting and sculpture while simultaneously finding non-nostalgic ways to honor them." Tom successfully does that with these images, as well.

As Phillips said to Etty Yanev in ArtSpiel, January 22, 2021, his "paintings represent the 'going wrong' aspect of our collective choices, and position a central question: what can be done?" His newest painting was actually begun 6 years ago and is inspired by Albert Pinkham Ryder's "Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse)" and "The Triumph of Death" by Bruegel, but felt too harsh at that moment, however now due to the accelerated deterioration of the state of our country and our world it has become the right time to speak these images.

William Norton is an artist and independent curator who, in the past 7 years, has mounted 35 exhibitions of contemporary artists. As an artist he has shown extensively in the US, Japan, and Europe; been reviewed in Vasari21, featured in ArtCritical for his solo show at the M David & Co., and was even generously featured by Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic in a TikTok review. From January 2020 through November 2021, during the pandemic, he ran -the gallery LTD- in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, giving voice to his community when it was needed most. These monthly exhibitions were reviewed multiple times by Etty Yanev for ArtSpiel, William Corwin in Gallery & Studio Arts Journal, and others.

Regarding his artwork, in a recent interview with the Galleria Balmain in London, he stated "My work has been long involved with researching the effects of politicized thinking in religious indoctrination and manhood's societal rites of passage. Currently I'm plumbing the coward's depths of the testosterone overdrive that fuels the anonymity and militarization of the police state's manhood myths. From the arrests, rapes, torture, murder, and disappearance of the often young protesters for democracy in Hong Kong to the violent denial of America's racist foundations and history I am casting these demons into images."

Dirty Churches is a collaborative, New York based performance art collective that explores the intersections of myth, ritual, and music through theatrical performances.The group consists of music director and founder Jesse Gelaznik, art director Rachel Blackwell, choreography / dance duo Alexandra Jacob and Constantine Alexis and musician H.Leon Harris. La MaMa Galleria said this about Dirty Churches and their opera "Era of Good Feelings"- "Dirty Churches manipulates the boundaries of theater, installation, and sculpture, orchestrating characters as they travel through layered compositions that utilize mysticism and speculative fiction to articulate conditions of our current times and ways of being."

Jesse Gelaznik's music was also recently exhibited as the multi-channel audio component of Andréa Stanislav's immersive installation "Surmatants-Mars Rising" at the Mattress Factory Museum in 2021. The video of this installation recently premiered on WQED-PBS's TV show Film Maker's Corner - Season 13. His illustrations have been called "Stunning and Eye Catching" by the New York Times for his work on Theater in Quarantine's "Footnote for the End of Time" and his music for the film H. screened at Sundance and the MoMA. Dirty Churches will be presenting both a live performance and video selections of past works.