Contents for April 14th, 2025
CONTENTS (please click on the links or scroll down for complete information on each post):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eunice Golden, FF Member, In Memoriam
1. Julie Tolentino, Ogemdi Ude, FF Alumns, receive Creative Research Grants 2025
2. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
3. Chris DAZE Ellis, Martin Wong, FF Alumns, now online at NYTimes.com
4. Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Jane Dickson, Lisa Kahane, John CRASH Matos, Yasmin Ramirez, FF Alumns, at The Clemente, Manhattan, thru May
5. Kimsooja, FF Alumn, current exhibitions
6. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, at Baruch College, April 24
7. Justin Allen, FF Alumn, at Ursula Bookshop, Manhattan, April 17, 2025
8. Dan Kwong, FF Alumn, podcast now online at SmithsonianMag.com
9. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/1066160838
10. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, at Motta Field, Provincetown,MA, opening April 14
11. Kal Spelletich, FF Alumn, at Telematic Gallery, San Francisco, CA, opening April 19
12. Mary Campbell, Peter Cramer, Jim Costanzo, John Fekner, Julie Hair, Rebecca (Becky) Howland, Joe Lewis, Stefani Mar, Brad Melamed, Joseph Nechvatal, Tom Otterness, Cara Perlman, James Romberger, Christy Rupp, Kiki Smith, Harley Spiller, Anton Van Dalen, Jack Waters, FF Alumns, at Emily Harvey Foundation, Manhattan, thru April 26
13. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, at Indexical Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA, May 3, and more
14. Franc Palaia, FF Alumn, at Garner Arts Center, Garnerville, NY, opening May 4
15. Alex Romania, FF Alumn, at Grace Exhibition Space, Manhattan, April 18
16. Richard McGuire, FF Alumn, now online at NewYorker.com
17. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, now online at NewWorldWriting.net and more
18. Martha Rosler, FF Alumn, at Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, thru May 10
19. William Wegman, FF Alumn, now online at TimesUnion.com
20. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland and online, April 27
21. GOODW.Y.N., FF Alumn, now online at sevenstorypublishing.com
22. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, receives Silver Award at 2025 Hollywood Gold Awards
23. Penny Arcade, Allen Frame, FF Alumns, at Soft Network, Manhattan, April 22
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eunice Golden, FF Member, In Memoriam
Eunice Golden
1927-2025
It is with the deepest sorrow and regret to inform you of the peaceful passing of my wife Eunice at our home and studio on April 3, in East Hampton, NY.
“When I grow up I want to be just like her”
Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham – MatronsandMistresses.com
Her work is currently on exhibit at both the Eric Firestone (40 Great Jones Street) and Duane Thomas Galleries in New York City.
A solo exhibition of her works will open on April 11, 2025 at the Duane Thomas Gallery.
137 West Broadway, New York City.
Reception: 6-8pm
Eunice Golden is a pioneering feminist artist. In the mid 1960’s she deployed a bold expressionist figuration at the service of a newly emerging sensibility. While other women were involved with self-definition and the re-valuation of “women’s work”. Golden presented the male body as a primal landscape of struggle and desire.
Her work is unusual in the context of early feminism for this straightforward metaphorical representation of men. Golden does not turn tables to present the male figure as a sexual object according to patriarchal precedent. Rather, she subsumes the tropes of expressionism and surrealism to create new, aggressively visceral images of male sexuality and sexual politics from her woman’s perspective.. The male body becomes female terrain: literal, romantic landscapes in which lurk pleasures and monsters too.
In the early 1970’s Golden began working with performance, body art, photography and film. She photographed herself and her models naked, painted and serially presented. Male bodies were adorned with female anatomy. Female bodies were slathered with pigment and food and wrapped in transparent plastic. Interested in words as visual images, she combined linguistics and body-art forms in her photographic work. Golden made a number of well-received feminist films in the early 1970’s. One, “Blue Bananas and Other Meats” (1973) was a recreation of the famous surrealist dinner in which a woman lay like a platter on the dining table. Golden however, substituted a man, adroitly arranging the fruits of the feast to incorporate his lower anatomy. Little seen at the time, Golden’s photographic work is a significant contribution to the body of ‘70s performance and documentation art.
Much of Golden’s art has been impacted by the natural environment of Long Island’s East End. She first experienced the extraordinary atmospheric changes from her Gerard Drive cottage in the Springs and Louse Point beach where she swam and basked in the ambient light with Saul Steinberg and Harold Rosenberg in the summers of the early 1970’s.
Golden’s seminal painting “Landscape #160” was executed in 1972 in her East Hampton studio, the historic Parson’s Blacksmith Shop {then} on Springs Fireplace Road near the Jackson Pollock house. It was exhibited at the downtown Whitney Museum in “Nothing But Nudes” in 1977. This painting came full circle when it was included in Guild Hall’s exhibition “Personal and Political” in 2002. It was acquired for Guild Hall’s permanent collection in 2009. More recently it was exhibited in “Framing The Female Gaze:Women Artists and the New Historicism” at Lehman College Art Gallery, October 10, 2023-January 20, 2024.
The renowned East End artist Ilya Bolotowsky likened Eunice Golden’s work to that of the poet James Joyce for its intuitive style and frank sexuality. Golden’s controversial and radical work challenged entrenched gender ideologies. Her revolutionary “Male Landscapes”, whose underpinnings were psychological and socio-political created a buzz among historians such as Lucy Lippard , and Linda Nochlin who were documenting the emergence of feminist artists. Golden’s work of the 1960’s and 1970’s which was a strike against a historical bias precluding sexual male imagery by women artists, was influential in providing a catalyst for the emergence and inclusion of a multiplicity of art forms and concepts not only for women but for the art world at large
Golden’s Male Landscapes made the sexual colossal yet intimate. Works that followed captured the immediacy of closeness, from the portraits of mother, son, daughter, to the anthropomorphic studies, and the swimmer series. In recent works Golden delved into yet another metamorphosis of visceral sensation in surreal abstract forms. For all the apparent differences in style, content, or technique, the common thread in all of Golden’s work is the power of intimacy.
Golden’s contributions extended beyond her artwork; she was a prolific writer and lecturer, articulating the intersections of art, sexuality, and feminism. Her seminal 1981 article in “Heresies” critically examined the portrayal of the male nude in women’s art, challenging entrenched gender biases in art criticism.
Eunice Golden’s fearless exploration of taboo subjects and her dedication to feminist principles have left an indelible mark on the art world. She is survived by her husband the artist and photographer Walter Weissman; her daughter Robin Golden; grandchildren Kierstyn Gates, her husband, Justin Gates, and Great Grandson Dane Marshall Gates. Her legacy continues to inspire artists to challenge and redefine societal norms.
