Contents for August 28, 2017
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1. Martha Wilson, Joseph Keckler, FF Alumns, at C24 Gallery, Manhattan, Sept. 7
2. Jide Ojo, FF Member, at Rush Gallery Project Space, Manhattan, opening Sept. 7
3. Penny Arcade, FF Alumn, now online
4. Jawolle Willa Jo Zollar, FF Alumn to receive Lifetime Achievement Bessie, Oct. 9
5. Taylor Mac, Ishmael Houston Jones, Jennifer Monson, FF Alumns, nominated for Bessie Awards, Oct. 9
6. Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumn, now online
7. Brooke Singer, FF Alumn, at La Casita Verde, Brooklyn, Sept. 9-Nov. 5
8. Arturo Lindsay, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, at Viridian Gallery, Manhattan, opening Sept. 7
9. Nicole Eisenman, FF Alumn, at Secession, Vienna, Austria, opening Sept. 13
10. Doreen Garner, FF Alumn, at Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, Queens,
11. Jane Dickson, FF Alumn, at National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Sept. 10
12. Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumn, at Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo, Italy, Sept. 2
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1. Martha Wilson, Joseph Keckler, FF Alumns, at C24 Gallery, Manhattan, Sept. 7
NYFA is pleased to invite you to an evening reception and performance series in conjunction with
Facial Profiling at C24 Gallery
Curated by David C. Terry
Date: Thursday, September 7, 2017
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Where: C24 Gallery, 560 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Closest Trains: C & E at 23rd Street
Cost: Free and Open to the Public
This reception will feature special performances by Joseph Keckler (Fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts ’12), Cori Olinghouse (Fellow in Choreography ’13), and performing as Donald Trump, Martha Wilson (Fellow in Performance Art/Multidisciplinary Work ’01), and will draw from the gallery’s Facial Profiling exhibition by exploring concepts of the observed, perceived, and projected self. Works in the exhibition include visualizations that cross cultures, genders, conformity, and identity, and question how we interpret/project imagery as portrait.
Exhibition includes works by:
Samira Abbassy (Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists’ Books ’07)
Kwesi Abbensetts (Fellow in Photography ’16)
Geoffrey Chadsey (Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists’ Books ’11)
Sean Fader (Fellow in Photography ’13)
Michael Ferris, Jr.(Fellow in Sculpture ’09)
Kymia Nawabi (Fellow in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists’ Books ’09, Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts ’17)
Oliver Wasow (Fellow in Photography ’89, ’00)
To read more about the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program, a $7,000 unrestricted cash grant awarded to individual artists living and working in New York State, click here.
To find out more about NYFA’s Curatorial Services for organizations click here.
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) was founded in 1971 to empower artists at critical stages in their creative lives. Each year we award $650,000 in cash grants to individual artists in all artistic disciplines. Our fiscal sponsorship program is one of the oldest and most reputable in the country and helps artists and organizations raise and manage an average of $4 million annually. Our Learning programs provide thousands of artists with professional development training and support, and our website, NYFA.org, received over 1.2 million visitors last year and has information about more than 20,000 opportunities and resources available to artists in all disciplines.
Our mailing address is:
New York Foundation for the Arts
20 Jay St
7th Floor, Suite 740
Brooklyn, NY 11201
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2. Jide Ojo, FF Member, at Rush Gallery Project Space, Manhattan, opening Sept. 7
RUSH PHILANTHROPIC PRESENTS
Children of the Ancestors
Solo Exhibition of Jide Ojo
Curated by Charlotte Mouquin
Rush Gallery Project Space
526 W. 26th Street, 3rd Floor
(between 10th-11th Avenues)
Manhattan
September 7th – 23rd 2017
Opening Reception Thursday, September 7th 6-8pm
Children of the Ancestors is a solo exhibition of Nigerian American artist, Jide Ojo presented at the Rush Gallery Project Space September 7th – 23rd, 2017. This exhibition highlights the large-scale installation, The Children of the Ancestors, is a mural sized piece made of a collection of photographs, shattered glass, resin bubble forms, with rich saturated colors.
