Contents for May 31, 2022
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weekly Spotlight: FF and Pratt Institute’s Live at the Library VII exhibition, opening online, May 31
1. Kiyan Williams, FF FUND recipient 2021-22, at Lyles and King, Manhattan, June 5
2. Alvin Eng, FF Alumn, live on NPR at wnyc.org May 31
3. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles, FF Alumn, at Bronx Academy of Arts, June 3
4. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray Associates, Manhattan, June 23-Aug. 6
5. Carlos Martiel, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, June 18
6. Kazuko Miyamoto, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
7. Beatrice Glow, FF Alumn, at apexart, Manhattan, June 3-July 31
8. Crystal Z Campbell, FF Alumn, at National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 4
9. Gloria Williams, FF Alumn, now online at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=659801898615016
10. Jaguar Mary X, FF Alumn, receives Kingston Distinguished Artist Award
11. Pope.L, FF Alumn, at Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA, opening June 3
12. Galinsky, FF Alumn, open mics in the East Village NYC, June 8 & 10
13. Claire Jeanine Satin, FF Alumn, at Art & Culture Center, Hollywood, FL, June 4-Aug 21
14. Virginia Maksymowicz, FF Alumn, at Amtrak 30th-Street Station, Philadelphia, PA
15. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
16. Dusty Grella, FF Alumn, at Neiman Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 2
17. Dynasty Handbag, FF Alumn, at Zebulon, Brooklyn, June 5 and more
18. Candace Hill-Montgomery, FF Alumn, at Southampton African American Museum, NY, thru
July 3
19. Barbara Pollack, Nam June Paik, FF Alumns, at Asia Society Museum, Manhattan, opening
June 15
20. Peculiar Works Project, FF Alumns, live online with New York Adventure Club, June 2
21. Paula Barr, FF Alumn, at The National Arts Club, Manhattan, thru June 12
22. Danielle Abrams, FF Alumn, now online at www.BayStateBanner.com
23. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/713263150 and more
24. Mark Bloch, E. F. Higgins III, FF Alumns, now online in WhiteHotMagazine.com
25. Elaine Angelopoulos, FF Alumn, at Dean Bergen Gallery, Brooklyn, June 4-5
26. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, receives Best Documentary Short, San Diego Art Film Awards 2022
27. Stephanie Brody-Lederman, FF Alumn, at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, June 8-July 31
28. Willie Cole, FF Alumn, now online at Hyperallergic.com
29. Stanya Kahn, FF Alumn, at Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA, opening June 3
30. Christopher Wool, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
31. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at GreatBlankness.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weekly Spotlight: FF and Pratt Institute’s Live at the Library VII exhibition, opening online, May 31
Virtual Opening & Guided Tour
46: Artists’ Books from Franklin Furnace Archive, 1976-2022
May 31, 2022
6:00 PM- 7:00 PM ET
please register at this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIld-CuqDIiGNCrxs5z0gnRmdGUUqiPlNcI
Please join us for the virtual opening of the exhibition 46: Artists’ Books from Franklin Furnace Archive, 1976-2022 when co-curators Fang-Yu Liu and Nicole Rosengurt will provide a guided tour of the exhibition at Pratt Library in Brooklyn and the companion virtual exhibition online. The curators will share insights on how they selected these books, explore thematic threads connecting the works, discuss the variety of forms featured in the exhibition, and engage in Q&A with the audience.
“46: Artists’ Books from Franklin Furnace Archive, 1976-2022” is a celebration of international artists’ experiments with the book form since the 1970s. The exhibition explores the development of artists’ books through the lens of the Franklin Furnace collection, which represents artists who see books not just for reading, but as sculptures, actions, and games. Their works range from lighthearted romps to serious grapellings with heavy topics, covering subjects including gender, bodies, and families to, performance, place, time, and the book form itself. 46 explores a multitude of techniques, topics, and disciplines featured through the decades, highlighting artistic innovation of the book form as a space outside the mainstream.
Russ Abell, Director of Pratt Library, and Harley Spiller, Ken Dewey Director of Franklin Furnace, will make opening remarks.
Visit the full virtual exhibition here: https://franklinfurnace.org/46-artists-books-exhibition/
46: Artists’ Books from Franklin Furnace Archive, 1976-2022, the 7th Annual Live at the Library exhibition collaboration with Pratt Institute, is curated by Fang-Yu Liu and Nicole Rosengurt and presented in honor of Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist, Franklin Furnace, in partnership with Pratt Institute Libraries and support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Kiyan Williams, FF FUND recipient 2021-22, at Lyles and King, Manhattan, June 5
On Sunday, June 5, 4-6pm, please join artist Kiyan Williams for a Flag Fry, a participatory performance in which the artist cooks American flags previously flown over the U.S. Capitol Building. You are invited to bring your favorite spices, herbs, and seasonings to include in the batter. Afterwards, the resulting flags will be on view in the gallery’s Outdoor Sculpture Space for the remaining duration of the exhibition. Food and beverages will be served. How Do You Properly Fry An American Flag is an ongoing project in which the artist transforms the iconic symbol of American nationalism into a charred, bubbling object.
Location: Lyles and King Outdoor Sculpture Space, 21 Catherine St, NYC
Date: Sunday, June 5, 4 – 6pm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2. Alvin Eng, FF Alumn, live on NPR at wnyc.org May 31
I’d like to share that I am scheduled to be interviewed on NPR/WNYC’s All Of It With Alison Stewart on Tue., May 31 @ 12:40pm (EST). To listen live: wnyc.org.
