Luhring Augustine is pleased to present a group exhibition that recognizes the creativity of those who work on our team. As is the case in most galleries and art institutions, many of the people who work at the gallery are also seriously engaged in their own artistic projects. We are taking this opportunity to acknowledge and share the creative practices which occupy some of our staff in their hours away from the gallery.

Exhibited work will include paintings, photographs, works on paper and sculptures by Sophie Aschauer, Donovan Barrow, Gabriel Bennett, Charles Black, Joshua Brown, Caroline Burghardt, Daniel Crews, Tiffany Edwards, Ryan Ford, Paul Krause, Junpei Murao, and Chad Nelson. Additionally, there will be contributions by staff members who endeavor to be creative, but do not maintain full time art practices.

Sophie Aschauer: Infinite Variety (1 Imaginary Self-portrait and 8 Overpaintings), 2008

9 photocopies of pencil on paper, unlimited Edition, each 8 1/2 x 11 inches

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Sophie Aschauer (b.1982, Austria) graduated in 2005 from Central St. Martin's College in London. She has been drawing imaginary portraits since her childhood. After having experimented during her studies with different media including performance, she returned to the portraits when she moved to New York 2 years ago.

Charles Black (b.1975) is a painter whose primary focus involves a type of "directed expression" that arrives from the confluence of seemingly disparate visual modes. He often experiments with circumstances whereby form and compositional structure intersect with subject and space, allowing for an abstracted narrative to unfold in both actual and symbolic terms. He attended the North Carolina School for the Arts from 1992-1994 and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1994-1996. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Caroline Burghardt's photographs examine interior spaces (mental and physical) as the site of sociological identity, psychology and personal history. Her work investigates adornment and socialization as reflections of cultural constructs and constraints. She received a BA in painting and photography from Bard College and an MFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art.

Dan Crews received his BA in 1999 from University of Florida at New World School of the Arts in Miami and his MFA in 2003 at Hunter College in New York. In 2005 he developed a new manner of working based on the techniques of Baroque and Rococo painting, sculpture and architecture. He draws "on site" then develops the drawings into abstract compositions that articulate the spatial, rhythm and volume of the Baroque through the filter of 20th Century Abstraction. He currently lives and works in New York.

Tiffany Edwards is a New York City based photographer. While working in the tradition of cultural and social documentary, she occasionally intersperses elements of fiction into the frame to exemplify the narrative possibilities of photography. Her current work focuses on the breakdown of utopian ideologies behind suburban America. When not behind the camera, she can be found listening to loud music and reading books by A.M. Homes. She graduated from Fordham University in 2002 with a BA in Photography.

Ryan Ford: Meditation #3 (The Warm Darkness), 2008

Oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches

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Ryan Ford received his BA in 2002 from The Savannah College of Art and Design. Since then he has been independently studying in Asheville, North Carolina and he is currently living in Brooklyn, New York. His most recent body of work is titled, "The Warm Darkness," which is an internal perspective and study on meditation. He combines color field and graffiti techniques on a 2-D, panel surface to communicate the hues, pixilation, and movement one perceives while in the warm darkness of meditation.

Paul Krause received his BFA 1999 from University of Colorado at Boulder. He currently works with students in the ceramics department at Hunter College where he also maintains his own studio practice. Using a variety of techniques from casting to assemblage, his ceramic sculptures meld geologic and man-made imagery.

Junpei Murao's recent works are based on his psychological attachment to baseball, and the relationship between his personas as an artist and an athlete. He has used his own experiences in baseball to insist on the existence of commonality between different cultural codes in art and baseball, and to visualize the power of concentration at peak physical performance. Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, he now lives and works in New York, NY, and is currently in the MFA program at Hunter College.

Living and Working in Brooklyn, NY, Chad Nelson is a Painter and Video Artist. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University and has recently co-curated "STEALING TIME", for the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College. Chad received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 and MFA from Hunter College in 2004. Chad Nelson's paintings seek reconciliation between painting and the mechanization of contemporary print media.