What Sold at Frieze Seoul and The Armory Show 2023
Arun Kakar
Sep 11, 2023 10:21AM
Interior view of The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Vincent Tullo. Courtesy of The Armory Show.
Summer came to an end for the art world last week with the return of two major art fairs on two different continents: The Armory Show (September 8th–10th) in New York and Frieze Seoul (September 6th–9th) in Seoul. Both fairs are now owned by the same company after Frieze announced that it would acquire The Armory Show, along with EXPO Chicago, earlier this year.
Both fairs—for now—have not revealed any plans to change their September slots in light of the acquisition. As The Armory Show’s executive director Nicole Berry told us earlier this week, this year’s fair was “business as usual.”
The Armory Show, which has occupied its September slot since 2021 (it was held in March before the switch in dates), is part of a week of fairs in New York that also includes Independent 20th Century, Art on Paper, and the inaugural Photofairs New York. Frieze Seoul, which staged its first edition in 2022, takes place in the same building as Korea’s longest-running art fair, KIAF, and is a part of Seoul Art Week, which features numerous gallery openings and events across the Korean capital.
“The ambience at the fair felt upbeat with a good attendance from international collectors, and we have observed again that the city represents one of the most sophisticated art markets anywhere in the world,” said Wendy Xu, White Cube’s general manager of Asia, at Frieze Seoul. “It’s clear that there is a community here that is deeply knowledgeable and engaged with both local and international modern and contemporary art.”
Taking place amid a period of sustained tension for the art world, with worries of a market “correction” abound, both fairs reported positive sales and strong attendance throughout.
While dealers at Frieze Seoul disclosed a higher number of six-figure sales, reported figures from The Armory Show reflect more strength in the middle market. This will have come as a relief to many of the galleries in attendance, following a slower-than-expected first half to the year across the art market broadly.
Here, we run down the key sales from both fairs.
Top sales at Frieze Seoul 2023
Installation view of White Cube’s booth at Frieze Seoul, 2023. Photo by Lets Studio. Courtesy of Lets Studio and Frieze.
Katherine Bernhardt
Untitled, 2023
David Zwirner
Hauser & Wirth reported a number of significant sales, including:
A work by Nicolas Party for $1.25 million.
A painting by Rashid Johnson for $975,000.
Works by Paul McCarthy, George Condo, and Charles Gaines for prices ranging from $450,000–$800,000.
Works by Gaines, Harmony Korine, Nicole Eisenman, Catherine Goodman, Angel Otero, Camille Henrot, Allison Katz, Pipilotti Rist, Günther Förg, and Cathy Josefowitz also sold in the range of $40,000–$175,000 per piece.
David Zwirner sold works by Mamma Andersson, Katherine Bernhardt, and Rose Wylie at prices ranging from $250,000–$550,000, as well as multiple works by Yayoi Kusama and paintings by Josef Albers and Joan Mitchell for undisclosed prices.
Installation view of Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth at Frieze Seoul, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac.
Thaddaeus Ropac—one of Artsy’s 10 best booths from the fair—sold:
A work by Georg Baselitz for €1,200,000 ($1.3 million).
A work by David Salle for $250,000.
A work by Lee Bul for $190,000.
A work by Tony Cragg for €300,000 ($322,000).
Two works by Daniel Richter for €375,000 ($402,000) apiece.
Ropac also announced a string of five-figure sales for works by artists including Mandy El-Sayegh and Heemin Chung, the latter of whom the gallery announced representation of during the course of the fair.
Kukje Gallery—another of Artsy’s best booths—confirmed multiple sales including:
A work by Park Seo-Bo in the range of $490,000–$590,000.
A work by Ha Chong-Hyun in the range of $223,000–$268,000.
A work by Kyungah Ham in the range of $110,000–$132,000.
White Cube reported sales including:
A work by Anselm Kiefer for €550,000 ($590,000).
A work by Park Seo-Bo for $490,000.
An Anthony Gormley sculpture for £350,000 ($438,000).
A gold on cardboard work by Danh Vo for $375,000.
A work by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones for $75,000.
An oil on canvas work by Minoru Nomata for $50,000.
Pace Gallery reported several sales including:
A work by Joel Shapiro for $175,000.
A work by Qiu Xiaofei for $160,000.
A Robert Nava painting for $150,000. Nava also opened a new solo show of paintings, “Tornado Rose,” at Pace Seoul during Seoul Art Week.
A painting by Kylie Manning for $80,000.
A work by Kiki Smith for $20,000.
A “rare” 1965 sculpture by Alexander Calder, as well as a 1975 work on paper by the artist.
The gallery also sold several other works by artists including Kenjiro Okazaki and Yoshitomo Nara for undisclosed sums.
Loriel Beltrán
GP (Black and Blue), 2023
Lehmann Maupin
Price on request
Suki Seokyeong Kang
Mat 120 x 165 #23-66, 2022-2023
Tina Kim Gallery
Sold
Lehmann Maupin reported a string of sales from its booth, led by:
Lee Bul’s Perdu XXI (2019), which sold for $200,000. Another painting by the artist, Perdu CLXXXII (2023), sold for $190,000.
A painting by Loriel Beltrán for $75,000.
Five works by Chantal Joffe in the range of £24,000–£80,000 ($30,000–$100,000) each.
A work by Tammy Nguyen for $100,000.
An oil on canvas work by Soun Hong for $50,000.
Tina Kim Gallery—which was among the winners of the inaugural Frieze Seoul Stand Prizes—sold multiple works by Ha Chong-Hyun, Park Seo-Bo, Suki Seokyeong Kang, Maia Ruth Lee, Seok Ho Kang, and others in the $20,000–$250,000 price range.
Installation view of GALLERIA CONTINUA’s booth at Frieze Seoul, 2023. Photo by Lets Studio. Courtesy of Lets Studio and Frieze.
MASSIMODECARLO reported the following sales:
A work by Yeesookyung for $140,000.
A work by Aaron Garber-Maikovska for $100,000.
GALLERIA CONTINUA’s sales included a sculpture by Anish Kapoor for £600,000–£800,000 ($751,000–$1 million).
Cardi Gallery sold:
A work by Mimmo Paladino for $350,000.
A work by Dan Flavin for $250,000.
Oliver Beer
Recomposition (The Feast of the Gods, after Giovanni Bellini), 2023
Almine Rech
Price on request
Jenny Brosinski
So I guess I gotta stay now, 2023
Almine Rech
Price on request
Almine Rech sold:
A painting by Ha Chong-Hyun in the range of $450,000–$460,000.
A painting by Javier Calleja in the range of €240,000–€260,000 ($258,000–$279,000).
A painting by Cristina de Miguel in the range of $60,000–65,000.
A painting by Timothy Curtis in the range of $85,000–$90,000.
A painting by Medhi Ghadyanloo in the range of €78,000–€84,000 ($84,000–$90,000).
A painting by Oliver Beer in the range of £45,000–£50,000 ($56,000–$63,000).
A work by Jenny Brosinski in the range of €38,000–€42,000 ($41,000–$45,000).
A painting by José Lerma in the range of $35,000–$40,000.
A painting by Li Peng in the range of $15,000–$20,000.
Two works by Gioele Amaro in the range of €19,000–€21,000 ($20,000–$25,000) and €20,000–€25,000 ($22,000–$27,000).
Gallery Hyundai’s sales included a pair of works by Seund Ja Rhee, which each sold in the range of $400,000–$450,000.
Kurimanzutto sold works by Gabriel Orozco, Rirkrit Tiravanija, WangShui, and Haegue Yang in the range of $40,000–$550,000, mostly to Korean institutions.
Lisson Gallery’s sales included the placing of a work by Stanley Whitney for $550,000.
Other notable sales from Frieze Seoul 2023
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Sahara Longe
Mirror, 2023
Timothy Taylor
Sold
Sarah Ball
Fin, 2023
Stephen Friedman Gallery
Sold
Timothy Taylor sold out its presentation of 13 paintings by Artsy Vanguard alumnus Sahara Longe at prices ranging from $20,000–$30,000 apiece.
Stephen Friedman Gallery sold a number of works, including a Caroline Walker painting for £25,000 ($31,000); a Yooyun Yang painting for $18,000 ($23,000); and a Sarah Ball oil on linen work for £85,000 ($106,000).
Jessica Silverman’s solo presentation of works by Woody De Othello was met with strong interest. Sales included two large, glazed ceramic sculptures for $92,000 each; a free-standing sculpture for $85,000; a glazed ceramic sculpture for $75,000; and a large oil on canvas for $65,000.
Woody De Othello
mineral wisdom, 2023
Jessica Silverman
Sold
Mary Weatherford
Malachite and Shifting Light, 2023
David Kordansky Gallery
Sold
Various Small Fires had a strong opening day, selling a “variety” of works in the range of $25,000–$75,000 from its group presentation featuring Dew Kim, Wendy Park, Mark Yang, and Kyungmi Shin.
Hong Kong gallery Kiang Malingue made a number of sales, including eight works by Chou Yu-Cheng with prices ranging from $25,000–$50,000.
Seoul’s Hakgojae Gallery made a number of sales, including works by artists Pen Varlen (Byun Wol-ryong) and Haindoo for ₩100 million ($75,176) each.
David Kordansky Gallery said that it had sold “almost all” of its new works by Mary Weatherford within the first few hours of the fair.
Top sales from The Armory Show 2023
Lynne Drexler
Burst Blue, 1969
Berry Campbell Gallery
Price on request
Rupy C. Tut
If not me then no one, 2023
Jessica Silverman
Sold
While there were fewer six-figure sales reported at The Armory Show compared to Frieze Seoul, sales within the high five-figure price ranges were consistent across the fair.
The leading sales from the fair are as follows:
Berry Campbell Gallery reported the sale of two works by Lynne Drexler for $800,000 and $95,000 respectively; a painting by Alice Baber for $200,000; Perle Fine’s Bristling (1946) for $275,000; and Ethel Schwabacher’s Untitled (Woman Series) (1955) by for $195,000.
Jessica Silverman sold a large-scale bronze sculpture by Woody De Othello for $400,000; a painting by Julie Buffalohead for $50,000; works on paper by Clare Rojas and Rupy C. Tut in the range of $12,000–$20,000; a weaving by Margo Wolowiec for $38,000; and five table-top bronze sculptures by Rose B. Simpson to a mix of private and institutional collections for undisclosed sums.
Marc Padeu
La bague de Roxane, 2023
Jack Bell Gallery
Sold
Victoria Miro sold nine new paintings from its solo presentation of María Berrío with prices ranging from $65,000–$200,000.
Templon sold a work by Will Cotton for $150,000; Philip Pearlstein’s 2015 painting Model with Indonesian Mask for $150,000; works by Chiharu Shiota ranging from $64,000–$106,000; all of its works by Philippe Cognée for $32,000–$80,200; a piece by Alioune Diagne for $40,000; and a piece by Oda Jaune for $30,000.
Jack Bell Gallery sold a 2023 Marc Padeu painting in the range of $70,000–$100,000; and a 2023 work by Lavar Munroe in the $70,000–$100,000 range.
Ben Brown Fine Arts sold works by Yoan Capote, Candida Höfer, Vik Muniz, and Ena Swansea in the range of $75,000–$100,000.
William Brickle, Two Figures, Under and Over, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Kohn Gallery.
Chiharu Shiota
Endless Line, 2023
KÖNIG GALERIE
Sold
Michael Kohn Gallery’s main sales included a Siji Krishnan work for $80,000; three Nir Hod works for $75,000, $28,000, and $24,000; an Ilana Savdie work for $60,000; two Heidi Hahn paintings for $48,000 each; and a work by Alicia Adamerovich for $48,000. It also sold two Chiffon Thomas works for $30,000 and $26,000; two works by Rosa Loy for $16,000 each; three works by William Brickel for $12,500 each; a work by Shiwen Wang for $12,000; and a work by Faris Heizer for $9,000.
KÖNIG GALERIE sold a work by Ayako Rokkaku for $89,993; a work by Alicja Kwade for $80,351; a work by Xiyao Wang for $69,637; a work by Robert Janitz for $24,000; and a work by Chiharu Shiota for $58,924.
Edwynn Houk Gallery sold Zana Briski’s gold-toned photogram Bearogram #15 (2020) for $85,000.
Rebecca Brodskis
Sous hypnose 1, 2023
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
Sold
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery sold three paintings by Joachim Lambrechts for $18,000 each, and 15 works on paper by the artist for $4,200 apiece; five paintings by Rebecca Brodskis in the $32,000–$48,000 range; and a Sara Berman painting for $25,000.
Wentrup sold out its solo presentation of Jenny Brosinski, with prices ranging from $40,000–$50,000.
Hollis Taggart sold a drawing by Tom Wesselmann for $38,000 and works by Ezio Martinelli and Larry Rivers for $15,000 and $55,000, respectively.
Nara Roesler sold a 2001 work by Heinz Mack for $256,700, and two oil paint and wax on linen works by Fabio Miguez for $15,000.
Garth Greenan sold 11 works by Howardena Pindell, priced in the range of $100,000–$875,000 per piece; and a Mario Martinez painting for $125,000.
Kasmin sold 15 works by artists including Diana Al-Hadid, Theodora Allen, vanessa german, Daniel Gordon, Alexander Harrison, Lyn Liu, Alexis Ralaivao, and Bosco Sodi, with prices in the range of $20,000–$150,000.
Tang Contemporary Art sold works by various artists including Zhu Jinshi, Wang Xiayao, Yue Minjun, Egami Etsu, Yoon Hyup, Woo Kukwon, and Zhao Zhao, with prices in the range of $16,000–$125,000.
Other notable sales from The Armory Show 2023
Thomas Bils
Kansas City, Missouri, 2023
Spinello Projects
Sold
Spinello Projects sold oil on canvas works by Alejandra Moros in the range of $6,500–$10,000; works by Thomas Bils in the $2,000–$20,000 range; and acrylic on canvas works by Zoe Schweiger, ranging from $4,800–$15,000.
Richard Saltoun sold a Magda Cordell painting for $80,000; two Romany Eveleigh paintings in the range of $20,000; a number of vintage photographs by Annagret Soltau in the $10,000–$14,000 range; a painting by Sylvia Plimack Mangold in the “low six figures”; and three works by Jan Wade in the $8,000–$12,000 range.
Public Gallery sold five paintings priced at $18,500, as well as two large-scale sculptures priced at $22,500 and $23,500, from its solo presentation of works by Cathrin Hoffmann.
April Bey
Calathea Phthalo Green, 2023
TERN Gallery
Sold
Gabriella Boyd
Exit (iii), 2023
GRIMM
Sold
TERN Gallery’s sales included two works by April Bey for $18,000 and $25,000.
Half Gallery sold a work by Yuan Fang to a Bronx Museum board member for $35,000.
GRIMM sold a painting by Gabriella Boyd for $30,000; a painting by Anthony Cudahy painting with an asking price of $55,000; and works by Tommy Harrison and Volker Hüller in the range of $15,000–$20,000 per piece.
Frestonian Gallery sold four unspecified large-scale oils on canvas in the range of $30,000–$50,000; and placed several small works on panel in the range of $5,000–$10,000 by Hannah Brown on the first day of the fair.
Katharina Fritsch
Madonnenfigur, 1982
Ludorff
Price on request
Patrick Dean Hubbell
The Days Go By and Still, You Are There For Us, 2023
Nina Johnson
Sold
Fredericks & Freiser sold two paintings by Hannah Lupton Reinhard for $22,000 and $22,000; a painting by Danielle Roberts for $15,000; and paintings by Anna Kenneally, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Lizzy Lunday, and Maria Calandra for undisclosed prices.
P420 sold works by Irma Blank, Shafei Xia, and Francis Offman for $30,000, $10,000, and $6,000, respectively.
Ludorff sold two sculptures by Katharina Fritsch for $36,000 and $16,000; two works by Josef Albers for $15,000 and $14,500; two works by Frank Stella for $15,000 and $12,500; and a work by Katharina Grosse for $15,000.
Bruce Silverstein Gallery sold four works by Sarah Sense for around $140,000 in total.
Nina Johnson and Candice Madey’s joint solo presentation of works by Patrick Dean Hubbell sold with prices ranging from $16,000–$20,000 per piece.
Jose de Jesus Rodriguez
Memorial Park, 2023
Charles Moffett
Sold
Arleene Correa Valencia
Eres La Estrella, 2023
Catharine Clark Gallery
Sold
Catharine Clark Gallery made a raft of sales including the last artist proof of Stephanie Syjuco’s Phantom Flag (2017/2023) for $15,000 and a complete set of five photogravures from the artist’s “Afterimages” series for $24,000 to a private collection. The gallery also sold 30 embroidered works on paper by Arleene Correa Valencia for $3,500 apiece; and an additional 20 embroidered works on paper, ranging in price from $3,500–$4,200.
Charles Moffett sold four new paintings by José de Jesús Rodríguez with prices in the range of $14,000–$18,000.
Galerie EIGEN+ART sold works by Brett Charles Seiler in the $5,000–$16,000 range; and works by Ricarda Roggan in the $3,000–$30,000 range.
Jaclyn Conley
The Return of the Herd, 2023
MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY
Larkin Erdmann sold an undisclosed number of Ken Price sculptures in the $50,000 range.
MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY sold out its works by Jaclyn Conley; placed one Kwesi Botchway work in a museum in North America; and sold works by Johnson Eziefula for undisclosed sums.
Galeria Senda sold Glenda León’s Mirage: hidden story of the broken mirror (butterfly) (2023) to the Francis H. Williams Collection in New York on the first day of the fair for an undisclosed sum.
Miles McEnery Gallery sold new works by Inka Essenhigh, Raffi Kalenderian, Jacob Hashimoto, Tom LaDuke, and James Siena for undisclosed prices.
BASTIAN sold a Joseph Beuys lemon and light bulb object, titled Capri-Batterie (1985), for $33,000; and a 1997 Robert Rauschenberg painting from the “Anagram” series, titled Matinee (Anagram).
Patel Brown sold out their works by Marigold Santos, with prices in the range of $2,000–$14,000.
WHATIFTHEWORLD sold four works by Zimbabwean-born artist Dan Halter, priced in the range of $10,000–$15,000 (two went to a major private foundation in the U.S.); and four works by South African artist Inga Somdyala, priced at $3,000–$5,000 per piece.
Installation view of White Cube’s booth at Frieze Seoul, 2023. Photo by Lets Studio. Courtesy of Lets Studio and Frieze.
September 20, 2023
The Armory Show 2023 – What The Dealers Said
15 September 2023
The Armory Show, now owned and operated by the Frieze Art Fair group, is a cornerstone of New York’s cultural landscape. Since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show brings the world’s leading international contemporary and modern art galleries to New York annually.
The fair closed on Sunday, September 10, for its 29th edition in its third instalment at the Javits Center. The international art fair, which now serves as the opening event of the fall arts season, hosted a diverse array of international exhibitors, collectors, curators, artists, and guests, totalling 51,000 attendees. Featuring participation from over 225 galleries representing more than 35 countries, this year’s edition saw solid sales and ambitious presentations that transformed the Javits Center into a vibrant hub of artistic expression.
The fair’s impact extended beyond the venue, encompassing installations and events across New York City; reflecting on the event, The Armory Show’s Executive Director Nicole Berry said, “The electrifying energy at this year’s edition was felt throughout the fair. We had exhibitors and collectors from every corner of the globe who were elated by the strong attendance, extraordinary art, excellent sales, and the impact the fair has had on catalyzing important discussions. Year after year, The Armory Show has organized a gathering of collectors, curators, artists, and gallerists in the inspiring setting of New York and its fall art season.”
Highlights of the 2023 fair included sections curated by Eva Respini (Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery) and Candice Hopkins (Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project). Respini’s Platform section of the fair saw large-scale works installed throughout the central Agora, and Hopkins’ Focus section included solo- and dual-artist presentations. Together, they re-examined historical narratives through the practices of emerging and established artists, whose work is informed by structures of inclusivity and exclusivity. Taking these sections as a starting point, Adrienne Edwards (Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art) chaired the 6th annual Curatorial Leadership Summit, a day-long, closed-door symposium for curators from around the world.
Prominent museum directors and curators included Cecilia Alemani, Stéphane Aquin, Patrick Charpenel, Melissa Chiu, Anne Ellegood, Alison Gass, Michael Govan, Max Hollein, Anne Pasternak, Adriano Pedrosa, Adriana Rosenberg, Scott Rothkopf, Peter Snare, Alice Gray Stites, Matthew Teitelbaum, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Adam Weinberg, and Rein Wolfs were in attendance.
Many well-known personalities, including Venus Williams, Beck, Chris Rock, Anderson Cooper, Paul Rudd, Diedrich Bader, Paul Dano, David Cross, Reilly Opelka, Zoe Kazan, Rami Malek, Emma Corrin, Hugh Dancy, Alok Menon, Mel Ottenberg, Norman Reedus, Jane Seymour, and Patricia van der Vliet were spotted at the fair.
Top collectors in attendance worldwide included Stefano Basilico, Anita Blanchard & Martin, Nesbitt, Allison Berg, Estrellita Brodsky, Frédéric de Goldschmidt, Larry & Marilyn Fields, Glenn Fuhrman, Susan Goodman & Rodney Lubeznik, Abel Guaglianone & Joaquin Rodriguez, Agnes Gund, Michael & Susan Hort, Ronald Harrar, George & Liz Krupp, Ana Carmen Longobardi, Jeffrey Loria, Bernard Lumpkin & Carmine Boccuzzi, Roszell Mack III, Marianna McDevitt, David Mugrabi, Valeria
Exhibitors at The Armory Show reported strong sales to top collectors and prestigious museums and institutions. Many galleries reported sold-out booths, including 56 Henry, Alexander Berggruen, Charlie James Gallery, JDJ, Johyun Gallery, Marinaro, Martin Art Projects, Patel Brown, Sebastian Gladstone, Semiose, Van de Weghe, and WENTRUP.
Photo Courtesy The Armory Show 2023
Notable sales included:
Eleven works by Howardena Pindell sold for prices ranging from $100,000–$875,000 and a
Painting by Mario Martinez sold for $125,000 (Garth Greenan)
A painting by Lynne Drexler sold for $800,000, a painting by Perle Fine sold for $275,000, an Alice
Baber painting sold for $200,000, and a painting by Ethel Schwabacher sold for $195,000 (Berry
Campbell)
A large-scale patinated bronze sculpture by Woody De Othello sold for $400,000 (Jessica
Silverman)
A work by Kim Lim sold for $250,000 (Ben Hunter)
Nine new paintings by María Berrío made specially for The Armory Show sold at prices ranging
from $65,000–$200,000 (Victoria Miro)
A Month of Early Morning Fog Over Lake Montauk (March 2023) by Rob Pruitt sold for $175,000
(303 Gallery)
A piece by Will Cotton sold for $150,000, an oil on canvas by Philip Pearlstein sold for $150,000,
and works by Chiharu Shiota sold for up to $106,000 (Templon)
Works by artists including Diana Al-Hadid, Theodora Allen, Vanessa German, Daniel Gordon,
Alexander Harrison, Lyn Liu, Alexis Ralaivao, and Bosco Sodi sold for prices ranging from
$20,000–$150,000 (Kasmin)
Works by Zhu Jinshi, Wang Xiayao, Yue Minjun, Etsu Egami, Yoon Hyup, Woo Kukwon, Zhao
Zhao sold for prices ranging from $16,000–$125,000 (Tang Contemporary Art)
Photo Courtesy The Armory Show
Notable acquisitions included:
The Addison Gallery of American Art acquired work by Patrick Dean Hubbell (CANDICE MADEY, Nina Johnson)
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, both purchased textile works by Arleene Correa Valencia (Catharine Clark Gallery)
The Baltimore Museum of Art and Seattle Art Museum will both show seminal works by MacArthur fellow Joyce J Scott thanks to placement within significant collections that will loan the works on the occasion of Scott’s upcoming 50-year retrospective (Goya
Contemporary Gallery)
The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, Florida purchased a table-top bronze sculpture by Rose B. Simpson (Jessica Silverman)
North Dakota Museum of Art acquired a Salah Elmur painting
“The fair has been packed until the end, with many engaged collectors and museum curators eager to look at international artists and make discoveries.” –Anne-Claudie Corix, Executive Director, TEMPLON.
What The Dealers Said
“There was an undeniable buzz, a palpable energy that coursed through the air at this year’s Armory Show. Here, the spotlight shone brightly on contemporary artists, offering a unique lens through which to view the world of today’s art and experience a great sense of discovery. To stand amidst it all is to have a thrilling immersion into the world of creativity. A very successful show for the Gallery and its artists indeed.” –Michael Kohn, Owner Michael Kohn Gallery
“We had a fantastic experience at Armory this week, particularly given the inspired context of the Focus sector, which was a wonderful place to show the work of Patrick Dean Hubbell.” –Nina Johnson, Director and Owner, Nina Johnson Gallery.
“We have had a bustling and successful fair, meeting many of our regular collectors and many new ones. Both artists we presented, Joachim Lambrechts and Rebecca Brodskis, sold well.” – Kristin Hjellegjerde, Owner, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.
“The fair has generated electrifying energy, and we were pleased to place four seminal works by Joyce J. Scott into important collections before we open her approaching 50-year retrospective next year at the Baltimore Museum and Seattle Museum. We were equally delighted to introduce the work of South African artist Jo Smail, now in her 80s, who was equally well received by collectors, placing two works into collections during the fair.” –Amy Eva Raehse, Executive Director and Partner, Goya Contemporary.
“There is nothing like the energy of New York, which is encapsulated so perfectly each year at The Armory Show. We had two booths for this edition, which nearly sold out on the first day. It was so exciting to bring a group of our artists to New York, particularly Alec Egan, as the subject of a colourful and poetic solo presentation.” –Anat Ebgi, Principal Owner, Anat Ebgi Gallery.
“We’ve had a tremendous week at The Armory Show for JD J’s first year participating in the fair!” –Jayne Drost Johnson, Owner, JDJ.
“We are delighted with the fair this year. The Focus section was very strong, and we felt the public felt the same way. We are very pleased by the enthusiastic reception we received from the public and media. It was extraordinary for us to have Rajni Perera’s painting win the Sauer Prize.” –Roxanne Arsenault, Director, Patel Brown.
“The Armory Show art fair exceeded all expectations – it was a fantastic venue for showcasing our artists’ works and a hub for forging new connections in the art world. We are thrilled with our successful sales and are looking forward to returning next year.” –Jade Yesim Turanli, Director, Pi Artworks.
“Overall, it was extremely successful for the gallery and the artists.” –Lauren Every-Wortman, Director, The Pit. “We’re very happy to be back at The Armory Show; it remains an excellent stage to connect with American collectors and institutions. Sales have been positive, and we have placed large-scale works by Lavar.
Munroe and Marc Padeu, with collections based in New York and Los Angeles. Museum engagement has been particularly strong over the week; curators and patrons are taking the time to discuss and positively engage with the works on the booth.” –Jack Bell, Owner, Jack Bell Gallery.
“We’ve seen strong sales across 20th Century and Contemporary material. The market still feels robust for quality works of art.” –Ben Hunter, Owner, Ben Hunter Gallery.
“The fair had incredible energy this year. We are thrilled to be back at The Armory Show post-pandemic, and the fair was busy. Our booth’s impressive presentation of contemporary Chinese artists has gotten high attention. We saw a tremendous level of public interest in the artists we represent. Above all, the fair’s organization was excellent; it brought together a great audience and galleries worldwide.” –Vivian Har, Executive Director, Tang Contemporary Art.
“As two female gallery owners, The Armory Show supports our mission of celebrating unrecognized women artists. Selling five works in the high five and six figures is a stellar way to kick-off the fall season.” –Christine Berry, Co-Owner, Berry Campbell Gallery.
“The Gallery is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year, and our artists’ sustained presence in world-class museums demonstrates the high quality of our roster. The positive reception from institutions on the East Coast shows how our artists’ material and conceptual rigour is timely and timeless.” –Jessica Silverman, Founder and Owner, Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Jean Shin, Huddled Masses, 2020, cell phones and computer cables, in the Platform section of the 2023 Armory Show
(all photos Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic unless otherwise stated)
“Today, you need to have a story behind the art,” mused Isaac Stein, a New York-based collector, as we stared together at Jenny Morgan’s black-and-white painting of a spectral reclining woman at the booth of Anat Ebgi Gallery. He’s not wrong. Zig-zag your way across the 200-booth floor plan of New York’s Armory Show, back at the Javits Convention Center in Hell’s Kitchen through this Sunday, and you’ll likely overhear snippets of dealers romancing potential buyers with their artists’ sometimes credible, sometimes improbable backstories. You can recite a three-page CV from memory or name-drop that a certain curator passed by the booth, but if you want to sell, you better have something interesting to say.
The 2023 Armory Show had one clear message: The art world can no longer afford to take itself so seriously. And that’s a relief. For the first time in ages, I found myself feeling — dare I say it! — inspired at an art fair.
Anat Ebgi Gallery’s presentation, with works by Fabian Treiber, Charlotte Edey, Jordan Nassar, and Jenny Morgan
There was vanessa german’s sculpture “White Flag Rag/e” (2023), whose mediums included, according to a label, “a forehead kiss” and “a grown man weeping in the parking lot of a steakhouse in Cincinnati.” There were the strangely relatable paintings of Thomas Bils, particularly one close-up of a figure lifting their shirt to reveal a belly “nife fite” tattoo and a Hanes waistband, a flashback to my Miami ex-boyfriends; and Arleene Correa Valencia’s “fuck you, migra” textile piece, from her 2023 series handwoven by the Zapotec artist Jacobo Mendoza and based on texts engraved on the steel door of an ICE detention center.