Thanks for the messages of inquiry, confirming the date and time.
#ourlaundryourtown #fordhampress
#asianamericanmemoir #asianamericanmemoir
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles, FF Alumn, at Bronx Academy of Arts, June 3
Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance BAAD! Presents
We were Never Human
A video art show curated by Andrés Senra and Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles
Participating artists:
Dimple B Shah / Daniela Beltrani / José Carlos Casado / Fantasía Collage (Aurora Duque de la Torre & María Huerta Arce (Lo Súper)) / Gwen Charles / David Farrán de Mora / Félix Fernández / Aitor Flores / Heather Fries / Ivana Larrosa / Marisa Maza / Carali McCall / Ildiko Meny / Amaia Molinet / Ruth Montiel Arias / Iván Pérez / Cristián Pietrapiana / Anna Recasens / Carlos Rivero / Ruth Somalo / Tatu Vuolteenaho/ Jody Wood / Jennifer Zackin
When: Friday, June 3rd, 22, 7:30 PM
Where: 2474 Westchester Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461. (Westchester Square)
Phone: 718-918-2110.
Directions: #6 Pelham Bay Park Train to Westchester Sq. or Zerega Avenue
We Were Never Human
Admission: $5-20 / Phone: 718-918-2110
We Were Never Human consists of a screening of a series of two-minute videos/video performances reflecting on the concept of caring for the planet, including practices such as veganism, magic, rituals, anti-speciesism, ecofeminisms, ecoqueerism, anti-ableism and anti-racist artivisms. These videos question otherness and also subvert anthropocentrism as an episteme that places the human in a position of hierarchy and dominance over all other beings.
We Were Never Human emerged from Alliances of Care and Desire, a project by Andrés Senra for The Interior Beauty Salon, in which Senra focuses on the possibility of queering identity beyond gender binaries, as well as dismantling the dual Western value system that separates the human from the non-human. This system of Western knowledge organizes the universe according to taxonomic rules that separate and divide it into artificial/natural, subject/object, mind/body, organic/inorganic, living/non-living, woman/man, human/non-human, human/animal, ability/disability, nature/culture, white/non-white, reason/emotion, freedom /necessity, civilized/wild, and so on, assigning positive and negative values in a hierarchical way. Negative values have traditionally been assigned to the feminine, the queer, the animal, and the non-white.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray Associates, Manhattan, June 23-Aug. 6
To Name a Place: Contemporary Landscape
New York: June 23–August 6, 2022
Alexander Gray Associates presents To Name a Place: Contemporary Landscape, a group exhibition organized by independent New York-based curator Anna Stothart. Through its title, which references the poetic practice of marking, remembering, claiming, and identifying place through naming, the exhibition offers a more expansive depiction of what landscape is, and how history, culture, identity, labor, and community indelibly inform our changing sense of place. Bringing together the work of an international group of artists—Miya Ando, Luis Camnitzer, Mel Chin, Justine Fisher, Lizzie Fitch, Coco Fusco, Valeska Soares, Ryan Trecartin, and Arnie Zimmerman—To Name a Place responds to locations across the globe—Japan, Cuba, Congo, America, and Canada—engaging with the social and historical specificity of each artist’s chosen landscape.
Featuring painting, sculpture, photography, collage, and video, To Name a Place presents a multigenerational group of artists whose work is deeply invested in the complex entanglement between physical and cultural geographies. Miya Ando, Luis Camnitzer, and Valeska Soares each examine the politics of landscape and geography through conceptual and poetic gestures. In the diptych Canales (1980), Camnitzer places a collaged world map alongside a self-composed text that imagines a future where cross-continental canals allow for the equitable distribution of land and goods. Camnitzer’s rebalancing of the current social, economic and political realities across the globe envisions a world where the dominant geopolitical forces (United States and Europe) are displaced and egalitarianism is achieved. In Ando’s Ugetsu (Rainy Moon / Waxing Gibbous) September 1 2020 Day 169 Lockdown (2020), the artist depicts an ethereal image of the moon with natural indigo and micronized pure silver on Kozo paper. This familiar image is made distinct in the title that tethers the night sky to a specific date–Day 169 of the Covid-19 lockdown. This series of nightscapes, created during the global pandemic, perfectly reflects both the monotony and subtle shifts in daily existence experienced by people around the globe. Soares’s Sea / Sea (2007) depicts a simple yet elegant line drawing that connects two porcelain plates, one featuring a figure holding a line that travels across space and becomes the sea upon which a boat sails. For Soares, there is always a close correlation between what people try to do physically in constructing a landscape and philosophy.
Mel Chin and Coco Fusco make work rooted in the specificity and significance of time and place. In Fusco’s The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia I (2012), the desolated Plaza de la Revolution in Havana, Cuba becomes the protagonist in the artist’s meditation on public space, revolutionary promise, and memory. Inspired by the organized protests that began in the Middle East in 2011, Fusco took note of the communal spaces around the world being activated for protests and those, in contrast, that were left empty. As the artist recalls, “the absence of the public in some plazas seemed just as resonant and provocative as the presence in others. Cuba’s Plaza of the Revolution is one such place. . . I decided to create a piece about that legendary site―an empty stage filled with memories, through which every foreigner visitor passes, while nowadays many, if not most, Cubans flee.” Safe (2005) is Chin’s lamentation on the continuing violence experienced by the Congolese people at the hand of colonizers. The work is composed of a pacified image of the Congo River rendered in oil paint on Belgian linen, surrounded by an overly ornate and ostentatious gilded frame. The painting is almost entirely obscured by weathered boards that are propped on the floor and lean against the wall. In a rectangular shape that mirrors the dimensions of the painting behind it, thousands of rusted nails are densely embedded into the surface of the wood in an unsuccessful attempt to puncture the painting behind them. Each of the materials holds symbolic significance—the Belgian linen refers to King Leopold II who mercilessly ruled over Congo for his own personal gain, while the dense application of nails refer to the sacred nkisi nkondi (power figures) of the Congolese people. Chin drives thousands of nails deep into the weathered board as a symbol of the violence inflicted on the Congolese at the hands of King Leopold II.
Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin each draw from pop culture to create work that embraces and reorders the visual and linguistic clutter of technology and media to create a frenzied meditation on the changing nature of narrative, language, and the human condition. Trecartin’s videos in particular explore technology’s impact on the hybrid nature of identity through characters not bound by common beliefs about gender, race, or sexuality. Mark Trade (2016), best described as a postapocalyptic remake of Easy Rider, follows the title character—a scraggly-bearded, rubber-limbed redneck emcee who alludes frequently to a long-past “human era”—as he and a film crew travel through the American West. In Smooth Digest (2012), Fitch composes a disorienting visual collage of details of tools, building materials, and various landscapes which she alters and frames in wall-bound constructions that she refers to as sculptural assemblages. The shiny, hyper-real quality of the images are manifestations of an image-driven culture increasingly defined by the edit, the sample, and uncanny digital manipulation.
Both Justine Fisher and Arnie Zimmerman are interested in the transformative capacity of landscape. Justine Fisher presents a new painting that is part of her most recent series, where each work depicts a dense landscape marked by a path, archway, doorway, that leads to a mysterious place. The incongruousness present in her compositions gives Fisher’s paintings a slightly jarring undertone to capture the discomfort that comes with meaningful change. For Zimmerman, “clay is the mother of all physical art materials. Humans used it first for utilitarian objects and to express the mysterious connections to the spirit world. They processed it with water, shaped it by hand, dried it in air and made it permanent with fire.” In The Quarry (2003), the artist depicts figures laboring to erect an architectural structure made of brick. Zimmerman’s lifelong commitment to clay was his continued endeavor to “walk in the truth of the infinite ways humans have used this material” that comes directly from the land. To Name a Place presents the ways in which artists are engaged with landscape today and how each grapples with overlooked histories, our uncertain future, and precarious present.
Participating artists:
Miya Ando
Luis Camnitzer
Mel Chin
Justine Fisher
Lizzie Fitch
Ryan Trecartin
Coco Fusco
Valeska Soares
Arnie Zimmerman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5. Carlos Martiel, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, June 18
Please join us on the final day of Articulating Activism for Alter Ego, a new performance by Carlos Martiel.
Saturday, June 18
5-7pm
The 8th Floor
17 W 17th St NYC
RSVP here: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ej7925qefe4e8be4&llr=qb8z58tab
Join us at The 8th Floor for Alter ego, a new performance by Carlos Martiel, to celebrate the culmination of Articulating Activism: Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection. This interactive, durational piece will reflect on the construction of heteronormative masculinity and its implications for people of color through the artist’s corporeal presence as a queer Black man.
We’re delighted to welcome Martiel back to The 8th Floor. His works are currently on view in Articulating Activism. Alter ego will mark the artist’s second performance commission at the gallery after his 2016 Maze.
The 8th Floor will be open from 11am to 4pm on June 18, reopening from 5 to 7pm for the performance. Please note: Alter ego includes mature content and may not be suitable for children.
All of our events are free and open to the public. RSVPs are required. Our current Covid-19 policy, accessibility info, and more details on visiting can be found here: https://www.the8thfloor.org/visit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
6. Kazuko Miyamoto, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7. Beatrice Glow, FF Alumn, at apexart, Manhattan, June 3-July 31
Please visit this link:
https://apexart.org/images/miller/millerPR.pdf
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8. Crystal Z Campbell, FF Alumn, at National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 4
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
9. Gloria Williams, FF Alumn, now online
Please visit this link:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=659801898615016
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. Jaguar Mary X, FF Alumn, receives Kingston Distinguished Artist Award
Please visit these links:
Video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=383687653714952
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
11. Pope.L, FF Alumn, at Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA, opening June 3
Vielmetter Los Angeles
Press Release
Pope.L
The Ritual Is for All Of Us
June 3 – August 6, 2022
Opening: June 3, 2022 4 – 6PM
Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to announce our second solo exhibition with Pope.L, The Ritual Is For All of us. Following his trio of critically acclaimed exhibitions, Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Public Art Fund in 2019, this exhibition offers another look at Pope.L’s durational practice in video, projection, objects, and paintings.
The show builds a focus on Pope.L’s practice with four video works and a projection/sculpture titled I Machine, 2014 – 2020. Most of the works have been ongoing from 1995 to 2022. Duration, both in terms of time process and time embodied is key to this presentation.
In an interview for the monograph, member: Pope.L, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 2019, the artist notes that “the link between language and performance is duration; both exist only via the crucible of time and are continually remade in time.”[1] In the exhibition, The Ritual Is For All of us, the link between language, performance, making and duration is set into slippery relation between works that unfold in time (video), works that address the passage and future of time (a set of recent Calendar paintings on paper), and the linkage between time, meaning, materiality, and entropy in a set of canned food objects fromThe Black Factory project, 2004 – ongoing.
