Contents for July 30, 2018
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1. Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumn, at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 22
2. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, at AMP, Provincetown, MA, Aug. 4
3. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, receives Rabkin Foundation Award 2018
4. Sherman Fleming, FF Alumn, at Rush Arts Philadelphia, PA, thru Aug. 17
5. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alum, now online at ragazine.cc
6. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online at brooklynrail.org
7. Karen Finley, FF Alumn, at Laurie Beechman Theatre, Manhattan, extended thru August 12
8. Dynasty Handbag, Rachel Mason, Luis Mejico, FF Alumns, at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 19
9. Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumn, summer news
10. Jill Poyourow, FF Alumn, at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME, opening Aug. 3
11. Brooke Singer, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 25
12. Doreen Garner, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 26
13. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/282117761
14. Edward Gómez, FF Alumn, now online in Hyperallergic
15. Betty Beaumont, FF Alumn, receives Tree of Life grant 2018
16. Janet Olivia Henry, Howardena Pindell, FF Alumns, at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, opening Aug. 2
17. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, Alicia Grullón, Harley Spiller, FF Alumns, at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, August 6-Sept. 3, and more
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1. Halona Hilbertz, FF Alumn, at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 22
My piece “Home” is in Trestle Gallery’s “Small Works 2018”, curated by Sharon Louden.
It’s all small! Nothing YUGE!
Opening is this Thursday, July 26, 7 – 9pm. Please join us!
Halona
Small Works
July 26 – August 22
Trestle Gallery
850 3rd Ave, Suite 411
Brooklyn, NY
http://www.trestlegallery.org/
Trestle
www.trestlegallery.org
Trestle is a New York non-profit arts organization. Our primary aim is to foster creativity by providing opportunities for contemporary artists
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2. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, at AMP, Provincetown, MA, Aug. 4
PROVINCETOWN: I will be presenting new work on Saturday August 4 at 6pm at AMP, 432 Commercial Street. See you there!
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3. Coco Fusco, FF Alumn, receives Rabkin Foundation Award 2018
For complete information please visit https://www.rabkinfoundation.org/grants/
RABKIN FOUNDATION AWARDS $400,000 TO ART JOURNALISTS
EIGHT VISUAL ART JOURNALISTS WIN $50,000 EACH
The Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Foundation program for visual art journalists has awarded prizes of $50,000 each to eight writers: Coco Fusco (NY & Miami, Florida); Sarah Rose Sharp (Detroit, Michigan); Lori Waxman (Chicago, Illinois); William O’Driscoll (Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania); Ray Mark Rinaldi (Denver, Colorado); Sebastian Smee (Boston, Massachusetts); Brett Sokol (Miami, Florida); Travis Diehl (Los Angeles, California).
This year’s winning journalists publish regularly in the Chicago Tribune; New York Times; Brooklyn Rail; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Artforum; Hyperallergic; Denver Post; Texte Zur Kunst; WQED-TV; Burnaway; One Good Eye; Art in America; Flash Art; Detroit Free Press; Infinite Mile; Frieze Magazine; Washington Post; Boston Globe; X-TRA; Garage; The Guardian; The Art Los Angeles Reader; Aperture; Dwell; Documenta; Objectiv; City Paper and Ocean Drive.
Participating Jurors were: Miranda Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky; Lee Kaplan, founder of Arcana: Books on the Arts, Culver City, California; and Karen Wilkin, independent curator and art critic, & Atelier Head of Art History at the New York Studio School.
This is the second cycle of prizes provided by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation of Portland, Maine. Leo Rabkin was an artist who worked and exhibited in New York City for sixty years. His wife, Dorothea, joined with Leo to create a landmark collection of American folk and outsider art. They lived in Chelsea and had a wide circle of friends including artists, writers and curators in New York City and beyond. Dorothea Rabkin (1921-2008) emigrated to the United States from Berlin, Germany, after World War II having been hidden throughout the war accompanied by her twin sister. She grew to love America for its cultural and artistic freedom. Leo Rabkin died in 2015 at the age of ninety-five. He had many friends among the city’s art journalists and was an avid reader of the art press.
Leo valued the essential role of visual arts journalists in the fast-changing art world. He and Dorothea had several art writers as close friends and understood the financially precarious circumstances of many in the profession. Ours is an award for past achievement, but we also hope it will provide a bit of time for unfettered creativity, reflection, and renewal for those who are chosen each year,” said Susan C. Larsen Ph.D., Executive Director of the Rabkin Foundation and a longtime friend of both Leo and Dorothea.
The program is by nomination only. A distinguished group of sixteen nominators, working in the visual arts in all parts of the country, provided the list of potential winners. The nominators were asked to identify, “The essential visual art journalist working in your part of the country.” Candidates for the award submitted two recent articles and a brief curriculum vita. Our jury considered each one and deliberated together in Portland in mid-July to come up with the final list. Writers can be re-nominated and are eligible until they win a Rabkin Prize in Visual Arts Journalism. This is an annual program and the central initiative of the foundation.
Trustees of the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation are: Edgar Allen Beem, Portland, Maine (arts journalist, political columnist); Deborah Irmas, Los Angeles, California (writer, art historian, philanthropist); Nancy Karlins Thoman, Ph.D. New York, New York (art historian, journalist). # # #
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Susan C. Larsen, Ph.D., Executive Director at 207-536-1686 or email slarsen@rabkinfoundation.org or Danielle Frye, Executive Assistant dfrye@rabkinfoundation.org.
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4. Sherman Fleming, FF Alumn, at Rush Arts Philadelphia, PA, thru Aug. 17
New work by resident artists Sherman Fleming and Joshua Graupera will be featured in the exhibition Logan: In Process at Rush Arts Philadelphia in conjunction with The AAMP Residency for Art and Social Change. The residency, launched in 2017, strives to advance the work of artists of color from around the Philadelphia region, while forging and deepening AAMP’s relationships and impact in Philadelphia neighborhoods. Fleming and Graupera have become a familiar presence in the Logan community. They’ve bonded with residents and incorporated their stories into their artistic practices. Fleming’s work features oral histories gathered from the Logan neighborhood and made accessible via the internet, while Graupera incorporates his signature “safe space” modular installations, several of which were co-created by local school children. This exhibition opening will take place at Rush Arts Philadelphia (4954 Old York Road, Philadelphia PA) and includes wine and light fare.