Eunice Golden, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York; studied art at Brooklyn College and SUNY Empire State College in New York City. In 1969 and 1971 she had a McDowell Fellowship as a Resident Painter.
Her works are in the permanent collections of The Museum at Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY; The John Horseman Foundation; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM; and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. Additionally her works are in numerous private collections of art historians, artists and art dealers.
Since the 1960s, her works have been exhibited in numerous national and international solo and group museum exhibitions, including at the Museum at Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY; Brooklyn Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Modern Art Museum Fort Worth, Texas; Stamford Museum, Ct; Indianapolis and Taft Museums; The Watermill Museum, NY; Long Beach Museum, Ca.; Palacio de las Bellas Artes, Mexico City; Bijbel Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum Den Haag; The Hague, Netherlands and Stadtgalerie Saarbrucken, Germany.
Additionally, her works have been exhibited at numerous universities and arts institutions: Fairleigh Dickinson, Arizona State, U of South Dakota, Bard College, U of Maryland, U of Colorado, Wake Forest U, U. of Kansas; U of Texas; Pace U. NYC.
Additionally, her films and photographs have been shown at The Jackson Pollock / Lee Krasner House, The Anthology Film Archive, Artists Space, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn Germany and Steven Kasher Gallery, NYC.
Other venues and gallery exhibitions over many years include: Mitchell Algus, Sapar Gallery, Duane Thomas Gallery, Westbeth Gallery, Soho 20, A.I.R., Eric Firestone, The Annual Springs Invitational, East Hampton; The New York Armory Show, Vered Gallery, Cork Gallery Avery Fischer Hall, Grey Art Gallery, NYU; ACA Gallery and the National Academy of Design.
Her work is extensively written about in numerous books, catalogs, journals, magazines and newspapers such as:
“In The Cut: The Male Body in Feminist Art”, Stadtgalerie, Saarbrueken, Germany
“Wack ! Art and the Feminist Revolution” Exhibition catalog MOCA, LA
Woman’s Art Journal, “Eunice Golden’s Male Body Landscapes and Feminist Sexuality” By Aliza Edelman, Fall/Winter 2020.
“Radical Eroticism: Women, Art & Sex” in the 1960’s” by Rachel Middleman
“Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics” by Alison M. Gingeras
Huffington Post Arts & Culture Section, “Ten Amazing Female Artists and Their Male Muses” by Talia Lavin
“Naked: The Nude in America” by Bram Dijkstra . Rizzoli Publisher
“Framing The Female Gaze:Women Artists and the New Historicism” by Bartholomew
Bland at Lehman College Art Gallery,
“Women Painting Women” By Andrea Karnes, The Modern Art Museum of
Fort Worth Texas
For additional information please contact Walter Weissman
Weissmanphoto.com
Eunice Golden is a recipient of the 2015 Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant.
To learn more about the artist go to these web sites:
Pollock/Krasner Foundation
Brooklyn Museum: Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Duane Thomas Gallery
Sapar Contemporary Gallery
Matrons And Mistresses
Parrish Art Museum: East End Stories
Huffington Post
Graphic Design Degree Hub
Website: www.eunicegolden.com
Email: eugolden@optonline.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Julie Tolentino, Ogemdi Ude, FF Alumns, receive Creative Research Grants 2025
NEW CREATIVE RESEARCH GRANTS PROGRAM FOR ARTISTS
LAUNCHED BY FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS
New program supported by $9 million bequest from LA dealer Margo Leavin
New York, NY, March 27, 2025 –The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) announced today a new Creative Research Grants program distributing $300,000 to an inaugural cohort of 30 experimental artists and collectives. Each $10,000 grant is awarded to support their artistic exploration and development. Recognizing that creative research is integral to the artistic process, this program provides meaningful support to experimental artists to advance their ideas and practices. FCA’s new program is made possible through the generous 2023 bequest from the estate of Margo Leavin, a pioneering LA gallerist and longstanding friend and supporter of FCA’s work; this program is part of a ten-year plan to distribute money to artists.
“It’s thrilling to be able to extend our support to this vital, exploratory stage of the artistic process, addressing a recurring gap in resources at a crucial time for artists across the country” said Kay Takeda, Executive Director of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. “The range of ideas and projects proposed by the artists receiving Creative Research Grants is remarkable—we’re excited to support their creative ambitions as they push their work and practices into new territories.”
Working in a range of practices, the 30 inaugural recipients of the $10,000 Creative Research Grants will undertake activities including collaboration, rehearsals, study, archival work, studio time, and travel across the United States and 12 different countries. A few of these awarded artists and their plans include:
• Max Adrian (Columbus, OH), a textile artist whose quilts, soft sculptures, inflatables, and installations consider experiences of consumer culture through a lens of queerness and desire, will explore experimental puppetry.
• Poet and filmmaker Shireen Alihaji (Los Angeles, CA) will investigate placemaking and memory to understand and reconsider history, exploring Persian household objects and traditions as sites of cultural restoration.
• Reg Bloor (New York, NY), an experimental guitarist, will create and record new music, building and using custom-built third-bridge Harmonics Guitars to explore rarely heard musical intervals of the harmonic series.
• Interdisciplinary artist Kameron Neal (Brooklyn, NY) will trace the song “Wagon Wheel” from its Black blues origins to its evolution into a country anthem for a film project called Wagon Wheel (Chopped & Screwed).
• Julie Tolentino (Joshua Tree, CA), a visual artist and performer who creates work across media that is inspired by activism, caregiving, and loss, will research underwater movement and touch practices through engagement with freediving and aquatic bodywork communities in Okinawa, Japan, and the Taal Volcano in the Philippines.
• Performance artist Donna Oblongata (Philadelphia, PA) will undertake research and development for the final piece in a solo-show trilogy of participatory dark comedies that explore the contradictions in our cultural relationships to water through Kurt Cobain’s persona.
• Ogemdi Ude (New York, NY), a dance artist, will explore pre-colonial Nigerian queer histories through performance, research, and interviews, including interviewing Nigerian artists to develop solo material inspired by these experiences.
Applications were reviewed by a panel of ten experimental artists, each with expertise in one or more of the disciplines FCA supports: dance, music/sound, performance art/theater, poetry and visual arts. Recipients were then selected by a two-phase review process, evaluating the submissions based on the strength and relevance of the proposal in relation to the artist’s practice, work samples, and goals, and the potential impact of the grant the artist’s development.
