Contents for January 29, 2024
CONTENTS (please click on the links or scroll down for complete information on each post):
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Weekly Spotlight: LIVE AT THE LIBRARY IX now on view at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Campus Library, thru April 11
Weekly Spotlight: Linda Sibio, FF Alumn, at Franklin Furnace LOFT, online Feb. 14
1. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, now online with Firewall 2.0
2. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, at Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA, opening Feb. 3
3. Guerrilla Girls, Jon Hendricks, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Jean Toche, FF Alumns, in new publication
4. Pope.L, Allan Schwartzman, FF Alumns, now online
5. Zakary Drucker, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
6. kara lynch, FF Alumn, at Mabou Mines, Manhattan, Jan. 30-Feb. 3
7. Liliana Porter, FF Alumn, at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY, thru Feb. 25
8. Nina Kuo, Bing Lee, Rumiko Tsuda, Charles Yuen, FF Alumns, now online at Hyperallergic.com
9. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Manhattan, thru Feb. 23
10. Ron Athey, Liz Ferrer and Bow Ty Enterprises Venture Capital, Beatrice Glow, Xandra Ibarra, Aaron Landsman, Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser, Yvonne Meier, Pamela Sneed, FF Alumns, receive 2024 Creative Capital Award
11. Lina Azalea Dahbour, FF Alumn, at ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, Feb. 9
12. Galinsky, FF Alumn, at Book Club Bar, Manhattan, Feb. 15
13. Halona Hilbertz, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, at Viridian Artists, thru Feb. 17
14. Eleanor Antin, Judith Bernstein, Louise Bourgeois, Cynthia Carlson, Agnes Denes, Mary Beth Edelson, Joyce Kozloff, Virginia Maksymowicz, Ree Morton, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Miriam Schapiro, Jenny Snider, Pat Steir, FF Alumns, at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, thru Mar. 16 and more
15. Charles Moulton, FF Alumn, at ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA, Feb. 3-4
16. Steven Widerman, FF Member, now online at YouTube.com
17. Ken Weaver, Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumns, at 14BC Gallery, Manhattan, opening Feb. 2
18. Elke Solomon, FF Member, now online at Artforum.com
19. Jenny Holzer, FF Alumn, now online at HauserWirth.com
20. elin o’Hara slavick, Amy Harrison, FF Alumns, at University of California, Irvine, Feb 1-Dec. 15
21. Cindy Sherman, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
22. Richard Prince, FF Alumn, at The Saanen Vitrine, 3792, Switzerland, thru Mar. 31
23. Janet Goldner, FF Member, at Carter Burden Gallery, Manhattan, opening Feb. 8
24. Marina Abramović, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
25. Dara Birnbaum, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
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Weekly Spotlight: LIVE AT THE LIBRARY IX now on view at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Campus Library, thru April 11
Pratt Institute Libraries & Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. present their annual collaborative exhibition and event
LIVE AT THE LIBRARY IX
The Ballad of Reversals: Ephemeral Images of Ephemeral Art
On View
January 19 through April 11, 2024
Mondays-Fridays. 10am-6pm
Pratt Institute
Brooklyn Campus Library
Panel Discussion
Saturday February 10, 2024, 5-6 pm
Brooklyn Campus Library
Alumni Reading Room
(elevator accessible)
and online at the Franklin Furnace digital LOFT
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/797302020807
All exhibition and related events take place at Pratt Institute Brooklyn Campus Main Library, 200 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11205-3802
The new exhibition The Ballad of Reversals: Ephemeral Images of Ephemeral Art reflects on the medium of reversal film through the image archives at Franklin Furnace. Reversal film, also known as slide film, positive film, and transparency film, was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935 as an affordable and high-quality alternative to negative film. This advance made it possible to directly project images onto screens, as opposed to images needing to be developed in a darkroom becoming visible. By the 1960s, artists, particularly those whose practices were conceptual and ephemeral in nature, began to use reversal film to document and exhibit their work.
The Ballad of Reversals considers the conjunction of two parallel missions of Franklin Furnace: one that supports and celebrates the ephemeral art and another that aims to preserve the ephemerality. Reversal film, which inevitably deteriorates with age and exposure to light, is itself ephemeral. It is both a medium of preserving ephemeral moments and an object of ephemerality. Embodying this ambivalence, The Ballad of Reversals explores the paradoxical nature of the now obsolete medium through images and physical slides drawn from Franklin Furnace’s Event archives. The exhibition also features a glass vitrine in which visitors can glimpse a simulated darkroom wherein the “magic” of photographic image making takes place.
The accompanying panel discussion, from 5-6 pm et on February 10th, will present exhibition co-curator Tsubasa Berg, conversing on the topic with photographers Barbara Nitke and Marty Heitner, and Harley Spiller, Ken Dewey Director of Franklin Furnace and co-curator of the exhibition. The panelists, all colleagues and friends of Michael Katchen, Franklin Furnace’s Senior Archivist and photography expert, who worked steadily for the organization from his first day as a university student intern in 1980 until his death in February 2023, will also discuss Michael’s career and legacy, and respond to comments and questions from audience members.
Tsubasa Berg, Photographic Digitization Specialist, has worked with Franklin Furnace since 2021. He is an artist/photographer based in Brooklyn, New York.
