FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pairing up for Scope 2007 in the Hamptons, {CTS} creative thriftshop and Dam, Stuhltrager present "Twisted Nature", unearthing the calm and chaotic impressions of nature upon the human condition. Approaching this theme through photography, painting and installation, the artists engage material items, internal or physical space as a source to locate order, retain control and quantify the value and placement of man within nature. Instinctive to modern life, the artists look at the need to quantify value within the chaotic flux of nature through possession and ownership, placement and context. These material objects or spaces that the artists depict or construct, become representations for the over-arching human instinct to grasp onto a sense of value through ownership, whether it be reclaiming a memory or carving out a physical piece of land as one's own.

By photographing a collection of her deceased uncle's white tee shirts, in "What Remains" Justine Reyes documents the tender experience of loss and pieces together the impressions of ownership, nostalgia and memory. Her work unveils the fragile imprint of life upon these clothing items, some with evident wear and tear, others pressed and creased with hints of the original packaging. Quite beautifully, her work reflects upon the human desire to seek order and understanding within the cycles of death and birth, newness and decay. Such commonplace material items remain as a representation of the person, whose physical entity and emotional passing can be as complex, yet as simple as the cycles of life and death.

While Justine Reyes' images carve out a more internal and associative relationship with material items, in "Surreal Estate", Guerra De la Paz's green plot of land explores the itemized ownership of physical space and land. This customizable 2x4 piece of land speaks to a sort of community living wherein despite the abundance of personalized editions and custom upgrades, one's sense of placement and concept of "home" remains inescapable from this homogenized and commodified way of life. Hinting at the dislocation of the American dream, Surreal Estate plays upon the erosion and decay of personal values under the guise of materialism and fortune.

In Bonsai, Guerra de la Paz' sculptural trees intimately approach the amorphous and humanistic nature of inanimate objects. Reworking the physical aesthetics of a cultural icon - the bonsai tree becomes a recontextualized symbol, obscuring culturally embedded meaning and birthing new truths. Merging discarded clothes and recycled materials, the bonsai trees organically personify remnants of human life, amassing as a critique on the wasteful disregard of western consumerism, and a disposable approach to truth and knowledge. Distorting standardized form, the trees awaken a conversation with fictional histories, unfixed ideologies and displaced cultural identity. Contemplating the value of an icon once it has been dislodged from its fundamental ties, the work engages the possibility for historic associations to collapse and give rise to new concepts and reconsidered commentaries. When symbols are adopted, challenged, absorbed and masked with alternate ideals, the sculptures abstract the origins of truth within nature. Bonsai critically questions how recycled images can be manipulated, diluted or reframed to relay sociopolitical and cultural truths, adopting alternate traits and consequentially - meanings.

Representing Dam, Stuhltrager and balancing the work of Guerra de la Paz, Chris Dam's refined approach employs a technique that unites perfection with the flawed artistry of the human hand. Vibrant and visceral in content, the paintings reveal organic shapes that merge and float through electric planes of color. Existing between organic abstraction and biological rendering, Dam’s paintings reframe systems within the natural world as universally familiar yet strangely foreign. In turn, his undefined paintings engage the viewer in a cyclical and probing conversation with their own frames of reference.