Bequest from the Estate of Margo Leavin
A pioneering Los Angeles-based gallerist, Margo Leavin (1936-2021) was longtime supporter of FCA, and an early champion of the work of FCA Co-Founder Jasper Johns. In the fall of 2023, FCA announced an almost $9 million bequest from the estate of Margo Leavin, which has enabled the launch of FCA’s new Creative Research Grants and will provide lead funding for the program for five years. Overall, FCA has apportioned an estimated 75% of this generous bequest to directly support artists through new and existing programs, including funds dedicated to supporting artists in Southern California—in keeping with Leavin’s commitment to artists in the region. The remaining 25% has been invested to help ensure the longevity of FCA.
About the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA)
The mission of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts is to encourage, sponsor, and promote innovative work in the arts created and presented by individuals, groups, and organizations. Since FCA’s inception, more than 7,500 grants to artists and arts organizations—totaling almost $29 million—have provided opportunities for creative exploration and the realization of new work. FCA’s unrestricted, by-nomination Grants to Artists recognize 23 artists each year with awards of $45,000 for their pioneering work across the fields of dance, music/sound, performance art/theater, poetry, and the visual arts. In addition to its Grants to Artist program, FCA’s Emergency Grants provide urgent funding to over 200 artists annually to respond to sudden opportunities to present their work, or unexpected expenses for projects close to completion. Artists are primarily responsible for the Foundation’s existence, its growth, and its continuation. To date, over 1,000 artists have contributed artwork to help fund FCA’s grant programs; and financial contributions from like-minded individuals and foundations significantly enhance FCA’s ability to recognize and support innovative artists.
FCA was established by John Cage (1912-1992) and Jasper Johns in 1963. At the time, some emerging visual artists were experiencing modest financial success, while many of their peers working in dance, music, and theater struggled to find funding for their work. FCA was initially operated on a volunteer basis by a group of artists who together organized benefit exhibitions, made grants, and produced performances by innovative artists. Many of the artists who participated in those early years would go on to make significant contributions to American arts and culture.
www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2. Yoko Ono, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit these links:
and
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Chris DAZE Ellis, Martin Wong, FF Alumns, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4. Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Jane Dickson, Lisa Kahane, John CRASH Matos, Yasmin Ramirez, FF Alumns, at The Clemente, Manhattan, thru May
Historietas: Latinx Comics as Alternative Histories
April 6–May 2025
The Clemente, 107 Suffolk St, 4th Floor
Curated by Carlo Quispe
On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of ABC No Rio’s founding, Historias Sembradas—the research and public engagement phase of Historias, The Clemente’s multi-year initiative—presents Historietas, an exhibition of Latinx comic book artists whose work weaves together multi-generational narratives of survival, resilience, and coming-of-age in NYC’s neighborhoods.
Curated by Peruvian cartoonist and educator Carlo Quispe, with ties to ABC No Rio and WW3 Illustrated magazine, Historietas brings together seven contemporary Latinx creators whose work spans from the Bronx to the Lower East Side, tracing histories across public schools, prison libraries, community spaces, homes, and streets. These artists—Ivan Velez Jr., Sandy Jimenez, Carlo Quispe, Sharon De La Cruz, Ivan Monforte, Medar De La Cruz, and Daisy Ruiz—challenge dominant narratives through the immediacy of comics, using the medium to document lived experiences and create informal yet powerful counter-histories. The Spanish word Historietas translates to “little histories” or “short stories,” but despite their modest size, these comics serve as potent tools for self-representation, storytelling, and political discourse. Through independent and mainstream publishing, the featured artists ensure that their voices and perspectives are seen, read, and remembered.
Uptown/Downtown: When Boroughs Collide
DEI Warriors on the Culture Front
Monday, April 28, 3–6pm
Presentation by Lisa Kahane and round table discussion
Invitees include: Joe Lewis, Lisa Kahane, Jane Dickson, John Ahearn, Charlie Ahearn, John “Crash” Matos, Frank Morales, Yasmin Ramirez, and Betti-Sue Hertz, Libertad Guerra, Amy Starecheski
Austrian emigre artist Stefan Eins opened the Fashion Moda experimental art space in the South Bronx in 1978. ABC No Rio opened two years later in Loisaida, after a building occupation. Several of the artists from “the Moda” came down for the Real Estate Show, and later showed at ABC. Artists from ABC went uptown to the Moda regularly. This crosstown traffic continued throughout the 1980s. One of the okupas of the squatting movement in the Bronx had a zine library; when that squat was evicted the zine library came to ABC No Rio, the seed of the present-day collection. This artistic traffic between boroughs was crucially important in laying the foundations for the diverse multi-cultural artworld of the present-day.
Questions around intersectionality have dogged the cultural world in NYC for at least a century.* The axis of Colab, through Fashion Moda and ABC No Rio, set out to intervene in this by siting experimental cultural centers in peripheral barrios of the city in the late 1970s and through the ’80s. These centers welcomed artists of color. How did that work? And did it work to build the artworld of today? The question is especially urgent given the recent federal government’s all-out attacks on “DEI” funding in all sectors. The time is now urgent for this important history to be better known.
Accessibility Notice:
Unfortunately, as construction proceeds, there are no elevators to the upper floors at The Clemente. There is a central, wise staircase with 3 flights of stairs to reach the 4th floor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5. Kimsooja, FF Alumn, current exhibitions
To Breathe – Coachella Valley
March 8 – May 11, 2025
Desert X Coachella Valley, California, U.S
To Breathe – Coachella Valley by Kimsooja invites an interaction with the essential elements of the desert: the texture of sand underfoot, the air we breathe, and the light around us. Drawing inspiration from bottaris, the fabric-encased bundles of belongings prominent in her work and in Korean culture, she describes this installation as a “bottari of light.” By wrapping the glass surface in a unique optical film, the physical architecture is transformed into a dynamic spectrum of light and color. The work reflects its counterpart work in the desert of AlUla, Saudi Arabia while also acknowledging the historical origins of the Light and Space movement on the West Coast of the U.S. More information here.
Meta-Painting
April 5 – June 7, 2025
Terrace Gallery, Kanaal, Belgium
Marking Kimsooja’s sixth solo-exhibition with Axel Vervoodt Gallery, Meta-Painting is showing two important series that depict the artist’s vast exploration of materiality: Meta Painting and Thread Routes. Conceived at Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden, Meta-Painting reflects Kimsooja’s sustained inquiry into the origins of painting itself. The adjacent room of the exhibition presents Thread Routes II (2011), the second chapter of a six-part 16mm film series that explores the structural affinities between textile, architecture, and human movement.
By bringing together Meta-Painting and Thread Routes, this exhibition underscores Kimsooja’s sustained exploration of transformation—of textiles, objects, and spatial perception. Moving fluidly between painting, sculpture, and film, her work dissolves boundaries between medium and meaning, revealing an interwoven narrative of materiality and migration. More information here.
