SECRET PROJECT ROBOT

We’re Back…. and it’s kind of a love story…

In `1998, when a taxi probably wouldn't drive you over the Williamsburg Bridge and their were giant buildings filled with industrial workers and artists instead of tidy office workers, Erik Zajaceskowski rented the back half of a small warehouse at 401 Wythe ave between south 6Th and Broadway; he called it Mighty Robot.

He wasn’t first, Rubulad, Free 103 , the absinthe parties in lofts with caan caan dancers and cool things we probably never even heard of were already established and happening, but… With some friends mainly, Fitz, Artur Arbit, Barry London and Etain Fitzpatrick legends, the legends, at least of my youth were made.

This is the space that, put on Junk Yard shows with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, TV on the Radio, Lightning Bolt, the Liars etc etc etc… (even though Todd P, somehow gets credit for them in the history books, it was us, there will be a rant about lazy fact checking by the media someday)…

The first show i remember seeing at Mighty Robot maybe in 2003 was so crowded that i stood with one part of my body on a trash can… the bands was Comets on Fire and another noise group maybe Sightings, which was kind of the house band at the time . It was epic in the way that being young in a room full of people entranced to loud music can be tranformational. I remember thinking, I had found New York.

I fell in love that night, with the scene, with the crazy, the music, the energy. I also later married Erik Z, and we are now raising our son in this same art space, but that is moving too fast… so flash back to 2004…

In 2004 Erik Zajaceskowski and friend, Karl LaRocca, rented a new bigger space on Kent Avenue to be called Monster Island. Monster Island was a 15,000 square foot three story building that housed Kayrock Screen printing, Live With Animals, Oneida’s O-Cropolis, Todd P’s space, later to be known as “The Monster Island” basement and the new Mighty Robot space, freshly coined Secret Project Robot.

In this new incarnation Erik Z. teamed up with myself (Rachel Nelson) to create an even further experience into the art and music subculture and subconscious. As Secret Project Robot, there was a greater emphasis on art installations to be used as experiential spaces to host parties and to develop the notion of the art of the party.

Secret Project Robot pushed artistic boundaries, creating giant group installations and pioneering concepts like drawing brunch, the black light installation show, immersive collaborative projects, poster shows and creating art towns all-the-while throwing large parties and making new friends and a bigger art community. During its tenure on Kent Avenue Secret Project Robot hosted art shows with Maya Hayuk, Lauren Luloff, Seripop, Sto & Cinders Gallery, Shelter and Ivory Serra, Chris Uphues, Raul De Nieves, Swoon, Black Label, UFO and Little Cakes just to name a few.

This era also saw an expansion into art and dance parties hosting some of the first inception’s of Jonathon Toubin’s Soul Clap and Todd Pendu’s witch-house events and later Milksop, an amazing queer dance party.

There were also hundreds of bands that performed and legendary parties, like the day it was 106 degrees outside with no fans or a/c inside where Black Dice, Wolf Eyes and Growing melted the crowd into shared hallucinations of intense sound and transcendental heat. There was the annual Monster Island Block party where bands would play outside on the street mixed with building-wide shows and exhibitions where the annual turn-out was nearly 6,000 people.

After seven years on Kent Avenue and with the feeling of imminent change in Williamsburg, Secret Project Robot followed the youth and art and music scene and found a new home in Bushwick.

During the five years it spent on Melrose street in Bushwick, Secret Project Robot honed in on the notion of what it means to be an art space in the midst of an ever-changing socio-economic dynamic in the city and a youth brought up on the internet not seeking the same New York City experiences as the original audience; however, in the end the evolution to stay relevant and transform into a thriving art hangout was not a large jump from the art experiment phase.

Melrose Street was in many ways a more relaxed version of Secret Project Robot. It hosted giant events in its 5,000 square foot yard, but at the same time there was an intimacy and maturity about these events, a purpose driving them.

"The Living Arts" was a notion, probably tied to the yard as a private compound and bubble. In this bubble the artists could recreate the world according to their liking, people could be free, comfortable and able to re imagine a further more perfect realm. It was from this notion that events like Bushwig were started. Bushwig was originally conceived as an alternative drag and queer performance day in which a kind of dirty gritty performance art would stand out against a milieu of sequins and cover songs. Secret Project Robot pushed the boundaries of appropriate behavior and appropriate performance and helped in the creation of a now legendary festival and queer staple.

