Opening Reception: Saturday- November 19th, 7pm -10pm

On view: November 19th – December 10th, 2011

 The Gallery at Fox Tax, in conjunction with guest curator John Alspach of BroadCast Exhibitions is pleased to announce “Making Progress”, a show of artwork by Kristina Mooney and Andy DuCett.

For more information and images: http://www.foxtaxservice.com/gallery or contact: mark@foxtaxservice.com

ABOUT THE GALLERY

Mark and Alyssa Fox are the brother/sister owners/art-lovers/tax accountants/merriment-makers that created this strange concept of Making a Business Out of Art and Making an Art Out of Business, reverse concepts that are the motivation behind Fox Tax and the Gallery. Housed within the warehouse offices of their tax preparation business in the ever-gentrifying Northeast Arts District, the Gallery at Fox Tax is in it’s 5th year of promoting both new and established artistic talent to the Twin Cities. Their unique approach to assisting artists in both exhibition, business and finances has garnered both local and national media attention.  Recent exposure from the Star Tribune, Kare 11 News, Metro, Ready Made Magazine, Minnesota Monthly and others have helped this brother/sister team of tax accountants create a premiere gallery within the Minneapolis art scene.

Opening Reception: Saturday- October 15th, 7pm -10pm

On view: October 15 – November 15th, 2011

The Gallery at Fox Tax is proud to announce a new exhibit of Recent Works by John Alspach. The man behind Shiny Robot Studio and Broadcast Exhibitions will be displaying his own work, which will incorporate a collage of elements ranging from billboards, graffiti and rust. Opening Reception will be held on Saturday October 15th from 7 – 10 pm.

Living in a city surrounded by images and messages that vie for attention, John seeks to address this clash of information by synthesizing it into a unified aesthetic. Elements of Street Art, Advertising and the effects of Nature and Time are combined, layered and collaged, creating something new from the discarded and the found.

John, a Minnesota native, abandoned his academic studies in 1990 to pursue Art.
Since 1996 he has run Shiny Robot studios, which has been both his own studio and home to a number of brilliant artists. In 2006 John started BroadCast Exhibitions as a means to display art in non-gallery spaces throughout Minneapolis.

You can see more work online at shinyrobot.com

The exhibition will be on display from October 15th through November 15th.

On view: September 9 – October 1, 2011

The Gallery at Fox Tax is pleased to present VAPOR, an exhibition of works by Minneapolis based artists John Fleischer and Jennifer Nevitt. The exhibition will open to the public on Friday, September 9th, with a preview and artists’ reception from 7-10pm.

Emerging in the Netherlands in the early 17th century, the paintings of the vanitas tradition reveal an acute awareness of the impermanence of phenomena.  These works, initially painted on the verso side of the canvas, depict arrangements of significant objects such as skulls, flowers, bubbles, clocks, and burning candles. Together, these signs produce a concentrated image of transience and ephemerality, a sense of constant departure existing within a continuous arrival.  The genre’s title refers specifically to the second verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes: Vanity of vanities, sayeth the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. Although commonly translated as “vanity,” the roots of the original Hebrew term hebel suggest breath, fog, breeze, and/or vapor.

Fleischer and Nevitt tacitly and explicitly engage the vaporous themes of this tradition within practices employing a variety of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, sound, and video. In Fleischer’s recent work rotting fruits and teas, cold reflective surfaces, and rough elemental forms combine in a haze of overlapping abstractions that softly penetrate non-objectivity. Nevitt’s recent works have been described as exploding paintings; these modest accumulations of materials (charred wood, clay, cardboard, fur) become interactions of totemic forms discussing opportunity, passage, and release. VAPOR provides the framework for Fleischer and Nevitt to present new selections of work drawn from the contemplation of impermanence.

John Fleischer studied art and educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. Recent exhibitions include: ALLMOST, The Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN); A Theory of Values, The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN); Latent Pattern, Dog + Pony Projects (Buffalo, NY); Ghost Story, Art of This (Minneapolis, MN); Loved and Unloved, Rasmussen Gallery, Grand View University (Des Moines, IA); Nature’s Way, Unit B Gallery (San Antonio, TX), and The Beijing International Short Film Festival (Beijing, China). Earlier this year, he collaborated with artist Jennifer Danos on Location Volume IV, a limited edition publication from Location Books. John lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Jennifer Nevitt received her MFA from the University of Minnesota where she studied drawing and sculpture. She has recently participated in group exhibitions at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Rosalux, Sellout Gallery and Shinders. In 2010 she presented her drawings in a solo exhibition at El Corredor. Jennifer lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This event was organized by John Alspach at BroadCast Exhibitions.