ENNOVA Art Biennale
October 27, 2024 – May 7, 2025
ENNOVA Art Museum, Langfang, Hebei, China
Kimsooja is participating in the inaugural Ennova Art Biennale in Langfang, China. Curated by Fumio Nanjo, this year’s Biennale, themed Multiple Future: New Visions of Our Life, explores contemporary art’s role in rethinking human creativity and global challenges. Kimsooja’s work is featured in the chapter Expansion on Sounds and Voices, which examines sound as a unique, immaterial medium.
Kimsooja’s installation is a replication of John Cage’s work originally created for the last Paris Biennale in 1985. Kimsooja first encountered this piece during her six-month scholarship at Écoles des Beaux-Arts in Paris, awarded by the French government. In 2019, when invited by the city of Poitiers, France, to create a city-wide art project, Kimsooja sought to exhibit this work and reached out to the John Cage Foundation for information. Unfortunately, the foundation was unaware of the piece, and her vision for its realization could not come to fruition. Recognizing the importance of this work in shaping her perspective as a young artist, Kimsooja decided to replicate it for this biennale, as part of artistic director Fumio Nanjo’s exploration of sound.
Art and Nature: Inside Out
April 6 – October 12, 2025
Villa Arconati, Milan, Italy
Home is Where We Start From
February 20 – August 31, 2025
Maison Tavel (MAH), Geneva, Switzerland
UPCOMING
All Directions: Art That Moves You
From 16 May 2025
Inauguration of FENIX Museum of Migration,
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Fenix, the new international art museum exploring themes around migration through the lens of art, will open to the public on a landmark site in Rotterdamʼs City Harbour on Friday 16 May 2025. Kimsooja is participating in the inaugural collection exhibition All Directions: Art That Moves You, which will showcase 150 artworks and objects ranging from the historical to the contemporary, drawn from the Fenix collection and acquired over the past five years.
Kimsooja: To Breathe – Mokum
May 24 – November 9, 2025
Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Kimsooja will be presenting a solo exhibition at the Oude Kerk, a place that has been the symbol of departure and arrival for centuries. Kimsooja covers the windows of the church with a film that breaks the sunlight into a spectrum of rainbow colours. This creates a dynamic interplay of light and colour on the walls and the church floor. Spread across the church floor, she will place her bottari – traditional Korean wrapping cloths in which people carry their cherished possessions when travelling. For this new installation, clothing from all over Amsterdam has been collected, originating from the many diverse communities that enrich the city. In this way, To Breathe – Mokum celebrates the migration history of Amsterdam, a city that has been one of the most diverse in the world for over 750 years. .
Magdalena Abakanowicz
April 18 – August 24, 2025
Het Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
PAST PROJECTS
Art Basel, Hong Kong
March 28 – 30, 2025
Axel Vervoodt Gallery, Booth 3D14
Kimsooja was presented by Axel Vervoodt Gallery in Art Basel HK 2025, along with internationally acclaimed artists such as El Anatsui, Sopheap Pich and Bosco Sodi. This year, the artist showed Meta-Painting, her new series that explores the original and fundamental principles of painting at Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden, where Kimsooja planted, cultivated, and harvested flax. Displayed alongside was Cities on the Move: 2727km Bottari Truck (1997), which delves into themes of nomadism, migration and glocalism. This piece was specifically selected to feature as the main poster of the event.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
6. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, FF Alumn, at Baruch College, April 24
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s FIREWALL is showing now at Baruch College until May 1st. A reception will be held at the Newman Library in room 415 from Thursday 4/24 from 5-7pm RSVP required: https://forms.gle/haUVjNPX7ZJp32Te8
The exhibition is across all 4 floors of the library and online at
https://newmediartspace.info/exhibitions/2025_joyce-yu-jean-lee_unfolding-connections
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7. Justin Allen, FF Alumn, at Ursula Bookshop, Manhattan, April 17
Hello!
I’ll be reading from my book Language Arts at Ursula Bookshop on Thursday, April 17 at 6 pm. Urusla is located at 443 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011. Book copies are also available for sale there.
RSVP here: https://www.hauserwirth.com/locations/41189-hauser-wirth-18th-street/
Thank you.
Justin Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8. Dan Kwong, FF Alumn, podcast now online at SmithsonianMag.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/series/theres-more-to-that
Thank you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
9. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/1066160838
TO THE GREAT BLANKNESS
MAILING LIST:
PZ, APRIL 7, 2025
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, at Motta Field, Provincetown,MA, opening April 14
The historic Pilgrim Monument, on unceded land of the Wampanoag Nation, has opened its doors to an event I created to celebrate a Portuguese immigrant poet, Grace Gouveia-
Grace Gouveia: Smoking Bomb. Opening April 14, 4:00-6:00 pm through April 30.
https://www.jaycritchley.com/motta-field.html
Before Provincetown’s historic Motta Field undergoes a massive makeover and upgrade, Provincetown based artist Jay Critchley will honor Portuguese immigrant poet Grace Gouveia, inscribing her poetry with white line chalk on the town’s historic athletic field. This
temporary, experimental public art installation, vulnerable to the elements, will be created for public viewing in early April, when weather permits, with a public event on April 14.
The neighboring Pilgrim Monument, towering over this next-door field at 372’ high, will host a community unveiling and viewing party for her writing on the field, Monday, April 14, 4:00-6:00 pm. This artwork is part of the artist’s Grace Gouveia: Smoking Bomb, a multidisciplinary project honoring this trailblazing hometown poet. The first fifty people to climb the monument and take a photo or selfie at the top will be given a copy of Critchley’s Build a Monument Book with text by Grace Gouveia (published in 1982!).
The event is free and open to the public.
Known for her flowing moo moo dresses, enveloped in billowing cigarette smoke with an inexplicable long dangling ash, Grace Gouveia, a Portuguese immigrant, arrived in Provincetown at the age of seven in 1916 and lived the American dream. Recognized for her radical approach to teaching fifth and sixth graders for twenty-seven years, she went on to join the Peace Corps, teach in Harlem and founded Provincetown Council on Aging. She was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for advocating for birth control.
Grace graduated from both American International College and Mt. Holyoke College and picked berries to pay for her tuition. She is also an unrecognized poet who wrote passionately about the community and the hardship and joy she experienced as the town was rapidly changing.
“Grace was a close friend who was engaged in all aspects of the town. I met her while working at the fabled Drop-In Center in the late 1970s. We shared a deep interest in local history and the importance of community,” stated Critchley. “I will be raising funds to publish a book of her poems,” he added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
11. Kal Spelletich, FF Alumn, at Telematic Gallery, San Francisco, CA, opening April 19
American Aria continues!