It was also the space in which old friends like Brad Truax and John Colpitts aka “Kid Millions” brought Secret Project Robot shows with bands like Spiritualized, it was why it made sense that Laurie Anderson performed and why events like Butt Magazine’s parties all came. On Melrose, Secret Project Robot was bringing art back into reality, into a tangible reason to move to New York City despite its high rents, it’s flaws and flirtation with mediocrity and chain stores, why it remains that New York City is a place like no other. Melrose Street was a discovery of art, of friends, of realizing why you keep going when it would be easier to not.

In 2016, facing a 50% rent increase Secret Project Robot faced an existential crisis, raise the rent and become “landlords” people, we didn’t want to be or shift the paradigm…

We made a mistake.

We thought going legal would solve our problems, but it only exacerbated them… We moved onto 1186 Broadway deep into Bed Stuy with decent intentions, a liquor license and a 10 year lease, but what followed was a social experiment gone awry. We pleased no one, including ourselves… We managed to throw some amazing events, I would say a few even legendary ones, but no one was happy. The neighbors hated us, they hated the queer people we brought, the police hated us, the partners didn’t get along, I watched a person being beaten to death and was attacked by a mentally ill person while pregnant… We closed just short of the 2 year anniversary of this space in April of 2019…

We left Broadway disillusioned with ourselves and New York. We put intention back into making our own art and trying to figure out what went wrong, we still talk about the mistakes, the casualties of friendship we’ll forever miss, but then something extraordinary happened, and this is why this is a love story…

Sometime in December of 2019, we were taking a walk with our son down by the Williamsburg bridge, and who did we run into but Isaac, the old landlord from the original Mighty Robot space, and what, you wonder was vacant, but Mighty Robot!!!!!

We re-rented 401 Wythe Avenue in March of 2020, we were so jubilant, our faith restored in New York, our loved revoked in Brooklyn, in art, in community, in the hope that we could give it one last try before we abandoned this old town for good, here is where the record skips…

A few days later we went into quarantine… We had a 2400 square foot space in need of total renovation that we were unsure if we’d ever be able to throw a party in. Our instincts told us to walk away, but our hearts, our hearts told us to stick with it…

We spent the pandemic rebuilding Secret Project Mighty Robot 3 hours at a time, just the two of us. We have a toddler, I learned plumbing on YouTube while he napped, and Erik and I took turns until 8 months later a space emerged… We had to make some changes to the original idea, without big parties as an option we built art studios and a ceramic studio and a small gallery and managed to put in an installation and venue space that can still hold a respectable 75 people, but what we really built was our homage to the last 20 years.

Rachel Elizabeth Nelson “Middle Class Morality”

In The Gallery window shop through October 2023

Secret Project Robot is pleased to present “Middle Class Morality, ” paintings by Rachel Elizabeth Nelson. In these works painted on found cardboard Rachel underscores the aspirational sensibility of America’s striving class system... Obsessed with status, struggling to stay above the working class, Rachel sees the development of a sense of moral superiority canonized by consumption, mainly in the name brands that the 1% have long abandoned... Showing off, in conspicuous fashion what one has obtained, weather through clothes, objects or even cleaning supplies, the class struggle of America has unfolded in a hushed fashion that screams for attention. Rather than criticizing the urge to be known as a “survivor” of American capitalism, Rachel sees the battle as a silent symptom of today’s political dysfunction... The myth of the boot straps lives on, forcing all who are not quite rich enough to “feel” unworthy, not good enough, even morally inferior, and so a pecking order ensues in a vicious cycle of planned obsolescence.

Eric Copeland

Tighten Up/Loosen Up

July, 2023

Eric Copeland’s drawings are as ambitious in their intellectual fervor as in their tedious physical deployment, with warped checkerboards he manages to create visual noise, that both defies the eye and plays on the thresholds of one’s senses. His latest drawings, more vivid, more radical and perhaps even more psychedelic invite the viewer into his own personal mania, making us question the borders of lines and what can be achieved from simply placing pen on paper.