The summer 2018 group exhibition is produced in conjunction with the AAMP Residency for Art and Social Change, which strives to advance the work artists of color from around the Philadelphia region—while forging and deepening AAMP’s relationships and impact in Philadelphia neighborhoods. The featured artists will be gleaned primarily from the Residency nominees, who use their work to process or respond to the constantly changing socio-political and cultural landscape.
From Selma to Starbucks, these artists are reimagining “safe spaces” for black and brown people on an interplanetary level, documenting the effects of displacement and gentrification, mining their personal histories, and actively pushing out of their studios and into the communities not only as art makers, but as change makers.
Artists include Diane Allen, Lavett Ballard, Russell Craig, Joshua Graupera, Keir Johnston, Nile Livingston, Sherman Fleming, Betty Leacraft, James Maurelle, Tieshka K. Smith, and Shawn Theodore.
thru Aug 17
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5. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alum, now online at ragazine.cc
The July-August issue of “Ragzine” features another installment of Barbara Rosenthal’s philosophy of art column, “A Crack in the Sidewalk.” This title is “PROCESS VS PRODUCT :
What is the Point of Art / What is The Interplay of Elements and Considerations in Artmaking / How Does This Body of Video Hold Up”
http://ragazine.cc/2018/07/barbara-rosenthal-a-crack-in-the-sidwalk/
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6. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online at brooklynrail.org
Mark Bloch writes about Jack Smith exhibition at Artists Space for the Brooklyn Rail
https://brooklynrail.org/2018/07/artseen/JACK-SMITH-Art-Crust-of-Spiritual-Oasis
Some excerpts:
“…Jack Smith didn’t invent gay but he invented “out.” His groundbreaking film Flaming Creatures helped put camp on the map.
“…John Waters later called Smith the only underground filmmaker. Smith was daring and busy because in addition to unique cinematic advances, he also had to reinvent “fabulous.”
“…Warhol’s footage of him creating it disappeared forever into hostile NYPD archives under confiscated prints of Flaming Creatures. Smith’s unfinished follow-up foreshadowed Sinbad In the Rented World, another unrealized master epic he attempted from 1972 to 1984, after the battle over Flaming Creatures crawled to the U.S. Supreme Court, into U.S.
Congress lore, and back to the tragically still-sequestered LGBTQ community.
“…Like another gay icon Truman Capote, who never completed a novel after In Cold Blood; like Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys album, Smile; reminiscent of post-Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger; Smith battled The Powers That Be as well as inner demons, racing inimitably, purposefully slow-mo, toward potentially finalizing whatever Intermedia masterpiece he might next deliver—with the cognoscenti, gay and straight, poised to receive. Yet, despite countless mini-productions staged in his loft and on European streets, despite truckloads of ephemera left behind, the larger-than-life ur-promise of another Flaming Creatures remained elusive. Yet, Smith’s scattered oeuvre here evokes completeness, an ever-expanding, quixotic simulacrum as powerful as Charlie Kaufman’s massive Synecdoche, NY, another grand tale of theater-making of infinite scale.
“…As this breath-taking show illustrates, the prolific Smith truly possessed genius.
“…This multi-media extravaganza penetrates and engulfs the viewer much like a shoestring budget doppelganger of the Brooklyn Museum’s extravagant David Bowie exhibit.”
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7. Karen Finley, FF Alumn, at Laurie Beechman Theatre, Manhattan, extended thru August 12
Performances Added for Karen Finley
GRABBING PUSSY
Now thru August 12 at Laurie Beechman Theatre
“Karen Finley is a profound theater-artist. Her artistry is due in part to her ability to alchemize ‘news’ and make it art … She is irreplaceable.” —Hilton Als
“Ms. Finley hasn’t lost the power to disturb.” — Ben Brantley, The New York Times
Karen Finley, a name synonymous with Performance Art, will present more performances of her new show GRABBING PUSSY, inspired by her new book of the same title from OR Books. It will now be presented through August 12, Sundays at 7pm at The Laurie Beechman Theater (inside West Bank Cafe at 407 West 42nd Street — at Ninth Avenue, accessible from the A,C,E,N,R,V,F,1,2,3 trains at 42nd Street). Tickets are $22 for general admission or $35 for VIP tickets that include a signed book and a one-of-a-kind bookmark handmade by Finley. Please note that there is also a $20 food/drink minimum at all performances at this venue. To purchase tickets, call 212-352-3101 or visit www.SpinCycleNYC.com.
In GRABBING PUSSY, celebrated performance artist Karen Finley offers a breathless cascade of poetry and prose that lays bare the psychosexual obsessions that have burst to the surface in America today. The evening also prominently features new work not included in the book that responds to the separation of families at the border, the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, and the #MeToo movement.
Standing in the tradition of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, GRABBING PUSSY speaks to a world increasingly divided into predators and victims.
GRABBING PUSSY is currently available in paperback or E-book from OR Books at www.orbooks.com.