Anti Authoritarian
At Telematic gallery April 2025
In San Francisco
ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN
Demagoguery, White Supremacy, and Resistance
Featuring works by Nic[o] Brierre Aziz, Christy Chan, Nicólas González-Medina, Doug Hall and Kal Spelletich/Seamus Davis April 19th – June 7th, 2025
Opening Reception, Saturday, April 19th 6:00 – 9:00pm
Closing Reception, Saturday, June 7th, 2:00 – 4:00pm
An exhibition of political art, registering the re-election of Donald Trump as an authoritarian take-over of the country. The show adopts an historical lens on our current crisis, foregrounding the authoritarian tendency in American politics, tying this tendency to the white supremacy integral to our country’s past, and highlighting these artists’ voices as protests against the ever-present threat of authoritarianism – now taking hold of our society.
https://kaltek.wordpress.com/american-aria/
EVENTS
Nic[o] Brierre Aziz: In Conversation Tuesday, April 22nd, 6:00 –8:00 pm Free and open to the public Art and Politics:A Panel Discussion with Nicólas González-Medina and Kal Spelletich
Wednesday, April 30th, 6:00 –8:00 pm Free and open to the public
This is Doug Hall:
A conversation with artist Doug Hall about his recently published memoir Saturday, May 17th, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Free and open to the public
May There Be Light:A Two-Part Workshop on Large Scale Projection Art Presented by Christy Chan Wednesday, May 14th and Tuesday, May 20th, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Free with registration (check back soon for link), limited to eight people. We strongly encourage participation by BIPOC and LGBTQ folk and political activists.
FULL STATEMENT
Since beginning his second term as President, Donald Trump has undertaken a frontal assault on our political institutions, aimed solely at consolidating his power. He has actively undermined the rule of law and exploited his position for the enrichment of himself and his cronies. He has implemented loyalty tests, based on acceptance of the “Big Lie” that the last election was stolen, and he has initiated a radical racist, sexist, and homophobic ideological agenda, targeting the most vulnerable, marginalized people in our society and subjecting them to extra-legal forms of discrimination and persecution.
As an exhibition of political art, this show registers the re-election of Donald Trump, as an attempted authoritarian take-over of the country that we are watching unfold in real time. At the same time, the show adopts an historical lens on our current crisis,foregrounding the longstanding authoritarian tendency in American politics,from Huey Long to George Wallace and beyond; and it ties this tendency to the authoritarianism of white supremacy integral to our country’s past. That is, not only have authoritarian movements in America’s past been marked by their xenophobia and racism, but white supremacy itself has functioned as a pervasive form of authoritarianism, plaguing the lives of people of color and compromising our self-proclaimed principles of liberty and justice.
Finally, the show marks a site of resistance, highlighting these artists’ voices as political protests – integral to their work as artists – and championing public activist opposition to the ever-present threat of authoritarianism, now taking hold of our society.
323 10th St. @ Folsom (SoMa), San Francisco, CA 94103
415-336-2349 | @tttelematiccc
Info@tttelematiccc.com | www.tttelematiccc.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. Mary Campbell, Peter Cramer, Jim Costanzo, John Fekner, Julie Hair, Rebecca (Becky) Howland, Joe Lewis, Stefani Mar, Brad Melamed, Joseph Nechvatal, Tom Otterness, Cara Perlman, James Romberger, Christy Rupp, Kiki Smith, Harley Spiller, Anton Van Dalen, Jack Waters, FF Alumns, at Emily Harvey Foundation, Manhattan, thru April 26
April 5-26th
Emily Harvey Foundation
537 Broadway #2
Tuesday – Saturday. 12 – 6pm.
A roster of artists includes John Fekner, Robert Goldman (Bobby G),Jim Costanzo, Joe Lewis,Cara Perlman,Christof Kohlhoefer, Colleen Fitzgibbon, Tom Otterness, Kiki Smith, Teri Slotkin, Rebecca (Becky) Howland, Christy Rupp, Brad Melamed and Andrea Evans,Joseph Nechvatal,Anton Van Dalen, Scott Miller,Jody Culkin, Richard Mock (estate), Scott Seaboldt,Seth Tobocman,Fly Orr (installation),Andrew Castrucci (installation), Mike Estabrook, Kevin Luecke, James Romberger, Franz Vila, Peggy Cyphers, Sue Strande, Vikki Law, Robert Goldkind, Julie Hair, Vandana Jain, Marc Fischer, Jade Doskow, Ethan Shoshan , James Love Cornwell, Renzo Castrucci, Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, Ricardo Nelson, Albert Choi , Stefani Mar, Ricardo Nelson and more.
ABC No Rio 45 is an exhibition of the artists and activists who have contributed to ABC No Rio over the decades and built it into an iconic Lower East Side cultural center. They will reassemble to exhibit work in this historical survey presenting artworks old and new, and documents that explore the many facets of ABC from the founding Colab years, during which artists of that group and others mounted politically charged theme exhibitions, to the movement in the mid-1980s towards experimental performance, film, and queer subjectivity. Ephemera from No Rio’s archives will represent the collectivist and political projects of the 1990s including the Printshop, Zine Library, Community Darkroom, Hardcore Matinees, and co-sponsored projects such as Blackout Books, Books Through Bars and Food Not Bombs. The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space will contribute materials documenting ABC No Rio’s relationships to the squatters’ movement which battled Giuliani’s police in the 1990s, and the movement to preserve community gardens.
As a collectively-run nonprofit arts organization on the Lower East Side, ABC No Rio’s approach to political and aesthetic concerns continues to resonate today. As a plaque on its now-demolished building proclaimed, “The Culture of Opposition Since 1980,” ABC No Rio has been a precious hub for DIY arts and activism and a sanctuary for activists, artists, and musicians, fostering a rich sense of community and collaboration. This exhibition honors the generations of collective struggle that built and sustained ABC No Rio, it will function as a workspace and gathering place for past, present, and future members of the ABC No Rio community. The sub-theme “GayBC No Rio” will offer insight into the undercurrent of queer culture that has existed as a foundational and binding element in the history of radical art and activism. These histories will be explored through panels, readings, workshops, performances, and film screenings at the Emily Harvey Foundation, The Clemente, Anthology Film Archives, and beyond. Check the Event Schedule https://abcnorio45.org/ for a full run of exhibition programming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
13. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, at Indexical Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA, May 3, and more
I am happy to inform you of this upcoming engagement at UC Santa Cruz and nearby Indexical Gallery. If you are in the area, I would love to see you!
