02 Nov 2015

Forms and Functions: a 4 day exhibit featuring the works of Robert Samartino and Ross Carlisle

New York, New York - The 103 Allen St. Gallery is proud to present Forms and Functions, an exhibition of works from Brooklyn based artists Robert Samartino and Ross Carlisle.

Forms and Functions collectively focuses on the identities of boxers, soldiers, and the labor-intensive working class. Through the use of body language, movement, and surface texture Samartino and Carlisle work to explore their subjects' varied and pliable identities. As colors blend and forms fade from the background, both artists allow their figures to remain focused on their tasks at hand and oblivious to the vacuums and distortions around them.

Brooklyn based Ross Carlisle focuses on the modern day warrior class; people that hone their physical and mental selves to the point of mechanical efficiency. Creating double images and out of focus forms, Carlisle implies movement throughout his works. As boxers slip and feint to avoid incoming punches, soldiers prep and secure their gear. As faces become unclear or intentionally censored, poise and posture is all that is left to define many of Carlisle's subjects - revealing them to be individual emobodiments of their actions rather than products of their agency.

Robert Samartino's scenes of working men are informed by Karl Marx's theory of value as objectified labor time. In his works, the physical environment and the human figure flow in the circulation of capital. Inconsistencies and partitions of concrete and asphalt display the accumulation of labor necessary to its maintenance. Mirroring this, Samartino's constant attention to surface - patching and replacing - relates to the layering and labor time of the painting process itself.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ross Carlisle was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1986. He studied painting at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio and received his BFA in 2008. In 2015, for his paintings of Brooklyn based boxers (exhibited in Forms and Functions), he received a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Robert Samartino was born in Long Island in 1989. After finishing his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011, he has built several bodies of painting and sculpture that confront the practicalities of working class life as well as the nature of capitalism's expansion and accumulation.

The 103 Allen St. Gallery is located at 103 Allen St, New York, NY 10002 and will be open Friday, Nov. 6 through Sunday, Nov. 8 from 10 am to 6 pm. For further information and visuals please contact Hannah Kauffman at Hannah.e.Kauffman@gmail.com

Forms and Functions is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) and is powered by miLES, a one-stop-shop for every pop-up: matching, booking, logistics, insurance, furnishing, social media, and sponsorship.

For additional works and information:
www.RossCarlisle.com www.RobertSamartino.com