Jide Ojo, grew up in Ilesha and Lagos before moving to New York in 1972. Growing up in Nigeria with a mother who worked with fabric dying and a father who was a blacksmith, Ojo moved to the US to pursue art and education. Being in and around artists, photographers, and gallerists, he has been inspired by the layers of community within the arts and the people who have inspired and supported his artistic career. For over 12 years Ojo photographed the people in his orbit including several inspirational artists, gallery owners, and art collectors: Jack Shainman, Danny Simmons, Russell Simmons, Mart Markowitz, Chuck Close, Frank Bowling, Martin Puryear, Fred Wilson, FF Alumn, Whitfield Lovell, David Hammons, FF Alumn, Laurie Simms, DJ Spooky, Kehinde Wiley, and Andres Serrano, FF Alumn, to name a few. They are all a part of Children of the Ancestors on view.
Children of the Ancestors, is a reflection of spiritual ideology of human development and relationships. The bubbles and bursts, reflect how thoughts and personas can grow within a bubble, and then burst or shatter, becoming part of a primordial web. Ojo believes we are all children of the Ancestors, and it is time to see our connections.
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3. Penny Arcade, FF Alumn, now online
Astrologer Rob Brezney of the fabulous Free Will Astrology used me in his column today speaking about Cancerians.
I imagine that this is the widest exposure for my writing to date as he is syndicated in so many cities around the world.
As I enter my 50th year as an artist it is interesting where the recognition for my work comes from and i send this to all my fellow Franklin Furnace colleagues who watch as i do year after years of making good work and watching others get the grants , the residencies and the greater acknowlegement. Stay the course! Stay strong! No retreat! No surrender!
From Astrologer Rob Brezsny brought to my attention by Londoner Goodman Anna! Read by me now in Kuala Lumpar Airport!
One of my favorite Cancerian artists is Penny Arcade, a New York performance artist, actress, and playwright. In this horoscope, I offer a testimonial in which she articulates the spirit you’d be wise to cultivate in the coming weeks.
She says, “I am the person I know best, inside out, the one who best understands my motivations, my struggles, my triumphs. Despite occasionally betraying my best interests to keep the peace, to achieve goals, or for the sake of beloved friendships, I astound myself by my appetite for life, my unwavering curiosity into the human condition, my distrust of the status quo, my poetic soul and abiding love of beauty, my strength of character in the face of unfairness, and my optimism despite defeats and loss.”
xoxoxopenny arcade
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/cancer.html
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4. Jawolle Willa Jo Zollar, FF Alumn to receive Lifetime Achievement Bessie, Oct. 9
New York, NY, August 22, 2017 – The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announced today that Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and founding artistic director of Urban Bush Women, will be the recipient of the 2017 NY Dance and Performance Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa will receive this year’s award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. The two awards will be presented at the 33rd annual Bessie Awards ceremony on Monday, October 9, at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
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5. Taylor Mac, Ishmael Houston Jones, Jennifer Monson, FF Alumns, nominated for Bessie Awards, Oct. 9
Please visit www.Bessies.org for complete information
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6. Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumn, now online
Hi!
After recording all our songs with the inimitable Michael Jung at Hizhaus, Fetzig has been starting to make music videos.
Here’s the newest one, Forces:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do3cJb6gmcc
Here’s Diamond Plate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzVWhRiHzfc&t=32s
And Youngblood by Billy Childish, Fetzig’s version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47t7JoWmLEg
As you can see, we have a YouTube channel now! Still figuring that shit out. Stay tuned.
Love and appreciation,
Halona of Fetzig
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7. Brooke Singer, FF Alumn, at La Casita Verde, Brooklyn, Sept. 9-Nov. 5
Summer is winding down, but we are just warming up at La Casita Verde.
We are excited to announce our Fall Event series that starts on Saturday, September 9th and runs through Sunday, November 5th (NYC Marathon Day). We hope you will join us!
