Contents for January 9, 2023
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1. Kate Gilmore, Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, Brendan Fernandes, Amber Hawk Swanson, Autumn Knight, FF Alumns, at Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, Feb. 1-May 7
2. Pope.L, FF Alumn, at David Zwirner, Manhattan, Feb. 3-Apr. 1
3. Alison O’Daniel, FF Alumn in the Sundance Film Festival, live and online, Jan 22-27
4. Nyugen E. Smith, FF Alumn, now online in TheArtNewspaper.com
5. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Coco Fusco, FF Alumns, at David Zwirner, Manhattan, thru Feb. 25
6. Galinsky, FF Alumn, at Book Club Bar, Manhattan, Jan. 19
7. Jennifer Miller, Cathy Weis, FF Alumns, at La MaMa, Manhattan, Feb. 4
8. Suzanne Lacy, Lucy Lippard, Alice Aycock, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, FF Alumns, now online at Frieze.com
9. Cassils, Miriam Schaer, Analia Segal, FF Alumns, at Pratt Institute Schafler Gallery, Brooklyn, opening Jan. 23
10. Soojakim, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
11. Virginia Maksymowicz & Blaise Tobia, FF Alumns, at College Art Association Conference 2023, Manhattan, February 17
12. Elise Engler, FF Member, at Frosch and Co., Manhattan, opening Jan. 19
13. Linda Mary Montano, Kathy Brew, FF Alumns, at The Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, Feb. 9
14. Joseph Kosuth, FF Alumn, at Castelli Gallery, Manhattan, thru Feb. 25
15. Simone Forti, FF Alumn, at MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, thru April 2
16. Johanna Went, FF Alumn, at White Columns, Manhattan, opening Jan. 20
17. Barbara T. Smith, FF Alumn, at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, opening Feb. 28
18. Stella Watizkin, FF Alumn, at Slag & RX, Manhattan, opening Feb. 2
19. John Cage, Andy Warhol, La Monte Young, FF Alumns, now online in The New York Times
20. Cindy Sherman, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
21. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, receives Best New Play, BroadwayWorld Boston Awards
23. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, now online in Cape Cod Times, and more
23. Ken Friedman, FF Alumn, at Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sweden, Feb. 8-Apr. 23
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1. Kate Gilmore, Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, Brendan Fernandes, Amber Hawk Swanson, Autumn Knight, FF Alumns, at Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, Feb. 1-May 7
Neuberger Museum of Art
Hard Return: 9 Experiments for this Moment
ON VIEW: February 1—May 7, 2023
Hard Return: 9 Experiments for this Moment is a performance art exhibition featuring a series of nine artists creating dynamic week-long experiences, environments, and interactions live in the Neuberger Museum of Art’s galleries.
Over the course of Spring Semester 2023, each of the nine artists will create works that pose fundamental questions about art and life. The projects will experiment with our sense of being alive in this moment, probing the influence of history on our present and proposing different ways of shaping and understanding community—from the intimate experience of one-to-one relationships to attempts to see humanity at planetary scale.
Hard Return promotes modes of artistic activity that the pandemic made impossible for a while and explores the museum as a space of community, reflection, and support.
Participating artists include:
Brendan Fernandes
February 1-5
Fernandes will develop a dance piece in response to African art in the Neuberger collection. Working with vogue expert Jason Rodriguez and a cast of Purchase College students, the artist will consider the transmission of cultural forms and knowledges across time and space and from body to body. This work, which will change and grow over the week, will also consider questions of rest and repose. In addition to developing original choreography, the artist will offer related movement workshops to museum visitors throughout the week.
Alix Pearlstein ’88
February 15-19
Pearlstein’s work, Inventory, explores the historical dimensions of an individual life through assemblage and evaluation of a personal archive of objects and memories. Reflections on this work of inventory will become elements of live performance captured by a video crew. These videos will then recursively feed back into the work’s installation and become fodder for further reflection and creation. This work will also feature Purchase College students as actors and collaborators in the production of a steadily growing environment that questions the boundaries between live and recorded, then and now.