Barbara Nitke is a New York photographer and educator best known for her intimate and compassionate work in the alternative sex world. Long a champion of the LGBTQ+, kink and sex worker communities, she lives and works in Harlem.
Marty Heitner is an artist and professional photographer who has created photographic documentation of Franklin Furnace art events since the early 1980s. His work has been published in The New York Times and he lives and works in Brooklyn and Greenport, New York.
Harley Spiller, Ken Dewey Director, is a lifelong New Yorker who started working for Franklin Furnace in 1986. He is an artist, collector, educator, and author of Keep the Change: A Collector’s Tales of Lucky Pennies, Counterfeit C-Notes, and Other Curious Currency (Princeton Architectural Press 2015).
Franklin Furnace, an independent 501(c)3 charitable organization-in-residence at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, will celebrate its 50th Anniversary in 2026. Franklin Furnace was founded in 1976 by artist Martha Wilson to serve artists who chose publishing as a primary, “democratic” artistic medium who were not being supported by existing arts organizations.
Pratt is an institute, an experience, and an idea. What started as a radical experiment to expand access to creative careers is now a community of 5,137 grad and undergrad students working across 48 programs with 1,200 dedicated faculty. 135 years in the making, this is Pratt.
Documentation of work by the following Franklin Furnace artist alumns is on view:
Alba Sanchez
Alex Mavro
Alison Knowles
Alvin Eng
Alyson Pou
Annie Lanzillotto
Angelika Wanke-Festa
Barbara Hammer
Blue Man Group (Chris Wink, Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton)
Bob Sikoryak
Brigid Murphy
Carnival Knowledge
Caroline Sykora
Cathy Simmons
Cheri Gaulke
Chris Kraus
Christine Papalexis
Sonia Knox
Dan Kwong
Debbie Moore
Deborah Edmeades
Dee Dee Russell
Dominique Dibbell
Elise Kermani
Eliza Schwarz
Eric Bogosian
Estelle Eichenberger
Frank Moore
Fred Holland
Gearoid Dolan
Gitta Gsell
Giuditta Tornetta
Harold Olejarz
Harley Spiller
Harry Kipper
Jim Sutcliffe
Joan Jonas
Joel Reynolds
Jones Twins
Judith Jackson
Julie Laffin
Julio Morales
Kevin Carter… et al
Koo Dance
Kriota Willberg
Kristen Stiles
Kugla
Layne Redmond
Lorraine O’Grady
Maciej Toporowicz
Margaret Nelson
Mary Beth Edelson
Maurya Wickstown
Michael Montgomery
Mineo Aayamaguchi
Nigel Rolfe
Patricia Winter
Peggy Shaw & Lois Weaver
Philip Brown
Pope.L
Ralph Wolf
Rebecca Moore
Rose English
Sheelah Murphy
Sherman Fleming
Susanne Grossberg
Tari Ito
Ted Weiss
Thomas Churm
Thought Music (Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley)
Timothy North
V-Girls
Yoshiko Chuma & School of Hard Knocks
Zone West
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Weekly Spotlight: Linda Sibio, FF Alumn, at Franklin Furnace LOFT, online Feb. 14
Spontaneous Combustion: Linda Sibio and Cracked Eggs in Performance
February 14, 2024
Franklin Furnace LOFT
Free – Online
Please RSVP for the event via Zoom:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcude6vqzIsHNzauV67eaC3N3RflUWUe0w3#/registration
“Spontaneous Combustion” was developed using structured improvisation. The main themes include, Guinea Pigs, Eyeballs, Renavia (the journey of a woman who is half-human and half-machine) who meets her doctor who is also the Pop Star singing about being Crazy for a Day (line: I spent most of my life under the setting sun, Searching for truth my journey has just begun/Cracked Eggs song: Cracked Eggs is a sign of hope, helping those in need. ) This is truly a crazy ride for the audience from Amazing Grace to the Vegetarian Wolf to the world cracked into pieces; bits of Austrich Eggs float in the air.
Themes and characters were developed by Erica Mosco and Jeff Pippin who both suffer from mental challenges. This piece demonstrates the high level of creativity from people who live outside of society. The music is by Shawn Mafia, Jeff Pippin, and Ray De La Rosa
They take themes in their lives filled with disability and joy. Both are now teaching a class developing a mental health coloring book called “See, See, See, More! Listen with your Eyes” where they collaborated with Claudia Bouche, Neil Doshin, Lesley Matamorous and Georgeann Dean who are contemporary artists funded by Creative Corps.
We must mention Harley Spiller and Martha Wilson from Franklin Furnace whose interest in “Cracked Eggs” since 2001 when Martha sat on the board of Bezerk Productions who sponsors this project. The company received a $1.5 million dollar grant in 2021 to work with people who have mental differences where Linda Sibio teaches movement, voice, and visual art. We are on Cohort 6 and it is getting more and more popular.
Erica Mosco is one example of someone who started with our Cracked Eggs workshops with the San Bernardino County/office of Innovation and made art a central point in her life. This is Bezerk Productions/Linda Sibio’s goal-to give courage and strength to those in need!