See the full description of events below, and visit our Facebook event page. We require RSVP (brooke@lacasitaverde.nyc) due to limited space, but it is all FREE! Please share.
We are also embarking on two big projects in September. We are building a green house and installing a rainwater catchment system (thanks to a grant from Citizens Committee for New York City). Please let us know if you would like to volunteer to help out with either or both. Builds are scheduled for the weekends of September 16-17 and 23-24. Email info@lacasitaverde.nyc to sign up!
Thanks for reading & all our best for a great end to summer,
La Casita Verde
2017 FALL EVENT SERIES AT LA CASITA VERDE:
THE CITY AFTER CLIMATE CHANGE
September 9th from 7:30 – 9:00 pm
Vanessa Keith/StudioTEKA, 2100: A Dystopian Utopia-The City After Climate Change, 2017. Courtesy of Terreform.
Vanessa Keith, a New York-based architect from Jamaica and principal of StudioTEKA will discuss her book 2100: A Dystopian Utopia – The City After Climate Change. The book visualizes possible design solutions to suggest the profound adaptability and possibilities of the design field to meet environmental challenges in the future.
OUR PUBLIC WATER: TUNNELS AND TANKS
September 30th from 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Lize Mogel, Walking the Watershed, 2017.
New York City’s water system contains miles of impressive infrastructure- vast reservoirs, giant underground water tunnels, and miles of pipes. Artist Lize Mogel will talk about how the rural Catskills and urban South Williamsburg are physically and politically connected by water, and lead participants in making a “human diagram” of the water system. Afterwards, garden members will demonstrate La Casita Verde’s new rainwater catchment system.
MUSIC FOR PLANTS
October 14th from 5:00 – 9:00 pm
LoVid, tools for a live performance, 2017.
In 2007, artist Peter Coffin inspired New York artists and musicians to make music for the pleasure and benefit of plants. On October 14th, two of the artist groups from the original collection will perform live: Geographies are Spreading and LoVid. During the performances, compact discs of Music For Plants will be on sale to benefit the garden.
MACRAMÉ PLANT HOLDERS & MEDICINAL PLANTS
October 28th from 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Members of La Casita Verde will instruct participants on how to make a macramé plant holder. Participants can either leave their plant holders to help build La Casita Verde’s new medicinal, vertical garden or bring one home. Medicinal plants in the garden will be identified and health benefits explained while the group works.
MARATHON DAY!
November 5th from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Laura Nova, The Silver Sirens, 2017.
La Casita Verde is on the New York City Marathon route – we are mile 10! Come celebrate the end of the season and cheer the runners from the garden with our special guest, the Silver Sirens. The Silver Sirens is a cheerleading squad made up of senior citizens that champion healthcare issues in public performances. Laura Nova is the artistic director and coach of the squad based out of the Lower East Side.
This event series is in part sponsored by Kiwi Energy.
Copyright (c) 2017 La Casita Verde, All rights reserved.
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8. Arturo Lindsay, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, at Viridian Gallery, Manhattan, opening Sept. 7
Viridian Artists
“Selfies & Self-Portraits: 21st C Artists See Themselves”
http://www.viridianartists.com/news-1/2017/8/16/press-release-selfie…
September 5 – September 30, 2017.
Thursday, September 7, 6-8PM. Opening Reception and a book
signing of Ann Zinman Leventhal’s new novel, “Among the
Survivors”. Thursday September 28, 6-8PM A night of
portraiture. All are invited to draw or be drawn!
Viridian Artists is pleased to present “Selfies & Self-
Portraits: 21st C Artists See Themselves”, which extends from
September 5 through September 30 2017. The opening reception
will be on Thursday, September 7, 6-8PM with a book signing by
Ann Z Leventhal.
Artists have been creating self-portraits since the beginning of
time, but now with cell phone cameras, the selfie has become the
ubiquitous portrayal of self. The selfie has become today’s self-
Press Release: “Selfies & Self-Portraits: 21st C Artists See Themsel… http://www.viridianartists.com/news-1/2017/8/16/press-release-selfie…
portrait, but does it go beyond being just a likeness of the self
which the artist has created or is it self-indulgence?