NOW EXTENDED THROUGH END OF JULY!!!

Everything moves a bit slower in the summer in Minneapolis, so we thought we’d give you another month to swing by and check out the current show.  There are still $40 prints available for all the work, so please let us know if you are interested in those before July is over!

CLOSING RECEPTION: SUNDAY JULY 31ST, 5 – 9 PM.

The Red Stag is having their annual block party on the 31st, so please also feel free to drop by the LAST day of this show for a final chance to grab a $40 print or an Original Work!

ON DISPLAY MAY 20TH THROUGH JULY 31ST.

The Gallery at Fox Tax is proud to announce a new exhibit entitled Art Form 1040:Mission Accomplished!.  For this Art-A-Whirl exhibit, Mark and Alyssa Fox asked artists to create two works each that expressed their perspective on the Oughts as a decade.  The result is a variety of mediums and imagery with a strong underlying tongue-in-cheek tone not-so-subtly summarized by the banner Bush-ism that is the subtitle of the show.  As the 3rd annual exhibit of commissioned works in the Art Form 1040 series at Fox Tax, not only is original work for sale, but 10 signed and numbered prints of each work will be available for $40 each (thus the blithe 10 40 take on tax and art).  Opening reception will be from 5 pm – 10 pm on Friday May 20th.  Show will be on exhibit through end of June.

Artists included in this show are: Nicholas Golfis, John Diebel, Colin Kopp, Melissa Loop, Aniela Sobieski, and David Hansen.  The work varies in medium from painting to collage to photography to screenprinting, but this disparate collection of mediums all somehow capture a timely post-post modern Dickensian “best of times/worst of times” perspective, dripping heavily with both sweetness and sarcasm.

In an effort to fulfill dual goals of both bringing new challenges to artists AND make art affordable to the general public, Fox Tax began a series of annual exhibits titled “Art Form 1040″ in which artists are commissioned to make original works on a theme.  The 10 top pieces of which become part of the Art Form 1040 series, where 10 prints of each piece are made and sold for a mere $40 each.  The high quality archival prints are graciously made by local printer extraordinaire, The Lab Digital’s Eric Recktenwald.  This year marks the 3rd installment of the series, and brings ten really great works to the bargain minded Art-a-whirl crowd of Northeast Minneapolis.

The exhibition will be on display from May 20th till June 30th.

We just couldn’t get enough of the current show (we did title it “A few of our favorite things”), so we’re going to leave it up through the end of tax season.  Seeing as blizzards and holidays made it tough for some to make it to the show, we hope this extension will give you all time to stop by and see some of our favorite things (and have a chance to bring some of them home with you).

ENTIRE SHOW WILL ALSO BE OPEN FROM 11 AM – 5 PM FROM TUES – SAT.

On View: December 3 – Jan 7th  April 23rd

Opening Reception: NOW CHANGED TO FRIDAY DEC 17, 6-10 pm

The Gallery at Fox Tax is proud to announce a new exhibit entitled A Few of Our Favorite Things.  For this holiday exhibit, owners Mark and Alyssa Fox, along with regular curator Emma Berg of MPLSART.com, each pick 10 of their favorite artists and create their own salon style collage that highlights both the depth and variety of local artistic talent as well as their own personal tastes as curators and collectors.

As part of the Holiday reception artists have also donated a work of art that will be sold gift-wrapped and sight unseen for $100 each.   Proceeds of purchased gift wrapped pieces will be going directly to a charity of the artists’ choosing, creating both a way to give back to the community and to further a main mission of the Gallery at Fox Tax: to encourage art collecting and ensure it is viewed as something attainable and affordable to anyone with an interest in art.