Ontario-based Inuk artist Couzyn Van Heuvelen exhibited some of his foil balloon pieces, inspired by the Inuit seal-skin floats used to hunt marine animals. These works are typically filled with helium, but the fair prohibited it, worried that the artworks would drift up into the convention center’s impossibly high ceilings, thousands of dollars lost forever. “They told us: ‘Pop them or get out,'” said Fazakas Gallery owner LaTiesha Fazakas. “So we blew them up ourselves using straws.”
Left to right: One of Arleene Correa Valencia’s 2021 textile works at Catharine Clark Gallery’s booth; Thomas Bils, “Gene Deep Certainty” (2023), oil on canvas, 72 x 56 inches at the booth of Spinello Projects; vanessa german’s “White Flag Rag/e” (2023) in Kasmin Gallery’s presentation
Cynics will say the Armory Show aimed for cheap thrills, with a large portion of artworks admittedly falling under the loose categories of“engaging,” “interactive,” “kinetic,” or as some nose-in-the-air commentators who fashion themselves the next Donald Kuspit will call it: “gimmicky.” I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a bit of a circus at times, but a circus is fun, and art fairs, generally, are not. In the nonprofit section, for instance, I peeked into a makeshift art studio where artist Drake Carr was live-drawing a portrait of Interview Editor-in-Chief Mel Ottenberg, who posed on a plush gray recliner, arms crossed over his Lacoste shirt, with the vacant-stared nonchalance of the models in his magazine spreads. Titled Housecalls and presented by the Manhattan-based Artists Space, which was awarded a free booth this year as part of the Armory Spotlight program, the project turns innocent visitors into prying observers.
Artist Drake Carr live-drawing Mel Ottenberg for Artists Space’s Armory Show project Housecalls
On the exact opposite side of the fair, the South Korean Wooson Gallery was showing “Theme for a Major Hit” (1974), a motorized marionette-slash-self-portrait by Dennis Oppenheim that is the only moving work by the artist available in the market, I was told by a gallery attendant at the booth. I inquired about the price.
“We would also like to know the price,” he replied, shrugging and gesturing at a woman walking away from the booth — the late artist’s wife, clearly the one calling the shots.
I waltzed into a booth of British artist Poppy Jones’s works just as a frazzled art advisor (bingo!) was pleading an Overduin & Co. salesperson for a second reserve on a tiny but luscious oil-and-watercolor still life of a lemon, priced at $9,500. I respect her hustle — Jones’s works, rendered on suede instead of canvas, have a mystic allure that reminded me of Vija Celmins’s early depictions of everyday objects. In a distinct but resonant vein of entrancing painting was Coco Young’s “Coquelicots” (2023) at Night Gallery’s booth, a canvas entirely occupied by a lush green field dotted with wild blooms, with no beginning or end.
Coco Young, “Coquelicots” (2023), 51 x 70 inches (photo by Pierre Le Hors; courtesy the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles)
I thought about another observation by Stein, who portrayed this year’s fair as more “emerging” than previous editions. The limitations of this exhausted label notwithstanding, I noticed many of the artists whose work caught my eye were fair newcomers; young or old, these are individuals galleries really seem to be taking a chance on.
But not everyone thinks this is a good thing. “What galleries bring to an art fair costing them over $50K is what they are thinking will sell,” said Belgian collector and art-world pundit Alain Servais.
“Remembering Hans Ulrich Obrist’s words that ‘art is the best defense against annihilation by standardization,’ I have no clue what Americans find in those miles of interchangeable paintings, most of them with no more concept than a cigarette paper,” Servais told me. He said he enjoyed the Focus booths, whose theme this year was “materiality”; the most offensive disappointment was the Present section: “This cannot be the present of art.”
“Object and image-making is not enough to make it art,” Servais concluded, my eyes watering at the smoke emanating from the searing words in our WhatsApp chat. “AI can do it cheaper.”
Solo presentation of works by April Bey at the TERN Gallery booth
James Greenberg of Greenberg Art Advisory lamented the “dearth of modern material,” wistfully remembering the days when the Armory Show resembled the heavy-hitter Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) fair. “Galleries are trying to take advantage of the new focus on marginalized voices, which is wonderful, but it does seem that there’s a lot of testing of the market with new artists,” he told me. “For those of us who’ve been around for a while, it feels a little young, and less serious.”
Greenberg suggested that this perceived scarcity of modern art at the Armory could be attributed to the debut, just last year, of Independent 20th Century, a concurrent fair; dealers who had once gone to the Armory to flaunt their newly discovered and under-appreciated “masterpieces” of the 1900s now have a dedicated space to do so. Or perhaps the Armory Show’s acquisition by Frieze, announced this summer, had something to do with the vibe shift — but despite some mostly empty gossip, my feeling is that it’s too soon to say.
Shafei Xia, “The happy tiger” (2023), painted and glazed ceramic, 11 13/16 x 24 1/64 inches
Contemporary art fairs have one obvious upper hand: the artists, for the most part, are still alive, and often there in person. I was fangirling over the works of Lydia Blakeley in a solo presentation by London-based Niru Ratnam Gallery when I was told the artist was standing behind me. The centerpiece of the booth, a Danish vintage sunlounger that Blakeley re-upholstered in fabric painted with lovely, pink-tinged images of lobsters and octopi, was surrounded by variously sized works depicting objects of leisure whose function has been stripped away — such as a beach cooler filled with dirt and cacti. Others are scenes of Airbnbs in Palm Springs, a place she never visited — this is her first time in America — but had “experienced vicariously through the internet, thinking of these vacation sites as aspirational places.”
I learned Blakeley had come into her arts education later in life, having worked through her 30s in the retail and hospitality industries; she was selling to people the very aspirations that she now examines, parodies, and yearns for through her paintings. Perhaps because she was able to make this career shift, her works convey an authentic sense of pleasure.
“I couldn’t think of anything worse than being a tortured artist,” Blakeley told me. “While I totally appreciate that there are different types of artists, for me, I prefer the joy in it. I love that moment when I’m into a painting and something clicks, and you get a kind of rush. It’s mentally cathartic.”
Long caught in the liminal space between craft and something more prestigious, works of thread and fabric are reaching newfound institutional recognition.
IN FEBRUARY OF 1969, by a first-floor window that looked out on 53rd Street, the Museum of Modern Art in New York installed a work by a then-34-year-old artist named Sheila Hicks called “The Evolving Tapestry: He/She” (1967-68). Made of more than 3,000 “ponytails” of linen thread, as the artist called them, stitched together and piled atop one another, it looked at first glance like something one might encounter in a commercial fabric store. Neither traditional sculpture nor painting, it conjured both, a monumental object made from the humblest materials.
The show that featured Hicks’s work, “Wall Hangings,” was a rare American institutional endorsement of artists who make ambitious work out of fiber and broadened the idea of what art could be. Most of the artists included were women. But the exhibition received only one major review, in the niche publication Craft Horizons, by the sculptor Louise Bourgeois. At the time, Bourgeois, who also had work on display at MoMA in 1969, was making bulbous bronze, plaster and marble sculptures that referenced the human body. Though she’d grown up working in her parents’ tapestry restoration studio outside of Paris, she wrote that, unlike a painting or sculpture, which “makes great demand on the onlooker at the same time that it is independent of him,” these works “seem more engaging and less demanding. If they must be classified, they would fall somewhere between fine and applied art.” They “rarely liberate themselves from decoration,” she concluded, deploying what might be art’s most insulting critical term.
From the early 1960s to the late ’70s, in a chapter of art history known as the fiber art movement, artists — predominantly women — across Europe and the United States began experimenting with thread and fabric, often pushing them into three dimensions and away from the wall. There was the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, who became famous for hovering, engulfing sculptures of sisal and hemp rope that were so distinctive, they earned their own label: Abakans. There was Lenore Tawney, the Ohio-born artist who created intricate threaded towers that recall the arches of Gothic cathedrals. And there was the Nebraska-born Hicks, who spent decades studying fiber with artisans from Mexico to Morocco. She turned thread into tiny portable abstractions, as well as towering mountains and waterfalls that tumbled from the ceiling.
The energy around the fiber art movement, and the small flurry of institutional shows dedicated to it, petered out by the late ’70s, although many artists remained committed to the medium. As the counterculture embraced D.I.Y. crafts projects (like crocheted clothing or macramé plant holders), fiber art’s materials became ubiquitous. Yet it remained a cousin to so-called real art, trapped in the liminal space between high art — painting, sculpture and, increasingly, conceptual art — and its ignoble cousin, craft. As Elissa Auther explains in the book “String, Felt, Thread” (2009), the distinction can be traced back to the Renaissance, when painting and sculpture became associated with liberal arts like music and poetry rather than with supposedly mechanical arts like weaving and blacksmithing.
Old views die hard in art history. As recently as 1986, the critic John Bentley Mays of Toronto’s Globe and Mail took to American Craft magazine to explain once and for all why he did not consider it his job to review textile and fiber work. “Hands cannot contemplate,” he wrote, “and the creation of works for disinterested, han Tau Lewis, photographed at her Brooklyn studio on June 19, 2023.Credit...Chase Middleton. Photo assistant: Brian Galderisi
Tau Lewis, photographed at her Brooklyn studio on June 19, 2023.Credit...Chase Middleton. Photo assistant: Brian Galderisi
Now, as the art world reckons with just how narrow its conception of artistic genius has been, the hierarchy placing art above craft — and intuition above skill — looks ever more gendered and archaic. And in an age when we spend much of our time touching the flat surfaces of screens, this tactile art form feels newly seductive to makers and viewers alike as both a contrast with and a culmination of modern sensory experience. Ambitious and experimental younger artists are embracing fiber and textiles for themselves. While first-generation fiber artists traveled the globe studying with local artisans, today’s practitioners are more likely to rely on their own histories and cultural traditions. Tau Lewis, 29, who lives in Brooklyn, makes long-limbed figures and 10-foot-tall Yoruba-inspired masks out of recycled fabric, fur and leather. She sources her materials from thrift stores and friends and considers herself part of a lineage of Black diasporic creators using what they can find to give form to their dreams. Similarly, the Portland, Ore.-based sculptor Marie Watt, 55, makes towers out of blankets that provide a commentary on life in the Pacific Northwest, including that of Indigenous people. One of her materials is treaty cloth provided by the federal government to the Seneca Nation, of which Watt is a member, as part of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by George Washington. Kira Dominguez Hultgren, 43, of Illinois, creates textiles that double as self-portraits, interweaving materials like her Punjabi grandmother’s clothing, rope from a climbing gym and her own hair.
Tau Lewis, photographed at her Brooklyn studio on June 19, 2023.Credit...Chase Middleton. Photo assistant: Brian Galderisi
Alongside these new practitioners, there is an ongoing reassessment of fiber art’s place in history. This month, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction,” which traces the relationship between textiles and abstraction over the past century. (“Textile” is a broad term that refers to art made with cloth or woven fibers; many experts use the terms “fiber art” and “textile art” interchangeably.) Tate Modern in London recently mounted an exhibition dedicated to Abakanowicz. And the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., is preparing to open “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women” next spring. Last year, the curator Legacy Russell organized “The New Bend” at Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York, which presented the work of young textile artists in homage to the Gee’s Bend quilters, who for three generations have produced dizzyingly colorful geometric quilts in a remote Alabama hamlet. When New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art installed an exhibition of the quilters’ work in 2002 (amid grumbling from several board members who thought other artists were more deserving of attention), a New York Times review described the objects as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.”
THE FIBER ART movement formed against the backdrop of the women’s liberation, civil rights and antiwar movements. It was a moment of profound questioning in the art world, too, as minimalist artists from Donald Judd to Walter De Maria embraced commercial fabrication and mundane materials like plywood and dirt to challenge long-held assumptions about art objects. Yet while minimalism eventually claimed its place in art history, fiber art did not. The medium was “simply too rooted in technique to be taken seriously as an ‘attitude,’” the curator Jenelle Porter writes in the catalog for the exhibition “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present,” which appeared at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in 2014, one of the first shows to re-examine this history.
Textiles are an ancient art medium. (Hicks discovered pre-Incan textiles in art school at Yale and became fascinated with mummy bundles dating from a period beginning around 600 B.C. that were discovered by archaeologists in Peru in the late 1920s.) Yet even some of the medium’s greatest advocates were initially skeptical of it. At the onset of World War II, artists who had been trained in interdisciplinary techniques of art and design at the legendary Bauhaus school fled Germany and began teaching internationally, helping to introduce a new generation to fiber techniques. But the Bauhaus graduate Anni Albers, perhaps the world’s most celebrated textile artist, said the prospect of working with thread initially seemed “rather sissy.” She only begrudgingly enrolled in the Bauhaus’s weaving workshop in 1923 because the courses she had been more interested in — painting and stained glass — were open only to men. “Circumstances held me to threads,” she said in a 1982 panel discussion, “and they won me over.”
Marie Watt, photographed at her studio in Portland, Ore., on May 31, 2023.Credit...Mason Trinca. Photo assistant: Julian Croman. Styling by Pamela Baker-Miller
Tau Lewis was drawn to textiles owing to a different kind of circumstance: They were what she had readily available to work with. “My hands are like sponges,” she said one evening in her studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “That’s how I navigate my artistic world.” She was looking down at a table covered in fabric samples and absent-mindedly folding and unfolding a piece of black leather. In contrast to some of her predecessors, Lewis has been embraced by the contemporary art world. She showed several of her towering masks at the Venice Biennale last year (the exhibition’s catalog refers to her works as “subversive monuments”), and she’ll have solo shows at the ICA Boston and Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2024. But she is just as philosophically aligned with forebears such as Essie Bendolph Pettway, 67, a third-generation Gee’s Bend quilter who first learned techniques around age 8 from her mother. Recently, they spoke and found they “have [some of] the same questions and concerns,” Lewis said. “We’re really thinking deeply about the ghosts that are in the materials.”
A detail of “Sapling” in Watt’s “Skywalker/Skyscraper (Twins)” (2020), which includes blankets the artist has amassed over more than a decade.Credit...Collection of the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, N.M. Photograph by Kevin McConnell
To take fiber art seriously is to understand how fabric is inextricably linked to the body and is in many ways an extension of it: We wear it, we sleep under it, we are wrapped up in it when we are born and we are buried in it when we die. When I reached Hicks, who is now 89, at her studio in Paris, where she has lived since 1964, she was working on an unusually intimate commission: a collector in South America had sent her an array of garments to wrap and transform into what Hicks described as “bundles of memories” that her family could hold on to after her death. It was the opposite, in a way, of the Andean mummy bundles that helped spark her interest in textiles.
Hicks was equanimous about any late-in-life reconsideration of her art. “Today, the curators walking in the door are different,” she says. They aren’t textile or craft experts — they are contemporary art experts. And that ultimately seems to be the peculiar fate of this medium — in and out of fashion, like an article of clothing. Hicks has said that three generations of curators have now engaged with her work. Each one thinks they were the first to discover it.
Installation view, Pepon Osorio: “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón
latiente”. Badge of Honor (1995), New Museum, 2023.
Late Summer is for New York City’s Art Lovers
Welcome to LATINA’s Art Digest, a periodical collection of new events, expos, and happenings in the art world. From rising Latinx artists, curators, and exhibitions, we highlight the must-see art events happening at the moment.
At the end of each summer, aside from New York Fashion Week, New York City buzzes to the tune of world-famous art fairs and exciting new exhibitions. At Abrons Arts Center, curator Mellány Sánchez pays homage to mid 20th century fashion workers, and identifies a through line between their work and today’s leading fashion designers. Meanwhile at Kurimanzutto, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane showcases campy garments and “wearable sculptures” that question the fashion industry’s practices and gender binaries. Other artists and exhibitions contend with memory, such as Muriel Hasbun’s haunting experimental photography and Martín La Roche’s participatory audience exercises.
“The Endless Coup”
Carlos Gallardo, Abatido/ A La Carne De Chile, 1981.
On view at New Art Dealers Alliance from September 5, 2023 to September 30, 2023
“The Endless Coup” is a group show featuring 21 artists of Chilean background taking place at the New Art Dealers Alliance. The exhibition showcases works that contend with the impact of the Chilean coup d’état on September 11, 1973 and Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Floria González: “Mixtape”
Floria Gonzales, Thanks for the Dance, Leonard Cohen, 2023. Oil paint on canvas, 7 9/10 x 7 9/10 in.
On view at JO-HS New York Gallery from September 5, 2023 to October 5, 2023.
For her solo presentation, “MIXTAPE,” the Mexico-city based artist Floria Gonzalez translates music into visual form. Gonzales looks back at the time in her life when she would wait hours for the radio DJ to play her favorite song to record it on tape. Her ensuing work reads like a playlist: Home with You, FKA Twigs; Sound and Vision, David Bowie. Each of the artist’s song-inspired paintings are a nostalgic entry into a parallel universe. Power ballads and dreamy electronic songs turn to eerie dreamscapes. In Thanks for the Dance, Leonard Cohen, loose, thick brushstrokes depict a house caving in amid a gray and somber landscape. It captures the melancholy of Cohen’s raspy voice, and larger contemplation of the fluid nature of love and lust. The exhibition is a vulnerable exploration of music enmeshed in memories.
“Objects of Permanence”
Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY
On view at Abrons Art Center from September 6, 2023 to September 14, 2023.
During New York Fashion Week, “Objects of Permanence” amplifies the foundational contributions of Puerto Rican women and other Latina/Caribbean communities of the mid 20th century in New York’s fashion industry. This multimedia exhibition bridges their legacy with today’s leading fashion designers, featuring objects by the likes of Tremaine Emory and Willy Chavarria. This is a tribute to the hands that built and dressed New York City.
The Armory Show
Jean-Pierre Villafañe, Stroll, 2023. Oil on Linen, 72 x 48 inches.
On view at the Javits Center from September 8, 2023 to September 10, 2023.
The Armory Show — one of the most highly anticipated art fairs — returns to New York City. This year’s roster brings galleries from across the country, including the Latin American cities São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogota, and San Juan. We are particularly excited to see Embajada’s presentation of Jean Pierre Villafañe’s carnivalesque paintings and Catherine Clark Gallery’s booth featuring Arleene Correa Valencia’s faceless depictions of migration on textiles.
Mildred Beltré: “Allow Me to Gather Myself”
Mildred Beltré, Shine, Walnut ink and color pencil on paper, 22 x 30 in.
On view at The Latinx Project from September 8, 2023 to December 7, 2023.
“Allow Me to Gather Myself” features work by The Latinx Project Artist-in-Residence Mildred Beltré. In this solo exhibition, Beltré explores “the power and limits of language.” The artist has a wide ranging practice working across abstraction, textiles, and even creating her own walnut-based ink to develop a “counter archive” of Afro-diasporic ways of knowing. The public is invited to RSVP for the opening reception.
On view PROXYCO Gallery opening on September 8, 2023.
Dolores Furtado experiments with glass and paper pulp sculptures in her solo show, “Vestigio.” She is interested in collapsing time and space in her work. Her glass sculptures are simultaneously pristine and timeworn, futuristic and ancient. Furtado’s sculptures, characterized by their rough exterior and amorphous shaping, defy expectations of what glass objects can be.
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: “New Lexicons for Embodiment”
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Look 3, 2023. Belts, rivets, polyester and metal, 82.68 x 55.12 x 19.69 in. Courtesy of Kurimanzutto.
On view at Kurimanzutto New York from September 14, 2023 to October 21, 2023
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane works at the intersection of fashion and art. In “New Lexicons for Embodiment,” the fashion designer and artist showcases ready-to-wear garments from her eponymous label, and new “wearable sculptures,” through which Kane can articulate social issues within the fashion industry.
On view at Kurimanzutto New York from September 14, 2023 to October 21, 2023
In “Undefined Inclusions,” Paulo Monteiro explores the limits of shapes in 50 separate artworks. His vivid oil paintings on linen and sculptural works are all about form and perception. As seen in his piece Untitled/ Sem título, the oval motif repeats across sculptures and paintings as a passageway for new colors, tones and shapes. See this exhibition for a mesmerizing journey into abstraction and bright colorways.
Pepón Osorio: “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente”
Installation view, Pepón Osorio: “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente”. Badge of Honor (1995), New Museum, 2023.
On view at the New Museum through September 17, 2023.
For over thirty years, Pepón Osorio has upended traditional notions of art-making via his richly ornate installations. “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente” is Osorio’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. It includes five large-scale installations inspired by everyday environments, from home interiors to barbershops and classrooms. These include Badge of Honor (1995), a recreation of a teenage boy’s room adjacent to a cell block. The artwork slowly reveals itself to be an intimate conversation between a teenager and his imprisoned father. Vignettes of everyday life overpower the museum walls and ultimately question how we might take better care of one another.
Martín La Roche: “Yo también me acuerdo”
Installation view, Martín La Roche: “Yo también me acuerdo”, Miriam Gallery, 2023
On view at Miriam Gallery from September 21, 2023 to November 18, 2023.
“Yo tambien me acuerdo (I do remember)” is a site-specific participatory installation that encourages visitors to touch the art, and most importantly, to remember and forge new narratives. Via a series of prompts embedded in the exhibition, artist Martín La Roche activates the gallery into a space for collective healing and renaming. The artist is scheduled to lead a series of creative, tactile, and group exercises throughout the run of the exhibition.
On view at the International Center for Photography from September 29, 2023 to January 8, 2024.
Multidisciplinary artist and educator Muriel Hasbun superimposes X-ray scans, expired film, and archival family documents to foreground overlapping ideas of home, geography and borders. “Tracing Terruño” illustrates the way migration, war and genocide are forever imprinted on terruño (land). Hasbun, a descendant of Salvadoran and Palestinian Christians on her paternal side, and Polish and French Jews on her maternal side, grounds the exhibition in the personal. Her experience migrating from El Salvador during the civil war in 1979, and her mixed heritage pulsate across her work. In “Tracing Terruño,” Muriel Hasbun tells the story of one family’s experience with dislocation via nearly 80 experimental works. Through photography, video and installation, the artist embarks on a quest of remembering.
Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: “Q’iwanakaxa/Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa” (Cacique apoderado Francisco Tancara & Rosa Quiñones confronted by the subprefecto, chief of police, corregidor, archbishop, Reid Shepard, & Adventist missionaries)
Installation view of Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: “Q’iwanakaxa/Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa (Cacique apoderado Francisco Tancara & Rosa Quiñones confronted by the subprefecto, chief of police, corregidor, archbishop, Reid Shepard, & Adventist missionaries)”. Photo: Steven Paneccasio
On view at MOMA PS1 until October 2, 2023.
Siblings Chuquimamani-Condori (Elysia Crampton Chuquimia) and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton honor their great-great-grandparents who worked towards asserting the Aymara people’s land and religious rights in Bolivia. In collaboration with family, the siblings resume their ancestors’ legacy by bringing Indigenous Aymara cosmologies to MOMA PS1. The immersive exhibition consists of a mural accompanied by sound and music.
Manuel Aja Espil: “Worlds of Exile”
Manuel Aja Espil, Invasion of Wilkes Land, 2023, Oil on linen, 56 3/4 x 72 1/2 in.
On view at Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary through October 14, 2023.
Manuel Aja Espil proposes a new visual vocabulary for dystopian fables. Aja Espil draws from sci-fi, cartoons and Charles Dickens to create imaginary universes full of sarcasm and spectacle. “Worlds of Exile,” Aja Espil’s first solo exhibition in the U.S., features new paintings that fuse European romantic landscapes with fantastical subjects. His gaze on society and nature may just imagine a world without the direct presence of human beings.
Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Found image: “nude woman behind opaque glass,” 2023. Photo: Erik Von Weber, licensed via Getty Images.
On view at the New Museum from October 12, 2023 to January 14, 2024
In “Nothing New,” artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, better known as Puppies Puppies, will blend art and life together as she transforms the New Museum’s lobby into a stage for her daily activities. Mediated through a fogged glass, viewers will have a cloudy view of the artist as she re-contextualizes quotidian life into a performance. In sensationalizing her daily existence, Kuriki-Olivo embraces the nuanced layers of her own identity, rejecting tokenization and reductive narratives of racial and trans identities.
Joanna García Cherán is an art historian, writer and cultural worker passionate about art of our time.
The Best Booths at the Armory Show, Where Under-Recognized Giants and Rising Stars Collide
The Fabric Workshop and Museum presents ‘Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art,’ an exhibition that explore and engage with sound.
By, Alex Greenberger
Published on September 7, 2023 11:00pm
The scene at the 2023 Armory Show
Photo: Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
There is no shortage of art to see in New York this week, but the big event most will attend is the Armory Show, the sprawling art fair that has once again touched down at the Javits Center. In 2021, when the fair first relocated there, a pandemic-driven anxiety accompanied the proceedings. Now, the mood is lighter, and the art is, too.
Many of the 225-plus galleries exhibiting here have trotted out paintings and sculptures with the hope of currying favor with collectors, advisers, and other dealers. The fair is, after all, a market event whose art is meant for selling first, appreciation second. But the offerings this year thankfully skew slightly more ambitious than usual, with under-recognized artists deserving more attention and difficult conceptual artwork in need of thoughtful viewing.
Curator Candice Hopkins’s “Focus” section, for single- and two-person presentations, is this fair’s high point. Many galleries in it are spotlighting Indigenous and First Nation artists; some of them also appear in Hopkins’s exhibition “Indian Theater” at Bard College upstate. Meanwhile, the “Presents” section, for younger galleries, is also strong.
How best to approach this fair’s multitude of booths? Below are 10 of the finest ones.
Sonia Boyce at Apalazzo
Apalazzo's Sonia Boyce booth
Photo: Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
Having won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale and just this week joined Hauser & Wirth, Sonia Boyce is on a hot streak. Her success continues with this booth by her Italian gallery. She is showing three pieces having to do with hair, which Boyce, a leading figure of the British Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, asserts as a defining feature of one’s identity.
The booth is anchored by The Audition, a work that Boyce first staged at Home, an art space in Manchester, in 1997. For that work, participants were asked to try on an Afro wig and were then photographed with and without it. The pictures of them can seem so markedly different as to portray two different people—a particularly complicated knot in Boyce’s concept, given that a number of the participants appear to have been white. She was questioning what truly counted as Black representation, and only continued to do so in another piece here, the 2005 video Exquisite Tension, in which a Black woman and a white man’s hair are tied together, leaving them inseparable from one another.
Cathy Lu at Micki Meng
Cathy Lu, Peripheral Visions, 2022.
Photo: Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
This booth, arguably the most visually stunning one of the entire fair, is filled by a single installation: Peripheral Visions (2022), an expanded version of which previously appeared at San Francisco’s Chinese Culture Center last year. Set against blue walls, the installation features ceramic eyes that spout streams of water tinged yellow by onion skins; Lu has called these flows “yellow tears.” Each pair of peepers is modeled on those of a famous Asian American—the artist Ruth Asawa, the figure skater Michelle Kwan, and the author Cathy Park Hong, to name a few.
It would be easy to read Lu’s installation as a representation of the sadness felt amid a recent surge in violence against Asian Americans, but the work is more complex than that. The soothing burble of water spewing into buckets and bowls—all of them based on Lu’s grandmother’s kitchenware—provides a respite in a chaotic world.
Arlene Correa Valencia and Stephanie Syjuco at Catherine Clark Gallery
Work by Arlene Correa Valencia and Stephanie Syjuco at Catherine Clark Gallery's booth.
Photo: Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
San Francisco’s Catherine Clark Gallery has paired two artists whose work piercingly takes up the pain and loss associated with the immigrant experience in the US. Those losses, these artists suggest, are not merely physical but psychological as well. Arlene Correa Valencia, who was born in Mexico and is now based in California’s Napa Valley, represents this by way of images of migrant farm workers on the job. One depicted behind a tree melts away into their labor, their face disappearing behind a tree whose leaves are left blank. All that remains is an orange vest whose zipper dangles off the canvas.
The Manila-born artist Stephanie Syjuco, meanwhile, focuses on the Philippines, photographing official documents that have been corrected to account for mistakes made by Dean Conant Worcester, an American who helped colonize the country during the 19th century. Alongside those pictures, she is exhibiting a translucent American flag printed on sheer black fabric. This symbol of national pride is here turned see-through.
Gio’ Pomodoro and Joan Witek at Secci Gallery
Work by Gio’ Pomodoro and Joan Witek at Secci Gallery's booth.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
The centerpiece of Secci Gallery’s spare booth is a giant black cube whose sides are bent inward. Reflective and mysterious, it looks like an artifact from an alien civilization, although it is in fact something much more modest: a work from the ’60s by Italian avant-gardist Gio’ Pomodoro, whose work is here also represented by compelling bronze slabs that zag in and out.
Beside Pomodoro’s sculptures, there are transfixing works by the largely under-recognized American painter Joan Witek. Many of her paintings are composed of black capsules lined up in rows. Some are left pristine, others rendered as though they were shaking or blurring. Notice how Witek has scrawled neat straight lines for her pill-like forms and then sometimes extended their tips just beyond them. She’s setting up a pleasant contrast between order and chaos, and showing that the two are not always mutually exclusive.
Women of Abstract Expressionism at Berry Campbell
Berry Campbell's booth.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
The masculinist narrative around Abstract Expressionism has gradually imploded in the past few decades, thanks to the labor of feminist art historians who have upheld artists like Joan Mitchell, Janet Sobel, and Lee Krasner. There’s still much more work to be done, however, and Berry Campbell’s booth showcases how many more female Abstract Expressionists are still in need of greater recognition.
