Matthew C. LangeMichelle LeftherisAdam RyderPhoebe Streblow

Rational Formal

Rational Formal is a collaborative curatorial project developed by Matthew C. Lange, Michelle Leftheris, Adam Ryder and Phoebe Streblow. Ideas for this exhibition emerged through sustained conversations amongst all participants, regarding the subjects, intents, aesthetics, and strategies in each other’s approach to photography.

At a passing glance, divergences in the artists’ fi eld of action appear sig-nifi cant. While Matthew C. Lange repurposes mid-century information devices to theorize a cosmological social system referred to as The Plum-met Machine, Michelle Leftheris interweaves photography, sculpture, and video to delineate or transverse corporeal and psychical spaces. Closer to Lange’s interest in generative systems, Adam Ryder’s work focuses on the creation of narratives combining authored and found images referencing the parafi ctional Renovatio Imperii organization. Phoebe Streblow uses photographs and collage to examine personal and collective unconscious through sibylline astrological perspectives.

Differences notwithstanding, the conditions and means by which all art-ists employ photographic media converge around common values and a willingness to open artistic creation to public or interpersonal discourse. Using the perceived objectivity of image-making, presentation and re-production devices to convey abstract notions or liminal states, Rational Formal consistently references informational or museological display. This mode of presentation combines artworks, sketches, inspiration boards, diagrams, props, related ephemera, and texts, offering them to collec-tive re-evaluation while demanding that their conceptual underpinnings remain central.

⊕♃♎︎ 0º29’In A Collection Of Perfect Specimens Of Many Biological Forms, A But-terfly Displays The Beauty Of Its Wings, Its Body Impaled By A Fine Dart

⊕“This cabinet card presents an image of an older man in his fraternal organization garb. Note the large star on his jacket. There is no informa-tion on the card to assist in identifying the gentleman in the photograph, nor to identify the photographer and location of the studio. Perhaps a visitor to the Cabinet Card Gallery can examine the clothing in the im-age, and identify the particular fraternal organization represented in the photograph. The card stock of this cabinet card is quite thin, making it likely that the photograph was produced in the early years of cabinet card photography (1870’s or early 1880’s)”

⊕The Plummet Machine is a rational machine. It formulates a theoretical model for allocating power amongst a finite quantity of organic expres-sions.

⊕6CO2 + 6H2O ------> C6H12O6 + 6O2

⊕Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (582-565 CE) sought to reconquer the lost Western half of the historical Roman Empire through the ambitious but only partially-realized Renovatio Imperii or “Restoration of the Empire.”

⊕☽♊︎ 4o33’ A Revolutionary Magazine Asking for Action

⊕An Organization: 1. Archaeological site; 2. An artifact as aberration; 3. The evidence, rationalized; 4. Evidence, in situ; 5. The evidence for evi-dence to come; 6. Grounds for hypotheses; 7. The artifact as overarching evidence.

⊕a dark shape that appears on a surfacewhen someone or something moves betweenthe surface and a source of light

⊕A Synthesis: [Sidekick / The Sheriff (A Kin To Gregor Samsa)], [Plumb Bob / The Shadow of the Atomic Bomb (Sidekick / The Executive Board)], [A Gang of Desperadoes / The Execu-tive Board (The Shadow of the Atomic Bomb)], [Plumb Bob / A Kin to Gregor Samsa (A Gang of Desperadoes / The Sheriff)]

⊕History <> Eternity / Linear <> Cyclical / Dogma <> Ritual / Rationality <> Magic / Waking Reality <> Altered States / Science <> Art

⊕Two forms moving continuously in front of each other interrupting vision in a constant eclipse of perception.

⊕In American architecture, neoclassicism was one expression of the Ameri-can Renaissance movement, ca 1890–1917; its last manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture, and its very last, large public projects were the Lincoln Memorial, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the American Museum of Natural History’s Roosevelt Memorial. These were considered stylistic anachronisms when they were finished.

⊕ ☊♌︎2o53’A Middle-Aged Woman, Her Long Hair Flowing Over Her Shoulders And In A Braless Youthful Garment.

⊕“Their power lies in the occult, (magic rituals) and in economy - money creates power. The Illuminati own all the International banks, the oil-busi-nesses, the most powerful businesses of industry and trade, they infiltrate politics and education and they own most governments - or at the very least control them. They even own Hollywood and the Music Industry.” –Wes Penre

⊕“I will tell, in fact, how this strange man carried with him, in his bag, instru-ments that I had never seen before then, which he called his wondrous machines. Machines, he said, are an effect of art, which is nature’s ape, and they reproduce not its forms but the operation itself.”