Since her first performances in the early 1980’s, KAREN FINLEY has become synonymous with performance art. A performer, artist, writer, musician, poet, teacher and lecturer, she is the recipient of two Obies, two Bessies, and multiple grants from the NEA and NYSCA. She has toured internationally with pieces including Make Love, George & Martha, The Jackie Look, The American Chestnut, A Certain Level of Denial and The Return of The Chocolate Smeared Woman, and Written in the Sand. In 1990, Finley became an unwilling symbol for the NEA when she, along with Tim Miller, Holly Hughes & John Fleck, sued the NEA for withdrawing grants on the grounds of indecency; the controversial case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Among Finley’s books are Shock Treatment, Enough Is Enough: Weekly Meditations for Living Dysfunctionally, the Martha Stewart satire Living It Up: Humorous Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Pooh Unplugged, and A Different Kind of Intimacy. Her art is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other places. Finley is a professor in the department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
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8. Dynasty Handbag, Rachel Mason, Luis Mejico, FF Alumns, at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 19
Smack Mellon
Participating Artists: Farah Al Qasimi, Natalie Baxter, Deborah Castillo, Kristina Davis, Dynasty Handbag, Jesse Harrod, INNER COURSE (Rya Kleinpeter and Tora López), Lady Parts Justice League’s Vagical Mystery Tour, Jen Liu, Rachel Mason, Jan Mun, Luis Mejico, Madhini Nirmal, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Andréa Stanislav Smack Mellon is pleased to present Laugh Back, a group exhibition that probes the transgressive potential of laughter to threaten authority. In an increasingly tense political landscape, laughing is an everyday gesture capable of unsettling norms, subverting power, and challenging dominant systems. Laugh Back focuses on the diverse cultural production of artists who engage the defiant possibilities of humor, satire, and the absurd as subversive tools for cultural change. Focusing specifically on the practices of self-identifying women, Laugh Back reframes the trope of humorless feminist resistance by emphasizing deployments of the absurd that disrupt presumed stable discourses. Speaking directly to the contemporary sociopolitical climate, the works in Laugh Back examine gender, race, politics, and labor from multicultural perspectives to uncover a current, uniquely feminist brand of humor that is an increasingly threatened and threatening vehicle to speak truth to power. In works that question and queer antiquated notions of gender, historically engrained myths and definitions are overturned while neat representations are problematized. Farah Al Qasimi’s photographs capture women Image: Jen Liu, still from Pink Slime Caesar Shift, 2018. Single-channel 4K video, two-channel audio; 24:20 min. Courtesy of the artist and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam Laugh Back Curated by Lindsey O’Connor July 14–August 19, 2018 Opening Reception: July 14, 6-8 PM
92 Plymouth Street @ Washington Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718.834.8761 | smackmellon.org | Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm Contact: Jessica Holburn, jholburn@smackmellon.org smackmellon.org | @smackmellon in domestic settings and grapple with the lingering effects of colonialism on Gulf Arab bodies. Meanwhile, Luis Mejico’s text-based works convey the artist’s dysmorphia toward her transgender body and question the rigid gender categories projected onto diverse physicalities. In a turn, Jesse Harrod engages the legacy of swimmer and 1940s movie star Esther Williams, uncovering Williams’s dual status as both a wholesome American icon and an LGBTQIA sex symbol. The collaborative duo INNER COURSE recreates a version of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo’s bedroom from the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy in a performative installation that functions as a library of pseudoscientific and predatory self-help books written for women. Finally, Andréa Stanislav creates a memorial to real and fictional men whose identities are inextricable from gross displays of masculinity. Utilizing humor both subtly and overtly, the artists in question mine diverse histories in order to call into question embedded gender stereotypes. Other artists offer searing critiques of racial bias in works that throw systemic inequality into sharp relief. Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s collection of aphoristic, alliterative statements calls attention to racial injustice, political corruption, and pervasive apathy as aspects of larger societal malady in absurd combinations of text. In uncanny videos, Katherine Simóne Reynolds exposes the impacts of structural racism on Saint Louis’s social and physical landscapes, examining the everyday microaggressions inflicted upon people of color. Both artists employ a brand of sardonic humor in an effort to confront uncomfortable truths head-on. A number of artists reckon with the contemporary political landscape both nationally and abroad in works that utilize dark comedy and wry humor. Natalie Baxter’s massive, flaccid American flag is a comment on the divided and discordant nature of political ideology in our current cultural climate. In an aggressive and grotesque makeup tutorial, Dynasty Handbag laments the crumbling façade of liberalism and prepares her physical self for conservative backlash. Meanwhile, in an ominous and unsettling video, Rachel Mason’s avatar FutureClown lip-syncs Donald Trump’s inauguration speech. Deborah Castillo’s performance in which she mauls two clay, male busts mocks misogyny, colonialism, and totalitarianism more universally. In addition, Madhini Nirmal reenvisions her hometown of Chennai, India as a subversive playground in which mischievous goats undermine oppressive political and caste systems. In each instance, these artists engage laughter to create a topsy-turvy space in which exchanges of power are unsettled. Finally, a selection of works examines women’s fundamental relationship to labor and economics. Jan Mun’s interactive project considers the lived experiences of women working in the direct line of secondary trauma and identifies laughter as a key survival tactic. In an installation of appropriated texts, Kristina Davis collages diverse voices from women working at the intersections of sex work, feminism, and queer theory. Lastly, Jen Liu considers the lived realities of women Special Economic Zone factory workers living in China in a film that also functions as a proposal to use genetically altered meat as a vehicle to covertly transmit messages of labor insurrection. These artists recognize women’s labor as a fundamental aspect of the formal and informal international economy while considering the challenges facing specific populations of working women. The artists in Laugh Back utilize various comedic genres to create a symbolic space for transformation in which structures of power and repression are recognized and confronted. These women use humor as a means to upset, if only for a visceral moment, established ways of being. ********************** Lindsey O’Connor is an exhibition organizer and arts writer living in New York City. She is currently the Biennial Co-Coordinator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and has held past positions at the Guggenheim Museum, American Federation of Arts, and Biennial of the Americas. She has curated and cocurated exhibitions with Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, South Africa, and the NLE Curatorial Lab in New York. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, CAA.Reviews, Art Papers, and Ada: Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. 92 Plymouth Street @ Washington Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718.834.8761 | smackmellon.org | Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm Contact: Jessica Holburn, jholburn@smackmellon.org smackmellon.org | @smackmellon EVENTS Saturday, July 14; 7:00 PM Performance During the exhibition opening, Deborah Castillo will perform Slapping Power, in which she mauls two male busts symbolic of legacies of colonialism and patriarchy. Every Thursday-Saturday; 1-6 PM Performance INNER COURSE will activate their installation modeled after Lucy and Ricky Ricardo’s bedroom in the sitcom I Love Lucy. The artists will be bedbound, and visitors are invited to sit and read from a selection of predatory books from INNER COURSE’s library. Friday, July 27, 8:00 PM Stand-Up Comedy The Lady Parts Justice League will host an extension of its Vagical Mystery Tour, a night of stand-up comedy and activism focusing on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. A post-show talkback with abortion providers and activists will offer tangible ways to fight back and support local clinics. $10 suggested donation; comedians to be announced. Thursday, August 2; 6:30 PM Exhibition Tour Guest curator Lindsey O’Connor will lead a tour of Laugh Back with exhibition artists Natalie Baxter and Madhini Nirmal. Saturday, August 11; 4:00 PM Reading INNER COURSE will present an evening of screwball readings from their private library; celebrity guest readers to be announced. Saturday, August 18; 4:00 PM Performance and Closing Reception Dynasty Handbag will blur the boundaries of comedy and art in an outlandish performance followed by a closing reception. ********************** This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation, Iorio Charitable Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members. Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The New York Community Trust, The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., Brooklyn Arts Council, and Exploring The Arts. Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
PRESS CONTACT: Jessica Holburn, jholburn@smackmellon.org 92 Plymouth Street @ Washington Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718.834.8761 | smackmellon.org | Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm Contact: Jessica Holburn, jholburn@smackmellon.org smackmellon.org | @smackmellon
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9. Aviva Rahmani, FF Alumn, summer news
Since the successful mock trial on April 25, 2018, at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, we’ve been busy expanding the discourse around “public good” vs. ecocide. Many thanks to copyright attorney Gale Elston for coordinating the mock trial and for the generous guidance and support provided by the A Blade of Grass (ABOG) fellowship program.
