Goings On | 03/11/2024 - Franklin Furnace

Contents for March 11, 2024

CONTENTS (please click on the links or scroll down for complete information on each post):

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1. Coco Fusco, Ana Mendieta, FF Alumns, now online at hyperallergic.com and more
2. China Blue, Warren Neidich, FF Alumns, at 1199 Castello, Venice, Italy, opening April 16
3. Rashayla Marie Brown, FF Alumn, now online at watch.weareo.tv
4. Judy Giera, Geoffrey Hendricks, Carlos Motta, Linda Stein, FF Alumns, at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Manhattan, opening March 14th
5. Raquel DuToit, Patricia Miranda, FF Alumns, at NoMAA Gallery, Manhattan, opening March 14
6. Sara Schulman, FF Alumn, at Lettréage, Berlin, Germany, March 26
7. Kiyan Williams, FF Alumn, now online at InterviewMagazine.com
8. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, FF Alumn, at Stanford University, CA, March 14
9. John Ahearn, DAZE, Martin Wong, FF Alumns at The Poetry Project, Manhattan, March 13
10. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online at artnet.com
11. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, at the Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan, Mar. 21 and more
12. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, live online April 17
13. Brendan Fernandes, Joan Jonas, FF Alumns, at Prospect6, New Orleans, LA, opening Nov. 2
14. Julia Scher, FF Alumn, at Ortuzar Projects, Manhattan, thru April 13
15. Arlene Rush, Jodie Fink, FF Alumns, at New York Artists Equity, Manhattan, thru March 23
16. Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Barry Holden, Richard Minsky, Nina Yankowitz, FF Alumns at Southampton Art Center, NY, thru May 4
17. Galinsky, FF Alumn, now online at Lisc.org
18. Mira Schor, FF Alumn, at Lyles & King, Manhattan, opening Mar. 28
19. Allan Wexler, FF Alumn, at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, March 20 and April 10
20. Pat Steir, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
21. Alyson Pou, FF Alumn, at Beattie-Powers Place, Catskill NY, March 24
22. Ray Johnson, FF Alumn, at Blum, Los Angeles, CA, opening March 16
23. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, at The National Gallery, Washington DC, Mar. 17
24. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Green Pavilion, Brooklyn, March 13 and more
25. Isabella Bannerman, FF Alumn, at MoCCA Fest, Manhattan, March 1726.
26. Penny Arcade, Ron Athey, Karen Finley, FF Alumns, now online at NYTimes.com

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1. Coco Fusco, Ana Mendieta, FF Alumns, now online at hyperallergic.com and more

Please visit this link:

https://hyperallergic.com/876490/that-time-carl-andre-wrote-coco-fusco-a-letter/

and,

now online at NYTimes.com

Please visit this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/style/ana-mendieta-family-estate.html?smid=url-share

Thank you.

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2. China Blue, Warren Neidich, FF Alumns, at 1199 Castello, Venice, Italy, opening April 16

“Hospitality in the Pluriverse” at (Re)Create Venice, April 16-May 4, 2024. Opening April 16, 5-7 PM. Performances by China Blue, April 16, 18 and 19, 6 pm

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3. Rashayla Marie Brown, FF Alumn, now online at watch.weareo.tv

What you’ve been asking for has arrived. My experimental directorial debut Reality Is Not Good Enough is now streaming! This is how you can watch our film (free or low-cost) from now on

https://watch.weareo.tv/reality-is-not-good-enough or on the OTV app via Apple,

Android, Roku, or FireTV. (I recommend the app!)

Many of you may recall supporting the 2016 Part 1 documentary version of this project with @3artschicago. Watch both on OTV!

Sharing my email to cast and crew publicly because it’s relevant to all who donated money, space and support over the years. Love you! Thank you @weareotv!

Rashayla Marie Brown

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4. Judy Giera, Geoffrey Hendricks, Carlos Motta, Linda Stein, FF Alumns, at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Manhattan, opening March 14th

Please visit this link:

https://leslielohman.org/exhibitions/i-am-a-thousand-different-people-everyone-is-real

Thank you.