Might a Perle Fine retrospective be in order? It would certainly seem so, based on one terrific canvas composed of glyphs set interrupting neat lines. Or how about an Alice Baber survey? That, too, seems appealing, based on the deliciously titled 1966 painting The Green Red, a Sonia Delaunay–like arrangement of red, orange, and yellow discs refracted through glimmers of emerald green. (More of Baber’s rapturous work can also be found at Luxembourg & Co.’s Independent 20th Century booth.) A host of other treasures, by Bernice Bing, Lynne Drexler, and Grace Hartigan, also hang here.
Abel Rodríguez and Zé Carlos Garcia at Instituto de Visión and Galeria Marilia Razuk
Works by Abel Rodríguez and Zé Carlos Garcia at Instituto de Visión and Galeria Marilia Razuk's booth.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
Abel Rodríguez, an up-and-comer of the biennial circuit, is here showing his idyllic images of forests where animals commune with shrubs and trees. They depict the region of the Amazon from which Rodríguez hails, and they are largely devoid of any interventions by humanity. Notably, Rodríguez has signed them not only with his Western moniker but also with Mogaje Guihu, the name he was given when he was being raised in the Muinane community.
These are being shown by the Bogotá-based gallery Instituto de Visión, which, rather than exhibiting solo, has shared its space with São Paulo’s Galeria Marilia Razuk, whose contribution is carved wooden sculptures by Zé Carlos Garcia. Some resemble pupas that have yet to complete their transformation.
Yhonnie Scarce and Johnathon World Peace Bush at This Is No Fantasy
Work by Johnathon World Peace Bush at the 2023 Armory Show.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
Amazingly, the Fitzroy-based This Is No Fantasy is the few Australian enterprises ever to have taken part in the Armory Show, and the gallery certainly did not put its booth to waste. Johnathon World Peace Bush’s paintings are the stars here. They represent timeworn Catholic imagery—penitent saints, Bible-carrying men with halos—but rather than adhering to traditional Western modes, Bush represents through beige and white stripes meant to mimic jilamara, a body painting technique utilized by the artist’s Tiwi community. This is his first New York presentation, and hopefully it will not be his last.
Bush’s works are being shown alongside Yhonnie Scarce, whose 2023 piece Point Pearce, South Australia alludes to the displacement of the Narungga people by British settlers during the 19th century. Beneath a screenprinted image of a structure bearing a sign referring to the Narungga, Scarce has included an old box filled with icicle-like glass elements—a reference to the bush foods that once nourished Aboriginals before the flora were permanently altered by nuclear testing in the region.
Sagarika Sundaram at Nature Morte
Sagarika Sundaram, Iris, 2023.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
Nature Morte’s booth has plenty to offer, from a Jitish Kallat piece playing on a famed Marcel Duchamp work to intriguing works by Martand Khosla made with burnt paint, but it is a Sagarika Sundaram piece that steals the show. Titled Iris (2023), the piece is a gorgeous piece of mustard-colored wool that has been sliced open to reveal layers of red and white beneath. This young artist’s deft handiwork shines in this piece where, despite its modest fibers, the red textile appears everso fleshy.
Gisela McDaniel at Pilar Corrias
Gisela McDaniel's work at Pilar Corrias's booth.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
This fair contains a tidal wave of market-ready figurative painting, and in that way, it’s emblematic of what’s being shown in galleries across the world today. But even in a crowded field, Gisela McDaniel’s maximalist portraiture stands out. JPEGs cannot do justice to this young CHamoru artist’s work, which offers a multisensory experience. Some paintings contain flowers and shells, others conceal elements that emit sounds. One even has a poem posted to its side.
Bigger Than Me (2023), one of the works in this booth, may appear to be a double portrait, but in fact, it represents them same sitter multiple times. That it so effortlessly tricks the eye, representing a woman in ways that evade simplifying gazes, is a testament to McDaniel’s talent.
Desire Moheb-Zandi at Dio Horia
Desire Moheb-Zandi at Dio Horia's booth.
Photo : Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
Desire Moheb-Zandi was herself on hand at Dio Horia’s booth, where during the VIP preview she could be seen weaving and knotting her sculptures. Having transformed her booth into a makeshift studio, she allowed fair attendees to watch her at her loom—the German-born artist experienced something similar herself as a child in Turkey, where she witnessed her grandmother weaving. This craft has long been considered women’s work, and indeed, Moheb-Zandi exposes it as just that—a tough, physical kind of labor that can result in beauty. Her wall-hung works, whose fibers are strung through with twined loops, offer plenty to admire.
Peruse Woodcuts + Vases At This San Francisco Gallery’s Shop
By, ANH-MINH LE
Published on AUGUST 26, 2023
PHOTO BY JOHN JANCA, COURTESY CATHARINE CLARK GALLERY
This spring, Catharine Clark doubled the size of her eponymous gallery, yielding additional exhibition space as well as a “bonus room,” as she describes it, that was “the perfect size for something I have often wanted to pursue”—a store. Offerings at the new jewel-box shop, called Exit, include melted crystal vases by Katherine Vetne, William Kentridge woodcuts, an abstract stained-glass sculpture by Andy Diaz Hope, Kara Walker lithographs and wooden bracelets by Ana Teresa Fernández.
Exit “looks a little like my own living room,” Clark says of the warm and welcoming atmosphere. Amid Persian rugs and textiles from Mexico, a wooden 19th-century canning table, chairs with sheepskin seats, an upholstered plaid sofa and a teak bar cart preside. An adjacent venue serves as a bookstore, whose inventory includes rare titles.
“People are encouraged to sit and thumb through the books,” the gallerist emphasizes. “Have a cup of tea or a glass of something stronger with us. Exit is a store, but it is also a hangout space—a place to commune with others casually and in a context that might promote interesting conversation.”
Tool’s Adam Jones Unveils Epiphone Les Paul Guitar Featuring Artwork by His Wife Korin Faught
One of several guitars in Jones' Les Paul Custom Art Collection
Adam Jones (photo by Johnny Perilla) and Adam Jones Epiphone Custom Art Collection (via Gibson Brands)
John Hadusek
August 30, 2023
Adam Jones has teamed up with Epiphone for the Les Paul Custom Art Collection. The latest guitar in the collection features artwork by the Tool guitarist’s wife, Korin Faught.
Faught’s original painting “Sensation” adorns the back of the fifth guitar in the collection, perhaps the crown jewel of the new Epiphone line. The stunning piece first premiered as part of the “Lost Days” exhibition in October 2016 at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles.
“‘Sensation’ is a painting about the loneliness and isolation of illness,” Faught mused via a press release for the guitars. “‘Sensation’ is a word to replace a fear based word. A word she learned while preparing for childbirth. A word she could retreat into when lying in bed with only herself and her thoughts. Gentle meditative properties and calmness resonate through her body as she lives within the moment.”
The other artists whose work is featured in the collection include Mark Ryden, Frank Frazetta, Julie Heffernan, and Ernst Fuchs (with additional artwork designed by Korin Faught adorning the back of the headstock of each model). Five models have been released so far, with two more yet to be unveiled.
As for the axes themselves, the guitars in the collection are a new take on Adam’s No. 1 guitar: his prized original Gibson Silverburst 1979 Gibson Les Paul. The signature models have a bound mahogany body with a maple cap, a three-piece bound maple neck with an Adam Jones Custom profile, and an ebony fretboard.
The guitars are equipped with a reverse-mounted Epiphone ProBucker Custom humbucker pickup in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan Distortion in the bridge (both wired to CTS potentiometers and Orange Drop capacitors). A Marquee Back Plate with the artist’s name and the name of the artwork is also included.
Each model is limited to 800 pieces and retails for $1,299 via Epiphone’s website.
Meanwhile, Jones will head out on a fall North American tour with Tool beginning in early October. Pick up tickets here.
Below you can see a promo video for the guitar featuring the Korin Faught design, and see product photos of each model.
Wall-to-wall de Young Open offers up Bay’s creative bounty—and supports artists, too
More than 7,000 artists applied for this year's edition. What trends do jurors see in their work?
By, Emily Wilson August 30, 2023
This year, 7,766 artists from the nine Bay Area counties applied to be part of the de Young Open (which runs September 30 through January 7)—1,574 more than its inaugural edition in 2020. Perhaps this year’s hopefuls noted that the exhibition’s first round garned an enthusiastic response, drawing attendees to marvel at works in the de Young’s 12,000-square-foot Herbst Exhibition Galleries. And when those visitors opened their wallet to buy art? The creatives themselves kept the proceeds.
Buoyed by this initial warm reception, museum officials decided to hold the community art show every three years, open to any Bay Area artist over the age of 18. Four jurors—artists Clare Rojas, Stephanie Syjuco, Sunny A. Smith, and Xiaoze Xie—have taken on the monumental task of going through this year’s submissions.
Smith has taught at the California College of the Arts for two decades and is currently its dean of fine arts. For years, they have reviewed graduate school applications and undergraduate portfolios, but had never previously judged a juried exhibition at this scale. After the first round, Smith says they and the other three judges each had to select 220 un-attributed works from 550 in the second round alone.
“Some people present something that is super technically proficient, and you can tell they might have had training and practice and that’s impressive,” Smith said. “But I’m really attracted to ways of doing things that seem like they’re not necessarily coming from an academic background or someone who seems to be clearly following their own path.”
Sunny Smith. Photo by Zane Allen
Smith called it fascinating and fun to take a week in July to look through hundreds of artworks in all different styles and mediums. They say what stood out were pieces that seemed to resonate with world events, as well as the work that seemed nuanced and idiosyncratic.
Syjuco, who is originally from San Francisco and who says her art education was formed by the Bay Area, wanted to be a judge to both see what is being made today in her arts community, and give back to the creatives around her.
“I would go to the de Young and other museums like SFMOMA and the Oakland Museum to gain my broader perspective on contemporary art,” Syjuco said. “So when I was approached by the de Young to participate, and as someone who came up in San Francisco, I wanted to consciously support the larger Bay Area community.”
A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Syjuco, like Smith, sees lots of work from applicants to the school. But she enjoyed the range of work and the different materials and mediums in the de Young Open submissions. Some genres were better represented than others.
Stephanie Syjuco. Photo by Kija Lucas
“Portraiture and landscape are something that honestly is sort of universally popular, right?” she said. “What was more unusual was abstraction, or things that were a little less direct in terms of depicting things or people.”
Syjuco pointed out that among thousands of entries, not all were made by artists who have gone to a private art school.
“I really appreciate the democratic quality of a high-end fine arts museum opening themselves up to a process that can be quite unruly to an extent. It’s a lot of effort,” Syjuco said. “I also think it helps make the viewers feel that the space is more accessible. That’s really important because museums—there’s that public perception that they’re this kind-of rarefied space. Please don’t quote me on saying that museums have turned into this ultra-democratic space for the people because that’s not true. But through this, there’s this nice kind of reflection back on the community.”
DE YOUNG OPEN runs September 30 through January 7. de Young Museum, SF
See How Photographers Reimagine Old Master Paintings
“Art About Art” bills itself as a thoughtful, whimsical exploration of the connections between past and present
Teresa Nowakowski
Daily Correspondent
August 25, 2023
As the Princeton University Art Museum undergoes renovations, its old master paintings remain behind closed doors. Still, even in storage, such works are the inspiration behind a new show, which opened on August 19: “Art About Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings.”
“As we rebuild, I wanted to remind the students and community at large that we have wonderful old master paintings in the collection that we can’t show at this time,” Ronni Baer, a curator of the exhibition, tells the Observer’s Casey Epstein-Gross.
(In two photos from Nina Katchadourian's Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style, the artist uses toilet paper to mimic features of the attire of a 15th-century Flemish couple. Nina Katchadourian)
“This exhibition reveals how vital the art of the past remains to many artists working today,” says Baer in a statement from the museum. “The selection will encourage viewers to consider how contemporary photographers respond in various ways to famous compositions, seek to explore emotions as expressed in historical paintings, address issues of identity that were as pressing then as now and apply new technologies in surprising ways.”
Photos on display include Vik Muniz’s Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter and Jelly), inspired by Andy Warhol’s prints from the 1960s. The piece recreates the famous Leonardo da Vinci twice over—once in peanut butter, once in jelly.
Also on view is a diptych from Nina Katchadourian’s series Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. The artist poses as both the man and woman of a 15th-century Flemish couple, using toilet paper to portray distinctive features of their attire.
In another work, Ori Gersht crafts an arrangement in the style of European still life paintings. He then destroys the fruit in it, capturing the exact moment of explosion.
(Pomegranate (Off Balance) by Ori Gersht captures the moment a pomegranate in a still life arrangement is destroyed. Ori Gersht)
The show is part of Princeton’s mission to “assure that works of the past can still be understood as living, breathing objects that were contemporary in their own time, and thus still have the capacity to spark inquiry,” says James Steward, the museum’s director, in the statement.
The exhibition explores centuries-old themes such as “identity and the fleetingness of life and … how we choose to live,” Baer tells Artnet’s Taylor Dafoe. For example, Jeanette May’s Dot Matrix, from the series Tech Vanitas, plays on the vanitas paintings of the Netherlands in the 17th century, which juxtaposed the inevitability of death with the trappings of affluence. However, rather than silk or ornate goblets, May’s photos feature obsolete technology thrown to the side in the pursuit of the next big thing.
(Jeanette May's Dot Matrix, from the series Tech Vanitas, puts a contemporary twist on 17th-century Dutch still life paintings. - Jeanette May)
“I think the exhibition provides inspirational teaching opportunities, raising questions about identity and iconicity and how and why artists engage with the art of the past,” Baer tells the Observer. At the same time, however, the show is designed to have a wide appeal, offering explorations of existential questions alongside “moments of fun and whimsy and discovery.”
“Some of the art is serious,” says Baer to Artnet. “But I hope people come and laugh.”
New artistic visions showcased at Laumeier Sculpture Park
by: James Atherlay
Posted: Aug 26, 2023 / 07:16 PM CDT
Updated: Sep 5, 2023 / 12:33 PM CDT
SUNSET HILLS, Mo. – A pair of brand-new exhibits have opened up at Laumeier Sculpture Park, showing new styles from three artists in south St. Louis County.
Even the heavy rain couldn’t get in the way of the three artists -Vaughn Davis Jr., Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis – as they displayed their hard work to the public Saturday.
“I want to create a work in the painting genre that has never been seen before,” said Davis.
Two displays are being shown at the park to demonstrate their respective specialties. Inside the Aronson Fine Arts Center, several paintings were put up with their own special features.
“I want to think about what a piece of art can look like,” said Davis. “Is it unfinished? Is it complete?”
Davis showed FOX 2 an exhibit called “The Fabric of Our Time.” It features paintings that have been torn in various ways. He says he lays canvases on the floor, and drenches them.
“I like to give homage to the working class in my practice,” said Davis. “I use sponges, I use mops brooms, brushes, anything that I can typically find to make this body of work.”
At the second exhibit, the work of Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis shows 29 kites resting in a tree outside, as part of an exhibit called “29 Tragedies.”
“We’ve all flown kites before,” said Clayton. “It’s a very familiar part of being a human. You’ve flown a kite as a kid, or seen someone fly kites, so it’s something we can all connect with.”
The kites are actually made out of aluminum with hand-made tails. They are carefully placed at separate parts of the tree. Lewis calls the exhibit a blurring of art and life.
“There was a string and a tail and a piece of a kite that was stuck in the tree from sometime, so it’s a logical thing that happens in life,” said Lewis.
These creators are clearly demonstrating the motivation to distinguish themselves from other artists.
“I want this work to be synonymous with my name,” said Davis.
Laumeier Sculpture Park is hosting a program called “Art and Artists in Nature” on Sunday.
You can get your own look at these exhibits, and more, plus meet the people behind these abstract concepts, Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
(Background/pxfuel.com; Barbie/Flickr dollyhaul CC BY-NC 2.0)
Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.
Is Barbie Jewish? If so, what would she serve for Shabbat dinner? Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, Bay Area residents who co-wrote a 2005 documentary that explores the relationship between Jews and Barbie, have some thoughts.
“I always thought it was one of the great ironies of the 20th century that Barbie was created by a Jewish woman,” Shlain said to me after this summer’s “Barbie” movie opened. “When Ken and I co-wrote ‘The Tribe’ we used Barbie to explore Jewish identity, assimilation and the multitudes of what it meant to be Jewish.” (Ruth Handler invented the doll in 1959.)
The couple also shared their Shabbat recipes with me (adapted for space below).
“Challah, roast chicken and Barbie are all cultural symbols,” said Shlain, who has made dozens of films about cultural phenomena. “And when we made the documentary one of our goals … was to make sure everyone knew that Barbie was also a Jewish cultural symbol.”
If you want to serve a Barbie dinner for Shabbat, you can “accessorize” with oven-roasted potatoes, beet-tahini salad dressing and parve Turkish coconut puddings.
(From left) Tiffany Shlain’s challah with pink topping featuring Himalayan salt and dried rose petals, Turkish coconut pudding with pomegranate seeds, and Ken Goldberg’s roast chicken. (Photo/Faith Kramer)
Ken Goldberg’s Roast Chicken
Serves 4-6
Oil
2 large onions, thinly sliced
3- to 5-lb. whole chicken
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
4 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 lemons or oranges
1 Tbs. flour
1 tsp. Herbes de Provence or Italian herb seasoning mix
¼ cup water or white wine
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Oil large metal baking pan. Scatter onions on bottom. Discard internal organs and rinse chicken. Combine salt and pepper. Rub bottom of chicken with ¼ tsp. of this mix. Place chicken breast side up on onions. Separate skin over breasts. Insert garlic and rosemary under skin.
Halve lemons. Squeeze juice over chicken. Place halves inside. Sprinkle chicken with remaining salt and pepper. Combine flour and herbs. Lightly sprinkle over exposed chicken. Pour water in pan.
Roast on oven’s middle rack for 10 minutes. Turn pan 180 degrees. Roast 10 minutes. Lower heat to 350 degrees. Roast 45 minutes. Check for doneness. (Cut into joint between leg and breast. If raw looking, roast longer.) Rest 10 minutes. Serve with pan juices.
Option: Remove breast skin, cut into squares and serve separately.
Tiffany Shlain’s Challah
Makes 1 large loaf
1 cup hot water (95-105 degrees)
2¼ tsp. fast-acting or instant yeast
⅓ cup sugar
About 4 cups bread flour
2 large eggs, divided
¼ cup canola oil, plus extra for bowl and pan
½ Tbs. salt
Pink Topping (see below)
Early in the day you intend to bake, combine water, yeast, and sugar in large bowl. Let sit 30 minutes. Stir 2 cups flour into yeast bowl. In a small bowl, beat 1 egg with ¼ cup oil. Mix into flour and yeast. Slowly mix in 1½ cups of flour. (Add water or flour by tablespoon if too dry or wet).
Dust work surface and hands with flour. Knead 8-12 minutes, adding flour if needed until dough is smooth, elastic and springy. Place in oiled, large bowl and turn to coat. Cover with a damp kitchen towel. Let rise for 5 hours.
Separate dough into 3 equal balls. Oil baking sheet. Flour work surface. Roll balls into 3 18-inch ropes. Place on baking sheet. Braid. Pinch and tuck ends under. Cover. Let rise 1-2 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat second egg. Brush over challah. Sprinkle generously with Pink Topping.
Place sheet in center of oven. Bake 10 minutes. Coat newly exposed areas with egg and Pink Topping. Bake another 15-20 minutes until golden.
Pink Topping: Combine 1½ Tbs. coarse pink Himalayan salt (or any coarse sea salt), 1½ Tbs. sesame seeds, 2½ tsp. crumbled dried rose petals and 2½ tsp. crumbled dried mint. (Note: Shlain also uses “everything bagel” seasoning to top her challah when she’s not using Pink Topping.)
Knowingly or not, every artist references the history of their craft eventually. Some do it to situate their own work in the lineage of greats, others to question the monolithic canon.
Recently opened at the Princeton University Art Museum’s gallery Art on Hulfish is an exhibition of lens-based artists who look to Leonardo, Van Eyck, and other Old Masters for material. Their strategies and intents vary but ultimately lead to the same comforting truth.
If this sounds like homework, it’s not. The show, like the last gasps of summer vacation alongside which it arrives, is light and warm. The art historical easter eggs are there for the nerds, but so is Vik Muniz’s charming 1999 photograph of the Mona Lisa recreated, in Warholian fashion, with peanut butter and jelly. You don’t need a PhD to appreciate what the artist is doing with that picture.
“Some of the art is serious. But I hope people come and laugh,” said Ronni Baer, the Princeton curator who organized the show. For her and the museum, the show checks several boxes. It’s historical but also contemporary, educational but enjoyable. It’s legible, and it also serves to remind visitors of the museum’s programming while its main building is being reconstructed on campus.
(David Adjaye, the Ghanaian/British architect recently accused of sexual harassment and assault, designed the new Princeton University Art Museum. Though Adjaye has stepped away from numerous projects in light of the allegations, Princeton has said that the museum is too deep into construction for the school to distance itself from him now. The new museum is expected to open in 2025.)
Ori Gersht, Pomegranate (Off Balance) (2006). Courtesy of the artist.
The exhibition, Baer said, points to the past but feels like the present. “The idea of searching for identity is something embedded in a lot of this work—and it’s as relevant then as today,” she said, referring to works like Yasumasa Morimura’s Daughter of Art History (Princess A) (1990), for which the older male artist recast himself as the young female subject of Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of the Infanta Margarita Aged Five (1956), and Nina Katchadourian’s “Flemish Style” self-portraits made in an airplane bathroom.
As with these stately Renaissance portraits, the still-life is a popular point of departure in the show. Included are pictures of bouquets by Sharon Core, who painstakingly grows her own horticultural specimens, and Bas Meeuws, who pulls examples from his personal library of floral photographs and reassembles them digitally.
A 2006 video by Ori Gersht recreates Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (circa 1600) with pomegranate substituted in—a symbol of the violence that defined the artist’s childhood in Tel Aviv. (In Hebrew, the word for “pomegranate” also means “grenade.”) Gersht also layers on a reference to Harold Edgerton as a slow-motion bullet pierces the pomegranate halfway through.
Jeanette May, NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018). Courtesy of the artist.
Nearby, Jeanette May’s NY Tech Vanitas: Dot Matrix (2018) nods to the eponymous genre of still-life paintings popularized by the Dutch in the 17th century, which employed objects of pleasure to remind viewers that our time on this mortal coil is limited and shouldn’t be wasted on indulgences. But instead of the decadent snacks and emptied wine carafes favored by Golden Agers like Willem Claesz Heda, May has filled her frame with pieces of outmoded, obsolescent tech: flip-phones, a CD-ROM, a printer that uses—gasp—perforated paper.
“All of it adds up to nothing, both then and now,” Baer said, somewhat jokingly, before putting a bead on the central idea of the show. “These themes,” she went on, “are centuries old. They’re human concerns about identity and the fleetingness of life and about how we choose to live.”
“Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings” is on view August 19 through November 5, 2023, at the Princeton University Art Museum’s Art on Hulfish gallery.
‘Still, The Meandering Path: Jim Melchert’s Final Works’
By, Tony Bravo
Published on August 2023
Date & Time
Fri. Jul. 28 — Thu. Sep. 07
Visit event site for schedule
Where
Gallery 16
501 3rd St.
S.F.
.
Installation view of "Still, The Meandering Path: Jim Melchert's Final Works" at Gallery 16.
When beloved Oakland artist and UC Berkeley Professor Jim Melchert died in June at age 92, he was a year into creating new work for a planned show at Gallery 16 at the invitation of gallerist Griff Williams. Now, the ceramist, sculptor and mentor to generations of artists is being celebrated at Gallery 16 in the exhibition “Still, The Meandering Path: Jim Melchert’s Final Works.”
The show was assembled around Melchert’s last finished artworks from his longtime studio. The broken and fired porcelain tile wall-mounted pieces are glorious centerpieces. Vivid color combinations and geometry in the work feel joyful, but elegantly restrained.
Gallery 16 also invited a group of well-known ceramists and other artists to contribute to the show. Curated by Nathan Lynch, these artists include Ashwini Bhat, Liz Hernández, Cathy Lu, Tucker Nichols, Gay Outlaw, Maria Porges and Wanxin Zhang. The combined generations represented in the show speak to the enormous reach and influence Melchert had in the art world (he was also the director of visual arts for the National Endowment of the Arts and the director of the American Academy in Rome.)
The show is a fitting tribute to an artist who helped make ceramics into the respected contemporary art form it is recognized as today.
ArtsWatch: Architect Selected for Bezos Learning Center; Phillips Collection Acquisition
By, Kate Oczypok
Published on August 2023
Firm A’s proposal for the Bezos Learning Center. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.
This month’s ArtsWatch includes a generous donation to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an architect selected for the new Bezos Learning Center on the National Mall and an official reopening date for the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Smithsonian Selects Architect to Plan Bezos Learning Center on The National Mall
The Smithsonian Institution has chosen an architect to design the Bezos Learning Center at the National Air and Space Museum. The center will be created by the Chicago-based architecture firm Perkins&Will. The firm’s proposal was one of five shortlisted to design the $130 million dollar center. Their prospectus included a complex inspired by the swirls of the Milky Way constellation. The center will also include a restaurant and educational facilities.
Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces $2 Million Gift from Helen Frankenthaler Foundation
Earlier this month, The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced a $2 million dollar gift from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The gift marks the end of a $10 million campaign in support of the museum’s fellowship program, which is the world’s biggest and oldest dedicated to advancing American art scholarship. The $2 million dollar largesse marks the single biggest to the campaign. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation was established and endowed by the artist (1928-2011) during her lifetime.
Patrick D. McCoy Named Development and Communications Manager at the Washington Conservatory of Music
Patrick D. McCoy has been hired to join the team at the Washington Conservatory of Music in Glen Echo Park, MD. The appointment follows McCoy’s two-year post as interim director of choral activities at Virginia State University. In addition to being organist and choirmaster at Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Beltsville, MD, McCoy is also an arts moderator, curator, journalist and reviewer.
Patrick D. McCoy has been named development and communications director at the Washington Conservatory of Music. Photo from M3 Mitchell Marketing and Media.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts Sets Reopening Date
After remaining closed due to an extensive renovation, The National Museum of Women in the Arts will reopen once again October 21. The renovation includes over 20 percent additional exhibit space, a new “Learning Commons” that integrates a research library and an education/studio into the gallery space, a reimagining of the museum’s collection, and more.
The inaugural show at the museum will be “The Sky’s the Limit,” which will feature work from 13 international contemporary women artists including Petah Coyne, Alison Saar, Davina Semo, and more.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts officially reopens in October. Photo by Cameron Robinson.
The Phillips Collection Announces Recent Acquisitions
The Phillips Collection announced recent acquisitions, including major working that enrich areas of the museum’s collection with an emphasis on photography. Through multiple gifts, over 60 photos from artists Frank Stewart, Aaron Siskind, Zanele Muholi, and more entered the collection. Works from artists like Linling Lu and Marta Pérez Garcia will reinforce existing holdings. The Phillips Collection is excited to enrich their photography holdings and diversify their collection with these acquisitions. “We are delighted to acquire works by such an expansive and dynamic group of artists,” said Vradenburg Director and CEO Jonathan P. Binstock in a press release. “The Phillips Collection has a unique history and legacy of collecting from its beginnings as a private collection established by Duncan Phillips. We remain dedicated to the founding principles of Phillips’s pioneering vision while actualizing the museum’s strides toward inclusivity by collecting work by LGBTQ+ artists, women, artists of color, and those who have been historically overlooked.”
Works by Marta Pérez García have been acquired by The Phillips Collection. Marta Pérez García, “Nameless,” 2021-22. Handmade paper, wire, nails, metal spikes, hair, teeth, film negative, Dimensions variable. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Courtesy The Phillips Collection.
Filmmaker explores connection between her family history and national Black history
By, Max Blue
Published on August 2023
Artist Trina Michelle Robinson goes looking for answers about her family history in a suite of four short films
Courtesy Catharine Clark Gallery
The recent decision by the Florida Board of Education to whitewash the history of slavery and the oppression of African-Americans in the United States set off a firestorm nationwide, but one San Francisco artist and filmmaker is no stranger to the obfuscation of Black history.
Over the last decade, Trina Michelle Robinson has made several short films that offer narratives of Black history in America by exploring her family’s own unique stories. Four of these films, made between 2021-2022, are the subject of her solo exhibition “Revival” at Catharine Clark Gallery in Potrero.
“The way slavery is taught in this country is with a sense of shame for Black people,” Robinson says, arguing that it should be a narrative of survival, rather than mere victimhood.
The project began when Robinson’s mother gave her a disintegrating family photo album, containing pictures of her great -grandparents’ and other family members of their generation, as well as newspaper clippings from the 1930s.
This led Robinson down a rabbit hole of research – from census records to internet archives to the property records of white families – tracing her family from Kentucky to California to the transatlantic slave trade.
The first film, “Berea,” follows Robinson’s journey to Berea, a town and liberal arts college in Kentucky, where her great-great-grandfather David attended school after he was freed from enslavement, interspersed with archival images of the school.
The film is dubbed with excerpts from an audio interview with 19th century author and filmmaker Zora Neal Hurston, and dialogue from Robinson.
“One hundred and fifty years after my great, great-grandfather walked these roads,” the artist says, “I’ve come to resurrect his ghost.”