Links to listen in:
On Vimeo check out these webcast conversations about how systems change with:
Laura Raicovich, former director of Queens Museum https://vimeo.com/279356437
and Mitch Ratcliffe of earth911 https://vimeo.com/279351530
Publications coming soon:
“Rocks, Radishes and Restoration” a conversation between Aviva Rahmani and Ray Weill, in Field to Palette, Dialogues on Soil and Art in the Anthropocene edited by Alex Toland and published by Taylor and Francis, 2018.
“A Blued Trees Policy” in Art, Theory, Practice in the Anthropocene, edited by Julie Reiss. Forthcoming publication by Vernon Press, Fall 2018.
Upcoming Blued Trees events you will hear more about this Fall:
Blued Trees, October 3 workshop at the Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio
Blued Trees, October 20-22 Feverish World Symposium 2018-2068 Arts and Sciences of Collective Survival EcoCulture Lab, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont
A Blued Trees Policy, October 26 panel presentation, International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), Columbia University, New York City, New York
Blued Trees, October 30 – November 2 Visiting Scholar at the Lamar Dodd School of Art with the Office of Sustainability and the School of Law, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia
Please support: The Blued Trees Symphony by joining Drip (d.rip/aviva) my new online community and receive excerpts from my work-in-progress book. Or, donate directly to the project at NYFA!
And if you’re on Vinalhaven Island this summer please join us:
At the library 6:00 PM Wednesday evenings for an hour of considering “Island Place” through August 22, thanks to the generous support of the Maine Humanities Council.
If you missed links to interviews sent earlier, here they are again:
Interview with Aviva Rahmani for Day 6 Canadian Public Broadcasting: “Making the trees sing: Using art to try to stop pipelines”
Interview with Aviva Rahmani by Mitch Ratcliffe of earth911: Artist Blocked Pipeline with Blued Trees Symphony Audio: Sustainability In Your Ear EARTH 911 Podcast
Aviva Rahmani’s work is also referenced in this important new research report
https://naturalsciences.ch/service/publications/97610 that has just been published.
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10. Jill Poyourow, FF Alumn, at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME, opening Aug. 3
Jill Poyourow: Red Bikini and Other Works
8/3/18 – 9/15/18
Grant Wahlquist Gallery is pleased to present “Red Bikini and Other Works,” an exhibition by Jill Poyourow. The show will run from August 3 through September 15, 2018. The gallery will hold an opening reception on Friday, August 3 from 5 – 8 pm, and host a talk with the artist on Saturday, August 4 at 1 pm.
“Red Bikini” presents recent paintings from a variety of Poyourow’s ongoing projects and demonstrates the breadth of her vision. It includes a number of works from her “Family Snapshot Paintings,” which here use images from an album of photographs taken in Ogunquit and Milbridge, Maine (where her grandparents retired) in the early 1970s. It also features works from the “Lands and People Paintings,” which adopt ethnographic photographs from vintage encyclopedias the artist often combines with biomorphic abstract marks. While these two bodies of work have differing historical perspectives, “Red Bikini” elucidates the formal and narrative connections between them. As the descendent of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Poyourow has an obvious affection for the peasant women in the “Lands and People Paintings;” though drawn from the artist’s life, the “Family Snapshot Paintings” depict natural vistas and scenes of leisure that seem familiar to any viewer who has traveled with family or thumbed through a family album. Poyourow’s paintings find the personal in the historical (and vice versa) and expose the coinherence of the two.
Both series also manifest the artist’s life-long investment in the documentary, psychic, and formal aspects of photography. Poyourow initially made photographs in order to paint the landscape after dark, which led to subsequent work as a documentary photographer and study with Allan Sekula. These formative experiences remain essential to her current work. In her paintings, the memories represented in each photograph selected are further abstracted from their origins, while her transformation of them amplifies their aesthetic and emotional charge. A number of works in “Red Bikini” were painted from images Poyourow created by translating photographs into digital negatives in Photoshop, implying an attempt to reach behind the image to the original moment of exposure.
Poyourow’s use of photography in her paintings is not merely a novel way to address the complicated relationship between the two media. Her substitution of the time-intensive process of painting for the relative instantaneousness of the photograph reveals a degree of care and attachment to the moment it depicts. The recurrence of certain photographs in multiple paintings not only recalls photography’s inherent reproducibility, but also demonstrates that these paintings are not the idyllic results of nostalgia. Rather, the reiteration of images suggests that some may be surrounded by painful emotions or trauma.
If many of the images in “Red Bikini” are personal to the artist, their use in the context of each painting as well as in the exhibition as a whole is an attempt to find their public significance. As Edward Steichen wrote of his seminal exhibition “The Family of Man,” “We are concerned with photographs which express the universal through the individual and the particular, that demonstrate the importance of the art of photography in explaining man to man across the world[.]” Poyourow pays homage to Steichen’s exhibition, but one not without attendant doubts about the possibility of a specific image’s ability to communicate the “universality” of “man.” Instead, she offers her own use of images as one model among many for finding our place in the world. Though many artists have examined the camera’s role in the construction of identity, in the age of social media a critical approach to this task remains essential.