Daniel Bozhkov
February 22-26
Bozhkov’s performance investigates the viability of life on this and other planets through an intensive involvement with soil science and cucumbers. Bozhkov has been working with Cornell University’s soil laboratory as they experiment with how to grow vegetables on Mars; in Hard Return, he will work with a composer and Purchase faculty and students to develop this process of provisional planting into an operatic libretto. The resulting opera will be performed in the Neuberger by Purchase students, set against the backdrop of some of his experimental produce, hand-painted fresco panels, and an embroidered tapestry that functions as an experimental log. Pushing the science-fictional limits of the present, Bozhkov’s work asks us not only to imagine another future, but also to stop and consider what it is that makes our lives livable here and now.
Nao Bustamante
March 8-12
Bustamante will present a series of theatrical set-pieces organized around the all-too-timely theme of the history of optics and tools used in gynecology and how these have interacted with, and informed conceptions of, femininity and womanliness. The work will feature original videos as backdrops to live performances which will feature Purchase students as actors.
Amber Hawk Swanson
March 29 – April 2
Hawk Swanson will film episodes of The Harmony Show, a multi-faceted talk show she developed with her collaborator, Davecat, and his partner, Sidore Kuroneko, a life-size silicone doll. Created during the early days of the pandemic as a web-based mode of artistic production foregrounding intellectual inquiry and community-building, The Harmony Show explores issues of personhood, desire, race, queerness, dis/ability, and community in two modalities. The first is a seminar in which an invited scholar presents on their work and discusses it with the show’s co-hosts. The second is a cooking show, where a less academically-geared discussion about the same types of issues can unfold as the guest and hosts prepare a meal designed by a recipe developer who specializes in food’s healing properties. As a program designed for an online environment, filming in-gallery with a live audience will present new opportunities for considering public engagement and imagining the community created by the show’s dissemination.
Emily Coates
April 5-9
Coates’ work will interweave a multi-channel video installation with a dance piece featuring original choreography and speaking-role cameos for Purchase College science faculty. The video, dance, and dialogic elements stem from Coates’ research into the long human history of cosmic dances across time and multiple geographies. Exploring attempts to reckon the cosmos in human scale and through the orchestration of human movement and collaboration, the work will feature Purchase College students. Coates will also offer movement workshops related to the themes of the piece to museum visitors.
Autumn Knight
April 12-16
Knight’s sculptural installation and dialogue-based performance work, Complain/Disappoint, will feature five performers drawn from the Purchase College community. The performers will interpret and present action scores that include interaction with sculptural objects created by Knight and the recitation of texts featuring the complaints of people who “are not usually allowed to complain or who we do not expect to hear complaining.” The piece explores affective labor, vulnerability, and the extraordinary expectations placed on certain types of workers we ask to shoulder other’s burdens while ignoring that they have their own.
Patty Chang
with Astrida Neimanis and Aleksija Neimanis
April 26-30
Chang, Neimanis and Neimanis will present a work exploring intimacy and feeling (as individual physical sensation and as the sense of belonging to a group) through a participatory, immersive environment. Still images culled from virtual reality depicting the action of touching an object will form the visual backdrop to performers and audience members playing a memory game using cards strewn across the floor. Investigating the seams between vision, touch, and sound, as well as the borders between individual and collective experience. Chang, Neimanis and Neimanis will invite museumgoers to consider the reality of feelings in multiple ways.
Jesus Benavente
May 3-7
Benavente will present a series of installations and interventions in the gallery and across the Purchase College campus on a rotating, irregular schedule. The artist will work with students to produce gatherings that have the aesthetics of protest to investigate what turns a group into a politicized bloc. Large inflatable sculptures will fill the gallery, altering one’s perception of space and transforming the solemn museum into an overstuffed funhouse. Museumgoers will be invited to a dance party with music and lights, all of which will alternate between a celebratory club atmosphere and a surveilled crime scene. Sometimes, a mariachi band will appear. The collection of spatial invitations and interventions will explore the ways our surroundings shape our sense of self and the permissible—what it is OK to do, and what it is not OK to do—and it will offer moments and glimpses of how people can push back on these limitations and expand our sense of the possible.
Hard Return: 9 Experiments for this Moment is organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, and co-curated by Purchase College faculty members Kate Gilmore, a renowned performance artist, and Jonah Westerman, an art historian who specializes in performance art.
Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Purchase College Foundation and the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.