GammaTime
A real-time participatory brainwave drawing performance @:
Indexical Gallery, Saturday, May 3, 2025 8:30 pm
1050 River Street, #119 Santa Cruz, California
&
On Monday, May 5 at 4pm:
I will be giving a public lecture (in-person!) about the evolution of my BrainWave drawings and other works on the UC Santa Cruz campus.
@: the Communications Building at UCSC Room 150 / Theater C.
From Indexical:
“New York-based artist Nina Sobell presents GammaTime, in collaboration with Ed Bear. GammaTime aims to create a foundation for understanding and experiencing Gamma brain waves as well as other brain waves through art and music. By engaging with the installation, participants will gain insights into their own and each other’s brain wave activity, as well as experience the potential cognitive and emotional benefits of 40 Hz Gamma stimulation. The project seeks to inspire, educate and provide a platform for creative exploration, ultimately contributing to the broader discourse on the intersection of art and neuroscience.”
UCSC event co-sponsored by the Department of Film & Digital Media and the Arts Research Institute. The event is offered as part of the Visual and Media Cultures Colloquium (VMCC) speaker series.
Best regards,
Nina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
14. Franc Palaia, FF Alumn, at Garner Arts Center, Garnerville, NY, opening May 4
FRANC PALAIA, FF Alumn, will present “Urban Archaeology” a 20 year survey solo show at the Garner Arts Center in Garnerville (Haverstraw) NY from May 3 – June 15 2025. opening reception: sunday May 4 from 3-5pm.
for more info- Francpalaia1@gmail.com
The expansive show will fill the 2700 sq ft gallery with paintings, frescoes, sculpture, mixed media photographs selected from works from 2000 to today.
The show will include over 65 works as well as a 15 minute video, “Many Parts” that highlights 50 years of Palaia’s artwork. A full color catalog will be available as well as other books, CDs etc during the exhibition. An article on Palaia’s work and the show will be featured in the May issue of Chronogram magazine.
gallery phone- 845-947-7108
Garner Arts Center- 55 W. Railroad Ave, Garnerville, NY 10923
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
15. Alex Romania, FF Alumn, at Grace Exhibition Space, Manhattan, April 18
Laughter-Rage in Action Night 4
APRIL 18, 2025 – 8PM
Featuring performances by:
AMYGDALA
Alex Romania x Stacy Lynn-Smith
MangoDog
Tickets: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/spring-2025-season-night-four
“The VR Archive for Performance Art”
Member’s Only Pre-show Event
April 18, 2025 6:30-7:30
Interested in becoming a member and attending this event?
MEMBERSHIP: https://graceexhibitionspace.org/memberships
Grace Exhibition Space welcomes a new spring season in this time of rapid change and accelerated bewilderment, empowering the immediacy of Now. Laughter and rage felt together will not abandon our utopian visions, but become our catalyst through the chaos to reach a better end. Presented on the floor, eliminating the separation of artist over viewer, we will together be pulled into the ideas being presented in an egalitarian, nonhierarchical way.
GES proudly welcomes the 18th spring season Laughter-Rage in Action with diverse, equitable, inclusive and multi-generational works.
The 2025 Spring Season is supported by New York State Council on the Arts.
Grace Exhibition Space was established in 2006 with a mission of the glorification of Performance art. Our focus is to showcase the current generation of international performance artists, whether emerging, mid-career, or established. GES believes in creating space to experience visceral and challenging works, where the boundary between artist and viewer is dissolved; Creating an immersive experience, our events are presented on the floor as opposed to a stage
Grace Exhibition Space presents over 30 curated live performance art exhibitions each year, showcasing new work by more than 1000 performance artists from across the United States and the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
16. Richard McGuire, FF Alumn, now online at NewYorker.com
Please visit this link to a brief story about RIchard McGuire’s cover art for this week’s New Yorker magazine:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2025-04-14
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
17. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, now online at NewWorldWriting.net and more
Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, Fiction in 2 publications:
New World Writing
https://newworldwriting.net/roberta-allen-we-dont-know-why/
Gargoyle Magazine
https://gargoylemagazine.com/roberta-allen-5/
Also in
https://matterpress.com/journal/2024/12
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
18. Martha Rosler, FF Alumn, at Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, thru May 10
Galerie Lelong, New York, is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with the artist Martha Rosler, Truth is/is not, opening on April 10, 2025. Since the 1960s, the Brooklyn-based artist’s practice has been defined by a sharp and unfiltered perspective on contemporary social and political issues of the public sphere, often through addressing the unexamined acceptance of the systems that create and define them. Drawing from works across decades, the exhibition examines how political consciousness is molded through the dissemination of ideas and truisms by mass media, reinforced by constant repetition. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from a recent essay by the artist published on The Brooklyn Rail’s Critics Page, “truth is, or is not,” in which Rosler unpacked the changing landscape of ideological approaches toward truth and its place in the contemporary art world.
Truth is/is not begins with an exercise in decision-making. Rosler positions an ordinary turnstile at the entrance and exit of the gallery, alongside a television and Xbox console with the game “Just Dance” which uses a sensor to detect the movements of players as they follow the moves on screen. Visitors must decide whether to pay a quarter to go through the turnstile and enter the exhibition or to play the game for a dollar. This choice juxtaposes instant gratification with an open-ended opportunity to explore complex representations of the consequences of institutional systems.
Upon entering the gallery’s main space, visitors negotiate Reading Hannah Arendt (Politically) for an American in the 21st Century (2006). This forest of hanging panels displays passages in English and German from the writings of the German Jewish émigré philosopher on authoritarianism and subject populations. Glimpsed through the translucent panels, pertinent selections from Rosler’s photomontage series and gallery visitors become a backdrop.
About the Artist
Martha Rosler’s practice focuses on issues of the public sphere, addressing cultural and political concerns both domestic and foreign-often through the feminist lens of their impact on the lives of women. For over six decades, Rosler has worked in a variety of media—including video, photography, text, sculpture, performance, and writing—always expanding upon her practice in an ongoing endeavor to incite questions of perception and truth as they relate to an ever-changing sociopolitical landscape. Among the many topics investigated throughout her oeuvre, recurring themes in Rosler’s practice include urbanism, spaces of transit, war and national security, and patriarchal expectations of women. Her work invites consideration and critique of the systems governing everyday life, including those that often go unnoticed. In addition to her artistic practice, Rosler’s incisive commentary extends to her written work, in published books and essays as well as contributions to newspapers and critical publications.
