Contents for January 30, 2023
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1. Alvin Eng, FF Alumn, now online at Spotify.com
2. Ron Athey, Katherine Behar, Liz Ferrer & Bow Ty, Xandra Ibarra, Aaron Landsman, Yvonne Meier, Julie Atlas Muz & Mat Fraser, Pamela Sneed, FF Alumns, receive 2023 Creative Capital awards
3. Catherine Chun Hua Dong, FF Alumn, at Canada Council Art Bank
4. Komar & Melamid, FF Alumns, at Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ, opening Feb. 11
5. Devora Neumark, FF Alumn, at Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, Nunavut, Canada, thru Mar. 31
6. Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Nicole Eisenman, Ana Mendieta, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, now online in the New York Times
7. Beth B., Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Barbara Ess, Dan Graham, Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumns, at Centre Pompidou, Feb. 1-May 15
8. RT Livingston, FF Alumn, at Thomas Reynolds Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA, opening Feb. 2
9. Susan Newmark, FF Alumn, at FGD Gallery, Brooklyn, opening Feb. 17
10. Alina Bliumis, FF Alumn, at A:D: Curatorial, Berlin, Germany, opening Feb. 10
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1. Alvin Eng, FF Alumn, now online at Spotify.com
Alvin Eng, FF Alumn, At long last, the Spotify playlist, “Songs from Our Laundry, Our Town, a memoir by Alvin Eng” is complete!
The list consists of popular songs mentioned in my memoir, along with two original tracks. I have been searching for one of those original audio tracks for years. That track, which bookends the playlist, features my late mother, Toy Lain Chin Eng, singing a verse from “People’s Lives Are Like Dreams.” This was a Cantonese lullaby that The Empress Mother (as mom is named in the book) used to sing around the laundry and the house.
This audio track was used in the 1994 production of my punk-rap musical, The Goong Hay Kid, at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Loisaida, NYC. The long lost audio was found when Tim Cramer, the sound designer from that production, attended a recent Author Event for the book. When I told Tim of my search, he scoured his home and he found the DAT in his… laundry room. Thanks, Tim!
The second original track (#23) is “Rock Me, Goong Hay”––that punk-rap musical’s title song. This version was recorded live at the 21 Pell St Community Center in Manhattan’s Chinatown last summer. I’m rapping, the audience is clapping and Skyler Chin (my second cousin, and composer of the powerful musical, Illegal), is on guitar.
Thank you.
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2. Ron Athey, Katherine Behar, Liz Ferrer & Bow Ty, Xandra Ibarra, Aaron Landsman, Yvonne Meier, Julie Atlas Muz & Mat Fraser, Pamela Sneed, FF Alumns, receive 2023 Creative Capital awards
Please visit this link:
https://creative-capital.org/award/awardees/2023/?mc_cid=1cd9989644&mc_eid=84be8f4127
Thank you.
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3. Catherine Chun Hua Dong, FF Alumn, at Canada Council Art Bank
I am very pleased to announce that my work, “Skin Deep” (the blue portrait on right) is acquired by the Canada Council Art Bank !!! It is my great honour to be part of the collection ! Cheers !
#artbankau #artbank50 #canadacouncilforthearts #canadacouncil #canadianart
Catherine Chun Hua Dong
Thank you.
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4. Komar & Melamid, FF Alumns, at Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ, opening Feb. 11
Please visit this link:
https://zimmerli.rutgers.edu/event/opening-reception-komar-melamid
Thank you.
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5. Devora Neumark, FF Alumn, at Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, Nunavut, Canada, thru Mar. 31
Light of the Candle
Devora Neumark
Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum
Iqaluit, Nunavut
January 28-March 31, 2023
With this new intimate body of work, Devora Neumark shares their meditative process of reckoning with the past as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Over several months, through a daily ritual of candle lighting, Devora ceremonially acknowledged their lived experience of trauma and, in the process, found their way to reclaiming joy. Light of the Candle, as reflected in this selection of images, is therefore simultaneously a contemplation about the soreness of healing and an affirmation of wellness.
As an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator and community-engaged practitioner, Devora Neumark, PhD has delved into the work of facing trauma for many years. Devora’s projects have given voice in various forms to grief, loss, and anxiety—particularly in the contexts of intergenerational violence, forced displacement, and the climate crisis. In this project, Devora explored the cultivation of joy as radical practice, beginning each candle lighting ritual with the question: “What if I remembered this birthday as a joyful one?”
Thank you.
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6. Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Nicole Eisenman, Ana Mendieta, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, now online in the New York Times
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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7. Beth B., Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Barbara Ess, Dan Graham, Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumns, at Centre Pompidou, Feb. 1-May 15
Who You Staring At?: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980
Centre Pompidou (4th floor) Nouveaux Medias Gallery
February 1 – May 15, 2023
Commissariat: Nicolas Ballet
Avec Scott & Beth B, Rhys Chatham, Joseph Nechvatal, Barbara Ess, Dan Graham, Glenn Branca, Karole Armitage, Raymond Pettibon, Vivienne Dick, Kathy Acker
Who You Staring At?: Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s
No wave was a new artistic scene that appeared in the low-rent areas of Lower Manhattan. The failure of the hippy cultural/economic model at the very end of the 1960s, then the commercial transformations of new wave and disco, pushed the leading players in the movement to break with the established music industry and contemporary art circles.