Visitors will find the gallery space opened-up, redistributed, vexed, and transformed. A set of sheds resembling one-room shacks re-organize the space into a maze of boxes, alleys, openings, and encounters. The sheds house the video works and I Machine, as well as create path-possibilities that only the visitor can design. A persistent dripping and humming sound haunts the space. On the walls, a set of Skin Set: Calendar paintings on paper, all of which seem to include iterations of the same text in varying levels of legibility, are clearly dated in ballpoint pen. Despite the clear penmanship, the meaning of the dates is not clear – some are many years in the future or past, suggesting an uncertain relationship to time. The work Calendar is paired with cans of “Sainbury’s (UK) low price baked beans in tomato sauce” in hand-made grey compression boxes; one-time products from the mobile participatory archive of The Black Factory. The bean cans bulge and distort under sustained pressure, but do not burst. The potential, the explosion, the energy, is contained, but only just. The Black Factory is a project in which the artist and his collaborators traveled the country collecting “Black objects” from the public. A Black object does not have to be black to refer to Blackness. It’s more about the donor’s personal fantasy of Blackness within the frame of history and ideology. Some of the objects, like the cans of baked beans, were augmented and offered for sale in the Black Factory’s gift shop. The cans have been under pressure since 2005.
The four videos contain footage shot on VHS or pre-hi-definition digital video. Some similarities emerge between the videos: performers hands dipped in black paint that is peeling, revealing skin beneath; vinyl masks of Bush Jr. era figures: Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld; narratives connecting facts to perifacts. Pope.L says he sees this project as a reenactment of sorts that allows him to re-visit past decisions, fantasies, ignorances, and images. The videos are united in unease. They are a family of bits of each other. They are claustrophobic in time but open-ended in relation. Their narratives tell stories that are only as true as their duration. In one video, a pair in Condoleezza Rice masks enact a kink ritual using a chunky, viscous white paste in the basement of a house (working class on the outside, suburban on the inside). Upstairs, in the house, a bristling Condoleezza asserts themselves over a boy Condoleezza during a conversation about the Norman Lear-produced 1970’s TV show, Good Times. In another video, Donald Rumsfeld, his eyes slowly bleeding, reaches tentatively for a sinking ship against a backdrop of a mountain of file boxes with dates on them. At times, we hear Pope.L do a voice-over or insert a word, for ex. “brown-eye” or “Robert Smithson” or the camera pulls back to show the artist or a mystery other overseeing, directing the action—these things may seem to suggest an outside perspective or even objectivity but that would be nonsense.
I Machine is a contraption made up of two overhead projectors, one stacked on top of the other, both turned on: one projects light, one is blind. Other elements of the work are an office chair, a wooden pedestal and stand holding a reservoir of liquid, a tube that transports liquid to a glass bowl and a photo-timer which, every few minutes, releases a small amount of liquid into a bowl. A sound system amplifies the sound of the liquid’s release. Blue Post-Its speckle the contraption, almost smothering it. Some of the Post-Its have notations or drawings. I Machine superficially references the ophthalmological practice of eye dilation, the opening of the eye for examination, and “agnotology”, the study of ignorance, or the closing of the mind to information.
Pope.L tries his valiant best, in various ways, to make the elements of the exhibition to cohere into a family but he falls short and that plummet is part and parcel of his project.
Pope.L (b. 1955, Newark, NJ) is an artist whose practice resists easy categorization. Explorations of language and the absurdities of its use to name, taxonomize, and create relationships forms a core of his diverse practice which encompasses painting, drawing, performance, video, street actions, installation, theater, sculpture, and writing. His work engages iterative, social, formal and performative strategies to explore systems, race, gender and nationalisms. Most often, the resulting work is indeterminate and fertile, provoking further questions rather than easy resolution. Recent solo exhibitions include Between a Figure and a Letter, Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin; Misconceptions, Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany, Germany; and My Kingdom for a Title, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Chicago, IL. His work has also recently been included in group exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MI; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. In Fall 2022 he will have a solo exhibition at de Appel Amsterdam. His work is included in many prestigious collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY among many others.
The gallery is located at 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, south of the 10 freeway. For further information and press inquiries, please contact Olivia Gauthier at Olivia@vielmetter.com.
[1] Pope.L, “A conversation with Pope.L,” Comer, Stuart and Danielle A. Jackson. member: Pope.L. The Museum of Modern Art New York, 2019.
1700 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 +1 213 623 3280
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. Galinsky, FF Alumn, open mics in the East Village NYC, June 8 & 10
Galinsky hosts an open mic on Wednesday June 8th, 8pm at Trinity Church out door garden on 602 East 9th Street and on Friday June 10th, 8pm at the East Village Playhouse on 340 East 6th Street. Both shows are “pay what you can”, performers sign up for 5 minutes stage time at the events.
More info http://underthestarsjune8.eventbrite.com and http://alphabetcityjune10.eventbrite.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
13. Claire Jeanine Satin, FF Alumn, at Art & Culture Center, Hollywood, FL, June 4-Aug 21
Art & Culture Center. Hollywood Florida
Book bound and printing
June 4-August 21 2022
Three Claire Jeanine Satin bookworks include a large hanging Bookwork Suspended Book Pages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
14. Virginia Maksymowicz, FF Alumn, at Amtrak 30th-Street Station, Philadelphia, PA
Virginia Maksymowicz: Tools of the Trade, a sculptural installation at Amtrak’s 30th-Street Station in Philadelphia.
Tools of the Trade is meant to make visible the often-invisible role that railroad workers play in building and maintaining Amtrak’s infrastructure.