What is a self-portrait? What meanings does it encompass? How
honest is reality or an artists’ interpretation, even with a media so
direct as the iPhone? Couldn’t it just be the moment and an
arbitrary decision to snap the shutter or be based on the
composition of shapes in the image? Is it photography in the
same way as our trusty old 35mm cameras performed? Is it more
truthful than a brush and paint with a mirror nearby? What is art?
What is reality?
Viridian has invited guest artists, as well as its usual entourage, to
create and show images they feel represent themselves. Artists
were invited to send us a “selfie”, aka 21st C self-portrait and to
create their selfie in the form of an art object in any media they
desire. All the while, thinking about who they are/ what inspires &
what motivates them. Or just to do an old-fashioned self-portrait!
Some are outrageous, some political, some as classical as Durer,
Rembrandt, but with a twist. Today’s self-portraiture because of a
thousand reasons has become more diverse & more conceptual.
How we see artists from the past may have to do more with their
self-portrayals than documents in their archives. But how we see
artists today via their self-image is a whole new conundrum.
On the last Thursday evening of the exhibit, September 28th,
there will be an evening of portrait drawing. All interested are
invited to bring their drawing pads & materials to create selfportraits
or portraits of each other. Guests are invited to pose for
portraits which can be traded or paid for at the rate of $1 a
minute. Come between 6-8PM & participate or just observe. A
good time is guaranteed for all! The exhibition continues until
Saturday, September 30th.
Renee Borkow * Ellen Burnett * May DeViney * Alan Gaynor * Wally
Gilbert * Srividya Kannan Ramachandran * Kat King * Namiyo Kubo *
Phillip McConnell * Matthias Merdan * John Nieman * Mary Tooley
Parker * Susan Sills * Virginia Evans Smit * Angela Smith * Deborah
Sudran* Kiffi Diamond * Arlene Finger * Ron Moore * Sarah Riley *
Kathleen Shanahan * Jenny Belin * Vernita N’Cognita * William
Patrick Armstrong * Emmett Barnacle * Jenny Brown * Naomi
Christianson * d’Ann de Simone * Dave Dorsey *Julie Gautier-
Downes* Melanie Gritzka del Villar * Olga Garcia Guerra * Charity Henderson * Ed Herman* Flora Hogman* Jieun Beth Kim * Megan Klim *Bernice Sokol Kramer * Angela M.
LaMonte * Arturo Lindsay * Vidho Lorville * Jade Lowder * Sara
Madandar * Song Lee * Shawn Marshall * Chang Sik Moon * Petronia
Paley * Jesse Parajeckas * Carol Quint * Mariko Spigner * Sharon Wybrants
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12-6PM
For further information please contact the gallery at 212 414
4040 or viridianartistinc@gmail.com
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9. Nicole Eisenman, FF Alumn, at Secession, Vienna, Austria, opening Sept. 13
Secession
Nicole Eisenman: Dark Light
Toni Schmale: HOT HOT HOT
Chadwick Rantanen: Ward
September 14-November 5, 2017
Press conference: September 13, 10am-12pm
Artist talk: September 13, 6-7pm, Nicole Eisenman in conversation with Monika Baer
Opening: September 13, 7-9pm
Secession
Friedrichstraße 12
1010 Vienna
Austria
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm
T +43 1 587530711
F +43 1 587530734
office@secession.at
Nicole Eisenman
Dark Light
Nicole Eisenman rose to renown in the New York art world in the 1990s as a creator of epic visual universes and inventor of bold, unvarnished, and occasionally shocking tableaus. She surveys the history of modern-era painting with instinctive assurance, rendering fantastic scenes as well as astute observations from everyday life in compelling form. Despite her stylistic versatility-she deliberately thwarts attempts to pigeonhole and fence her in-Eisenman has developed a unique signature style blending classical techniques and compositional forms with influences from underground and popular culture. The private clashes with the political in works that sometimes feature her own friends and acquaintances, a forthrightness that has made her a leading protagonist of the queer art scene.