Coming from a variety of artistic fields, no wave bands appropriated the instruments of the rock scene to better turn them against it in order to subvert its icons. Out-of-tune guitars, deconstructed rhythms and raucous vocals enriched a range of radical visual productions, revealing an alternative cultural project blending many media (posters, cassettes and audio records, film and video). Saturated and dissonant sounds were translated into abrasive images that were altered by subverting reprographic techniques (Xerox art) as used in punk and industrial music networks as early as the mid-1970s. This presentation borrows its title from Who You Staring At?, an album by John Giorno and Glenn Branca. A question that transcribes no wave artists’ confrontational attitude and determination to deconstruct conventional representation presented here in an ensemble of multidisciplinary practices where dance, opera, music and the visual arts intersect.
More information:
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/collection/films-et-nouveaux-medias/who-you-staring-at
Thank you.
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8. RT Livingston, FF Alumn, at Thomas Reynolds Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA, opening Feb. 2
Please visit this link:
https://trgtalk.wordpress.com/2023/01/25/introducing-western-edge/
Thank you.
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9. Susan Newmark, FF Alumn, at FGD Gallery, Brooklyn, opening Feb. 17
February 18 – March 12
Opening reception: February 17, 5:30 – 7:30
FGD Gallery
535 6th Ave, Park Slope
Brooklyn, NY
Gallery hours:
Friday 2–5 pm
Saturday & Sunday 12–5pm
Thank you.
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10. Alina Bliumis, FF Alumn, at A:D: Curatorial, Berlin, Germany, opening Feb. 10
A:rray and D:isplay
Exhibition by Alina Bliumis
Curated by Irena Popiashvili
Opening: February 10, 6-9 pm
On view: February 11th – April 9th, 2023
A:D: Curatorial: Kurfürstenstraße 142, 10785 Berlin
A:D:Curatorial is pleased to present Alina Bliumis’s exhibion. The title refers to Bliumis’s creative method that functions like her personal algorithm: the artist researches and finds a pattern in subject matter that interests her, ergo arrays and displays it. What makes this series of works special is Bliumis’s viewpoint. She is a research-based artist who approaches historical and political moments through the lens of the natural world. There are three series presented in the exhibition: The Masses (2019-20), Endangered (portraits of extinct and endangered flowers), (2022) and In The Center of Europe (2020).
The exhibition opens with eight posters of In The Center of Europe (2020) displayed on a bright yellow wall; these photos of various centers of Europe display the shifting perception of ‘center’ starting from 1775 up to 2000. At different periods in human history people representing different disciplines and criteria declared all these eight spots to be the center of Europe and erected memorial landmarks. This inevitably brings to mind Pierro Manzoni’s Magic Base where once you step on it you become a living sculpture; In The Center of Europe you declare a place to be the center, put the monument up and it becomes the center of Europe.
In Masses, black and white floating cotton fabric pieces depict closeups of crowds and combine digital print and watercolor. From front-page news images of protest, civil unrest and soldiers to mass celebrations of Dionysian excess in the rock concert or erotic entanglements of an orgy, Masses make one experience loss of self in crowds. Physically maneuvering the space to view the suspended floating Masses, the lightness of displayed works resembles the full body physical experience of social media scrolling.
If in Masses it’s impossible to identify individual characters, Endangered flowers have very distinct and unique faces. In other words, all the personhood lost in Masses can be found in these anthropocentric, amusing portraits of endangered or extinct flowers. The undeniable calamity implied in the title of these series (Endangered: portraits of extinct and endangered flowers) while paired with gaiety of flowers is whimsical.
Whimsical is the adjective best used to describe the rationale behind the array and display of Bliumis’s works: images of long extinct flowers are turned into portraiture, images of crowds loose the context and reason of their gathering, and there are eight monuments in various parts of Europe claiming to be its center.
The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Alina Bliumis is New York-based artist, born in Minsk, Belarus. Alina received her BFA from the School of Visual Art in 1999 and a diploma from the Advanced Course in Visual Arts in Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy in 2005.
Alina has exhibited internationally at the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France, the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Busan Biennale (Busan, South Korea), Assab One (Milan, Italy), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, US), Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France), Centre d’art Contemporain (Meymac, France), the James Gallery, The Graduate Center CUNY (New York, US), Museum of Contemporary Art (Cleveland, US), Museums of Bat Yam (Bat-Yam, Israel), the Jewish Museum (New York, US), the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Botanique Museum (Brussels, Belgium), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), MAC VAL – Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (France).
Her works are in various private and public collections, including Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; 21c Museum Hotels, USA; The Saatchi Collection, UK; The Harvard Business School, USA; The National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA, Missoni Collection, Italy and MAC VAL – Musée d’art contemporain du Val- de-Marne, France.
Irena Popiashvili is Dean and Founder of Visual Arts, Architecture & Design School, VA[A}DS, at the Free University of Tbilisi. She also established the contemporary art space Kunsthalle Tbilsi. Previously she co-owned Newman Popiashvili Gallery in New York (2005-2012) and served as a director of the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi in 2012. Ms. Popiashvili has curated exhibitions in the US and Europe (notably, the Georgian Pavilion in Venice Biennale in 1999). She received a BA from Tbilisi State University and University of Lodz, Poland and an MA in art history from University of Georgia in Athens, GA (USA).
Thank you.
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Mackenzie Penera and Kyan Ng, FF Interns, Spring 2023
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