⊕“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical sub-stances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Texts:

Author’s notes (AR). || Author’s notes (MCL). || Jacques-Alain Miller. The Seminars of Jacques Lacan: Book II: the Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge University Press, MA. 1988. || C.G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Revised edition. ed. Aniela Jaffe. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books,1989. || Author’s notes (ML). || Richard Stone. Unpublished manuscript (“Who are the illuminati?”). 2004. || Diane Arbus. unpublished manuscript, quoted in Going Where I’ve Never Been: The Photography of Diane Arbus. (film) Dir. John Musili. 1972. || Joseph Campbell. Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. New World Library. Novato, CA. 2013. || Author’s notes (AR). || Author’s notes (MCL). || Anon. “Sensitive Plant” http://www.mon-ticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/sensitive-plant. || Pat Geisler, “The Magical Chart.” http://alabe.com. - Author’s notes (MCL). – Author’s notes (ML). || Michael Conneely, “The Grand Trine”, http://starwheel.wordpress.com, May 30, 2012. || Anon. Unpublished manuscript. || Elsie Wheeler, Dane Rudhyar. An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transfor-mations and its 360 Symbolic Phases. Vintage Books, NY. 1974 || Anon. Unpublished manuscript. || Author’s notes (MCL). || Author’s notes (ML). || Author’s notes (AR). || Author’s notes (PS) || Author’s notes (MCL). || Au-thor’s notes (ML) || Author’s notes (MCL). || Author’s notes (PS). || Author’s notes (ML). || Wes Penre. The Secret Order of the Illuminati. http://www.illuminati-news.com/moriah.htm. Nov 12, 1998. || Umberto Eco. The Name of The Rose. Harcourt Brace & Company, New York. 1983. C.G. Jung. Modern Man in Search of a Soul: 2nd Edition. Routledge, New Jersey. 2001.

Opposite Page: Phoebe Streblow, Trine of Air, 2015.

Exhibition view, L to R: Adam Ryder, Michelle Leftheris, Phoebe Streblow, Matthew C. Lange.

Exhibition view, L to R: Adam Ryder, Michelle Leftheris, Phoebe Streblow, Matthew C. Lange.

Exhibition view, L to R: Michelle Leftheris, Matthew C. Lange, Phoebe Streblow.

Exhibition view, L to R: Michelle Leftheris, Matthew C. Lange, Phoebe Streblow.

Michelle Leftheris. L to R: Morivivi, 2014; Interior Sun, 2015, Hollow Earth, 2015.

Michelle Leftheris. L to R: Morivivi, 2014; Interior Sun, 2015, Hollow Earth, 2015.

Adam Ryder, selections from Renovatio Imperii, 2015 (work in progress.)

Adam Ryder, selections from Renovatio Imperii, 2015 (work in progress.)

Exhibition view, L to R: Adam Ryder, Michelle Leftheris, Phoebe Streblow, Matthew C. Lange.

Exhibition view, L to R: Adam Ryder, Michelle Leftheris, Phoebe Streblow, Matthew C. Lange.

Rational Formal performing R/F/A/V, Armory Arts Week 2015, NURTUREart Gallery.

Rational Formal performing R/F/A/V, Armory Arts Week 2015, NURTUREart Gallery.

NURTUREart Non-Profit, Inc is a 501(c)3 New York State licensed federally tax-exempt chari-table organization founded in 1997 by George J. Robinson.

NURTUREart receives support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, including member item funding from City Council Mem-bers Stephen Levin and Antonio Reynoso, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

NURTUREart is also supported by the Andy War-hol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council of Northern Ireland, Harold and Colene Brown Foundation, Con Edison, Czech Center New York, Edelman, the Francis Greenburger Charitable Fund of the Jewish Communal Fund, the Golden Rule Foun-dation, Greenwich Collection Ltd., the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Walentas Family Founda-tion, and the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foun-dation.

We receive in-kind support from Lagunitas, So-ciete Perrier, Tekserve, and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

NURTUREart is grateful for significant past sup-port from the Liebovitz Foundation and the Gre-enwall Foundation, and to the many generous individuals and businesses whose contributions have supported us throughout our history. Fi-nally, we would like to acknowledge the artists who have contributed works of art to past bene-fits—our continued success would be impossible without your generosity.

Brooklyn, NY. April 2015 / Book Design: Marco Antonini and Ido Michaeli / Editing/Copyediting: NURTUREart Non Profit Inc. / All Images, cour-tesy the artists.

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