The last shot lingers on the artist’s cupped hands, holding soil from the ground is a lyrical visual metaphor for her excavation of the past.
In the second, eponymous film, the artist is seen following a man in an antiquated military uniform through the Presidio, from a gravestone in the National Cemetery to the bluffs above Baker Beach.
The man is her great-great-uncle William J French. The film is narrated by Robinson, reading from a 1932 newspaper article from the Chicago Defender, which tells the story of French, a white-passing Black man and U.S. soldier stationed in San Francisco, whose racial identity became the center of a sensationalized media frenzy in newspapers and magazines nationwide following his death in a mysterious accident.
The Defender’s version of French’s story is humanizing rather than sensationalist, underscoring his complicated story of identity as one emblematic of the larger construction of race in America.
“The lie was not in him,” Robinson quotes from the Defender, “but in the despicable contradiction of his countrymen.”
The third film, “Elegy for Nancy,” is a poetic ode to ancestry, dedicated to Robinson’s most distant known ancestor, Nancy, who was born circa 1770, likely in Virginia, before migrating to Kentucky where she was enslaved.
Footage of Robinson wading into the Sacramento river and tossing sunflowers into the water is interspersed with shots of the Ohio River, which runs through both West Virginia and Kentucky, as well as archival footage of a 1920s African-American baptism, scenes from the Ogun River in Nigeria and text from Lucille Clifton’s poem “Blessing the Boats.”
The final film, “Encoded,” also opens with a long shot of water – the Ohio River – and traces Robinson’s journey to Senegal, ending with a shot of the underwater memorial for the Henrietta Marie, a British slave ship that sank off the Florida Straits in 1700.
The most striking moment in the film, however, is when the word “home” appears on the screen, only to be replaced, in a flicker, with “home?” before the question is again returned to a statement, revealing the uncertainty one experiences searching for a sense of belonging.
But the fact that she does belong, somewhere, is never in question.
The power of Robison’s films is in her radical refusal of the absence of Black narratives. There may be an endemic omission from the history books, but her films stand as a testament to the fact that those gaps can be filled, if one looks hard enough.
“There are so many stories waiting to be told,” Robinson says, “you just have to figure out what all these silences are about.”
“Revival” is on display at the Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah St. through Sept. 23
Top row, from left to right: Pras Velagapudi, Jeff Linnell, and Ken Goldberg. Bottom row, from left to right, Amit Goel and Ted Larson.
Generative AI is revolutionizing the software industry, but how can this breakthrough be applied to robotics? At RoboBusiness, which takes place October 18-19 in Santa Clara, CA, a keynote panel of robotics industry leaders will discuss the applications of Large Language Models (LLMs) and text generation applications to robotics. It will also explore fundamental ways generative AI can be applied to robotics design, model training, simulation, control algorithms and product commercialization.
The panel will include Pras Velagapudi, VP of Innovation at Agility Robotics, Jeff Linnell, CEO and Founder of Formant, Ken Goldberg, the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley, Amit Goel, the Director of Product Management at NVIDIA, and Ted Larson, the CEO of OLogic.
Velagapudi has previous experience at Berkshire Grey, where he was previously the Director of Engineering and Vice President of Mobile Robotics. He also has over nine years of experience as a Carnegie Mellon University faculty member and project scientist. He specializes in industrial automation, robotic manipulation, multi-robot systems, AGV/AMRs, human-robot interaction, distributed planning, and optimization.
Before founding Formant, Linnell served as Head of Robotics at Google X. He previously founded Autofuss, a design/production company, and Bot & Dolly, an engineering studio specializing in automation, robotics and film, which were acquired by Google in 2013.
Goldberg is co-founder and Chief Scientist of Ambi Robotics and Jacobi Robotics. He co-founded the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab and the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Goldberg and his students have published 400 peer-reviewed papers and 10 US patents. Goldberg’s artwork has been exhibited internationally and he founded the Art, Technology, and Culture public lecture series in 1997. He has presented over 600 invited lectures worldwide.
Goel leads the product development of NVIDIA Jetson, the most advanced platform for AI computing at the edge. He has more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry working in both software and hardware design roles. Prior to joining NVIDIA in 2011, he worked as a senior software engineer at Synopsys, where he developed algorithms for statistical performance modeling of digital designs.
Larson is a computer software and electronics expert with 30+ years of experience designing and building commercial products. Prior to OLogic, he founded an internet software company called the Urbanite Network, a web server content publishing platform for media customers, and grew the company to over 70 employees, and raised over $10 million in private equity and venture capital. Prior to Urbanite, Larson held positions at Hewlett-Packard, Iomega, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ted has both a BS and MS in computer science from Cal-Poly, San Luis Obispo.
RoboBusiness is the leading event focused on developing commercial robots. There will be 60-plus speakers, 100-plus exhibitors and demos on the expo floor, networking receptions, the Pitchfire Robotics Startup Competition and more. You can check out the current list of speakers, to which more will be added.
RoboBusiness will be co-located with the Field Robotics Engineering Forum, an event focused on successfully developing robots that operate in wide-ranging, outdoor, dynamic environments.
Also co-located with RoboBusiness is DeviceTalks West, the premier industry event for medical technology professionals, currently in its ninth year. Both events attract engineering and business professionals from a broad range of healthcare and medical technology backgrounds.
Myriad ways to consume art at Bay Area Art Gallery Weekend
Russell Crotty, "Illuminations at Piedra Blanca," 2021.On view at Hosfelt Gallery
By, Tony Bravo
Published on July 2023
The Art Dealers Association of America is throwing open the doors at local member galleries Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 3-6. The Bay Area Art Gallery Weekend will include performances, curatorial tours, lectures, panel discussions and screenings during special late and weekend hours.
Participating Bay Area ADAA galleries include: Altman Siegel, Anglim/Trimble, Berggruen, Rena Bransten Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Crown Point Press, Fraenkel Gallery, Haines Gallery, Hosfelt Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Anthony Meier Gallery, Modernism, Gallery Wendi Norris, Paulson Fontaine Press and Jessica Silverman Gallery.
The weekend begins Thursday evening with a lecture by Sarah Mackay, assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, at Hosfelt Gallery as well as a special performance by drag artist Fauxnique at the neighboring Catharine Clark Gallery. Friday evening, ADAA galleries at the Minnesota Street Project will be open late. And Saturday, galleries in downtown San Francisco and Chinatown as well as Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley are expected to host special events, including a lecture by artist Tom Marioni at Crown Point Press. Sunday events will be hosted in the afternoon at Haines Gallery at Fort Mason and Anthony Meier Gallery in Mill Valley.
If you haven’t had a chance for gallery going so far this summer, this is a great chance to catch up before the fall shows begin in September.
"Bay Area Art Gallery Weekend": 5-8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 3. 4-7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 5 and 6. Free. Multiple venues in San Francisco, Berkeley and Mill Valley. https://artdealers.org/events
San Francisco gallery walk debuts at 15 free galleries
By, Max Blue
Published on July 2023
A. Frick Vernon, “Untitled” (1969) will be on display at Minnesota Street Project as a part of the art walk on Friday.
Anglim/Trimble.
For the first time, 15 Bay Area art galleries are opening their doors Thursday and through the weekend for a free gallery walk sponsored by the Art Dealers Association of America.
Galleries in San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin are taking part in the event in an effort to spread the world that art galleries are for everyone.
In nearly 30 years operating Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, gallerist Todd Hosfelt says the number one phone call he receives is “from people asking, ‘What’s the price of admission?’”
In case you’re wondering, too, the answer has always been “nothing.”
But the cost of admission isn’t the only reason people don’t check out their local galleries, said Catharine Clark of Catharine Clark Gallery, who had the idea to launch a gallery walk in the Bay Area to help make art galleries’ open-door policy and educational role in the community more public.
“If you’re not being exposed to the arts in a general way — from art classes in school to art history to the way in which art reflects what’s going on in our world — then you haven’t even had a chance to decide whether you’re interested or not,” Clark said.
Art experts say galleries can be a source for arts education otherwise hard to come by in the United States.
“Most (gallerists) think of (themselves) as educators,” Hosfelt said. “The commercial aspect is really about supporting the program.”
Both Catharine Clark Gallery and Hosfelt Gallery will host events on Thursday evening at their Utah Street spaces. Exhibiting artist Russell Crotty will be in conversation with Sarah Mackay, Assistant Curator at the Achenbach Foundation, at 5:30 p.m. at Hosfelt Gallery.
Crotty’s drawings are sublime nighttime landscapes, conveying the awe of stargazing in the open desert. Local drag artist Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique), will perform a specially commissioned piece at Catharine Clark Gallery at 7 p.m.
On Friday, Altman Siegel, Anglim/Trimble, and Jenkins Johnson Gallery at Minnesota Street Project will host receptions and walkthroughs for their current exhibitions, which include shows of new work by minimalist painter Laeh Glenn and sculptor K.R.M. Mooney as well as a survey of the late local artist A. Frick Vernon and a group show celebrating summertime.
Rena Bransten Gallery, also at MSP, will host “San Francisco in Ten,” at 5 p.m., featuring local personalities speaking for ten minutes on subjects of their choice. Speakers include award- winning columnist Leah Garchik; artist and writer Maria Porges; and community organizer and Lydia Bransten, executive director of the Gubbio Project, among others.
Non-ADAA galleries at MSP will hold regular hours.
The downtown and Chinatown neighborhoods come alive Saturday. At Berggruen Gallery, Elsa Hansen Oldham’s playful narrative embroideries contrast with Margaux Ogden’s bright floral-pattern acrylic paintings. Modernism Inc., also features simultaneous exhibitions: Scot Heywood’s geometric wall sculptures and Sheldon Greenberg’s post modern figurative paintings packed with references to art history. Fraenkel Gallery presents a brand new series of breathtaking landscape photographs by Richard Misrach.
Downtown, Crown Point Press will host a talk by local artist Tom Marioni at 1 p.m., on his current exhibition of lithographs, “Hard Edges for Hard Times.” The minimally geometric, colorful prints include abstract shapes and scenes of San Francisco streets at night.
Gallery Wendi Norris and Jessica Silverman in Chinatown will both host seminal shows by foreign painters: Mexican artist Leo Marz’s first U.S. solo show in more than a decade and Japanese artist Kei Imazu’s first exhibition in the U.S., both featuring saturated, surreal scenes.
Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley will exhibit a new series of abstract, patchwork etchings by McArthur Binion.
Sunday will feature receptions at Haines Gallery in Fort Mason Center, where David Simpson’s “Smoke and Mirrors” promises glimmering color-field paintings evocative of the surrounding Bay Area landscape, and Anthony Meier, in Mill Valley, presenting a group show focused on local artists.
Other galleries and free art events to check out this weekend include the San Francisco Center for the Book and the Institute of Contemporary Art, both located between Utah Street and The Minnesota Street Project, and a free screening of “Kokomo City” — a documentary about the lives of four Black trans sex workers — presented by downtown gallery Jonathan Carver Moore at 6:30 p.m. Friday at The Roxie, with a Q&A to follow.
“If the weekend goes well,” Clark said, “we can make it into an annual event.”
But don’t wait for next year to visit your local art galleries. They’re expecting you.
Stephanie Syjuco, The Visible Invisible: Plymouth Pilgrim (Simplicity), Antebellum South (Simplicity), Colonial Revolution (McCall’s), 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photo: Randy Dodson, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
THE VISIBLE INVISIBLE
Coinciding with “Crafting Radicality” is Svane artist Stephanie Syjuco’s vibrant sculptural dresses sewn from bright green chroma key fabric, which will be on view in the American art wing. Chroma key is a visual effect used to composite an image for video and film that allows an editor to superimpose new backgrounds or settings for the original image. The Visible Invisible: Plymouth Pilgrim (Simplicity), Antebellum South (Simplicity), Colonial Revolution (McCall’s) (2018) contain costumes based on theatrical plays and historical reenactment of early America. Utilizing green chroma key fabric commonly used for green screens implies that history itself is fabricated and manipulated like a projection that serves power over truth. The artist was inspired to create her work after witnessing protests between left and right leaning groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Syjuco realized that the detritus and objects left behind at the protest scenes could be interpreted in many ways, and could be used in media reports to render public opinion by weaponizing information and manipulating the truth.
Crafting Radicality reinforces the Bay Area’s identity, bridging political activism and art. Curator Janna Keegan observed, “Theirs is a reclamation of experiences and materials to tell subversive stories that question traditional narratives of art, history and identity.” These stories are a part of the continuing dialogue with the museum’s ongoing exhibition “Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence.”
“Crafting Radicality: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift”: Tue.–Sun. 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m. through Dec. 31, $15, de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., Golden Gate Park, 415-750-3600, famsf.org.
Be our ghoul of honor at an exhibition hosted by creatures lured from the depths of the McNay Art Museum’s collection. Dreamland | Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas marks the 30th anniversary of filmmaker Tim Burton’s 1993 stop-motion animated film.
In the exhibition, visitors can reacquaint themselves with Burton’s awkwardly charming cast that includes Oogie Boogie, Bone Crusher, and the beloved hero, Jack Skellington. And meet unusual characters created by artists from the McNay’s collection, including José Clemente Orozco Farías, Julie Heffernan, Eugene Berman, Marilyn Lanfear, Willem de Kooning, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Julie Speed, and others. Visitors can explore colorful and unfamiliar worlds found in large paintings and photographs by artists Paul Maxwell, Claudia Rogge, Robin Utterback, and Sandy Skoglund.
Small models (or maquettes) created for Burton’s iconic film in conversation with a range of artworks, encourage guests to imagine fantasy narratives of their own. And with a nod to Burton’s creative roots at Walt Disney, explore a “hall of peculiar portraits” that will have you wondering—is that picture looking at me?
Dreamland | Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is organized for the McNay Art Museum by R. Scott Blackshire, PhD, Curator, The Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts; and Kim Neptune, The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund
Assistant Curator, The Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts.
Major support is provided by The Tobin Endowment. Additional funding is most generously provided by The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, the Semmes Foundation, Inc., and our Exhibition Host Committee Chaired by Mr. and
Mrs. J. Bruce Bugg Jr.
Dindga McCannon, Sister Alone With Her Spirits. Etching, printed 2020, designed 1972, Ed. 2/22 15 ½ x 18”.
NEW YORK, NY.- It has been 10 years since the first show at Fridman Gallery. From the beginning, the gallery aimed to show emerging artists working in painting, sculpture and installation, often giving the artists space to create new work and experiment and guest curators room to explore ideas. The gallery saw the value of giving artists free reign of the space, including setting aside time between the exhibitions to allow for live music, experimental performance, dance and other interdisciplinary works. Serial programs took root such as the annual New Ear Festival showcasing some of New York’s most exciting experimental performers.
The exhibition Interior Resonances brings together a selection of works from the current gallery roster as well as from many of the seminal shows and performances that took place during the gallery’s early days on Spring Street and its current location on the Bowery. Curated by Regine Basha, an early advisor of the gallery, the works in the group exhibition reflect a plutonian mood, meaning the tendency to dwell in an interior realm, while processing distant memories, wrestling with inner demons, and transmuting these into material forms. The practice of inner work, otherwise known as ‘spirit work’ or ‘shadow work’, foregrounds looking inward to reflect fearlessly into the depths of subconscious activity and to reckon with often existential questions about what we are really made of beneath the surface of the skin.
With all this fullness, the 10th anniversary show consists of three distinct but related parts:
● an exhibition of sculptures, prints, and paintings in the gallery’s main space;
● CT::SWaM’s Plasticity Office, a sound installation in the gallery’s showroom; and
● a microcinema in the gallery’s media room featuring past performances and video screenings.
Friday microcinema features all-day screenings revisiting seminal video and sound works from the gallery’s program:
July 14: Heather Dewey-Hagborg, T3511 (2018)
July 21: Milford Graves Full Mantis (2018), directed by Jake Meginsky
July 28: Yvette Janine Jackson, Destination Freedom (2017)
August 4: Nina Katchadourian, The Recarcassing Ceremony (2016)
August 11: Victoria Keddie, Cannibal Mécanique (2017)
August 18: Nate Lewis, a parable about dancing with landscapes (2022)
August 25: Aura Satz, The Listening Cobweb (2021) and Tamar Ettun, How to Trap a Demon (2023)
This presentation profiles only some of the artists who have been integral to the gallery’s history.
[...]
Nina Katchadourian
Nina Katchadourian’s first solo exhibition in New York, Ification, took place at Fridman Gallery in 2019.
Building on the artist’s ongoing exploration of humor as an art form, Katchadourian’s The Recarcassing Ceremony (2016) tells the story of an elaborate game Katchadourian and her younger brother played as children. The game involved two families of Playmobil figures. After a tragic event befell two of the characters, the siblings invented a “recarcassing ceremony” to bring the characters back to life.
Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography, and public projects. Katchadourian's work is in numerous public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Blanton Museum of Art, Morgan Library, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Margulies Collection, and Saatchi Gallery.
[...]
Fridman Gallery
Interior Resonances: 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Curated by Regine Basha July 13 – August 25, 2023
I recently paid a visit to the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco to see American Gothic, a collaborative exhibition by Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin. The mixed media work that comprised the show concerns their farm in Northern California and ecological issues, subjects which are obviously related and both of which Oropallo has addressed in her work over the past several years.
Although I’d previously seen at least one sculpture by Oropallo,1 I believe this is the first gallery show I’ve attended to feature such work. I’m not familiar with Goldin, but Oropallo’s aesthetic is so strong and makes such a seamless jump to the three-dimensional that it actually took some time before I realized I hadn’t before seen a show of hers largely made up of sculptural work.
Oropallo and Goldin’s piece American Gothic takes not only its title but its imagery from the Grant Wood painting, possibly the most recognized work in the history of American art. Wood’s two figures are gone, leaving only the farmer’s spectacles and his pitchfork, which now has a sewn rawhide handle replacing the functional wooden one. The Gothic-style farmhouse window from Wood’s piece appears as “reflections” in the lenses of the glasses. By encapsulating the composition in just these elements, Oropallo and Goldin have retained the “salt of the earth” allusion while opening up the image, making it less specific and more inclusive. The piece reimagines Wood’s painting in a manner that steps up the original slightly unsettling feel while also being informed by its common satirical reading and innumerable parodies.
Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin: American Gothic [Detail] (2023). Mixed media, 60″ x 18″.
Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin: Dangling Ducks 1 (2023). Mixed media, 75″ x 19″
Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin: BO PEEP (2023). Mixed media, 80″ x 45″ x 18″.
Figuring prominently in the show are images of animals and objects from the farm. Bulls, boars, chickens, and especially sheep appear, or are at least conjured, as well as boots and buckets. Several of the three-dimensional pieces feature ducks; those in Crude and the Reflections series, covered in glossy or matte black resin, recall those horrible photos we’ve all seen of birds caught in the oil tanker spills which wreak havoc on our environment, both in the ocean and on land. In Dangling Ducks 1 and 2, the fowl appear to be burned and melting, their bills seemingly turning to liquid and dripping, as if in some darkly surreal animated cartoon.
I’ve been following Oropallo’s career for about thirty years, and her work continues to surprise. Even so, she is always building on her previous work, and certain motifs – her personal environment and the fairy tales in the present exhibition, for example – have appeared and re-appeared. This continuity was accentuated by the showing in the gallery of additional pieces, not part of this body of work, some dating back to the early 1990s. Snow White (1994) and Bad Apples (2016) both have Snow White-inspired imagery, as does the new HAVEAHART, a disturbingly humorous piece that has Snow White and all Seven Dwarfs caught in animal traps.2 Similarly, the painting Cloning Bo Peep from 2010 has echoes in BO PEEP, which evokes violence of some sort; taken by itself, I would assume against women, as so many fairy tales end badly for them. However, given the themes of the show, I think its subjects are industrial farming and animal cruelty.
Although in her video pieces Oropallo has been working with other artists for several years,3 I believe she has only recently started doing so outside of that media.4 I presume she is attracted to the creative dialogue inherent in collaboration, which exposes her to different approaches, as throughout her career working alone, she has continually changed her techniques for making art. Like Robert Rauschenberg, she seems uncomfortable getting too comfortable – this has served her well; she has consistently produced engaging, challenging exhibitions, of which American Gothic was but the most recent.
1 Love + Marriage (2004), which celebrates the same-sex marriages that took place in San Francisco over twenty-nine days in February/March 2004, is on view at San Francisco City Hall, South Light Court.
2 The Haveahart® company makes humane catch and release animal traps, eight of which are used in the piece.
3 Three videos were shown in the Catharine Clark Gallery media room during the run of American Gothic. White as Snow, Wolf, and Dirty are all collaborations with Jeremiah Franklin, and take as their subject gender issues – another of Oropallo’s recurring interests, which she has also notably explored in the series Guise and Kink, among others.
4 To my knowledge, this is only the second time – Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, who have worked together on video pieces, produced the letterpress print DISARM in 2020.
New public art at Brown showcases the magic and humor of books
“What I Know About Magic,” now on display on the first floor of Friedman Hall, shows books about magic and the occult artfully arranged in clever, humorous and thought-provoking ways.
By, Brown University
Published on July 2023
The 12 photographs show collections of books about magic and the occult artfully arranged in clever, humorous and though-provoking ways.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Friedman Hall, among the busiest classroom buildings in the heart of the Brown University campus, has a new trick up its sleeve.
Now adorning the building’s first-floor corridor is the piece “What I Know About Magic,” created by artist and Brown Class of 1989 graduate Nina Katchadourian. The series of 12 photographs, which show collections of books about magic and the occult artfully arranged in clever, humorous and thought-provoking ways, is one of the newest additions to Brown’s diverse public art collection.
According to Kate Kraczon, chair of Brown’s Public Art Working Group, Katchadourian spent years delving into the H. Adrian Smith Collection of Conjuring and Magicana at the University’s John Hay Library, working with collection curator Tiffini Bowers to find books whose titles could tell both funny and meaningful stories about society’s fascination with talented magicians, mysteries of the universe and tricks of the eye.
“The books in the H. Adrian Smith Collection were fascinating historically, but also aesthetically: there were thick, gilded, leather-bound volumes from the late 19th century as well as slim paper booklets from the 1940s and 50s that often provided instructions on how to perform just one trick,” Katchadourian said. “Magicians seem to be particularly playful in their use of language for the titles of their publications, and since my project focuses so much on language, it was utterly delightful to respond to these authors’ linguistic tricks with a few of my own.”
One of the piece’s photographs shows a leather-bound book titled “Conjuror’s Repository” atop a stack of books whose embossed titles and leather covers have worn away over time — a humorous commentary on the number of times magicians practice and fail before perfecting a trick, perhaps leaving behind a heap of damaged props.
Another photograph pokes fun at the age-old battle between magic’s true believers and its biggest skeptics: A book titled “Practical Telepathy” sits next to two books titled “Mainly Mental.”
“What I Know About Magic” is the latest piece in Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project, a decades-long effort to explore different libraries and cluster together books that reflect “that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies,” according to Katchadourian. In addition to her Sorted Books pieces, Katchadourian has worked across video, sound, performance, photography, sculpture and public projects, creating art that comments on topics such as cultural assimilation, gender identity and family relationships. This is Katchadourian’s second public art commission for Brown; her first, “Advice from a Former Student,” features the voices of Brown alumni who graduated between 1939 and 2010.
Kraczon said the artist has always had a knack for injecting magic into everyday things and concepts — much like other well-known creative people who studied semiotics at Brown in the 1980s, including radio personality Ira Glass, novelist Jeffrey Eugenides and film director Todd Haynes.
“Nina is so good at turning the quotidian into something fantastic and funny,” Kraczon said. “If you’re walking through Friedman Hall, thinking about an exam or a deadline, this piece offers a nice moment of levity in the middle of your day.”
July 12, 2023
Arleene Correa Valencia
El Ultímo Sueño de Frida y Diego: Iconic Artists for Fashion,Art, and Opera
El Ultímo Sueño de Frida y Diego (2022) by local composer Gabriela Lena Frank is the first-ever San Francisco Opera production by a female composer, and the first ever in Spanish (libretto by Nilo Cruz).The opera tells the story of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera reliving their tumultuous love for 24 hours on El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) through their paintings, embracing the passion they shared and the pain they inflicted upon one other.
Artists Kahlo and Rivera were and are icons of Mexican arts and culture, magic and realism. This Commonwealth Club panel will focus on the impact of their artistic motivation, clothing, design and the famed murals across the Americas. Their fashion and lifestyles have continued to inspire many in the arts world today, including the costumes in El Ultímo Sueño de Frida y Diego, the incredible co-commissioned production of San Francisco Opera you can see on stage from June 13–30, 2023.
June 26, 2023
In Association with San Francisco Opera. Thanks to post-program reception sponsor Casa Sanchez. Main image by Illustrator Brian Stauffer; image provided by SF Opera; Bejarano photo by Christie Hemm Klok; Kazan photo courtesy the artist. Speakers Eloise Kazan Costume Designer, El Ultímo Sueño de Frida y Diego Stephanie J. Smith Author; Frida Kahlo Scholar, Ohio State University Arleene Correa Valencia Bay Area Artist Jessica Bejarano Scholar-in-Residence, San Francisco Opera; Founder and Music Director, San Francisco Philharmonic—Co-moderator Cole Thomason Redus Education Content Curator, San Francisco Opera Department of Diversity, Equity and Community
July 12, 2023
Marie Watt
Nature, Home and Relationships Inspire ‘Sun Drinks White’ Exhibit at Nerman Museum
By, Elisabeth Kirsch
Published on July 2023
Installation view of Mark Cowardin’s “Drift,” a work inspired by the metal oil rigs he saw as a child in his hometown of Joplin, Missouri
Large-scale works in unexpected materials by Teresa Baker, Mark Cowardin, Rashawn Griffin and Marie Watt reflect their remarkable creative journeys.
If the title “Sun Drinks White” sounds enigmatic, the artworks in this impressive exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art appear, at first, equally so. The museum’s executive director and chief curator, Joanne Northrup, with input from participating artists Teresa Baker, Mark Cowardin, Rashawn Griffin and Marie Watt, chose a section from the poem “Haiku Journey” by Kimberly Blaeser for the show’s title; it is meant to highlight the artists’ focus on the physical world, a subtext that courses throughout all the paintings, wall works, sculptures and installations in this exhibit.
Northrup’s goal was to curate a show that combined abstraction with a variety of materials. As the exhibit signage notes: “The artists’ deep awareness of materiality firmly grounds their work in the world.” The art may be abstract, but the works exemplify the meaning of cultural abstraction; although formally non-objective, each piece is steeped in the artists’ personal history and experience.
The text panels identify the artists’ backgrounds and how their use of specific materials functions as identity markers.
All four artists fabricated major, large-scale works for this show, using resources as varied as artificial turf, pebbles made from bread, steel girders and old blankets. Although wildly idiosyncratic, somehow these very personal artworks, produced under very different circumstances and in different parts of the country, feel subliminally connected. Each artist displays a deeply felt version of what home and relationships embody for them, whether in a literal, symbolic or ancestral sense. Baker, Cowardin, Griffin and Watt visually bare their souls in specific and remarkable creative journeys.
[...]
Installation view of Marie Watt’s textile mural, “Companion Species: Gather to Sing” (rear) and totemic sculptures, “Skywalker/Skyscraper: Forest.” All the works reference her background as a member of the Seneca Nation.
Marie Watt’s textile mural and totemic sculptures all reference her background as a member of the Seneca Nation (one of the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy on the East Coast), as well as aspects of Western modern art.
Watt holds an MFA from Yale and lives in Portland, Oregon. Her art is broadly collected, and she has received fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Ford Family Foundation and many others. Her “Companion Species: Gather to Sing” is a monumental, extraordinarily beautiful textile, which was stitched together from dozens of individual patches made by members of a sewing circle organized by Watt. Each fragment has words or statements embroidered on it with pink thread. Silver metal tinklers, or pow-wow jingles from dancers, are also sewn on parts of the piece. Words chosen for embroidery on “Companion Species” were collected from the participants by Watt with the question: “What do you want to sing a song for in this moment?”
Blankets are of great importance for many Indigenous peoples, and Watt uses them often in her art. She collects new and old ones, and people also give them to her. In “Skywalker/Skyscraper: Forest” a variety of blankets are rigorously and specifically folded and stacked on top of wooden blocks (a citation of Brancusi’s famous pedestals made from wood), and on top of them are heavy steel geometric forms with titles such as “Grandmother” and “Grandfather” etched onto them. “Skywalker/Skyscraper: Forest” honors the legendary Iroquois ironworkers known as “skywalkers,” who worked in Manhattan in the 1950s constructing skyscrapers at extreme personal risk. To say these works have presence is an understatement.
[...]
“Sun Drinks White” continues at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park through July 30. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, 913.469.3000 or www.nermanmuseum.org.
All images courtesy Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas / photos by EG Schempf
17 Jun — 19 Aug 2023 at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, United States
By, MEER
Published on June 2023
Masami Teraoka, Waves: Waimanalo Beach, 1986 – 88, watercolor on paper, mounted as a scroll, 42x94 inches. Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
Catharine Clark Gallery opens its summer program with Masami Teraoka: Waves and Plagues Redux, on view from June 17 to August 19, 2023, in the North Gallery.
The exhibition takes its title from an important monograph on Teraoka titled Waves and Plagues published by Chronicle Books in 1988 and offers a rare opportunity to see watercolors, drawings, and multiples from two iconic bodies of work: the AIDS Series and Waves Series, as well as a selection of important studies and watercolors from projects created prior to 1995.
