In conjunction with ‘Are You Sure You Are You?’, our upcoming exhibition of new web art, Spencer Brownstone Gallery is delighted to announce the launch of gallery artist Jeff Gabel’s new Facebook project, ‘The Moons Ride Over’.

Based upon‘Salware: Oder Die Magdalena Von Bozen’, a largely forgotten 1935 novel by Carl Zuckmayer which details the goings-on among a group of artists and intellectuals summering at a castle retreat in the South Tyrol, Gabel has translated and transposed large sections of the novel to the seemingly incongruous context of a Facebook site. Each character in the novel has been given his or her own Facebook identity and the artist has turned their often intense after-dinner debates into a series of posts and comments on each of the characters’ pages.

Already well under way with his adaptation, Gabel is now opening up the project to contributions from Facebook members. Anyone with a Facebook account can view the novel-in-progress by searching Facebook for its main character Thomas Stolperer, or any of the characters from the list below. In addition, anyone can interact with the novel by requesting friendship with any of these characters.

Thomas Stolperer
Jeff Saltz (external narrator)
Magdalena Salwar Dej Stries
Firmin Salwar Dej Stries
Mena Morandell (or Menega, or Magdalena)
Grisi Himmelfahrt
Cordula Salwar Dej Stries (The Cow, or Lavacca)
Peter Insam
Matrona Salwar Dej Stries
Loisl Insam
Walt Cavanaugh (elderly man at the Albergo)
Michelle Marsh (elderly woman at the Albergo)
Jerry Fannin (baker’s apprentice; bread eater)
Carroll Schraeder (innkeeper on Rittner Plateau)
Gary Kerr (boy carrying a milk can)
(More characters to come)

Jeff Gabel is an artist based in Brooklyn who has had four solo shows at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, most recently in September 2008. Best known for his pencil drawings of characters appended with often dramatically extended narrative explications, Gabel has also produced a series of unconventional literary translations and adaptations, of which this Facebook project is the latest. These projects have included comic-book renderings of a Stefan Zweig story, an animated video adaptation of Thomas Mann’s ‘Gladius Dei’, and a translation of an Alma Mahler biography into a foul-mouthed ‘American vernacular’.

Please contact the gallery for more information and images. Read more about the work of Jeff Gabel here.