Contents for July 11, 2016
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1. Martha Wilson, Sheryl Oring, FF Alumns, at SmackMellon, Brooklyn, thru July 31
2. Jane Mulfinger, FF Alumn, at Beaconsfield Gallery, London, UK, thru Sept. 18
3. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, at Minus Space, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 13
4. Mush, FF Alumn, at Bloomingdales, Manhattan, thru July 31
5. Emireth Herrera at Flux Factory, Long Island City, Queens, opening July 20
6. Victoria Vesna, FF Alumn, at Harvestworks, Manhattan and Del Rey Lagoon, Los Angeles, CA, July 19
7. David Medalla, FF Alumn, at Venus, Manhattan, opening July 14
8. Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Gavlak, Los Angeles, CA, July 16-Sept. 3
9. Annissa Dupal, FF Alumn, at I.M.A.G.E Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, opening July 23
10. Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, Colette, Alanna Heiss, Sol LeWitt, Richard Nonas, Brian O’Doherty, Nam June Paik, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, July 6
11. Ann Hamilton, FF Alumn, at University of Texas at Austin
12. Epstein & Hassan, FF Alumns, at The Alchemical Theater, Manhattan, July 16
13. Karen Shaw, FF Alumn, at Garvey/Simon, Manhattan
14. Irina Danilovah, FF Alumn, art events, summer 2016
15. Ann-Marie LeQuesne, FF Alumn, at Somerset House, London, UK, July 16
16. Priscilla Stadler, Nicolas Dumit Estevez Raful’s, FF Alumns, at JAMECO Exchange, Jamaica, Queens, July 14
17. Mira Schor, Susan Bee, Mimi Smith, Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Lyles & King Gallery, Manhattan, thru Aug. 12
18. Chun Hua Catherine Dong, FF Alumn, at Universidad de Chile, Santiago, July 17
19. CRASH, FF Alumn, at Dorian Grey Gallery, Watermill, NY, July 17
20. Roberley Bell, Portia Munson, FF Alumns, at Wave Hill, The Bronx, opening July 17
21. Judith Sloan, Warren Lehrer, FF Alumns, art events, summer 2016
22. Virginia Maksymowicz, FF Alumn, in Sculpture Magazine, now online, and more
23. Blaster Al Ackerman at Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, July 11
24. Circus Amok, Jay Wegman, FF ALumns, in the New York Times, July 10
25. Sur Rodney (Sur), Felix Gonzalez Torres, Martin Wong, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, July 10
26. Jim Costanzo, Peggy Diggs, Harth, Harley Spiller, Beriah Wall, FF Alumns, in American Numismatic Society Magazine, Issue 2, 2016
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1. Martha Wilson, Sheryl Oring, FF Alumns, at SmackMellon, Brooklyn, thru July 31
Of the people
Curated by Erin Donnelly
Exhibition Dates: June 17 – July 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18, 5 – 8pm
Closing Reception and Events: Sunday, July 31, 3-6pm
Lauren Frances Adams, Daniel Bejar, Guy Ben-Ari, Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine
(Mildred Beltre & Oasa DuVerney), Isabella Cruz-Chong, Peggy Diggs,
Esteban del Valle, Nicholas Fraser, Emily Greenberg, Alicia Grullon*, Jeremy D. Olson, Sheryl Oring, Ben Pinder, Brittany M. Powell, Kate Sopko,
t.Rutt (Mary Mihelic & David Gleeson)*, Martha Wilson*, Leah Wolff
*Public event artist
The exhibition Of the people curated by Erin Donnelly, opens at Smack Mellon on June 17 and will be on view through July 31, reflects of-the-moment political opinions shaping the 2016 presidential race in the United States. With video, drawing, photography, painting and sculpture as well as socially engaged projects and site-specific installation, the exhibition features artists selected through an open call who hail from California, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Ohio. Artworks included in the group show offer critical perspectives on the current electoral process while challenging notions of American democracy today.
Eliciting public reactions from the finger to the fist pump during its cross-country tour this year, the T.RUMP Bus by t.Rutt (Mary Mihelic & David Gleeson) will make a stop in Brooklyn, while in the gallery, Alicia Grullon’s endurance performance of Filibuster #2 strives to withstand the force of income inequality. Both will be presented on the opening weekend. Voter registration for the fall’s general election will be conducted on the following days: Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18, 5-8pm and Closing Reception: Sunday, July 31, 3-6pm, which includes Martha Wilson as Donald Trump – Politics and Performance Art Are One and the Same and a panel discussion with select exhibition artists.
Exhibition artists have produced projects that create space for public participation in a broken election system. Mildred Beltre & Oasa DuVerney of Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine have designed radical posters about the 2016 election with their neighbors in Crown Heights, Brooklyn where they have led a community forum including collaborative art making since 2010. As part of her 12-year project I Wish to Say, Sheryl Oring has mailed thousands of letters addressed to sitting presidents and candidates running for office that are dictated and tapped out on a vintage typewriter thus giving voice to people to air their frustrations or freely express their hopes, dreams, and desires.
The back gallery of Smack Mellon has been converted into a Campaign Office by Jeremy D. Olson where would-be candidates can self-nominate for the highest executive position by recording a stump speech, generated from 2016 campaign announcement speeches, and filling out documents to be an official candidate for president. In a similar DIY fashion, Leah Wolff’s ongoing sculptural work reimagines curious objects sold through the mail order Whole Earth Catalog popular from 1968-1972 as election-ready accouterments such as political buttons printed with your own catchy slogan.
Other artworks reflect upon hot topics debated on the televised stage and during the long primary season leading up to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer. Issues such as immigration are evident in Isabella Cruz-Chong’s sound installation Line of Breath that portrays the human dimension of the border between the United States and Mexico. Daniel Bejar brings forward Isabel Gonzalez who pioneered legislation to make all Puerto Ricans American citizens-his lenticular photographic work declares “Let’s Make America Great Again.”
You will hear Emily Greenberg’s Public Privacy Hotline phone ringing in the gallery, prompting you to pick up the line to reveal a breach of privacy. The crushing debt experienced by many Americans is highlighted in poignant portraits taken by Brittany M. Powell, part of a mission to document 99 debtors across the United States. Also dealing with visibility and invisibility, Kate Sopko’s project The Fixers is comprised of a series of community-made videos documenting outlier Cleveland neighborhoods overlooked by the mainstream media coverage of the Republican National Convention.
Looking towards the past to enlighten the future, art historical strategies can be found in Of the people. Neither the partisan elephant or donkey but nevertheless taking cues from the 19th century satirical cartoons of Thomas Nast, the bull in Esteban del Valle’s mural symbolically struggles to maintain the incongruous balance of power between the market and political speech. The traditional odalisque informed by the male gaze is inverted in Guy Ben-Ari’s painting that pictures the Oval Office, the ultimate prize in the presidential contest, and its interior under feminine control.
New artist’s projects included in the show take into account timely subject matter underscored during the election year. Peggy Diggs’s project Heirloom considers the fairness of ballot design with a handcrafted “cozy” while Nicholas Fraser’s performative drawings question the fundamental bias of voter maps. Looming large over Smack Mellon’s space, the likenesses of big money donors made by Lauren Frances Adams are inspired by the portrait head roundels of historic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives chamber. Formed in 2015, Ben Pinder’s The Mythic History of America, For America Super PAC is lawfully recognized here in drawings and genuine articles.
Related programs:
Saturday, July 16, 12-6pm: Mapping projects #7 and #8 by Nicholas Fraser
A series of mapping performances will be conducted that examine the absurdities inherent in the media’s visualizations of the presidential election process.