Most recently, Eisenman caused a stir with her reinterpretation of a baroque fountain for Skulptur Projekte Münster. At the Secession, she presents paintings and drawings from the past year that respond directly to last fall’s U. S. presidential elections. Recalling earlier works in which apocalyptic scenes reflected relations of power and the individual’s impuissance, the new cycle paints a gloomy panorama of America under Donald Trump and a society that, apathetic and absent-minded, is edging ever closer to the abyss.
Nicole Eisenman, born in 1965 in Verdun (France), lives and works in New York City.
Toni Schmale
HOT HOT HOT
Encompassing sculptures as well as performative interventions, video pieces, and graphic art, the work of Toni Schmale scrutinizes social power relations and a hegemonic society’s stereotypical gender roles, which she counters with gender-political utopias served up with characteristically sly humor masking radical dauntlessness. Her metal, concrete, and rubber sculptures have the air of a fleet of dysfunctional machines and call up associations of fitness equipment as well as torture instruments, surveying a wide terrain crisscrossed by desires, from the yearning for physical perfection to practices of sexual gratification.
The exhibition HOT HOT HOT presents a series of new sculptural works that were inspired by the artist’s study of the theories of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott; she describes them as “transitional objects.” Considerations on the motif of the Doppelgänger are reflected in formal affinities, variations and repetitions between the sculptural works.
A locker calendar designed by the artist will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.
Toni Schmale, born in 1980 in Hamburg, lives and works in Vienna.
Chadwick Rantanen
Ward
Utilizing commercial and industrial products in his works, Chadwick Rantanen considers these items as proposals for an intended use. The exploration of these proposals manifests in specific products through an intersectional map of context, aesthetics and function. A product’s common use and its ability to be used otherwise, form a call and response. Thus, while their original purpose is extended, they remain functionally intact, albeit in a slightly disturbed manner. Rantanen has created sculptures, installations and site-specific interventions with neon tubes, tennis balls, plastic buckets, cups and cuckoo clocks, among other things, which often evoke a shift in one’s perception of a space or context.
In his exhibition Ward at the Vienna Secession, Chadwick Rantanen will present a new body of work, which derives from his interest in designs for healthcare facilities and how these environments are engineered to create a specific physical as well as aesthetic experience. Implementing a wallpaper mural as a backdrop for sculptural objects hanging from the ceiling and placed on the floor, the artist creates an environment that oscillates between being dystopian and comforting.
Chadwick Rantanen, born in 1981 in Wausau (Wisconsin, USA), lives and works in Los Angeles.
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10. Doreen Garner, FF Alumn, at Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, Queens,
THE SOCRATES ANNUAL, FEATURING NEW WORK BY 15 ARTISTS, TO OPEN OCTOBER 1 AT SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
A failed Presidential amusement park, 18th century Chippendale and Queen Anne design motifs, mobile home landscape and architecture, and New York City’s urban soccer leagues are among the points of departure for the 15 distinct artist projects selected for The Socrates Annual, opening at Socrates Sculpture Park on October 1, and running through March 11, 2018. Participating artists, whose diverse range of medium include mosaic, cast concrete, glass, and painting, were selected by Socrates Director of Exhibitions, Jess Wilcox, and the Park’s 2017 Curatorial Advisors: Eugenie Tsai, the Barbara and John Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Melissa Levin, former Vice President, Cultural Programs, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
The 2017 Socrates Annual participating artists are:
Joe Bochynski
Paul Branca
Tanda Francis
Devra Freelander
Doreen Garner
Gordon Hall
Tali Keren & Alex Strada
Valerie Piraino
Sreshta Rit Premnath
Ronny Quevedo
Amy Ritter
Moeinedin Shashaei
David B. Smith
Laura Swanson
Wang Xu
The Socrates Annual – formerly known as The Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition – is an annual exhibition of new public art that addresses the most urgent issues of today. It is distinct in its mission to foster individual artist projects rather than present an overarching theme. The 2017 participating artists join the ranks of over 250 artists who have received artist fellowships for producing work at Socrates since the Park’s inaugural artist grant in 1995.