A Note on Performance Art
by Professor Jonah Westerman
Co-Curator, Hard Return
“Performance” itself can be an intimidating and confusing word when it comes to describing artworks. Since the 1970s, “performance” has become a way to describe modes of artistic activity that do not fit neatly into other categories–like painting, sculpture, photography, video, dance, theater, etc.–or flout their conventions. At the same time, works described as performance often include or borrow from these traditional mediums. Performance itself, however, is not a medium—not something that a work of art can be—but is rather a set of questions about how art relates to people and the wider social world. Describing artwork as performance emphasizes the processes through which it is created and received. It destabilizes the line between two usually sequential procedures to acknowledge the many ways a work is made at the place and time where it meets its audiences.
Thank you.
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2. Pope.L, FF Alumn, at David Zwirner, Manhattan, Feb. 3-Apr. 1
Please visit this link:
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2023/gordon-matta-clark-and-pope-l-impossible-failures
Thank you.
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3. Alison O’Daniel, FF Alumn in the Sundance Film Festival, live and online, Jan 22-27
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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4. Nyugen E. Smith, FF Alumn, now online in TheArtNewspaper.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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5. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Coco Fusco, FF Alumns, at David Zwirner, Manhattan, thru Feb. 25
Please visit this link:
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2023/felix-gonzalez-torres/press-release
Thank you.
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6. Galinsky, FF Alumn, at Book Club Bar, Manhattan, Jan. 19
“Poetry in New York” at Book Club Bar, LES NYC, Thursday January 19
Galinsky hosts this monthly series of poets on Thursday January 19th, 8-9:30pm, at Book Club Bar, 197 East 3rd Street, 10009. Featured poets this month include: Yelda Ali and Filip Marinovich! Join us for this FREE event! Come early. .. Stay Late …
Wine, coffee, tea served before, during, and after the show!
Thank you.
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7. Jennifer Miller, Cathy Weis, FF Alumns, at La MaMa, Manhattan, Feb. 4
La MaMA Presents:
Coffeehouse Chronicles #169: Circus Amok
Saturday, Feb 4, 2023
3:00pm
La MaMa: The Downstairs
66 East 4th Street,
basement level
New York, NY 10003
You may purchase tickets here: https://www.lamama.org/shows/coffeehouse-chronicles-169-circus-amok
Panel: Jennifer Miller, Jenny Romaine & Cathy Weis
Moderated by: Laura Helton
Performers: Sarah Johnson, Gregory Corbino, Pher Gleason
Band Members: Jenny Romaine, Mary Feaster, Ben Meyers
Curated and directed by Michal Gamily
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can from $11–$61
Free for La MaMa Members
Coffeehouse Chronicles is an educational performance series exploring the history of Off-Off-Broadway. Part artist-portrait, part history lesson, and part community forum, Coffeehouse Chronicles take an intimate look at the development of downtown theatre, from the 1960s’ “Coffeehouse Theatres” through today.
Thank you.
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8. Suzanne Lacy, Lucy Lippard, Alice Aycock, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, FF Alumns, now online at Frieze.com
Please visit this link to Frieze.com’s Top 10 Exhibitions of 2022
https://www.frieze.com/article/top-10-shows-us-2022
Thank you.
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9. Cassils, Miriam Schaer, Analia Segal, FF Alumns, at Pratt Institute Schafler Gallery, opening Jan. 23
Fine Arts Faculty/Staff Exhibition: Part Two
Please join us on Monday Jan. 23 5-7 pm for the opening reception at the RUbelle and Norman Schafler Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.
Curated by Kyle Staver
Register to Attend: https://bit.ly/3UNDsBP
Advanced Registration is required to attend the opening event for all visitors, including the Pratt Community
Artists: Adam Apostolos, Lisa Bateman, Taylor Bielecki, Nate Bozeman, Michael Brennan, Cassils, Peggy Cyphers, Theresa Daddezio, Kelly Driscoll, Brice Garrett, David Gothard, Xayvier Haughton, Blake Hiltunen, Michael Kirk, Fay Ku, David Lantow, Benjamin La Rocco, Catherine LeCleire Wright, Michael Gac Levin, Steve Locke, Jen Mazza, Chip McCall, Riad Miah, Curtis Mitchell, Donna Moran, Mario Naves, Matt Nolen, Naomi Safran-Hon, Miriam Schaer, Josh Schutz, Analia Segal, Laurel Sparks, Adrienne Elise Tarver, Erica Wessmann, Andrew Woolbright
On view: January 17 – February 25, 2023
Thank you.