Steichen also wrote that “The Family of Man” was “concerned with man in relation to his environment, […] the good and the great things, the destructive and the stupid things.” While in Milbridge with her family in August, 1973, Poyourow attended a screening of the post-apocalyptic movie Soylent Greenat the Colonial Theater, and the remaining works in “Red Bikini” reflect on this memory as a pivotal early experience of the sublime. The film features Edward G. Robinson as Sol Roth, the last man on earth who can remember the natural world when it was still beautiful. Near the end of the film, unable to bear the degraded state of the world, Roth elects to be euthanized at a government-sponsored clinic. He watches images of the world as it once was on a panoramic screen accompanied by the music of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Grieg, then dies. (Robinson was himself dying of cancer during production of the film.) Deeply moved by this scene—which impressed on her not only the power of art but also, for the first time, the idea that death could be experienced not with fear but welcomed as a part of life—Poyourow kept the Colonial Theater’s poster calendar for the season. In some paintings, sections of the poster calendar function as a frame for images such as renderings of animals painted in the Chauvet Cave in France (French archeologist and filmmaker Marc Azéma has proposed that they constitute an early form of cinema). Though conscious of our current environmental crises, these works, like many others in “Red Bikini,” model a therapeutic relationship with images grounded in wonder and acceptance. They demonstrate that images of the past, even a painful past, can be used to prepare to greet the future with grace.
Jill Poyourow received a B.S. from Western Washington University, Bellingham, and a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. She lives in Cape Neddick, Maine. Poyourow’s solo exhibitions include POST, Los Angeles (catalogue with essay by Chris Kraus) and the Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines, Rapid City. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at venues including: Grant Wahlquist Gallery; POST; Thomas Solomon’s Garage, Los Angeles; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport; Dave Muller’s Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California; Annika Sundvik Gallery, New York; Side Street Projects, Santa Monica; and in the First Biennale Internazionale delle Arti FiliForme.
The gallery is located at 30 City Center, Portland, Maine. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm, and by appointment. For more information, visit http://grantwahlquist.com, call 207.245.5732, or email info@grantwahlquist.com.
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11. Brooke Singer, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 25
Please visit the complete illustrated article linked here (text only follows below):
The New York Times
The City’s Buried Treasure Isn’t Under the Dirt. It Is the Dirt.
by Richard Schiffman
July 25, 2018
Dan Walsh is New York’s unofficial czar of soil. On a Tuesday morning in April, the geochemist, who directs the city’s Office of Environmental Remediation, gestured proudly toward a mound of straw-colored dirt and said, “That pile is as clean as any soil in the Northeast.”
The sediment that Dr. Walsh and a dozen volunteers were admiring had been transferred a few days earlier from a construction site in Jamaica, Queens, to the Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Park, where it is being used this summer to conduct an agricultural experiment. The transfer was part of the NYC Clean Soil Bank, a soil exchange that pairs local builders with environmental restoration projects that need fill materials.
While air pollution and spoiled waterways are the most visibly threatened environmental resources, the soils that lie beneath our feet have lately been receiving some long overdue attention as well — especially in the New York metropolitan area, which scientists say sits on top of some of the best soil on the continent.
Dirt, suddenly, is somewhat glamorous. New York City has been leading this reassessment. An Urban Soils Symposium was held at the New York Botanical Garden last year, attracting scientists from around the world, who spoke about how city soils can be used to grow more food, improve storm drainage and counter global warming by taking excess carbon out of the atmosphere. Another conference, slated for December, will bring gardeners and researchers together to discuss how to regenerate soils that have been degraded by urbanization.
Degraded soils are a big concern in New York, where lead contamination levels can be high. For much of the 20th century, soil excavated at construction sites was regarded as toxic waste and sent for disposal outside the city. Every year, between two million and three million tons are carted off to dumps upstate, in Long Island and in New Jersey.
That’s a shame, Dr. Walsh said, because heavy metal contamination is generally limited to soil surface. While this toxic surface material does need to be safely disposed of, New York’s deeper sediments are pollution-free, he said. And we are throwing away tons of valuable soils and other fill materials that can be used to address New York’s environmental problems.
Moreover, the demand for soil within the five boroughs has never been greater. As sea levels rise, New York needs landfill to build levees to protect neighborhoods that are susceptible to flooding during tidal surges like the one that inundated low-lying areas during Hurricane Sandy. Soil is also needed to create new coastal wetlands that can help buffer the impact of future storms.
This month, the PUREsoil NYC program was launched, which in addition to pursuing environmental goals intends to focus on cleaning contaminated community gardens.
In the past, material for projects like these was trucked into the city from quarries outside its borders. (A ton of fill costs between $30 and $60, and many projects require hundreds of tons.) But the NYC Clean Soil Bank is working to replace these expensive imports with the city’s native soils, cutting the miles it get transported by 80 percent and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s an unexpected boon to builders. No longer will they need to pay to send their excavated materials out of town, while worthy environmental projects within the city will be delivered usable soil and sediments to their work sites for free.
While the idea might seem obvious, Dr. Walsh maintains that this is the first soil exchange anywhere in the world that is run by a city government. It is currently being watched by officials from New Orleans and Los Angeles as well as municipalities in Germany, China and Australia, which are considering implementing similar programs.
Recipients of city soil have included a Superfund site in Sunset Park where PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were removed and replaced with clean soil, and new wetlands that are being created in Queens and Brooklyn. In the past five years, half a million tons of excavated material (enough to fill the ball field at Yankee Stadium to a depth of 90 feet) have been delivered to a variety of projects, saving an estimated $30 million for both the construction companies that generate the soil and the recipients that use it.
“We’re essentially matchmakers,” Dr. Walsh said. “We don’t stockpile the soil, so both a donor and a recipient have to be ready at the same time. Our job is to coordinate the transfer.”
At the demonstration project at the Hall of Science, Dr. Walsh joined others who were shoveling the pile of sediment into a cluster of polygon-shaped wooden beds. Several museum volunteers enthusiastically raked the sandy loam together with bags of compost supplied by the Sanitation Department.
And Brooke Singer, the designer in residence at the Hall of Science, was mixing it with her bare hands. “Smell this,” she said, holding her palm out to another volunteer. “Makes you happy, huh? It’s the soil bacteria.” Ms. Singer is the driving force behind Carbon Sponge, a project that is exploring New York’s capacity to sequester carbon in soil by putting in test plots around the city.
“We’re planting eight different cover-crop types that were developed by a sunflower farmer in Kansas,” Ms. Singer said. In addition to testing the capacity of urban soils to suck carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the atmosphere, they want to find out what precise mix of compost, sediment and cover crops can best transform the sterile sediments that abound deep below the city’s neighborhoods into productive soils.
That New York sits atop a trove of potential agricultural materials might surprise anyone who has dug in a backyard or community garden. Sink a shovel into the ground and you will encounter brick fragments, ceramic pipes, glass shards and other industrial debris. But according to Joshua Cheng, a geologist at Brooklyn College, concealed under several feet of surface rubble are sediments that were laid down by glaciers during the Ice Age.