Artist fellowships at Socrates Sculpture Park present a singular opportunity to create ambitiously scaled outdoor works by offering studio and fabrication facilities on site; past fellows include Hank Willis Thomas (2006), Wade Guyton (2003), Orly Genger (2004), and Sanford Biggers (2001).
Artist projects featured in the 2017 Socrates Annual will be:
Evoking the excavation or burial of a United States presidential seal, Joe Bochynski’s POTUS is at once an exploration of contemporary civics, faux artifacts, and political symbols. With its partial concealment and traditional medium, Bochynski’s work interrogates the aesthetics of power and speculates about the future of American politics.
Marrying the historically private practice of painting with imagery associated with the public farmer’s market, Paul Branca’s The Fruit Stand at 4 p.m. (d’apres Giacometti) features oil paintings of food that that artist will change throughout the exhibition. Inspired by Alberto Giacometti’s 1932 sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m., Branca’s piece builds upon the literal and figurative scaffolding provided by art history to generate new narratives about public consumption and the circulation of art objects.
Tanda Francis’s Take Me With You depicts a head emerging from a pool positioned as if anticipating a drop of water from the sky. Placed in sharp contrast with New York City’s East River and monumental in scale, Francis’s work brings awareness to basic human needs and the resources that are too often taken for granted.
Gordon Hall’s FOUR HANDS enlarges the Ball and Claw design motif, commonly found at the bottom of 18th century furniture, incorporating materials that recall Brutalist design and Minimalist aesthetics. Originally thought to be a Chinese symbol of a living being protecting wisdom and power, the Ball and Claw became an intriguing point of departure for Hall, whose work has long considered the moment of contact between body and object.
Doreen Garner’s hanging glass sculptures reference show globes, which during early 20th century were displayed in pharmacy windows as symbolic markers. Their opulent exteriors belie abject contents: cast silicone body fragments floating in whiskey, alluding to appalling histories of medical violence inflicted upon black bodies.
Devra Freelander’s Fluorescent Sun pairs the sublime image of a sunset with the sensation of looking at an LCD screen. Cast in pigmented resin, the semicircle seems to exist in a digital space made tangible. The sun’s orange-pink color gradient echoes the sedimentary accumulation of the earth’s geology, conjuring various time frames–the 8-second digital media attention span, the 24-hour daily cycle, and the eons of the earth’s life–and eliciting questions about the sustainability of contemporary living.
National Park by collaborative duo Tali Keren and Alex Strada is a photographic and audio piece that brings to Socrates the story the defunct Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Virginia. Visitors are invited to treat the work as a kind of theatrical stage where one can stand next to an image of past presidents, take selfies, and examine oneself in relation to these dilapidated yet steadfast symbolic monuments. By combining narrative and image, the work aims to question the promise and stability of political representation and mythology.
In A Year Around the Sun, Valerie Piraino evokes mourning with the use of a ghostly overturned lifeboat overlain with maritime objects in a shrine-like arrangement-a memorial to the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. Suggestive of both an aftermath of a wreck and a shelter, the piece is a poignant appeal for empathy.
Sreshta Rit Premnath’s Only One Way reveals the ever-present but rarely acknowledged dichotomy between the aspirational allure of luxury developments and the living and working conditions of those who build them. Combining imagery from real estate advertising with limp body-like silhouettes of sand and rubber, the piece questions what it means to occupy, rent, or own space.
Ronny Quevedo’s installation mimics the space of an indoor basketball court with milk-carton crate hoops that reference both improvisational means of playing the game using materials at hand and the decagonal structures found in the playing fields of ancient Mayan temples. By simultaneously employing and destabilizing visual vocabularies associated with games and architecture, Quevedo examines how displaced cultures shape the urban landscape of New York City.