Maksymowicz commuted on Amtrak’s Keystone Service for over 25 years, spending countless hours riding between her home in Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she taught as a professor of sculpture at Franklin & Marshall College. When Amtrak revamped its now retired on board magazine, renaming it The National, she was particularly struck by a new feature that invited artists to interpret the Amtrak national route system and decided to make a proposal to design a map, which was accepted.
Maksymowicz had already been working on a series of sculptures involving plaster casts of tools and bones, metaphorically relating them to various structures. It occurred to her that Amtrak’s national route system is another kind of structure, one that connects north and south, east and west, much like a bodily skeleton connects head to toe and hand to hand. She wanted to represent this structure through casts of the type of tools that Amtrak workers might use on the job.
The map was photographed for the December 2019/January 2020 issue of The National. Amtrak’s installation of the map in the North Waiting Room at William H. Gray Ill 30th Street Station now puts the three-dimensional version on public view. <https://whyy.org/articles/first-new-sculpture-in-70-years-for-phillys-30th-street-station/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
15. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Hello,
Very pleased that my art papers have gone to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Also a new video about my art made by The Writer’s Brush.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Roberta+Allen
Best,
Roberta
Roberta Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
16. Dusty Grella, FF Alumn, at Neiman Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 2
Unmade beds
June 2-July 28, 2022
Kari Cholnoky
Daniel Girodano
Joanne Greenbaum
Dustin Grella
Cate Holt
Lauren Luloff
Amos Poe/JR Skola
Chuck Webster
organized by Clearsky
Opening reception is Thursday June 2nd from 5-7 PM.
The Neiman Gallery is located at 310 Dodge Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University at 116th Street and Broadway. You have to enter on the second floor on the campus side.
We are not totally sure of the covid protocols but it is possible that visitors will have to show proof of vaccination, sign a Covid attestation, and be masked (I think but will check) when not drinking – there will be wine, beer and sparkling water.
All are welcome so invite your friends and we look forward to seeing you!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
17. Dynasty Handbag, FF Alumn, at Zebulon, Brooklyn, June 5 and more
Dear Signature Selects,
It’s been a dream come true to get to do Weirdo Night live again. Even though I would rather eat my own face sometimes before the show. I still get raging anxiety. These are terrible times! I still can’t eat day of show. Maybe that is why I want to eat my face. :/ I have learned to live with myself, as disgusting as I yam. I hope you are all close to this higher plane of existence – in radical self acceptance of your imperfections and jealous of mine. And that you bring them to Weirdo Night on June 5th. I would love to see you, there will be a special humiliating “pride” sing-a-long. There won’t be a WN in July, alas I will be out of town on a luxurious international vacation. Ok that is a lie – I saw a psychic dog who told me that I would be stuck at the LA county fair in the Zipper until early fall. Also PS in case you haven’t heard the news, I got a Guggenheim! Thank you everyone (you) who supports my work. I vow to keep on producing gilded garbage for you, now sponsored by Benjamin Gugg who died about the SMS Titanic, with his mistress. That’s what you get for having a mistress who famously said “Never mind, icebergs! What is an iceberg?” Good question bitch!
Till soon,
Dynasty Dipshit
Sunday, June 5th
Weirdo Night
Solid ill-fitting lineup
Bizou Bizou, Kira Nova, Michelle Tea, Nate Denver’s Neck
7:00 doors / 7:30 show
Zebulon tickets
June 4th
COLA Artist Fellows 2022
at Grand Performances
6:00 PM – Free!
with Dynasty Handbag, Najite Agindotan, Shonda Buchanan, Suchi Branfman
Grand Performances – 350 South Grand AvenueLos Angeles
read more https://www.grandperformances.org/events/cola-2022
I am honored to be celebrating this award with this lineup of incredible artists! This will be really fun and free. It’s also outside which is a violent curse for a live performer – so you can expect me to be extra psychotic and mean.
Queer Art Digital Book Fair
Tuesday, June 1st–Saturday, July 31st
check it out! https://www.queer-art.org/pride-2021#fair
I will have new prints and merch and lots of fun things for sale at mall of depravity. Check back for the launch – fair opens on June 1st.
Ongoing – Feb 4th – June 25th
Not Me, Not That, Not Nothing Either
at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, NYC
Participating artists: Math Bass, Diedrick Brackens, A.K. Burns, Jibz Cameron, Theresa Chromati, KC Crow Maddux, Troy Michie, Christina Quarles, Devan Shimoyama, Ceaphas Stubbs, and Jade Yumang. – Not Me, Not That, Not Nothing Either is curated by Rachel Beaudoin and Nirvana Santos-Kuilan.
I have 4 drawings and a video installed in this excellent show. It has been great to work with Leslie Lohman Museum. This is a special place full of people with integrity, talent and queer magistracy. Thank you LLM! https://www.leslielohman.org/
Did you miss April’s truly incredible Brooklyn Weirdo Night? Watch the CCTV!
Starring: Dynasty Handbag, Viva Ruiz, Haaggs, Illustrious Pearl, Holland Andrews, Sarah Squirm Ana Fabrega – Video by Patrick Farrell
Don’t you want another stupid tote bag?
You can put your other totes you don’t use in it.