From 1960 to 1984, Teraoka lived and worked in Los Angeles, during which time he produced his signature ukiyo-e (or“pictures of the floating world”generally rendered as woodcuts in the Edo era of Japan) compositions that reflected on cultural hybridity, represented in series such as McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan, 31 Flavors Invading Japan,and New Views of Mt. Fuji.
The onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s brought a new urgency to Teraoka's work and inaugurated a five-year span in which he created monumental watercolors on paper, screens, and canvas, such as American Kabuki/Oishiiwa (1986), a multi-panel watercolor mounted to a folding screen in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. These compositions depicted figures with visible symptoms of infection, such as lesions caused by Kaposi sarcoma, dressed in Kabuki-style make-up and costumes, and set in tumultuous and often menacing landscapes. Teraoka was one of the few major American artists creating work about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s. His paintings were particularly radical at a time when the American government willingly ignored public health data on infection and transmission rates, and all but refused to address a public health crisis that disproportionately impacted queer people and communities of color (a scenario re-visited during Covid-19).
Work from this era of his practice was included in the recent exhibition and attendant catalogue Art, AIDS, America. The exhibition (and catalogue) was the first comprehensive overview and reconsideration of 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It foregrounded the role of HIV/AIDS in shifting the development of American art away from the conceptual foundations of postmodernism and abstraction toward a new, more political, and autobiographical voice.Art AIDS America surveyed more than 100 works of American art from the early 1980s to 2015, reintroducing and exploring the spectrum of responses to HIV/AIDS, from activism to elegy.
It also introduced and explored the spectrum of artistic responses to AIDS, from the outspoken to the mournful. Art AIDS America was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and co-curated by Jonathan David Katz, Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program at the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), and Rock Hushka, Chief Curator at Tacoma Art Museum who contributed to the catalogue.
For Teraoka’s part, in 1984, seeking respite and solace from the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on his artist community in Los Angeles, he began traveling between LA and Hawaii, and eventually moved to the island of Oahu, where he continues to live and work today. Finding escape and comfort in the natural beauty of Hawai'i, Teraoka began painting evocative waterscapes, some of which are mounted on traditional Japanese scrolls in between making works that addressed the insidiousness of HIV/AIDS and its devastating effects. Drawing inspiration from Edo-era, historic landscape prints by artists such as Hokusai and Kunisada, Teraoka created this new series of meditative works as a counterpoint to the intensity of his AIDS Series watercolors. In the process, Teraoka continued to experiment with scale and materials,resulting in larger and even more expressive works that eventually evolved into the large-scale triptychs that emerged in the later 1990s.
Waves and Plagues Redux features several important unmounted watercolors on canvas, including AIDS Series/Father and Son(1990). These canvases, nearly nine feet tall, portray figures in the end stages of infection. Two of the paintings depict a father that is infected and a mother tenderly holding the infant that is infected with HIV or dead, with their eyes cast downward and away, capturing a moment of overwhelming and indescribable loss. These canvases are among the last of his ukiyo-e style works and represent the culmination of his AIDS Series.Waves and Plagues Redux offers an important survey of this period of Teraoka's work, which continues to have a lasting impact on art historical conversations surrounding HIV/AIDS.In conversation with Teraoka’s exhibition, the gallery continues to feature three videos by Deborah Oropallo: White As Snow, Wolf,and Dirty. As their point of departure, the videos use fairy tales such as Snow White,Little Red Riding Hood,and Fantasia, the related costumes from cosplay, and Disney films to weave together cautionary tales of a more dystopic nature (they complement the collaborative work created by her and her husband Michael Goldin in exhibit in the South Gallery titled American Gothic).
Exhibition on figure painting on display at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art
From cave paintings to the Renaissance, artists have used the human figure to tell stories.
By, Sonoma Index-Tribune
Published on June 2023
The art exhibition currently on display at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is all about figure painting.
From cave paintings to the Renaissance and from Vermeer to Henry Moore, artists have used the human figure to tell stories. Di Rosa’s current exhibition, “Figure Telling: Contemporary Bay Area Figuration,” provides a fresh look at figure painting today.
Works by Sydney Cain, Craig Calderwood, John Goodman, Afsoon Razavi, Josephine Taylor and Heather Wilcoxon tell deeply personal stories about life in 2023. These range from ancestry to the persecution of women in Iran and from the horrors of adolescence to growing up transgender in a small town.
The multigenerational artists in Figure Telling have very different backgrounds, interests and artistic practices. Each of them, however, uses visual storytelling to convey unique identities, concerns and compassions. In a world that is so often complex, they use human bodies to tell stories — sometimes ugly and sometimes beautiful, always honest.
“Figure painting is all the rage in New York, Los Angeles and London,” said Chief Curator Kate Eilertsen in a news release. “Northern California is producing its own unique brand of contemporary figuration, rooted in the deeply personal.”
A panel discussion with the artists and Eilertsen will be held on Saturday, July 22 at 2 p.m. in the exhibition space. Tickets are available online at dirosaart.org. The exhibition will continue until Sept. 17, 2023.
Exhibition on figure painting on display at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art
From cave paintings to the Renaissance, artists have used the human figure to tell stories.
“Figure Telling: Contemporary Bay Area Figuration” will be on display at di Rosa through Sept. 17.
The art exhibition currently on display at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is all about figure painting.
From cave paintings to the Renaissance and from Vermeer to Henry Moore, artists have used the human figure to tell stories. Di Rosa’s current exhibition, “Figure Telling: Contemporary Bay Area Figuration,” provides a fresh look at figure painting today.
Works by Sydney Cain, Craig Calderwood, John Goodman, Afsoon Razavi, Josephine Taylor and Heather Wilcoxon tell deeply personal stories about life in 2023. These range from ancestry to the persecution of women in Iran and from the horrors of adolescence to growing up transgender in a small town.
The multigenerational artists in Figure Telling have very different backgrounds, interests and artistic practices. Each of them, however, uses visual storytelling to convey unique identities, concerns and compassions. In a world that is so often complex, they use human bodies to tell stories — sometimes ugly and sometimes beautiful, always honest.
“Figure painting is all the rage in New York, Los Angeles and London,” said Chief Curator Kate Eilertsen in a news release. “Northern California is producing its own unique brand of contemporary figuration, rooted in the deeply personal.”
A panel discussion with the artists and Eilertsen will be held on Saturday, July 22 at 2 p.m. in the exhibition space. Tickets are available online at dirosaart.org. The exhibition will continue until Sept. 17, 2023.
About the artists
Sydney Cain is a visual artist born and raised in San Francisco. Through large-scale and intimate works, Cain honors those who have passed on and provides them with sacred sites to be reborn and re-imagined. Current works with printmaking, powdered metals and sculpture mine personal archives, their family’s genealogy, and the intersections of urban renewal and displacement on the psychic, spiritual, emotion and physical well-being of marginalized communities. Cain, currently in graduate school at Yale University, is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery, and has exhibited at SOMArts, and the Oakland Museum of California, among others.
Craig Calderwood, a self-taught artist, uses low-end materials such as found fabrics, polymer clay and fiber-tip pens to create intricate and decorative works, rendered through a personal vernacular of symbols and patterns, and arranged into constellations that tell stories both personal and fantasized. His work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, Mills College Art Museum and Museum of Craft and Design, among others.
John Goodman, a self-taught artist who draws inspiration from Bay Area figurative painters, came to painting after a long and successful career as a playwright. His storytelling skill is central to his being and career. His understated minimalism, signature impasto brushwork and reductive use of color speak of isolation and eternity. Goodman lives and works in San Francisco and is represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame.
Afsoon Razavi is an Iranian-American artist and designer living and working in Napa. With her charcoal drawings of free-flowing hair, Razavi tells the story of Iranian women’s protests and self-determination as their government prohibits them from showing their hair in public.
Josephine Taylor's mysterious drawings leave us searching for the sources of her history. Using delicate colors with meticulous details, Taylor explores the traumas and joys of contemporary experience. She is a 2017 Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellow and a 2004 recipient of the SFMOMA SECA award, among other accolades. Taylor is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and will open a solo exhibition at the gallery in September 2023.
Heather Wilcoxon’s figures explore issues like abortion and immigration. Each piece has a story to tell — however she allows space for each viewer to make up their own narrative. Having studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, Wilcoxon lives and works in Sausalito, CA. She has received fellowships including two from the Pollack/Krasner Foundation, and recently received the Distinguished Women in the Arts Award from the Fresno Art Museum.
31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla IV, 1979, watercolor on two sheets of paper; 11 x 55 inches
The temporal distance between the pandemic 40 years ago and the one from which we’ve just emerged has given us time to reflect on the global devastation of the AIDS crisis when it was at its peak and California was among its American epicenters. This survey of Masami Teraoka’s work from 1984 to 2008, titled Waves and Plagues Redux, reminds us of those times, inviting a reexamination informed by a post-COVID perspective.
Teraoka attracted significant West Coast visibility during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s by adopting the esthetics and techniques of traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e painting and woodblock printing and combining them with pictorial fragments derived from the most banal and occasionally vulgar aspects of American popular culture. The results of this approach were always suffused with undeniable charm, refined craftsmanship and a good-natured humor, highlighting the absurdity associated with the economic colonization of a deeply revered tradition.
AIDS Series/Father and Son, 1990, watercolor on canvas, 108 x84 inches
A good early example in the current exhibition, 31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla IV (1979), depicts a female figure clad in the flowing kimono of a traditional geisha. Her overdramatic body language shows her greedily consuming an ice cream cone while reflecting with visible dismay, her momentary and embarrassing lapse of dignity. It is worth remembering that the Ukiyo-e artists of the Edo-Tokugawa period often depicted the idealized world of actors and courtesans who lived exalted lives as exceptions to the rigidity of their society, something Teraoka comically mirrors by employing in their stead, Hollywood celebrity types who lived near him in Los Angeles before he relocated to Hawaii in 1984.
As the AIDS crisis worsened in the 1980s and early 1990s, the disease and the fraught politics surrounding it proved to be no laughing matter. This explains the somber, melodramatic moods of Teraoka’s large works from a series made in 1990, five excellent examples of which are included here. All quite large and compositionally forthright, deviating from earlier Ukiyo-e stylistics in favor of centrally posed figures evoking official state portraits of shoguns or other high government officials, not to mention the revered emperors of ancient China painted in the older, albeit similar, Gongbi style. The difference is that Teraoka’s figures are not highly placed officials in any government, nor are they recognizable celebrities of any import. They are everyday people clad in Kimono gowns, appearing as if they were personally associated with the artist. Many appear to be sick, evidenced by their exsanguinated pallor and the somber colors of their surroundings. Three such paintings portray mother and child dyads, while a fourth portrays a father and child. The children depicted are all infants, some looking seriously ill or otherwise malnourished, like the one featuring a distraught blond woman clutching her blue-tinged offspring. In other cases, the adult figures are the ones who look vexed by infirmity; witness the parent figure in AIDS Series/Father and Son whose palsied hands look as if they are morphing into rotten claws.
Study for Wave Series/Molokai Lookout Point, 1984, watercolor on paper, 24 7/8 x 98 inches
Several examples from Teraoka’s Wave Series offer an ebullient counterbalance to the grim pathos of the AIDS Series. The earliest, New Views of Mt. Fuji/Waterfall Contemplation II (1979), is a horizontally formatted image of cascading water with figures positioned at the corner taking enjoyment from the serenity of the scene. More dramatic are the ebb and flow of surging waves depicted in Waves and Rocks (1986), Study for Wave Series/Molokai Lookout Point (1984) and Waves: Waimanalo Beach (1986-88), where the frothy whitecaps seem to form semi-figural water wraiths representing the spirits that animate them. The obvious reference point for these efforts is Hokusai’s famous 1831 image The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Teraoka’s wave paintings, executed in both watercolor and polychrome woodblock, play off of that familiarity to good advantage by capturing a perfect balance between the frozen stillness of the picture form and the unsettled, perpetual motion of the subject. Where Hokusai’s image is thought to dramatically represent the yin and yang of nature, Teraoka’s Wave images accomplish the same thing in a more lyrical register, elegantly teasing out the analogy between of the flow of water and the flow of time.
Namiyo at Hanauma Bay, 1985, lithograph, 24 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches
One special aspect of this exhibition is the inclusion of a large array of small works and preparatory studies, a few of which look to be related to some of the larger, more complete works on display nearby. These run a gamut from outright doodles and purposeful sketches to finished works executed in an unselfconscious and improvisatory manner. Just as professional magicians guard the inner mechanisms of their illusions, so do certain artists. When their secrets are revealed, as they are here, it’s an opportunity to be savored, one that allows us to see the thinking behind Teraoka’s process, thereby enhancing our appreciation and understanding of it.
[...]
Masami Teraoka: “Waves and Plagues Redux.” A survey of work from 1984 to 2008 @ Catharine Clark Gallery through August 19, 2023.
ART ‘Offshore Islands’ by artist Betty M. Wilson. Painting by Betty M. Wilson
Ross
Noble Art
The Marin Art and Garden Center presents “Noble Art: Creativity & Community in the College of Marin Fine Arts Department,” a celebration of some of the most exciting and influential artists who have taught in the College of Marin fine arts department. Featured artists include Betty M. Wilson, Carole Beadle, Chester Arnold, Bill Abright and Allan Widenhofer. The works, guest curated by Twyla Ruby, span painting, sculpture, ceramic and fiber arts, and are on exhibit through Aug. 27. Gallery hours are 10am to 4pm, Friday and Saturday, and 12 to 4pm, Sunday, at the Studio at Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross.
Walking Speed: A Curator’s Tour of The Mary and Al Shands Collection
By, Megan Bickel
Pubslished on June 2023
Anish Kapoor, British, b. 1954. “Untitled,” 1999. Stainless steel and yellow paint, The Mary Norton Shands and Alfred R. Shands III Art Collection Bequest, P2022.2.69/Photo: Bill Roughen
“Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection,” curated by Julien Robson, is a major exhibition celebrating the significant collection of contemporary artworks assembled by the late Al Shands (1928-2021) and Mary Norton Shands (1930-2009). The exhibit at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, also commemorates the transformative gift of art made to the museum, numbering over a hundred artworks.
It was Al Shands’ wish that the contemporary art collection he and his late wife, Mary, amassed at their Great Meadows estate in Crestwood, Kentucky be displayed in a public exhibition before being dispersed to museums across the state. In this way, he sought not only a closure to the collection’s life at Great Meadows, but also a bridge to the works’ future lives in other contexts. Shands, a former Episcopalian priest, hoped to stage an exhibition that would be dynamic but also contemplative—a place where museum visitors could be inspired to explore what meaning the works could spark in their own lives.
The exhibition appears in three parts but avoids chronological narratives and instead navigates space, time, and materiality to look at the evolution of a collection that includes highly established artists such as Anish Kapoor, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Siah Armajani, Petah Coyne, Olafur Eliasson, Elizabeth Murray, Alfredo Jaar, Betty Woodman, Sol LeWitt and Tony Cragg, alongside major Kentucky artists such as Vian Sora, Cynthia Norton, Kiah Celeste and Sandra Charles. I had the chance to discuss decisions behind the curatorial choices with Robson, as well as what the future of the Great Meadows Foundation holds for Kentucky’s artists.
Nina Katchadourian, “What is Art?” C-prints, 12.5 x 19 inches, 1996/2008, part of the “Special Collections Revisited” series from the “Sorted Books” project/Photo: Megan Bickel
“We walk up to the first gallery here, and we’re greeted by this piece which serves to direct us,” Robson says. “It’s Nina Katchadourian’s piece, which is part of the “Special Collections Revisited” series. It’s her portrait of John Canady’s book, “What is Art,” and then “Close Observation.” As you head toward the exhibition in this compressed space, the first thing it’s doing is pointing you to art and giving you advice about what art could be.”
Installation view, “Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Alfred Shands Collection” at the Speed Art Museum/Photo: Mindy Best Photography, courtesy the Speed Art Museum
The print serves as a direction point.
Yeah. Yeah. I decided the next step would be to go into a slightly larger space where there would be more didactic material, and this is really the only place where it’s distinctly about Al and Mary. I took this wall of photographs directly from the house and just hung it here with a brief chronology of the two of them and a text that’s an introductory text, then I’ve included three ceramic works. They’re all teapots. Ceramics is really where the collection started, with Wayne Ferguson‘s work. And at the end of their life, there were nineteen Wayne Ferguson’s in the collection from the early years. But in the early years of their collecting, Mary was asked by Phyllis George, the then-governor’s wife, to lead the Kentucky Foundation of Art and Craft, which eventually became KMAC. This spurred their collection.
She started taking Al to craft fairs like Berea’s. They both had cultural backgrounds, but they weren’t really serious collectors, and it was at Berea that Al found this piece by Wayne Ferguson that really touched him, and he bought it and put it in his car, and came back and started buying more things. He always talked about that from the moment he became a collector.
Yes, Yes.
It got bigger and bigger and eventually became much more sculptural. The show isn’t a chronology, but it interlaces a number of things. As we walk into the next room, which is almost exactly the size of the courtyard at Great Meadows, we find in the middle of the floor the Alice Aycock, which sat in that courtyard. The sound work is the work Al commissioned after Mary died from Stephen Vitiello in her memory.
[...]
We’ve involved ourselves over the last couple of years with a number of big projects which we will step back from in order to return to core activities. We put money into this exhibition, which Al wanted, and then we’re funding a final project: a book. And the book will be a document discussing Mary and Al and their collection and the house. But we will continue the Artist Professional Development Grant, which really is the core of what we do, right?
“Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection” at Speed Art Museum, 2035 South Third Street, Louisville, Kentucky, on view through August 6.
New Photography and Media Arts Curator appointed at Milwaukee Art Museum
By, Artdaily.com
Published on June 2023
MILWAUKEE, WI.- The Milwaukee Art Museum today announced that it has appointed Kristen Gaylord as the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, overseeing its collection of photography and media works. Gaylord comes to the Museum, among the first American institutions to collect photography, from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, where she is currently the Associate Curator of Photographs. She will assume her new role beginning in September.
“The Milwaukee Art Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts has a robust exhibition program that connects our visitors to compelling works of photography, film, and video,” said Marcelle Polednik, the Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. “We look forward to having Kristen on our curatorial team to lead this program and shape the Museum’s strong collection across these media as they continue to evolve."
For the last five years, Gaylord has served on the curatorial team of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, where she contributed to the ongoing scholarship, preservation, and growth of the Carter’s extensive photographic holdings. During her tenure, she organized exhibitions including Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision (2022); Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection (2022); Looking In: Photography from the Outside (2019); Set in Motion: Camille Utterback and Art That Moves (2019); and the forthcoming Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood (May 2024).
“The Milwaukee Art Museum excels in the study and collection of 20th-century American photography, and we look forward to Kristen’s contributions to and expansion of this legacy,” said Liz Siegel, Chief Curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Kristen's experience and passion for presenting the work of a wide range of photographers with varied perspectives and approaches to the medium make her a valuable addition to our team.”
As the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Gaylord will lead the study and exhibition of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection of nearly 4,000 photographs and a growing collection of time-based media, spanning from daguerreotypes to works by contemporary practitioners. In addition to overseeing acquisition strategy, Gaylord will regularly rotate the Center’s exhibitions to showcase new acquisitions, share original research, and increase visitor engagement with the collection.
“I am thrilled to be joining the Milwaukee Art Museum and its storied photography program,” said Kristen Gaylord. “I look forward to collaborating with colleagues and community members to develop new scholarship around the collection, feature expanded narratives of the history of art, and amplify the innovative voices in photography and media arts today.”
Prior to her role at the Carter, Gaylord served as the Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for three years, having previously worked there as a research assistant and a curatorial intern. Concurrently, Gaylord was also the inaugural curator of the Duke House Exhibition Series at New York University (NYU). In addition to holding positions at the Willem de Kooning Foundation, Gaylord has taught at the Museum of the City of New York, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Kingsborough Community College, and NYU. She has also written and lectured widely.
Gaylord holds a Bachelor of Arts in art history and English literature from Westmont College and a Ph.D. in art history and archeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Gaylord's position is endowed through a major grant from the Herzfeld Foundation.
Inward journey: Art opening at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild centers on self
By, Hv1 Staff
Published on June 2023
Julie Heffernan’s Self Portrait as Mad Queen.
As brushes dance on canvas, they often weave tales that transcend the boundaries of mere pigments and patterns to illustrate the ineffable. This summer, three renowned artists, Brenda Goodman, Julie Heffernan, and Elisa Jensen, invite us to delve into a fascinating exploration of the notion of “self”. In an upcoming exhibition titled “SELF: Portraits + Places”, they skillfully unravel the complexities of identity, each through their unique artistic lens.
The exhibition, curated by Melinda Stickney-Gibson, opens this Saturday, June 24 with an opening reception at 4pm, and runs through August 6 at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock.
Brenda Goodman brings to life the authenticity of personal narratives through her self-portraits. Known for her honest representation of the artist’s existence, Goodman’s work reflects a personal, unembellished viewpoint of the self. Her art is devoid of any romanticized notions, serving as a poignant testimony to her experience as an artist.
Contrasting Goodman’s approach, Julie Heffernan depicts the “self” using elaborate allegories. Through incredibly detailed and intricate artworks, Heffernan echoes her environmental concerns. Her self-portrait, designed as a symbol representing humanity, offers a visually stunning perspective on humanity’s place in the world we inhabit today. Initially striking in their beauty, a deeper inspection reveals the undercurrent of thoughtful critique lacing her work.
Elisa Jensen offers a different perspective yet, choosing to manifest “self” through the subtle representation of daily life. Her art, featuring intimate views of interiors, garden corners, or apartment window views, conveys a sense of familiar tranquility. Jensen’s works serve as silent reminders of the personal resonance in our lived spaces, the objects we surround ourselves with, and the meaning they hold to us.
“SELF: Portraits + Places” promises an engaging exploration of selfhood through the perspectives of three gifted artists. More details can be found at woodstockguild.org.
ADAA Names Exhibitors for 35th Anniversary Art Show in November
By, Maximiliano Duron
Published on June 22, 2023
The ADAA's 2021 Art Show 2021, at the Park Avenue Armory.PHOTO SCOTT RUDD PRODUCTIONS
The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has lined up 78 exhibitors from its membership for the 35th edition of its annual Art Show, scheduled to run November 2–5 at the Park Avenue Armory. The fair opens to VIPs with its evening benefit preview on November 1, which benefits the Henry Street Settlement.
As is typical at the Art Show, the majority of the fair’s booths will be dedicated to single-artist presentations, among them Kiki Smith at Pace Gallery, Tavares Strachan at Marian Goodman, Betty Woodman at David Kordansky, Manoucher Yektai at Karma, Richard Mayhew at ACA Galleries, Whitfield Lovell at DC Moore Gallery, Arvie Smith at Monique Meloche, Charmion von Wiegand at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, and new works by Jasmin Sian at Anthony Meier, who also serves as president of the ADAA.
This edition of the fair will also include several new ADAA members, such as LA’s Anat Ebgi Gallery, which will do a solo presentation on Faith Wilding, and San Francisco’s Catharine Clark Gallery, which will mount a two-person presentation titled “Double Vision: Rethinking Manifest Destiny,” with work by Marie Watt and Stephanie Syjuco. Other new members participating include Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, Eric Firestone Gallery, Ortuzar Projects, and Perrotin, which recently sold a 60-percent stake to Colony Investment Management.
In a statement, ADAA executive director Maureen Bray said, “This is a special year for The Art Show as it celebrates two milestone anniversaries—its very own 35-year run and Henry Street Settlement’s 130th year of operation—which demonstrates how the generative collaboration between our two organizations has had a tremendous and time-honored impact on the lives and well-being of our communities.”
The full exhibitor list follows below.
Exhibitor Location(s)
ACA Galleries: New York, NY
Avery Galleries: Bryn Mawr, PA
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery: New York, NY
Berggruen Gallery: San Francisco, CA
Peter Blum Gallery: New York, NY
Castelli Gallery: New York, NY
Cheim & Read: New York, NY
Catharine Clark Gallery: San Francisco, CA
James Cohan: New York, NY
Thomas Colville Fine Art: Guilford, CT and New York, NY
DC Moore Gallery: New York, NY
Tibor de Nagy: New York, NY
Anat Ebgi Gallery: Los Angeles, CA
Andrew Edlin Gallery: New York, NY
Derek Eller Gallery: New York, NY
Eric Firestone Gallery: New York and East Hampton, NY
Debra Force Fine Art, Inc.: New York, NY
Forum Gallery: New York, NY
Peter Freeman, Inc.: New York, NY
James Fuentes: New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA
GAVLAK: Los Angeles, CA and Palm Beach, FL
Gitterman Gallery: New York, NY
Marian Goodman Gallery: New York, NY
Garth Greenan Gallery: New York, NY
Hirschl & Adler Modern: New York, NY
Hosfelt Gallery: San Francisco, CA
Susan Inglett Gallery: New York, NY
Jenkins Johnson Gallery: San Francisco, CA and Brooklyn, NY
Nathalie Karg Gallery: New York, NY
Karma: New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA
Kasmin: New York, NY
June Kelly Gallery: New York, NY
Sean Kelly: New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA
Anton Kern Gallery: New York, NY
Tina Kim Gallery: New York, NY
David Kordansky Gallery: Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY
Krakow Witkin Gallery: Boston, MA
Kraushaar Galleries: New York, NY
Lehmann Maupin: New York, NY
Luxembourg + Co.: New York, NY
Mary-Anne Martin | Fine Art: New York, NY
Barbara Mathes Gallery: New York, NY
Miles McEnery Gallery: New York, NY
Anthony Meier: Mill Valley, CA
moniquemeloche: Chicago, IL
Yossi Milo Gallery: New York, NY
Shulamit Nazarian: Los Angeles, CA
Jill Newhouse Gallery: New York, NY
David Nolan Gallery: New York, NY
Ortuzar Projects: New York, NY
P.P.O.W: New York, NY
Pace Gallery: New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA
Franklin Parrasch Gallery: New York, NY
Perrotin: New York, NY
Petzel: New York, NY
Almine Rech: New York, NY
Ricco/Maresca: New York, NY
Yancey Richardson: New York, NY
Roberts Projects: Los Angeles, CA
Rosenberg & Co.: New York, NY
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery: New York, NY
Mary Ryan Gallery: New York, NY
Schoelkopf Gallery: New York, NY
Marc Selwyn Fine Art: Beverly Hills, CA
Susan Sheehan Gallery: New York, NY
Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino: Houston, TX
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.: New York, NY
SKOTO GALLERY: New York, NY
Sperone Westwater: New York, NY
Cristin Tierney Gallery: New York, NY
TOTAH: New York, NY
Leon Tovar: Gallery New York, NY
Van Doren Waxter: New York, NY
Von Lintel Gallery: Los Angeles, CA
Michael Werner: New York, NY
Worthington Gallery: Chicago, IL and San Francisco, CA
Yares Art: New York, NY and Santa Fe, NM
YOSHII: New York, NY
Art historian, critic and curator Maika Pollack will join Syracuse University this fall as executive director and chief curator of the Syracuse University Art Museum.
“Maika Pollack brings the talent and vision to support and expand the important role that Syracuse University Art Museum plays in campus life and in the greater Syracuse community. I look forward to working with her and watching the museum flourish under her leadership,” says Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Gretchen Ritter.
In her new role, Pollack will report to Marcelle Haddix, associate provost for strategic initiatives. Haddix’s portfolio includes, among other things, all University-wide arts and humanities affiliates and programs.
“We are excited to welcome Maika to campus this fall,” Haddix says. “She is an experienced, collaborative leader and talented arts professional whose contributions to the museum and the University will greatly benefit our students, faculty and staff.”
Pollack, who grew up in Central New York, comes to Syracuse from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, where she is the director and chief curator at John Young Museum of Art and University Galleries. She says she is looking forward to joining the Syracuse University community and returning to her native New York State.
“I am honored to take this role,” Pollack says. “Syracuse University has a long history of graduates who are enormously influential in the arts, from Clement Greenberg and Sol LeWitt to LaToya Ruby Frazier. I’m excited to help make this unique history more visible through exhibitions and publications, and to work with the museum’s talented staff and leadership.”
At the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, she established a founding endowment of nearly half a million dollars, created an imprint with nationally reviewed publications and curated shows with such artists as Ken Okiishi, Tadashi Sato, Stephanie Syjuco, Hadi Fallahpisheh, David Salle and Tetsuo Ochikubo and others.
She expanded diversity in programming and put together exhibitions lauded in local and national media, resulting in an attendance of almost 40,000 unique visitors in 2022-2023. She also oversaw the creation of a scholarly study room, the rehousing of the museum’s permanent collection, the transition to an updated collections management system and renovations to improve facilities.
Prior to Honolulu, Pollack was co-founder and director of Southfirst, a contemporary art gallery in Brooklyn that presented experimental exhibitions for almost two decades, where her curated shows were reviewed by major publications. Previously, Pollack worked as the curatorial assistant to the chief curator at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, where in 2000 she was part of the original curatorial team for the highly popular “Warm Up” summer performance series. Additionally, she founded the imprint Object Relations. Her writing on contemporary art and culture has been widely published. She was the museum exhibition critic for the New York Observer from 2011 to 2015.
