Contents for December 19, 2022

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Weekly Spotlight: Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. awarded $50,000 by the New York State Council on the Arts

1. Arantxa Araujo, Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumns, receive Demystifying NFT Award, New York Foundation for the Arts, and more

2. Anahí Cáceres, FF Alumn, new exhibition online thru May, 2023

3. Ruth Wallen, Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumns, now online in WEAD magazine

4. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, at Ortuzar Projects, Manhattan, Jan. 5-8, 2023, and more

5. Edward M. Gómez, FF Alumn, now online at Asia.Nikkei.com

6. Kiki Smith, FF Alumn, at Seoul Museum of Art, thru Mar. 12, 2023

7. Gregory Sholette, FF Alumn, new book selected among Top Art Books 2022, The Art Newspaper, and more

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Weekly Spotlight: Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. awarded $50,000 by the New York State Council on the Arts

Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. announces today grant awards totaling $50,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support the recovery of the nonprofit arts and culture sector. Following New York State’s historic investment for the arts, NYSCA has awarded $90 million since Spring 2022 to a record number of artists and organizations across the state.

Governor Kathy Hochul said, “As a cultural capital of the world, New York State is strengthened by our expansive coverage of the arts across all 62 counties.  This year’s historic commitment to the arts sector will spur our continuing recovery from the pandemic and set the course for a stronger future.”

NYSCA Executive Director Mara Manus said, “We are immensely grateful to Governor Hochul and the Legislature for their unprecedented investment of $240 million to support arts organizations across the state. New York State arts organizations such as Franklin Furnace are the cornerstone of our vibrant arts economy. As crucial drivers of our health and vitality, we are grateful to the unwavering dedication of arts workers across the state.

NYSCA Chair Katherine Nicholls said, “On behalf of the entire Council, I congratulate Franklin Furnace, and sponsored independent artist Britta Wheeler, on these grant awards. Their creative work provides the benefits of the arts to both their community and all of New York. Arts organizations are essential, leading our tourism economy and fueling sectors such as hospitality, transit, and Main Streets across our state. “ 

About the New York State Council on the Arts                                            

NYSCA preserves and advances the arts and culture that make New York State an exceptional place to live, work and visit. NYSCA upholds the right of all New Yorkers to experience the vital contributions the arts make to our communities, education, economic development, and quality of life. To support the ongoing recovery of the arts across New York State, NYSCA will award record funding in FY 2023, providing support across the full breadth of the arts.

NYSCA further advances New York’s creative culture by convening leaders in the field and providing organizational and professional development opportunities and informational resources. Created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1960 and continued with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, NYSCA is an agency that is part of the Executive Branch. For more information on NYSCA, please visit http://www.arts.ny.gov, and follow NYSCA’s Facebook page, Twitter @NYSCArts and Instagram @NYSCouncilontheArts.

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1. Arantxa Araujo, Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumns, receive Demystifying NFT Award, New York Foundation for the Arts, and more

Arantxa Araujo has won a “Demystifying NFT Award” from The New York Foundation for the Arts, for her presentation of “YERMA” which will be featured in the Voxels Metaverse as part of the NYFA / Technology Gap Award Exhibition Dec. 15-31.

Araujo’s award-winning NFTs:

YERMA Exhibition Copy (edition of 1) can be accessed and purchased for 1.5 ETH on OpenSea in her “EMERGENCY Series” Collection: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/60718285712912781760816783458053344884089190848090507647898812293634502688769 

YERMA // CORRE (edition of 20) can be accessed and purchased for 0.01 ETH on OpenSea in her “EMERGENCY Series” Collection: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/60718285712912781760816783458053344884089190848090507647898812292534991061012 

New York Foundation For The Arts (NYFA) Presents: “Demystifying NFTs: The Award Exhibition”

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), in partnership with artist and technologist Laura Ó Reilly, is pleased to present “Demystifying NFTs: The Award Exhibition, on view from December 15-31, 2022 in the Voxels metaverse at Technology Gap: Bridge ++ Community Center. The exhibition also features a public art installation inside the windows of ChaShaMa’s 266 W. 37 Street space in Manhattan, where a camera will be streaming the public into the Voxels metaverse exhibition 24/7.