Artists included in the event span a broad range of the local and national art scene.  They range in age from early twenties to over eighty and include both well known and not-so-well known names including: Gregory Euclide, Frank Gaard, Anne George, Robert Lesch, Andrea Stanislav, Jennifer Davis, Bruce Nygren, Pamela Valfer, Miles Mendenhall, Drew Peterson, Ruben Nusz, Broken Crow, DC Ice, Xavier Tavera, Alex Kuno, Josie Lewis, David Hansen, and more.  Each artist will have one or two pieces on display, and each collector/curator will create their own collage within the gallery with their chosen pieces.

ABOUT THE CURATORS
Emma Berg is the director and founder of the online arts calendar mplsart.com. She launched the site in 2005 as a way to compile Minneapolis art events in a single source and support local artists.  Since then, she has been known to be involved heavily in all things local art, music, fashion and/or anything else interesting and fun happening in Minneapolis/St Paul.  She has been the primary curator at the Gallery at Fox Tax since 2008.

Mark and Alyssa Fox are the brother/sister owners/art-lovers/tax accountants/merriment-makers that created this strange concept of Making a Business Out of Art and Making an Art Out of Business, reverse concepts that are the motivation behind Fox Tax and the Gallery.

All 3 curators have developed a personal style and unique collection of art over the past 5 years.  Many of the artists in their personal collections will be a part of this unique exhibit and will highlight the reflective nature of art collecting itself.

Photo by Anne George

The Gallery @ Fox Tax and curator Emma Berg of mplsart.com are pleased to present ENDLESS WINTER, an exhibition of new paintings and screen prints by Minneapolis artist Drew Peterson.

Drew Peterson’s work pulls from a set of illustrative images used in advertisements in the early 20th Century.  In pairing the likely and unlikely public domain images he creates imagery of sculptural obscurities that feel familiar and antique as well as imagined and futuristic.

For the exhibition Endless Winter Peterson has noticeably diverged from the broad range of color that has been characteristic of his painting and print work in past exhibitions. In its place is a collection of large scale paintings and works on paper that exudes the tonality of the impending winter months.  The cool, nearly monochrome color field pervades like the overcast skies of an eternal January.

The exhibition at Fox Tax will feature new large scale paintings and screen prints.

Drew Peterson lives and works in Minneapolis, MN.  He earned a BFA in 2009 from the University of Minnesota and attended the Yale Summer School for Art in 2008.  Peterson served as the emerging artist in residence for printmaking at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, CO.  He has taught screen printing to teens at Juxtaposition Arts in north Minneapolis, and currently serves as project staff at Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

Peterson has had his work included in significant shows in Minnesota including an invitational at the Soap Factory in 2008 in which an oversized collaborative painting was attached to the outside of the gallery, an invitational at the respected Thomas Barry Fine Arts earlier this year and a two person exhibit at First Amendment Gallery run by Burlesque Design in 2009.

Peterson is currently in preparation for a solo exhibit at Burnett Gallery within the Chambers Hotel, to occur in late 2011.

On View: September 11th – October 8th, 2010

The Gallery @ FOX TAX and guest curator Emma Berg of mplsart.com are proud to announce a new exhibit titled Synthetic Kinetic Confections…or No Big Whoop. For this exhibit, two disparate artists create a show that highlights the juxtaposition between the organic and the synthetic. Eric Melzer’s Kinetic Abstractions approach nature in a way that captures them as purely light and motion. Laura Hallen’s work starts at the other end of the spectrum by taking the synthetic and recombining it into an organic creation. Both reveal a certain mystery of the mundane, one through dissection of image, the other through reconstitution. The result of both, however, is a beautiful display of sugary confections of color, texture and energy. The opening reception for this unique show will be September 11th from 6 to 10 pm.

Eric Melzer is a Minneapolis based freelance photographer. His “Kinetic Abstractions” studies challenge the apparent stasis of representational forms by revealing the energy that flows through each piece to experience depth and motion. Inspired by his color based photojournalist roots, his “Urban Abstraction,” series calls attention to the push and pull between industry and nature.

The works of Laura Hallen fall somewhere between painting and sculpture using a technique which reveals a “sandwich” like appearance with multiple textures and colors. Spontaneity is the sweetness that is comprised in her creations which often include pom-poms, streamers, gumballs and cotton candy confections.

We look forward to seeing you on opening night!

On View: August 13th  – September 3rd,   2010

The Gallery @ FOX TAX and guest curator Emma Berg of mplsart.com are pleased to present STICKY SWEET. The exhibition will put on display works by local artists Rudy Fig and Jeff Warner.  Both painters can be called pop surrealist, creating pieces that dense with characters draped in color and imagination.

