SEASONS IN THE SUN FALL JIM HOLYOAK
October 16-27, 2006
RECEPTION: Friday, October 27, 8-10pm

New General Catalog is pleased to present the second installment of Seasons in the Sun, a series of short-term residencies taking place inside the gallery. Inspired by the spirit of locality, neighborhood, and the distinct creative impulses that reside in any given place and time, this exhibition represents an ode to Greenpoint, Brooklyn before its eventual rezoning into complete gentrification. Seasons in the Sun is a pastoral, a premature goodbye of sorts. Our friends from near and far will come help us navigate the “progress.” Resident artists have free reign of the space to make and exhibit art, play music, experiment, curate, collaborate, dissociate, make merriment, sleep, and suspend the shift and drift that is here and now.

Part Two (FALL) welcomes American born, British Columbia-raised artist Jim Holyoak. Much of this young prolific artist’s work stems from his romance with the temperate rainforests he grew up around - dense, green, and crawling with banana slugs. Holyoak is obsessed with monsters, because “they are completely real and completely imaginary.” Incorporating drawing, painting, and texts, his world is one of a playful, unleashed, and raw imagination. He draws parallels between the species, and begs the question of the value of our supposed differences, inspiring in people a discomfort with anthropocentric views of ‘god-given’ superiority. It is part warning against fundamentalism, war, and ecocide, and part reminder of the wonders of nature, one rife with sexual awkwardness, spiritual uncertainty, and an attention to human relationships with animals and big momma.

Holyoak will also bring along the wieldy Book of a Mere Fraction, a 50 lb., 40 x 40 inch volume of image collecting that has been an "obsessive, bottomless endeavor." This repository of collages houses childhood drawings, garbage, bats, dreams, relics from travels, farm animals, cigarette warnings, doodles, photo-copied text books, werewolves, ink tests, newspaper clippings, politicians, family, friends, bullies, riot cops, cephalopods, pterosaurs, moths, pamphlets, lost cat posters, lost dog posters, Egon the one-eared zombie, sex positions, the sun, the stars, undersea, mountains, swamp, forest, and everything else made of paper and curious enough to be saved. The book documents the physical and mental debris of the artist's process. It is an intimate memoir and testament of relentless art working.

Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind: perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try to learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
- Andre Breton

Visitors are welcomed to stop by the gallery during the entire residency and chat it up with the artist. For information and updates on the schedule of performances, please call the number below or check back here for further details. Many thanks to Brooklyn Brewery and Digital Society for their generous support.