No, Trespassing at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

Bill Brown's Tour of surveilled Williamsburg on Saturday June 7 and June 22 at 2 PM

NO, TRESPASSING inaugurates a two-part survey of young artists at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, each organized by a separate pair of guest curators. Through an investigation into the structures and methods of social control, both exhibitions will investigate new and novel formulas of transgression. For its part, NO, TRESPASSING focuses on the hybrid notion of security violation, posing a series of questions: In this age of Homeland Security and Nanny-Cams, do icons of security ameliorate or exacerbate fear? What role does society's fascination with violence play in its longing for safety? When does the quest to defend freedom transgress on civil rights?

The artists in NO, TRESPASSING explore the psychological apparatus of safety and its violation through a multidisciplinary program of video, sculpture, photography and performance. Artist Brock Enright styles custom kidnappings for paying patrons. On display are the "products," sculptural artifacts of the kidnapping experience. J.S.G. Boggs questions the currency of cash by appropriating its image in the tradition of trompe l'oeil paintings. He has been extensively investigated by the U.S. Secret Service for his subversive use of the dollar bill.

Sue De Beer's work demonstrates the juxtaposition of naïveté and violence in youth culture via the phenomenon of American school-shooters. Vibeke Jensen, having recently exhibited her second solo museum show in her native Norway, presents observations of security from two separate angles: Blind Spot allows viewers to examine each other surreptitiously, and her Gun Shots photographs presents the tension between beauty and violence. The process behind Jeremy Hobbs's light box image -- photo paper exposed by electricity arcing through a firearm -- similarly transforms an instrument of violence into a startlingly delicate pattern.

Bill Brown has won notoriety for his walking tours of heavily surveilled neighborhoods and his performances, with the Surveillance Camera Players, for hidden cameras in public places. For this exhibition, he created his first surveillance-camera map of Brooklyn and will conduct two tours of surveilled Williamsburg on June 7 and 22, both at 2 PM. Constant is a video artist and the host/curator of the open-forum television show Snack on Art. Revolution on Video Tape employs his poetic reconfiguration of language and symbolism by converting a famous civil-rights era lyric for new technologies and new video generations.

Mark Sarosi's video/sculptural installation Panopticon isolates the nervousness and self-consciousness that are the byproducts of increased security. Reid Speed's series of abstracted street and airport photographs demonstrates the literal and metaphoric chains that attempt to discipline urban chaos.

Nin Brudermann, for her photographs, traveled to remote islands with a history of biological or munitions testing and which have subsequently been designated off-limits to human visitors. Erik Stein uses graffiti iconography in an investigation of transgression and its relationship to genuine emotion. Mexican artist Yoshua Okon scrutinizes the authority granted to the guardians of society. In his videos and photography, he places various police officers and security guards in positions that draw attention to that authority, demonstrating its constructedness with both humor and dismay.