GALERIE LELONG
528 WEST 26TH STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10001
T +1 212.315.0470
F +1 212.262.0624
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
19. William Wegman, FF Alumn, now online at TimesUnion.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.timesunion.com/living/article/william-wegman-photographer-hockey-20184926.php
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland and online, April 27
Video in Glasgow
Barbara Rosenthal’s 1min 50sec image-text video WORDS COME OUT BACKWARDS WHEN SPOKEN TO SCREEN LEFT will be screened on Sunday, April 27, 2025 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts , Glasgow Scotland
About it she says, “Last night I was up talking to myself, when the words appeared visimagically before my lips, and kept coming out. If you were on my right and saw them also, they’d be backwards coming forwards as they were.”
Close-Up Cinema
Centre for Contemporary Arts
350 Sauchiehall Street
Glasgow G2 3JD
United Kingdom
+44 (0)141 352 4900
Information and tickets:
https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2025/one-minute-volume-6
Barbara Rosenthal’s video is part of the series curated by Kerry Baldry, called ONE MINUTE VIDEOS Vol. 6. This is a description of the whole program.
(55 min, 2024)
Curated by Kerry Baldry
Over the last 16 years artist /filmmaker Kerry Baldry has been curating and organising international screenings of artists moving image titled One Minute. Each programme includes an eclectic mix of work made within the duration of one minute by artists at varying stages of their lives. These experimental works thoughtfully engage with the concept of time in cinema, challenging traditional narratives and exploring how much can be conveyed within sixty seconds. One Minute volumes 1 – 10 are now archived at the BFI British Film Institute
For those of you who can’t be in Glasgow, you can watch it on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/166512248 (if you verify you’re human – hahahahaah — Been noticing how much interaction all the online companies are increasingly causing you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
21. GOODW.Y.N., FF Alumn, now online at sevenstorypublishing.com
Hello All,
Wanted to share this!
https://sevenstorypublishing.com/2025/04/01/interview-with-goodw-y-n-aka-nicole-goodwin/
GOODW.Y.N.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
22. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, receives Silver Award at 2025 Hollywood Gold Awards
Just learned that DESIGN IS ONE: LELLA & MASSIMO VIGNELLI won the Silver Award in the Feature Documentary category in the March 2025 Hollywood Gold Awards. Thank you. Kathy Brew
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
23. Penny Arcade, Allen Frame, FF Alumns, at Soft Network, Manhattan, April 22
dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, 1965-1990
ExhibitionUpcoming
Opening event: Thursday April 3, 6-8PM
Dates: April 4 – May 10, 2025
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 11AM-5PM and by appointment
636 Broadway, NYC, Room 320
Soft Network is honored to present dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, 1965–1990 curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade. The exhibition serves as an introduction to the life and photographic practice of Turkish-American artist Sheyla Baykal (1944–1997) and is composed of a mixture of black and white prints, projections of 35mm color slide photography and super 8mm films, and archival material from the artist’s estate. Taking its title from a folder of obituaries for deceased friends that Baykal kept between the 1960s and 1990s, the exhibition emphasizes her community-based approach to portraiture. Recurring subjects include John Eric Broaddus, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, John Heys, Peter Hujar, Agosto Machado, Cookie Mueller, Jack Smith, and Paul Thek. While well-known within her lifetime among a tight-knit coterie of East Village artists, Baykal’s work was rarely exhibited.
This exhibition, which marks the first six months of the Estate of Sheyla Baykal as Soft Network’s 2025–2027 Archive-in-Residence, is also Baykal’s first solo exhibition since 1993. A second exhibition will be mounted in April 2026. During the residency, Soft Network is organizing and cataloguing Baykal’s expansive archive for the first time. Digitization, ongoing research, and public programs with artists and scholars familiar with Baykal’s community will increase awareness of the artist’s life and work and will ensure that her papers and artworks, and the subjects within, remain accessible for further study.
Throughout the mid-to-late 1960s, Baykal straddled two axes of the Downtown New York art world. At one end, she was enmeshed in the New York School of artists and poets through a family connection to Elaine de Kooning and a brief marriage to poet Frank Lima — she was immortalized as part of the circle in two Alex Katz works, Cocktail Party (1965) and One Flight Up (1968). At the other end, she was becoming integral to an East Village queer counterculture through her friendship with photographer Peter Hujar, as well as an “open-door” urban commune experiment she was running in her East Third Street apartment where she welcomed many from the Off-Off Broadway theater scene. During these years, she funded the commune experiment by working as an haute couture model for the Ford Agency and was photographed for editorials by Richard Avedon, Hiro, and others. Baykal saw these modeling shoots as a type of schooling in photography, and she purchased her first camera, a Nikon F, in 1965. In early resumes, she lists Hujar as a mentor and teacher. Baykal’s photographs from this period range from self-portraiture to street photography, to portraits of her artist peers. Many of her early subjects were from and adjacent to the New York School, including Ted Berrigan, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, John Giorno, Alex Katz, Joan Mitchell, Frank O’Hara, and Anne Waldman. Portraits included in the exhibition, such as those of the critic and artist Scott Burton or Baykal’s husband, the poet Frank Lima, are characterized by their frontality, close-framing, and shallow depth-of-field. Often alongside Hujar, she also photographed more public events such as drag balls in Harlem and anti-war protests in New York and Washington, D.C.
By spring 1968, Baykal had decided to quit modeling and leave New York, wanting to return to Turkey, her home from ages three to eleven. She took a Portuguese shipping freighter to Europe alone and hitchhiked and photographed along the Hippie Trail, the famed overland journey that stretched from Europe into South and West Asia. During her time away, she kept herself tethered to her East Village community by mailing negatives and prints from her travels to Hujar and his lover Steve Lawrence for publication in the experimental tabloid Newspaper. These photographs showed a development in her confidence and command as a photographer as she moved away from close-framing to more firmly placing her subjects in their environment. Portraits of children, shepherds, and fishermen all were published in Newspaper alongside peers such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Peter Beard, and Billy Name, among many others. Contact sheets from the period also illustrate a growing interest in photographing wildlife and landscapes.
Baykal returned to New York in November 1971 and stayed with Hujar and Lawrence at their shared apartment on 188 Second Avenue. After seeing the San Francisco-based genderfuck troupe the Cockettes perform that month at the Anderson Theatre, Baykal sought out the group’s founder, Hibiscus (née George Harris III). Baykal was interested in getting involved with The Angels of Light, the new splinter-group Hibiscus had recently formed with his parents, siblings, and lover Angel Jack (née Jack Coe). They welcomed her, christening her as Angel Shala Butterfly, and she went on to produce numerous Angels shows in New York. Her involvement with the group changed the course of her career, dawning an unwavering commitment to experimental Off-Off Broadway as producer, director, and documentarian that would continue over the next two decades.