About the presenters:
Linda Sibio
Linda Sibio was awarded a Franklin Furnace Fund in 1992 to bring her performance work, “W.Va. Schizophrenic Blues,” to the Anchorage venue in New York City produced by Creative Time. Since then, she has incorporated issues around insanity as a major component to her artistic practice. In 1985, she taught performance classes for the Los Angeles Poverty Department where she first began collaborating alongside people with mental differences. This led her to write the book, “Reflections in a Broken Mirror,” and develop her philosophical stance called, “The Insanity Principle.” She has exhibited her fine art projects in Los Angeles, New York, The Netherlands, and with organizations such as Cooper Union School of Art, High Desert Test Sites, LAMP, Morongo Basin Mental Health, and Art Possibilities and Pathways. Her work is the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles.
Erica Mosco
From the early age of 7, I discovered my passion for drawing, and throughout my life, art and my faith have been instrumental in helping me navigate the ups and downs. In my mid-50s, I had the privilege of joining an art class called Cracked Eggs, led by the talented Linda Sibio, who became my mentor. Under her guidance, I honed my artistic technique and expanded my creativity. Since then, I have successfully completed two full courses and now utilize art as a means to support individuals with mental illness, using my skills to make a positive impact in their lives.
Erica Mosco
Driven by a passion for helping others and art, my personal development was shaped by my diagnosis of Severe Social Anxiety Disorder. Through music and graphic art, I found solace and strength, enabling me to overcome the challenges of Social Anxiety and pursue a career in public speaking. Recognizing my aptitude for technology, I obtained credentials in Adult Education to empower and educate adults in technical skills. Now, I am dedicated to using my artistic talents, technological expertise, and personal experiences to positively impact lives through teaching, creating art, and advocating for mental health awareness.
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1. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, now online with Firewall 2.0
Firewall 2.0 – https://fwc-2023.ue.r.appspot.com/
I am pleased to announce the launch of Firewall 2.0 beta, a web-based version of my project that investigates online censorship by comparing the disparities of Google searches in western nations versus Baidu searches in China.
You’re invited to check out Firewall 2.0, and I welcome your feedback and suggestions as we develop this web app into a more robust web experience.
I am also seeking a future partner to permanently host the project, namely not-for-profit Internet freedom organizations, research and educational institutions. If you’re interested in hosting Firewall 2.0 or brainstorming ideas together, please get in touch!
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2. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, at Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA, opening Feb. 3
Coco Fusco
Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word
February 3 – May 12, 2024
Opening Reception
Saturday, February 3 from 7-10PM
Music: Pauline Kim Harris
Narrator: Pamela Sneed
A video essay recorded in the waters around Hart Island, home to the largest mass grave in the United States, where New York’s unclaimed victims of COVID-19 have been buried.
The piece was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona and the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin, and featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial.
“Indelibly disturbing and enthralling, “Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word” (2021), by the veteran Cuban American artist and singularly plainspoken social activist Coco Fusco, is a gorgeous twelve-minute video exploration of Hart Island—New York’s potter’s field for unidentified or unclaimed corpses. Shots of the artist laboring in a rowboat along its shores are intercut with drone overviews of a really quite lovely place where rows of small stone markers perfunctorily memorialize innumerable lost lives. Beauty stands in for unconsummated mourning. The work can seem to invoke the cascading fatalities of the covid pandemic and, by chance, the remorseless current carnage in Ukraine, whereby the destruction of so many people occasions news headlines as sullen as those stones. To be alive now is to be overwhelmed by a consciousness of the untimely dead, who, in Ukraine, have resigned their parts in a drama of ever more urgent military, political, and humanitarian imperatives. Their silence roars.”
– Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker
About the Artist
Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. She is a recipient of a 2023 Free Speech Defender Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship, a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award, a 2021 Latinx Artist Fellowship, a 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman award, a 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, a 2016 Greenfield Prize, a 2014 Cintas Fellowship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.
Fusco’s performances and videos have been presented at the 56th Venice Biennale, the Sharjah Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008, and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. A retrospective entitled Tomorrow I Will Become an Island opened at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin in September, 2023. An accompanying monograph with the same title was just published by Thames & Hudson.
Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015). She is also the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995) The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2001), and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008). She is the editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (1999) and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003). She contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and numerous art publications.
Fusco received her B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), her M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985), and her Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007).
Fusco is a Professor at the Cooper Union School of Art.
Please visit this link:
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/coco-fusco-your-eyes-will-be-an-empty-word/
Thank you.
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3. Guerrilla Girls, Jon Hendricks, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Jean Toche, FF Alumns, in new publication
Guerrilla Girls, Jon Hendricks, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Jean Toche, FF Alumns, are featured in the new publication “Risk Work: Making Art and Guerrilla Tactics in Punitive America, 1967-1987” by Faye Raquel Gleisser, University of Chicago Press, 2023.
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4. Pope.L, Allan Schwartzman, FF Alumns, now online
This morning we launched the second season of The Art World: What If…?!, a series all about imagining new and different futures. These are frank conversations with some of the most thoughtful people in culture today, some of whom may be new to listeners, while all are among the most impactful in our field, and many seldom speak so openly in public.
Please visit this link:
https://open.spotify.com/show/7MYuNXzaX7pNnf7kd3hw0W?si=29acef6198a04f1c&nd=1&dlsi=e83712cb2c304e12
Our podcasts have become increasingly focused on people who do what they do because they believe that art can better our world; that it can, in different but very real ways, enrich lives through insight, provocation, and beauty of objects and ideas.
