SaveArtSpace is proud to present The Existential Tail, a public art exhibition in Brooklyn, NY starting August 28, 2023, curated by Dustin Yellin.

The Existential Tail selected artist are Jude Griebel, Lidia Lidia, and Seyed Alavi.

Our planet faces an abundance of crises simultaneously: from climate change, to overpopulation, disinformation, corruption, nuclear war, pandemics and inequity, the list goes on... But where do we collectively look for solutions to the world's most persistent problems? Is the real crisis one of imagination? How can innovation and creativity help build a more just and equitable future?

The Existential Tail invited artists whose work addresses the crises of the contemporary world, and asks, What is the most pressing issue of our time? If civilization is a sculpture, then we all collaborate in its formation. How do we build a world that we all want to live in, together?

During the week of August 28, 2023, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in Brooklyn, NY. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Selected Artists

Jude Griebel Anti-Human. 4" x 10" x 28". Wood, air-drying clays, adhesives, wire, acrylic. 2023. Next World Emissaries: Blue Bottle Fly. 112” x 84” x 52”. Wood, paper-mache, textiles, wire, acrylic. 2021. Photography by Blaine Campbell.

Location: Flushing Ave & Bushwick Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Jude Griebel creates intensively detailed figurative sculptures and drawings that visualize our entanglement with the surrounding world. In his works, landscapes, the species we affect, and the waste we create, coalesce in vivid forms that illustrate the reach of our impact and consumption habits. Both harbingers of ruin and agents of transformation, his works build on art historical traditions of the anthropomorphic body to reflect a planet in a state of crisis.

Griebel’s work has recently been supported by residencies at institutions including Pioneer Works, New York; International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. His work has been funded by major grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Griebel’s work is included in collections internationally including Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal; the Sakima Art Museum, Okinawa; Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee and the Volpert Foundation, New York.

Artist Statement:

I create sculptures that explore human impact on the world by fusing animate and inanimate forms into singular identities. The careful crafting of these works and their miniature details counter the central themes of hyperactive production, and on demand delivery. Laboriously carved from wood and painted, they represent hours of reflection on the meaning of being an active consumer in this world and struggling to imagine models beyond it.

Using invention, humor and speculation my work envisions new ways to visualize our behaviors and resulting global predicament. The mechanics of consumerism is a driving theme behind these works, with a specific focus on the factory food system and its implications for land depletion and climate shift. These patterns are played out on the surfaces of sculptures that express the physical and psychological fallout.

Merging human forms with those of animals, insects, architecture and the natural environment, my sculptures become intricate cosmologies of real and imagined spaces. These complex hybrid forms construct idiosyncratic narratives that explore new and fantastic understandings of eco-anxiety and speculate on possibilities beyond planetary collapse. Using an elastic sense of anatomy and scale, I visualize rampant cycles of human consumption and the resulting detriment to both the human self and surrounding world.

Connect with Jude on Instagram at @judegriebel.

Location: 5th Ave & 8th St, Brooklyn, NY

Lidia Lidia is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of visual art, performance and activism. In her work, she investigates shared human experiences and the important concerns of the day. She passionately believes that through art it is possible to shape society.

The term 'selfitis' was coined by the media in 2014 as a hoax, but the joke is now becoming real. Selfitis is an obsessive-compulsive desire to take photos of oneself and post them on social media.

Research increasingly draws connections between:

1) Heavily filtered selfies and increased body dissatisfaction. A new term has emerged to describe this phenomenon: Snapchat dysmorphia.

2) Heavy use of social media and Mental health problems above all in teens.

This work is the final stage of a 1 year long project involving two main elements: posting a different selfie every day for a year as a form of social media activism and various public performances. During Mental Health Awareness Week, using the frames shown on the billboard, I tried to self fund a campaign on META: META restricted me from advertising 'because of inauthentic behaviour or violations of our Advertising Policies or Community Standards'.

Connect with Lidia Lidia on Instagram at @justlidialidia or on Twitter: @justlidialidia

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Seyed Alavi received a Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State University and a Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Alavi’s work is often engaged with the poetics of language and space and their power to shape reality.

He has created site-specific installations for The New Museum of Contemporary Art and Franklin Furnace in New York City; The University Art Museum- Cal State Long Beach; The Museum of Santa Cruz County; The deSaisset Museum; The University Art Museum, Sonoma State; The University Art Museum, Cal State San Bernadino and San Francisco’s Capp Street Project.

His public art projects include; Fountain Head in Walnut Creek, CA; Tree of Life in Seattle, WA; Room for Hope and Flying Carpet in Sacramento, CA; Tale of Time in Kochi, Japan; Seed of Knowledge in Saint Paul, MN; Nature of Life and A Sense of Unity in San Jose, CA; Signs of the Time in Emeryville, CA; Where Is Fairfield in Fairfield, CA; Words by Roads in Oakland, Selected Words in San Rafael, CA; Forgotten Language for the City of Palo Alto; Speaking Stones, Golden Gateway and What Do You Think? in San Francisco.

He has also received grants from the NEA/ US-Japan Creative Artists’ Fellowship; The California Art Council; Western States Arts Federation; Art Matters Inc.; The Pollock-Krasner Foundation; New Langton Arts; City of Oakland Creative Artists Fellowship; The Creative Work Fund, and The LEF Foundation.

Alavi has taught classes and workshops at The San Francisco Art Institute; California College of the Arts in Oakland; San Francisco State University; The University of California, Davis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has also been a visiting artist at Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto, Japan, and the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

He has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Washington in Seattle; Capp Street Project in San Francisco; The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; The Blue Mountain Artists Residency, New York, and at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California.

Connect with Seyed on Instagram at @seyedalavistudio.

Curator

Dustin Yellin tells stories that weave together the diverse forces of nature and technology. Through his multidisciplinary body of work, which includes object making, collage, painting, and animation, Yellin draws attention to the interconnectivity of all beings and things. His approach tunnels across traditionally siloed fields so as to crystallize the idea that both the human world, and all other worlds around us, are a collection of enmeshed networks - even if many are hidden. Yellin’s glass works in particular, in which paint and images clipped from various print media are embedded within laminated glass sheets to form grand pictographic allegories, invite viewers to engage with the legions of their own consciousness and its embodied emotions, as well as that of our collective society and its infrastructures. The artist balances descriptive poetry with a prescriptive social practice so as to span new ways of seeing and being, and build a bridge to a more holistic world.

Dustin Yellin’s (b. 1975, Los Angeles, CA) work has been the subject of solo exhibitions throughout his over 20-year career at numerous galleries and museums including Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Vito Schnabel Gallery, Milan; Haines Gallery, San Francisco; Half Gallery, New York; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, and more. In 2015, Yellin was invited to exhibit his series Psychogeographies at the Lincoln Centre for Performing Arts for the New York City Ballet’s Art Series. Yellin’s work has also been exhibited in group shows at international institutions including the Museum of Art and Design, New York; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Matadero Centre for Contemporary Creation, Madrid; Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; Fondazione Berengo, Venice; and Museo Del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, among others. In addition to his art practice, Dustin Yellin is the Founder and President of Pioneer Works, a multidisciplinary non-profit cultural center that builds community through the arts and sciences, founded in 2012. Dustin Yellin lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Connect with Dustin on Instagram at @dustinyellin.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.