Professor Cheng explained that 20,000 years ago, the last glacier had advanced as far as what is now New York City. The deposits of sand, silt and rounded pebbles dumped by the retreating glacier are 300 to 400 feet deep in parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
But the rich and clean glacial soil is well below the surface of the city. A study conducted by Professor Cheng in 2015 found that 97 percent of the community gardens and backyards that they tested had elevated levels of lead and arsenic. While the main sources of these pollutants, leaded gasoline and lead-based paint, are now strictly regulated, high levels persist in topsoil and get blown into the air as dust, potentially putting gardeners and children who play in the most contaminated gardens at risk.
Dr. Cheng advises New Yorkers to avoid eating city grown root vegetables and to thoroughly wash greens that lead particles can adhere to like cabbage, lettuce and collard greens. The most effective way to eliminate the danger from heavy metals, however, is to cap them with clean materials, like those supplied by the NYC Soil Bank. A pilot studypublished this month showed that clean soil from construction sites can lower exposure to certain common pollutants by 98 percent.
Tatiana Morin, the director of the NYC Urban Soils Institute, said she hopes that legitimate concerns about lead won’t blind people to the essential services that New York’s soils provide. “Soil scrubs our air, filters our water, grows food and moderates the heat island effect that makes cities warmer than their surroundings,” Ms. Morin said. “Yet many of us are scarcely aware that it is sitting right here below our feet.”
This is an oversight that the institute hopes to correct in the fall, when a permanent soil museum will open in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The museum will be partly tunneled into a cemetery hillside and will feature art fashioned from New York dirt, as well a working soil lab.
Ms. Morin applauds the fact that the city is using soil generated at construction sites to regenerate its environment. She said that New York is also busy expanding tree pits, putting bio-swales on traffic islands, and removing concrete from some schoolyards and playgrounds to create gardens of native plants.
“New Yorkers need to uncover their soil and make better use of it,” Ms. Morin urged. “If we keep on beating soil up, we won’t be able to sustain our cities in the future.”
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12. Doreen Garner, FF Alumn, in the New York Times, July 26
Please visit this link:
thank you.
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13. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/282117761
TO THE GREAT BLANKNESS MAILING LIST:
EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE4
The theory that all knowledge is derived
from sense experience.
FOR THE FULL SET:
http://greatblankness.com/portfolio-gallery/empirical-knowledge/
PZ, July 2018
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14. Edward Gómez, FF Alumn, now online in Hyperallergic
New York
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Dear art lovers and media colleagues:
My article about the new exhibition brain feeling.! art from gugging from 1970 to the present, which is now on view at Museum Gugging, in the Art Brut Center Gugging, near Vienna, Austria, has just been published in HYPERALLERGIC.
Recently I saw this big, artistically rich and eye-opening exhibition during a visit to this legendary art center. Gugging and the artists who, over many years, have been associated with its on-site Artists’ House and open art-studio program have contributed in notable ways to the art brut field both in Europe and internationally. The current exhibition offers a historical survey of works created by these artists over a period of roughly half a century.
Artists whose works are featured in the show include, among others, Johann Hauser, Oswald Tschirtner, Johann Garber, Franz Kernbeis, Arnold Schmidt, Günther Schützenhöfer, Karl Vondal, August Walla, and Laila Bachtiar. Using plain pencil, colored pencil, paint, collage elements, and other materials and techniques, these artists have created drawings, paintings, and other works that are notable for their skillful draftsmanship and singular visions.
You can find my article about this big, bold exhibition here:
I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.
I send you all best wishes!
EDWARD
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15. Betty Beaumont, FF Alumn, receives Tree of Life grant 2018
July 28, 2018
Tree of Life 2018 Grantees
Tree of Life is pleased to announce the four individuals who were selected to receive the Tree of Life Individual Artist Grant. The Grantees are:
Betty Beaumont, New York, NY
Eung Ho Park, Jackson Heights, NY
Jacqueline Shatz, Tappan, NY
Takako Yamaguchi, Santa Monica, CA
Additional information about the artists and their projects is posted to our website, www.treeoflifeartists.org, under Tree of
About Tree of Life
When artist and philanthropist, Alyce Simon, met Victor Faccinto in 1976, it was the beginning of a life-long friendship and working relationship. Over the years, Simon came to rely on Faccinto, a working artist and curator, for assistance in her art practice, particularly in cataloging, documenting, and exhibiting her art. Through this process, they both became increasingly aware of the diminishing opportunities for senior artists like Simon. In 1995, they founded Tree of Life “to encourage talented and late-career artists in the pursuit of their ideas and the expansion and perfection of their techniques and capabilities.” The full implementation of the foundation’s mission was delayed after Simon’s health declined. She eventually relocated to a lakefront home in North Carolina, near the headquarters of Tree of Life, so that she could plan, along with co-founder Victor Faccinto, the future of the foundation. When she passed away in 2011, she left a substantial legacy that will enable Tree of Life to fulfill her dream of giving meaningful financial support to senior visual artists. Simon selected the foundation’s name because she believed that the tree is the very living essence of life on earth and “gives back for others to continually share the benefits of earth’s energy.” In 2014, Tree of Life began sharing Simon’s philosophy of “giving back” through their grant program benefitting senior visual artists.
Grant Program
For the majority of late-career visual artists, professional opportunities diminish as the artists continue to age. They also begin to face a number of common concerns related to the preservation of their artwork and historical documentation. It is issues such as these that Tree of Life seeks to address by providing support for senior visual artists. The Individual Artist Grant can be for new work or special projects, studio space, website creation, cataloging art and artist’s history, archiving and storage of art, exhibitions, and catalog publication. For additional information about Tree of Life and our grant program, you may visit our website or email us at
info@treeoflifeartists.org.
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16. Janet Olivia Henry, Howardena Pindell, FF Alumns, at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, opening Aug. 2
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
AUGUST 2 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
Opening Reception, Thursday, August 2, 6-8 PM
Dialectics of Entanglement: Do We Exist Together?
Judith Baca, Beverly Buchanan, Janet Olivia Henry, Senga Nengudi, Lydia Okumura, Howardena Pindell, Selena W. Persico, Zarina, Aruna D’Souza, Regina José Galindo, Che Gossett, and Rachael Rakes
GALLERY I
In honor of its 45th anniversary, A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to be organizing The Unforgettables Program, which revisits and restages past A.I.R. shows that engage with themes that defy the passage of time and remain urgent to feminist discourse.