Maintaining faith in the transformative power of art isn’t easy in today’s art world. At any given moment, one might encounter 57 varieties of consumable perspectives on painting, each a retread packaged in the seductive language of speculation. Hyper-attention is fixated upon a few framed objects, each with price precedents that are trackable online as apparent proof of their worth.
Yet I’m struck by the energy and confidence of our guests, who speak to Charlotte Burns and me with such candor, creativity and humor, despite the grim times we are living in. The perspectives our guests bring to the field enrich my understanding of it and, I hope, yours too. I am endlessly grateful for their generosity in these interviews and how open they are in thinking through the ‘What Ifs’ of what art could be, and what all aspects of creativity and our industry might look like. It is inspiring.
I hope you’ll tune in for this new series. Our first episode, which you can download here, is with the Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Alice Smith, whose miraculous voice embodies creativity itself.
Other guests in these first few shows, which will drop weekly on Thursday mornings for the next 16 weeks, include Dia Art Foundation director Jessica Morgan, who talks about the future of museums—a topic about which there is little consensus or clarity.
The artist and NEW INC director Salome Asega combines charismatic leadership with the latest technology, while Alvaro Barrington is one of the most generously spirited artists of our time.
Upcoming guests include Koyo Kouoh, chief curator and executive director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, who is influencing the field in profound and exciting ways. The peerless dealer Barbara Gladstone, who never talks to the press, has promised to speak with us now.
‘What Ifs’ are the threads weaving through these conversations. We interview the visionary Hoor Al Qasimi, director of Sharjah Art Foundation and the cutting-edge Sharjah Biennial, who has conceived and created new cultural realities.
We ask Phillip Ihenacho, the formidable director of the MOWAA (the Museum of West African Art), about building a new institution — what if we thought about museums and restitution from a totally different perspective? — while the LA art collector Jarl Mohn talks about forming personal taste and philanthropy.
We’ll speak to LaToya Ruby Frazier, whom I consider to be one of the most vital artists working today, on the eve of her upcoming survey at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York.
All this and much more. I hope you will subscribe here, and of course, join the discussion by letting us know your thoughts here.
These new conversations build on our first season of What if…?
extending the “hope” part of the Hope&Dread podcast documentary we produced in 2021 about shifts in power in art. One of our best-remembered episodes of the past season was with the artist Pope.L
whose art I have been thinking about a lot since his untimely death last month. I feel intensely sad at what we have lost. He talked with such vision during our podcast about the work he had yet to make, and it is painful to think of how much we will have missed.
His art was not bound by a specific medium or style, even while it was deeply informed by the histories of art and culture. Rather than play by the rules, Pope.L was constantly poking them. His art was deeply sensitive, endlessly curious and utterly inventive. He was a Black man navigating life in America and his art carried those complexities. His work in performance, theater, painting, sculpture, writing, and drawing defied being either this or that. Embedded in his constant sense of provocation was a man with a keen sense of irony who intentionally evaded a singular sense of himself in relation to the issues his works addressed. This throughline of his work came from both the intellect and the gut.
His was an art forged of commitment, monumental in its ambition and meaning. Pope.L risked his own safety and wellness, his verticality and vertebrae, going above and beyond as an intentional disruptor, even after disruption ceased to hold much value in contemporary art in general.
He was just beginning to achieve the kind of mainstream attention by which worth tends to be measured. There was a retrospective of performance props at MoMA, and special projects with the Whitney and Public Art Fund. I suspect it would have taken the broader art market much longer to embrace the artist’s work in proportion to its importance. All the more gloomy for art today. Art and the art market and the institutions that mirror it need Pope.L now more than ever.
He pushed us to be active in his work, whether complicitly or implicitly and, in the end, his art leaves us with more questions than answers. I have been listening again to his podcast and wondering what it is he meant by this — perhaps it was a call to action: “I think I could do more,” he said.
Pope.L was a great listener, a skill easily lost in this moment when the world feels like it is physically and ideologically crumbling, and when many of us find it hard to hear one another.
I am trying to listen more. There are so many profound voices worth seeking out, all of whom, like Pope.L, are trying to do more, in different ways. I suspect that it is perhaps in art alone that these kinds of spaces exist.
Allan
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5. Zakary Drucker, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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6. kara lynch, FF Alumn, at Mabou Mines, Manhattan, Jan. 30-Feb. 3
kara lynch in LATE BLOOMER @ Mabou Mines SUITE/Space 2023-24
https://www.maboumines.org/production/suite-space-2023-24-naima-lowe-late-bloomer/
Late Bloomer, Created by Naima Lowe
Performances : January 30 at 7:00 PM, February 1 at 7:00 PM, & February 3 at 9:00 PM Runtime: 45 minutes
Directed by Asher Hartman | Text by Naima Lowe | Sound Design and Music by Naima Lowe, Jordan Wright, and kara lynch
Lighting Design by LW Miller
Production Manager Andy Goodman
Performed by Naima Lowe as the Late Bloomer AND Jordan Wright (vocals, trombone, keys, synths) and kara lynch (vocals, violin) as The Band
Masks are required for all SUITE/Space performances. Please wear a mask that fits securely over your mouth and nose at all times in public spaces (hallways, bathroom, lobby, elevator). If you do not have one, we can provide one for you.
