The Daily Newarker

1938
August 11 + 18th, 2007 at Gallery Aferro

Instigated by Sebastian Patane Masuelli
Performance by American Watercolor Movement at 8 PM

1938 is a site-specific installation instigated by Aferro studio resident Sebastian Patane Masuelli with musical collective American Watercolor Movement.  1938 is also an original film created by Masuelli and filmmaker Michelle Mumoli.  Jersey City-based American Watercolor Movement, consisting of Tom Barrett, Joe Centeno, Jason Cieradkowski, John Fesken, Mark Townsend and Brian Wilson, will be giving two live performances of “The Mustacio Suite,” a musical score to the film with lyrics based loosely on the Spanish Civil war.  During each performance, Masuelli will play VJ, creating a new narrative for one night only.  Artists contributing to the set include John Fesken, Aferro resident Jesse Wright, Pete Tuomey Jr, and Seth Godwin.

The recruitment and involvement of an extended community of artists and musicians for the project constitutes a semi-ironic reference to underground resistance, not unlike Thelonious Monk’s 1968 Underground album.

Sebastian Patane Masuelli is an Argentinean-born installation artist currently in residence at Gallery Aferro. His work has been seen recently in The S Files at El Museo del Barrio, NY, NY and La Argentina Pinta Bien at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.  He is also the founder of the Fease art collective, which took over abandoned Bloomfield storefronts with performance and exhibitions.

A recent reviewer wrote of American Watercolor Movement: “It’s hard to imagine this amalgam of junkyard technology, unabashed artiness, multiculturalism, and high theory coming from anywhere else” (but New Jersey.) Their songs have been described as “confusing, sleazy, foggy, threatening, decayed; usually sexy, sometimes dangerous, always alluring.”

Motivated by a self-described affinity for lost causes, Masuelli has assembled a ragged army of volunteers to create a strangely seamless alternate world within Gallery Aferro’s Newark space.  A ghostly aura of idealism and artistic production past hangs over the entire undertaking.  Please join us this August,1938.