Amy Ritter’s Single Wide transforms a portion of the park into an empty mobile home plot complete with shrubbery, an oil tank, front steps and lawn ornaments. Displacing a home associated with rural America inside an urban park, Ritter’s work employs a visual language of impermanence and absence to address broader U.S. housing politics.
Over the course of his fellowship, Moeinedin Shashaei cast the mouths of dozens of Socrates visitors in a commemorative salute to ephemeral conversations and interactions for a large-scale sculpture. Unum becomes a celebration of the plurality of the public, with hundreds of individual smiles and other expressions coming together to form a unified mass.
David B. Smith’s Digital Skin places visitors in the role of scientific explorers encountering a creature that appears to hail from both the biological and digital realms. Composed of modular wooden parts and recycled Socrates billboards that give the work the textural composition of bone and flesh, the piece transforms familiar shapes and images into eccentric three-dimensional bodies that invite multiple associative interpretations.
Laura Swanson pairs two street clocks of contrasting heights that mirror the statures of herself and her partner. By adapting clocks typically found in communal metropolitan spaces to function as portraiture, the artist challenges assumptions about normative size in the public sphere while also producing a whimsical image of difference.
Wang Xu conceived of Rain Bird after months in the park shadowing the Socrates grounds crew as they tended to the Park’s five acres. Focused on the site of the park and the people who know it best, the artist casts aluminum masks as portraits using materials found on site.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a digital catalogue to be added to a growing digital library of e-publications and videos available at socratessculpturepark.org/digital.
SUPPORT
The Socrates Annual is made possible, in part, with funding from the Jerome Foundation, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Socrates Sculpture Park’s major exhibition and operating support is generously provided by grants and contributions from Bloomberg Philanthropies; Charina Endowment Fund; Cowles Charitable Trust; Mark di Suvero; the Sidney E. Frank Foundation; Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation; Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation; Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation; Ronay and Richard Menschel; Ivana Mestrovic; Plant Specialists; the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation; the Thomas W. Smith Foundation; and contributions from our Board of Directors. Additional support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; as well as contributions from many generous individuals.
ABOUT SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
Since 1986 Socrates Sculpture Park has been a model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Known for fostering experimental and visionary artworks, the Park has exhibited more than 1,000 artists on its five waterfront acres, providing them financial and material resources and outdoor studio facilities to create large-scale artworks on site. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset and is located at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, New York.
socratessculpturepark.org
MEDIA CONTACT
Katie Denny Horowitz / kd@socratessculpturepark.org
718.956.1819 x102
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11. Jane Dickson, FF Alumn, at National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Sept. 10
Jane Dickson
Artist Talk at the National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC
Sunday September 10th, at 3pm
3rd Floor Great Hall (20th Century Galleries)
8th St NW & F St NW, Washington, DC
Free Admission
Also on View: my “Usual Suspects”, collaborative poster in “An Incomplete History of Protest; selections from the Whitney Museum collection 1940 – 2017”
Hoping to see you there !
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12. Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumn, at Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo, Italy, Sept. 2
A Rizzutogallery production.
Lucio Pozzi
If you catch it, it’s not there.
A Patchameena action.
Katharina Maderthaner
Who says A, must also say B.
Construction
Gianni Gebbia
Sax and live electronics music
2 September 2017 – 7:00 PM
I started producing actions towards the end of the 60’s as part of my project of redefining painting from inside and outside it’s field. One of the themes I follow is the tension between sense and nonsense in art. It became natural to write various texts in understandable words and as a counterpart to explore the power of phonetic meaningless speech. I have delivered whole lectures in my imaginary improvised Patchameena language. Using it, I have held speeches, recited guided tours with musical accompaniment, spoken in videos, written texts. Patchameena is the name given it by my autistic brother Marcello during our childhood games. Now in Palermo I am presenting a speech divided in parts staged in a structure by Katharina Maderthaner. My voice interweaves with the sounds by Gianni Gebbia.
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
