Tom Thayer and Dave Miko have paired up to create a series of video installations at Eleven Rivington’s exhibition space at 195 Chrystie St (the exhibition was on view through March 17th). Tom Thayer’s animations and assemblages were included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they are a kind of dark atmospheric storytelling pulling from the language of puppetry and theatre. Dave Miko’s work is a more straight forward painting process, at times including the use of hand written text with oil on aluminum and recently, installations of wall sized drip and spray paint paintings. Miko was included in the Greater New York show at MoMA PS1 in 2010. The two have come together for what they call, "Baseless Legion of Architects Rent Asunder," a poetic title and an interesting marriage of two artists. Each piece in the show consists of a projection on an aluminum sheet hung a few inches off of the gallery floor. It looks as if they have worked simultaneously at their collaboration, with Thayer’s projections and Miko’s paint meeting up and complimenting each other in different segments. - Anthony Palocci Jr, New England Contributor

Miko & Thayer | The Tender Color of the Raspberry Darkens, Slowly Obscured by the Pale Mold, 2013, 4:30 loop; Acrylic on aluminum with video projection, 80 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artists and Eleven Rivington

Miko & Thayer Installation

Miko has sometimes left the bare aluminum showing through his paint, and maintained a bright palette creating a very luminous effect with the light from Thayer’s projections. The over all feel of the work echos the back drops of psychedelic rock videos with trails of images coming in and out of focus, but the work is more mysterious than that. There are breaks where we see a man in silhouette looking at something in the distance and then fades away with his profile faintly traced by a wavy painted line turning into something else with the next scene in the projection. There is also a sequence were we see the camera man in real time in an ATM mirror. This groups himself in his projected world and also uses the work as a filter to see the world we actually live in. Rather than assuming this place depicted in the work exists somewhere other than our own realm of consciousness, this act breaks the illusion.

Miko & Thayer | Walking Bags of Chemicals Nurtured by an Environment of Chemistry, 2013, 1:30 loop; Ink, enamel with video projection, 31 x 32 inches. Courtesy of the artists and Eleven Rivington

Miko & Thayer | Baseless Legion of Architects Rent Asunder, 2013, 55:57 loop; Tempera, acrylic, oil, lacquer, enamel with video projection, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artists and Eleven Rivington

The installation continues in the space at Eleven Rivington. This time not limiting themselves to the boundaries of the flat aluminum rectangle, they expand into the space of the gallery. Thayer, Miko and fifteen of their friends worked on this installation completing it in one evening. Certainly a more direct or quicker styling, the viewer is confronted with a less controlled environment than the video work. Based on the titles of the projected pieces, this single room is like walking into the world depicted on the walls of 195 Chrystie. There is writing scrawled on the wall, paper hung up and torn half way hanging from the ceiling and free standing in space. People start to look different in the gallery. Conditioned by the videos, this place starts to look more like Thayer and Miko land, and people a little stranger. The relationship between the two spaces is a cosmic one, metaphorical reflections of this one in that, from 3D to 2D and back again. The show was up through the Armory week in NYC and came down on March 17.

Miko & Thayer Installation

Miko & Thayer Installation

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Tom Thayer received his BFA and MFA from the Northern Illinois University in 1992 and 1995. His work was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2012. He is represented by the Derek Eller Gallery in NYC.

Dave Miko received his BFA from SUNY Purchase in 1999 and his MFA from Yal University in 2001. He was included in the Great New York show at MOMA PS1 in 2010.

Anthony Palocci Jr. is an artist who lives and works in Boston, MA. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in 2012. He has contributed writing to artcritical.com and New American Paintings.