Mabou Mines
150 First Avenue (Second Floor), NYC 10009
Late Bloomer is a poetic musical performance about love, longing, and ambition written and performed by Naima Lowe, with a highly improvised punk-jazz musical score co-created with musicians kara lynch and Jordan Wright, and with direction by Asher Hartman. As the Late Bloomer, Naima embodies a heightened version of herself experiencing various stages of a secret, unrequited love affair with an unseen and unknowable figure known as “the old man who has agreed to be the human embodiment of her ambition” or simply “Ambition.” Ambition is charming, elusive, and may or may not be a figment of the Late Bloomer’s imagination. Combining tactics from experimental theater, improvisational music, spoken-word poetry, and physical comedy, Late Bloomer is about a monstrously beautiful body and soul embracing its multiplicity and sexual power by growing ever bigger, badder, and more willing to risk it all in the name of love.
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7. Liliana Porter, FF Alumn, at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY, thru Feb. 25
Liliana Porter: The Gardener and Other Situations
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
January 24 – February 25, 2024
Beginning January 24, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College presents Liliana Porter: The Gardener and Other Situations, curated by Lauren Cornell. This exhibition brings together a selection of works depicting characters in unusual or precarious circumstances. Within each, Porter isolates the wider narrative and reveals a single moment of the figure’s reality. As a result, Porter calls upon the audience to imagine or complete the story of these humorous yet harrowing works.
Liliana Porter’s practice often places carefully chosen small figurines in monochromatic or chaotic backgrounds to address larger philosophical questions and emotional states. Alongside working with toys and found objects, Porter’s practice is deeply rooted in installation, photography, printmaking, and video. The artist states, “Many of these pieces depict a cast of characters that are inanimate objects, toys and figurines that I find in flea markets, antique stores, and other odd places. The objects have a double existence. On the one hand they are mere appearance, insubstantial ornaments, but, at the same time, have a gaze that can be animated by the viewer, who, through it, can project the inclination to endow things with an interiority and identity. These ‘theatrical vignettes’ are constructed as visual comments that speak of the human condition. I am interested in the simultaneity of humor and distress, banality and the possibility of meaning.”
Liliana Porter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and currently lives and works in Rhinebeck, New York. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Porter’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, USA; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Texas, USA; and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York, USA amongst others. Liliana Porter: The Gardener and Other Situations will be on view at CCS Bard until February 25, 2024
CCS Bard
33 Garden Road
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY
12504, United States
For inquiries and more information on Liliana Porter’s work, contact Will Isbell at william@sicardi.com and Mónica Hernández at monica@sicardi.com or call the gallery at 713-529-1313.
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8. Nina Kuo, Bing Lee, Rumiko Tsuda, Charles Yuen, FF Alumns, now online at Hyperallergic.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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9. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Manhattan, thru Feb. 23
Seeing Is Realizing There Is Always More to See
January 24 – February 23, 2024
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 24, 6 – 8 PM
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
3rd Floor, 323 W 39 ST, NYC 10018
Lisa Blas
Sari Carel
Clare Churchouse
Billy Gerard Frank
Beth Ganz
Amir Hariri
Tooraj Khamenehzadeh
Lise Kjaer
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Negin Mahzoun
Curated by Sharon Kendrick
A screening of Billy Gerard Frank’s film “Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap” will be held on February 22, 2024, from 6–8 pm. A closing reception will follow.
EFA Studios is pleased to present an exhibition of EFA-affiliated artists whose work reminds us that the act of perceiving can lead to the realization that there is a hidden depth or abundance of things yet to be seen or understood. The artists here perceive and share things that may be hidden in plain sight, suppressed, or living deep in their imagination. From Lise Kjaer’s observant romanticism to Amir Hariri’s constructivist interiority to Tooraj Khamenehzadeh’s exploration of the landscapes of mystical pilgrimage a range of stories remind us that the epic lies just beneath the surface of the everyday.
Billy Gerard Frank’s film ‘Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap’ is an autobiographical deconstruction and repositioning of his father’s life revealed in an old suitcase of letters and mementos and his own memories of confusion and desire. Fiction and non-fiction interweave to conjure an abstract story of intertwined lives: of Frank’s father, and Frank’s personal experiences of growing up as a gay teen in Grenada. Front and center are death and mortality, truth vs reality, what the adult said, what was said on the television and radio in 1983, what is remembered, and what one chooses to forget. Memories of confusion and the desires the first time a man laid his hands on my body, my sense of abandonment—the gap of time.
Amir Hariri creates constructivist illusions with distorted shapes that challenge the tendency of the brain to take shortcuts and demand the viewer to pay attention. ‘Cobweb Afternoon’ is a snapshot of a contemplative afternoon lost in thought, a mind map of the dialogue happening between him and everything he was absorbing through the noise around him. Forms deconstruct and fold in one another, creating tension and conflict, yet come back together and create beauty. ‘Study for Shelter’ looks back at the optimistic, utopian thinking of the modern era and holds a mirror to where we are today: illuminating Ideas that were developed and not developed, how they shaped us, and how they will shape us.
During the lockdown, Lisa Blas found herself awake every morning at 5 painting the view outside her kitchen window. Isolated inside and yearning for the outside, she returned to that view each morning, painting the meeting planes of the sky and the Hudson River recording their dramatic shifts in tonality throughout the seasons and weather. She began to notice the arc of light and color was not linear but collinear: forming overlapping, circular movements of color and making the horizon appear to bend. Mirroring the shape of an oculus, a motive she returns to often in her work, a form itself that connects you to something that is missing.