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5. Raquel DuToit, Patricia Miranda, FF Alumns, at NoMAA Gallery, Manhattan, opening March 14

Please visit this link:

https://www.nomaanyc.org/events/opening-women-in-the-heights-dress/

Thank you.

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6. Sara Schulman, FF Alumn, at LettrÃ©tage, Berlin, Germany, March 26

Please visit this link:

https://literatur-berlin.tickettoaster.de/produkte/3136-tickets-let-the-record-show-an-evening-with-sarah-schulman-lettretage-berlin-am-26-03-2024?mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Thank you.

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7. Kiyan Williams, FF Alumn, now online at InterviewMagazine.com

Please visit this link:

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/kiyan-williams-is-deep-frying-the-american-flag

Thank you.

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8. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, FF Alumn, at Stanford University, CA, March 14

Book Launch and Celebration of Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco, just published by University of California Press

Thursday, March 14th, 5:30 – 7pm

Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies

Event details and RSVP:

https://events.stanford.edu/event/erotic_resistance_book_launch_and_celebration

If there’s room to include this, that would be great!

Save 30% when purchasing directly from UC Press with code: UCPSAVE30

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398955/erotic-resistance

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9. John Ahearn, DAZE, Martin Wong, FF Alumns at The Poetry Project, Manhattan, March 13

Martin Wong Launch Event

featuring

John Ahearn, Wo Chan, Lydia Cortés, Christopher “Daze” Ellis,_ Antonia Kuo, Eugene Lim, and Emily Zhou

Please join POW, Primary Information, and The Poetry Project for an evening celebrating Martin Wong’s Footprints, Poems, and Leaves and Das Puke Book on Wednesday, March 13 at 8 pm at The Poetry Project. The night will feature readings by John Ahearn, Wo Chan, Lydia Cortés, Christopher “Daze” Ellis, Antonia Kuo, Eugene Lim, and Emily Zhou. A pre-event reception will begin at 7:30 pm.

Tickets are priced at $8 and can be purchased here. This event will also be livestreamed for free on The Poetry Project’s YouTube channel.

The Poetry Project is located at St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003

Self-published in 1968, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves collects dozens of poems written by Martin Wong between 1966 and 1968. Hand-written in a signature calligraphic style that he was just beginning to develop, the poems ebb and flow visually across the page, much like the fluctuating characters, scenes, and moods that inhabit them.

Das Puke Book is a small chapbook self-published by Martin Wong in 1977. Written in the early 1970s, the publication contains thirteen chapters of handwritten micro-fictions filled with cringeworthy stories unfolding in San Francisco and beyond.

Copies of both books will be available at the event and can be purchased directly from our website for those who cannot attend

For tickets and more information about the event, please visit

https://www.poetryproject.org/events/martin-wong-celebration

and/or contact info@primaryinformation.org or info@poetryproject.org

Primary Information is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that receives generous support through grants from the Michael Asher Foundation, Galerie Buchholz, the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Empty Gallery, The Ford Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Greene Naftali, the Greenwich Collection Ltd, the John W. and Clara C. Higgins Foundation, Metabolic Studio, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Orbit Fund, the Stichting Egress Foundation, VIA Art Fund, The Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Wilhelm Family Foundation, and individuals worldwide. Primary Information receives support from the Arison Arts Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Marian Goodman Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, and Tiger Foundation through the Coalition of Small Arts NYC.

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10. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online at artnet.com

Please visit this link:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/acorns-john-lennon-yoko-ono-beatles-museum-2439932?mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Thank you.

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11. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, at the Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan, Mar. 21 and more

Interactive Installations and more at Guggenheim, New York
Thurs, March 21, 2024 (6-8 pm)

The Guggenheim’s Innovation Lab presents an evening exploring the desire to float, fly, drift, and harness air created by Marisa Morán Jahn and students from Parsons/The New School.