Exhibiting Artists: Vanessa Albury, Arantxa Araujo, Harper Bella, Sean Capone, Abigail Child, Adelfino Corino, Gladstone Deluxe, Doménica García, Dev Harlan, Courtney Harmel, Robin Kang, French Leave (Bonita Oliver), Luca Lee, Nyasha Madamombe, Maiclear, Joey Mai, Meryl Meisler, Vinh Mai Nguyễn, Laura Nova, Dempsey Rice, Geneva Lee Robles, Barbara Rosenthal, Rudolph Shaw, Erica Shires, Debra Swack, Rica Takashima, Marya Triandafellos, Haibei Wang, Jill Waterman, and Roger White.

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2. Anahí Cáceres, FF Alumn, new exhibition online thru May, 2023

On December 16, 2022, the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Virtual Gallery of the Department of Visual Arts opened UNA, its first fully 3-D exhibition. Directed and curated by Anahí Cáceres, who says: “Because we believe that the imagination and freedom of art will determine the feasibility of a probable future, we think that this exhibition is a symbol of the infinite possibilities that artists can contribute to make our world more friendly.” 

Please visit this link:

https://visuales.una.edu.ar/noticias/inaugura-la-galeria-virtual-prilidiano-pueyrredon_37401

Thank you.

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3. Ruth Wallen, Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumns, now online in WEAD magazine

Ruth Wallen’s essay,  “The Stickiness of Touch: Caring for Boulder’s Front Range Forests”  https://directory.weadartists.org/the-stickiness-of-touch-caring-for-boulders-front-range-forests  

And Aviva Rahmani’s essay “Divining Chaos: The Autobiography of an Idea” https://directory.weadartists.org/divining-chaos  are now online in the current issue of WEAD Magazine, “The Art of Empathy.”

Thank you.

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4. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, at Ortuzar Projects, Manhattan, Jan. 5-8, 2023, and more

and

The Byrdcliffe 23rd annual 5×7 benefit Benefit Exhibition is online and in the gallery, December 2-18. There may still be work available so check the website and contact them if you wish. The Kleinert/James Center for the Arts’ 5 by 7 Show is one of Woodstock’s premier events, showcasing artists from the Hudson Valley and beyond. Works are exhibited anonymously, a fun way to give equal voice to all, with 5 x 7 in. artworks available for sale at $150 each. 

Thank you.

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5. Edward M. Gómez, FF Alumn, now online at Asia.Nikkei.com

Greetings, friends and art-world and media colleagues:

With this message, I’d like to share with you my article about the big exhibition of works made by Japan’s Gutai artists, which is now on view at two museums in Osaka.

Title of the exhibition: Into the Unknown World – Gutai: Differentiation and Integration.

For those of you who are not familiar with Gutai, this word served as the name of an association of Japanese avant-garde artists who were active as a group from 1954 through 1972. In recent decades, some of them have received critical attention and appreciation for their individual, respective accomplishments and legacies beyond the shadow of their famous artists’ group. The exhibition in Osaka emphasizes how much creative diversity there was among the artists who took part in the Gutai movement.

My article has been published in Nikkei Asia, the magazine-format, English-language version of Nihon Keizai Shinbun, one of the leading newspapers and news services in Japan and East Asia.

Here is the link to the published article:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Arts/Delving-into-Japan-s-Gutai-art-movement

I send you all best wishes as the start of winter approaches!

EDWARD

Thank you.

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6. Kiki Smith, FF Alumn, at Seoul Museum of Art, thru Mar. 12, 2023