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10. Soojakim, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
Can the Sydney Modern Change How a ‘Sporting Nation’ Sees Itself?
Thank you.
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11. Virginia Maksymowicz & Blaise Tobia, FF Alumns, at College Art Association Conference 2023, Manhattan, February 17
Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowiczwill be participating in a panel at the College Art Association conference in NYC this February.
The session will focus upon an important part of American art history that has been overlooked by scholars. Titled, “Art History in Search of a Historian,” it will discuss the largest federal program for employing artists since the Works Progress Administration — The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) — which funded 20,000 arts sector jobs from 1974 to 1982.
At its peak in 1980, CETA funneled between $200 and $300 million (over a billion in 2023 dollars) into the arts. In comparison, the National Endowment for the Arts budget that year was only $159 million.
This federal program helped lay the foundation for contemporary art today. It connected artists to communities and to each other. Some found continued employment with their project sponsors while others moved into arts-related jobs. Some became professors, museum administrators, curators and arts writers. Still others went on to artworld success such as Ursula von Rydingsvard, Judy Baca, Dawoud Bey, Ruth Asawa, Suzanne Lacy, FF Alumn, Fred Wilson, FF Alumn, Willie Cole, FF Alumn, and Senga Nengudi. Its impact was enormous.
“Art History in Search of a Historian”
Virginia Maksymowicz, Blaise Tobia, Andrea Kirsh
Friday, February 17, 2023, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM (EST)
New York Hilton Midtown, Grand Ballroom West
More details here: https://www.americansforthearts.org/events/art-history-in-search-of-a-historian
For more info about CETA and the Arts, please visit the http://www.ceta-arts.com/
Thank you.
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12. Elise Engler, FF Member, at Frosch and Co., Manhattan, opening Jan. 19
I have work in the group show, Paper Power, at Frosch and Co. at 34 East Broadway in Manhattan opens Thursday, January 19 and continues through February 26th. https://froschandco.com/future Thank you, Elise Engler
Thank you.
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13. Linda Mary Montano, Kathy Brew, FF Alumns, at The Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, Feb. 9
INTERACTION with Video by Linda Mary Montano in collaboration with Tobe Carey video editing/animation; Jim Barbaro sound; Brenda Hutchinson long horn. And in performance with Kathy Brew, Yanira Castro, Laurie Berg, Kim Brandt and Tatyana Tannenbaum at The Chocolate Factory 8pm. Thursday February 9, 2023. https://chocolatefactorytheater.org/linda-mary-montano/
Thank you.
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14. Joseph Kosuth, FF Alumn, at Castelli Gallery, Manhattan, thru Feb. 25
Please visit this link:
https://www.castelligallery.com/artists/joseph-kosuth
Thank you.
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15. Simone Forti, FF Alumn, at MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, thru April 2
Simone Forti
at MOCA Grand Avenue
250 South Grand Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA 90012
On View:
January 15 – April 2, 2023
Members’ Celebration:
January 14, 1:30–4:00pm
Performances at 1:45 and 3:00pm
The Box, who has represented Simone Forti since 2009, is elated to announce Forti’s solo exhibition at MOCA Grand Avenue.
From MOCA’s Press Release:
Simone Forti is the first exhibition on the West Coast to explore the monumental career of visionary artist Simone Forti in depth. Forti is perhaps best known as a choreographer, which the exhibition will highlight with weekly performances of her groundbreaking Dance Constructions, featuring a cast of Los Angeles-based artists and creatives. At the same time, Forti can more expansively be understood as an artist who works with movement; looking beyond the Dance Constructions, this exhibition surveys six decades of the artist’s incisive work, elucidating the breadth and depth of her practice through works on paper, videos, holograms, and performance ephemera and documentation. Featuring work from the 1960s through to the present day, Simone Forti is an homage to a towering artist who has forever reframed the dialogue between visual art and contemporary dance.