Interactive installations: 6-8
Miniature kites: 6:30-7:30
Procession: 7:30 led by curatorial collaborator Amy Rosenblum Martín

Tickets: https://www.guggenheim.org/event/late-shift-float

Duet, 2024. media: fans, kitchen trashbags, scotch tape.

You likely know the story of Daedalus who designed wings of wax and feathers so that he and his son Icarus could escape captivity. Daedalus escaped. But Icarus, delighted by the sensation of flight, flew too close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell to his death. The story is most often told as a warning to us of Icarus’ hubris and foolishness.

But I prefer to think of the father and son as two parts of the same coin that together allegorize the process of inspiration and invention. Beautiful and foolhardy at the same time, inventing — like making art — is a rapturous process driven by the exhilaration to defy limitations. Over and over, we engage in the never-ending quest to transcend our limits as landlubbers with airborne aspirations.

Along with twenty students from Parsons/The New School, I explored these themes in a prototyping course in Fall 2023 in collaboration with the Guggenheim’s Academic Engagement team.

On Thurs, March 21st, we’ll share disasters, delights, and discoveries from our pedagogical adventure. You’ll encounter interactive installations, a miniature kite making workshop, and a spiraling procession at 7:30pm down the Guggenheim’s ramp.

Come wearing the color the color white.
Bring a question for the oracle!

Onwards and skywards,
Marisa

and

Winning Proposal to Design Art + Tech District in Kosovo

We won! Our team, led by architects/urbanists Rafi Segal AU, ORG Permanent Modernity, and OUD+Architects, and myself as a collaborating artist, won an international competition to transform a former brick factory in Kosovo into an art and technology district called Art-Tek Tulltorja.

Our winning proposal will repurpose the city’s former brick factory and industrial heritage site into a hub where 21st century creative industries, artists’ studios, galleries, co-working spaces, and tech entrepreneurs converge.

By integrating state-of-the-art facilities with green infrastructure and low-emission transportation strategies, we are setting a new standard for environmental sustainability in Kosovo and beyond.

Art-Tek Tulltorja celebrates the cultural and linguistic identity of Kosovo, a young democracy emerging out of conflict where the majority of people speak Albanian. Art-Tek Tulltorja can serve as a space for self-determination and democracy and incubate Kosovo’s next generation of creatives and entrepreneurs.

The project’s significance resonates deeply within the community, particularly in light of Kosovo’s demographic and economic challenges: with nearly half of the population under 25 years old and a significant portion facing unemployment. Art-Tek Tulltorja aims to bridge the education, opportunity and community gaps by fostering creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship.

By catalyzing a transformation from bricks to bytes, Art-Tek Tulltorja will be a vibrant destination that nurtures the talent, collaboration, and innovation needed for cultural and economic regeneration.

Follow more at #ArtTekTulltorja

and

Sneak Peek

Opening summer 2024 — “Re/Creation” is a series of floor-to-ceiling wallpaper murals I’ve been designing for the National Public Housing Museum that celebrate the energetic, ground-up civic initiatives led by predominantly low-income Black mothers in Baltimore from the late 1960s through the 1970s. With my collaborators, Micah Campbell Smith, a community developer who grew up in Baltimore, and Dr. Sarah Szanton, Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (both seen below), and with permission from the Robert Breck Chapman archive, we remixed (and ‘re-created’) rarely seen photographs with hand-dyed and mono-printed paper that I created to capture the feeling of cultural exuberance and dignity experienced by many who lived through the era.

Along with Dr. Deidre Crews, Sarah featured us on her podcast, “Aging Fast and Slow”

https://magazine.nursing.jhu.edu/2024/01/art-mutualism-and-structural-resilience/

where we chat about last mile outreach, grandmas, coaches, school nurses, and art.

and

Carehaus was recently reviewed in Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2023/11/16/3-experiments-to-help-reduce-senior-care-worker-shortages/?sh=70988ba86540,

Next Avenue

https://www.nextavenue.org/companioned-isolation-caregiving-housing-crisis/,

and MarketWatch

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-new-senior-housing-project-will-tackle-the-middle-ground-between-living-alone-and-needing-a-nursing-home-e0aaa330 !