Pollack earned Ph.D. and master’s degrees in the history of art and architecture at Princeton University and an A.B. in art history and social studies at Harvard University. She has taught art history and curatorial studies at Sarah Lawrence College, Pratt University, New York University, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and Princeton. Her research focuses on the history of photography, late 19th-century European art, feminist art, American art of the 1960s and 70s, contemporary art and postcolonial studies.
'Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art' opens at The Fabric Workshop and Museum
By, ArtDaily.com
Published on June 2023
Glenn Ligon, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Skin Tight (Thuglife II) (installation view), 1995. Yellow ink on black vinyl. 35 x 18 x 37 inches. Edition of 7. Photo by Carlos Avendaño.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Fabric Workshop and Museum opened Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art, an exhibition featuring 22 artists who explore and engage with sound. Some artworks incorporate actual sound while others encourage viewers to rely upon their own experiences and memories of sound to interpret the works. Curated by Alec Unkovic, the exhibition is on view June 23, 2023 to January 7, 2024.
Artists on view: Terry Adkins, Janine Antoni, Moe Brooker, Nick Cave, Lenka Clayton, Kevin Cooley, Peter Edwards, Guillermo Galindo, Ann Hamilton, Christine Sun Kim, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Mader, Jason Moran, Robert Morris, Stephen Petronio, Raúl Romero, Yinka Shonibare, Patrick Siler, Kiki Smith, Lenore Tawney, and Mika Tajima.
Throughout The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s history, Artists-in-Residence have used sound as the focus or as a conceptual component of their residencies. These projects have often explored how to offer a direct translation of sound, capture an indirect representation of its energy and cultural forms, or inspire an audible response from an audience. As the title of the exhibition suggests, the artworks presented demonstrate the notion of a “sonic presence,” a palpable connection between the visual and the aural. Featuring works from the Museum’s collection alongside a selection of loaned works, Sonic Presence invites visitors to explore the resonant themes of sound in visual arts, be it implied, imagined, absent, or realized.
As part of residencies that often focus on material exploration, some artists at FWM have turned to visually translating the experience of sound, performance, or their cultural reverberations. For Yinka Shonibare, creating his Afrofuturist sculpture Space Walk (2002), which consists of two life-size astronaut figures suspended midair in the gallery suggesting the weightlessness of soundless space, involved scouring Philadelphia’s South Street neighborhood for vinyl records. Visual iconography of the 70s Philly Sound movement and then-emerging local artist Jill Scott came to serve as the inspiration for four custom batik textile designs that clothe the figures with the cultural energy of Black musical artists. The notion of clothing oneself in sound is explored further with Nick Cave’s Soundsuit, with its vibrant armor of stuffed animals towering above a pair of colorful tight-wearing legs, and with Lenore Tawney’s Cloud Garment, in which silkscreened sheet music and the evocation of atmospheric calm merge together to form a protectively serene garment.
In his 2010 print on silk, Listen with your eyes ttgg, the late Philadelphia artist Moe Brooker, a preacher’s son, invites viewers to conjure the sounds of his childhood in the church through its vivid colors and abstracted forms, while Patrick Siler’s 1987 screenprinted Blaster captures a scene of listeners captivated by a classic boombox. Conversely, Peter Edwards’ interactive sculpture Specter, which consists of clusters of illuminated orbs descending from the ceiling, visibly responds to the sounds of visitors.
Instruments act as a recurring theme throughout Sonic Presence as both material and form. The exhibition includes two sculptures from Terry Adkins’ Aviarium series, the last body of work by the late Philadelphia artist, which translate wave vectors of bird vocalization into a monumental scale, using cymbals and aluminum rods to capture song in purely sculptural form. Recent works by Jason Moran vividly capture the traces of a performance, with the artist exploring the residue of music-making by placing paper on the piano keys and using saturated pigment.
Place becomes the inspiration in Sonic Border for Mexican composer and artist Guillermo Galindo, who crafted instruments from discarded items bearing the evidence of migration, which he collected on his travels along the Mexican-American Border. Paired with recordings of Galindo’s original score, these artifacts resonate with the complexity and lived experiences of immigration.
Making its debut is The Sound of the Sea, a new collaborative work by former Artist-in-Residence Lenka Clayton with Phillip Andrew Lewis that explores the process of Foley artists, who utilize props to recreate everyday sound effects in films, radio, or television; for this work, Clayton and Lewis have collected and recontextualized unexpected objects used to create the sound of the ocean.
Glenn Ligon’s Skin Tight, made up of eight punching bags and graphic wallpaper, reflects on the notion of Black masculinity and the Black body as site and object. Adorned with the images of rappers such as Ice Cube and texts from Muhammad Ali, the installation confronts the visitor with the impact and implications of a punching bag’s activation.
Sonic Presence also explores the conceptual notion of the sound of an artwork’s own making. During her FWM residency, Mika Tajima began her ongoing Negative Entropy series, consisting of woven acoustic portraits that act as images of the condition of their production; having recorded industrial spaces employing Jacquard looms, the artist visually translated those recordings into spectrograms that were then produced into Jacquard-woven designs on some of those same looms. In a work that predates his residency at FWM, Robert Morris’ Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961) presents an ordinary wooden box that emits a recording of its own construction, complete with sawing and hammering as well as pauses and sounds of activity less traditionally associated with progress.
Lenka Clayton’s ongoing Typewriter Drawing series explores both cacophony and absence through mark-making. Phillip Andrew Lewis and Kevin Cooley’s Harmony of the Spheres blends performance and relic. Their destruction of one-thousand silent vinyl records inspired numerous works, including a final edition of one-hundred LP records made entirely from the ruins. When re-pressed, the new vinyls—available for visitors to listen to—are inscribed with the sounds of the buzzing factory as it works to press the silent record as well as the sounds of the records’ initial destruction when thrown against the wall.
The exhibition also explores communication in its myriad forms: Ann Hamilton’s 1993 editioned collar work, Untitled, explores the relationship between the body and language with an alphabet woven from horsehair. Over a dozen editions of Kiki Smith’s Singing Siren, an artist multiple made with FWM, form a chorus-in-waiting of mythological creatures whose song is simultaneously alluring and deadly. A prototype from Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio’s 2016 work Swallow offers custom seating that engenders connection and dialogue.
A two-film work by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader continues the exhibition’s focus on sound and communication. In Tables and Windows, the artists intertwine their bodies much like a game of collaborative improv, working together to negotiate their different skill sets as a native American Sign Language (ASL) speaker and an ASL learner. Another work on loan looks beyond human communication. Philadelphia artist Raúl Romero’s sculptural installation Music for plants, by plants merges speakers, sculpture, and a listening station to explore the role of the sculpture’s plant as recipient or maker of subsonic frequencies. Wielding unexpected humor, these works interrogate the perceived limitations of language and sound, inviting visitors to join the artists in search of their untapped potential.
Taken together, the works by the 22 artists in Sonic Presence offer numerous ways that contemporary art can both engage with ideas of sound and offer possibilities in bridging explorations between the visual and the aural.
Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art is organized by former FWM Exhibitions Manager Unkovic.
Tool’s Adam Jones unveils new version of the best Epiphone Les Paul on the market
By, Michael Astley-Brown
Published on June 2023
(Image credit: Epiphone)
The fourth entry in Adam Jones’ Epiphone Les Paul Custom Art Collection has arrived, and with it another new piece of art on the rear of the acclaimed signature guitar.
Before we dive in, a quick recap: back in December, the Tool guitarist finally launched his affordable Epiphone model, but it came with a twist: seven unique guitars would be produced, each featuring a piece of artwork chosen by Jones. Just 800 of each guitar would be produced.
Now, the fourth entry in the lineup has arrived, showcasing Julie Heffernan’s “Self-Portrait as Not Dead Yet”, with its subject surrounded by flowers, peacock feathers and dead rabbits.
Now, we’re no art critics, but we can tell you that The New Yorker once described Heffernan’s works as “ironic rococo surrealism with a social-satirical twist”. And we have no reason to disagree.
While the aesthetics have been refreshed, the spec sheet remains the same – something that will be of great relief to Jones fans seeking to capture his gritty prog-metal attack.
The guitar features an Antique Silverburst-finished bound mahogany body with maple cap, while the three-piece bound maple neck boasts an Adam Jones Custom profile. Meanwhile, you’ll find 22 medium frets, a Graph Tech nut and a 12” radius on the block-inlaid ebony fretboard, which is at the Les Paul regulation 24.75” scale.
Pickup-wise, there’s a reverse-mounted Epiphone ProBucker Custom neck unit, while a Seymour Duncan Distortion offers the high-output swagger for those drop-D riffs.
Finally, there’s an Epiphone LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece, vintage-style chrome tuners and PosiLock strap buttons.
Additional aesthetic flair comes via a commemorative control cavity cover and rear headstock design.
Once again, the price tag is a cool $1,299, which includes a Protector hardshell case. And just 800 of the guitars will be produced.
Whatever you make of the artwork, you’d be advised not to miss out on the model – in our review of “The Berserker” incarnation of Jones’ signature guitar, we were bowled over by the quality.
“All in all, to say we’re impressed would be an understatement,” said GW’s Amit Sharma. “Aesthetically and tonally, this could easily be the finest Les Paul ever produced by Epiphone.”
Previous entries in the Art Collection include “Mark Ryden’s The Veil of Bees” and “The Berserker” by Korin Faught.
The Adam Jones Les Paul Custom Art Collection featuring Julie Heffernan’s “Self-Portrait as Not Dead Yet” is available now for $1,299.
Marie Watt: Sound, Dancing, Community And Healing At Kavi Gupta Gallery In Chicago
by, Chadd Scott
Published on June 2023
Marie Watt, Sky Dances Light Forest (2023). Tin jingles, cotton twill tape, polyester mesh, steel 230 x 58 x 39 in.COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND KAVI GUPTA
The space between sky and earth. Marie Watt’s (b. 1967; Seneca) most recent artworks live there, taking inspiration from her culture’s Creation Story.
Across the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, of which the Seneca are a member, the story varies slightly, but in it, broadly speaking, Sky-woman falls out–or is pushed–through a hole in Sky World where a sacred tree once stood. Falling toward a water world below, the animals there–geese, heron, otter, muskrat and turtle–agree to break her fall. She lands on the back of a turtle, which becomes Turtle Island–North America.
Watt’s “jingle clouds” envision the sky opening, Sky-woman falling through.
“This space between sky and earth has always been a space that, for me, subverts this Western fascination with a horizon line,” Watt told Forbes.com. “My Seneca perspective (is) thinking of our orientation to this space as omni directional. There are cardinal directions–north, south, east and west–but we are not fixed on the orientation of horizon line.”
The world view of Indigenous people across North America is generally circular, cyclical–the sun and the moon, the seasons, rebirth, continuum–in opposition to the linear perspective of the continent’s white colonizers–starting points, ending points, birth, life, death, roads, objectives.
A globe versus a map. The globe is more accurate, the map more common.
Jingle Clouds
From June 10 through September 30, 2023, Watt and Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago invite visitors to explore this space between sky and earth during the exhibition “Marie Watt: Sky Dances Light.” The presentation centers her new series of jingle clouds: biomorphic, hanging sculptures assembled from tens of thousands of jingle cones, rolled pieces of tin historically fashioned from the circular lids of tobacco containers.
“I feel like sometimes I've done a disservice referring to them as clouds because I think that word almost limits what they are,” Watt said.
Some of the pieces stretch 10-feet-long, hanging nearly to the floor more like forests.
Watt’s interest in jingles began at the Denver Art Museum. She had previously been the museum’s Native Arts Artist-in-Residence in 2013 and on a subsequent visit that year, hosted a sewing circle where a pair of Native pow wow dancers, including a jingle dancer, participated.
“We were sewing this piece while this pow wow was happening (outside) and there's those sounds and smells and your senses are completely activated by the music and the drum beat, the food and the company,” Watt recalls.
Seeking to bring that energy and sensation to her artwork, Watt began affixing jingles onto fabric, wall-hung pieces. These, along with her blanket totems, have become signatures of her practice, unique, instantly recognizable, and on view throughout America’s top art museums.
The jingle clouds, however, go further.
“One of the things I realized had to happen when I started incorporating jingles into that very first piece is that it needed to be away from a wall because that's what gave you the sense that the jingles might make a sound,” Watt explains. “If they’re flush to a wall, then it feels static, but if it moves away from the wall, all of a sudden you get the sense that it could play music.”
In the Kavi Gupta exhibition, Watt’s artworks are suspended, occupying the space between the ceiling and floor, between sky and earth.
“My work has been a slow evolution to the point of realizing these amorphous, organic forms that are saturated in these jingles,” Watt said.
She has disposed of the fabric backing, composing these artworks entirely of jingles – thousands of them, one weighing upwards of 100-pounds. Some feature motorized attachments subtly turning the pieces, allowing the jingles to move and create sound like a windchime.
In addition to animating the jingle clouds in three dimensions, Watt sought to incorporate a hands-on element for the new pieces.
“Part of the goal was to bring into form a situation where people could interact with them because the impulse to touch has always been there–whether to touch the blanket or to touch the jingles, or to hear them make that sound,” she said.
At the gallery, visitors enter the exhibition through a jingle threshold: a shimmering, tin cone curtain hung from blue strands implying water and sky. Guests will further be able to physically engage with the jingle clouds.
Jingle Cones
Though their invention and use as fashion adornments dates at least to the late 1800s, jingle cones became an iconic element of Indigenous dance traditions during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.
“There was this very sick child, and the (Ojibwe) father had this dream,” Watt explains. “In the dream, he was instructed to put jingles–tin lids to tobacco cans or food cans–take the lid, curl it into this bell like shape, and then attach that bell to a dress. The instruction in the dream was to attach the cones to the dresses and have the dresses danced and it would be this healing sound that would help the child get well.”
It is believed that the medicine worked because the dance was shared with other communities.
“It's really important to recognize the relationship between sound and healing, dancing and healing, community and healing,” Watt added.
Jingles. Dancing. Pow wow.
A circular perspective on life.
Strong medicine as well for a contemporary pandemic.
Nearly 10 years ago now, Watt had another presentation of her work in Chicago. In preparation, she researched the Indigenous history of the area.
“One of the things that strikes me so significantly about Chicago is that anywhere there's water on the planet, and especially in North America, you can't help, but know that was an important hunting (and) agricultural space for Indigenous people,” Watt said. “The thing that is in some ways devastating to reflect on is that in this place we now call Illinois, and Chicago in particular, there's not a single federally recognized tribe in the state of Illinois. That tells you a lot about the history of relocation.”
Lake Michigan forming its northeastern boundary, the Mississippi River its western, the Ohio River its southern and the Wabash River its southeastern, Illinois was shaped by water. Rivers and streams crisscross its entirety.
Once a combination of rich forest and vast, head-high prairie with the richest soil on earth, today’s Illinois was previously homeland to a variety of tribes. The southwestern part of the state was home to Cahokia, one of the largest Indigenous cities anywhere in the Americas.
But, as Watt mentioned, today, the Land of Lincoln is one of only 14 U.S. states without a single federally recognized tribe calling it home. Conversely, during the Urban Indian Relocation Act era of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, another effort by the federal government to disconnect Native people from their land and culture under the guise of “progress,” Indigenous people from around the Midwest were incentivized to move to Chicago by the thousands.
In the fall of 2023, the Center for Native Futures in Chicago will open a dedicated gallery space exclusively for the display of Native American artwork. Nothing else remotely of its kind exists there.
One of the Center’s founders, Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo), serves as Community Engagement Coordinator for Chicago’s Field Museum’s Native American Exhibit Hall. The Field Museum is one of the largest and most prestigious museums in the world.
She was instrumental in guiding the museum through a decades-overdue reinterpretation in 2022 of its Native North American Hall. The Hall was shamefully outdated and previously presented without any input from the Indigenous people whose story was supposedly, inaccurately, and prejudicially being told.
The update constituted a defining moment in museology and the now prevalent invitation of Indigenous people to partner with museums on exhibitions of their history or cultural production.
Yepa-Pappan’s daughter, Ji Hae, a classically trained ballerina, will be featured as part of Kavi Gupta’s programming around Watt’s exhibition, dancing amongst the jingles.
“Sound and healing, dancing and healing, community and healing.”
PARTY • NORTH SIDE
Much like Oscar the Grouch, you will declare your love for trash after attending this year’s Garden Party at Mattress Factory. Under the theme Trash Bash, the event pays tribute to a current exhibition by Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, who are diverting the museum’s garbage and recycling to the Monterey Annex first floor. Groove to live music and DJs, participate in a trash-inspired fashion contest, sample cuisine by the best local restaurants, and more. 7-11 p.m. 5:30 p.m. for VIP guests. 500 Sampsonia Way, North Side. Tickets start at $150. mattress.org
The Fabric Workshop and Museum presents ‘Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art,’ an exhibition that explore and engage with sound.
By, Nemesis Mora
Published on June 2023
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) just announced Sonic Presence (or Absence): Sound in Contemporary Art, an exhibition featuring 22 artists who explore and engage with sound. Some artworks incorporate actual sound while others encourage viewers to rely upon their own experiences and memories of sound to interpret the works. Curated by Alec Unkovic, the exhibition is on view June 23, 2023 to January 7, 2024.
The artists that are part of the exhibition are: Terry Adkins, Janine Antoni, Moe Brooker, Nick Cave, Lenka Clayton, Kevin Cooley, Peter Edwards, Guillermo Galindo, Ann Hamilton, Christine Sun Kim, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Mader, Jason Moran, Robert Morris, Stephen Petronio, Raúl Romero, Yinka Shonibare, Patrick Siler, Kiki Smith, Lenore Tawney, and Mika Tajima.
Throughout FWM history, artists-in-residence have used sound as the focus or as a conceptual component of their residencies. These projects have often explored how to offer a direct translation of sound, capture an indirect representation of its energy and cultural forms, or inspire an audible response from an audience. As the title of the exhibition suggests, the artworks presented demonstrate the notion of a “sonic presence,” a palpable connection between the visual and the aural. Featuring works from the museum’s collection alongside a selection of loaned works, Sonic Presence invites visitors to explore the resonant themes of sound in visual arts, be it implied, imagined, absent, or realized.
As part of residencies that often focus on material exploration, some artists at FWM have turned to visually translating the experience of sound, performance, or their cultural reverberations.
[...]
Making its debut is The Sound of the Sea, a new collaborative work by former Artist-in-Residence Lenka Clayton with Phillip Andrew Lewis that explores the process of Foley artists, who utilize props to recreate everyday sound effects in films, radio, or television; for this work, Clayton and Lewis have collected and recontextualized unexpected objects used to create the sound of the ocean.
By, Willamette University Pacific Northwest College of Art
Published on June 2023
Ana Teresa Fernández is an artist of fluencies. A student of linguistics, she speaks five languages. An artist of border erasure, she elevates the intersectionality of place, person, and politics to create a common human vernacular. Time-based actions and social gestures are her syntax. Land, history, gender, climate, and culture are her subjects. Performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture become her dynamic tools of grammar. Through enacted narratives, she reveals all that too often gets lost in translation, becoming the literal embodiment of the stories that divide but also bind us as human beings sharing a planet of great fragility and beauty. Asked to characterize her work, Fernandez gives it the novel label Magical Non-fiction, explaining:
“Where unimaginable conditions are the reality, I seek to portray dreamscapes of what’s possible. The courage to transform is up to us.”
Born in Tampico, Mexico, Fernandez grew up in California and makes her home in San Francisco. She has created residencies and public work in Haiti, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, Cuba, Mexico & throughout the United States. Major public projects include On The Horizon, which was featured in the 2021 Lands End exhibition, organized by the FOR-SITE Foundation.
In one highly visible work, she erased the border between Tijuana & San Diego by painting a portion sky blue while wearing a tango dress and heels to create an illusion of a hole on the wall from afar. Collaboration is also a core value of Fernández’s practice, reflected in projects such as SOMOS VISIBLES with Arleene Correa Valencia and Truth Farm with Guadalupe Garcia, Correa Valencia, and Ronald Rael. In the latter, she installed a 120-foot-long table that spelled Truth across the lawn of the Trump winery, for all to see.
Jun 14, 2023 Thursday 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
PNCA Campus - Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design Shipley Collins Mediatheque 511 NW Broadway Portland, OR 97209
125 Newbury Announces Group Exhibition ‘Face Values’ Opening This Friday, June 9
By, Art Martin Cid Magazine
Published on June 2023
New York, NY – June 5, 2023 – 125 Newbury presents Face Values, a group exhibition that brings together artists who deal with the problem of the human face. Encompassing painting, drawing, and photography, the exhibition includes the work of more than twenty artists who employ a diverse range of practices to explore a shared set of questions: How do we recognize a person in a face? When is a portrait a likeness and when is it an icon? When is a face a mask, and when is it a stranger, a lover, a friend? Addressing these and other questions, the works in this exhibition confront the human face in all its complexity, intimacy, and strangeness.
The exhibition includes works by Richard Avedon, Georg Baselitz, Amoako Boafo, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, Alex Katz, Nina Katchadourian, David Hockney, Peter Hujar, Ana Mendieta, Piet Mondrian, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Elizabeth Peyton, Andy Robert, Lucas Samaras, Julian Schnabel, Kiki Smith, Papay Solomon, Henry Taylor, Andy Warhol, Sydney Vernon, and Zhang Huan. Face Values opens June 9 at the gallery’s 395 Broadway location in Tribeca and remains on view through July 28.
...
In photographic self-portraits by Ana Mendieta, Nina Katchadourian, and Lucas Samaras, the face becomes an engine of performativity and a constructor of self. Photographs by Warhol and Irving Penn meanwhile look outward, using the camera’s gaze to render the faces of others as icons. For Avedon, the face is a politics; while for Peter Hujar and Kiki Smith, it becomes a screen for pathos, a cipher for the martyr and the saint. In his self-portraits, Samaras reveals the face as a mirror, a totem for otherworldly selfhood—a condition literalized in Sydney Vernon’s depiction of a face refracted in a hall of mirrors.
Celebrate Black history during Springfield's first city-wide Juneteenth weekend festival
By, Greta Cross
Published on June 2023
For the first time, Springfieldians may celebrate Juneteenth during a city-wide weekend festival this year. The inaugural "We Are One" Juneteenth celebration is hosted by the NAACP of Springfield and Community Partnership of the Ozarks.
Celebrated on June 16, Juneteenth is a national holiday celebrating the day all enslaved people learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was two years after former President Abraham Lincoln presented the proclamation in 1863 that the last slaves in Texas received word of their freedom. Juneteenth became an official national holiday in 2021.
The "We Are One" weekend festival kicks off on Friday, June 16 at the Springfield Art Museum. From noon to 8 p.m. on Friday, June 16, folks are invited to visit the Springfield Art Museum to enjoy the "Creating an American Identity" exhibition.
"Creating an American Identity" is the art museum's permanent collection but will feature works from Black artists like David Driskell, Nick Cave, Robert Pruitt, Alison Saar and Richard Hunt for the weekend. Throughout Friday, guests may take home a free project bag with a mixed media collage inspired by Driskell, who is considered the father of African American art history.
Value Culture’s Dim Sum Art Experience Brings Love to San Francisco’s World Famous Downtown Restaurant Yank Sing
By Grit Daily Staff
Published on June 2023
San Francisco is experiencing one of the weakest recoveries of any downtown in the country from recent pandemic times. The city also saw its hate crimes against AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) people rise dramatically during this period. Increased cost of living has also threatened and pushed artists out of the city. That’s when a rising star immigrant artist and a small buzzy nonprofit organization wanted to do something to help.
San Francisco-based nonprofit organization Value Culture led by Adam Swig and Filipino American artist Reniel Del Rosario approached world-renowned dim sum restaurant Yank Sing with an innovative idea for an arts experience to celebrate Asian heritages and pride, build community bridges, and excite people to come back to downtown San Francisco and visit the city’s global destinations. Prior to the pandemic, Yank Sing’s two locations were open 365 days a year. Now with the city’s downtown struggles, it’s open just Wednesday through Sunday.
The experience called AAPI Love A La Carte played out to loving fanfare on May 20th, 2023, as part of San Francisco’s celebration of AAPI Heritage Month. “Stop Asian Hate, Start Asian Love” was the tagline of the event. Hundreds of attendees were enjoying the event when Executive Director of the Office of Small Business Katy Tang arrived in place of Mayor London Breed to deliver a surprise proclamation of Yank Sing Day in San Francisco in recognition of 65 years in business. The crowd erupted in applause.
“We were so excited to be a part of this event when Value Culture and Reniel approached us with their unique idea. We have never done anything like this in our 65 years of business and we are thrilled to support our AAPI community and celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with such a fun experience.” said Vera Chan Waller of Yank Sing, “I was completely surprised when they announced the proclamation at the event and it brought tears to my eyes.”
Reniel Del Rosario (b. Iba, Philippines) is an artist that primarily uses ceramics, quantity, and satire to discuss themes of commodification and value—historical, cultural, and monetary. His projects range from interactive mimicries of consumer establishments, reimaginings of artifacts, and imperfect copies of already-existing objects.
This collaboration with Yank Sing and Value Culture used dim sum as the model for the AAPI Love A La Carte experience. Reniel based all of his pieces for this project off of Yank Sing’s most popular menu items. The pieces were sold in customized steamer baskets, a la Yank Sing’s famous pushcart service.
Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin. “Elegy,” 2023. Tree stump, bull horns, rug, bull fur.
Photo: Deborah Oropallo, Michael Goldin and Catherine Clark Gallery
"The Bay Area’s summer art season heats up with new exhibitions exploring everything from Tudor-era England to the life of the American farmer amid the challenges of climate change. Photography, site-specific installation and painting are among the featured mediums, with plenty of solo artist shows. Be a tourist around the bay this summer and check out these diverse offerings.
‘Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin: American Gothic’
This collaborative show by married Marin artists Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin explores the lifecycle of their farm amid the realities of the changing planet. The installations use a mix of natural beauty and dark humor to comment on the folk-nostalgic place of rural life in American culture, and the absurd ways it’s at odds with the real experience. The works incorporate everything from real agricultural tools to livestock hides in the newly expanded gallery."
10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday. Through July 14. Free. Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah St. S.F. 415-399-1439. www.cclarkgallery.com
Al Taylor, Pet Names, 1991, from the Morgan collection. Photo: Glenn Steigelman, Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum
"Almost 70 works from the Morgan Library’s wunderkammer collection have been organized by artist Nina Katchadourian in her new show, “Uncommon Denominator.” Her own work is installed alongside diaries, maps, a UFO photograph, a seaweed specimen, bookbinder tools, bric-a-brac, and various arcana. Dates range from 3,400 BCE to the present. Sections of the show are accompanied by short statements by Katchadourian, 54, about visual coincidence, record-keeping, mending, how one kind of art might refer to another kind of art, geography, and, crucially, how to survive at sea. The whole calls to mind Jorge Louis Borges’s taxonomy of fictitious animals, organized into numerous categories, including “those that belong to the Emperor,” “embalmed ones,” and “those that tremble as if they were mad.” Katchadourian’s phenomenological exercise similarly encourages free-floating slippages in thinking, the euphoric discovery of hidden connections.
Katchadourian is something of an insider outsider, who has shown all over the world but not a lot of late in New York. She’s a conjuror conceptualist with a tinkerer’s touch, eccentric and cerebral. Born to a Swedish mother who grew up in Finland and an Armenian father raised in Beirut, Katchadourian went to school in California and now divides her time between New York and Berlin. Her father was a psychiatrist, a former dean at Stanford, and a professor of human biology; her mother, a literary translator, writer, and an expert in Esperanto. Katchadourian has written about meals in which conversations were carried on in four languages.
Katchadourian has a need to restore things. Using tweezers, thread, and glue, she repaired damaged spider webs on an island in Finland in 1998. Overnight, the spiders excised her fixes, dropped them to the ground, and carried out their own fixes. Louise Bourgeois called the spider “a repairer,” an occupation that Katchadourian interpreted as an “attempt to keep things together and make things whole.” She has also patched damaged mushrooms with a bicycle-repair kit; another astounding work is a small plastic lid that her maternal grandfather meticulously repaired in 1959.
Katchadourian imposes meaning on things that catch our attention but may be meaningless. In 1993 she labeled patterns and colonies of rock lichen according to the islands they resembled: Iceland, Ireland, Australia, Hawaii. She’s a pattern-recognition machine who has tried to translate the sound of popcorn popping into Morse code. In Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style (2011), Katchadourian entered airplane bathrooms, adorned herself in tissue and toilet paper, and took pictures of herself in the style of Flemish self-portraits.
“Uncommon Denominator” is about the delight taken in close observation, obsession, natural science, documentation, found objects, anonymous photographs, and other strange paraphernalia. These include a foldout, three-dimensional rendition of a tunnel under the Thames from 1830. In the anatomy section, there’s a beautiful Watteau drawing from 1716, and her own anatomy book from the 1970s. Also on hand is her 1981 Beatle Log, noting every Beatle song heard on the radio. Elsewhere are locks of hair decoratively arranged; John Pierpont Morgan’s own diary of steamers from Liverpool; and a book of autographed letters between Walt Whitman and his mother — only every example has been cut out. It’s a ghost book.
One wall is devoted to the 1973 book Survive the Savage Sea. This is a saga of six people enduring 27 days on the Pacific Ocean in a six-foot dingy. Katchadourian has read the book over 40 times. She presents numerous other books whose covers are arranged to retell the story of setting to sea, being wrecked, becoming castaways, battling the ocean, and being rescued. Katchadourian uses survival as a grand metaphor for what being an artist is: hyperattentive, mentally flexible, adaptable, and creative in any space, with any material at hand."