The third and final iteration of the 45th-anniversary program will be Dialectics of Entanglement: do we exist together? an exhibition in conversation with Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States.
Organized in 1980 by A.I.R. Gallery members Ana Mendieta and Kazuko Miyamoto together with the artist Zarina (Zarina Hashmi), the group show Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States included works by Judith Baca, Beverly Buchanan, Janet Olivia Henry, Senga Nengudi, Lydia Okumura, Howardena Pindell, Selena W. Persico, and Zarina. According to Mendieta, the aim of the exhibition was to comment on the erasure of women of color in the American feminist movement that they helped to build. Rather than focus on the injustices of a racist society or a feminist movement that had become only for the white middle class, the exhibition pointed “more towards a personal will to continue being ‘other.’”
Public Program:
Che Gossett: Performative Lecture, August 15, 6:30 PM
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17. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, Alicia Grullón, Harley Spiller, FF Alumns, at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, August 6-Sept. 3, and more
Whose Language Does the Produce Speak?
Conversations Between La Boqueria and
the Essex Street Market
New York program curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful
August 6 – September 3, 2018
Participating Artists
Bernat Daviu and Joana Roda Calvet, Alicia Grullón, Enrique Figueredo, Antonia Pérez, Laia Solé and Thelma García, and Harley Spiller
This project is presented by Artists Alliance Inc., FoodCultura, and Institut Ramon Llull, in collaboration with Center for Book Arts.
Whose Language Does the Produce Speak? Conversations Between La Boqueria and the Essex Street Market, is the fruit of a two-year discussion involving Jodi Waynberg, Antoni Miralda, alfonso borragán, Laia Solé, and Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, as well as Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space in New York, and FoodCultura in Barcelona. Both Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space and FoodCultura function within historic food markets—the Essex Street Market and La Boqueria—which are experiencing major identity shifts as result of the rapidly changing cities in which they exist. This project and its resulting exhibition in New York ask the participating artists to reflect on their creative practices and respond to this in connection to new food trends, waste and recycling, conspicuous consumption, urban development, and tourism and “touristification.” Similarly, it asks participating artists to use performance, film, photography, printmaking, and writing, as active platforms that can facilitate collaborations amongst them, vendors, and patrons; and even intimate rendezvous between the artists and the markets themselves. Some of the questions that emerge: Are these markets a dated version of the cities in which they operate, or do they stand as a counterforce against cultural erasure? Will the evolving markets continue to reflect their neighborhoods or become a simple tool for urban redevelopment; in which case, one can ask, whose language will the produce speak?
Essex Street Market, a 76-year-old marketplace, will be relocating to a new building in the fall of 2018, as one of ten sites to be developed in the surrounding area and is considered one of the largest re-development projects in recent New York City history. The complex impact of these significant architectural as well as socio-cultural and emotional changes is yet to be imagined. On the other side of the Atlantic, La Boqueria stands as the most important marketspace in Barcelona, Catalonia. The first mention of La Boqueria market dates from 1217, and its most recent incarnation can be traced to 1826 when the market was legally recognized and situated inside its current building. Located in the Ciutat Vella, the old city, with the main entrance on La Rambla, Barcelona’s renowned promenade, the market is considered one of the city’s foremost tourist landmarks. This role, along with the rapidly changing civic character of Barcelona, is affecting its identity, the traditional sellers, and in consequence how the neighborhood uses it, and who the neighborhood becomes.
The program and exhibition at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space include a partnership consisting of a printmaking residency at the Center for Book Arts. It also includes a panel and other events involving the artists and the public at-large. Most importantly, during the first two weeks of Whose Language Does the Produce Speak? Conversations Between La Boqueria and the Essex Street Market, the gallery will be formatted as a flexible and collaborative studio space; during the last two weeks it will re-embody its role as an exhibition site to celebrate the culmination of the project, and so, Catalonian artists Bernat Daviu and Joana Roda Calvet will work side-by-side with their New York City counterparts Alicia Grullón, and Antonia Pérez. Laia Solé and Thelma García will be reporting directly from La Boqueria to the Essex Street Market, while Enrique Figueredo and the Catalonian artists will collaborate on a limited edition multiple through a print-based residency with the Center for Book Arts. Harley Spiller, for his part will contribute to the project with a tasty written piece on the Essex Street Market.
ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS
Founded in 1999 by a group of 40 artists on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Artists Alliance Inc. (AAI) dedicated to supporting the careers of emerging and underrepresented artists and curators through residencies, exhibitions, and commissioned projects. Rooted in the Lower East Side (a long-standing epicenter for creative experimentation and cultural diversity) and in New York City at-large, AAI focuses on advancing contemporary art practices while cultivating public, social, and cultural discourse using art as a catalyst. Through its three principle programs—Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, LES Studio Program, Public Works—AAI provides a platform for experimentation and collaboration that evolves with the changing needs of the artists and curators whom it serves.
FoodCultura is a wall less space dedicated to communication and investigation, as well as the global history of food, customs, cultural experiences and art. The concept FoodCultura explores broader questions related to the modes from which human identities are manifested: their universal rituals, their relationship with local memory, their interbreeding processes, their strategies for preservation and cohesion, their means of conveying or undermining traditions as well as contemporary social practices.
Institut Ramon Llull was established in 2002 with the aim of promoting Catalan language and culture abroad. A public consortium comprised of the Government of Catalonia, the Government of the Balearic Islands, and the City Council of Barcelona, the Institute provides broad international exposure to writers and artists; encourages artistic and cultural exchanges in visual arts, architecture, design, performing arts, music, and film; and supports Catalan language and literature studies in universities.
Founded in 1974, the Center for Book Arts is the first not-for-profit organization of its kind in the nation and remains a model for others around the world. The Center promotes active explorations of both contemporary and traditional artistic practices related to the book as an art object. The Center achieves this by facilitating communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary visual and literary arts through exhibitions, classes, public programming, literary presentations, opportunities for artists and writers, publications, and collecting. The Center is the only location in New York City at which visitors can view book arts exhibitions in the context of an active, working studio.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS & CURATOR
Bernat Daviu (b.1985, based in Barcelona) studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins, London. His work has been shown at Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), Galeria Balaguer (Barcelona), Uma certa falta de coerencia (Porto), Guest Projects (London), Fundació Arranz-Bravo (l’Hospitalet de Llobregat), Can Framis (Barcelona), Bienal de Jafre (Jafre) or Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool), among others. Parallel to his individual work, Daviu’s practice often involves collaborations with other people. An example of this is Forever Blowing Bubbles, an initiative by art historian Joana Roda and him that explore the role of caterings in contemporary art events.