Eric Copeland, is an American experimental musician and artists based in New York City. He is a core member of Black Dice and has several solo projects. He is an artist that has published several books and zines of uncanny observations, drawings and photographs and has also created several prints and a major series of drawings based on impressions from the Wizard of Oz and Grateful Dead bootlegs…

“In the heart of Brooklyn, amidst the hustle and bustle of city life, lies a secret oasis of creativity. Moklé is a sanctuary where two artists, Mokshini and Moses, come together to indulge their passion for pottery, turning everyday ceramic vessels into one-of-a-kind pieces of art.”

CHRIS UPHUES

OPENING RECEPTION APRIL 5TH, 2023 5 to 7pm

The Good Times Express is an interesting little Art show that collapses entirely under its own whimsical weight, while keeping the viewer wondering to the bitter end.

Devoid of the teeniest tendrils of meaning, substance or consistency the artwork grows wild and terribly uneven. 

What sustains us is the mystery and age old question, “is this simply meaningless or pointless as well?”

For the viewer, the imagination is neither nourished or even provided with the expectation of deriving some modicum of order out of this charade.

Nothing is developing and at root, we discover that Chris Uphues entertains a fantasy that can not hold up to the barest of inspections.

Surely he has a more fertile mind than this! How in the world does he not understand that this Art Practice is unsustainable? 

The only conclusion must be is that people will do and believe what they want, despite the evidence.

MARCH 2023

MEMORY NUMBER ONE

Dean Cercone

Memory Number One is a new series of mixed media works by Dean Cercone Jr. The artist made these compositions with a mixture of charcoal, spray paint, and oil, and each one features his distinctive line work and signature figures. The artist adorned all of these works with a minimal amount of collage, crudely adhering objects with shellac to the canvas or panel. All of the collage objects were taken from the artist’s personal archive and are of sentimental value.

This series is named after a wistful country song by Webb Pierce. Cercone frequently listens to music while painting, especially music that he associates with his childhood growing up in rural Pennsylvania. Just as the title of Pierce’s song implies, this music evokes strong emotional memories for the artist. Similarly, the works in Memory Number One conjure the bittersweet quality of remembrance while depicting its effect on lived experience and perception.

The figures in these works are inhabited and bisected by chaotic lines, which further extend into their immediate environment. These manic yet exquisitely patterned gestures sometimes suggest arcane symbols or uncontrollable mental energy. For the artist, these lines are an attempt to depict the thinking process. He has them both penetrating and emanating from the figures’ skulls, which are frequently adorned with helmets and other headgear. It is as if their thoughts are a protective measure that insulates them from the world.

The works in Memory Number One explore the moment when these protective memories undergo a process of decay and renewal. Their ephemeral nature is revealed as lost loves give way to new romances. Even as the physical layer of these foundational experiences erodes, their legacy remains as the building blocks of character. These paintings bear witness to this passage, and in some ways serve as a monument to the tragic loss of an irretrievable past.

At the same time, these figures need to learn to fully inhabit their memories as they reach toward new experiences. They are working to embrace a present moment that has the potential to occlude any ambivalent feelings they may harbor toward their past. Each composition depicts this jumble of emotions, mixing hesitancy and exhaustion with the gratification of release. They evoke a moment spent reflecting on a lifetime of trials, beloved experiences that have come and gone, or a bright day following a long night of revelry.

Cercone is a prominent figure in Bushwick’s nightlife scene, and he frequently draws inspiration from his love of celebration. These works draw from the ethos of transitory social situations, especially late nights and early mornings spent inside Brooklyn bars and around backyard fire pits. In these moments, where inebriation, improvisatory dialogue, and unexpected encounters intersect, intimate connections are forged and the plasticity of identity is apparent. Cercone’s work posits these moments as a tonic to the overwhelming presence of acutely emotional memories, including formative childhood experiences.

January 2023

My Other Ghost Friend Lives in Darkness too, No one should come to Ghost Land (on view until February 19th) is a collaboration between father and son, Erik and Raul-Moon Zajaceskowski, a series of paintings made on flat tables that explore the narrative quality of a forming mind.

