May 4th-25th

Joe was born and raised in the southwest corner of the state of Utah and spent his junior high and high school years in Escondido, California. Much of the time between then and now is filled with almost 11 years of service in the U.S. Navy. Currently, Joe is gainfully employed by the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History at the University of San Diego as their Facilities Manager. There he is generously provided with a studio where he engages in the development of an art practice that meaningfully integrates his obsession with second-hand shopping. He completed a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art at UC San Diego in 2012

Joe will be presenting new work in sculpture, photography and collage.

Save On Everything opens with a party on May 4th. 6pm till Late.

JOEYORTY.com

Lena Lapschina

Lena used a pencil to trace the shadows from the sun through the front of the gallery on her first day in residence. It was 2pm on the last afternoon of Daylight Saving Time. She worked quickly to capture the moment and spent the rest of the week manipulating red duct tape to compose the 15′ drawing. The result was a beautifully graphic site-specific installation and a fitting first effort at our new location.

The work continued to evolve during Lena’s stay, influenced by the cumulative experience of exploring San Diego. One wall held two parallel lengths of white tape that documented an overheard conversation shouted from opposing sides of a downtown street.

Before I Start was an observant installation. It was like seeing somebody see your hometown for the very first time.

lapschina.com

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10th, 6-10PM

Helmuth Projects is proud to present The Strawberry Thief, new work by Colin Tuis Nesbit & Bill Conger.

From the artists:

‘In 1883, poet, painter, and most notably textile designer, William Morris produced the classic pattern The Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicts thieving thrushes with their strawberry loot amid a multi-hued, flowering thicket.

Set within the context of sculpture and installation based works, the exhibition both takes its title from the arguably most famous of Morris’ patterns, and uses the subject as a point of departure in shadowing the strategies used within the exhibition and contemporary art as a whole.

The installation’s austere simplicity—sculptural objects chosen by Conger placed within a light-based work by Nesbit which mimics the sensation of moonlight—becomes even more haunting in “light” of the Morris pattern.’

Colin Tuis Nesbit
http://colintuisnesbit.com

Bill Conger
http://www.billconger.com

SUMMER, 2012

Helmuth was proud to host Melissa McLean for a summer residency project that opened to the public August 31st.

Using massive mixed media, McLean’s cavernous collaged landscape vaguely resembled a storyboard for a fairy tale as conceived by an angry gorilla.

The Secret of In will run through the month of September by appointment.

SUMMER, 2012

Hess and Lindsay Preston Zappas, both San Diego natives and Cranbrook Academy of Art attendees, present new work at Helmuth Projects. The artists approach themes of Californian culture, landscape and identity.

Sourcing materials from Home Depot and dollar stores, the artists present a sound, sculptural, and photographic array of color and movement.

SPRING, 2012

SPRING, 2012

Emily Elizabeth Goodman curated an exhibition investigating the question of determinacy; how we delineate and define the things that comprise our world, how we come to determine something as one thing or another, and whether such distinctions are positive, negative or useless. The contributing artists explore the limitations of certain forms and how one thing is differentiated from another, causing us to definitively determine what something is while challenging such distinctions altogether in their practices.

Frankie Martin and Berglind Tomasdottir
Emily Sevier
Allison Spence

Spring 2012

Helmuth is proud to present a two person show featuring Mike Calway-Fagen and Joshua Miller. This is a one night event, and your best chance to say goodbye to Mike as he leaves his fair and weathered friends of San Diego. Christen his crest with your finest champagne and moisten his chest with your finest clamp-stain.

Spring, 2012

Ela Boyd and Matt Savitsky curated works from the UCSD MFA program into a framework that sought to illuminate how digital tools and networked systems affect art practice. Taken as a starting point, artists were asked to name (in a hypothetical sense) central concepts in their research as they might be interpreted by the semantic web. In other words, to identify which keywords make their work searchable.

SPRING 2012

Room Face Realness
A residency project by Matt Savitsky

Throughout his residency, Savitsky transplanted his working studio and transformed the gallery space into a boutique-style living room where he and his drag mother, David Perez (a.k.a. Mz. Perez), met for their personal sessions.

During these sessions, the two made plaster casts of their bodies and practiced drag make-up working in a collaborative fashion where stylistic friction between the roles of “drag mother” and “drag baby” posed a challenge to balance Savitsky’s aestheticized clutter with Perez’s desire for gloss finish.

As an extension of the exploration of gay cultural issues, Savitsky involves his personal relationship with his drag mother in hopes to expose the “back-stage” of drag. Through a material process, he frames a moment in which he is receiving a tradition that is passed down through touch and play.