Shop Now http://www.dynastyhandbag.com/shop
Copyright © 2022 Dynasty Handbag, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Dynasty Handbag
6724 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, California 90026
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
18. Candace Hill-Montgomery, FF Alumn, at Southampton African American Museum, NY, thru July 3
Southampton African American Museum Presents:
“BIPOC EXPERIENCE”
SAAM – 245 North Sea Road, Southampton, NY 11968
SAAM is pleased to present a group exhibition of works by artists Lion Ayodele, Ruby Bianchi, Jeremy Dennis, Nati Dred, Brianna Hernández, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Tomashi Jackson, Sekou Luke, David Bunn Martine, Denise Silva-Dennis, Gloria Smith, Lyle Smith, Tohanash Tarrant along with an opening reception poetry reading by Adriana Devers.
The exhibit will run from May 22nd to July 3rd, 2022, with an opening reception Saturday, May 21st, from 5 – 7:30 p.m.
BIPOC EXPERIENCE is themed around the expression of hair and the fact that the Southampton African American Museum was an African American barbershop and gathering place.
The Southampton African American Museum (SAAM) began in 2005 under The East End African American Museum and Center for Excellence. It has functioned as a virtual museum—hosting events and exhibits in public spaces throughout Southampton Village—most notably the Annual Southampton African American Film Festival.
The new home for SAAM is located at 245 North Sea Road in Southampton, NY. Affectionately called “The Barbershop,” the building was a local gathering place for area African Americans from the 1940s until its closing. In 2010, the Village Historic Preservation Board designated it the first African American historic landmark in the Village of Southampton.
Museum tour and Gallery hours are Friday to Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm by appointment.
Book a tour: Go to www.saamuseum.org
Private Group Tours call 631-353-3299
For additional information or an appointment with the curator, please contact Jeremy Dennis at 631.566.0486
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
19. Barbara Pollack, Nam June Paik, FF Alumns, at Asia Society Museum, Manhattan, opening
June 15
Asia Society Museum presents Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity, an exhibition of 19 artworks by seven artists, born in mainland China in the 1980s, opening at Asia Society Museum on June 15. Belonging to what is referred to as the ba ling hou generation, these artists grew up in a post-Mao China shaped by the one-child policy and the influx of foreign investment. Comprising painting, sculpture, performance, installation, video, digital art, and photography, the exhibition reflects the dramatic economic, political, and cultural shifts the artists have experienced in China during their lifetimes.
The exhibition’s title, Mirror Image, refers to the double reflection at the heart of the exhibition. Rather than emphasizing their “Chinese-ness,” these artists’ respective practices are born of a China where Starbucks can be found in the Forbidden City and the internet permits them access—despite the obstacles of censorship—to a host of influences beyond geographical boundaries. Their works strike a balance between appealing to a global art market—all have established international careers—while speaking directly or obliquely to aspects of contemporary Chinese realities.
In contrast to the East-West divide characteristic of Chinese art made by previous generations, these artists explore a new sense of self as “transnational” while weighing identity in the context of rising anti-Asian hate crimes across the diaspora. The transnational identity explored in Mirror Image became most evident in the mid-2000s with the rise of China as a force in the global art market and evolved with the rise of nationalism in China and the backlash against western influence in Chinese culture and education in more recent years.
Mirror Image is, in a way, a sequel to the 1998 exhibition, Inside Out: New Chinese Art at Asia Society Museum and PS1. Where Mirror Image departs from the former exhibition’s conception of modernity is in how the 1980s version of transnationalism was the product of forces of globalization on society rather than an identity in and of itself. Whereas Inside Out posited as opposing forces “the local and the global” or the “spiritual and the material,” the artists in Mirror Image neither experience nor express such conflict. East and West are now so seamlessly merged into a third identity not particularly rooted in either region. Once attributed only to artists living in the Chinese diaspora, this third space is now occupied by a majority of young Chinese artists, whether they choose to live in China or elsewhere.
Participating artists are:
Tianzhuo Chen | 陈天灼 – (b. 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing and Shanghai, China)
Cui Jie | 崔洁 – (b. 1983 in Shanghai, China; works in Shanghai, China)
Pixy Liao | 廖逸君 – (born 1979 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in New York, U.S.)
Liu Shiyuan | 刘诗园 – (b. 1985 in Beijing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China, and Copenhagen, Denmark)
Miao Ying | 苗颖 – (b. 1985 in Shanghai, China; lives and works in New York, U.S. and Shanghai, China)
Nabuqi | 娜布其 – (b. 1984 in Inner Mongolia, China; lives and works in Beijing, China)
Tao Hui | 陶辉 – (b. 1987 in Chongqing, China; lives and works in Beijing, China).
Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity is organized by Barbara Pollack, Guest Curator, with Han Hongzheng, Guest Curatorial Assistant.
Concurrently on view is the exhibition Visionary Legacies: A Tribute to Harold J. Newman, also opening June 15, celebrating Hal Newman (1931-2021) who, with his wife Ruth, endowed Asia Society Museum’s Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Launched in 2007, the collection includes their seminal gift of some 30 artworks. This exhibition comprises works by artists Akino Kondoh, Cao Fei, Hiraki Sawa, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Lin Yilin, Mami Kosemura, Nam June Paik, and Yang Fudong, and the collective Tromarama, representing Hal’s eye and passion for art that pushes the boundaries in Asian and Asian American contemporary art.
Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution with major centers and public buildings in New York, Hong Kong, and Houston, and additional locations in Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20. Peculiar Works Project, FF Alumns, live online with New York Adventure Club, June 2
New York Adventure Club presents a Peculiar Works Project The Origins of Broadway, an Illustrated Talk about the Rise of New York’s early Theater Scene performed by Ralph Lewis & directed by Jason Jacobs.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
5:30 pm (EDT) — 75 minutes
$10
While Broadway is widely considered one of the top theatrical destinations in the world, have you ever wondered what came before it? And why, and how, New York City became the theater capital of America? This is the story of New York’s earliest theaters and how they transformed a city once fixated on only business and trade into one dedicated to culture and the arts.
