MODE traces the interplay between corporate design strategies and artistic practice, foregrounding the intricate relationship between commercial display and art history. The artists in the exhibition offer wry visual insights into how systems of form, color, and style can infiltrate our neural pleasure centers, striking at our fears and desires.

SARA CWYNAR uses collage and re-photography to make composite images that resemble old advertisements or stock photography. Cwynar is interested in the feelings generated by dated commercial images: with time their visual trickery fails, their seductive power wanes. Her works highlight how the once familiar becomes foreign; how the fetishized object can lose its luster; how glamour can deflate.

ANDREI KOSCHMIEDER subjects prosaic images to unconventional printing processes and odd configurations. Here he repurposes home-design and fashion accessories in a wayward mix of Modernist abstraction and Orientalism. He combines traditionally inspired, now commonplace East Asian screen designs with printed silk scarves. The screens hold rice-paper blotted with ink, and the scarves have images of squid printed with actual squid in their own ink.

SUZANNE MOONEY produces constructed studio photographs that resemble abstract paintings. Mooney photographs store display devices – translucent, sculptural forms – on colored grounds. Her works possess a photographic depth of field that is contradicted by a sense of flatness. She captures the ambiguous, sensual allure of visual marketing, reflecting its transfixing strategies back at itself.

BORNA SAMMAK repurposes found materials, outputting them to objects that vacillate somewhere between sculptures and prints. Sammak edits images from skateboard grip tape of a cigarette and a beer can, and makes a sculptural version of a framed pharmacy sign using 3D modeling software. His ubiquitous images are reanimated, jump-started with a dose of Pop Art that both glamorizes and wittily attacks them.

Sara Cwynar (Vancouver, Canada, 1985) lives and works in New York. She holds a BDes from York University, Toronto. Recent exhibitions include: Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto (solo); Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam (solo)(both 2013); Ed Varie, New York ; Talk to Me, Museum of Modern Art, New York (group project) (all 2012); Show & Tell Gallery, Toronto; Neubacher Shor Contemporary, Toronto; and Diaz Contemporary, Toronto (all 2011).

Andrei Koschmieder (Frankfurt, Germany, 1980) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from the Staatliche Hochschule, Frankfurt. Recent exhibitions include: Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany; Sies + Hoeke, Duesseldorf; Dold Projects, St. Georgen, Germany (solo); Freak Out, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (all 2013); Foxy Production, New York (solo); Foot to Foot, curated by Margaret Lee, Regina Gallery, London, UK (both 2011); and Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö, Sweden (solo)(2010).

Suzanne Mooney (Galway, Ireland, 1976) lives and works in Barrytown, NY. She holds an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include: Contemporary Arts Society, London
; The Sunday Painter, London; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid
; Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Warsaw
; Palazzo Della Farnesin, Rome; 
Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin (all 2013); and Spike Island, Bristol (solo)(2012).

Borna Sammak (Philadelphia, PA, 1986) lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from New York University. Recent exhibitions include: Oko, New York with Alex Da Corte; DSM-V, curated by David Rimanelli,The Future Moynihan Station, New York (all 2013); Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT; JTT, New York, NY (solo); Higher Pictures, New York, NY; and Bulletin Boards, curated by Matthew Higgs, Venus Over Manhattan, New York (all 2012).

CREDITS:
Installation photography: Mark Woods.