NOVEMBER 2022

A five course mini-golf course in part taken from our summer installation at Art Port Kingston...

Rachel Nelson and Erik Zajaceskowski are pleased to present “secret project robot country club” a cheeky caricature of Americana and a site specific fully interactive miniature golf course. Toying with the current political upheaval along the lines of “Make America Great Again,” the artists explore the question, what was ever really great about America? From Wonder Bread to the opioid crisis, from mass pollution to corporatization, race riots to labor and class struggles, what exactly are we nostalgic for?

Country Club, then plays with themes of wealth, inequality and the notion of golf itself as an elitist pass time where “the big decisions” get played out without consideration to the masses.

Giant flowers and products, butterflies and sea creatures, nature unhinged or fighting back? It’s psychedelic and dystopian, it is a diorama to walk through and putt at, a place to keep score and relax while the world as we know it unravels…

HALLOWEEN 2022

The 15th Halloween Installation at Secret Project Robot incorporated animal parts made into Chimera’s

NOVEMBER 2022

Secret Project Robot is pleased to present Alien Hair, new works by Vashti Windish… In Alien Hair, Vashti uses the materials of paper maché, twine, ink on paper and paint with a highly articulated aesthetic intent while also reaching inward for the personal exuberance of making art…

The elqouent line drawings of Alien Hair create a new language of movement that are paradoxically zen and meditative, with their bleached palatte and linear simplicity, while also being accessible symbols of whimsy, with their curvaceous hair like flow. They manage to occupy both softness and starkness, a push and pull that is the product of the artist’s methodology.

Vashti’s sculptures make the jump from flat to multi dimensional while occupying a similar aesthetic balance, somewhere between a serene desert and manic jubilance, the mono-chrome works manage to calm while also exciting the viewer.

Perhaps, not unconsciously, Vashti’s works are a manifestation of personal experience and a search for inner calm. She has experienced many lives be it on the road traveling in the circus, performing music across the seas, or living in cities from Atlanta to Brooklyn to Tucson, and now in Los Angeles. In each of these iterations she has dived deeply into the culture, creating spaces and projects that have left a mark on time and friends, but her art is not the psychedelic menagerie one might expect, instead her new works are sophisticated, reflective, even quiet.

SEPTEMBER 2022

Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Noah Wall

Multidisciplinary artists Hisham Akira Bharoocha and Noah Wall, along with Brooklyn label Chaikin Records, present Syncretic Vessels, a gallery show consisting of handmade cassette-cover artworks, in celebration of Bharoocha’s and Wall’s individual upcoming album releases. Treating the cassette-cover as a ‘canvas’, these artworks function as visual counterparts to the audio material which generated the initial creative processes. Both Bharoocha and Wall explore a similar theme: the conversion of analog data to digital formats (and back again), and the fluidity of ‘translation’ which comes about through this dialogue. Whether the conversation is in assigning subjective sonic values to analog source material or in visually representing a confluence of suggestive imagery, a circuitous, playful and intriguing pathway exists between ‘there’ and ‘here.’ Syncretic Vessels consists of approximately twenty album covers each from Bharoocha and Wall. As a highlight, the show will feature a special live music performance from both artists. Their limited edition albums released by Chaikin Records will be available as well.

THERE ARE TWO BIRDS INSIDE MY HEART

AUGUST 2022

SUZANNE KIGGINS

Suzanne is a self-taught artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She likes to use painting as a way to share unseen experiences. A common theme is tension between two opposing powerful forces such as order and chaos and our internal and external worlds, and the longing for integration of these forces.

JULY 2022

DRAKE CARR

In Outlets and Turn-ons Drake Carr presents an installation of painted light-switch and electrical outlet covers and works on paper centered around the idea of fetishistic, sexual energy and ephemera. Carr’s double-sided “Trade Cards” and functional light-switch/outlet covers are touchable, hand-held artworks that celebrate the collectible fetish object. Deviating from his typical larger-than-life scale, these artworks convey a sense of secret commerce and private kink- sometimes perhaps it’s best to keep your turn-ons to yourself and say the loud part quietly.