Tooraj Khamenehzadeh’s work seeks to capture the ineffable—the state of mystical bewilderment Iranian mystics experience as they return from their inner pilgrimages along the path of intuition and truth. He traveled the routes and byways of the mystics through the Dasht-e Kavir, the vast desert in the center of the Iranian plateau. Using film and old-school camera and film manipulation techniques he created images that evoke the dreamlike journey of waking from a vision and returning to the world.
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s “Lenses” are inspired by the portals of private yachts Russian oligarchs and other super-wealthy world citizens traverse the oceans in and Joyce’s desire to address climate change. Through these portals, Joyce exhibits animations of how the warming climates of the oceans and land might come to look like. The oceans are populated with new creatures and fauna and imagery from traditional Chinese landscape painting is woven in and subverted to reflect the state of our current non-ideal relationship with nature.
One day on the streets of Copenhagen, Lise Kjaer saw a stone in the pavement in the shape of a heart. Looking around, she discovered another one and then many more. She was surrounded by heartstones. “Heartstone” is a part of “The Summer of Love,” an ongoing project initiated in the Summer of 2023 during which Kjaer spent three months traveling with artist Ole Lejbach, crisscrossing Denmark and continuing on a road trip to Berlin and Poland. As an artist, Kjaer is interested in how we see the world through filters of senses, memories, and desires, and navigate our perceptions with an often slim line between the illusionary and the real.
Sari Carel dreams of a circular economy where materials can be used forever. Her practice focuses on the overlooked, things like pennies that are the difference between something and nothing. She aims to reset the trivial, things so familiar we don’t notice them any longer, and bring them to the center through open-ended play, materials and process. On view are sketches from her most recent project, a multi-layer interactive community art project around single-use objects she is currently developing.
Negin Mahzoun’s beautiful figurative drawings, inspired by “Haft Paykar | Seven Portraits” written in 1197 by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (ne. Nizami), are twisted and sewn together and then hidden behind painted glass. Their beauty is obscured and withheld evoking the reality of how familial and cultural traditions reverberate and crash into new generations causing new stories of personal trauma. Haft Paykar reflects how women, from ancient tales to contemporary media, continue to face narratives that only address half of humanity, and have to make a great effort to see power and control as possible for them in a male-dominated world. The figures trapped and held hostage by something that can not change on their own, mirror the need for everyone to change to allow true equality to rise.
Clare Churchouse’s wall-based assemblages teeter on the edge of 2D and 3D and between drawing, painting, and sculpture. Occasionally pieces are related to a particular space with descriptive elements or material from the place, but just as often they do not. Working intuitively and patiently, Clare will add materials and subtract objects working towards the minimal amount to tell the maximum reflecting her desire to create artworks with as little material resources as possible. Drawings evolve, become abstract, and defy gravity. The space in between lines and elements that are created draws the viewer in to complete the image in their minds.
Rather than treat digital technology as necessarily destructive to human experience, Beth Ganz uses it to create new ways of communing with and perceiving the world’s most sacred mountain sites. Experiencing these sites traditionally entailed great physical effort symbolizing the internal struggle of the spirit over the body. Beth combines twenty-first-century surveillance images, with equaling exacting, nineteenth-century photogravure technique and traditional sketching and methods to engage the viewer in a celebration of the beauty of the sacred on earth.
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit public charity. Through its three core programs, EFA Studios, EFA Project Space, and EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, EFA is dedicated to providing artists across all disciplines with space, tools and a cooperative forum for the development of individual practice. EFA is a catalyst for cultural growth, stimulating new interactions between artists, creative communities, and the public. Our mission is maximized by fostering diversity in all its aspects.
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10. Ron Athey, Liz Ferrer and Bow Ty Enterprises Venture Capital, Beatrice Glow, Xandra Ibarra, Aaron Landsman, Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser, Yvonne Meier, Pamela Sneed, FF Alumns, receive 2024 Creative Capital Award
Please visit this link:
https://creative-capital.org/award/awardees/2024/
Thank you.
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11. Lina Azalea Dahbour, FF Alumn, at ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, Feb. 9
Blind Date: Tiny Conversation Hearts
Friday, February 9th, 2023 – 8pm
ISSUE Project Room
22 Boerum Pl. Brooklyn, New York 11201
$15 Advance / $12 ISSUE Members / $20 Door pending availability (Limited Capacity)
On Friday, February 9th at 8pm, just a few days before Valentine’s Day, 2024 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow and interdisciplinary artist Lina Azalea Dahbour presents the first program in her “Blind Date” series—Tiny Conversation Hearts. This Winter, between phases of renovation, ISSUE returns to their 22 Boerum Pl. theater for a series of limited capacity Artist-In-Residence and Fellowship events.
Tiny Conversation Hearts asks four performers to complete a series of risky tasks: take a singular score (in this case, a newly commissioned score by choreographer Alexa West), go home by their lonesome, create a piece based on the score, and show up on the night of the event to perform their piece at the same time as another artist working in a different medium, with no knowledge of the other artist’s plans.
