teleportraiture.com
May 18-31, 2012
Opening reception Friday, May 18th, 7-9 pm
Space Womb Gallery
22-48 Jackson Ave. #1
Long Island City, NY 11101
teleportraiture.com
May 18-31, 2012
Opening reception Friday, May 18th, 7-9 pm
Space Womb Gallery
22-48 Jackson Ave. #1
Long Island City, NY 11101
Teleportraiture
by Janet Bruesselbach
teleportraiture.com
Exhibition May 18-31, 2012
Opening Reception Friday, May 18th, 7-9pm
Space Womb Gallery
22-48 Jackson Ave.
Long Island City, NY 11101

Teleportraiture is a series of small, intimate oil portraits, painted from live poses, by remote video chat, via Skype, Google Hangout, or iChat. Janet Bruesselbach launched Teleportraiture in 2011 as a Kickstarter campaign. The subject of each portrait is a backer of the campaign, or a loved one volunteered by the backer.
Janet is pleased to announce that the 45 resulting paintings, completed between October 2011 and February 2012, will be displayed in a 2-week gallery exhibition in New York City, in downtown Long Island City, to be more precise. Attendance at the opening reception on Friday, May 18th, will also be possible remotely through a simultaneous online video chat.
The pricing and experimentalism of the series made the fine art portrait experience open to people who had never before considered commissioning one. The subjects include the artist’s friends and relatives as well as people met only through the campaign, and only online. Some posed from the other side of the world, others from the same room, all framed by their computer screens. The ages of subjects ranged from under a year old to septuagenarian. Many subjects had never used video chat before. The project reflects a moment when a flexible technology is still finding its social niche.
Janet has been working as a portrait artist since she was 15, and was further trained at RISD and the New York Academy of Art. Her painting is traditional but fresh and lively, and feeds on the energy of interaction with a live subject. Paintings reflect on both the artist’s personality and her subjects’. Yet as artifacts of sittings, they are not quite realistic, and often contain traces of awkwardness in every level of communication.
Some of the portraits remain available for purchase, as are a limited number of catalogs. The artist will be working in the gallery and will be available for live video chat Monday (21, 29), Tuesday (22, 30), and Thursday (24), from 12-6pm EST. The gallery is also open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 12-6pm. To commission a portrait during this or another time, to schedule a viewing, and for any other inquiries, contact: janet@bruesselbach.com (310) 617-3366
I switched hosts, and there may still be some problems with the wordpress install, so if you run into anything broken, email me. In the meantime, the pages for Teleportraiture and Blind Reproduction, my most recent projects, are still relatively stable. Catalogs are for sale for the latter, and of course commissions of the former, while I ramp up for the show in May.

Linsey, oils on panel, 11x9in, from a live pose over Skype
Do you see, over to the right, that widget for an indiegogo campaign? And up there, under “projects”, Blind Reproduction? That’s a curatorial project I bullied 30 people into, and I make a point of paying people for their work. Time is running out, and we need sponsors, supporters, everything, so we can print a catalog, pay exhibition costs, and keep making art.
BLIND REPRODUCTION
March 10 – April 15, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday, March 10, 6-9pm
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East 3rd St. 2nd Floor (Between Ave C & D, near F at 2nd Ave or Delancey/Essex)
New York, NY 10009 (212) 674-3778 info@tribes.org / gatheringofthetribes@gmail.com
You are cordially invited to what may be the very last art show at Tribes. Inspired by the different descriptions Steve Cannon’s visitors would give of the art on the walls, and by taking the blind professor to art openings, curator Janet Bruesselbach organized an elaborate art and writing project between 13 artists and writers. It aims to consider the subjectivity of attentive visuality in art writing and the absurdity of symbolic imagery.
The artists were invited to contribute a small two-dimensional work, and commit to another. Images, titles, size and media information were then assigned to the writers, who were charged with describing the art as thoroughly and sincerely as possible. These descriptions were nearly randomly assigned to the contributing artists, who were tasked with recreating the artwork they thought the writer had described, without knowing the artist or seeing the original image.
The first stage of translation from visual to verbal varies hugely in style and focus, even given stylistic restrictions. The artist’s job is even harder and even more subject to the variations of personality and style. Not only was it hard to communicate the most basic aspects of artwork or even the rules of the game, the variations in series are indescribable. The resulting illustration of mis/communication varies from wondrous to farcical and demonstrates the impossibility of translation.

Original acrylic painting by Alexis Duque, interpreted by BMIP in digital drawing collage from Allison Moore's writing.
Participating artists: Participating Writers:
Alexis Duque Allison Moore
Lorra Jackson Maddie Drake
Brian Elig Josh Crowley
Blair Kamage Jenny Bhatt
Carly Bodnar Casey Plett
Robert Scott Kaitlin Heller
Joseph Materkowski Adam Kavulic
Samuel Bjorgum Zane Hart
Lauren Kolesinskas Matt Keeley
Jessica Daly Amanda Spitzer
David Hollenbach Jon Boulier
BMIP (Babyhead) Ammon Ford
Nick Musaelian Chris Heffernan
Please contribute to our campaign before March 3 for perks indiegogo.com/Blind-Reproduction
Contact the curator: janet@bruesselbach.com

Self Portrait with Negative Feedback, Oils on canvas, 27x35in, 2011.
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The old custom “Gnarwal” site is now at janetbruesselbach.com.