Rudy Fig is an oil painter currently living and hailing from Minnesota.  Her paintings drip with color, imagination and escapism.  Each painting reveals layer upon layer of detail from character to buttons to pearls to background.   Each painting is worked on for months, with more elaborate pieces taking sometimes over a year to complete.  With each sitting the paintings become more enriched, creating a world that is dense with imagined worlds, characters and elaborations.

Jeff Warner is originally from New York and now lives in South Minneapolis.  His paintings depict an innocence that is strongly influenced by his youth and the “excessive sugar and the most wonderfully senseless commodities seen on television.”  His desire to create positive imagery that influences the mood of the viewer is a pure approach to art making that leaves you with a child like sense of wonderment and satisfaction.

Check out recent press for this show:

Vita.mn Review

City Pages A-List

We hope that you can join us for the opening!  Miyagi salon is having an event the same night just around the corner, so why not spend an artsy Friday night in Nordeast?

On View: July 10^th – August 6^th, 2010

The Gallery @ FOX TAX and guest curator Emma Berg of mplsart.com are pleased to present WAITING ROOM.  This exhibition brings together the works of couple Clea Felien and David Pederson.  With complimenting works, the two artists will be playing with the idea of the space as a waiting room, expounding on the elements that create a waiting space.  With added or intensified details such as artist created coffee table books, a coffee table, paintings and photographs.

Clea’s current series of paintings are based from photographs, however “People, landscapes and idealized notions of reality disappear by abstracting or disintegrating the form with impasto brushwork.”  The end results are lush in texture and color within the cloud of a hazy memory.

David, along with displaying interactive furniture and artist books, will have large printed photographs from recent travels on view. 

Clea Felien and David Pederson currently share a studio space in the Northrop King Building and have recently returned from a trip in the south, exploring, taking photos and talking with those impacted by the BP oil spill. 

Clea is the founder The Studio School of the Twin Cities, a technical painting school which is run out of her and David’s studio.

We look forward to seeing you at the opening!

On View: May 14^th – June 27^th, 2010

Art-A-Whirl Hours of Operation (May 14^th – May 16^th): Friday 6-10pm, Saturday Noon-8pm and Sunday Noon-5 pm

The Gallery @ Fox Tax and guest curator Emma Berg of mplsart.com are pleased to present The Age of Aquarius.  This exhibition showcases three young Twin City artists; Jesse Draxler, Katelyn Farstad and Josh Journey-Heinz.  Though the work of all three is unique, as a whole they provide a glimpse into a generation that has a strong need for community, a belief in the D.I.Y. spririt, and a strong influence by the local music scene.

Artist Jesse Draxler is founder of Vigilante Justice, a reoccurring event of music and art.  His involvement in the artist collectives Lovelee Buttons and WAFA Global Artist Collective has created a contagious energy around his work.  His collage pieces are meant to provide the viewer with a sense of ease and connection.  As he states “Instead of loading my images with flimsy narratives, I attempt to evoke the desired emotional connection with a viewer on an elementary level through color, found imagery and common symbols”. Jesse is a graduate of College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, MN.

Artist and musician Katelyn Farstad is a graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  Having played drums in several local bands, she currently performs in the riot noise band Tips for Twat.  The punk D.I.Y aesthetic captured by her bands also informs her work as a visual artist.  Her boldly colored drawings “are rendered in bright and mismatched colors and naïve style that prioritizes intuitive decision-making and results in an awkward but emotive voice”.

Josh Journey-Heinz has been making rock posters, zines and album cover art since the late nineties.  Most recently he has been creating limited edition artist books that have been accessioned into the Walker Art Center Library. Along with past rock posters, Josh will be displaying a new body of work made specifically for this exhibit.  The ambitious 24 paneled body of work depicts a journey through a mystical place full of trappings and opportunities.  Josh explains his mother as a “legit 60’s California peacenik art teacher” that “exposed him to a subterranean world that looked for new ways to artistically interpret the world, oftentimes using the absurd or the surreal”.  These upbringings are mapped out in his current body of work.  Josh currently plays drums in the band Knife World, voted Best Rock Band in 2008 by City Pages.  Josh is a graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, MN.