In an attempt to depart from the mono dynamic, algorithmically feasible pairings modern technology seeks to offer us, Dahbour has selected two dancers and two musicians with differing and distinctive voices to be paired in this first dance/music cross-genre “Blind Date” experiment. Conceptually oriented, multimedia dance artist Dominica Greene is paired with cathartic, aural channeler Nyhne; geometrically-minded movement investigator Emily Kessler is paired with sonic collagist Holy People.
Dahbour notes, “Tiny Conversation Hearts is a hopelessly romantic quest to find unexpected, chance-based artistic partnerships. What can we learn about our differences & samenesses from witnessing a kaleidoscope of score interpretations? What do we experience when improvisation lives in the overlap between interdisciplinary artistic monologues? Will any of the artists find creative love? Or will the night be filled with awkwardness and missed opportunities?”
Lina Azalea Dahbour is an interdisciplinary artist and event producer based in the Hudson Valley and New York City. She specializes in multimedia movement performance and dance event creation. Her work has been presented at New York Live Arts, ROSEKILL, Glasshouse Project, Rockaway Art Week/The Locker Room, Green Kill, Trans-Pecos, Groundswell Series, Terrain Exhibitions, The Lace Mill, North Node Kingston, and DIY venues across the Northeast. She is a 2023 Franklin Furnace FUND Recipient for her work with “Light Meditations.” She is the 2024 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at ISSUE Project Room. She produces BADDANCE, a dance event series she founded in 2017 that upholds the merit of confounding, obscene, strange, and very bad dance works. In 2022, she co-founded Momenta, a monthly dance and performance art event series in residence at Trans-Pecos. She operates a part-time DIY show house in Kingston, NY.
Dominica Greene is a movement-based conceptual artist, dancer, and facilitator based in Brooklyn, New York. She values dance as one of the purest forms of expression, utilizing it as an energetic entity capable of affecting real and palpable change. Her company and freelance experience is extensive, having collaborated with, performed, and toured the work of many notable choreographers domestically and internationally. As a bi-racial, Black, Queer woman and art-maker, she is committed to dreaming up and worldbuilding alternate realities and more expansive futures with her BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community.
Emily Kessler is a multinational dance-based artist who was raised in the United States and Switzerland. Her choreographic work has been performed in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Singapore, and Vietnam. Collaboration being at the helm of her process, Emily created POGO in early 2020 to deepen her artistic endeavors with others. Through POGO she has released her first film, choreographed music videos, created work for stage and the outdoors, and curated and produced seasons of a dance showcase series for NYC-based artists. Her recent work has been presented by PAGEANT, Arts On Site, and the Locker Room. Additionally, Emily is a MOtiVE 2023 AiR and has been in residence at Mount Tremper Arts, Chapman Steamer Arts, Sky Hill Farm Studio, Utica Dance, Peaceable Barn, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. She graduated from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, earning a BFA in Performance and Composition and a minor in Art History.
Nancy Kim is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and designer based in New York. Under the alias Nyhne (pronounced— “nine”), they investigate the sonic architecture of emotion, hidden stories, and multigenerational pain, often unearthing layers from their Korean ancestry. Using the amplification of hand-crafted elements, voice, electronics, breath, and synthesis, they create tense and textural environments for catharsis. Through improvisation, their performances welcome chance and play, enabling pain to alchemize into an optimistic potential. Nancy has shown work at Arario Gallery, Reykjavik Art Museum, MIT Keller Gallery, Van Alen Institute and performed at The Glass House, Basilica Hudson, Opus 40, Trans Pecos, and many diy spaces. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and a Master of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are also certified in Integrative Hypnotherapy.
Holy People is the solo-music project of Leah Victoria, a narrative artist & experimental composer based in NYC. Leah’s practice is influenced by her connection to home, healing, and ancestral memory. Her debut LP, Jester to Her Majesty the People, was released in 2019.
Alexa West is a dance artist based in New York City. West studied both dance and sculpture, and makes performances that incorporate material sensibilities across the two disciplines. She trained at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance before receiving a BFA at the Cooper Union, and an MFA at the Milton Avery School of Art at Bard College. West’s work has been presented in both gallery and performance spaces around New York City and Houston, TX. West is a co-founder and co-director of Pageant, a performance venue in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently a Dance Research Fellow at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library.
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12. Galinsky, FF Alumn, at Book Club Bar, Manhattan, Feb. 15
Galinsky curates 10 incredible poets, each doing 5 minutes, at New York’s hottest venue – Book Club Bar, 197 East 3rd Street by Avenue B in the East Village of Manhattan. The night shows a great variety of curated voices, the audience is always enthused and the venue has great cocktails, beers, coffee and tea! All ages and free
IG @galinskynow.
Feb. 15, 8 pm
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13. Halona Hilbertz, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, at Viridian Artists, thru Feb. 17
UN-TRASHED
Curated by Vernita Nemec
Viridian Artists
548 W. 28th Street #632
New York, NY
Opening Thurs Jan. 25, 6-8pm
Jan 23 – Feb 17
Art Talk Sat Feb. 17, 4 pm
#WallDolls #Planet #Life #Humanity #Wildlife #Insects #Plastic #Pollution #Creatures #Diversity #Plants #Biosphere #Life #Nature #Habitat #PlanetEarth #ReadyQuestionmark #halonahilbertz #halonahilbertzblogspot #contemporaryart #touchedbyhumanhands #brooklynartist #artistsofinstagram #zeitgenoessischekunst
#object #wallobject #artwithgarbage #consequentialplastic @viridianartistsinc @ncognita
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14. Eleanor Antin, Judith Bernstein, Louise Bourgeois, Cynthia Carlson, Agnes Denes, Mary Beth Edelson, Joyce Kozloff, Virginia Maksymowicz, Ree Morton, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Miriam Schapiro, Jenny Snider, Pat Steir, FF Alumns, at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, thru Mar. 16 and more
There is an extensive series of shows happening here in Philadelphia for the 50th anniversary of Focus, an important show of women artists in 1974.