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12. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, live online April 17

Please visit this link:

https://letsreimagine.org/76768/lets-experience-letters-to-life

Thank you.

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13. Brendan Fernandes, Joan Jonas, FF Alumns, at Prospect6, New Orleans, LA, opening Nov. 2

Please visit this link:

https://www.prospectneworleans.org/news-1/prospect-new-orleans-announces-artist-list-for-prospect6-the-future-is-present-the-harbinger-is-home

Thank you.

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14. Julia Scher, FF Alumn, at Ortuzar Projects, Manhattan, thru April 13

Please visit this link:

https://www.ortuzarprojects.com/exhibitions/julia-scher4

Thank you.

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15. Arlene Rush, Jodie Fink, FF Alumns, at New York Artists Equity, Manhattan, thru March 23

Green: Monsters, Money, Lust, Luck and Lucifer

If one could point to one color emblematic of the profound ambivalence and exasperating contradictions of our times, green would clinch the role. Whilst cast as a symbol of life, luck, and hope, it also signals disorder, greed, and poison.

Curated by fellow NYAE members Alexandra Brock, Patricia Fabricant, and Christina Massey, “Green” comprises a group show of 30 + artists and allied whose works explore the dichotomies, mythologies, and suspicious underpinnings of chroma’s most fugitive player.

Thursday, March 7, 2024
Saturday, March 23, 2024

Tel: +1 (931) 410-0020

Email: info@nyartistsequity.org

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12 PM – 6 PM

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16. Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Barry Holden, Richard Minsky, Nina Yankowitz, FF Alumns at Southampton Art Center, NY, thru May 4

https://www.southamptonartscenter.org/look-at-the-book

LOOK AT THE BOOK is a multimedia exhibition that pays homage to “Books.” The exhibition will focus on how contemporary artists have engaged with the book as a surface, structure, found object, philosophical, and literary guide. The works will include various types of books, accordion books, video books and audiobooks, graphic novels, sculpture, photography, and several site-specific installations created with and from books.

These 33 artists, by exploring literacy in their way, will celebrate the changing role of books in the digital age. They will also address issues such as literacy, freedom of speech, banned books, and the evolving role of books. We hope to shed light on the impact of these changes and spur conversations about their implications for society. We’re excited to provide artists and community members a platform to engage with these critical topics through workshops, readings, and performances that will address these issues and hopefully create an ongoing dialogue. We will create art and have panel discussions, community talks, curator tours, and workshops.

Books are essential for many reasons. First and foremost, they are a valuable source of knowledge and information. They allow us to delve into new subjects, explore different perspectives, and learn from the experiences of others. Books can educate, inspire, and challenge our thinking. In addition to knowledge, books also play a crucial role in preserving and sharing culture and history. They provide a means for passing down stories, traditions, and ideas from one generation to another, ensuring that essential aspects of our heritage are not lost.

The exhibition hopes to bring attention to literacy, social literacy, banned literacy, and the ever-changing way we approach literacy and freedom of speech. Literacy is a significant issue in the United States, especially Suffolk County. Many no longer have books in their homes or read newspapers. Many libraries have banned books. The news is primarily received through social media, which has changed our relationship with “Books” and how we gain information.

February 24 – May 4
Curated by Christina M. Strassfield

March 16
Interactive Reading
+ Panel Discussion
Bring your reading voices for an interactive reading of Mirror Test the Cassidy Hutchinson Story at 2 PM, followed by Barbara Slate Story at 3 PM

Join artists from the exhibition on this informative tour, where they will discuss the inspiration for their piece on display.

March 23
Artist Gallery Tour
Femme Fatale
Karyn Mannix

March 30
Book Workshop
For children 12 and under – they will create a watercolor accordion book. 12:30 -2:30 PM.