Value Culture’s dim sum art experience brings love to San Francisco’s world famous downtown restaurant Yank Sing
By, Feedia
Published on May 2023
Value Culture led by Adam Swig and Yank Sing produced an innovative idea for an arts experience to celebrate Asian heritages called AAPI Love A La Carte
My family & I had a great time at Value Culture's activation at Yank Sing. What a great way to bring communities together to honor a venerable Chinese American institution and an emerging AAPI artist”
— Thea Anderson, Director at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.
San Francisco is experiencing one of the weakest recoveries of any downtown in the country from recent pandemic times. The city also saw its hate crimes against AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) people rise dramatically during this period. Increased cost of living has also threatened and pushed artists out of the city. That’s when a rising star immigrant artist and a small buzzy non profit organization wanted to do something to help.
San Francisco based non profit organization Value Culture led by Adam Swig and Filipino American artist Reniel Del Rosario approached world renowned dim sum restaurant Yank Sing with an innovative idea for an arts experience to celebrate Asian heritages and pride, build community bridges, and excite people to come back to downtown San Francisco and visit the city’s global destinations. Prior to the pandemic, Yank Sing’s two locations were open 365 days a year. Now with the city's downtown struggles, it’s open just Wednesday through Sunday.
The experience called AAPI Love A La Carte played out to loving fanfare on May 20th, 2023 as part of San Francisco’s celebration of AAPI Heritage Month. “Stop Asian Hate, Start Asian Love” was the tagline of the event. Hundreds of attendees were enjoying the event when Executive Director of the Office of Small Business Katy Tang arrived in place of Mayor London Breed to deliver a surprise proclamation of Yank Sing Day in San Francisco in recognition of 65 years in business. The crowd erupted in applause.
“We were so excited to be a part of this event when Value Culture and Reniel approached us with their unique idea. We have never done anything like this in our 65 years of business and we are thrilled to support our AAPI community and celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with such a fun experience.” said Vera Chan Waller of Yank Sing, “I was completely surprised when they announced the proclamation at the event and it brought tears to my eyes.”
Reniel Del Rosario (b. Iba, Philippines) is an artist that primarily uses ceramics, quantity, and satire to discuss themes of commodification and value—historical, cultural, and monetary. His projects range from interactive mimicries of consumer establishments, reimaginings of artifacts, and imperfect copies of already-existing objects.
This collaboration with Yank Sing and Value Culture used dim sum as the model for the AAPI Love A La Carte experience. Reniel based all of his pieces for this project off of Yank Sing’s most popular menu items. The pieces were sold in customized steamer baskets a la Yank Sing’s famous pushcart service.
Attendees were confused at first by the life-like pieces of art on the carts normally reserved for food. Remarkably, one set of the dim sum art was created with real gold, including a giant golden bao. At the event, Reniel announced that inspired by the work of Value Culture, all of the proceeds from his sales of these pieces would go to benefit up and coming artists in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
“We are deeply moved and surprised that the artist Reniel Del Rosario has announced to donate all of the proceeds from AAPI Love A La Carte toward CCC’s artist and youth development efforts in San Francisco's Chinatown. Art and culture represent the soul and imagination of our communities, and yet, it's deeply under-resourced on a neighborhood level. Through programs such as 41 Ross Artist-in-Residence and Generation Chinatown, this support will seed the next generation of artistic changemakers! Thank you to Value Culture and Reniel.” said Hoi Leung, Curator and Deputy Director, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. During the event, Yank Sing also announced the donation of all food and beverage sales from the event to the Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco.
“Our 2023 Value Culture Artist in Residence Reniel Del Rosario is a true emerging star in the Bay Area art scene. We were thrilled at the outcome of this amazing project to show love to the AAPI community and businesses and Reniel’s choice to donate all of the proceeds from these works to help the next generation of artists in San Francisco’s Chinatown.” said Adam Swig, Executive Director of Value Culture. “Just as thrilling was to be a part of Yank Sing Day and their generosity to the community, highlighting that downtown SF still has many treasures to offer!”
Reniel is Value Culture’s 2023 Artist in Residence (Prior Value Culture Artist in Residence Jimmie Fails now sits on the Value Culture Board of Directors). The mission of Value Culture is to produce and support artistic, educational, charitable, and spiritual events to inspire individuals to give back to their communities. Internationally recognized, Value Culture removes barriers to arts, culture, and philanthropy. The residency was generously supported by the Robert Joseph Louie Memorial Fund and the event was supported by the San Francisco APA Heritage Foundation.
Collaborating on this project, Reniel and Value Culture asked the question; how can we stop Asian hate? San Francisco officials have received more than 60 reports of hate crimes against AAPI people in the city during 2021, a more than 500% increase in comparison to the nine incidents reported in 2020. Between March 2020 and March 31, 2022, the group Stop AAPI Hate recorded almost 11,500 reports of hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) persons in the United States.
Their answer: Asian love. Therefore they focused on engaging audiences with what is loved by all: food, art, culture, community, friendship, and Yank Sing. They were thrilled by the approval from the diverse crowd at the event including people from the arts world, community activists, and fans.
“This project was right up my alley from the very beginning and I'm very happy with the outcome. Thank you. Value Culture has been a great partner to work with.” said Reniel Del Rosario. “I’m grateful we could show support for the community and the next generation of artists. We hope everyone had a memorable experience and got inspired to show some love from AAPI Love A La Carte.
I will be upfront: Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan, a collaboration between artist Nina Katchadourian, the Morgan Library & Museum, and Morgan curator Joel Smith, is one of the most unusual and engrossing shows that I’ve encountered in years.
Katchadourian began by asking several of the curators to choose an item from the Morgan’s vast collection that they cherish; some of these works are in the show. Then she and Smith set about selecting disparate artworks and artifacts, some very old, some recent, and all things in between. Interspersed, and often discretely installed, are Katchadourian’s own works, along with treasured things from her family.
Everything connects with themes long important for her: travel, maps, language, books, bodies, history (including personal and family), and the relationship between humans and nature. Her sensibility — keenly intelligent, soulful, playful, boundlessly alert — permeates all. Not just ideational but also abundant visual correspondences help make the show so delightful and enticing.
An engraving by Dutch artist Jan van de Velde shows a sorceress spreading white, bewitching powder through the air to demons (“The Sorceress,” 1626). In Katchadourian’s photo “Prince Charming” (2012), from her ongoing Seat Assignment series, two smiling male airplane pilots eye one another in an airport. Similar white powder bewitches the two men, who seem avid for a torrid encounter.
The show’s centerpiece is a collection of Katchadourian’s 24 lush photographs, commissioned by the Morgan, from her ongoing Look Who’s Talking series. She selected mostly lesser-known books by well-known authors from the Morgan’s Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, and arranged them in stacks with their titles forming messages. One begins: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee). The hilarious answer: Don (Zane Gray), Joey (Henry Miller), Charlie (Ben Hecht), Elmer (William Faulkner), Ferdinand (Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson), and Tiny Alice (Edward Albee); save for tiny Alice, all are men. It’s a sly yet potent critique of males terrified of powerful females.
Jan van de Velde, “The Sorceress” (1626), engraving in Joseph Ames, Emblematic and Satirical Prints on Persons and Professions; The Morgan Library & Museum
The show easily traverses eras, categories, mediums, genres. On one wall, in an assortment of body-themed works, is an enchanting chalk drawing by Antoine Watteau of a young woman, her rippling dress half sliding off her shoulder, her face turned to one side as she looks out and up (“Seated Young Woman,” c. 1716). Nearby are side by side photographs in an alarmingly titled 1926 book Ein anatomischer Totentanz (An anatomical dance of death) of a male javelin thrower and a skeleton seemingly poised to hurl a javelin, by Albert Hasselwander with Fritz Skell. That’s quite a shift from the Watteau.
A total surprise in an exhibition that abounds with them is a handwritten and illustrated book about the human body, enchantingly titled The Human Body: The Incredibal Machine (1975–76), which Katchadourian made when she was seven years old. One page features her drawing of a smiling “human skeloton”; underneath is the emphatic “Magnificent!” in bold red tinged with blue. Finding this childhood book in an institution renowned for books, many of them rare and famous, is wonderful.
Among the almost 130 things on display are the jagged remnant of the champagne bottle that christened J.P. Morgan’s yacht, along with sundry items from Katchadourian’s family. Her Finnish grandfather meticulously repaired and restored a mundane plastic lid. This minimalist object is odd and alluring, although the grandfather never considered it art. Nearby is Katchadourian’s striking, colorful photograph “Renovated Mushroom (Tip-Top Tire Rubber Patch Kit)” (1998); instead of fixing a tire she altered a mushroom. Renovation and transformation run in the family.
At first, the exhibition can seem overwhelming — a panoramic cabinet of curiosities writ large, minus the cabinet. But after some time and exploration, the ultra-creative logic becomes apparent, with things arranged in thematic clusters. Plants? Golding Bird’s 1839 photogram of ferns, the first published photo, and an anonymous c. 1860s photo of a jungle scene in India. Nearby is an English woman’s album, featuring actual seaweed and a poem, and Katchadourian’s hugely artificial green plant made from paper-covered wire, gouache, and product packaging (“Plant #32,” 2021), from her appropriately titled Fake Plant series. Animals? A striking, anonymous 1960s photograph of a shaggy black dog on its hind legs at a window, Robert Benecke’s grisly 1873 photo of buffalo heads, and a 3,000-plus-year-old Mesopotamian alabaster seal showing bovine animals at a byre. Informational charts? J.P. Morgan’s 1853 pocket diary listing various steamers from Liverpool, third mate L.R. Hale’s logbook of a lengthy 1857–60 whaling voyage, Saul Steinberg’s table of country noises, and Katchadourian’s teenage “Beatle Log” (1981), a notebook chronicling every time she heard a Beatles song.
Most, maybe all, of the non-art objects have probably never been in an art exhibition. A surprising star is an assortment of small leather-stamping tools in a handsome wood case that Katchadourian spied in the Conservation department. Used to ornament leather-bound books, they resemble a mysterious pictorial language.
Directly across is an embroidery sampler by the young Lucy Katchadourian, who was orphaned during the Armenian Genocide (1915–16), made it to a refugee camp in Lebanon, and later joined the Katchadourian family, becoming the artist’s “bonus, third grandmother.” The gorgeous multicolored sampler likewise suggests a pictorial language; it also seems spiritual, with its intricate designs — maybe even cosmic. That Lucy composed it in the aftermath of immense trauma, suffering, and death makes it all the more special, a captivating diasporic work made by a young survivor.
Katchadourian can be a riot, and this exhibition is often refreshingly humorous. The champagne bottleneck is next to a model of J.P. Morgan, Jr.’s yacht — I guess yacht-owning oligarchs go way back. Above, each in a different language, are 31 copies of the book Survive the Savage Sea, long important to the artist (“Every Version of Survive the Savage Sea in Every Language and Every Edition,” 2021). Bottle, yacht, and books evoke impending disaster: a yacht is christened, it sets sail, then yikes!
The exhibition is also often deeply touching. For 12 years, Katchadourian’s Finnish grandmother, Runa “Nunni” Lindfors, took photos of her daughter, Stina (Nina’s mom), on her birthday, wearing her first nightgown. The lovely accordion-fold book shows Stina getting bigger, the nightgown getting smaller. Note the Swedish title of “The story of why Stina’s first nightgown became too small” ( 1939–52): “Berättelsen om varför Stinas första natipaitu blev för liten.” Katchadourian’s maternal family is from Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority.
Behind it on the wall is Katchadourian’s “Lake Michigan” (1996), in which cut paper maps of the lake grow successively larger. The two serial works echo one another, linking the two women. These connections underscore the creativity of what is indeed a remarkable show.
Installation view of Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan (photo Gregory Volk/Hyperallergic)
Antoine Watteau, “Seated Young Woman” (c. 1716); The Morgan Library & Museum
Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan continues at the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan) through May 28. The exhibition was curated Joel Smith, the Morgan’s curator of Photography and department head of Photography."
An unclassifiable artist and a deep reader, Jen Bervin has expanded the notion of what it is to be a poet in the 21st century.
By, John Yau
Published on May 2023
Jen Bervin installing “River” (2006–18) at Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (photo by Charlotte Lagarde; all images courtesy Catharine Clark Gallery)
"SAN FRANCISCO — I first learned about Jen Bervin when I read Nets (Ugly Duckling, 2003). In that book, Bervin took 60 of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and erased them until the words that were left (exactly where they are in the original) became her poem. In contrast to earlier poets, such as Ronald Johnson and Jonathan Williams, who erased preexisting texts, Bervin did not completely efface her source. Shakespeare’s poems are still discernible in light blue text, while Bervin’s are in black; readers can literally see the dialogue between the two poems. By leaving the source visible, she recognized that some of her poems would suffer by comparison. This is the opposite of appropriation, a common postmodern practice. Writing about this work in the afterword to Nets, she stated: “When we write poems, the history of poetry is with us, pre-inscribed in the white of the page.”
The second book I read was Silk Poems (Nightboat Books, 2017). The poem was printed like a scroll of cloth unfurling across the page; each line of the typed text (all caps) was comprised of six letters, corresponding to the silkworm’s DNA. While I knew that a physical manifestation of this poem existed, and that Bervin worked in other materials and made objects, including artist’s books, I had never seen any at this point. I planned on visiting her exhibition Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect: Selected Works (1997–2020) at the University Galleries of Illinois State University (August 15–December 13, 2020), curated by Kendra Paitz, but the pandemic made travel impossible. I wondered when I would get a chance to see an entire show devoted to the range of her practice, so I felt very fortunate to see the large exhibition Jen Bervin: Source, at Catharine Clark Gallery, in the gallery’s newly expanded space.
The exhibition’s 15 works, dating from 1998 to 2023, include artist books; “River” (2006–18), composed of silver foil-stamped cloth sequins sewn together; and “Silk Poems” (2016), an installation that features a video of Bervin’s extensive research into silk. What connects these works together is her physical and intellectual engagement with her materials, whether embroidering muslin with words and marks that correspond to Emily Dickinson’s fascicles (a group of 40 self-made small booklets in which she copied around 800 of her poems), typing up a text, or sewing sequins to form a silver, glittering river. In her practice, reading, as an enhanced, hyperconscious activity, and making become inseparable.
Jen Bervin, “Measure (After Susan Hiller)” (2023), burned journals 1992–2012 in 16 borosilicate glass tubes with mirrored text; two handblown glass vessels. Eight tubes: 1 1/4 inch in diameter with lengths ranging from 12 9/16–24 1/2 inches; eight tubes: 5/8 inch in diameter with lengths ranging from 13 3/8–22 5/8 inches; glass vessels: 12 x 7 1/2 x 6 inches each
One of the striking things about Bervin’s work — and this is true of Nets — is her ability to both preserve and change her source. In doing so, she establishes two dialogues, one with the work and one with the viewer/reader. This is also true of early, groundbreaking works by Jasper Johns, such as “Flag” (1954–55). If we view the encaustic and collage “Flag” or Bervin’s weaving of Dickinson’s fascicles on cotton muslin only in formal terms, we miss out on the deeper and more challenging richness of their work, the dialogues they have initiated with history.
This was my experience with the group of individual pieces collectively titled The Dickinson Composites, each numbered and dated between 2004 and 2022. Made of cotton and silk thread on cotton batting back with muslin, and measuring 72 by 96 inches, they are displayed so viewers can see both sides.
During Emily Dickinson’s most extraordinary outpouring of poetry (1858–64), which coincided with the Civil War, she copied more than 800 of her poems into handmade volumes of folded sheets of paper, which she made by stabbing two holes in the papers and tying them together. Dickinson made other “signature” marks on these sheets of paper, over which scholars have puzzled. Her unique fascicles are the source of Bervin’s quirky, mysterious works. From sculptor Roni Horn to Chicago Imagist painter Philip Hanson to poet Susan Howe, Dickinson has served as source material for creators — so much so that I wondered if anything fresh could be done. In contrast to other poets and artists, Bervin does not cite, reconfigure, or meditate upon well-known lines and phrases. She is interested in the marks and dashes that Dickinson used as punctuation, which scholar have speculated as indicating pauses of silence or bridges between sections of a poem.
I think Bervin wants to suggest the background of the Civil War without being didactic about it. Cotton was produced in the 15 slave states by nearly two million enslaved people. Women made cotton clothes as well as wore cotton dresses. By evoking quilts and bedding, the artist comments on the role women played in this long, bloody conflict that still haunts us. The way red threads mark the surface, like cuts and incisions against a white ground, further inflect this reading. Dickinson never acknowledged the Civil War, nor voiced an opinion on it, slavery, or people of color.
Jen Bervin, “The Dickinson Composites 12” (2022), cotton and silk thread on cotton batting backed with muslin, 72 x 96 inches
Bervin’s touch regarding these matters is light. She gives viewers a lot of room to reflect upon these connections and silences. Her work is open-ended and resists any reductive or literal reading.
According to the press release, the sculpture “River,” which runs across the gallery’s uneven ceiling, “imagines an impossible vantage: the Mississippi River as if viewed from the core of the earth, its headwaters, alluvial path, and confluence in the delta stretching across 230 curvilinear feet of ceiling and wall.” Walking beneath the piece and looking up at it, seeing the sequins glinting and winking in the light, we are invited to recognize all the different roles the Mississippi River has played in the history of the United States. Bervin undermines our comfortable relationship with rivers, a common subject, by making viewers look up rather than down upon it.
The scale of “River” is set at one inch to one mile. In “Measure (after Susan Hiller)” (2023), Bervin pays homage to Hiller (1940–2019), the influential US-born British conceptual artist. For “Measure by Measure II” (1993–2012), Hiller burned her paintings each year and collected the ashes in glass measuring tubes. Bervin’s work consists of journals she had written between 1992 and 2012, which she burned, containing their ashes in tubes. A phrase from the journal within is on the exterior of each tube.
“Measure (after Susan Hiller)” is less visually commanding than “River” and The Dickinson Composites. I am glad about this discrepancy — it means that Bervin has not figured it all out yet. Each work is different, including her artist books. An unclassifiable artist and a deep reader, she has expanded the notion of what it is to be a poet in the 21st century.
Jen Bervin, “Silk Poems” (2016), digital print on silk, edition of 5 + 3AP + 1HC, 65 x 52 inches
Jen Bervin: Source continues at Catharine Clark Gallery (248 Utah Street, San Francisco, California) through June 10. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
Jen Bervin's "River," 2006-2018, at her solo show "Source" at San Francisco's Catharine Clark Gallery in 2023. Bottom right: Jen Bervin, "Measure (after Susan Hiller)," 2023.
"Walking into the newly expanded Catharine Clark Gallery to see “Jen Bervin: Source,” the first thing you must do is look up.
On view in the gallery’s 9,200-square-foot space is Bervin’s monumental installation “River” (2006-2018), which stretches across 230 curvilinear feet of the gallery ceiling and wall. The work imagines the Mississippi River as if viewed from the core of the Earth, rendered in handsewn silver sequins that reflect the light of the gallery like ripples on water.
Tracing the work’s journey through the gallery changes the way you experience the show: As you look up to the ceiling, your neck stretches, your focus becomes more intent and your awareness of the space changes. You can almost feel yourself moving with the flow of the sequined waters.
But even in the dreamy tranquility of the piece, larger issues about the Mississippi’s place in American culture assert themselves, including the river’s role in American expansion and manifest destiny as it was an early hub for industry.
“Source” also includes new works from Bervin’s “The Dickinson Composites Series” (2004-ongoing), the large-scale embroidered quilts that depict Emily Dickinson’s variant marks in her manuscripts. Also debuting in the show is Bervin’s sculpture titled “Measure (after Susan Hiller),” which was created by burning her journals from 1992 to 2012 and displaying the ashes in glass tubes. The work is a tribute to U.S.-born British conceptual artist Susan Hiller, who displayed the ashes of her own paintings in a similar fashion."
Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait as Mad Queen, 2022, oil on canvas, 96 × 56".
"Julie Heffernan’s outing here, “The swamps are pink with June,” featured a selection of figurative paintings. All of them were rather large, but one—Self-Portrait as Throne, 2022, which is six feet tall and five feet wide—was quite grand, as befits its subject: a rendering of the artist as some kind of nature goddess. We often saw Heffernan’s women, many of whom function as her avatars, posed like queens amid hallucinogenic arrangements of greenery and flowers. (The exhibition’s title was taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, a fervent gardener who in her own otherworldly writing often discussed the plants she nurtured.) The artist’s scrupulously rendered florae usually form magnificent patterns that fan out like proud peacocks’ feathers, as was the case with Spill (The Fall), 2023, in which quivering red globules of organic matter surround the figure’s head. In other works, the plants seem to sprout from the subject’s body, Gaia-like, as we saw in Self-Portrait as Continental Divide, 2022. Throughout the show, Heffernan boldly declared what anthropologist Ashley Montagu called the natural superiority of women. (Psychoanalyst Karen Horney argued that men have womb as well as breast envy, however unconsciously, for they lack a woman’s ability to create and nourish life.)
To my mind, Heffernan presents herself in these works as Lucretius’s Venus Genetrix, a source of perpetual renewal and regeneration, rather than Botticelli’s sterile and oddly sexless Aphrodite (aka Venus). Heffernan supposedly alludes to all kinds of historically important women (such as Queen Victoria). But so many of her canvases call to mind Shakespeare’s mythical Titania, due to their fairy tale–like character and hypnotically conceived details, which are often reminiscent of Richard Dadd’s famous painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, 1855–64. One wondered if Dickinson’s line inspired Heffernan because it distills the creative process into a metaphor: The unconscious is a swamp, while the wildflowers (the “pink”) that grow out of it are the conscious. Pink is a symbol of femininity, more broadly of happiness, suggesting that Heffernan’s paintings are a celebration of joy and womanhood.
Heffernan relies on the creativity of the unconscious—what Freud called its “imaginativeness”—to idealize herself, rather than wait for society to respect her. She is in effect healing herself from the wounds our misogynistic culture has inflicted upon her. Her “Spill” paintings, 2022–, such as Spill (Ashdod) and Spill (Lotus Emergent), both 2022, seemed to be tributes to the power of ingenuity. According to the press release for the show, the artist was searching “for fresh energy in the studio” for the series, so she “began pouring paint onto canvas to begin each work,” producing moments that “captured by accident the same energy that [Heffernan] would so painstakingly try to render.” The artist’s wonderfully capricious handling of her chosen medium recalls the fecundity of Dickinson’s flourishing swamp. The painter uses a tried-and-true automatist (and modernist) method of making contact with the unconscious. The result felt like a healthy antithesis to Pollock’s flashy yet psychically sick approach to automatism—what critic Robert Coates described as “mere unorganized explosions of random energy,” which he ultimately found “meaningless.” Heffernan makes a kind of refined neo-traditionalist literary art, insistently naturalist, optimistic, and extravagantly baroque, suggesting that modernist abstraction has become a dead end, as the ongoing development of so much “zombie formalism” confirms."
"A new show at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York commandeers small curios to figure large social narratives
A clockwise turn around the gallery begins with Moss Maps (1993) and ends with Globe 1 (2019), c-prints by Nina Katchadourian that zoom in on scaly masses easily mistaken for landforms photographed from the air. In the former the artist uses press-on letters to spell words like ‘Australia’ and ‘Madagascar’ on patches of moss shaped like the countries. In the latter the frame is filled by the globelike top of a stanchion pole found on a Paris street. On its surface salt-crusted continents – of chipped paint – are eclipsed by the artist’s shadow as she stands over it. Clever and bewildering, Uncommon Denominator, the third in a series of artist-curated exhibits at the Morgan, gives Katchadourian, whose internet-famous aeroplane-lavatory self portraits (2010–) were widely misconstrued as pranks, a chance to set the record straight. Selected in collaboration with museum experts, the objects on display attest to the rigorous research and obscure interests that lie beneath her playfulness.
Katchadourian mined the museum’s collection and her own archives for objects that tell stories, commandeering small curios to figure large social narratives: a fragment of a champagne bottle, mounted on a wall dedicated to ‘ships’, is one such specimen. The bottle, we learn, had been aboard a yacht that belonged to the museum’s founder, J. P. Morgan. Elsewhere, a flimsy plastic storage-box lid that Katchadourian’s frugal grandfather fortified with wood and brass screws is juxtaposed with Renovated Mushroom (Tip-Top Tire Rubber Patch Kit) (1998), a Cibachrome print of torn wild mushrooms the artist mended with tyre-repair stickers she’d found in her grandfather’s toolshed after his death. These broken bits, like other artefacts in the show, display visual affinities that point behind their backs to differences in class status and perspective.
The accumulation has an animistic bent to it. In an interview the artist recalls visiting a Finnish forest to ‘worship’ an enormous glacial erratic – a rock once carried by a glacier and deposited on foreign soil, whose coordinates can be used to map the path of prehistoric ice. The oddities in her twenty-first-century wunderkammer are likewise evidence of happenings beyond their horizons. The more one learns about their origins, the stranger they seem."
The Sea (detail), 2023, Artist book: digital prints on handmade gray cotton and abaca paper with machine-sewn silver metallic thread, foil printed punched cover, flatback limp vellum binding by John DeMerritt, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches (closed), 196 pages
"I once organized an exhibition in collaboration with an art history professor. It was particularly challenging because she wanted to cover the walls with text, demonstrating a misunderstanding of the difference between a book and an art exhibition. Jen Bervin avoids that pitfall. Reconciling prose and visual art she produces new hybrid forms that combine the pleasures of simple sculpture and elevated poetic language. Two ideas are key to understanding the exhibition. The visitor needs to approach the art on view, knowing that it all is some kind of book, even if it initially may not appear so. Second, we must keep in mind that the artist sets herself enormously difficult and time-consuming tasks as central to her fabrication process, reflecting her dedication, seriousness and long-term commitment.
An example of her labor-intensive approach is River (2006-18) installed on the ceiling. It is an accurate map of the Mississippi River from its source to the sea, made up of 230 feet of silver foil-stamped sequins sewn onto book-binding cloth, which is, in part, what ties it to the theme of an extended form of bookmaking. At a scale of one inch to one mile, it took her about as much time to make as it would have taken to walk the length of the river, according to the gallerist. Installed on the ceiling it resembles a splayed-out book, it is a curvy spine, a backbone for the American continent.
The Sea exists as both an artist’s book and an installation. Bervin printed out text fragments from John Van Dyke’s 1906 book, The Opal Sea: Continued Studies in Impressions and Appearances, and stitched over most of the original words, placing meticulous silver zigzag stitches over each letter. She did, however, leave a few phrases intact, and in the literary tradition of the cut-up, they cohere to form abstract but haunting poetic wholes when read serially. The text is laid out at waist height on two simple wooden frames, covering approximately 36 linear feet.
Many of the pieces on view here were originally part of a survey of Bervin’s work at Illinois State University that was interrupted by the covid shutdown. Collectively titled Source, they fill Catharine Clark’s newly expanded space. Bervin is best known locally for her earlier presentation at the gallery, where she wrestled with and transformed the work of Emily Dickinson. Another of Bervin’s long-term commitments is to elucidate what she argues is Dickinson’s experimental and unique formal innovations. Her earlier iteration dealt with Dickinson’s jottings on paper fragments and envelopes,
The Composite Marks of Fascicle 12 (detail), 2022, cotton and silk thread on cotton batting backed with muslin, 72 x 96 inches
suggesting a dramatically more open way to read her work—as a kind of precursor to hypertext. In an ongoing series called The Dickinson Composites (2004—ongoing), consisting of six large-scale (72 x 96 inch) embroidered quilts, the artist re-creates under-appreciated punctuation-like marks and other text-related fragments that are routinely omitted when the poems are published. Bervin and others argue that these marks are integral parts of the poet’s system of offering different word choices and, thus, alternative readings of her work. The quilts are elegant minimalist objects, but suffer from redundancy.
Measure (after Susan Hiller), 2023, burned journals 1992 – 2012 in sixteen borosilicate glass tubes with mirrored text
Measure (after Susan Hiller), embodies another approach to sculptural bookmaking. Hiller, a British-American conceptual artist, is known for having burned work and displayed the ashes annually, from 1972 on, to clear psychic space and move on. Bervin pays homage to Hiller by burning selections from 20 years of her own journals and encasing the ashes in 15 glass tubes, each of which is printed with a line of poetry from the journals on the outside. As in other work, the artist embraces the possibility that viewers will read them in any order they choose.
Bervin has several works about the human relationship with silkworms, insects that have become dependent on us for survival because of our breeding choices. As a result, they can no longer fly or feed themselves adequately in nature. (A short video of her visit to a Chinese silk factory documents her research.) She also displays a book of poems written from the silkworm’s perspective. They are at once reconciled and despondent. The writing is subtle and tragic and in no way sentimental. An interesting fact about silk is that it is medically neutral. Meaning, that if implanted in humans, the body doesn’t attack it as a foreign invader. With that knowledge, Bervin took her bookmaking in a radical new direction; she collaborated with Tufts University to translate the worm’s genetic code into poetry printed in liquified silk to be implanted as a biosensor under a person’s skin in a helix-like swirl. Not a tattoo—too clunky; not a chip—too technological. The recipient, thus, becomes an animate book. Combined, these efforts form a tour de force of research-as-art that incorporates text art and scientific thought into contemporary practice."