Wednesday, July 27, 7pm: Panel Discussion on Propaganda co-presented by
Smack Mellon and Hyperallergic
What differentiates propaganda from art? This conversation will probe historic propaganda imagery, its connection to today, and the role it plays in raising social consciousness and awareness for issues often overlooked by governments, institutions, and society. Moderated by Hyperallergic’s editor-in-chief and co-founder Hrag Vartanian, in conversation with art historian at NYU Miriam M. Basilio; artist Daniel Bejar, who is part of the Of the people exhibition; and more to be announced soon.
Thursday, July 28, 5:30-8pm: Silkscreen Workshop by Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine
Come to Smack Mellon to make your own political poster copy. The evening includes a screening of the Democratic National Convention when the party’s candidate will be announced.
Sunday, July 31, 3pm: Martha Wilson as Donald Trump – Politics and Performance Art Are One and the Same
Martha Wilson embodies her trademark “invasions” of other people’s personae.
Immediately following performance: Community practices: Art and Intervention Panel Discussion
Select exhibition artists discuss their projects of social and political consequence. Participants include Isabella Cruz-Chong, Brooklyn, New York; Sheryl Oring, Greensboro, North Carolina; and lead artist Kate Sopko, Cleveland, Ohio, who will be joined by a fixer from her project; moderated by Erin Donnelly
Additional events may be scheduled, check www.smackmellon.org for announcements.
Also, Smack Mellon staff will also conduct voter registration for the fall’s general election Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm.
Erin Donnelly, Programs Manager at Smack Mellon, has organized exhibitions in galleries and museums such as Maccarone, Municipal Art Society, Abrons Art Center, Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna and elsewhere as well as curated public art projects along 14th Street in Manhattan and in the storefront windows of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Publications include Art in Odd Places: Sign and Site Matters. She has taught in the Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She has a BA in Fine Art, MA in Individualized Study and Certificate in Museum Studies, all from NYU. She was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art and received a David Alfaro Siqueiros Award from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.
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 Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Gilbert Mackay 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 Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Lambent Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., The Robert Lehman Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Lauren Frances Adams’s project is made possible with support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Maryland Institute College of Art. Kate Sopko’s project is brought to you with generous support from SPACES and Art Matters, and with tremendous work from a huge group of collaborators.
Smack Mellon
92 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
p. 718.834.8761
f. 718.834.5233
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2. Jane Mulfinger, FF Alumn, at Beaconsfield Gallery, London, UK, thru Sept. 18
WINDAUGE
[vindt-ow-geh, Saxon “wind-eye”]
Jane Mulfinger & Graham Budgett
25 June-18 September 2016
Wednesday – Sunday 11am-5pm
GIORGIO SADOTTI SOUNDS LIKE I (COMPOSING)
Preview: 7-9pm with special performance by the band GIORGIO SADOTTI
Seduced by the distinctive architecture of the former Lambeth Ragged School and its
contemporary history, artists Jane Mulfinger and Graham Budgett travel from California for their latest collaboration commissioned by Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall. They write: ‘The name Beaconsfield itself suggests a play or display of light. Entering the main space, the Barthesian punctum is not subtle at all. There’s a small circular window high up in the back wall. An aperture. This majestic Beaconsfield chamber is a Camera Obscura, a room with an unobserved Weltanschauung.
Seeking display, disparate moving images of the exterior environs constantly invert through this small window, only to be lost in a flood of light from the three vast neo-classical arcade windows opposite. Blacking-out and screening the arcade could reveal a fuzzy, animated view of the exterior scene cast into the interior. But that’s a bit like inverse puritanical iconoclasm, wrecking the arcade’s luminous elegance, vandalising the Latin Fenster for an Owl Hole, a Saxon Windauge…’ Mulfinger & Budgett’s site-specific installation runs over the summer, empowering a single viewer’s experience of the world from a particular point of view through various electronic and architectural devices. GIORGIO SADOTTI SOUND LIKES I (A COMPOSING) will be installed in the Arch space until 4 September and to open the exhibition, the band of the same name GIORGIO SADOTTI will make a special performance. Line up: Giorgio Sadotti, Mary George, Leda Sadotti and Jamie Kirkbride.
PRESS ENQUIRIES & RSVP
press@beaconsfield.ltd.uk 020 7582 6465
Find us on facebook.com/BeaconsfieldGallery
Follow us on @BeaconsfieldArt
Notes for Editors:
Jane Mulfinger is an avid collector of human artifacts, engaging her public in both conceptual and perceptual reflections on the significances of human activity in site-specific installations, performance, and sculpture. A graduate of Stanford University and the Royal College of Art, Mulfinger’s early work is recognized as addressing the relationship between architecture, memory, and the human body. Rather than presuming the neutrality of a given space, Mulfinger posits the sociological, political, and formal/spatial contexts of architecture and history with the objects and text that she chooses to incorporate. Her most longstanding work (since 1994), the Regrets series, is a growing collection of anonymous regrets, most recently sponsored by Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK, and the University of Westminster, London. http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/mulfinger
In his work across the expanded field of Spatial Practices and New Media, Graham Budgett fabricates complex metaphors that implicitly reflect upon the production and display systems of art while illuminating the pathos of individual and collective human subjectivity. He calls his practice ‘doing theory’ and ‘a scopophilic conceptualism’, but also ‘comedic’, and ‘allegorical not anecdotal’ – intending a critique of reductive, regressive, or reactionary tendencies in art theory & practice. Sickened by the atrocities of ‘market-forces’ at all cultural levels, not least the Gallery, Budgett uses public space to publish and exhibit. http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/budgett/
Giorgio Sadotti is a conceptual artist based in London whose exhibitions and performances are presented internationally. Sadotti’s work is held in the public collections of Tate and British Council Art Collection. In 2011 he was the artist selected by Tate Britain to create a Christmas Tree for the gallery and in 2003 he won a Paul Hamlyn Award for visual arts. Sadotti is associated with the artist-led initiatives of the 1990’s, when he curated exhibitions in various venues including his own home and his work is featured in the book City Racing: The Life and Times of an Artist-Run Gallery, 1988-1998 (Black Dog Publishing 2002). http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Giorgio-
Sadotti-CV-2016.pdf
Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall is a unique, non-profit, politically engaged, artist-led entity, placing equal emphasis on audiences and artists. Founded as an educational charity in 1994 with the desire to fill a niche between the institution, the commercial and the ‘alternative’, Beaconsfield’s reputation rests on the staging of an influential programme of commissions (beacons) in a range of art mediums (field). The organisation’s function as a primary research vehicle is particularly notable for pioneering developments in time-based and sound art as well as curatorial practice. For more information: beaconsfield.ltd.uk/projects #SupportBeaconsfield is a fundraising campaign launched in 2015. Find out how you can support us here: beaconsfield.ltd.uk/supportbeaconsfield
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3. Roberta Allen, FF Alumn, at Minus Space, Brooklyn, thru Aug. 13
“On Paper,” Minus Space, Opens Sat. July 9, 6-9 pm
July 9 – Aug. 13 (by appt. Aug. 14 – Sept. 5)
Wed.- Sat. 11-5 pm
Group Show
w/ Roberta Allen, Vincent Como, Michael Paoletta, Nate Ethier, Russell Maltz, Erik Saxon, Kate Shepherd, Tilman Hoepfl, Li Trincere, Rossana Martinez, Kiki Olmedo
16 Main St., Suite A, Dumbo
F train to York St.
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4. Mush, FF Alumn, at Bloomingdales, Manhattan, thru July 31
Bloomingdales, Uniform, and I are on a mission to give back. Uniform is a clothing brand that was funded through Kickstarter. For every garment sold, a child in Liberia gets a school uniform. Check it out at Bloomingdales, 59th and 3rd ave. Thank you for your support and spread the word!!
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5. Emireth Herrera at Flux Factory, Long Island City, Queens, opening July 20
opening reception: July 20, 7pm – 9pm
robotic workshop: July 20, 12pm – 7pm
exhibition: July 20 – July 21
Thinking like a machine, Niki Passath 2016
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the human, especially the working human, has increasingly adapted to a coexistence with machines. The human has become a prosthesis for the non-organic body of the industrial factory. During early adaptation this occurred mainly on the material body, the hardware of humanity. Simple repetitive movements on the assembly line became the tasks of the workers to fulfill those duties the machine could not.
The promise was that humans of the future will not have to work, machines will lighten the load. However, the importance of ones identity being tied to her/his occupation became increasingly socially relevant.
With the invention of the computer, machines have moved away from hardware towards software; machines began to acquire a brain. In this new epoch, is it possible that human are still a prostheses of the machine? Now not only attached to the body but also an amendment to its thinking? It can seem that with the wish of creating machines that think like humans, we have also created humans that think like machines.
More and more a human defines itself by the work it does, no-matter how unnecessary or meaningless this activity is. It is often the case today that there is no need for working humans, as artificially intelligent systems can control and realize the whole cycle of industrial production. What do we do now that the human is redundant?
The July 20th workshop on Wednesday will allow participants to create a robot from scratch. These robots will act together to become a amalgamated body, which will enact a performance during the opening reception. The reception and exhibition will feature the robots made during the workshop.
curated by: Emireth Herrera
http://niki.xarch.atniki.passath@gmail.comwww.fluxfactory.org
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6. Victoria Vesna, FF Alumn, at Harvestworks, Manhattan and Del Rey Lagoon, Los Angeles, CA, July 19
What: BIRD SONG MIMIC – An Art/Science Collaboration Bi-coastal bird/human communication event
When: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 @ 6-10 pm in NYC
Where: Harvestworks, 596 Broadway #602 New York
& Del Rey Lagoon, Los Angeles (4-8 pm, PST)
Who: Artists Victoria Vesna and Max Kazemzadeh in NYC communicating with Charles Taylor, evolutionary biologist and artificial life expert, in Los Angeles.
The artists based in NYC will connect in real time with Charles Taylor and the Art|Sci Collective in Los Angeles for an east/west hands-on demonstration of communication and birdsong sharing.
This demo grows out of a long-term collaboration between Victoria Vesna and Charles Taylor. Back in 2011, Vesna was invited by Taylor (both professors at UCLA) to join his interdisciplinary research group and help on the NSF-funded project, Mapping Acoustic Network of Birds. It took Vesna three years of absorbing, learning and going along with the researchers-recording and mapping bird sounds early mornings in the Santa Monica Mountains-to begin to conceptualize the work. She noticed that her relationship to space changed as she was hearing bird songs in open spaces, both in natural and urban environments, and became keenly aware of how we have edited this acoustic richness out of our daily experience.
By working closely with Taylor and his collaborators, most notably physicist Takashi Ikegami, the work emerged as a meditation on our relationship to birds in the natural environment, as well as to the ever-expanding number of artificial birds – drones. The fates of birds are intricately tied to ours. Where bird populations are dropping, the lands and water that sustain us are stressed.
Two participatory installations were premiered at Governor’s Island in the summer of 2015 in coordination with the New York Electronic Arts Festival hosted by Harvestworks – a large-scale immersive installation on Governor’s Island and a mobile Bird Song Mimic in Times Square. Here media artists Max Kazemzadeh and Joel Ong joined the collective work and the mimic prototype was created.
After installing those versions in New York last summer summer, Vesna got an opportunity from engineer Hiroo Iwata at the University of Tokyo in Japan to envision the project in his recently established Large Space – the largest virtual reality space in the world. (https://vimeo.com/149093191)
Ikegami’s group worked on the artificial life aspects of the visual and sound interactivity and sound artist Itsuki Doi worked on the composition. The focus here was on creating an immersive sound and visual environment that allows a group of people to interact and influence the sound composed by Itsuki Doi and the flocking patterns programmed in Iwata’s lab. The project is envisioned to be habitat and space-specific. https://vimeo.com/158831006
The second iteration of the installation is on exhibit now, presented again with Harvestworks, at Nolan Park Building 5B on Governor’s Island through July 25th.
http://www.harvestworks.org/may-28-july-25-bird-song-diamond-mimic-the-team-lab-artworks-and-ex periences/
BirdSong Mimic is being presented as part of the LA: Currents Biennial
(http://www.currentla.org/public-programs/ucla-art-sci/) and is hosted by Harvestworks
(http://www.harvestworks.org/may-28-july-25-bird-song-diamond-mimic-the-team-lab-artworks-and-ex periences/)
More information about the ongoing project can be found here: http://birdsongdiamond.com http://victoriavesna.com/index.php?p=projects&item=1
Additional information on the collaborators: Victoria Vesna: http://victoriavesna.com
Charles Taylor: https://www.eeb.ucla.edu/facultyspotlight.php?FacultyKey=753 Max Kazemzadeh: http://www.maxkazemzadeh.com
Joel Ong: http://www.arkfrequencies.com
For further information, contact:
Carol Parkinson, Director of Harvestworks, 212-431-1130; carolp@harvestworks.org
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7. David Medalla, FF Alumn, at Venus, Manhattan, opening July 14
DAVID MEDALLA
I AM AN ENIGMA, EVEN TO MY SELF
Opening Thursday, July 14, 6 – 8 PM
July 14 – August 12, 2016
VENUS | NY
980 Madison Avenue, FL 3
New York, NY 10075
info@venusovermanhattan.com
www.venusovermanhattan.com
+1 212 980 0700
VENUS is pleased to present its second exhibition of work by David Medalla, a pioneer of kinetic and participatory art. In 2014 VENUS showcased Cloud Canyons, an eight-foot-tall bubble machine considered to be Medalla’s most iconic work (currently on view at the TATE Modern). The second exhibition, titled I am an enigma, even to my self, will feature paintings, photographs, sculpture, ephemera, and an interactive installation, providing an overview of Medalla’s artistic practice. For the exhibition, Medalla recounts:
In the late ’60s, I met two ex-lovers at London’s Heathrow airport and gave them each a handkerchief, along with a packet of needles and several spools of cotton thread. I instructed them to stitch anything they wanted on the handkerchiefs-poems, names, messages, drawings, etc. Years later, I met a backpacker at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam carrying a totem-like pole of pieces of multicolored cloths stitched together with various objects including old Chinese coins, keys, empty cigarette packets, dried leaves, barks and roots of tropical trees attached. The backpacker revealed that someone had given it to him in Bali. Upon taking a closer look, I was amazed to find that the bottom piece of cloth was one of the original handkerchiefs I had given away.
This event marked the beginning of A Stitch in Time, a pioneering work of participatory art in which needles and spools of colored thread are made available to visitors to stitch messages onto a suspended length of fabric. VENUS’ exhibition will feature two iterations of the piece-an extant version from 2013 and a new version to be created over the course of the show. The exhibition will also include photographs of Medalla holding a previous rendition of A Stitch in Time in front of various monuments around London relating to the artist’s unique interpretation of time and space. Together, the photographs and installations explore elements of temporality and chance in order to convey the duality of the outside world versus the internal consciousness of the individual.
ABOUT DAVID MEDALLA
David Medalla was born in Manila, Philippines in 1942 and was admitted to Columbia University at the age of 12. He is a poet, a celebrated professor, and a self-taught artist. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Medalla made a series of ‘participation works’ where he encouraged audience involvement in the production of pieces to challenge notions of creative hierarchy. Since 1968, different versions of David Medalla’s participatory artwork A Stitch in Time have been shown internationally at Documenta 5, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA Los Angeles, the Johannesburg Biennale, and the Liverpool Biennial, among others. In 2017, the piece will be exhibited at the Venice Biennale. Other works by David Medalla are held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of the Philippines; the Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila; the Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; Inhotim of Brumadinho, Brazil; the Museum Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia of Madrid, Spain; the Queensland Art Gallery of Brisbane, Australia; the National Gallery Singapore; and TATE Modern, London, England.
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8. Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Gavlak, Los Angeles, CA, July 16-Sept. 3
Gavlak Los Angeles is pleased to present Sex Works / WOMEN Words Phrases and Stories, Betty Tompkins’ second solo exhibition with the gallery and her first in Los Angeles. This exhibition includes Betty’s recent series of WOMEN Words paintings, along with a survey of her early works on paper, and large-scale Cunt, Fuck, and Pussy paintings. Sex Works / WOMEN Words Phrases and Stories put pieces from the beginning of Tompkins’ career in conversation with her most recent paintings, showcasing the artist’s trajectory from subtly political works to more overt statements.
Tompkins is a groundbreaking, feminist artist who has, over the course of her career, repeatedly bucked conventional norms, eschewing ‘safe’ art in favor of creating difficult and impactful paintings, drawings, photographs, and videos. Taking as her starting point heterosexual pornography, Tompkins reclaims the medium, taking a genre typically conceived as a vehicle for subverting women, and uses it to create direct, powerful, and empowering works that are distinctly feminist. Appropriating pornographic imagery, Tompkins recasts it through an artistic lens and creates masterfully crafted paintings that assume control of and reframe the subject matter.
The centerpiece of the exhibition at Gavlak will be WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories an installation of 1,000 paintings of words that Tompkins received in response to an email request for words that describe women. The works are traveling from the FLAG Art Foundation in New York City, though this marks the first time the paintings will be shown alongside her earlier work. Tompkins received more than 3,500 responses to her initial query, with the most common words sent in response being cunt, bitch, slut and mother. Beginning in 2013, Tompkins selected 1,000 of the words and began to paint them on canvas, depicting some simply as text, while incorporating imagery from her earlier works into the background, or gestural references to what Tompkins describes as “old-boy painters,” like de Kooning and Rothko, into others. Tompkins then installed the paintings in a confined yet fluid network, creating conversations between them, some humorous, some disturbing. In one arrangement, Tompkins placed the phrase “Liberated women,” and underneath hung “Talking, talking, talking,” followed by “Will she ever shut up?” a trajectory that Tompkins feels mirrors a common experience women have, with people first approving of you, and then slowly become more and more critical. In other less lighthearted areas of the installation, more overtly misogynistic words form groupings: “The only thing that could make her more beautiful is my dick in her mouth,” “Three hole wonder,” or “Prick pit.”
In addition to the WOMEN Words series, Tompkins will install a series of her Cunt Paintings, a selection of Fuck Paintings, and early works on paper. The works span from the early 1970s to 2015, highlighting the way in which she has continued to approach similar subject matter anew, though with an ever-evolving formal approach. Taken together the works offer a bold look at the state of feminism today, a reminder that while women’s rights have advanced, there is still a long road ahead towards equality.
Born in 1945 in Washington, D.C., Tompkins now lives and works in New York City and Pleasant Mount, Pennsylvania. Her work was the subject of the solo exhibition WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories at the FLAG Art Foundation, and Real Ersatz at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University. Her work was recently included in Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics, a four-artist exhibition curated by Alison Gingeras at the Dallas Contemporary, and The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look at Men at Cheim and Read in New York. Tompkins’ work is currently part of the permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
For more information concerning the exhibition, please contact Tabor Story at tabor@gavlakgallery.com, or (323) 467-5700.
GAVLAK Los Angeles
1034 North Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, Ca 90038
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9. Annissa Dupal, FF Alumn, at I.M.A.G.E Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, opening July 23
Colored Matter by Annissa Dupal
July 23rd, 2016 | 7pm
I.M.A.G.E Gallery
1501 Broadway
Bklyn, NY, 11221
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10. Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, Colette, Alanna Heiss, Sol LeWitt, Richard Nonas, Brian O’Doherty, Nam June Paik, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, July 6
Here is a link to the complete illustrated article (text only follows below):
http://www.wsj.com/articles/alternative-art-pioneer-is-back-with-forty-1467851203
The Wall Street Journal
U.S. NEW YORK NY CULTURE
Alternative Art Pioneer Is Back With ‘Forty’
Alanna Heiss returns to MoMA’s PS1 with a survey celebrating its radical foundational spirit
By ANDY BATTAGLIA
July 6, 2016
When Alanna Heiss founded P.S. 1 in Queens, she envisioned it as an alternative space for adventurous art-an “anti-museum” to take up a position against institutions of the old guard.
Four decades later, she has organized a survey celebrating its radical foundational spirit.
At MoMA PS1-the name of Ms. Heiss’s upstart enterprise since its merger with the Museum of Modern Art-a 40th-anniversary show assembles work by artists associated with the outpost’s founding in 1976.
The inaugural exhibition “Rooms” transformed an abandoned school building in Long Island City into a series of unusual gallery spaces, with artwork in former classrooms, hallways, playgrounds and a boiler room down below. Now, the retrospective “Forty” presents artists from that original show or otherwise affiliated with Ms. Heiss’s early organizational experiments.
In the early 1970s, Ms. Heiss had emerged as a kind of renegade leader of New York’s burgeoning “alternative space” movement, founding an organization called the Institute of Art and Urban Resources to help find studio, exhibition and performance space for the city’s artists. In addition to the abandoned Queens school, Ms. Heiss reimagined many unused and overlooked city spaces, launching the Clocktower Gallery, the Idea Warehouse and the Coney Island Sculpture Factory, among others.
‘What Alanna wants, Alanna gets-she had a strong presence and went to bat for artists in the art world, which is not an easy thing to do sometimes.’
-Richard ‘Dickie’ Landry
From the beginning, the building now known as MoMA PS1 avoided museum conventions. It had no collection, no gift shop and no allegiance to art of historically sanctified or market-sanctioned kinds. Morning visitation was avoided in favor of more amenable times at night-“artist’s hours,” Ms. Heiss said. “I ran it like a hip restaurant or a nightclub, a place you would go.”
Richard “Dickie” Landry, who has four minimalist drawings in the “Forty” show, knew Ms. Heiss at the start of her career.
“She had a purpose in mind and always emanated that,” he said of the contemporary art champion who hails from rural Illinois. “What Alanna wants, Alanna gets-she had a strong presence and went to bat for artists in the art world, which is not an easy thing to do sometimes.”
For Ms. Heiss, trial and error come with the territory of investigating new art.
“It’s an idiotic notion that an institution dealing with the new would be afraid and have to evaluate how ‘successful’ a show would be,” she said. “These were places where people said, ‘We’re making this kind of art and no one is looking, so we want to put it the way it should be seen.’ “
Ms. Heiss recalled a performance at her Clocktower Gallery featuring the musician and artistic muse Charlotte Moorman, who played the cello while topless and covered in molten chocolate.
“It was a terrible mess,” she said, with a grin.
Ms. Heiss seeded early exhibits like “Rooms” with artists who were then barely known. “Forty” harvests a bumper crop of those ’70s-era stalwarts.
Among the 42 artists in the show, on view through Aug. 28, are now-canonical figures like Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Laurie Anderson, Lawrence Weiner and Robert Ryman. Others represent a historical milieu devoted to questioning the art world’s formalities and precious airs.
“The clearest way of talking about the difference [Ms. Heiss made] was getting rid of the pedestal and those aspects that made art important by giving it prestige,” said Richard Nonas, an 80-year-old artist included in “Forty.” “Alanna changed the way art is seen and thought about publicly more than almost anybody else of my generation.”
Mr. Nonas’s large steel sculpture “Alligator” lies on the floor of a second-floor gallery, in the same spot it occupied in “Rooms,” though the setting has evolved. In 1976, the walls of the derelict building were raw and falling down. Now, they are museum-grade white and cooled by air conditioning.
“Uncarved Blocks” by Carl Andre employs a floor-bound arrangement of cinder blocks first used in “Lament for the Children,” a piece conceived 40 years ago for the space’s outdoor playground. “One Candle” by Nam June Paik commands a room of its own with a wax candle burning inside an empty TV.
Up a creaky set of wooden stairs, an immersive installation by the artist Colette transforms a spacious attic into a sort of stage set for a modern costume drama.
“Her strength is in her moodiness and her understanding of excess,” Ms. Heiss said of mirrored glass and fabric draped all around.
Klaus Biesenbach, the director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator-at-large for MoMA, said the institution has worked to maintain its founding spirit since Ms. Heiss stepped down from her directorship in 2008.
“I hope we are true to her principles for how to work in a building that was built not as a museum but for a different purpose,” Mr. Biesenbach said.
Ms. Heiss, now 73 years old and busy with roaming exhibitions and projects supported by her nonprofit organization Clocktower Productions, said her return to the institution she founded was welcome for the chance to reacquaint herself with artists from a generation she helped shape.
“I expected it to be more bittersweet than it was, but I was happy I had chosen them so many years ago to guide me,” she said of the artists. “One of the things we talked about was the graceful aging of an outlaw.”
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11. Ann Hamilton, FF Alumn, at University of Texas at Austin
Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin, acquires major works by Marc Quinn and Ann Hamilton
Landmarks’ collection expands with the acquisition of a monumental sculpture by Marc Quinn and a newly commissioned project by Ann Hamilton
Landmarks today announced two significant additions: the recent acquisition of Marc Quinn’s 2013 sculpture, Spiral of the Galaxy, to be unveiled in September 2016; and the commission of O N E E V E R Y O N E, a community-based photography project by Ann Hamilton (January 2017). Both works will be installed at the university’s Dell Medical School and are funded through a percent-for-art allocation that sets aside one-to-two percent of capital improvement projects for the acquisition of public art.
“Adding Marc Quinn and Ann Hamilton to the diverse roster of artists represented by Landmarks is an honor,” said Andrée Bober, the founding director of the program. “Quinn’s biomorphic sculpture and Hamilton’s intimate portraits complement each other in unexpected ways. Both wrestle with bigger ideas about the human form and healing, making them ideally suited for the new Dell Medical School.”
Marc Quinn’s artistic practice is preoccupied with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual. Spiral of the Galaxy, Quinn’s seven-ton bronze sculpture, was first shown at an exhibition of the artist’s work in 2013 at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, Italy. Landmarks’ acquisition was cast as the artist’s proof alongside an edition of three, and it will be the only example of the piece in the United States. Placed at the gateway to the Dell Medical School, the monumental sculpture depicts an elegant conch shell. The conch carries cultural and religious significance, and among many interpretations can be construed here as a complex structure that protects delicate organisms.
Ann Hamilton engaged in a three-part residency for Landmarks to create portraits of local community members. Her images evoke the human form, touch, and the care and attention of healers. During each residency, she photographed volunteers through a semi-transparent membrane that renders in focus only what touches the surface and softly blurs the gestures and outlines of the sitters. The optical quality of the material renders touch-something felt more than seen-visible. The life of every citizen will intersect with the health care system and these portraits include caregivers, faculty, students, staff, community partners, civic leaders and patients themselves.
Hamilton will select around two dozen portraits to install in the new Center for Health Learning and Center for Health Discovery buildings in early 2017. Her library of approximately 500 subjects may be used in future buildings of the Dell Medical School as well as in other graphic applications, including a book that contains images of each participant. 10,000 copies will be given to the public, and portraits will be available to download online for free. With more than 500 portraits taken in various locations across the city, Hamilton’s residency in Austin is the largest O N E E V E R Y O N E series developed to date.
“The University of Texas at Austin is building the first new medical school at a top-tier research university in nearly 50 years, offering the unique opportunity to rethink the role of academic medicine in better serving society’s needs,” said Clay Johnston, inaugural dean of the Dell Medical School. “With unprecedented support from our community, we are creating a medical school for the 21st century that draws upon innovative thinking from across disciplines, from engineering to the arts. Public art that starts conversations and inspires creativity and community connections is vital to the environment we envision.”
The installation of these two works supports Landmarks’ broader strategy to develop an extraordinary public art collection that both enhances the aesthetic character of the campus and supports pedagogy. An ongoing percent-for-art allocation ensures the collection will develop in tandem with the rapid expansion of the campus. With these upcoming additions, Landmarks continues to advance its mission to present iconic works of art that convey the university’s ideals.
In addition to site-specific commissions and acquisitions, Landmarks features 28 mid- to late-20th-century sculptures on long-term loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, FF Alumn, Deborah Butterfield, Anthony Caro, Jim Dine, Donald Lipski, Beverly Pepper, Antoine Pevsner, Tony Smith, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Beyond its aesthetic value, the group demonstrates significant art historical trends from the second half of the 20th century. The collection also fosters learning through its conservation efforts. Landmarks provides technical training for student volunteers who preserve the sculptures, the only known program of its kind in the United States.
Marc Quinn was born in London in 1964. He graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in history and history of art, and subsequently worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan. He is one of the leading artists of his generation, creating sculptures, paintings, and drawings that explore the dynamic between art and science, and the human body relative to perceptions of beauty. Other key subjects include cycles of growth and evolution through topics such as genetics and the manipulation of DNA, as well as issues of life, death, and identity. Quinn’s work uses a broad range of materials, both traditional and unorthodox. The materiality of the object, in both its elemental composition and surface appearance, is at the heart of Quinn’s work.
Ann Hamilton was born in Lima, Ohio, in 1956. She received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1985. Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale multimedia installations. Using time as process and material, her methods serve as an invocation of place, of collective voice, of communities past and of labor present. Her ephemeral environments create immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites.
Contact
Landmarks
The University of Texas at Austin
College of Fine Arts
2305 Trinity St., PAC 3.204
Austin, TX 78712
landmarks@austin.utexas.edu
512.495.4315
Press Office
Nick Nobel, External Affairs Coordinator
The University of Texas at Austin
College of Fine Arts
2305 Trinity St., PAC 3.204
Austin, TX 78712
nobel@utexas.edu
512.232.5904
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12. Epstein & Hassan, FF Alumns, at The Alchemical Theater, Manhattan, July 16
Get out the heat…..have fun…
We are so excited and what to share our happiness
Join us for an evening of laughter!
The Black and The Jew Go Buddhist!
July 16th @ 7:30pm- $15
The Alchemical Theater 104 West 14th St. b/t 6 & 7th ave.
theblackandthejew.com
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13. Karen Shaw, FF Alumn, at Garvey/Simon, Manhattan
Garvey|Simon announces new lenticular collages by Karen Shaw
Shaw’s Atmospheric Disturbances series rhymes with glitch art, a movement in contemporary art that aestheticizes glitches, or errors, in digital technologies.
Karen’s images shine with jewel-like colors, while defying their two-dimensional medium by revealing two or more views as the observer moves. The collages call to mind a once-imagined cyberpunk future that is becoming increasingly real today.
We just received new works at the gallery and they are available for private viewings. For inquiries contact us: liz@garveysimon.com or call 917-796-2146.
We’d love to see you soon at the Gallery!
Tue. 11-5, Wed-Fri. 11-6, Sat. 12-6
547 W 27 ST, SUITE 207
NEW YORK, NY 10001
GALLERY: 917.865.4302
CELL: 917.796.2146
WWW.GARVEYSIMON.COM
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14. Irina Danilovah, FF Alumn, art events, summer 2016
a. Hiram and I took part in Unnoticed Art Festival: http://www.unnoticedart.com/unnoticed-art-festival-2-nijmegen-the-netherlands/ with the parallel performance in NYC: http://www.irinadanilova.net/UnnoticedArt2016.html
b. Project Anywhere v.1 was recently published: https://issuu.com/projectanywhere/docs/anywhere_v1_pages with City Drawings presentation on
p.p.26-29
c. Quadrennial Shaving performance will be this year in Southern Hemisphere, on August 31 in The Lock-Up Art Center in Newcastle: http://www.thelockup.org.au/whats-on
d. On July 9th Couple 59 for 59 minutes performance was at Here in Jamaica with Kulsum Rifa and Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful.
e. I am taking part in the group show “Clinic” at the Fond Cultural Transit in Ekaterinburg, Russia, https://www.facebook.com/events/149775448764605/?notif_t=plan_user_invited¬if_id=1467883908769200 Opening July 11
f. I am taking part in the exhibition Bazhov-Fest 2016, New Ural Mythology at National Center for Contemporary Arts in Ekaterinburg, Russia. July 13-August 21
http://www.ncca.ru/events.text?filial=5&id=3615
Irina
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15. Ann-Marie LeQuesne, FF Alumn, at Somerset House, London, UK, July 16
Ann-Marie LeQuesne’s ongoing project, “Fanfare for Crossing the Road”, will be screened at a weekend of events at Somerset House, London WC2R 1LA, on July 16th – 1-2pm http://www.walkingartistsnetwork.org/walking-women-at-somerset-house/
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16. Priscilla Stadler, Nicolas Dumit Estevez Raful’s, FF Alumns, at JAMECO Exchange, Jamaica, Queens, July 14
Dear All,
On Thursday July 14 from 3-6, you’re cordially invited to “Take a Nice Slow Breath” with me for Nicolas Dumit Estevez Raful’s HERE IN JAMAICA at No Longer Empty’s JAMECO Exchange, 89-62 165th St., Jamaica, NY. I invite you to help me explore this very basic act which unites us: breathing.
For more info on the project please read below.
Hope to see you at this exploration of the art of the everyday at a wonderfully dynamic set of creative community-engaged projects in Jamaica, Queens.
Best wishes,
Priscilla
Overview
For my project (I have a hard time embracing the word performance) I want to explore a basic act that unites us all: breathing. And to use the act of breathing with someone else as a subtle invitation for us to slow down a bit and to connect. I also want to encourage people to remember to pause and take a deep breath as they live their (often stressful) lives.
Background
An interaction has evolved at my job that I would like to bring to the people of Jamaica. It is very simple. Taking a deep breath with someone. This is what I do with Juan, who works in the mailroom of LaGuardia Community College where I am employed (in another office). Whenever we see each other around the college, we stop what we are doing, pause, and both of us take a deep breath. Just by seeing each other, we remind each other to take a deep breath.
And we try to encourage others to do this.
In Jamaica I would like to invite people to take a deep breath with me. I think it may be an opportunity for connection.
More About the Project
I like the idea of working near the exhibition space to give more context and have it related to the show.
Also I may make some related objects such as simple talismans I can give people to carry with them as a reminder to breath in their everyday life, and a sign or something visible to communicate something about the action and invite people to consider participating.
Phrases (for a sign) are rolling around in my mind: breathe with me, take a nice slow breath, help yourself to some oxygen, etc. Still thinking about that. I may also offer to give those who participate a small talisman to help them remember to pause and breathe during their daily lives in the future.
Inspired by proposing this project, I will consciously remind myself to slow down and take a deep breath throughout the planning and implementation process. I consider this awareness to be part of the project (and am very grateful for
Best wishes,
Priscilla Stadler
Artist
priscillastadler.com
facebook.com/priscillastudio
@priscillastudio instagram
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17. Mira Schor, Susan Bee, Mimi Smith, Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Lyles & King Gallery, Manhattan, thru Aug. 12
Mira Schor, FF Alumn, group exhibition, “X,” at Lyles & King Gallery, NYC, July 8- August 12, 2016 Opening Reception: Friday, July 8, 6-8PM
X includes paintings by Betty Tompkins, Adrienne Rubenstein, Al Freeman, Mira Schor, Miriam Laufer, Mimi Smith, Anna Rosen, Alicia Gibson, Lauren Faigeles, Susan Bee, Rebecca Watson Horn, Dakotah Savage, Katrina Fimmel, Rebecca Levitan,
Lyles & King Gallery
106 Forsyth St. at Broome
New York, NY 10002
646-484-5478
www.lylesandking.com
Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6
July 8 – August 12, 2016
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18. Chun Hua Catherine Dong, FF Alumn, at Universidad de Chile, Santiago, July 17
Chun Hua Catherine Dong will present her performance, ” Yellow Umbrella – An Unfinished Conversation,” at Universidad de Chile, Santiago, as part of The 10th Encuentro: Dissidence, Sovereignties, Performance, hosted by The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and the Universidad de Chile
Time: July 17th, 16:30pm-17:30pm, 2016
Location: Universidad de Chile, Santiago
“The Yellow Umbrella-An Unfinished Conversation” is a performance that involves twelve performers engaging with yellow umbrellas. The umbrella is a symbol of protection and resistance. This performance seeks an intersection where aesthetics and politics ignite each other, exploring how symbolic and situational behaviors impact on our perception in regards to specific social movements and activism. It is relevant to open conversations about how to transform social and political landscapes through embodied gestures, examining relationships between the citizens and the place they live, between what they have lost and what they have gained in social political transformations.
For more about this work
http://chunhuacatherinedong.com/portfolio/yellow-umbrella-an-unfinished-conversation/
For more about this event and program
http://chunhuacatherinedong.com/news/
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/encuentro-2016
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, born in China, is a visual artist working with performance, photography, and video. She received a M.F.A. from Concordia University and a B.F.A from Emily Carr University Art & Design in Canada. She has performed in multiple international performance art festivals and venues, such as, The Great American Performance Art in New York (2015), Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival in Chicago (2015), Infr’Action in Venice (2013), Dublin Live Art Festival in Dublin (2014), Miami Performance International Festival (2016), Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania (2013), Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn (2014), Select Art Fair in New York (2015), ENCUENTRO Performance and Conference in Santiago (2016), Internationales Festival für Performance in Mannheim(2013), Place des Arts in Montreal (2014), and so on.
She has exhibited her works at Fernando Pradilla Gallery in Madrid (2016), The Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow (2015), Gera Museum in Vrsac (2014), New Art Center in Boston (2014), The Others Art Fair in Turin (2014), Delhi Photo Festival in Delhi (2013), The Aine Art Museum in Tornio (2013), VMU art gallery “101” in Kaunas (2014), Art Museum at University of Toronto in Toronto (2014), Articule in Montreal (2014), and Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver (2014). Her video work has been screened in Brazil, Mexico, Finland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Colombia, Spain, The Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Greece, Romania, Croatia, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, China, USA, and Canada. Among many other awards and grants, she is the recipient of Franklin Furnace Award for contemporary avant-garde art in New York in 2014. Her performance is featured at Marina Abramovic Institute and listed amongst the ”Top Nine Political Art Projects of 2010” by Art and Threat magazine. Dong now lives in Montreal.
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19. CRASH, FF Alumn, at Dorian Grey Gallery, Watermill, NY, July 17
Art & Automobiles
Sunday July 17th 9am- 2pm
938 Montauk Highway, Watermill, NY
Please click here to reserve a parking spot
Dorian Grey Gallery with Martino Auto Concepts are excited to announce the second family friendly gathering of exotic cars in the Hamptons. Please join us on the morning of Sunday July 17th as we bring together collectors of both street art and rare / exotic automobiles. Expected on location will be rare sports cars from local collectors and the latest high performance vehicles from McLaren, Aston Martin, Porsche, BMW. Front and center will be our famous hand spray painted Ferrari F 430 Art Car completed by Bronx artist John “Crash” Matos in the studio of Martino Auto Concepts. Our roster of artists on display include the latest works by contemporary street & graffiti inspired maestros: Kenny Scharf, COPE2, Crash, Lady Aiko, LA2, STIK, Sean Sullivan, JPO and others.
Please RSVP to join us as parking will be limited. The receptions are generously sponsored by Aston Martin, Long Island Sports Car, Martino Auto Concepts, Porsche of Southampton, and Exotics for Life.
938 Montauk Highway
Watermill, NY
516 244 4126
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20. Roberley Bell, Portia Munson, FF Alumns, at Wave Hill, The Bronx, opening July 17
Roberley Bell and Portia Munson, FF Alumns, have work included in Nature Pops, thru Sept. 5 at Glyndor Gallery, Wave Hill, The Bronx. For complete information please visit
https://www.wavehill.org/arts/
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21. Judith Sloan, Warren Lehrer, FF Alumns, art events, summer 2016
We are in the middle of a tremendous amount of grief and anger over the rash of violence, police killing of black people, sniper killing police in Dallas, killings of LGBT community in Orlando. All of the hate, revenge, murder and dismissal of the value of human life is something we cannot be silent about. For the past 15 years, we have been working on multimedia projects that seek to build bridges across race, culture, ethnicity, class, gender and age and defy stereotypes. We use our projects to open up dialogue, entertain, and bring moments of humanity, solace, grief, joy and celebration to the stage, books, radio, and web. We invite you to join us at whatever events you can attend, participate in post-show discussions, and continue to work toward a more peaceful world.
Summer Dates
Performances featuring stories of migration, refuge, and finding home.
Saturday July 9 and Sunday 10, Amherst, MA
Judith Sloan and Warren Lehrer at the Ko Festival of Performance
TICKETS AND INFO
Monday July 18, New York City, NY
excerpts from Yo Miss! and Crossing the BLVD
Judith Sloan with Andrew Griffin on viola
TICKETS AND INFO
Monday August 1, Eastport, ME
Judith Sloan solo show
TICKETS AND INFO
Tuesday August 2, Winter Harbor, ME
Judith Sloan solo show
TICKETS AND INFO
Saturday August 6, Stongington, ME
Judith Sloan performing new works.
Opening Acts Genevieve Beaudoin and Warren Lehrer
TICKETS AND INFO
Sunday August 7, Bath, ME
Judith Sloan solo show
TICKETS AND INFO
“Inventive theater that packs a punch – and a lesson.” Blog Critics (Jon Sobel)
“Oral History with a twist!” The World, Public Radio International
“A world view that sees comedy and tragedy as two bones of the same skeleton in the closet. Superb!”
The Scotsman
“…boldly carries the tradition of oral history into the 21st Century. Electrifying!” Eve Ensler
“[Lehrer and Sloan’s Crossing the BLVD] is a whirlwind tour and love poem of what has often been called the most racially and ethnically diverse county in America. In the tradition of the playwright Anna Deavere Smith, Sloan performs “Crossing the BLVD” adopting the personae (and respectfully mimicking the accents) of the varied immigrants.” The New York Times
“[Sloan’s] empathy and perceptiveness have the potential to inspire much-needed understanding amid the inflammatory rhetoric that outweighs reason in our current electoral season.” Broadway World
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22. Virginia Maksymowicz, FF Alumn, in Sculpture Magazine, now online, and more
Feature article about Virginia Maksymowicz’s work in July-August 2016 issue of Sculpture Magazine:
<http://www.maks-arts.com/#!Strong-Supports-Sculpture-Magazine/cd23/5769652b0cf2710e3e682999>
and
Virginia Maksymowicz, solo show entitled “Architectural Overlays” at SACI Gallery in Florence, Italy from September 5 to October 16, 2016.
<http://www.saci-florence.edu/exhibition_details.php?id=233>
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23. Blaster Al Ackerman at Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, July 11
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 505-5181
July 11, 2016, 6:30PM & 9PM
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
MOVIES BY tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is the greatest Sprocket Scientist alive according to absolutely no-one. That’s quite a rep to live up to. Don’t worry about it. Worry, instead, about the possibility of missing his 2 programs, he’s not planning to live forever no matter how many attractive offers he gets along those lines. He’s made 437 movies & that ain’t the half of it. Don’t expect ‘beautiful’ hi-def movies lacking content but abounding in budgets. Expect movies so packed with conceptual loudness that you’ll be hi-def-ened without having a single voice raised.
6:30PM
PROGRAM 1:
17 SELECTED SHORTS: SUMMER, 1977 – DECEMBER, 2014
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is one stubborn cuss, too much to mishandle, & three’s a crowd. Making matters worse, he’ll present not 3 but SEVENTEEN shorts from a 37 year period starting with COMPUTER INTERVIEW (1977) & ending with I WOULDN’T MAKE A MOVIE LIKE THIS IF YOU FUCKING PAID ME. (2014). One could say that these are a bit off – as in he bit off more than he could eschew.
COMPUTER INTERVIEW (w/Steve Estes) 1977, 3.5 min
3 MILE ISLAND (w/B.O.M.B.) 1979, 4 min
PAPER DOLLS IN DAVA’S CLASS 1981, 2.5 min
A DOUBLE NEGATIVE AS NOT A POSITIVE (w/Hannah Aviva) 1982, 2 min
NEOIST GUIDE DOG (w/Litvinov) 1984, 2.5 min
BALLING TIM ORE IS BEST (w/Dick Hertz) 1985, 16 min
PHILOSOPHER’S UNION MEMBER’S MOUTHPIECE: RICHARD TRYZNO ELLSBERRY 1988, 6 min
A CUE STICK GUITAR DUET (w/Neil Feather) 1992, 3.5 min
NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE DOCUMENTARY 1993, 3.5 min
DISZEY SPOTS 1993-95, 11.5 min
DEPARTMENT OF FAILURES 1995, 2.5 min
HOW ORGONE CINEMA TREATS ITS VISITING FILMMAKERS 1995, 5.5 min
BACKGROUND MOVIE 2 (w/etta cetera & Dave Lahn) 1997, 1.5 min
ANTI-NEOIST RALLY (w/etta cetera & Karen Eliot) 2000, 2 min
HARPS & ANGLES (w/Michael Pestel) 2003, 28.5 min
MULTIPLE PROJECTIONS 1978-2009, 10 min
I WOULDN’T MAKE A MOVIE LIKE THIS IF YOU FUCKING PAID ME. 2014, 9 min
Total running time: ca. 120 min.
9PM:
PROGRAM TWO:
THIS WILL EXPLAIN
2013, 84 min, digital
“Blaster” Al Ackerman probably wasn’t one of the 14 Secret Masters of the World but he certainly had more than 14 identities & all of them were tricksters. He was born (1939), he lived, he was a copious correspondent of a very personal nature, a cartoonist, a philosopher, & the funniest damn experimental writer of All Zeim. He also died (2013). This will explain.
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24. Circus Amok, Jay Wegman, FF ALumns, in the New York Times, July 10
The New York Times
THEATER
Artistic Director Moves from Abrons to Skirball Center
By JOSHUA BARONE
JULY 10, 2016
Jay Wegman, artistic director of Abrons Arts Center, will leave his post there and join N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts as its senior director on Aug. 1.
He has served as Abrons’s director since 2006, during which time much of the center’s adventurous, increasingly international programming has been credited to him. But after 10 years, Mr. Wegman said, it was time to move on. His successor will be chosen in the fall.
The coming season at Abrons, which begins on Sept. 11 with a performance by Circus Amok, is “a reflection of everything that’s come before,” he said. “It’s got all these emerging theater companies, the choreographers are both established and emerging, and we have international work coming in. It’s a wonderful season to exit with.”
In particular, Mr. Wegman is looking forward to the drag performer Dickie Beau’s “Blackouts,” which has its American premiere on Oct. 6 as part of theCrossing the Line Festival. The show, which blends the spectacle of drag with the sadness of clowns, explores Dickie Beau’s fascination with female icons like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. Mr. Wegman also singled out “Good Samaritans” (Feb. 16 through March 24), a play with songs by Richard Maxwell and performed by the New York City Players.
At Skirball, Mr. Wegman said, he plans to build out the theater’s international programming by taking advantage of connections N.Y.U. faculty members may have. He also wanted to see what he could do to “embrace Broadway.” “It’s this great-sized theater,” he said. “Physically, and even programmatically, it’s where uptown meets downtown.”
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25. Sur Rodney (Sur), Felix Gonzalez Torres, Martin Wong, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, July 10
The Wall Street Journal
U.S.
NEW YORK
NY CULTURE
How the Art World Responded to AIDS
The epidemic is the focus of ‘Art AIDS America’ at the Bronx Museum of the Arts
By
SUSAN DELSON
July 10, 2016 8:56 p.m. ET
It looks like something you might pick up in any well-stocked toy store. But the teddy bear in Charles LeDray’s untitled 1991 sculpture is no toddler’s companion.
Dressed in a white funeral suit, it lies in a tiny, silk-lined coffin-another victim of the AIDS crisis that was then tearing through the art world, and the world at large.
How artists grappled-and continue to grapple-with the epidemic is the focus of “Art AIDS America,” opening Wednesday at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. In some 120 works by close to 100 artists, the show captures the rage, anguish and overwhelming sense of loss that accompanied the epidemic at its height, along with the activism it sparked and its continuing reverberation through the culture.
“At first it was, ‘What the hell is happening and why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?’ ” recalled Hunter Reynolds, one of the artists included in the show. “It was like a war. You’re in your 20s and everyone around you is dying.”
There is anger, among other things, in “Love, AIDS, Riot,” Marlene McCarty’s unprintable riff on Robert Indiana’s tilted-O “Love” icon. A profound sense of mourning suffusesKeith Haring’s bronze-and-white, gold-leafed “Altar Piece,” its silhouette echoing medieval religious art. A dreamlike unreality haunts “Babies with AIDS (Bebés con SIDA),” Luis Cruz Azaceta’s vision of the epidemic’s youngest victims.
And Mr. Reynolds’s “Survival AIDS Series 2 ACT UP Chicago with Memorial Dress photographed by Maxine Henryson,” completed only last year, reveals a continued reckoning with a disease that hasn’t gone away.
Organized by the Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with the Bronx Museum, the
exhibition features artists ranging from the familiar to the less well-known, including Jasper Johns, Annie Leibovitz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Catherine Opie and Martin Wong.
It also explores the impact of the AIDS crisis on American art. For one thing, the show suggests, AIDS sharply reversed the 1980s trend of removing the artist’s presence from the artwork.
“All of a sudden, you’re not just talking about ideas and tropes and metaphors,” said Antonio Sergio Bessa, the Bronx Museum’s director of curatorial and education programs. “Death is not a metaphor anymore. It becomes a real threat.”
Artists “took every possible tool they could find to make expressions of their experiences,” said Rock Hushka, chief curator at the Tacoma museum and co-curator of the exhibition with Jonathan D. Katz, director of the visual studies doctoral program at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York.
Approaches ranged from Madison Avenue-style advertising to the feminist position that all politics is personal. The show spotlights activist art collectives that took the lead in pushing the epidemic into the public eye-among them, ACT UP, Gran Fury and Visual AIDS, creators of the red AIDS-awareness ribbon and the international Day Without Art, still observed every Dec. 1.
Other exhibition themes include the body, the spirit and camouflage.
Camouflage?
With the late-1980s culture wars raging and funding pulled for controversial exhibitions, “artists needed to find ways to make it acceptable for people to talk about the AIDS crisis in a museum or gallery context,” Mr. Hushka explained.
The coffined teddy bear is one example. So is “Drains,” a 1990 cast-pewter sculpture byRobert Gober. Resembling an everyday sink fixture, it hauntingly evokes waste, bodily fluids-and lives-literally going down the drain.
While the epidemic may have peaked, AIDS persists. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 1.2 million Americans currently live with HIV/AIDS, and close to 40,000 cases are diagnosed nationwide annually.
“We have some of the largest numbers of HIV in New York City, here in our borough,” said Bronx Museum Executive Director Holly Block.
With that in mind, the museum is looking to start a conversation with local residents about HIV, AIDS and related health issues.
Ms. Block called the effort “information sharing, using artwork as knowledge, thinking more broadly.”
Locally, there hasn’t been much public dialogue on the topic, said Mr. Bessa, due to “issues related to stigma and prejudice.”
The museum’s education and public programs include a three-week teen summer intensive, a Bronx Stories open-mic event and a panel discussion with local health-care providers. A mobile medical unit will be present for many events.
In September, Mr. Reynolds-a 32-year HIV survivor and a co-founder of the activist group Art+-will perform in conjunction with an exhibition tour led by independent curator Sur Rodney (Sur) and Art+ co-founder Lola Flash.
The involvement of long-term survivors reflects one of the show’s most inspiring takeaways: the resilience of communities and individuals in the face of HIV/AIDS.
That idea is movingly evoked in Deborah Kass’s 2007 canvas “Still Here.” Painted in bold lettering over a colorful background, the phrase quotes a song from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Follies.”
It is a message, said Ms. Kass, that “survivors of a lot of things can relate to.”
Corrections & Amplifications:
The Bronx Museum’s director of curatorial and education programs is Antonio Sergio Bessa. An earlier version of this article omitted his surname in one instance. (July 10)
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26. Jim Costanzo, Peggy Diggs, Harth, Harley Spiller, Beriah Wall, FF Alumns, in American Numismatic Society Magazine, Issue 2, 2016
The work of Jim Costanzo, Peggy Diggs, Harth, Harley Spiller, and Beriah Wall, FF Alumns, is covered in American Numismatic Society’s ANS Magazine, issue 2, 2016 in an illustrated article by Andrew Reinhard, “Subverting Currency: Money, Art, and Message”
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