Adults: 3D Abstract accordion book. 3-5 PM

With guidance from Barbara Thomas and using the inspiration of the SAC show, bookmakers will develop a theme for their book and manipulate materials on hand to make a book of any fun, conceptual, and creative shape, size, or idea.

April 6
Book Workshop

April 20
Short Film
Presenting with Hamptons Doc Fest – this Academy Award Nominated film reveals the voices of the impacted parties of books banned from school districts, inspiring hope for the future through the profound insights of inquisitive youthful minds. Immediately following will be the panel discussion: Libraries Today and Tomorrow.

Sleeping Bag Book, 1994
Chip Haggerty

April 20
Panel Discussion
Join us for a panel discussion with local librarians Steve Alcalde, Sara Fiore, Marci Byrne as well as Liz Burns, Director of the Rogers Memorial Library. Christina Strassfield, Executive Director of the Southampton Arts Center, will moderate the discussion.

April 21
Panel Discussion
Join Look at the Book artist John Buchbinder and Marta Kazandjian on Sunday, April 21 at 1 PM to discuss John’s Memory Book.

SCOA INC. DBA Southampton Arts Center is a registered not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
EIN# 45-2703101
25 Jobs Lane, Southampton, New York 11968 | 631-283-0967 | info@southamptoncenter.org

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17. Galinsky, FF Alumn, now online at Lisc.org

Please visit this link:

https://www.lisc.org/our-stories/story/home-ownership-near-long-time-renters-new-york-citys-lower-east-side/

Thank you.

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18. Mira Schor, FF Alumn, at Lyles & King, Manhattan, opening Mar. 28

Mira Schor
WET
March 28 – May 4, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 28, 6-8pm

Lyles and King is pleased to present WET, by Mira Schor, a thematic survey of paintings, drawings and sculpture spanning 1973 to the present. The works in this exhibition foreground existential and corporeal themes, use abstraction, landscape and the figure to, in Schor’s words, “bring the experience of living inside a female body —with a mind— into high art in as intact a form as possible.” The show’s title “Wet” borrows from the artist’s 1997 iconic book of essays, her defense of the medium against the 1990s critique of essentialism and a male bastion of art critics, her insistence on the “goo” of both oil paint and the female body. Varied in approach, the works in this show share a directness of imagery and the written word, and an insistence on the formal as a way to deconstruct cultural and personal histories.

Masks and Dresses made in 1977 are some of Schor’s early experiments with rice paper, a material she felt transmitted the delicacy and vulnerability she inhabited being a woman. These works emerged following her participation in the Feminist Art Program at CalArts, 1971-73, where she studied with Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, but she also encountered Fluxus and Conceptual approaches from artists such as Allan Kaprow and Allison Knowles, who presented her with new models for uniting language, concept, and image. Despite her deep involvement in feminist thinking, Schor found herself attracted to the nuanced and anti-heroic nature of the Fluxists. These material impulses were further developed in the four years she spent teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) where she was, notably and at 24 years old, the only woman on a 14-person fine arts faculty.

Starting in Halifax and later in New York, she began folding, tearing, creasing rice paper to make her nearly life-size dress shapes and masks. The dresses are narrow, pared down, asymmetrical, iconic; the masks are simplified with frayed-edge, almond-shaped holes at the eyes and pointed chins. All are rubbed with dry pigment and medium — grays, greens, metallic browns — a muted palette suggesting historic artifacts rather than feminized objects of decoration. Schor’s Dress and Mask works are double-sided: layered pages open like a book or flip upward like a veil, revealing diary entries or dreams written in her distinctive cursive. In this way they present a multidimensional perspective. They elaborate on intimate topics and invite participation by the viewer rather than obscuring the wearer. Schor was interested in the indexical nature of the Masks — how she could use pigment to transfer marks from one to another, to create ghostly outlines that bound the pieces together into a cumulative whole. She was also interested in their inconvenience as an art object and commodity. Their tactility, fragility, and interiority, her invitation to read them like a book, asserts the personal over the polished and acts antithetically to the white cube.