This is the overall website for what is being called (re)FOCUS2024:
This is the one which Virginia Maksymowicz is project directing on behalf of the Women’s Caucus for Art:
https://refocus2024.org/womens-caucus-for-art
and she has an installation here: https://refocus2024.org/philadelphia-sculptors-the-artfront-partnership
Moore College of Art & Design is hosting a show that has work from all 81 of the original Focus show:
https://refocus2024.org/refocus-then-and-now
Thank you.
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15. Charles Moulton, FF Alumn, at ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA, Feb. 3-4
Please visit this link:
https://odcsf.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket#/events/a0S5b00000E6s4ZEAR
Thank you.
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16. Steven Widerman, FF Member, now online at YouTube.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drG5AUWdGG4
Thank you.
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17. Ken Weaver, Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumns, at 14BC Gallery, Manhattan, opening Feb. 2
The curatorial efforts of Aaron Zimmerman and Ken Weaver have resulted in a show called “My Bloody Valentine,” opening at 14BC Gallery (at 626 East 14th St. New York, NY.) Friday February 2nd from 5-9pm.
In Ken’s words: My Bloody Valentine is a look at the darker side of love, equal parts perverse and tender, obsessive and distant. This show will be an examination and celebration of gothic and horror laced takes on the traditional Valentine’s experience.
Artists included: Lily Darling, Rebecca Goyette, Halona Hilbertz, Alexis Karl, Kelsey Legg, Jay Mueller, Leonard Reibstein, Adam Torkel, Ken Weaver, Aaron Zimmerman, and myself.
If you’re in New York, or close enough to make the trip in, it’s worth your time to check it out!
Keep an eye out for more work and information on Instagram with:
@14bcgallery @rebeccajgoyette @hellreibstein @mostexalted @lucretiaboredgia @14bcgallery @jaymuellerart @alexiskarlfilms @halonahilbertz @adamtorkel
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18. Elke Solomon, FF Member, now online at Artforum.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.artforum.com/news/elke-solomon-1943202-548486/?mibextid=Zxz2cZ
Thank you.
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19. Jenny Holzer, FF Alumn, now online at HauserWirth.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.hauserwirth.com/news/jenny-holzer-inner-city-arts/
Thank you.
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20. elin o’Hara slavick, Amy Harrison, FF Alumns, at University of California, Irvine, Feb 1-Dec. 15
University of California, Irvine, “Viral Integration,” February 1 – December 15, 2024 — Inaugural group exhibition curated by elin o’Hara slavick, artist-in-residence, for the new Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences Hall and Sue & Bill Gross Nursing and Health Sciences Hall. “The exhibit includes more than 100 works by 40 artists from across the United States and Canada – with a central theme of addressing health issues, from the individual human body and disease, treatment and survival to environmental factors and medical systems. Artists address childbirth, AIDS, mental health, cancer, medicine, healthcare workers, surgery, community responses to collective experiences, the practice of care, endometriosis, migraines, coal ash ponds, and much more.”
UCI Public Health:
Contact eoslavic@gmail.com for more information.
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21. Cindy Sherman, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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22. Richard Prince, FF Alumn, at The Saanen Vitrine, 3792, Switzerland, thru Mar. 31
Please visit this link:
https://www.marcjancou.com/archive/richard-prince-a-book-guy
Thank you.
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23. Janet Goldner, FF Member, at Carter Burden Gallery, Manhattan, opening Feb. 8
We are excited to announce
Janet Goldner
Transcultural Enigmas
Janet Goldner’s steel collages are pieced together from outtakes and leftovers from her previous works. The use of her own scrap steel is inspired by recycling in Africa and around the world. The abstract forms are inspired by Janet’s work about migration and her ongoing inspiration from African culture. The show also includes works from the ZigZag series.
“Working intuitively from the array of negative shapes in my studio leads to new forms and patterns that I wouldn’t come up with intentionally. The abstract constructions of welded steel have a vintage aesthetic and a strength of interconnectedness that references the transcultural collaborations I have been involved in for many years especially in Mali. With the negative spaces defined, the structures come together to gracefully hold their balance.”
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 8, 6-8pm
February 8- March 6, 2024
Tuesday – Friday: 11am – 5pm
Saturday: 11am – 6pm
Carter Burden Gallery
548 W 28th St, 5th Floor, NYC
212 564-8405
www.carterburdengallery.org
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24. Marina Abramović, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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25. Dara Birnbaum, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/arts/design/galleries-nyc-january.html?searchResultPosition=2
Thank you.
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For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Join Franklin Furnace today:
https://franklinfurnace.org/membership-2023-24/
After email versions are sent, Goings On announcements are posted online at
https://franklinfurnace.org/goings-on/goingson/
Goings On is compiled weekly by Adam Yehya, FF Intern, Winter 2024
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