Number 35 is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Christopher Daniels. Young American artists continue to deal with political subject matter in increasingly subtle and impersonal ways. Such is the case in the works of Christopher Daniels.

Using Crayola crayons, Daniels fills the two large canvases on display for this exhibition. His characters are mostly faceless miniatures either performing everyday acts or acting out a narrative for a larger story. They are interwoven with symbols: arrows, x-marks, flames, disjointed text, located near a tell-all legend that the viewer must find and decipher. Both canvases are dense, with compositions held together by impossible landscapes where ice floes coexist alongside deserts.

At once endearing and twisted, these tiny characters tell sophisticated stories. Drawn mostly from his travels, Daniels relates to his viewer the social and political situations of people found outside of urban areas, usually well after paved roads end. He does not censor nor take sides. He simply depicts these stories as they are revealed to him.

Not all narratives are weighted with social commentary. Daniels peppers his composition with whimsical stories and fantastic creatures acting upon, or being acted upon, by the work's population. No story possesses a greater significance than the other. They are all simply a part of a cycle of a life, harmonious at one moment and at war the next. 

Walking the streets of New York City, one will surely encounter a building enshrouded in scaffolding. Whether the temporary structure was erected so that the existing building can be restored or destroyed and rebuilt, the large flat planks of blue plywood are easily a signal for an architectural shift. It is the observation of this secondary architectural phenomenon, supporting constructions and temporary structures, that is the starting point for Kreissl & Kerber's fragile architectural landscapes.

Kreissl & Kerber are attracted by the places "at which a town's system of order breaks" because these places are free from narrow-minded planning regulations and are liberated for uncommon architectural ideas and individual solutions. From a vocabulary of forms, the duo develops structures and patterns, computer generated vector drawings and three-dimensional sketches, which they then assemble into landscapes and urban panorama.

Landscapes begin where the detail, the multiplicity of individual sites, moves into the background and the entirety begins. The idea of the entirety creates itself in the viewer and the ideal standpoint. Kreissl & Kerber, however, are not only interested in the whole, but in the shift in standpoint that dismantles the landscape into individual elements. Movement is in many ways a constituting element in the duo's installations.

Individual sculptural elements often remain without a recognizable function and yet are multifunctional at the same time. Their constructions are always answers to the question of how the abundance of their own artistic material can be presented in a sculpturally consistent and yet sensual form. They seek high tech materials; yet in their unusual compositions endow these with a different function than the conventionally intended one. In such an experimental employment the building blocks are extremely reduced and brought to the limits of their inherent possibilities as constructions elements.

In this exhibition, Leitão continues her exploration of human alienation from nature. Through intricate
drawings of space suit-clad humans entangled in the foliage of creeping plants, Leitão depicts
our relationship with nature to be estranged.

These series of drawings introduce a new concept in her environmental narrative: the thicket. Throughout this series, Leitão weaves in images of defunct airplanes and helicopters,
automobiles, humans and empty vessels. All are battling the ruins of a civilization and the thicket
itself. In this post-apocalyptic imagery, Leitão conveys her compassion of the human experience
in the detail of each piece. Her figures maneuver through the composition barefoot and barehanded,
some with wing-like appendages lending them an unearthly appearance. What is striking
about these drawings alongside the care in their rendering is the open-ended metaphor. The
thicket is a nameless quagmire, a situation created, yet not easily escaped.