Tracing her diaristic impulses to the present are three large-scale paintings made in 2023-24. These are hung in conversation with one another and were painted on unstretched canvases like a theater backdrop. The paintings are chromatic red and blue grounds that hold faceless women figures — subjects Schor drew by observing a series of clay sculptures she made as a 10-year-old girl. These simple, unglazed sculptures are dainty women wearing ball gowns, perhaps queens. Molded by hand and of varying sizes, they are an early foray into her fictional world building, and drawing from these figures, 60 years later, lends the paintings a degree of gravity and lived history. In the painting titled Did I? a large, blank figure in the foreground is tethered on a red string to a smaller woman below who holds a script asking “Did I?” This seems to be the artist asking — did I do it, did I do what I set out to do (in life? In art? In making feminist art?)

Answering the question is the painting We did which depicts a pair of figures, more regal, holding manuscripts. The third painting, Torn: “It Didn’t Happen”, presents a split composition, ink black, blood red, with the words “It didn’t happen” scrawled into a full, shadowy moon. This specter, wearing white, is bisected down her spine with a dripping red slit in the canvas that reveals the wall behind. This motif is repeated in recent works on paper, which position the woman central on a page unleashed from the sewn binding of a book. The absolute denial of this last statement — “it didn’t happen” — its vagueness and existential refusal, points to a darker mood. Schor’s use of the autobiographical objects alongside call and response phrases, the repeated utterance of “did,” exemplifies how the artist is able to shift from the personal to the universal and back again.

Schor was born to refugee artist parents — the lived experience of this family history informed her approach to imagery, and germinated her interest in the body, language, feminism, the stakes of war and patriarchy and dehumanization of the Other. Originally from Poland, her parents Ilya and Resia Schor fled Paris in 1941 following the Nazi invasion and were the only surviving members of their respective Jewish families. They settled on the Upper West Side raising Mira and her older sister Naomi among a milieu of avant-garde artists and intellectuals. Ilya was a renowned sculptor and draftsman who became known for intricate Judaica. He received synagogue commissions for Torah crowns and pointers and created wood-engraving illustrations for canonical Jewish texts. Resia made abstract, gouache paintings and later, after Ilya’s sudden passing in 1961, took up his metalwork to build her own career as a jeweler and sculptor of Judaica. Mira grew up going to the Met and MoMA, steeped in art history (later her major in college) and the French language. Her sister Naomi became a pioneer of feminist theory and one of the foremost scholars of French literature and psychoanalysis. Mira, who developed her own interests in critical theory, has maintained a dual practice as artist and writer publishing in Artforum, Art Journal, Tema Celeste, among other outlets. She co-founded and edited M/E/A/N/I/N/G with the painter Susan Bee which they published in print from 1986-1996, then as an online editorial project until 2016.

Schor worked exclusively on paper until 1985 and this show highlights the multiplicity of her drawing practice — her drawings are driven by a complex base of art influences and modes of inquiry. Defining herself as a painter who is a conceptual artist, and as a painter at the heart of whose work is sculpture, her approach differs to those of her CalArts peers and friends of the time who aligned more with the Pictures Generation. In this show, an early series titled The Story Paintings is represented by The Two Miras, 1973, a gouache self-portrait that depicts topless Mira facing her doppelganger in a succulent green landscape. The artist’s nipples are rendered in a deep rose color, matching the blood stained hands of second Mira, who stands with her back facing the viewer. Narrative dissolves into formal play as Schor repeats certain visual motifs across bodies of work. In works from the early 1980s, she uses pigment and expressive linework to evoke archetypes of landscape — shadowy forests or swelling storms — and the figures inhabiting these spaces are often reduced to geometric shapes and created by stencil. Red Petal, a large work from 1984, depicts a dark figure, arms raised in exaltation, with red spilling out the abdomen. This figure is based on a skate egg case, a natural flotation device produced by skates and sharks to contain and nurture a fertilized egg. While its leathery black shell and pronged appendages protects life, to the artist the egg case conveys a maternal fierceness and a sense of wonder, as well as another image to develop in her lexicon.