Read the full press release, including list of curators, hosts, participants, and supporters here: https://theboxla.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=38f015e9acc99dafacbec1a57&id=f2e7458c4c&e=053998eec4
Dance Constructions Performance Schedule:
Thursdays, 3:30pm, 4:45pm, 6pm, and 7:15pm
Saturdays and Sundays, 12:30pm, 1:45pm, 3pm, and 4:15pm
Dance Constructions are performed by Loay Al Derazi, Rodrigo Arruda, Alan Duff Berman, Miles Brenninkmeijer, John Brutle, Kyla Carter, Milka Djordjevich, Alexsa Durrans, Gabriela Enciso, Jennifer Galipo, Abriel Gardner, Chelsea Gaspard, Peter Kalisch, Zoe Rappaport, Kim Schnaubert, Michelle Sui, devika wickremesinghe, and Melina Wilcox.
Instruction by Carmela Hermann Dietrich.
Performance Coordination by Sarah Swenson.
Stay tuned for more information about exhibition merchandise for Simone Forti including t-shirts, books, and vinyl records via the MOCA Store here: https://theboxla.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=38f015e9acc99dafacbec1a57&id=5034091fd2&e=053998eec4
Admission to Simone Forti is free courtesy of Carolyn Clark Powers.
GALLERY NEWS
Upcoming
Simone Forti, FF Alumn, Simone Forti at MOCA, Los Angeles, California opens January 15, 2023
Johanna Went, FF Alumn, Looking Back at White Columns, New York, New York opens January 20, 2023
Barbara T. Smith, FF Alumn, The Way to Be at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, California opens February 28, 2023
On View
Marwa Abdul-Rahman THE WORLD at The Box, Los Angeles thru February 4, 2023
Simone Forti and Barnett Cohen work of poetry poems poems hardcopies available
Julien Bismuth and Corazón del Sol ongoing online project Sanfona / Symphony
Naotaka Hiro New Abstracts: Recent Acquisitions at LACMA, Los Angeles, California thru May 29, 2023 and Shadow Tracer: New Works on Paper at Aspen Museum, Aspen, Colorado thru April 2, 2023
Los Angeles Poverty Department, FF Alumn Blue Book—Green Paper at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, California thru January 28, 2023
Judith Bernstein, FF Alumn, Ridiculously Yours: Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm at Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany thru April 10, 2023
Julien Bismuth Beat the Matrix at Simone Subal Gallery, New York, New York thru February 11
Box Editions on Bandcamp
Thank you.
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16. Johanna Went, FF Alumn, at White Columns, Manhattan, opening Jan. 20
White Columns
Looking Back / The 13th White Columns Annual – Selected by Olivia Shao
January 20–March 4, 2023
Participating Artists:
Terry Adkins
Olga Balema
Lyndon Barrois Jr.
Patricia L. Boyd
James Castle
Leidy Churchman
Jenni Crain
Blacklips Performance Cult
Verne Dawson
Trisha Donnelly
Elise Duryee-Browner/Graham Vunderink
Elizabeth Englander
Donald Evans
Minnie Evans
Ryan Foerster
Raque Ford
Ellie Ga
Fernanda Gomes
Ray Hamilton
Yun-Fei Ji
Dominique Knowles
Marc Kokopeli/Matthew Langan-Peck
June Leaf
Maggie Lee
Agosto Machado
Danny McDonald
Peter Moore
Maria Nordman
Rafael Sánchez
Ser Serpas
Jack Shannon
Ahlam Shibli
Bob Smith
Anita Steckel
Unknown Lakota Artist
Frank Walter
Johanna Went
and Benjamin Péret/Robert Rius/André Breton
/Thérèse Caen/Remedios Varo
91 Horatio, Street New York, NY 10014
Tuesday–Saturday, 11 AM–6 PM
Thank you.
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17. Barbara T. Smith, FF Alumn, at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, opening Feb. 28
Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be
GETTY CENTER
Upcoming, February 28 – July 16
Research Institute Galleries I and II
Get free tickets to the Getty Center: https://tickets.getty.edu/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=79DEA111-0A5B-463B-A2CB-EF0CD927DF11&menu_id=05C6A2BC-780F-40F5-85FF-309A5FC8994A
Since the 1960s, Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931 in Pasadena) has been at the forefront of artistic movements in California. Her work explores concepts that strike at the core of human nature, including sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, technology, and death. This autobiographical exhibition with an accompanying publication explores the artist’s first 50 years, which were marked by dramatic upheavals in her personal life as well as the development of her most pioneering works, including her Xerox art and radical early performances.