Join Co-Director Ralph Lewis for a virtual tour of NYC’s first theaters. He will explore the evolution of New York’s theater industry through the mid 1800s, and the actors, production managers, and playwrights who helped pave the way for modern-day Broadway to rise.
Please join us from your home—or wherever—and get the inside scoop on this fascinating NYC history. If you love theater and NYC, you’ll want to know this enlightening story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
21. Paula Barr, FF Alumn, at The National Arts Club, Manhattan, thru June 12
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South
On view in the Trask Gallery
The 30th Annual Roundtable Exhibition
May 18 – June 12
Opening Reception: May 23, 6 – 8 pm
The Roundtable Exhibit features work by Roundtable members and their guests. This exhibit brings together established and emerging artists, offering them an opportunity to share their aesthetic explorations and latest accomplishments. The works encompass a variety of genres and materials.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
22. Danielle Abrams, FF Alumn, now online at www.BayStateBanner.com
Please visit this link:
https://www.baystatebanner.com/2022/05/26/danielle-abrams-54-multidisciplinary-artist/
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
23. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, live online at https://vimeo.com/713263150 and more
My lecture on May 19 with Ann McCoy as commentator and so many wonderful respondents was an inspiring experience for all concerned! The talk was recorded and is available to view anytime on Vimeo at this link: https://vimeo.com/713263150
and
DESMA 9: EEG & ART with Nina Sobell
UCLA Art | Sci Center – DESMA 9
Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series
View this email in your browser
DESMA 9:
Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series
Nina Sobell
EEG + Art
Thursday, May 19th
1:00 pm PDT // 4:00 pm EDT
Stream Here
From interactive remote-controlled foam rubber sculptures to performances and video/installations, Nina Sobell’s practice has been driven by a desire to visualize non-verbal communication and create intimate connections. Her works invite attention to otherwise invisible phenomena and the mutability of our surroundings and relations to others. She will be talking about this trajectory in a continuum that is present in her work today.
About Nina Sobell
Nina Sobell is an interdisciplinary artist who thinks of herself as an electronic medium led her to originate BrainWave Drawings, the interactive synchrony of brainwaves between two or more people, creating a combined physical and mental portrait by visualizing non-verbal communication, as evidenced by Dr. B Sterman’s Neuropsychology Lab in 1974 in collaboration with Mike Trivich and has been involved in extensive collaborative work. She pioneered video, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and was part of the feminist video performance movement of the 1970s.
Sobell created the first live interactive wireless mobile webcam and transcontinental web performances at NYU’s Center for Advanced Technology in collaboration with Emily Hartzell with the historic internet collective, ParkBench, where they were Artists-in-Residence 1994-1999. Sobell was artist-in Residence at NYU Tisch1990 -1993. She was in shows curated by S. Lacy, B. Viola, P.McCarthy, and invited by Joseph Beuys to speak about her social sculpture, Videophone Voyeur at Documenta 6.
Her work has been shown at or is in the collection of DIA, the Whitney, Hammer, LACMA, LAICA, LBMA, CAM Houston, Blanton Museum, MIT, Getty, ZKM, Whitechapel, Zwirner, WP Phillips Gallery, Louisiana MOMA, Denmark,
Kunst Forum, Cornell, and the Kramlich collection among others. She has taught at UCLA, SVA, and received an Arts Council of Great Britain, NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Turbulence, Franklin Furnace awards, an Acker Award in Video. She holds an MFA in sculpture from Cornell University, where she is credited with doing the first thesis in video and founding interdepartmental collaboration 1969-71.
Check out more of Nina’s work:
Website: www.ninasobell.com
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Sobell
Instagram: www.instagram.com/nina_sobell/
and
Nina Sobell – UnSeen UnHeard https://vimeo.com/433801976
Nina Sobell – Pioneer in Interactivity https://vimeo.com/351411798
Join the live stream here: https://vimeo.com/709733862
Scientists in studios. Artists in labs.
access our newsletter archive
https://techspressionism.com/video/salon/salon-43/
Enjoy!
Nina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
24. Mark Bloch, E. F. Higgins III, FF Alumns, now online in WhiteHotMagazine.com
Please visit this link:
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/at-van-der-plas-gallery/5421
A memorial article and a memorial show for the late E.F. Higgins III.
Doo Da Forever! at Van Der Plas Gallery on Orchard Street
Thanks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
25. Elaine Angelopoulos, FF Alumn, at Dean Bergen Gallery, Brooklyn, June 4-5
Friends,
I am participating in an open studio and “Sampler” exhibition in the storefront of my studio building this coming weekend (Covid permitting) June 4th and 5th, 2022. I would love it if you can stop by or send this to someone who you think would be interested in seeing my work in person. See the information below my personalized email.
Currently I am in post-production of my large formatted and digitized images from my Mathew Shepard Candlelight Vigil series from 1998. I also have editions from other projects in the past decade available for sale as well as unique works on paper. If you would like a list of the editions I can send one to you before your visit.
I am working on other projects I can tell you about in person.
I can be reached at 646-491-1252.
My website is still being updated but you can see how the construction is coming along. Visit elaineangelopoulos.com
Hope to see you!
Best,
Elaine A.