Oil paintings from the late 1980s and early 1990s demonstrate Schor’s ability to merge representation of the body and text painting with political references. Schor began making dick paintings at the height of the AIDS crisis, responding to the conservatism of the time. She transformed her line work into bodily fluid or phrases; her female figures or self portraits became faceless silhouettes or disembodied parts; landscape forms breasts or phalluses. Schor made Pardon Me Ms. in 1990 as a response to the US invasion in Panama — the nonchalance of the event’s NPR reportage struck her. In it she heard an unquestioned acceptance of American hegemony and patriarchal might. The nearly ten-foot painting depicts an anatomical dick and condom painted in an infrared palette, emerging menacingly from a disembodied ear, positioned between a smaller ear on a multi-panel, horizontal painting. On the tip of the phallus sits an American flag dripping its colors like blood or ejaculate pooling into the ear. This combination of imagery is repeated in For Which it Stands: a thick, red penis is flanked by ears and flags and a money sign replaces the flag’s stars. Oil paint, which she adopted after years of working with gouache and dry pigment, provides Schor with a richness of color and luminous rendering capabilities. With it she channels the realism and specificity of Rogier van der Weyden, a Northern Renaissance painter who made devotional altarpieces, while delivering exaggeration, absurdity, and a transgressive attitude into the lineage.

Mira Schor, “For Which It Stands”, 1989, Oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches, 40.5 x 51 cm

Embedding language into paint is the primary objective of War Frieze, a 195 running foot wide work composed of 12 x 16 inch canvases Schor created in the early 1990s and intended to hang as one continuous work. The work borrows phrases from the news and other sources, connecting gendered body parts, painted in a cursive slant next to sperm and other body-like forms. War Frieze XIII: Margin of Safety, 1994, refers to a term related to cancer surgery: when doctors seek to remove cells beyond the actual tumor in order to create a margin of safety. The painting depicts a breast with the words flowing out from the nipple on a flesh-pink canvas, but of course Schor is more interested in the metaphor implied rather than the medical procedure. The larger War Frieze includes the term “Undue Burden” lifted from the Supreme Court decision on abortion; another segment makes reference to the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings. When read together as one punctuated sentence, these events list acts political, cultural, and otherwise, enacted around and against women’s bodies, yet painted in a way that verges on the abstract, creating emphasis and movement through a quiet examination of power.

Abortion access, a woman’s right to choose, is a political cause Schor fought for both then and now. In the early 1980s, attending a lecture by the art critic Leo Steinberg on his research for The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, Schor was struck by early Renaissance iconography of the impregnation of the Virgin Mary represented by the word of God entering her ear. Insemination through language — and related, the power of speech to subjugate — became a conceptual nexus point for Schor to tie her writing and political convictions to depictions of the body. The Impregnation of M, 1987, deals with this in a multi-panel, vertical format that measures 112 inches tall. In the painting a black, cannon-like form emits smoke or a divine light while ears transmit and receive golden rays. She handles the concept of impregnation through painterly language and touch, as well as scaling the painting in a monumental way that verges on the ecclesiastical. In contrast Slit of Paint, 1994, draws you nearer. Its 12 x 16 inch surface is raked with flesh-colored oil paint whose vaginal lips part to reveal a semicolon incised into the painting in the place of a clitoris, further emphasized with a glaze of brownish red. The semicolon is a mark of punctuation that joins two independent thoughts, suggesting complication and the need to further expound. It’s a succinct way to link together the many modes Schor has employed throughout her practice — using the female body and mind to inspire new forms, postures, defy language, elicit material pleasure and discomfort, and strive toward transcendence.