Kiki Smith: Free Fall is Kiki Smith’s first solo exhibition held at a public museum in Asia. Occupying a unique space in contemporary American art of the 1980s–90s through her deconstructive expression of the body, Smith continues to be active in her practice. By way of Seoul Museum of Art’s institutional agenda of “production” and exhibition agenda of “poetry,” the show has taken the keyword “free fall” in presenting features of the artist that encompass aspects of a producer in multi-media experimentation, as well as those that have allowed her to vary her formative rhythms according to the undulations of the times. Smith has always opted for a non-linear narrative instead of a clear-cut answer between the binary divisions of life and death, reality and ideals, material and immaterial, and male and female. Her attentiveness to “all creatures great and small” and casting a message of coexistence with a deep, considered breath are indeed values worth paying attention to again today when terms like “excess,” “inundation,” and “surplus” have become all too familiar. “Free Fall,” which is also the title of a work of Smith’s produced in 1994, points to the eruptive and vital energy as well as the wandering movement inherent in her work, bringing together the past forty years of her vast media experiments and artistic practice that engaged in weaving transcultural narratives which go beyond mere female-centric narratives. Immediately reminding us of a downward falling movement, “free fall” symbolizes the dynamism implicit in Smith’s exploration of the fragmented body, but it also conveys the performative posture that has allowed her to expand the boundaries of media and concepts through a kind of wandering akin to the moon’s free-falling orbit around the Earth. Based on these characteristics, the exhibition introduces more than 140 works spanning sculpture, prints, photography, drawings, tapestry, and artist’s books.

America in the 1980s can be summarized by its focus on human rights, equality, identity, and gender discourse with issues surrounding AIDS and abortion rights. Against this backdrop, the art scene moved against minimalism or Abstract art, often regarded as symbols of male chauvinism, and toward employing the body as art’s subject matter and material. Many feminist artists during this time subverted the prevalent attitude that understood women’s bodies as aesthetic objects and instead brought them into a place where their expression happened with agency. Meanwhile, Smith, having lost some family members during this time, peered into life’s frailty and imperfections. From this peering came her ways of thinking across the border between the inside and outside of the body, and with this attitude, spirituality and materiality were combined. Smith, who took a non-hierarchical approach in her exploration of the body, became a key figure of abject art, boldly dealing with the segmented and fragmented body as well as bodily fluids like menstrual blood, sweat, tears, semen, urine, and other excreta. Her early works were created based on her interest in the human anatomy, focusing on depicting parts of the body, but this scope was soon expanded to give form to full-length figures as well as installation pieces. Coming into the 2000s, Smith created lyrical narratives out of familiar fables like Little Red Riding Hood and fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland, while also gradually expanding the radius of her work to include subjects like animals, nature, and the universe. Her macroscopic view, which allowed her to broaden the scope of her subjects and iconographies, can also be found in her experiments with media.

In order to effectively tie together Smith’s journey of the past several decades, through which her formative grammar has differed for each period, this exhibition takes neither a chronological approach nor the existing prescriptive approach centered around modifiers that have surrounded the artist like “female” or “the body.” Smith says the reason she became interested in the body was not simply to emphasize the feminine in a new way but “because it is the one form that we all share; it’s something that everybody has their own authentic experience with,” and it is this multiplicity of interpretations that became a crucial starting point for this exhibition. The exhibition thus proposes three loosely connected themes based on elements such as “narrative structure,” “recurring elements,” and “energy,” which can be found consistently throughout her œuvre, from her early works to her more recent works. This looseness is intentional, giving precedence to Smith’s diverse formative language and the mechanism of its grammar, while also allowing the possibility of multiple layers of interpretation. Smith has called her own artistic practice a kind of “walking around in a garden.” This symbolizes the wandering movement of a thought that lingers around various media and concepts as well as their borders. And this movement is fully transferred to the screen today, with reverence for all life that is marginalized, insignificant, or not yet reached. Having gone through the 1980s–90s up to the present day, repeating to adapt and run counter to the undulations of the times, Smith says, “I am still in free-fall.” Our hope is that this exhibition would offer the audience the opportunity to find a starting point for their own story while following the various movements of Kiki Smith that could be summarized as “free fall.”

Thank you.

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7. Gregory Sholette, FF Alumn, new book selected among Top Art Books 2022, The Art Newspaper, and more

Thank you.

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For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org

Please join Franklin Furnace today: 

https://franklinfurnace.org/membership/

After email versions are sent, Goings On announcements are posted online at https://franklinfurnace.org/goings-on/goingson/

Goings On is compiled weekly by Kyan Ng, FF Interns, Fall 2022

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