Thank you.
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18. Stella Watizkin, FF Alumn, at Slag & RX, Manhattan, opening Feb. 2
STELLA WAITZKIN
STELLA WAITZKIN: THESE BOOKS ARE PAINTINGS
FEBRUARY 2 – MARCH 11, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 6-8 PM
Slag & RX, 522 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Slag Gallery proudly announces Stella Waitzkin: These Books Are Paintings, the first solo exhibition of work by the sculptor Stella Waitzkin (1920-2003) at the gallery. The show features a selection of significant works dating from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. In these works, we see a range of compositional approaches the artist applied to her idiosyncratic use of the cast book form: single sculptural objects, assemblages, and rows of cast resin books set upon shelves. Waitzkin’s powerful artworks explore themes of transformation, memory, gender roles, and the disruption of expectations.
Curated by Craig Hensala
Exhibition text by Eleanor Heartney (please read below)
About the artist
Stella Waitzkin (1920-2003) exhibited widely in Europe and America and received the Lee Krasner Award for lifetime achievement from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1995. She lived and worked in New York, where she was a longtime resident of the Chelsea Hotel.
Recent exhibitions include Materiality: Stella Waitzkin, Zillman Art Museum, University of Maine (2022); Lost Library: Stella Waitzkin, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (2018); Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum (2020); and inclusion in the permanent collection galleries at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2019). Her works are in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI and the RISD Museum, Providence, RI.
Stella Waitzkin
By Eleanor Heartney
Books are repositories of human knowledge and portals to imagined worlds. But they are also (although this concept is increasingly endangered in our digital age) tactile objects composed of paper covered in ink and bound together in handheld volumes. In this latter guise, books can be subject to any manner of indignities and transformations, a reality that has inspired countless artists. Books can be singed and covered with lead (Anselm Kiefer), cast in concrete (Rachel Whiteread), even dissolved and fermented (John Latham). But rather than diminish their power, such treatments only affirm how central books are to the human imagination. The multiple seductions of books are central to the mature work of Stella Waitzkin.
Born in 1920 in New York City, Waitzkin came of age as an artist during the tumultuous 1950s and 60s. She gained critical recognition and commercial exposure in the 1970s and 80s, appearing in twelve solo and numerous group shows and continuing to make art until she died in 2003. In the years since her death interest in her art has grown. Her work is held in many collections, among them the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, and the New York Public Library. Several large assemblages based on arrangements of her works from her apartment are owned by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Like so many women of her generation, Waitzkin followed a circuitous career path. While young, she explored theater, hosted a radio show on beauty tips and attempted to settle down in a conventional marriage. Eventually, the pressure to conform was too powerful and she sought liberation from the prescribed roles of wife and mother through art. In the early 1950s Waitzkin studied with Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning and became a painter. By the end of the decade, she had left her husband to pursue the artist’s life in Greenwich Village. There she threw herself into the feminist and anti-war movements and began expressing her dissatisfaction with contemporary society through a series of feminist performances. In 1969 she moved into the Chelsea Hotel, where she would retain a residence until her death. This legendary haunt of artists, writers and musicians became the incubator of the works for which she is best known: assemblage sculptures that combine found and fabricated articles in a manner that breaks down the barrier between art and life. For the New York avant-garde of that time, traditional definitions of art had become meaningless. Rauschenberg put a tire around a goat and made his bed into a painting. Louise Nevelson salvaged materials from construction sites and pieced them together in moody black architectural structures. Like them, Waitzkin was exploring the new possibilities emerging from the wreckage of the old rules.