Mira Schor (b. 1950, New York) lives in New York. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, FR; Bourse de Commerce – the Pinault Collection, Paris, FR; Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart, FR; The Jewish Museum, New York, US; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US; MoMA P.S.1, New York, US; the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, US; The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, US; Hauser & Wirth, New York, US; David Nolan Gallery, New York, US; PPOW, New York, US; MendesWood DM, São Paolo, BR and many other institutions and galleries. She is the author of A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life (2009); Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture (1997; both Duke University Press); and of the blog A Year of Positive Thinking. She is the co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G. Schor is the recipient of many prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting, a Pollock Krasner Grant, the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Schor is represented by Lyles & King, New York and Marcel Alix, Paris.

Lyles & King
19 Henry Street
New York, NY 10002

646-484-5478
gallery@lylesandking.com

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 11am – 6pm

mailing address:
Lyles & King
21 Catherine Street
New York, NY 10038

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19. Allan Wexler, FF Alumn, at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, March 20 and April 10

Allan Wexler presents talks at Pratt Design Center Gallery from 12 noon to 1 pm on March 20th and April 10, 2024.

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20. Pat Steir, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com

Please visit this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/t-magazine/pat-steir-hauser-wirth.html?unlocked_article_code=1.a00.y1JD.Zz1fUvdvwSwK&smid=url-share

Thank you.

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21. Alyson Pou, FF Alumn, at Beattie-Powers Place, Catskill NY, March 24

To Us At Twilight by Alyson Pou, March 24th at 3 pm at Beattie Powers Place 10 Powers Pl, Catskill, NY 12414, donation $15.

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22. Ray Johnson, FF Alumn, at Blum, Los Angeles, CA, opening March 16

Please visit this link:

https://www.blum-gallery.com/exhibitions/ray_johnson

Thank you.

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23. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, at The National Gallery, Washington DC, Mar. 17

Kathy Brew will screen her film, Following the Thread, at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 17th at 2 pm in conjunction with an exhibition, Woven Histories: Textiles and Abstraction.

https://www.nga.gov/calendar/film-programs/film-knots-and-threads/following-the-thread.html/2024/03/17/1400

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24. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Green Pavilion, Brooklyn, March 13 and more

Women’s History Reading, March 13 I’ll read Sappho 31 by the immortal Greek poet Saapho, and Hot And Humid, a different prose poem from my 1984 book Sensations. The event is curated by Dorothy Friedman. Here is a link to Saapho’s work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho_31

Address: Green Pavilion 4307 18th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11218

718-435-47227pm, free entry, $8 food/drink minimum

Performance video, online
Hot and Cold Shakeup

https://vimeo.com/66562209

Title: “Hot and Cold Shakeup”
Artist: Barbara Rosenthal
Audio: Ambient
Year: 2010
Genres: Performance, existentialism, autobiography, love, implied narrative
Language: None
Run time: 2min 36sec 9fr

Description:
Seemingly simple and straightforward, as is characteristic of all Rosenthal’s work, Hot and Cold Shakeup was actually fabricated using one trick of videography, and one fakery of physics. Also characteristic of this life/art creator, is puns and idioms appear in some way, and that her inspiration sparks from real experience. This idea came in a flash while thinking about a love affair. So you get the idea, alternate titles included the following

I’m So Stuck On You I’m Not Normal
He’s No Great Shakes But He Gets Me Off
I’m No Great Shakes But I Get Him Off
No Great Shakes But We Get Off
Can’t Shake Him When He’s Hot, Can’t Shake Him When He’s Cold
Can’t Shake Him When I’m Hot, Can’t Shake Him When I’m Cold

See y’all later! Cheerio! Barbara Rosenthal

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25. Isabella Bannerman, FF Alumn, at MoCCA Fest, Manhattan, March 17

I will be tabling with the National Cartoonists Society from 2:30 – 6 PM at MoCCa Fest on Sunday March 17th with cartoon artwork from “Six Chix” and WW3 Illustrated

https://www.moccafest.org/tickets

Isabella Bannerman

https://www.isabellabannerman.com/

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26. Penny Arcade, Ron Athey, Karen Finley, FF Alumns, now online at NYTimes.com

Please visit this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/arts/design/performance-space-taja-cheek.html

Thank you.

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