Joana Roda (b. 1987) studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, as well as History of Art at Universitat Autonoma in Barcelona, La Sorbonne IV in Paris and La Complutense in Madrid. Roda studied Art Direction at ESCAC and different seminars and museography courses. When she lived in Madrid she worked at the archive of Museo Cerralbo. After finishing History of Art, she moved to Montreal, Canada, where she worked at Lilian Rodriguez gallery, at which time she started to experiment with art catering by serving potato omelettes to collectors. When she returned to Barcelona, Roda began working for a gallery, while partnering with Bernat Daviu in Forever Blowing Bubbles, a project in which they provided food catering for exhibition openings. Forever Blowing Bubbles also made a film called “Guanyar-se les garrofes”, commissioned by Fundació Joan Miró, which introduces a new fictional avant-garde movement marked by the symbol of a carob. After showing the film at Fundació Miró, the film was selected for Loop Discover Awards 2017. In 2016, together with Joana Llauradó, she was awarded with INJUVE bursary for a project called “Welcome curator”, shown at La Puntual in Sant Cugat del Vallés and Espacio Trapezio in Madrid. In 2017, Roda opened Bombon projects, a gallery in Barcelona. Currently she manages this space and coordinates the programming of Centre d’Art Maristany, an art centre in Sant Cugat del Vallés.
Alicia Grullón moves between performance, video, and photography, channeling her interdisciplinary approach towards critiques on the politics of presence- an argument for the inclusion of disenfranchised communities in political and social spheres. Grullón’s works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions including The 8th Floor, Franklin Furnace Archives, Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC House for Arts and Media, School of Visual Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Columbia University, Socrates Sculpture Park, Performa 11, and Art in Odd Places. She has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York, and Franklin Furnace Archives. She has participated in residencies in the United States and Korea among them Center for Book arts and Artist in the Market Place Bronx Museum of the Arts. She’s presented for the 2017 Whitney Biennial with Occupy Museums, Creative Time Summit 2015, The Royal College of Art, School of Visual Arts, and American Museum of Natural History. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Creative Time Reports, Art Fag City, ArtNet News, Blouin Artinfo, and The Columbia Spectator.
Enrique Figueredo’s dynamic woodcuts, paintings, and drawings look closely at the forces and issues affecting today’s world—race, religion, immigration, power—and relates those incidents to the visual history of ancient civilizations, the colonization of the Americas, and mythology. He analyzes hardship through two lenses that are simultaneously his own: his identity being perceived as both a white man and a minority. The friction and peace he finds in polarization become the catalyst for Figueredo’s creative visual storytelling. Working through the resistance of woodcut and figurative imagery, a collision of indigenous design and colonial baroque intertwine in Figueredo’s interdisciplinary practice and self-concept. The mixed references do not lead toward a particular narrative resolution, rather they point toward a bold internal imagination. Enrique Figueredo is a Venezuelan-American artist who immigrated from South America at an early age. He is currently a MFA candidate at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Born and raised in New York City, with many summers of her youth spent in Mexico City in the care of her relatives, Antonia A. Perez is a mixed-media artist who collects discarded household detritus and repurposes it into sculpture, works on paper, paintings and site-specific installations. Her work focuses on the transformation of materials, especially plastic bags, which she crochets into a range of forms representing domestic objects or abstract structures referencing the environment, the home, textile design and culture, and hand-made traditions. In addition to making objects she participates in socially engaged activities centered on crocheting and the environment. She is a teaching artist who has worked with people ages 5 to 95. She is a 2016 recipient of the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Studio Immersion Fellowship and the 2011 Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program Award. She has exhibited her work locally and nationally, including at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, El Museo del Barrio, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, No Longer Empty in Jamaica, Cuchifritos Gallery, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and the Queens Museum. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Queens College, CUNY.
Laia Solé’s work explores the social and physical dimensions of space. She intervenes in spaces by actions that communicate and/or transform the dynamics of each site, using resources that are immediate and interactive. Her work often develops as a cooperative practice, working with other artists and local communities. In her recent works she blends her passion for the early cinema’s visual tricks and site-specific actions. She was an Artist-in- Residence at LABMIS at Museu da Imagem e do Som (Sao Paulo), 2012 and has exhibited her work extensively including at MAC (Santiago de Chile); Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona); The Drawing Center (New York); and the Fundación Chirivella-Soriano (València).
Thelma García is an avid explorer of everyday life, and a NYC-based visual artist and architect. Her work develops primarily through photographic and video projects centered in exploring subtle and recurring practices of everyday life, specifically how individual and autonomous spaces intersect with public spaces. García’s works have addressed issues like intimacy, the experience of time, or the appropriation of images. In parallel to her individual practice, García has worked in collaboration with other artists developing site-specific and performative works, always conceived as invitations to decelerate and experience an enhanced present, such as Ruidero a sound-walk exploration for Aiop (NYC, 2017).
Harley J. Spiller is an artist who focuses on the ordinary to help people see anew. He collects and shares quotidian artifacts to spark the lifelong love of learning, and his work has appeared often in The New York Times, Gastronomica and Flavor & Fortune magazines. His book Keep the Change: A Collector’s Tales of Lucky Pennies, Counterfeit C-Notes and Other Curious Currency (Princeton Architectural Press) was deemed “beautifully written and designed” by Roberta Smith, and he loves cooking for his wife and their son, who may have been the first to put a Maraschino cherry atop a Chinese almond cookie.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively or through experiences where the quotidian and art overlap. During the past seven years Estévez Raful has received mentorship in art in everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a historic figure in the performance art field. Montano and Estévez Raful have also collaborated on several performances. He has curated exhibitions and programs for El Museo del Barrio, the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and Longwood Art Gallery/Bronx Council on the Arts, New York; and for the Filmoteca de Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain. Publications include Pleased to Meet You, Life as Material for Art and Vice Versa (editor) and For Art’s Sake. Born in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Dominican Republic, in 2011 Estévez was baptized as a Bronxite; a citizen of the Bronx.
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller