Contents for October 17, 2016
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Klaus Kertess, FF Alumn, In Memoriam
1. Martha Wilson, Ricardo Dominguez, Mark Tribe, FF Alumns, at New Museum, Manhattan, Oct. 27
2. Katherine Behar, FF Alumn, fall news
3. Carolee Schneemann, FF Alumn, at PPOW & Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, opening Oct. 21, and more
4. Jayoung Yoon, Hang Gil Han, FF Alumns, at Ozaneaux Art Space, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20
5. Paul Zaloom, FF Alumn, at MassArt, Boston, Oct. 21-22, and more
6. Bob Connolly, FF Alumn, at Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway, Oct. 27
7. Felix Gonzalex-Torres, FF Alumn, at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, thru Dec. 25
8. John Held, FF Alumn, at Berkeley Art Museum, CA, Oct. 21, and more
9. Peter Baren, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, thru Dec. 18
10. Jenny Polak, FF Alumn, at The Muffler Shop, U Chicago, IL, Oct. 22, 28, and more
11. Lydia Lunch, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, Manhattan, Nov. 2-3
12. Sydney Blum, FF Alumn, at Kim Foster Gallery, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20
13. Clifford Owens, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, Oct. 27, and more
14. Siah Armajani, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray, Manhattan, opening Oct. 27
15. Power Boothe, FF Alumn, at Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT, Oct. 21
16. Fiona Templeton, FF Alumn, announces 3rd Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights recipient
17. Marni Kotak, FF Alumn, at 4 Charles Place, Brooklyn, Oct. 25
18. Stephanie Skura, FF Alumn, at WeisAcres, Manhattan, Oct. 30
20. Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, opening Oct. 21
21. Vernita Nemec, FF Alumn, at Viridian Artists, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20, and more
22. Zackary Drucker, FF Alumn, at Haverford College, PA, opening Oct. 21
23. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, FF Alumn, at Jamaica Ave. and 165th St., Queens, October 19
24. Dusty Grella, FF Alumn, at SVA, Manhattan, October 28, and more
25. Courtney J. Martin, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, Oct. 16
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Klaus Kertess, FF Alumn, In Memoriam
KLAUS KERTESS, FORESIGHTED ART DEALER AND CURATOR, DIES AT 76
BY Andrew Russeth
POSTED 10/09/16 3:28 PM artnews.com
Showed Brice Marden, Dorothea Rockburne, Chuck Close, Bill Bollinger, Alan Saret, curated 1995 Whitney Biennial
Klaus Kertess, the writer, curator, and art dealer whose Bykert Gallery in New York helped launch the careers of numerous artists who are now cornerstones of art history, has died. He was 76.
Barely a quarter-century old, Kertess opened Bykert in September of 1966, with the financial backing of his former Yale classmate Jeff Byers, in the 57th Street space that had been vacated the previous year by Richard Bellamy’s pioneering Green Gallery. Over the next nine years, Bykert would show a formidable roster of artists associated with Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, and Process Art, including Brice Marden, David Novros, Barry Le Va, Alan Saret, Chuck Close, Bill Bollinger, and Dorothea Rockburne, among many others.
Explaining his decision to become an art dealer, Kertess said in 1975 that, at the time the gallery started out, aside from Park Place, which was run by Paula Cooper in Downtown Manhattan, “there were no galleries that were actively looking for new artists or no galleries where younger artists could turn to in the hopes that they would show their work.” The gallery quickly garnered attention. In 1968, critic Rosalind Constable declared Bykert the “Gallery of the Year” in New York magazine, writing that “now the word is out that something fresh is going on [there].”
After leaving the Bykert in 1975 (it would close a year later), Kertess focused on writing and curatorial projects, working as curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York, from 1983 until 1989, when he became adjunct curator of drawing at the Whitney. He curated its closely watched biennial in 1995, organized the inaugural show for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2007, and in 2009 received the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
Klaus D. Kertess was born in New York in 1940 and grew up in Westchester County, New York, about 20 miles outside of the city, the second of three children. His father, F.A., was a businessman, and his mother, Kate, was a homemaker who had studied art history. He attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he wrote a humor column for the paper that regularly roiled certain faculty members, and then headed to Yale University. “I had this thought that I was going to go into government service and be a diplomat,” he told the Archives of American Art in an oral history, but gravitated to art history courses.
Kertess graduated from Yale in 1962 and then studied at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn, in Germany-in part to avoid the draft, he’s said. While in Cologne he worked at the Lempertz auction house, but he was fond of neither the job nor the city, where he said he felt discriminated against because he was not Catholic. “The only way I survived the year in Cologne was, I spent all the money I made at [Lambrecht] going to Paris once a month,” he said. Returning to the States, he completed a master’s in the history of art at Yale in 1964.
When Kertess told the head of Yale’s art history department, Egbert Haverkamp Begemann, that he wanted to open a gallery in Manhattan rather than earn his doctorate, he said the professor replied, “Whore, whore, you will become a whore.”
Deciding to become an art dealer, Kertess said, was a result of “a process of elimination.” Teaching and museum work didn’t interest him, and “I knew I couldn’t survive in an academic atmosphere, even as an undergraduate,” he added. After graduate school, he headed down to New York, where his first job was at the Interpublic advertising firm, which he joined with the aim of helping it building an art collection and learning the industry before setting up shop on his own.
Unfortunately, the company was struggling financially and it quickly became clear that it would not be acquiring art for its walls. “I generally walked in with an attaché case that had a bathing suit and a towel and read the New York Times, went to a health club, and spent my afternoon either at the Museum of Modern Art or going to galleries,” he told the Smithsonian of his time at the firm. “I was, in retrospect, under a very generous scholarship.”
Kertess spread word around that he wanted to open a gallery, and that he didn’t have the capital to do so. An old Yale classmate, Jeff Byers, came forward to fund the enterprise. They combined their names to title the gallery and opened in the old Green space, a gallery Kertess had visited regularly when visiting New York from Yale, on September 20, 1966, next door to Pace Gallery. The first show was a solo outing by the painter Ralph Humphrey. Always on the hunt for the new, Kertess became a diplomat of another sort, introducing the work of an adventurous new generation of artists to gallery goers.
Visiting the “Primary Structures” show of Minimalism at the Jewish Museum in 1966, Kertes ran into the artist Carlos Villa, who told him that if he liked Humphrey’s work he should go see an artist named Brice Marden. Marden, as it happened, was working as a guard on the second floor of the museum. “Brice was somewhat wasted, leaning against a case of silver,” Kertess remembered in a 2012 interview with Clocktower Radio, adding, “He was one of several artists where the door opened and I just stood there in wonder.” Marden would end up showing with the gallery, and becoming a friend, pointing the dealer to the studios of many artists, including Chuck Close, who would also show at the Bykert.
Bykert was one of the rare galleries that has secured its place in art history not only for the artists it showed but for the people it employed, who included the sculptor Lynda Benglis, as a secretary, and Benglis’s student at Hunter College, the future dealer Mary Boone. Boone would go on to open her eponymous space in SoHo in 1977. “It was a gallery that was artist-driven rather than collector-driven,” Boone told New York magazine of Bykert years later.
“The first five years of the gallery [were] difficult,” Kertess told the Archives of American Art. “You know, always run in deficit, always needed outside support. After that, it wobbled with extreme difficulty on the break-even point, was, you know, sporadically hysterical in terms of whether or not the rent was going to be paid, whether the electricity was going to be turned off, whether I was getting my salary, the woman who worked for me was getting her salary, et cetera.”
Nevertheless, the gallery persevered, and it earned a solid reputation with critics and artists. “I had wanted to be in Klaus’s gallery…because there was a sort of daring, devilish tolerance for the extreme,” Dorothea Rockburne, who would join the gallery, told the Brooklyn Rail in 2005. As artists’ careers progressed, it was clear that they would need guidance, and greater backing, but “[n]eedless to say, I wasn’t interested in the business of career management,” Kertess told the Rail in the same interview. And so he ended up leaving the gallery.
Joining the Parrish as curator in 1983, Kertess organized solo and group shows with artists like Carroll Dunham, April Gornik, Albert York, Jane Freilicher, and Alfonso Ossorio. In 1989, he joined the Whitney as adjunct curator of drawings.
In the catalogue for his 1995 Whitney Biennial, Kertess writes, in what critic Paul Goldberger described in the Times as something of a riposte to the politically engaged 1993 edition, “Art is a platform for experience, not a lesson. What is being proposed here is not a return to formalism but an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value. An acknowledgment of sensuousness is indispensable-whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn.”
Kertess’s biennial included long-established masters like Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden and his wife Helen Marden, Barry Le Va (who had also showed at Bykert) and Cy Twombly, alongside younger, lesser-known figures like Nicole Eisenman, Jason Rhoades, Ellen Gallagher, and Stan Douglas, who was then based in Toronto and eligible for the show since Kertess expanded its-typically just the United States-to include Canada and Mexico.
Discussing the stress that comes with being the show’s curator, being lobbied by so many people, Kertess told Goldberger, “The pressure got so bad that in the middle of it all I went out and got a dog so I’d have a friend.” (Goldberger also noted that Kertess was the first Whitney Biennial curator to release the artist list well in advance of the show, with a bit of fanfare, leading the critic Hilton Kramer to tell the Times, “They’ve never advertised and illustrated the contents of the exhibition on the scale they did this year. I think it’s an obvious bid to have the exhibition favorably reviewed before it is actually seen, and I won’t be a part of it.”)
After the biennial, Kertess continued to curate shows, including “Willem de Kooning: Drawing Seeing/Seeing Drawing” at the Drawing Center in New York in 1998 and “John O’Reilly: Assemblies of Magic” at the Addison Gallery of American Art at his old high school, the Phillips Academy. In 2007 he organized “Meditations in an Emergency,” the inaugural show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which included Mark Bradford, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, Barry McGee, and others. His taste was broad and always evolving. “Artists make the definitions, and the rest of us have to follow,” he told a radio reporter in 1971.
Kertess published widely, penning many monographs and writing numerous pieces for Artforum, Art in America, and other publications. In 2011, Gregory R. Miller & Co. published a book of his collected writings under the title Seen, Written. His essays brim with intimate descriptions, nuanced interpretations, and bold arguments on artists stretching from de Kooning to Raymond Pettibon, Martin to Matthew Ritchie. In the introduction to the book, Kertess writes that, while “gathering these texts, I often thought of what and whom I had not written about,” before concluding, “More travel is now on my calendar. Still so much more to see.”
Kertess’s survivors include Billy Sullivan, his partner of more than 40 years, with whom he lived in New York and East Hampton.
Remembering the Bykert days in their joint interview in the Rail, Rockburne said, “The atmosphere then at Klaus’s gallery was a unique experience. In the back room there was a huge, white leather couch in the office where everybody plopped down and talked to Klaus. His desk was opposite it.”
Kertess jumped in. “I used to lift up cushions and pick the change up,” he said. “Part of what made it interesting was who walked into my office. There was one spectacular show after the next. It was stunning. Even though I knew the artists, knew their work, I was never ready for what they delivered.”
Copyright 2016, Art Media ARTNEWS, llc. 110 Greene Street, 2nd Fl., New York, N.Y. 10012. All rights reserved.
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1. Martha Wilson, Ricardo Dominguez, Mark Tribe, FF Alumns, at New Museum, Manhattan, Oct. 27
The Art Happens Here:
Net Art Anthology Launch
October 27, 2016
7 PM
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
$15 General/$10 Members
*Current Rhizome members: please email kaela.noel@rhizome.org for a discount code. Non-members: consider joining Rhizome today!
On October 27, Rhizome will launch a major new initiative, Net Art Anthology, with a presentation and panel discussion bringing together a group of artists who championed distinct and often conflicting approaches to net art practice in the mid to late 1990s.
Funded by a grant from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Net Art Anthology is Rhizome’s ambitious project to retell the history of a field of artistic practice in which even the most influential works often fade into obscurity as a result of technological obsolescence. It will restage a diverse selection of one hundred works from net art history, one per week, over the course of the next two years. The first phase of the Anthology will focus on works created before 1999, and launches on the day of the event with A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century (1991) by VNS Matrix.
The event will feature a presentation about Net Art Anthology by Michael Connor, Rhizome’s Artistic Director; Aria Dean, Assistant Curator; and Dragan Espenschied, Digital Preservation Director. Following this, a panel discussion will bring together artists who articulated early and divergent artistic approaches to the internet, ranging from performance to activism to narrative to folkloric cultures. Panelists include Olia Lialina (net artist and Geocities researcher/archivist), Martha Wilson (artist and founder of Franklin Furnace), Ricardo Dominguez (artist and founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater), and Mark Tribe (artist and founder of Rhizome). Each artist will discuss their early online work as artists, curators, and organizers, reflecting on commonalities and contradictions in the field.
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2. Katherine Behar, FF Alumn, fall news
My first museum survey exhibition, Katherine Behar: Data’s Entry, was presented this fall at the Pera Museum in Istanbul: http://www.peramuseum.org/Exhibition/Katherine-Behar/199
The catalog, featuring essays by Daniel Rosenberg, Patricia Clough, Alexander R. Galloway, Tung-Hui Hu, the curators Fatma Colakoglu and Ulya Soley, and myself, is now available for international purchase through Cornucopia: http://www.cornucopia.net/store/books/datas-entry-catalogue/
My new edited collection, Object-Oriented Feminism, will be coming out from University of Minnesota Press in a couple of weeks. This interdisciplinary volume may be of special interest to the FF community: it brings histories of feminist practices in body art, performance art, bioart, and other disciplines into intersection with recent object-oriented, speculative realist, and new materialist philosophies. Now available for preorder on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Feminism-Katherine-Behar/dp/151790109X/
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3. Carolee Schneemann, FF Alumn, at PPOW & Galerie Lelong, Manhattan, opening Oct. 21, and more
Further Evidence – Exhibit A
October 21 – December 3, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, October 21, 6-8 PM
In their first joint exhibition since announcing dual representation in 2015, P•P•O•W and Galerie Lelong are pleased to present the two-part solo exhibition by Carolee Schneemann, Further Evidence – Exhibit A and Further Evidence – Exhibit B. Taking Schneemann’s research on both the physical and metaphorical manifestations of the body as its starting point, the exhibition merges Schneemann’s critical but lesser-known works of the eighties, nineties, and the present. Both presentations are centered on representation of bodies in captivity and visualizations of repressed histories of control and confinement. Though Schneemann’s works from the sixties and seventies involving performance and the body are widely known, her later works have not received the same critical attention. Further Evidence – Exhibit A and Further Evidence – Exhibit B present a crucial selection of later works, highlighting in particular Schneemann’s large-scale, multi-media installations that incorporate her research, installations, film, and video.
Further Evidence – Exhibit A at P•P•O•W will present the rarely-seen Known/Unknown: Plague Column (1995-6), an installation which combines collage, sculptures, wall texts, photographs, and video. The title refers to a Viennese plague column from the 17th century, in which the bubonic plague is represented as a witch; the victory over disease is imagined as the conquering of an unruly and malignant femininity. Video loops of enlarged permutated cancer cells are juxtaposed with grids of religious icons. The savagery of the witch hunt and of breast cancer itself are unified within the maligned body, both feared and desired. As scholar Soyoung Yoon notes in the catalogue essay, Known/Unknown: Plague Column asks: Is there a continuity between this representation of the plague and our more recent imagination about cancer, a link between witch hunts and the current warfare model of cancer treatment?
Morphological vocabularies which originate in dreams initiate Schneemann’s process. Fresh Blood – A Dream Morphology (1981-7), also on view at P•P•O•W, began with a dream dominated by imagery of a bouquet of dried leaves and an umbrella. These images were united by the common form they shared – a ‘V’ shape. Schneemann composed a visual vocabulary of related ‘V’ forms in a series of works in varying media over the course of ten years.
Carolee Schneemann lives and works in upstate New York. She was the subject of the recent retrospective, Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria, in 2015, which was accompanied by a full-color catalogue. The exhibition will travel to the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 2017. A major monograph, Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable, was published by Black Dog in December 2015. The Artist’s Institute at Hunter College in New York held a multi-part exhibition, Carolee Schneemann Residency. In 2013, the artist was the subject of the solo exhibition, Carolee Schneemann: Then and Now, which traveled from the Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart in France to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León in Spain. In 2010, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York in New Paltz presented the retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises. An impressive collection of over forty years of letters to and from the artist was published in Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle, edited by Kristine Stiles. Schneemann’s work is included in major museum collections around the world, including the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
and
Carolee Schneemann
Further Evidence – Exhibit B
October 21, 2016 – December 3, 2016
Press Release
Opening reception: Friday, October 21, 6 – 8pm
In their first joint exhibition since announcing dual representation in 2015, P•P•O•W and Galerie Lelong are pleased to present the two-part solo exhibition by Carolee Schneemann, Further Evidence – Exhibit A and Further Evidence – Exhibit B. Taking Schneemann’s research on both the physical and metaphorical manifestations of the body as its starting point, the exhibition merges Schneemann’s critical but lesser-known works of the eighties, nineties, and the present. Both presentations are centered on representation of bodies in captivity and visualizations of repressed histories of control and confinement. Though Schneemann’s works from the sixties and seventies involving performance and the body are widely known, her later works have not received the same critical attention. Further Evidence – Exhibit A and Further Evidence – Exhibit B present a crucial selection of later works, highlighting in particular Schneemann’s large-scale, multi-media installations that incorporate her research, installations, film, and video.
Further Evidence – Exhibit A at P•P•O•W will present the rarely-seen Known/Unknown: Plague Column (1995-6), an installation which combines collage, sculptures, wall texts, photographs, and video. The title refers to a Viennese plague column from the 17th century, in which the bubonic plague is represented as a witch; the victory over disease is imagined as the conquering of an unruly and malignant femininity. Video loops of enlarged permutated cancer cells are juxtaposed with grids of religious icons. The savagery of the witch hunt and of breast cancer itself are unified within the maligned body, both feared and desired. As scholar Soyoung Yoon notes in the catalogue essay,Known/Unknown: Plague Column asks: Is there a continuity between this representation of the plague and our more recent imagination about cancer, a link between witch hunts and the current warfare model of cancer treatment?
Morphological vocabularies which originate in dreams initiate Schneemann’s process.Fresh Blood – A Dream Morphology (1981-7), also on view at P•P•O•W, began with a dream dominated by imagery of a bouquet of dried leaves and an umbrella. These images were united by the common form they shared – a ‘V’ shape. Schneemann composed a visual vocabulary of related ‘V’ forms in a series of works in varying media over the course of ten years.
The two multi-media installations on view in Further Evidence – Exhibit B at Galerie Lelong have an antecedent in Schneemann’s works protesting the Vietnam War, including her films Viet-Flakes (1965), Snows (1967), and Souvenir of Lebanon (1983). These works activate Schneemann’s characteristic process of collecting, filming, editing, and then exposing images which are suppressed. Commissioned by the Tate Liverpool in 2009, and on view in New York for the first time, Precarious is a multi-channel video installation. A motorized mirror system rotates the imagery 360 degrees to physically encapsulate the viewer. Precarious was motivated by Schneemann’s research into the torture of animals, including photographs of cats in cages captured for Chinese food, as well as sequences of animals and prisoners dancing in captivity. Fleeting sequences in which a bird, a bear, prisoners, and Schneemann dancing are edited together within the shifting frames of cages and the confinement of the video format itself.
Exhibit B includes Devour (2003), a dual-channel video installation. The work is built upon the juxtaposition between what Schneemann terms the “ecstatic normal” of quotidian moments and atrocities. “Evanescent, fragile elements” of domesticity are contrasted with “violent, concussive, speeding fragments” of “political disasters” and “ambiguous menace.” As in Precarious, the momentum of the visual vocabulary belies the horrific subject. The architecture of the grid and the recurring relationship of the body to social politics are present throughout the installation.
Carolee Schneemann lives and works in upstate New York. She was the subject of the recent retrospective, Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria, in 2015, which was accompanied by a full-color catalogue. The exhibition will travel to the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 2017. A major monograph, Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable, was published by Black Dog in December 2015. The Artist’s Institute at Hunter College in New York held a multi-part exhibition, Carolee Schneemann Residency. In 2013, the artist was the subject of the solo exhibition, Carolee Schneemann: Then and Now, which traveled from the Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart in France to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León in Spain. In 2010, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York in New Paltz presented the retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises. An impressive collection of over forty years of letters to and from the artist was published in Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle, edited by Kristine Stiles. Schneemann’s work is included in major museum collections around the world, including the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
For press enquiries for Galerie Lelong, please contact Danielle Wu, 212-315-0470 ordanielle@galerielelong.com.
For press enquiries for P•P•O•W, please contact Abby Margulies, 614-827-5810 orabby@ppowgallery.com.
and
November 2 Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable discussion with Kenneth White and CS.
Presented at the Performance Studies department at Tisch, NYU. 7:30pm.
November 2 Breaking The Frame feature film on Carolee Schneemann’s life and work.
Screening in conjunction with the exhibition A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant Garde, 1960s-1980s at Grey Art Gallery, NYU. 6:30-8:30pm.
December 1 Further Evidence… Exhibit C discussion with Soyoung Yoon and CS. Presented at PPOW’s 6th floor gallery. 535 W 22nd St.
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4. Jayoung Yoon, Hang Gil Han, FF Alumns, at Ozaneaux Art Space, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20
KOREA with KOREA
Opening Reception: October 20, 2016 7-9pm I By Appointment Only October 21 – December 07
OZANEAUX ArtSpace is pleased to host a unique exhibition produced by Korea Art Forum, titled KOREA with KOREA. You are cordially invited to the opening reception, Thursday, October 20 from 7 to 9 pm.
KOREA with KOREA is a group exhibition exploring a new Korean identity that has the potential to eliminate escalating tensions due to the country’s division. This exhibition attempts to contribute to the advancement of contemporary art while, at the same time, global peace-building, as it brings together landscape art North Korea, South Korea, China and the US.
Described for centuries as an arena of conflict and competition by most scholars of Korea, the physical land of the Korean peninsula seems to manifest a concrete instance of the abstract concept of contemporary art that advances by the logic of contradiction and competition. In addition, the country’s name, “Korea,” comes from the name of the dynasty Koryo, which literally means “high” (Ko) and “fine” (Ryo), implicitly conveying the core aesthetic values of the sublime and the beautiful. Inspired by these striking affinities of Korea to contemporary art, the exhibition questions external factors that impact the framework of contemporary art, a regime of the sublime and the beautiful that exists at the fulcrum of the precarious balance of power equation. The exhibition includes works of art that have rarely or never been seen in New York City and features the following artists:
From South Korea: Sungho Choi, Hongseon Jang, Tae Seok Ju, and Jayoung Yoon.
From North Korea: Chang Ho Choi, Hyunil Kim, Sunggil Oh, and Seonmyong Ri.
From China: Yutian Qi, Xiao Wang, Gaozhong Wu, and Shen Yang.
From the US: Joel Carreiro, Anton Ginzburg, Robert Morris, and Frank Webster.
Each of these artists uniquely reinterprets the meaning of landscapes and landscape paintings, revealing the conditions – historical, cultural, and/or political – of the society in which they live and work. Each artist finds different problems within the context of a landscape and articulates these problems in the visual language of their individual voice. Although all of the artworks explore the same theme – the land – they are very different from one another. Placing them together enables viewers to begin to identify sources of tension and conflict within the international policies of the four states.
The Korea Art Forum (KAF) was founded in 2013 and is a New York based independent not-for-profit organization led by artists with the mission of bridging the world through arts. In collaboration with other institutions and organizations, KAF presents thought-provoking exhibitions, discussions, and public initiatives worldwide, exploring issues related to the Korean division while fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists and audiences. KAF embraces experimental works of art, challenges conventional notions of art, and provokes conversations about contemporary art. For more info, please visit www.kafny.org.
The exhibition and related activities are, in part, generously funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as well as by public funds from Creative Engagement supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
For hours and appointments, contact Heng-Gil Han at hhan@kafny.org or 347-840-1142.
OZANEAUX ArtSpace
515 West 20th Street, #4E
New York, New York 10011
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5. Paul Zaloom, FF Alumn, at MassArt, Boston, Oct. 21-22, and more
Paul Zaloom’s puppet extravaganza is coming to a sector near yours, you lucky freaks! White Like Me: A Honky Dory Puppet Show is a hectic toy theater/ventriloquism exploration of the trials and tribulations of being a white male. Oh, golly, get the hankies out! See White-Man leave Planet Caucazoid to colonize the watery planet and set all those exotic natives right! Touring schedule Fall tour 2016:
October 14th: Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/events/archives/002454.shtml
October 15: Mayo Street Arts, Portland, Maine
http://mayostreetarts.org/?tribe_events=white-like-me-a-honky-dory-puppet-show
October 21st and 22nd: MassArt, Boston
http://www.puppetshowplace.org/zaloom
October 25th: Temple Stream Theater, Temple, Maine
https://www.facebook.com/templestreamtheater/
November 3rd, 4th, and 5th: Casteliers, Montreal
http://casteliers.ca/en/spectacle/white-like-me-a-honky-dory-puppet-show/
November 16 and 17: Philadelphia: First Person Arts
http://firstpersonarts.org/first-person-arts-festival/
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6. Bob Connolly, FF Alumn, at Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway, Oct. 27
FF Alumn Bob Connolly performing at the Late Night event at the Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway October 27th, 18.00 – 21.00.
“Chanting, all clamoring, chirping (Chiroptera), blaring elevator stops. Dings.” An exhibition and performance art event in correlation with the ongoing Munch + Jorn show at the museum, featuring a solo show of paintings by Christian Tony Norum and a group show of paintings curated by him, plus performance and performers invited by him.
Bob Connolly will be wearing a mask cast from the bust of Edvard Munch on Munch’s tombstone for a performance examining the legacy of Munch in modern Norway.
http://munchmuseet.no/en/calendar
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7. Felix Gonzalex-Torres, FF Alumn, at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, thru Dec. 25
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
September 30-December 25, 2016
Rockbund Art Museum
No.20 Huqiu Road
Shanghai
China
The Rockbund Art Museum is honored to present the first solo exhibition of the influential international artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-96) in Greater China. From September 30 to December 25, 2016, RAM will host a exciting exhibition of work by the American artist, who is renowned for his unconventional methodology and poignant sensitivity. The unique nature of his work takes this exhibition beyond a retrospective; it constitutes a genuine renewal of his art.
Selected from 30 institutions and collections across the world, the exhibition includes over 40 pieces, spanning from 1987 to 1995, allows audiences to contemplate a broad and meaningful selection of the artist’s works. The tension between the public and private, the shared and the personal, comprises a recurrent theme for Gonzalez-Torres. Many of the artist’s works consist of everyday objects, such as strings of lightbulbs, mirrors, wall clocks or printed sheets of paper. Other works are comprised of spills of candy and jigsaw puzzles. His artwork itself is like a puzzle, but lacking a univocal order. Its demure minimal aesthetic solicits the audience to put the pieces together for themselves, inviting a plurality of pictures to emerge.
It is well known that Gonzalez-Torres produced his work in the ’80s and ’90s in an American society and art community profoundly affected by the AIDS epidemic. However, it would be a mistake to engage with his work as simply dealing with homosexual issues or the AIDS crisis. These issues represent that circumstances under which the works were made, and can be understood as platforms for exploring human values, relationships and aspirations at large, both in the artist and in the viewer. In fact, one of the most intriguing aspects of this exhibition is the dramatic shift in the historical and cultural context of the artworks as they are exhibited in Shanghai. Much of Gonzalez-Torres’ work allows the environment to shape its aesthetic. By staging the exhibition in contemporary China, it will open up the artist’s work to a new context, as a 21st century Chinese public confronts its message for the first time. Audiences in China may readily recognize a postmodern diagnostic in the artworks on show. It is certainly a presentation relevant to an age of information, where social media and the internet tend to fragment personal identities and abrogate local bonds.
20 years since his passing, RAM is able to present the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres afresh, moving beyond the labels that once constrained its definition. Its uniquely interactive nature entails that meaning is not only discovered, but also contributed by its audience. This reciprocity is what makes Gonzalez-Torres both an artist of the polity, and in the end altogether intimate. Quirky and opaque, sharp and humorous: the pieces presented in this forthcoming exhibition will incite introspection just as they draw its audiences together.
Rockbund Art Museum would like to thank the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and the many institutions that graciously loaned their pieces, both for their generous help and their assistance in bringing this exhibition into realization.
About the artist
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) was the subject of several important museum exhibitions during his lifetime, including Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Traveling (1994) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; and a retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1995), which traveled to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; and ARC-Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Gonzalez-Torres’s interest in social and political causes may have informed the overlap of private and public life that can be found in his work. From 1987 to 1991, he was part of Group Material, a New York-based art collective whose members worked collaboratively to initiate community education and cultural activism. In 2007, Gonzalez-Torres was selected to represent the United States at the 52nd Venice Biennale, in the exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres: America.
About the curators
Larys Frogier is the Director of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai. Curator, critic and art historian, he is involved in artistic and social challenges in post-global contexts where ongoing social, economical, cultural transformations demand new ways of interrelations, citizenship and reinvented creativity. He curated numerous exhibitions and published extensive essays on the works of international artists: Adel Abdessemed, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Paola Pivi, Ugo Rondinone, Wang Du, Yang Jiechang.
Li Qi is Senior Curator at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai. He was Opinions Editor at The Art Newspaper China and Senior Editor at LEAP, where he currently serves as a contributing editor. He was a jury member of the 2015 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists. In 2014, Li Qi curated CONDITIONS: An Exhibition of Queer Art, at club Destination, Beijing. In 2016, he curated Heman Chong: Ifs, Ands, or Buts at Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai. Li Qi graduated from Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and from London’s Chelsea College of Art and Design. He has worked at institutions such as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing and the British Film Institute (BFI) in London.
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8. John Held, FF Alumn, at Berkeley Art Museum, CA, Oct. 21, and more
a. The latest multi-part installment of my, “Move Your Archive” article appearing in the September issue of “New York Arts Quarterly,” now online…
http://sfaq.us/2016/10/move-your-archive-part-three/
b. Upcoming lecture at the Berkeley art Museum:
http://www.bampfa.org/event/mail-art-history-and-practice-john-held-jr
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9. Peter Baren, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, thru Dec. 18
MICHAEL GIBBS – LET IT KEEP SECRETS
21 october – 18 december 2016
A series of events in Amsterdam, including exhibitions, lectures and performances, celebrating the early work of the writer, visual artist, critic and publisher Michael Gibbs 1949 – 2009.
Michael Gibbs was a pioneer in the field of visual poetry, deploying language as a visual means. Starting out as an English Literature student in England, he was active in the Fluxus movement from 1968 on. While still a student, he launched his art magazine ‘Kontexts’, which included interviews with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, among others. He lived and worked in Amsterdam from 1974 until his untimely death.
His works on paper, installations and performances all give evidence of a love-hate relationship with language. His obsession with language is particularly evident in his works on paper, through cut-ups, typewriter, mail and stamp art. In his performances, he pushed things beyond all conceivable limits by, for instance, burning and cursing the alphabet, writing with his own blood, or cutting words out and then eating them. His dry humour was a discreet presence in his deadpan performances and sound poetry events with John Cage and others. In the experimental period of the 1970s Michael Gibbs was closely associated with De Appel arts centre, where for the artists the floor became the canvas and the body was used as a medium.
With his independent publications ‘Kontexts’ and ‘Artzien’, Michael Gibbs generously enabled the Amsterdam avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s to obtain a platform for publishing work and embracing new initiatives. With Amsterdam as his base, Gibbs provided documentation from a ‘no-budget underground culture’ and made a vital contribution to innovative developments, ensuring that the ‘non-material’ forms of art of this period did not get lost. He published work by Marina Abramović, Sigurdur and Kristjan Gudmundsson, Ulises Carrión, Raul Marroquin, Reindeer Werk, Lawrence Weiner, Henri Chopin, Jackson MacLow, and numerous others.
The event ‘Let it keep secrets’ will acquaint a new public with this rich and exceptional body of work; those who already are aficionados will welcome this opportunity to once more explore Gibbs’ work. Artists’ books, objects, installations, concrete poetry and early photoworks are shown in conjunction with his notes. The exhibition will present excerpts from Gibbs’ performances, sound poetry and original recordings of his interviews with William Burroughs and Lawrence Weiner. It will be the first time that these archives are open to the public.
As a writer and critic, he exercised considerable influence with his articles on photography, disqualifying it as an objective documentary medium. Thus, he became co-responsible for the acceptance of photography as a form of art.*
‘The exhibits in ‘Let it keep secrets’ focus mainly on his pre-1985 work. Because Gibbs used to put his material away and focus on new developments in his art, the works of that period have not been shown to the public before.
Acting once more as a pioneer and publisher, Gibbs initiated the critical internet art magazine ‘Why not Sneeze?’ (1996). This site, composed in rudimentary HTML will be exhibited together with his ‘utterly analogue’ art magazines Kontexts and Artzien at De Appel. It is the only post-1985 work in ‘Let it keep secrets’.
Michael Gibbs’ enormous body of work remains relevant to and inspiring for a new generation of artists. The ‘Image and Language’ department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy is participating, creating interventions with Gibbs’ work as a starting point, thanks to its function as a source for current developments.
The event ‘Let it keep secrets’ consists of a varied programme with performances and installations at several locations, where artists will react with new work and installations.
The performers are Rose Akras [BR], Peter Baren [NL], Ivan Cheng [AU], Nina Glockner [DE] Mariana Lanari [BR] en Lot Meijers [NL]. Other artists taking part are David Gibbs [IL] and Doyoun Park [KR].
‘All or nothing and other pages’, a survey of the work of Michael Gibbs, will be published by Uniformbooks, edited by Gerrit Jan de Rook & Andrew Wilson. This book will be presented during the manifestation.
Curators:
Soledad Senlle Art Foundation: Gerrit Jan de Rook, art critic and Eva Gonggrijp, holder of the Gibbs’ archives
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Britte Sloothaak
De Appel arts centre: Nell Donkers
WG Kunst Artist Space: Eva Gonggrijp
Boekie Woekie: Jan Voss
Rietveld Academie and OBA: Gerrit Jan de Rook
Organisation: Archief voor Visuele, Concrete en Experimentele Poëzie and Soledad Senlle
Links: www.deappel.nl
‘Let it keep secrets’ has been made possible with grants from the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, the Mondriaan Fund and Soledad Senlle.
David Gibbs
Doyoun Park
Ivan Cheng
Lot Meijers
mariana darvas lanari
Nina Glockner
Peter Baren
Rose Akras
www.michaelgibbs.nl
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10. Jenny Polak, FF Alumn, at The Muffler Shop, U Chicago, IL, Oct. 22, 28, and more
Hello, if you’re in Chicago, I hope you can catch this project – it’s up till the US election!
The Mobile Speakers’ Podium for Citizens and Non-Citizens is beginning a month-long stay on the lawn of U Chicago’s Muffler Shop, part of the Arts and Public Life initiative. FB event here <https://www.facebook.com/events/1292450550806571/>
Weekly programming features activists, poets, student groups, prison abolition groups, performing artists, who through their practice engage with conversations around mass incarceration, immigrant detention, and citizenship. We begin Friday Oct 14, 6-7pm with great performers including Cauleen Smith, Damon Locks and Maggie Brown. Upcoming presenters include Aram Han Sifuentes, Bella Bahhs, Sam Love, Silvia Gonzalez, Diaz Lewis and Visible Voices Ensemble – and you (open mic.) Thanks to all the participants and organizers especially Nadia Sulayman, Dara Epison and the team from U Chicago, Meg Noe and John Hanson. If you are in Chicago come and join in!
The Muffler Shop, 359 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago. Future programs: Sat. Oct 22, 1-2pm; Friday Oct. 28, 6-7pm; Friday Nov 4, 6-7pm.
This project is on the move – I initiated it to carry forward the work of the immigrant and citizen communities who together stopped Corrections Corporation of America from building a big detention center in Crete, IL. You can read a great article about it in Hyperallergic <http://hyperallergic.com/313074/confronting-the-fears-detained-immigrants-face-in-the-us/>
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11. Lydia Lunch, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, Manhattan, Nov. 2-3
Lydia Lunch and Umar Bin Hassan | NO WAVE OUT
Joe’s Pub | November 2 and 3, 2016 | 9:30 PM | Tickets $20
Follow this link to watch the NO WAVE OUT trailer:
https://vimeo.com/186428831
No Wave Out is a brazen, unprecedented live performance uniting No Wave icon Lydia Lunch and legendary Last Poet Umar Bin Hassan. Disparate styles, cultures and generations of intellectual revolt are woven into a unified tapestry of spoken word and sound. Weasel Walter (guitar), Tim Dahl (bass guitar), Last Poets percussionist Don Babatunde and drummer Shaun Kelly create a freely improvised foundation of funk, jazz, avant-garde noise and No Wave Skronk to this trailblazing sonic adventure of agitprop verbiage and daring musical spontaneity.
“Lydia Lunch has defined the underground music and art scene for over thirty years. Predictable only in her unpredictability, she has exploited every creative outlet at her disposal, from film to books, photography to poetry.”
-San Francisco Weekly
Follow this link TO BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW
http://joespub.publictheater.org/Tickets/Calendar/PlayDetailsCollection/Joes-Pub/2016/L/Lydia-Lunch–Umar-Bin-Hassan/
“Umar Bin Hassan is an OG when it comes to spoken word, influencing a generation of MCs and poets as a member of the seminal Last Poets. The group’s albums were incredibly impactful. Tracks like “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution” and “The Mean Machine” were not only heard on the radio, but also on the streets of Black America as they blared from Cadillacs, ill-lit bars and Black bookstore doorways. Today, we hear Hassan’s booming voice on Common and Kanye’s brilliant “The Corner,” and we can hear his muse flutter all over Kendrick Lamar’s recent rhythmic revolt, To Pimp a Butterfly. Forty-five years after the debut of 1970’s The Last Poets, Brother Umar is still writing, fighting and expressing his pain. Older and wiser, Umar Bin Hassan is still telling it like it is.” -Ebony Magazine
“Of all the great unions of underground music, rock and otherwise; Bowie and Eno, Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld, Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin, John Cale and Terry Riley, Sonny Sharrock and Peter Brotzzman, and so on; the union between No Wave icon, transgressive artist, and spoken word warrior Lydia Lunch and free jazz, noise, and no wave musician Weasel Walter is perhaps the most harmonious and unquestionably the unholiest.”-Autre Magazine
Some Serious Business · P.O. Box 35 · abiquiu, NM 87510 · USA
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12. Sydney Blum, FF Alumn, at Kim Foster Gallery, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20
Dear Friends,
I would love for you to join me this Thursday October 20, 2016, from 6-8 pm for the opening of my new show Icarus-Colour-Space at the Kim Foster Gallery, 529 West 20th St. NYC. The show will have a long run until December 17th.
Here is a link to images of the sculptures.
http://kimfostergallery.com/sydney-blum/
Best,
Sydney
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13. Clifford Owens, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, Oct. 27, and more
Please Join Us Thursday, October 27
from 6 to 8pm for
Clifford Owens and Carlos Martiel in Conversation
Location: The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street
RSVP: media@sdrubin.org
As a follow up event to Carlos Martiel’s performance Maze, which takes place on Wednesday, October 19, Clifford Owens will interview Martiel on October 27 at The 8th Floor. Owens will guide the conversation to expose the relationship between Martiel’s practice and performance art of the 1960s, namely, body art. Together the two artists will discuss Martiel’s artworks, including Ruins and Expulsion (both 2015), both featured in Enacting Stillness, and will reflect on the implications of Martiel’s performance of Maze.
Carlos Martiel (born 1989, Havana) lives and works in New York and Havana. He graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts “San Alejandro” in Havana, 2009. Between the years 2008-2010, he studied in the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, directed by the artist Tania Bruguera. Martiel’s works have been included in: Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba; Pontevedra Biennial, Galicia, Spain; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, United Kingdom; Biennial “La Otra”, Bogotá, Colombia; International Performance Art Biennale, Houston, USA; and Casablanca Biennale, Casablanca, Morocco. He has had solo exhibitions and performances at Y Gallery, New York, USA; Samsøn Projects, Boston, USA; Robert Miller Gallery, New York, USA; Steve Turner, Los Angeles, USA; Axenéo7, Gatineau, Canadá; Nitsch Museum, Naples, Italy; Lux Gallery, Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Contemporary Art Center “Wifredo Lam”, Havana, Cuba. He has received several awards including Franklin Furnace Fund in New York, USA, 2016; CIFOS Grants & Commissions Program Award in Miami, USA, 2014; and Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, 2013. His work has been exhibited at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy; Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; Tornielli Museum, Ameno, Italy; Estonian Museum of Art and Design,Tallinn, Estonia; and Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.
Clifford Owens’ art has appeared in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His solo exhibitions include Anthology: Clifford Owens at Museum of Modern Art PS1, New York (2011-2012), Better the Rebel You Know at Home, Manchester, England (2014), and Perspectives 173: Clifford Owens at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2011). His many group exhibitions include Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Arts Museum (2012 – 2014), Greater New York 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art PS1 (2005), Freestyle at Studio Museum in Harlem (2001), and Performance Now (2013 – 2014).
Owens studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rutgers University, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He has received numerous grants and fellowships including the William H. Johnson Prize, the Art Matters Grant, the Louis Tiffany Comfort Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, the Rutgers University Ralph Bunche Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, and the Pennies from Heaven Fund of the New York Community Trust. Publications, reviews, and interviews about his work have been featured in The New York Times, Art + Auction, Village Voice, Modern Painters, Art in America, Artforum, The New Yorker, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, The Drama Review, Greater New York 2005, Performa: New Visual Art Performance, Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education, and Why Art Photography?. He has written for exhibition catalogues, The New York Times, Artforum, and Performing Arts Journal. His project Anthology is the subject of his first book.
He has been visiting artist faculty and guest critic at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Yale University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, New York University, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Studio Museum in Harlem (2005-2006), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2004), Pioneer Works (2014), and Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2016-2017).
Owens lives and works in New York City and is represented by INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, located in New York City.
RSVP: media@sdrubin.org
For more information on these events, please visit the8thfloor.org/#events.
and
CLIFFORD OWENS | Hard & Fast
PERFORMANCE DATES:
Thursday, October 20, 7pm: Autumn Knight, Yes and No
Friday, October 21, 7pm: Marisa Williamson, After Kara Walker / Before Clifford Owens
Saturday, October 22, 7pm: Allana Clarke, Archeology of a Silence: A Duet
Sunday, October 23, 7pm: Rashayla Marie Brown, Chosen by History
EXHIBITION DATES:
October 26 – November 6, 2016
RECEPTION:
Wednesday, October 26, 6 – 8pm
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is pleased to present “Hard & Fast,” an exhibition including four days of performances, followed by a collaborative object-based installation by Clifford Owens. This is his second project at the gallery.
Performances: Rashayla Marie Brown, Allana Clarke, Autumn Knight, and Marisa Williamson. Each of the four nights will be broken up into two parts: a performance by one of the collaborators (schedule above), to be succeeded by a camera-based reaction performance by Owens. Photography will not be permitted during the performances, and the audience will be limited to the first 40 people.
The extended exhibition portion of the project involves collaborations with David Choi, Andy Cross, David Hammons, Matthew Day Jackson, Rashid Johnson, and Eric Mack. Owens invited each artist to participate by requesting an object/image/text/etc. The objects, then, will be altered, modified, or transformed by Owens, and place on view for the duration of the exhibition.
PERFORMANCES:
Rashayla Marie Brown works across camera-based image-making; performance and social engagement/disruption; curation and installation; and theoretical writings infused with subjectivity and spirituality. Works have been commissioned by the Block Museum, Northwestern University; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Yale University; and have shown at Black Paper, Los Angeles; Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; University of Pennsylvania; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Centro Cultural Costaricense Norteamericano, San Jose, Costa Rica; and other venues. Her work and words have been featured and published in Art Forum, Blouin Modern Painters, Chicago Magazine, Hyperallergic, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, the Radical Presence catalog, and the cover of the Chicago Reader.
Allana Clarke is a conceptual artist working in video, sculpture, installation, and performance; and has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Ordinary Projects in Chicago. Clarke is also the 2014 recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship MICA, Skowhegan/MICA matching fellowship, Vermont Studio Civil Society Fellowship and the Peter W. Brooke Fellowship. She has recently completed her MFA in the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA and lives and works in New York and New Jersey.
Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation and text. Her performance work has been presented in group exhibitions at various institutions including DiverseWorks Artspace, Crystal Bridges Museum, Skowhegan Space (NY), The New Museum, and The Contemporary Art Museum Houston. She is currently an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016-2017). She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and holds an M.A. in Drama Therapy from New York University.
Marisa Williamson is a New York-based performance and video artist. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. from CalArts. She was a participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2012 and the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2014-2015. She has staged site-specific performances at and in collaboration with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Storm King Art Center, and most recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her videos, performances, and objects are exhibited regularly in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
Clifford Owens (1971, Baltimore, MD) has exhibited extensively both domestically and abroad. Notable exhibitions include the Brooklyn Academy of Music (2014), “Better the Rebel You Know” at Home in Manchester, UK (2014), Performa13 (2014), MoMA/PS1 (2012), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014), The Studio Museum (2012), and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2011), among many others. Articles about his work and practice have appeared in Art in America, the New York Times, Artforum, and the Los Angeles Times, to name just a few.
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is located at 89 Eldridge Street, just south of Grand Street. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11am-6pm, and by appointment. For more information, call 212-226-5447 or email: info@invisible-exports.com.
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14. Siah Armajani, FF Alumn, at Alexander Gray, Manhattan, opening Oct. 27
Siah Armajani
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 27, 2016, 6-8 PM
Exhibition Dates: October 27 – December 17, 2016
Alexander Gray Associates presents recent drawings, models, and sculptures by Siah Armajani from his ongoing “Tomb Series” (1972-2016). The Series pays tribute to philosophers, activists, poets, and writers who have informed and inspired Armajani’s art and ideology. This is the second exhibition of his Tombs at the Gallery, and the group of works on view highlight his interest in the way these cultural figures influence one another in life, death, and output.
The exhibition showcases Armajani’s drawings, sculptures and models, all of which are discrete elements rather than tools in service of a single realized Tomb. The variety of media he uses speaks to the democratic nature of his practice; the sculptural elements are built, the drawings made, but within his oeuvre neither process holds more significance than the other. In some cases drawings or models serve as the Tombs’ final conceptualized forms.
In his large-scale calligraphic drawing 100 and One Dead Poets (2016), Armajani honors poets across geographies and generations. The artist created this 14-foot drawing by recording excerpts from poems by each of these figures, and then meticulously covering the inscriptions with correction fluid. He describes the resulting surface as a “retinal experience.” The drawing is an abstract composition of text embedded with small representational elements that function as vignettes; for example one notices a small rendering of a pear, a common motif in his earliest calligraphic work dating from the late 1950s while he was still living in his native Iran. Also included in the exhibition is is the 16-foot drawing of the cityscape of Tehran, Written Iran (2015-16). As with 100 and One Dead Poets, the drawing is formally composed of written language, but here Armajani uses Farsi poetry, much of which he memorized as a child, to structure representational and architectural elements. Armajani pays tribute to a selection of seminal poets, especially Nima Yushij, considered to be the predecessor of modern Persian poetry.
Sculptures and models in the exhibition include Tomb for Richard Rorty (2016), a modular composition that incorporates elements of vernacular American architecture in honor of the American pragmatist philosopher. Tomb for Frank O’Hara (2016) celebrates the free-association style of the American poet and curator whose work poet John Ashberry describes as having “shatter[ed] the congealed surface of contemporary academic poetry.” The pastel pink and blue painted surface of Tomb for Arthur Rimbaud (2016) refers to descriptions taken directly from the French poet’s work.
Of note is Tomb for Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2016), through which Armajani pays tribute to the the German theologian who the artist explains “rose up to kill Evil Itself, and was hung for it” under the Nazi regime in 1945. In a departure from all of the other tombs he has created up to this point, Tomb for Dietrich Bonhoeffer includes an allusion to the man’s manner of dying; a noose which is pulled tightly across the top of the tomb itself. Through this compositional element Armajani communicates Bonhoeffer’s status as a martyr and identifies the pastor’s death as a defining moment of his life and legacy.
This exhibitions precedes a large-scale retrospective to open at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN in 2018. Siah Armajani’s public art works include the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (1988), Minneapolis, MN; Battery Park Waterfront Project (1989), in collaboration with Scott Burton and Cesar Pelli, New York; Floating Poetry Room, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Gardens at Villa Arson Museum, Nice, France; Lannan Foundation Poetry Garden (1992), Los Angeles; City Center Bridge Ramp (1994), Stuttgart, Germany; George Simmel Footbridge Strasbourg (2003), France; Three Skyway Bridges for the City of Leipzig (1997), Germany; and Lighthouse and Bridge for Staten Island (1996), New York. Solo exhibitions, including surveys and retrospectives at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2016); Parasol Unit, London (2013); Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (2008); Musee d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2007); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Raina Sofia, Madrid (1999); Villa Arson, Nice, France (1994); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (1985); Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN (2011); among others. Armajani’s work is in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; British Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; National Gallery, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Museé d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.
Press Inquires
press@alexandergray.com
Alexander Gray Associates
Alexander Gray Associates is a contemporary art gallery in New York. Through exhibitions, research, and artist representation, the Gallery spotlights artistic movements and artists who emerged in the mid- to late-Twentieth Century. Influential in cultural, social, and political spheres, these artists are notable for creating work that crosses geographic borders, generational contexts and artistic disciplines. Alexander Gray Associates is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America.
Alexander Gray Associates
510 West 26 Street, New York NY 10001 United States
Telephone: +1 212 399 2636
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
info@alexandergray.com
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15. Power Boothe, FF Alumn, at Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT, Oct. 21
Artist Conversation with Peter Howe, Walter Kendra and Geoffrey Detrani, moderated by Power Boothe Friday, October 21, 6:00pm
Five Points Gallery, 33 Main Street, Torrington, CT 06790
Five Points Gallery is a 501c3 non-profit organization
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16. Fiona Templeton, FF Alumn, announces 3rd Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights recipient
Announcing the winner of the third
LESLIE SCALAPINO AWARD
FOR INNOVATIVE WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
The Triumph of Crowds
by Brigid McLeer
The award will be presented
with a reading of the play directed by Fiona Templeton in early December. We will send out a further announcement with details.
In memory of Leslie Scalapino, her extraordinary body of work, and her commitment to the community of experimental writing and performance.
In our third round of the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers, we have chosen a work that is again very different to its predecessors. Triumph of Crowds is a layered work, weaving art history, film, and the contemporary politics and poetics of community. It opens up the space of performance into a time that is both meditative and urgent.
Brigid writes: The Triumph of Crowds is a lecture as performance, or performance as lecture, distributed between the voices and gestures of ten performers. Written in response to Nicholas Poussin’s painting ‘The Triumph of David’ (1631) it explores the politics of public assembly, protest, and becoming ‘us’.
Brigid McLeer is Irish living in the UK. She has been working and exhibiting mainly in visual art and installation, as well as performance and writing.
The Prize:
In addition to the reading, the winner will receive a cash prize and print publication of winning play by Litmus Press, as well as a full production of the play in the following year. Details will be announced on the website MailFilterGateway has detected a possible fraud attempt from “r20.rs6.net” claiming to be www.lesliescalapinoaward.org and via email – sign up here.
The next call for entries will be in 2018.
Our final rounds were highly competitive and we plan further presentations to introduce this year’s finalists.
The Leslie Scalapino Award recognizes the importance of exploratory approaches and an innovative spirit in writing for performance. It wishes to encourage women writers who are taking risks with the playwriting form by offering the opportunity to gain wider exposure through readings and productions. The award also seeks to increase public awareness for this vibrant contemporary field.
Finalists:
Lisa Langford, The Art of Longing
Jamara Wakefield, Rosie
Semi-finalists:
Kelly Malone, Reign of Contexti
Ish Klein, Orchids
Michelle Sui, house/body
Leslie Scalapino and the Award
In memory of Leslie Scalapino, her extraordinary body of work, and her commitment to the community of experimental writing and performance.
The Leslie Scalapino Award recognizes the importance of exploratory approaches and an innovative spirit in writing for performance. It wishes to encourage women writers who are taking risks with the playwriting form by offering the opportunity to gain wider exposure through readings and productions. The award also seeks to increase public awareness for this vibrant contemporary field.
The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights is funded in part by the Leslie Scalapino-O Books Fund and is administered by The Relationship. Publication of award-winning works will be in collaboration with Litmus Press.
For more information about Leslie Scalapino, please visit her website: www.lesliescalapino.com.
The Relationship, Fiona Templeton, Artistic Director, 100 Saint Mark’s Place #7, New York, NY 10009
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17. Marni Kotak, FF Alumn, at 4 Charles Place, Brooklyn, Oct. 25
“My Halloween Birthday Party, Ajax Turns 5”
October 25, 2016
4-6pm
at 4 Charles Place
Brooklyn, NY 11221
the location of Ajax’s birth and the former location of Microscope Gallery
costumes recommended!
Jack-o-lantern carving, pizza, games and more.
Marni Kotak, FF Alumn
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18. Stephanie Skura, FF Alumn, at WeisAcres, Manhattan, Oct. 30
October 30, 2016 at 6:00pm – Cathy Weis Projects and Sundays on Broadway present choreographer Stephanie Skura and a presentation of her newest work, Surreptitious Preparations for an Impossible Total Act. Joining Skura are a stellar group of dancer/collaborators: Paige Barnes, Sally Dean, Juliette Mapp, Wendy Perron, Debra Wanner, and vocalist Shelley Hirsch. All Sundays on Broadway events begin at 6:00 pm. Doors open at 5:45 pm at WeisAcres, 537 Broadway #3, New York, NY 10012. Seating is first come, first served. Keep in mind, this is a small space. Please arrive on time out of courtesy to the artists. Free admission. www.cathyweis.org
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19. Scott McCarney, FF Alumn, fall events
smARTnews FALL 2016 edition is freshly posted and
ready for your eyes at scottmccarney.blogspot.com.
N O T A T I O N S
Scott goes bananas in the Old Grey Lady!
P R I N T E D I T I O N
I WENT BANANAS IN NEW YORK
E X H I B I T I O N S
Artbook MoMA PS1 installation for the NYABF
El Libro de Artista, una lectura differente / The Artist’s Book: a Different Perspective
Transformational Imagemaking (last stop)
Art of the Book
Thanks for clicking.
Scott McCarney
22 Cayuga Street
Rochester NY 14620 USA
ScottMcCarneyVisualBooks.com
ScottMcCarney.blogspot.com
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20. Betty Tompkins, FF Alumn, at Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, opening Oct. 21
PLATO’S CAVE
EIDIA House presents
Betty Tompkins and Bill Mutter “The Bill and Betty Show”
Opening reception Friday, October 21, 2016, 6-8pm
Exhibition: October 21 – November 18, 2016
Hours 1-6pm, Wednesday – Saturday (or by appointment)
The Plato’s Cave at EIDIA House
14 Dunham Place
Brooklyn, NY 11249
646 945 3830 eidiahouse@earthlink.net
www.eidia.com/
http://platocave.weebly.com/
EIDIA House announces its continuing exhibition initiative PLATO’S CAVE, with the 24th artist(s) in the series, Betty Tompkins and Bill Mutter. This is their second two-person exhibition-not to mention exhibiting together in numerous group shows over the years.
For a little background color on “The Bill and Betty Show” Mutter states:
“Betty and I have been a couple for over 40 years. Early on we noticed that there were many ‘opposites’ in our lives. We were born almost six months apart. My father and her mother shared the same birthday. My mother and her father were born two days apart. When we met, Betty had a thoroughbred female white German shepherd and I had a male black alley cat, and so on.
It stands to reason that ‘opposites’ are a commonality in our works as well, as the drawings for our Plato’s Cave exhibit exemplify. And we specifically chose themes of contrast-in my case, childhood innocence and in Betty’s, the adult experience of sex. Opposition is usually thought of as being in a state of tension and conflict. In our case it means being in a state of harmony and balance.”
For The Bill and Betty Show, Tompkins’ images are digital prints of original pencil and polycolor drawings on paper, an edition of one. And Mutter’s are digital prints of original marker drawings on paper, an edition of one as well.
Betty Tompkins is best known for her photorealistic airbrush paintings of heterosexual intercourse, a subject explored from 1969 to 1973 and revisited some 30 years later. Tompkins’s work was censored in Paris in 1973 and in Tokyo in 2006. Born in Washington State, Betty Tompkins grew up in Philadelphia where she attended Philadelphia High School for Girls. She later received degrees from Syracuse University and Central Washington State College. Tompkins is represented by PPOW in New York City, Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach and LA, and by Galerie Rodolph Janssen in Brussels. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou/CNAC in Paris. Tompkins lives and works in New York City and Pleasant Mount, PA. www.bettytompkins.com.
Bill Mutter is a figurative painter/sculptor, and having spent his early years in a trailer park in New Jersey, Mutter has fond memories of being surrounded by cultural outsiders. His subjects include portraits of heavily tattooed people, bodybuilders, circus freaks and a series of large (8 feet tall) free-standing cutouts of professional wrestlers. As a ceramic sculptor, he created a life-size series of fighting cowboys in the ’80s and ’90’s. These works were followed by a life-size ceramic series of children in Halloween costumes. His most recent series is of dolls with animal faces; ceramic and mixed media. Mutter received a BFA from Monmouth College (now Monmouth University), in West Long Branch, NJ, and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His work has been included in many gallery and museum shows from the Lower East Side galleries of the ’80s to the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris. Awards include New York Foundation For The Arts and the Warren Tanner Memorial Art Fund.
For PLATO’S CAVE, EIDIA House Inc. Co-Directors Melissa P. Wolf and Paul Lamarre (aka EIDIA) curate invited fellow artists to create an installation with (in some cases) an accompanying limited edition. EIDIA House functions as an art gallery and meeting place, collaborating with artists to create “socially radical” art forms-framed within the discipline of aesthetic research.
Contact Paul Lamarre or Melissa Wolf, 646 945 3830, email to: eidiahouse@earthlink.net
www.eidia.com/
http://platocave.weebly.com/
Plato’s Cave at EIDIA House
14 Dunham Place
Brooklyn, NY 11249
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21. Vernita Nemec, FF Alumn, at Viridian Artists, Manhattan, opening Oct. 20, and more
VIRIDIANARTISTS A CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
548 WEST 28TH STREET between 10th & 11th Ave., NEW YORK, NY, 10001
TEL 212-414-4040
viridianartistsinc@gmail.com www.viridianartists.com
“Unusual Politics: The Madness of Reality”
Photographic & Mixed Media Invitational
Curated by Vernita Nemec
October 18 – November 5, 2016
Reception Thursday October 20, 6-8pm
Poetry Reading & closing event Saturday Nov 5, 4-6pm
Alan Gaynor * Franz Fox * May DeViney * John Nieman * Kathleen King * Jan Davis * Bruce Rosen * Kathleen Shanahan * Sarah Riley * Joshua Greenberg * Katherine Ellinger Smith * Dave Dorsey *Srividya Kannan Ramachandran * Ed Herman * Larry Zdeb * Naum Medovoy * Claudia Corò * Angela M. LaMonte * Erik Miller * Bernice Sokoll Kramer * Jackie Lima * Marcia Bernstein * D’Ann de Simone * Patricia Owsiany *
Elizabeth Bisbing * Victoria Webb * Bryan Smith * Jenny Belin * Marjie Zelman * William Patrick Armstrong * David Yendes * Robert Cenedella * Irene Christensen * Fred Gutzeit * Craig Cheply * Richard Brachman* Len Rosenfeld * Michael Wolf * N’Cognita * Michael Reck * Philip Gerstein * Kyoyoung Keum * Marcia Lloyd * Ursula Clark *
Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present “Unusual Politics: The Madness of Reality”, a Photographic & Mixed Media Invitational curated by Vernita Nemec. The exhibition continues from October 18th – November 5th, 2016 with an opening reception Thursday, October 20th, 6-8pm & a closing party & poetry reading on Saturday Nov 5th, 4-6pm.
The impetus for this invitational exhibit arose out of the trying times of this moment of reality that is so filled with madness. The upcoming election with possibly our first female president vying for the office with a political neophyte, racial anger, immigration, gun & police issues, environmental catastrophes throughout the world are tensions and stress that perhaps only can be safely addressed through art.
More than 40 artists are addressing their concerns and thoughts both directly and indirectly about today’s world with their art. Ed Herman’s photo of Lincoln dissolved by water dripping from AC, Angela LaMonte’s collage accompanied by a quote from Frantz Fanon about the magic finally being in the hands of the people; Marcia Bernstein’s abstract construction “Hatred’s Rising”; Michaels Wolf’s lead flag, Larry Zdeb’s assemblage of things from daily life that continues despite our fears; Elizabeth Bisbing’s “Obama of Mercy” collage with crowd shots of rallies mixed with fragments of Poussin paintings, Alan Gaynor’s multiplied face of Trump with lips pursed; Len Rosenfeld’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”; Craig Cheply’s “Maddog” man in a suit; Franz Fox’s “Danseur” symbolizing the chaos he feels in our country; Sryvidya K Ramachandran’s “Proudhon, not Marx” abstraction about gradualism. Kyoyoung Keum explores the disparity between “reality” and what is “true”. Racism, labor, the environment, law, hope and oh yes, politics are all explored through art and images.
These artworks all carry a message filled with worries about tomorrow. Sometimes the message is made clear by the title, sometimes by the image and sometimes the meaning is not at all clear, but then, that is the nature of these times. This is not the first time that Viridian has presented an exhibit focused on politics or social concerns because art speaks beyond words. Nevertheless, the artists have also been invited to present a poem or two to close the exhibition- for words and image both help to clarify our communication. We hope you will join us and see the power of art to express what is on the minds of artists in today’s tumultuous world.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12-6PM
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director at 212 414 4040 or viridianartistsinc@gmail.com or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com
and
Konzert Ariadne-Projekt-Ensemble, Leitung: Theresa Buschmann
H’Art Songs, deutsche Kanons, Thor the Nordoom u.a.
29. Oktober 2016, 19 – 21.30 Uhr (Eintritt frei)
Intermezzo am Mittag – täglich 12.15 – 12.30 Uhr
Gäste
David Rodgers & Vernita N’Cognita (New York, Performance), Gerry Monaghan (Ithaca/NY,
Skulptur), Sabine Lohner und Partner des Blinden- und Sehbehindertenbundes Frankfurt
Eine Veranstaltung der Ev.-luth. St. Paulsgemeinde www.paulsgemeinde.de
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung durch die Evangelische Zukunftsstiftung Frankfurt am Main und das Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
Vernita
Best,
Vernita
www.ncognita.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernita_Nemec
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22. Zackary Drucker, FF Alumn, at Haverford College, PA, opening Oct. 21
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College
Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics
October 21-December 11, 2016
Opening and conversation with curators:
Friday, October 21, 4:30-7:30pm
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
Haverford College
370 Lancaster Avenue
Haverford, PA 19041
Hours: Monday-Friday 11am-5pm,
Saturdays-Sundays noon-5pm,
Wednesday until 8pm
T 610 896 1287
exhibits.haverford.edu
Bring Your Own Body presents the work of transgender artists and archives, from the institutional and sexological to the personal and liminal. After exhibiting in New York City and Chicago last year, the exhibit moves to Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery; a program of performance, film, and artists and scholars in conversation, spanning several Philadelphia area venues, will accompany and expand on the exhibition’s conceptual and political stakes.
Taking its title from an unpublished manuscript by intersex pioneer Lynn Harris, Bring Your Own Body historicizes the sexological and cultural imaginary of transgender through a curatorial exploration of historical collections, including the Kinsey Archives. The exhibition presents contemporary transgender art and world making practices that contest archival narratives in favor of new historical genealogies. Moving beyond the aesthetically defunct category of “identity politics” and the fraught gains of visibility, the artworks propose transgender as a set of aesthetics made manifest through multiple forms: paint, sculpture, textiles, film, digital collage, and performance.
Sexological and diagnostic histories of the clinic and the case study still reverberate in the foreclosure of transgender subjectivity. Bring Your Own Body interrogates the archive’s often violent capture of identity, mining the visual data of “transvestite” photography collected by Alfred Kinsey as well as newsletters and ephemera of self-identified trans communities. Transvestism in the News (2015), a digital collage made by Chris E. Vargas after a visit to the Kinsey archives, repurposes sensational news headlines from the 1940s-60s about “gender deviance.”
Several artists interrogate the intersections of historical taxonomy and lived experience. Justin Vivian Bond constructs an intimate study of beauty and the search for the “transchild” in watercolor diptychs of the artist and model Karen Graham in My Model / MySelf (2015). Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s polaroids and collages, made with partner Lady Jaye, express the couple’s savage resistance to the “tyranny of DNA” and a commitment to deconstructing the fiction of self. Early, radical artists working in and around gender and performance are included, including handwritten text by the mother of “terrorist drag,” Vaginal Davis; ephemera from the archive of legendary drag queen Flawless Sabrina; and photographs by Surrealist outlier Pierre Molinier. Sculptures by Math Bass and Buzz Slutzky explore relationships between bodily absurdity and physical materials. Works from the estates of Mark Aguhar and Effy Beth, many of which are on view for the first time, recognize formidable accomplishments within too-brief careers and gesture to the importance of digital communities mobilized by young artists.
Artists
niv Acosta, Mark Aguhar, Math Bass, Effy Beth, Justin Vivian Bond, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Vaginal Davis, Zackary Drucker, Chloe Dzubilo, Greer Lankton, Pierre Molinier, Genesis P. Orridge, Flawless Sabrina, Buzz Slutzky, and Chris E. Vargas and the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art
Public programs
Saturday, October 22, 4pm
CLAPBACK
Performance by niv Acosta
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
Supported by the Leeway Foundation
Thursday, October 27
Queer Genealogies of the Normal pt. 1
4:30pm
Keynote Lecture: “In Treatment: Psychiatry and the Archives of Modern Sexuality”
Talk by Regina Kunzel
Chase Auditorium, Haverford College
7pm
Screening of The Queen (1968)
International House Philadelphia
Friday, October 28
Queer Genealogies of the Normal pt. 2
*All events at Haverford College
10am-4pm
With Lisa Darms, Johanna Fateman, Heather K. Love, Gayle Salamon, Kyla Schuller, and Tuesday Smillie
Monday, November 21, 6pm
Chris E. Vargas in Dialogue with Sharon Hayes
The Howard A. Silverstein & Patricia Bleznak Silverstein Photography Project Space
Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Monday, December 5, 7:30pm
Happy Birthday, Marsha! Conversation with Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel
Chase Auditorium, Haverford College
Sponsors
Bring Your Own Body: transgender between archives and aesthetics was curated by Jeanne Vaccaro with Stamatina Gregory and organized for The Cooper Union. BYOB is presented by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College.
Additional support for Bring Your Own Body has been provided by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University; the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania; International House Philadelphia; Penn Humanities Forum; the Leeway Foundation; the University of Pennsylvania Departments of English and Art; the University of Victoria Transgender Archives; Haverford College Libraries; the Haverford College Women*s Center; and Independent College Programs, Health Studies, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Concentration in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Haverford College.
Press contact: Matthew Seamus Callinan, Associate Director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and Campus Exhibitions, at T 610 896 1287 or mcallina@haverford.edu.
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23. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful, FF Alumn, at Jamaica Ave. and 165th St., Queens, October 19
Ayana Evans and Rory Golden perform in Jamaica, Queens
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
3:00 to 4:30 PM
Starting at the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 165th Street
These actions will be hosted by HERE IN JAMAICA, a project conceived by
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful for No Longer Empty.
For information about HERE IN JAMAICA:
http://www.nolongerempty.org/nc/home/what-we-do/artists/artist/dumit-estevez-raful-nicolas/
ACTIONS
Ayana Evans
“I have felt like rolling on the ground lately both as a playful gesture and as an act of exhaustion. So I will roll on the ground in my catsuit along with extra fabric for the next suit. There will also be strutting and cartwheels in heels involved. I’m perfecting them now. #blackgirlmagic”
Rory Golden
Duty Free Ranger: Coronado in Queens
A delusional emissary of her majesty, Duty Free Ranger seeks the city of gold and a pony in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. Dressed as a mash-up of a modern dandy and a conquistador, Duty Free Ranger asks for directions using all the Spanish he knows. Coronado in Queens embodies, destabilizes, and satirizes colonialism and militarism via a performantive public intervention, or what the artist dubs a “Fashion Action.” Spontaneous exchanges inspire curiosity, awakening passersby on their day-to-day paths. The action connects contemporary cultural expressions, i.e., fashion, with the USA’s violent colonialist history through an experience of walking, asking and searching for a mythical place.
Images courtesy of Ayana Evans and Rory Golden
BIOS:
Ayana Evans is a NYC based artist. She frequently visits her hometown of Chicago whose Midwestern and sometimes controversial reputation is a major influence on her art. Evans received her MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2015 she received the Jerome Foundation’s Theater and Travel & Study Grant for artistic research abroad. Summer 2016 Evans completed her prolific installment of solo residency performances, in gallery installations, and interactive group show performances within residency at El Museo Del Barrio in NYC. This was part of “Back in Five Minutes,” an umbrella series of curated museum happenings, conceived by Nicolás Dumit Estévez. Evans’s well known on-going performances/public interventions include: “Operation Catsuit” and “I Just Came Here to Find a Husband.” Other recent works by Evans are: “Thoughts on Rape; A Response to After Midnight by SHPC” Queens Museum, NYC, “Parasol” a triptych video collaboration with Zina Saro-Wiwa, Tiwani Contemporary, London, and “Stopping Traffic,” Gallery Sensei, NYC. Additionally, Evans is a co-founder of Social Health Performance Club (SHPC), artist contributor www.cultbytes.com, and owner of www.ijustcameheretofindahusband.com.
Rory Golden’s performative works destabilize colonialism and militarism via public interventions, rituals and acts of propitiation. Golden becomes an amplifier and transmitter of secret language that enables justice, facilitating individual and societal healing. He has presented at La Mama in NYC as part of NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art & Politics “Emerge NYC” intensive; at the Performance Laboratory (Detroit, MI); NYU’s Radical Archives Conference; Art in Odd Places in New York City and Sydney, Australia; Itinerant Live Art Festival; and Dixon Place Lounge (forthcoming). In virtual reality, Golden plays an haute couture menswear designer @rorygolden on instagram.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively or through experiences where the quotidian and art overlap. He has exhibited and performed extensively in the U.S. as well as internationally at venues such as Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05 and 07, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, NYU Cantor Film Center, The Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art and Politics, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Anthology Film Archives, The Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, The 8th Floor, Casita Maria, The MacDowell Colony, Provisions Library, El Museo del Barrio, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, The Center for Book Arts, Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. 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. Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He has received grants from Art Matters, Lambent Foundation, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, Printed Matter and Puffin Foundation. Estévez Raful Holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with Coco Fusco; and an MA from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He has curated exhibitions and programs for El Museo del Barrio; the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; Cuchifritos; The Center for Book Arts; 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 Raful was baptized as a Bronxite; a citizen of the Bronx.
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24. Dusty Grella, FF Alumn, at SVA, Manhattan, October 28, and more
200!
It’s true! Back in February 2011, I called up two of my favorite English professors, Bob Pope and Jerry Martien, and asked them to leave messages on my answering machine so that I could animate them. Then I posted those animations and the phone number for people to call and leave their own message. Now five years and thousands of voice-mails later, not to mention thousands of hours of animating, we’ve (and I say we’ve because it isn’t just me working on theses anymore, it’s the whole Dusty Studio team) created our 200th animation.
I wanted to take a minute to say thanks to all the people who have helped make a project like this happen and for the opportunity that it’s allowed for me to communicate to the world in some strange way (I’ll admit I’m a bit of an introvert). There are honestly too many people to thank in an email, they would start playing the talking-too-long music from the Oscars.
On a similar note, we are just about to finish a new piece to the puzzle where we’ve turned a 1940’s Superman style phone booth into a mobile Animation Hotline Hotspot, where people can climb inside and have a little privacy while they are telling their story. It is going to have its premier at the SVA MFACA 30th Anniversary exhibition on October 28th. Please stop by and say ‘hi’ if you are in New York.
You can watch a good many of the new animations on the freshly remodeled Dusty Studio website as well as Prayers for Peace and many of the commercial projects and personal animations.
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25. Courtney J. Martin, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, Oct. 16
The New York Times
ART & DESIGN
Righting Wrongs and Generating Attention for Art of the African Diaspora
By TED LOOS
OCT. 16, 2016
Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department, was relatively new on the job in 2013 when Pamela J. Joyner, a prolific art collector and supporter of artists of African descent, invited her on a trip to Washington to visit the studio of the Color Field painter Sam Gilliam. They looked at Mr. Gilliam’s in-progress pieces, a series of striking works with a thin stream of paint poured on board.
Ms. Wagstaff knew the Met owned a Gilliam work, “Leah’s Renoir” (1979), somewhere in its collection, and the visit “prompted me to take a second look at it.” Later, Ms. Joyner donated money to buy another Gilliam,“Whirlirama” (1970), and next year there are plans to exhibit both when the Met reinstalls its modern collection. “Pamela is such an informed champion of her artists,” Ms. Wagstaff said.
That trip to Washington was one of the many ways that Ms. Joyner, 58, exerts her power as an art-world influence behind the scenes. She has relinquished a successful business career to become what she calls a full-time “mission-driven” collector of a very specific niche: Abstract art by African-Americans and members of the global African diaspora. Now she leverages her relationships with the Met in New York, the Tate in London, the Art Institute in Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to help these artists gain traction in the wider world.
“It’s no less ambitious than an effort to reframe art history,” said Ms. Joyner, who sees herself as righting a wrong. “First, to include more broadly those who have been overlooked — and, for those with visibility, to steward and contextualize those careers.”
When art collectors publish a book on their treasures, they often include a glamour shot of themselves surrounded by myriad works. But in “Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art,” edited by Courtney J. Martin and published last month by Gregory R. Miller, there is no picture of Ms. Joyner anywhere. Instead, there are academic essays by curators and writers, with only a short “question and answer” segment with Ms. Joyner and her husband, Alfred J. Giuffrida.
“That’s very deliberate,” Ms. Joyner said recently over coffee in Chelsea. “The focus is on the artists.”
Ms. Joyner, who is based in San Francisco but keeps an apartment in New York, founded and ran a private equity marketing company called Avid Partners. She started the collection 20 years ago and now adds to it with Mr. Giuffrida, an investment executive whom she married in 2004. Her trove, more than 300 works, begins in the 1940s and goes up to “yesterday,” Ms. Joyner said, encompassing four generations.
Her definition of “African descent” has broadened to include William Kentridge, the white South African artist whose work has been in Ms. Joyner’s sights for some time. She just acquired her first Kentridge piece the other week in London.
As an African-American woman in the corridors of establishment power — an education at Dartmouth and Harvard, and then an entrepreneurial career — she said she knew the feeling of being an outlier.
“I’ve operated in environments where some people would construe me to be unusual,” she said. “And I am stitched together in a way that I find myself doing things that aren’t necessarily expected. So I relate to that journey.”
The book’s most telling photograph is from 1950, when Abstract Expressionists gathered in New York to discuss their work. Some were famous — Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell — but the black painter Norman Lewis (1909-79), whose work Ms. Joyner collects, was also there.
“He’s literally at the table, but he gets written out of that history,” Ms. Joyner said. “His first monograph was only published last year.”
She explained some of the factors that kept black artists from gaining a foothold, especially in the 1960s and ’70s. “For a long time, the art world wanted black artists to do black subject matter,” she said. “Art was a political tool. People were viewed as not part of the struggle if they were doing abstraction.”
About 100 artists are in her collection, and Ms. Joyner referred to Lewis and the Washington Color School painter Alma Thomas (1891-1978) as the “Adam and Eve” of the group, stylistically begetting the later generations. (Thomas is the subject of an exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem through Oct. 30.)
Ms. Joyner’s largest holding, more than a dozen works, is of works by Mr. Gilliam, who is 82. She also owns pieces by successful midcareer artists like Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon and Mark Bradford, and is scouting out new talents. The under-40 artists she is tracking include the Conceptual sculptorKevin Beasley; Hugo McCloud, who uses nontraditional materials in his paintings; and Samuel Levi Jones, best known for his mixed-media works on canvas.
The Los Angeles artist Charles Gaines, whose Abstract and Conceptual work is in her collection, said that “Four Generations” crystallized his longtime thinking about the context of his work as part of a continuum.
“Pamela’s book is the first legitimate academic effort to theorize some of this material,” Mr. Gaines, 72, said. “It’s a pioneering effort.”
About 60 works from the Joyner/Giuffrida collection will tour in a museum show, “Solidary and Solitary,” beginning next fall at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans. Ms. Joyner buys about 30 works a year and has never sold one, she said, although she has donated them to museums.
“Collecting is a job for Pamela,” said James Rondeau, director and president of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Ms. Joyner’s hometown, where she is a trustee.
Over the years, Ms. Joyner has watched prices rise for many artists she has championed. “One curator said that I’m my own worst enemy,” she said with a wry smile.
Lorna Simpson, an artist Ms. Joyner has collected and now befriended, noted that Ms. Joyner was no longer alone in her interest in the field. “The market was already starting to move around those pictures when she began,” Ms. Simpson said. “But she was ahead of it.”
Ms. Joyner is the daughter of two teachers, and she used to visit Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” at the Art Institute after attending ballet class. She noted that her mother moved from Mississippi to Chicago, where she attended her first integrated school.
“There was a keen sense in my household that you had to be prepared for whatever was going to happen,” Ms. Joyner said. “You needed these literacies, and cultural literacy was one of them.”
Ms. Simpson, who also has family roots in Chicago, said she noted a “black Chicago thing” about Ms. Joyner’s outlook, which she defined as a forthright sense of humor, “a way of seeing the world.”
Ms. Joyner does take breaks from collecting. “I have slumber parties with my girlfriends, and that has included Lorna,” she said.
So far, she said she was pleased by the reception to “Four Generations,” and had only one fear: that it might be misunderstood.
“The danger of these projects is if people think it’s a politically laden, identity-laden exercise,” she said, in explaining that race is not the only lens through which to view art.
“Those elements are there, but they are not the drivers. Good art is the driver.”
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