MAY 2022

Vacant store fronts, bodegas, products everywhere for sale, online marketplaces, what exactly is lost in the shifting landscape of urban and web development and how do we come to terms with the joy of purchasing and the gluttony of cheap goods everywhere, and all that wonderful packaging luring us in...

The paintings all presented on found cardboard, showing colors and scenes larger than life magnify the joy in a neighborhood deli, the pleasant convesations and incidental friendships of local shops, and the tragedy in the loss of locality to a global economy; which, though arguably more convenient, is certainly sure to alter the notion of community, even as we abandon the commons for a more insular existance.

Playing on the push and pull between criticism and participation, consumption and abstention these paintings come to represent a multitude of thoughst and conversations about our unitnentioal and unavoidalbe complicity in a system rooted deeply against us..

APRIL 2022

MAGGIE BOYD

“Often I pull hideous things out the kiln that make me laugh/recoil from/adore all at the same time and if late-cap has anything to do with it that morning there will also be an element of admonishment for not just making things I can sell! sell! sell! I’ve been making stacks of these particular pots in the studio for years now and to me they have become monuments for refusing to utilize every dang second to be a productivity demon of the first order. They are bright wild sunflowers made of mistakes and guesses and gestures and they have been fired anywhere up to ten times, fused together, celebrated and of course, scaled into objects of joy.“

OCTOBER 2021

Raul-Moon Zajaceskwoski, Erik Zajaceskwoski & Rachel Nelson

During the height of the pandemic, Secret Project Robot kept up the good cheer by creating a halloween installation even though NYC had officially cancelled halloween.

AUGUST 2021

Drake Carr, Eric Copeland, Erik Zajaceskowski, Pvssy Hvn, Riley, Barry London,Elwood London, Rachel Nelson, Dean Circone, Kerry Lacey, Christian Joy, Jason Grisell, Allison Busch, William Shmeichen, Vampyrates Bradley Eros & Richard Sylvarnes, The Sally Beauty (Juan Twinmg), Clock Face Orange (Rachel Guma & Genevieve HK), Raul De Nieves, Maggie Boyd, Sto,Karl LaRocca,Evelyn LaRocca, Kristen Schiele, Nick Kuszyk, Bjorn Copeland, Suzanne Kiggins, Dana Zinsser, Preston Spurlock, Monica Mirabile, Nyssa Frank, Cameron Stuart, Stephanie Beattie, Brock Monroe, Micki Pellerano, Arthur Arbott, Milinda Kiefer, Chris Santiago, Brad Truax, Bruno Coviello, Justee, Brian Chase

Will be the first group art show and open studios at the new (old) Secret Project Robot. After a year and a half of social deprivation, one thing we have collectively learned is that gathering seems essential to the condition of living. The show will celebrate the disposing of masks, the revelry of dancing, parties, drugs and sweat in a crowded room, but it will also be a tribute to what we have learned over the last year. Many of us see our pre-pandemic lives as endemic of the modern era, full of hustle and hassle and an unrealistic balance of work and life; part of the celebration will be in the hopes for an attainment of a new “normal” which is more embracing of the human condition, more full of leisure, lasting friendships, and love of those around us

MAY 2021

Eric Copeland

Eric Copeland’s latest collection of exasperatingly detailed works on paper borderline on a practice that could be classified as near teen obsession, but upon closer look the pieces lend themselves to a far higher level of sophistication than mere teen eye candy, though eye candy they indeed are.

The drawings are as ambitious in their intellectual fervor as in their tedious physical deployment, with warped checkerboards and Masonry as the main subject matter, what comes to the viewer’s eye first is the obvious but layered symbolism of a mind spent thinking on a particular subject for perhaps too long, but then again, what is obsession without obsessive overanalyzing. And, though the artist is reticent, their meaning is actually quite clear and critical, begging the question as to what small tweaks or alterations in the power matrix could be made to disarm the system.

With a sense of humor and titles all taken from the Wizard of OZ, in Eric Copeland’s art, the grid is disrupted, the trajectory distorted and the little man behind the curtain is revealed to be just that…

JULY 2021

Nick Kuszyk

ZONIA "a sculptural installation and some paintings that came from his brain..." Nick Kuszyk's