The Dean Bergen Gallery Collective
Artist Sampler #1
In our gallery building at 87 Third Avenue, 11217 (between Bergen and Dean)
JUNE 4th & 5th
Saturday 11am – 6pm
Reception and Entertainment @ 5pm
Sunday 12 noon – 6pm
Featuring:
Sally Gil
Cliff Thompson
Fukuko Harris
Bonnie Steinsnyder
Elaine Angelopoulos
and may be others..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
26. Kathy Brew, FF Alumn, receives Best Documentary Short, San Diego Art Film Awards 2022
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
27. Stephanie Brody-Lederman, FF Alumn, at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, June 8-July 31
Stephanie Brody-Lederman of Northwest Woods in part of an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, bibliotheque Kandinsky.
The exhibit is titled Artifacts At The End of a Decade and is up from June 8-July 31, 2022. The show was organized by Dr Steven Watson, William Markasian-Marten and Lou Foster.
Brody-Lederman has a contribution to this exhibit of a multiple book/object entitled “Spring Chicken.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
28. Willie Cole, FF Alumn, now online at Hyperallergic.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
29. Stanya Kahn, FF Alumn, at Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA, opening June 3
Vielmetter Los Angeles
Press Release
Stanya Kahn
Forest for the Trees
June 3 – July 16, 2022
Opening: June 3, 2022 4 – 6PM
Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to announce our fifth solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist, Stanya Kahn. Forest for the Trees is a multi-disciplinary exhibition teeming with paintings, ceramic works, bronzes, animations and found materials from the natural world. Best known for her films and video works, which have been presented at MoMA PS1, the New Museum, and the Wexner Center among many other institutions, Kahn made Forest for the Trees during the first two years of the pandemic.
Solo animals gaze out from vibrant landscapes painted in oil on linen and canvas. Portraits of the endangered ivory-billed woodpecker, the tragically slain silver-back gorilla, Harambe, and a coyote who took up residence in Kahn’s yard join uncanny, imagined beings in fantastic landscapes, all of them seeming to inhabit spaces that are both literally and figuratively unreachable by people. Many of the paintings are framed with planks of old-growth redwood the artist pulled from the walls of her studio—a row of garages built in 1909. Kahn planed and sanded the wood herself and collaborated with the gallery’s framer to design custom deep-profile frames akin to window boxes. The upcycled frames also hold ceramic snakes, skulls, and other organisms, creating dioramic mise en scènes. Other ceramic and bronze figures rest on logs, including sections of a century-old incense cedar that died from drought in the artist’s yard. In addition to the figures, there are wheel-thrown forms and vessels also made of porcelain and other high-fire clay bodies, their shapes and carved surfaces inspired by both ancient pottery from around the world as well as that of the American Midwest in the early 20th century. As markers of history and human intervention, many of the vessels here are glazed to resemble artifacts, others are closed entirely, without utility.
Two new digital animations made from photographs of the artist’s paintings depict mutated animals in inhospitable environments.
Forest for the Trees offers respite from society, while implicating it and us. Working in proximity to personal and collective traumas, Kahn created alternate worlds in isolation, desperate for an elsewhere and inspired by the possibilities offered by fiery mass uprisings for freedom. With this show, Kahn draws out the long threads of distress and resilience present throughout her oeuvre, albeit in entirely new physical and material explorations. This new body of work flows from the trajectory of Kahn’s most recent film, No Go Backs (2020), a visceral and visually lush film shot on 16mm in the Eastern Sierras, in which teens escape unnamed manmade catastrophe, barely prepared, riding out of the city and into the wild. In both No Go Backs and Forest for the Trees, Kahn explores the natural world as a site of critical reflection; narrative and language are de-emphasized; a deepening of one’s relationship to the land and a retreat from humanity as we know it invite both disorientation and vision.
Stanya Kahn (b. 1968, San Francisco) is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily in film and video with a practice that includes drawing, painting, sound and ceramics. Humor, pathos and the uncanny are central to a hybrid practice that seeks to re-work relationships between fiction and document, the real and the hyper-real, narrative time and the synchronic time of impulse. In a long-term investigation of how rhetoric gains and loses power, Kahn’s projects often situate language in the foreground of works that are dialectically driven by the demands and of the body. Sometimes language falls away altogether. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; and the New Museum, New York, NY. In January 2023, a large selection of her film and video works will be presented at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Two of her recent films, Stand in the Stream and Don’t Go Back to Sleep will be exhibited at Kaje in Brooklyn, NY beginning on June 11, 2022. Kahn’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art/NY, the Walker Art Center, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The gallery is located at 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, south of the 10 freeway. For further information and press inquiries, please contact Olivia Gauthier at Olivia@vielmetter.com.
1700 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 +1 213 623 3280
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
30. Christopher Wool, FF Alumn, now online in The New York Times
Please visit this link:
Thank you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
31. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at GreatBlankness.com
To The Great Blankness mailing list:
“Don’t blame me, for falling in love with you.
I’m under your spell but how can I help it.”
(“Don’t Blame Me”)
http://greatblankness.com/portfolio-items/5-new-morning/
Full set:
http://greatblankness.com/portfolio-gallery/new-morning/
PZ, 5/31/2022
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Please join Franklin Furnace today:
https://franklinfurnace.org/membership/
After email versions are sent, Goings On announcements are posted online at https://franklinfurnace.org/goings-on/goingson/
Goings On is compiled weekly by Taylor Milefchik and Kyan Ng, FF Interns, Spring/Summer 2022
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~end~~