By spring 1973, the Angels productions became rife with in-fighting and Baykal left the group. She decided to establish a new outlet that could become a showcase for autonomous, rather than strictly collective, talents. Baykal’s Palm Casino Revue began at the Palm Casino Theatre on East Fourth Street with an initial cast of around fifty performers that included Jackie Curtis and Agosto Machado, as well as Wilhelmina of Hot Peaches, ex-members of the Cockettes and the Angels of Light, and ex-members of John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous. After one performance, the theater’s landlord kicked them out: as Baykal would write, “fifty pansexual street freaks wandering around in bras, girdles, and stockings” was too much for him. The Revue moved to the Bouwerie Lane Theatre for the rest of its run. Baykal’s photographs from the Palm Casino Revue range from documentation of performances to scenes of performers backstage to formal studio portraits of individual cast members. After a year of performances, Palm Casino came to an end when Baykal was hospitalized with complications from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She retreated after the hospitalization to the secluded community of Oakleyville on Fire Island to spend most of the next two years, favoring landscapes and still-lifes in color as her subjects.
Throughout the late 1970s and into the mid 1990s, Baykal dedicated herself exclusively to portraiture, with an emphasis on performers as her subjects. Seeing her photography as a mode of social practice, she established a storefront studio along East Third Street and photographed friends and strangers for several years in the 1980s. By the mid-1980s when HIV began to ravage life Downtown, Baykal tasked herself with photographing as many friends as she possibly could. Her subjects during this period were in the hundreds. With very little money to formally print her work during this period, she turned to laminated color Xerox and laser prints as well as slide shows as a means of exhibition. Her late portraiture became an elegy to her disappearing Bohemia and a testament to her role as caretaker to friends like John Eric Broaddus and Paul Thek as they suffered from complications due to HIV/AIDS.
In 1996, Baykal was diagnosed with end-stage cervical cancer and given nine months to live. She approached the artist Penny Arcade and asked her to reprise the role she had played for the artist Jack Smith at the end of his life, a role Arcade had termed “Death Mother.” Just as in early life a mother fosters the well-being and needs of an infant, Arcade saw the need for someone to help carry someone else’s death, ensuring that their goals and wishes were protected, facilitated, and manifested. Baykal gifted Arcade her entire body of work and archive, including all her negatives, slides, and prints. This exhibition represents three years of collaborative archiving and caretaking by Arcade, Yáñez, and Steve Zehentner, as well as the next phase of bringing Baykal’s work to the public in partnership with Soft Network.
Soft Network and curators Penny Arcade and Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez would like to thank Darling Green for the exhibition design and Pablo Eguía for the exhibition graphics. We are grateful for additional contributions by Rachel Comey, Allen Frame, Emilio Garcia, John Edward Heys, Michael Gillespie, Andrew Jarman, Lower East Side Biography Project, Agosto Machado, Olivia McCall, Nicole Miller, Gary Schneider, Hedi Sorger, The Peter Hujar Foundation, James Walsh, and Steve Zehentner. Penny Arcade would like to acknowledge the work that Ken Angel Davis and David Brockman contributed to the Sheyla Baykal archive over the years.
Soft Network’s programs are supported with funding from Hauser & Wirth Institute, Teiger Foundation, and individual donors.
Related Public Programs
April 22nd, 6:30 PM, Room 320
A conversation with Penny Arcade, Agosto Machado, and Steve Turtell on their memories of Baykal, her photographs, and her theatrical productions like the Palm Casino Revue. Moderated by Allen Frame.
May 6th, 6:30 PM, Room 320
A conversation with Eloise Harris, Mary Lou Harris, and Nicholas Martin, Curator for the Arts and Humanities, NYU Special Collections, on the Angels of Light.
RSVP required for all programs
Email: info@softnetwork.art
Sheyla Baykal (1944–1997) was born in Cambridge, MA to a Turkish father and Italian-Canadian mother. From age three to eleven she attended school in Turkey before her family relocated to Calgary, Canada. In 1962, at the age of eighteen, Baykal ran away from home to live in New York. Between 1964 and 1968, Baykal worked as a couture fashion model for the Ford Modeling Agency while simultaneously developing her own independent photographic practice. In addition to her work as an artist, Baykal was known for her generous communal living experiments, as well as a passion for housing rights, including establishing a cooperative apartment on East Third Street and fighting to save one of the Lower East Side’s most well-known community gardens, the “Garden of Eden.” In the 1980s, she kept a storefront photographic studio in the East Village where she photographed as many people who passed by her door as possible. In 1996, Baykal was diagnosed with end-stage cervical cancer and given nine months to live. Friends like Penny Arcade and Agosto Machado took care of Baykal in her final days and made a commitment to furthering her legacy.
Baykal had solo exhibitions at Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY (1968) and La MaMa La Galleria, NYC (1991 and 1993). Select group exhibitions include Contemporary Arts Annual, curated by Thomas Lanigan Schmidt at The National Arts Club, NYC (1996); Candy Darling, Always a Lady, Feature, NYC (1997); The Nocturnal Dream Show, curated by Daniel Reich at Pat Hearn Gallery, NYC (2000); Fever, curated by Allen Frame at MATTE Editions (2021); Luxe, Calme, Volupté, curated by Antonio Sergio Bessa and Allen Frame at Candice Madey Gallery, NYC (2023); and a field of bloom and hum, curated by Ian Berry at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY (2025). Baykal’s photographs were published in Newspaper (1968–1971) and SoHo Weekly News (1980).
Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected performance artist, actress, poet, and theater maker. Her text-based work is known for its humor, high content, and highly quotable wit and focuses on community building as the goal of performance and performance as a transformative act. Her dedication to social practice and activism began in 1977 when she identified herself as an advocate for other artists. She continues in this role as an international community elder and icon of artistic resistance.
Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez is a photographer and art historian living between an intentional community in Rockland County and Washington Heights. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, writing a dissertation titled The Disappearance of Landscape: Artists on Fire Island, 1937–1983. He is a 2024–2025 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow at the Archives of American Art.
A former architect, Steve Zehentner is a filmmaker, theater designer/director and archivist based in New York City. With Penny Arcade, he is co-founder of the Lower East Side Biography Project, a video oral history documentary project.
Soft Network empowers contemporary artists and those working with artist estates and archives to imagine and implement new and sustainable legacy models. Our mission is to provide space for shared dialogue around this critical yet overlooked field and to redress exclusions in art history.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Join Franklin Furnace today:
https://franklinfurnace.org/membership/
Goings On for Artists is compiled weekly by Rohan Subramaniam, Archive Intern, Summer/Fall/Winter 2024/2025
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~end~~