Waitzkin found her métier in books. After experimenting with glass and metal, she settled on cast polyester resin as her preferred material. Its semi-transparence captures light while suspending any object encased within it in a milky translucence. She learned how to color the resin, giving the works a mysterious glow. Books cast in resin are defamiliarized. Traces of the embossed patterns on their covers, bits of bound leather and even at times a title remain visible. But the objects themselves are now something new. Waitzkin incorporated other artifacts into some of the sculptures –doll heads, casts of her own or friend’s faces, birds, fruit and fish and other trinkets. She also used resin to cast other objects. One example is a series of casts made from a relief, possibly cast from the cover of an antique wedding album, representing a pair of lovers. In what was perhaps a slightly cynical comment on her own marital experiences, she titled these works Pre-Nuptial Agreement/Marriage Vows. Waitzkin displayed her resin books in various ways. Sometimes they existed as singular objects, and sometimes she grouped them spines out, piled up or face out. They might be propped up with bookends or cast as open volumes from which objects protruded, literally evoking the idea of narratives spilling from a book. In her Chelsea apartment, Waitzkin’s art works surrounded her. Arranged on shelves, they became elements in ever-changing wall size assemblages.
Waitzkin’s cast resin books have the frozen stillness of relics and the poetic resonance of shards unearthed in an archeological dig. Writings about Waitzkin’s work frequently stress a comment she made in an artist statement: “Words are lies.” This is often used to suggest that she regarded books as suspicious objects that needed to be silenced. But it is important to know that the statement continues, “I make the books to get away from the word. When I make the books, I feel like I’m telling folk stories; it’s all there inside the book. You don’t have to necessarily read it, see, because you already know the whole thing by heart.”
This suggests that Waitzkin saw herself as a storyteller. What kinds of stories do these works tell? There is pathos and redemption in the resuscitation of discarded items. The objects she chose to incorporate suggest an old-fashioned version of femininity. The birds, flora and cast heads have a Victorian quality, imbuing them with an aura of nostalgia. And yet, trapped as they are in resin and almost melting before our eyes, they also hint at Waitzkin’s unwillingness to succumb to traditional expectations. The books themselves, resembling fragments of a personal library, speak of home and domesticity – a place both of sanctuary and imprisonment. And while the assemblages often exhibit a wry wit, they also convey a sense of melancholy made more powerful today by the awareness that physical books themselves are rapidly becoming relics of a vanishing world.
A sign displayed in Waitzkin’s library/studio read: “These Books are Paintings.” With this, she indicated that her resin books are not meant to be read in any conventional sense. They speak the language of color, form, material and light. But for all their formal beauty, they are like ordinary books in one striking way. They contain worlds, ushering us into a magical realm of memory, dream and emotion.
Special thanks to Waitzkin Memorial Library Trust
Title: STELLA WAITZKIN: THESE BOOKS ARE PAINTINGS
Artist(s): STELLA WAITZKIN
Address: Slag & RX, 522 West 19th street, NY, NY 10011
Website: www.slaggallery.com
Dates: February 2 – March 11, 2023
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 AM – 1 PM and 2- 6 PM
Sunday and Monday closed
Admission: Free
For available works, please contact the gallery :
Irina Protopopescu at Slag Gallery
Tel: +1 212-967-9818
Email: irina@slaggallery.com
Thank you.
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19. John Cage, Andy Warhol, La Monte Young, FF Alumns, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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20. Cindy Sherman, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/new-york-art-galleries.html?referringSource=articleShare
Thank you.
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21. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, receives Best New Play, BroadwayWorld Boston Awards
Winners Announced For The 2022 BroadwayWorld Boston Awards
The audience has voted and the winners have been announced!
Best New Play Or Musical (Professional)
Winner: THE LADY HAMLET by Sarah Schulman – Provincetown Theater
Thank you.
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22. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, now online in Cape Cod Times, and more
Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, in the Cape Cod Times, Provincetown Banner, Provincetown Independent, Cape Codder and WOMR.FM radio
My 40th Re-Rooters Day Ceremony was held on January 7 after “The Twelve Days of Stockpiling” in Provincetown Harbor. The Theme: Grass-fed Capitalism (def-ssarG msilatipa – Chant), including the Ten Commandments of Free-Range Insurrectionists.
Onward!
Jay Critchley
Thank you.
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23. Ken Friedman, FF Alumn, at Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sweden, Feb. 8-Apr. 23
Please visit this link:
https://www.kalmarkonstmuseum.se/en/exhibition/92-events/
Thank you.
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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 Mackenzie Penera and Kyan Ng, FF Interns, Spring 2023
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