Chromakey Aftermath (Standard Bearers), 2019
Courtesy of the artist; Ryan Lee Gallery, New York; and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
"In Chromakey Aftermath (Standard Bearers), a protest scene is rendered in “green screen” as if an editor plans to superimpose a new setting onto the original image. Syjuco’s use of this fabric reflects upon how information can be manipulated and faked—thus transforming the meaning of the props and the intent of the protestors. In this work, Syjuco explores how media representation of public protests can distort their original meaning. The making of this photograph is discussed in season 9 of art21’s Art in the 21st Century series."
EXPO CHICAGO 2023: Build Community, Celebrate Diversity
by JAN GARDEN CASTRO
Published on: April 2023
"At the central EXPO CHICAGO exhibition and performance/discourse spaces at Chicago’s Navy Pier, the atmosphere was lights and glam. Over 170 galleries and nonprofit organizations from Zimbabwe, Capetown, Berlin, LA, New York, and more celebrated diversity. Free shuttles took art lovers to other nearby art institutions. Ruinart champagne was pricey but La Crema wines offered free tastings and Audi offered its patrons free shuttles.
Three of my stops featured monumental works by women artists. Thanks to a savvy friend, my first stop was SF-based Catharine Clark’s gallery where Marie Watt’s Tethered and Unbound, 2023 reshaped a long gallery wall. This flag-like wall sculpture formed from satin blanket bindings and ceremonial Seneca jingles addresses the challenges indigenous women face. All women today are tethered and unbound, but this paradox runs especially deep for indigenous women. Marie Watt’s work was also at the Marc Straus Gallery booth (NYC) and a couple of others.
Suchitra Mattai's art was a strong presence in Chicago. The artist participated in the Art Expo Forecast Forum, and her monumental work created from everyday women's saris was featured at the fair, at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), and at Kavi Gupta Gallery. Born in Guyana and living in Los Angeles , this Indo-Caribbean multi-disciplinary artist uses collage, fibers, drawing, film, installation, and video to give worn domestic cultural artifacts new values and settings. Her visually-engaging art unravels colonial narratives to valorize women’s bodies, work, and lives. Mattai has a solo show in July at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles."
Nina Katchadourian | What I Know About Magic (2022)
By, Brown University
Published on April 2023
Nina Katchadourian
What I Know About Magic (2022) from the Sorted Books project (1993-)
Twelve chromogenic development prints
Percent-for-art Commission
Installed in Friedman Hall, 1st floor (rotates on view with artworks by Dave Cole, Karl Haendel, and Ruth Root)
"What I Know About Magic (2022) is interdisciplinary artist Nina Katchadourian’s most recent contribution to her ongoing Sorted Books project, which began in 1993. In Sorted Books, Katchadourian explores both institutional and personal libraries to create clusters of book titles that, when viewed together, form short phrases, stories, poems, or commentary. The resulting photographs ultimately serve as a portrait of the book collection or collector. Over many years, Katchadourian has explored both institutional and personal libraries, such as those of artist Isamu Noguchi, the writer William S. Burroughs, the rare book collections of the Delaware Art Museum (Delaware, MD) and the Morgan Library and Museum (New York). A monograph of the Sorted Books project was published by Chronicle Books in 2013, marking the 20th anniversary of the ongoing project.
To create What I Know About Magic, Katchadourian made in-depth visits over the course of several years to familiarize herself with the H. Adrian Smith Collection of Conjuring and Magicana, held in the John Hay Library at Brown. One of the preeminent private collections of magic in the world, it was bequeathed to the university by Smith (Class of 1930), who performed magic to help pay for his tuition at Brown. While the Smith Magic Objects Collection includes a great variety of items, from homemade props and wands to coins and commemorative Houdini busts, Katchadourian worked with the collection’s immense number of books—over 5,000—and created twenty photographs, twelve of which were chosen for display at Friedman Hall.
Katchadourian says of What I Know About Magic: “The books in the H. Adrian Smith Collection were fascinating historically, but also aesthetically: there were thick, gilded, leather-bound volumes from the late 19th century as well as slim paper booklets from the 1940s and 50s that often provided instructions on how to perform just one trick. Magicians seem to be particularly playful in their use of language for the titles of their publications, and since my project focuses so much on language, it was utterly delightful to respond to these authors’ linguistic tricks with a few of my own.”
Nina Katchadourian (b. 1968 in Stanford, CA; lives and works in Berlin and Brooklyn) is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, sound, performance, photography, sculpture, and public projects. She is also a Clinical Professor on the faculty of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Katchadourian’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Blanton Museum of Art, Houston, TX; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her video installation Accent Elimination (2005), was included in the 2015 Venice Biennale’s Armenian Pavilion, which won the Golden Lion Prize for Best National Participation. Curiouser, a solo museum survey of her work, opened at the Blanton Museum in 2017 before traveling to Stanford’s Cantor Art Center and the BYU Museum of Art. Katchadourian is an alum of Brown (1989), and graduated with a double bachelors of art with honors in Visual Arts and Literature and Society. She also taught in the Visual Arts Department at Brown between 2001–2004. This is her second public art commission for Brown; her first, Advice from a Former Student, features the voices of Brown alumni who graduated between 1939 and 2010."
The married collaborators Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, known for their wit and distinctive way of manipulating found objects, group together more than two dozen works in their exhibition, One thing after another thing. It’s a charming hodgepodge of “things” that break down to the following: four clocks, three nets and a suite of prints about nets, three videos, rocks, a bird cage and several prints of bird cages, three distressed books, and several painted columns. These found objects are manipulated through a process in which aesthetic research becomes serious fun. The result, as the title implies, is a miscellany of things that cohere.
Let’s start with the analog clocks, generic wall decor seen ubiquitously in institutions from offices to schools. The artists’ intervention involves detaching their numbers, which, once removed, pile up as a scrum of “limbs” at the bottom of the clock faces. The artists aim to satirize the tyranny of time and clock watching but are unsuccessful because we don’t need the numbers to tell time; the hands of the clock do it for us. Freedom from the oppression of regulated hours will need a stronger fix than missing numerals. Like these clocks, much of the work in the show examines how our apprehension of the world is habitual and ingrained.
Ana Teresa Fernandez speaks to borders and the environment in 'At the Edge of Distance'
by Tony Bravo for The San Francisco Chronicle
Published on August 2023
Artist Ana Teresa Fernández’s practice creates visual connections among some of the most significant issues of our times.
In her 2021 installation “On the Horizon” at Ocean Beach (and later the Cliff House), she crafted a potent metaphor for how climate change will directly impact communities of color in San Francisco living in low-lying areas of the city with her series of saltwater-filled tubes showing how high the sea will rise. Now, in her first solo show at Catharine Clark Gallery, “At the Edge of Distance,” on view through Sept. 3, that intersectionality continues.
“It’s the broad spectrum — identity politics, social justice, environmental justice — that interests me,” said Fernández, 42, who was born in Mexico but has lived in San Francisco since she came to the city in 2001 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. “Areas where there are inequities, I definitely tend to touch a lot.”
How Doug Aitken, Andy Goldsworthy, and Other Artists Turned a Former Retreat for San Francisco Elites Into a Stark Reminder of Climate Change
For a show at Cliff-House, the For-Site Foundation enlisted 26 artists to install work at the seaside venue.
By: Julie Baumgardner
Published on: November 26th, 2021
Daniel Beltrá, Oil Spill #12, (2010). Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.
It’s almost impossible to think about San Francisco without thinking about its landscape: the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the 1989 Earthquake. California’s Golden City, a boom-and-bust town with an economy, immigrants, and urban identity so tied to its environment, that the climate itself is a central character in San Francisco’s story.
It was no surprise then that when For-Site Foundation founding director Cheryl Haines began to consider the next exhibition for the Bay Area-based organization, the climate crisis would be its central query. In the last decade, the city has been plagued by drought and fire, they too becoming local residents in the psyche of San Francisco. But it was when the National Park Service all but tossed Haines the keys to Cliff House, the Victorian-era landmark leisure complex on the Pacific Ocean, that the theme of the new exhibition, titled “Lands End,” really began to take on tones that might otherwise not be there.
Set Against the Crashing Waves of the Pacific, a New Art Exhibition Takes on the Climate Crisis
By: Marley Marius
Published on: November 5th, 2021
Ana Teresa Fernández, On the Horizon, 2021. Acrylic resin cylinders filled with seawater. 72 in. high each. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photo: Courtesy of Ana Teresa Fernández
Since 2003, the San Francisco-based FOR-SITE Foundation has centered “art about place,” mounting affecting exhibitions at Fort Mason Chapel (2017’s “Sanctuary,” examining “the basic human need for refuge, protection, and sacred ground” through a series of contemporary handmade rugs), Fort Winfield Scott (2016’s “Home Land Security,” which activated former military structures in the Presidio), Alcatraz Island (2014’s ”@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz”), and other sites. With its latest, “Lands End,” opening to the public on Sunday, the setting is San Francisco’s historic Cliff House, a former restaurant and ballroom built in the mid-19th century. There, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, 26 artists from 14 different countries are using painting, photography, sculpture, sound, and other media to respond to the climate crisis. (...)
The setting proved especially resonant for Ana Teresa Fernández, the artist behind On the Horizon (2021), an installation of six-foot-tall acrylic pillars filled with sea water. (In a worst-case-scenario, sea levels could rise by that much over the next 80 years.) “You have all this epic landscape occurring, and you have these waves that are, like, 15 feet and crashing into these three large boulders that are just in front of the building,” she says. The precariousness of the site—its proximity to a ruinous force—feels germane to the issue at hand in “Lands End.” “There’s nothing ‘pacific’ about it,” Fernández says of the site. “It’s quite literally the wild west.”
So too was she inspired by the variety of approaches and concerns represented in the show. “I’ve known their work for quite some time,” Fernández says of the other artists “Lands End,” “so it’s interesting when we intersect. For example, Andy Goldsworthy’s piece and mine are at opposite extremes, right? Mine is about an abundance of water and his is about scarcity and dryness. But this is very much what the conversation around climate change is—extremes, and all the complexities in between.”
Provocative eco-art exhibition in S.F. forces confrontations with climate change
By: Sam Whiting
Published on: November 7th, 2021
Dinners made of beach plastic ready to be served at the Cliff House in San Francisco, Calif.
Sea levels may be rising, but Ana Teresa Fernández and her bucket brigade are doing what they can to combat it.
Forming a 200-yard human chain on Ocean Beach, they drew 170 gallons out of the surf, hauled the sloshing saltwater off the beach and up to the old Cliff House restaurant, where it was carried into the dining room and muscled up a ladder to be poured into seven clear cylinders, all six-feet tall.
“It was a lot of fricking work. For the next three days I couldn’t lift my arms,” said Fernández, at the opening of “Lands End,” a provocative environmental art installation curated by the For-Site Foundation. Fernández’s contribution to the group show is called “On the Horizon. ” The seawater cylinders are intended to show exactly what a sea-level rise of six feet will look like. (...)
“We want to bring visitors’ attention to the very complex conversation around climate change,” said For-Site founder Cheryl Haines, noting that the show opened during COP26, the international climate conference in Glasgow. “We shouldn’t just leave this to government and industry to solve. There is also an individual responsibility to affect change in our own lives.”
An iconic structure is resurrected with the installation of an exhibition focused on climate change.
By: Jessica Wolfrom
Published on: November 3rd, 2021
The former Cliff House, now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is situated at Lands End in San Francisco. | Photo courtesy of Terrance Emerson / shutterstock.com
San Francisco’s Cliff House has long teetered on the edge of the world. Famed for its panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean, the Victorian-era landmark has been destroyed and rebuilt several times throughout its history, once after a schooner carrying explosives crashed into the rocks near Point Lobos, and again after succumbing to multiple fires.
Now, it will be transformed into an art gallery, where a forthcoming exhibition will ask visitors to contemplate the changing climate.
Lands End, presented by San Francisco-based For-Site Foundation and the National Park Service, will make its debut November 7 and run through March. The show includes 26 contemporary artists whose work explores the tenuous ground upon which humanity stands in the face of a warming world.
Featuring works by Catharine Clark Gallery represented artists Ana Teresa Fernández and Chester Arnold.
Clarksville, TN – The Austin Peay State University (APSU) The New Gallery, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Department of Art + Design, is pleased to present Preserve & Protect to continue an engaging 2021-22 exhibition season.
Co-curated by Michael Dickins, director of The New Gallery, and Erika Diamond, curator and assistant director of CVA galleries at Chautauqua Institution, this exhibition of conceptual garment work looks at the complex ways in which textiles, particularly garments, tell the stories of the past, present, and future. More than just armor for the body, they relay the resilience of a culture – worn for protection but also as a way to proclaim one’s identity.
“Textiles serve to protect us, to tell our stories, and to display our privilege,” Diamond said. “Through recognizable structures in historical fashion and strategic embellishments, these textiles recontextualize and assert shrouded histories. They affirm the value of lives lost due to persistent ideals of colonialism, bigotry, and unequal power structures. They reveal concurrent histories and ask for better futures.”
The exhibit includes works from Michael Sylvan Robinson, Paul Rucker, Stephanie Syjuco, Winnie van der Rijn, and Anangookwe Wolf.
Their works “bear witness to and challenge our shared American history,” Diamond said. “They question whose histories have had the privilege of being heard. They ask for a more inclusive authorship of our shared history. Together, they represent an army of truths. Will we take up this call to arms and begin to protect each other, listen to each other’s stories, and share our abundance of resources?”
The exhibit opens on Monday, November 1st, and runs through December 10th at The New Gallery, located in the Art + Design building on the campus of Austin Peay State University.
See Sculptures by Kehinde Wiley, Alison Saar, and More Commissioned for Destination Crenshaw, L.A.’s $100 Million Black Arts Initiative
100 sculptures will ultimately line a 1.3-mile corridor in South Los Angeles.
By: Caroline Goldstein
Published on: October 26th, 2021
The City of Los Angeles’s Cultural Affairs Commission has approved plans for the initial stage of Destination Crenshaw, the $100 million public art and environmental revitalization project that aims to turn a 1.3-mile-long stretch of South Los Angeles into a hub for Black arts and culture.
Earlier this month, the organizers revealed the designs for seven permanent sculptures by artists Charles Dickson, Melvin Edwards, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, Alison Saar, Kehinde Wiley, and Brenna Youngblood that will be installed on Crenshaw Boulevard. Four of the pieces will be placed in the new Sankofa Park to be built at 46th Street, named after the traditional African symbol of a bird mid-flight, with others sited further down towards 50th Street, near the project’s southern terminal on Slauson Avenue.
Read more about how artist Stephanie Syjuco intervened in the American imperialism narrative
By: Asian Art Museum
Published on: Not Listed
Stephanie Syjuco works in photography,sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations. Recently, she has foused on how photography and image-based processes are implicated in the construction of racialized, exclusionary narrastives of history and citizenship.
Syjucos's latest work resulted from a 2019/2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in which the artist spent hudreds of hours searchig for visual evidence of the Philippines and Filipinos in the official American archive. (...)
By showing these texts as fallible and correctible, Syjuco hints at the possiblity for a counter-narrative to also be applied to the form of the archive.
"As a young Asian American girl I struggled to feel the museum was "mine" -- that it was "them" looking at "us" No longer! - Stephanie Syjuco.
Why There Were Water-filled Cylinders at Ocean Beach on Sunday
By: Michelle Robertson
Published on: October 13th, 2021
Dancer Meredith Webster among "On the Horizon" by Ana Teresa Fernandez on Oct. 10, 2021 at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
Courtesy William Randall Henner
An unusual sight stood against the vast water at Ocean Beach on Sunday. Six-foot-tall cylinders of clear acrylic, filled to their brims with seawater, jutted into the sunny, blue sky.
The cylinders were not there by mistake or accident. Rather, they were part of an art installation titled “On the Horizon” by San Francisco artist Ana Teresa Fernandez.
The installation, she told SFGATE, “is about climate change and specifically sea levels rising.”
In her research about climate change, Fernandez said she continually ran into the same figure: Sea levels will rise by 6 feet in the next 30 to 50 years.
Fernandez wanted to make that number palpable, somatic. So she designed the sculptures, with support from Doniece Sandoval of LavaMae, to visually represent how that number feels.
(...)
“It’s important that we listen to the ocean,” Fernandez said. “And we should listen to each other, so that we listen to science, so that we listen to Mother Nature.”
If you missed the temporary installation Sunday, you can view the cylinders at an upcoming exhibition about climate change at the Cliff House beginning Nov. 7, called “Lands End.”
Save the Date: Behind the Screens with Feminist Animator Stacey Steers Tuesday October 26th, 2021.
By: Patricia Zimmermann
Published on: October 9th, 2021
Behind the Screens: Conversations Unpacking Cinema continues on Tuesday October 26 at 7 p.m. on Zoom with renowned feminist animator Stacey Steers. Dr. Rachel Schaff, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Screen Studies, will conduct the interview.
Stacey Steers is known for her process-driven, labor-intensive animated films composed of thousands of handmade works on paper. Her recent work employs images appropriated from early cinematic sources, from which she constructs original, experimental narratives. (...)
Behind the Screens is designed as conversations with major figures in international screen cultures to probe the systems, structures, economics, politics, operations, infrastructures, and practices undergirding cinema across myriad forms such as major Class A international festivals, international art cinemas, documentary, virtual cinema, local art cinema exhibition, experimental animation, and streaming.
Discussion opens up thinking about cinema across many forms and modes, unraveling the complex nexus of production, distribution, and exhibition.
October 30, 2021 – February 27, 2022; Lightcatcher building: 250 Flor Street, Bellingham, WA 98225
Curated by Amy Chaloupka from the Collection of Driek and Michael Zirinsky, featuring works by Catharine Clark Gallery represented artists Josephine Taylor and Wanxin Zhang.
The extended isolation of the pandemic has undeniably affected our collective consciousness, especially our heightened awareness of the body and its vulnerabilities.
Sharing life “in person” once again is a celebratory moment, but also cause for self-reflection. How will we wish to operate moving forward within our own bodies, and also in caring for and considering the bodies of others?
The exhibition Up Close & Personal examines the human body through the expressive lens of 60 artists. Some explore the many ways we communicate with one another—through facial expression, body language, self-presentation, and performance. Others boldly envision narratives and representations of the self through the use of their own bodies in their work. Artists are acutely aware that all bodies reside at the dynamic intersection of gender, class, race, sexuality, age, and ability. These compelling portrayals of the figure are situated at these crossroads of identity and point toward countless possibilities for human connection and understanding.
Bierstadt to Birk: California Landscape Ideals Versus Realities
By: Emma Acker
Published: September 17, 2021
Sandow Birk, "Fog over San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California" (from the "Prisonation" series), 2001. Oil on canvas, 66 x 90 in (167.6 x 228.6 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, American Art Trust Fund, 2002.7. Photograph Joseph McDonald, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
In Gallery 27 of the de Young museum, visitors will encounter a large-scale and luminous coastal scene. Given the striking visual similarity of the work to many of the nineteenth-century American landscapes exhibited in nearby Gallery 26, viewers may be surprised to learn that the painting was created in the twenty-first century by the contemporary artist Sandow Birk (b. 1962). Although this arresting view of a rocky shore and serene waters readily evokes the picturesque landscapes of Northern California, such as those in nearby Marin County, Birk based the composition of Fog over San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California on Beach at Beverly (ca. 1869–1872), a coastal New England scene by the second-generation Hudson River School painter John Frederick Kensett. Artists associated with the Hudson River School, such as Thomas Cole and, later, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church, used idealized views of the American landscape to symbolize the nation’s aspirations and progress.
Artist Alison Saar on why she gives power to the Black female body
By: Carolina A. Miranda
Published on: September 27th, 2021
Artist Alison Saar at home in Laurel Canyon. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
One of the most searing artistic experiences I’ve ever had came courtesy of Alison Saar in 2017. The Los Angeles artist was part of a group show of Black female sculptors titled “Signifying Form” at the Landing gallery in L.A.'s West Adams district, organized by independent curator jill moniz.
The show was memorable all around. But Saar’s piece, in particular, floored me. The nearly 7-foot-tall sculpture titled “Cake Walk,” from 1997, presented a larger-than-life marionette of a Black woman that the viewer can control via a system of pulleys. The title references a processional dance that originated on Southern plantations during the slavery era and would later be parodied by white performers in minstrel shows. In Saar’s piece, a firm tug on the pulleys could make the figure dance.
On the one hand, it’s an irresistible work. Saar invites the viewer to touch a work in a place where touch is usually forbidden. It’s also one that left me feeling queasy. To engage the marionette is to engage the manipulation of a vulnerable Black woman’s body (she is nude). It is also to engage a whole legacy of manipulation and control over Black women. (...)
There is a lot more where that came from. And some of it is on view in an ongoing two-part survey, “Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe,” at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. Sadly, “Cake Walk” is not on display, reflecting the need for a comprehensive retrospective devoted to this important artist. But the shows nonetheless offer a broad overview of Saar’s work, which, in deft and profound ways, has engaged myth, spirituality, history and the physical and psychological states of women.
‘Night Watch’ transforms San Francisco Bay into art installation highlighting refugees
By: Tony Bravo
Published on: September 20th, 2021
People gather at Fort Mason to view “Night Watch,” a floating media installation created by Shimon Attie that displays portraits of refugees granted asylum in the U.S. on Sept. 17.Photo: Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle
The collaboration between Boxblur and the Immersive Arts Alliance has been one of the most talked about public art events in the Bay Area since it was announced on June 20, recognized as World Refugee Day. With Leo Villareal’s “Bay Lights” glimmering above and a bright moon and calm waters, the conditions from weather to tides had been carefully considered for the West Coast premiere of the project, a video installation on a 20-foot LED screen affixed to a barge. (...) The sharp quality of the images onscreen juxtaposed against the bay setting, with its mix of technology and natural elements, were a majestic combination. But more important, there was an urgent relevance to the subject matter. How do you look at “Night Watch” in the fall of 2021 and not think about the people presently fleeing Afghanistan and Haiti?
Although the project initially premiered in 2018 in New York during the United Nations’ General Assembly, current events remind us that there will probably always be a news peg for the work.
'Undoing Time' opens Sept. 10; show is the first one ever to take over entire ASU Art Museum space
By: Mary Beth Faller
Published on: September 7th, 2021
The ASU Art Museum is opening a new social justice exhibit on Friday in which 12 artists have created new works that explore the tragedy of mass incarceration.
“Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” will run through Feb. 12. The show is the first one ever to take over the entire ASU Art Museum space.
The museum began working on the project three years ago when it received a grant from the Art for Justice Fund, according to Miki Garcia, director of the museum.
“I would say that this is the most ambitious and largest exhibition the museum has ever endeavored, and it’s in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests and of the museum seeing itself as a champion of the community’s well-being,” she said.
“We wanted to take a risk and say, ‘This is what we stand for — putting artists in the midst of these urgent conversations.’”
The exhibit, which is kicking off with a celebration and panel discussion on Friday, will include never-before-seen sculpture, film, paintings and drawings from the artists, whose work combines history, research and storytelling. They are: Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Juan Brenner, Raven Chacon, Sandra de la Loza, Ashley Hunt, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Michael Rohd, Paul Rucker, Xaviera Simmons, Stephanie Syjuco, Vincent Valdez and Mario Ybarra Jr.
‘Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe,’ a Survey Spread Across Two Institutions, Presents Female Forms That ‘Activate Legacies of Bodily and Spiritual Survival’
By: Victoria L. Valentine
Published on: September 3, 2021
DUALITY IS A CONSISTENT THEME in the work of Alison Saar. The multidisciplinary artist has long centered the female body and the wonder of nature in her practice, using figurative forms to explore cultural narratives and contemporary events. In her latest exhibition, she considers the binaries of body and spirit, earth and air and the intersections of gender and race, space and time.
The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College are partnering to present “Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe,” in the greater Los Angeles area. On view at both museums, the exhibition features paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations, dating from the early 1980s to 2020.
“Within these works, Saar measures social memory and cultural norms, using sophisticated visual language to bring attention to the gaps where narratives have been forgotten or ignored. Using rough-hewn forms and humble found materials, she creates resilient female bodies that activate legacies of bodily and spiritual survival,” co-curator Rebecca McGrew wrote in “Alison Saar’s Radical Art of Sustenance,” her opening essay in the exhibition catalog.
“Saar measures social memory and cultural norms, using sophisticated visual language to bring attention to the gaps where narratives have been forgotten or ignored. Using rough-hewn forms and humble found materials, she creates resilient female bodies that activate legacies of bodily and spiritual survival.” — Co-Curator Rebecca McGrew
Bay Area art spaces back on feet for fall, focusing on the traditionally underrepresented
By: Tony Bravo
Published on: September 8, 2021
Shimon Attie, “Night Watch (Norris with Liberty),” 2018. Originally produced by Moreart.org in New York City.Photo: Shimon Attie
‘Night Watch’
Artist Shimon Attie’s floating installation “Night Watch” is slated to visit the San Francisco Bay for three nights, co-presented by Boxblur and Immersive Arts Alliance.
Attie’s piece, which debuted in New York in 2018 during the U.N. General Assembly, consists of a barge with a 20-foot LED screen that displays video portraits of 12 refugees who were granted political asylum in the United States, including members of international LGBTQ communities and people from Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Peru and Russia. At shoreline locations including Fort Mason, Epic Steak, Waterbar restaurant and Warm Water Cove in San Francisco, as well as Brooklyn Basin in Oakland, performances with dancers, musicians and artists will engage with the work, and audiences can view the installation when it docks.
“Night Watch” coincides with the opening of “Here Not Here,” a survey show of the artist’s work at the Catharine Clark Gallery.
“Night Watch”: 6:15-9 p.m. Sept. 17-19. Free. San Francisco Bay and various locations. cclarkgallery.com
Jen Bervin, Close Reading 169 “Grasped by God –”, 2021, cotton batting, muslin, thread, 2 1⁄2 × 9 3⁄4".
Jen Bervin
CATHARINE CLARK GALLERY
"A subtle question asks itself not in words but as a feeling, a disquiet amplified over time, when an artwork takes root in the mind and the imagination grasps a difficult lesson: that an ethics is forming inside an aesthetics. But walking away from Jen Bervin’s exhibition “Doing and Undoing,” I felt such a realization growing in me. Bervin has taken fragments of language that Emily Dickinson originally scrawled on small scraps of paper—sometimes just a single word—magnified them sixfold, then embroidered them with silver thread on fabric grounds made from cotton batting, muslin, and mull. Dickinson’s notes, written with who knows what intent, gain a different status and gather to them a rare attention via Bervin’s tender replications. I suspect this very quality of consideration is the artist’s main concern. One is transformed from a viewer to a reader, and the art is a kind of translation, of deciphering the quick hand of a poet jotting language down at the speed of thought. Lightning-quick inspiration is slowed to wondrous delay, as if contemplation and perception themselves have been caught by the silver tether of the New England mystic’s pencil lead and translated into thread.
MOST ARROWS, one fragment says (or does it claim?); the phrase nearly fills the entirety of the blown-up fascicle (all works 2021). Elsewhere, SLOTH is sewn into the left-hand corner of the fabric; the word stands listlessly inside an ample amount of white space, as if committing the sin it names. This sense that the poem—and its magnification by the artist—is a test of the rules we have been given, an experiment of the self upon the world it is born to, is but one part of the generous difficulties Bervin opens for us. The blank page itself is an existential dare, as in another piece: EMERGING FROM / AN ABYSS AND / ENTERING IT AGAIN— / THAT IS LIFE IS / IT NOT? Subtly and profoundly, the artist reminds us: Dickinson’s quicksilver jots question the universe.
But Bervin also prompts us to ask other questions, which are part and parcel of the moral complexities and complicities we stumble through half-blindly today. The approach is found in this work of enlargement—not of Dickinson’s handwriting per se, but of the materials the words are sewn on. The hand-dyed batting haptically mimics the cotton-based paper of the mid-nineteenth century—the very material on which soldiers in the Civil War would write home—as well as the cotton that forged the shackles of the ongoing horror of slavery. Now that disquiet grows louder. Now we sense that even thoughts of the greatest beauty or whimsy, even words that pierce the heart of the human condition, occur on a barren page that reminds us of our hypocrisy. It is an unspoken and unspeakable thing. It is also what Bervin is giving us to see. We must learn to read that blankness.
The show was titled after a French saying, something of a Bervin family motto: Faire at defaire c’est travailler (Doing and undoing is the work). That phrase was sewn into three separate white cloths, each in a different hand: a child’s, an adult’s, and an elder’s. A looped video—the exhibition’s namesake—captured those hands printing out the aphorism and then, with a simple bit of cinematic trickery, making it disappear. The child labors over her letters, but the film is then reversed and the forms vanish, their thick lines swallowed up by the pencil that made them. The screen doubles, and an adult hand writes and unwrites the phrase simultaneously. Another hand erases the phrase translated into English and writes it again, traces of the previous version visible still. So I’m brought to the questions I’m still asking myself: How does one create and not create at once? How does one do and undo in the same gesture? It seems to me Bervin is trying to envision such an art. And to Emily Dickinson’s question “Unto the Whole—how add?” the artist has a quietly astonishing answer. Don’t. Magnify what is already there so that we may learn to see more decently."
Bay Area Visual Art Exhibitions Not to Miss this Fall
By: Sarah Hotchkiss
Published on: August 30th, 2021
Shimon Attie, ‘Night Watch’
Sept. 17–19, 6:15–9pm
San Francisco Bay and Oakland Estuary
"If being indoors isn’t your jam these days, BOXBLUR (a performance program launched by Catharine Clark Gallery) and the Immersive Arts Alliance have organized three nights of waterfront viewing for Shimon Attie’s floating video project: a slow-moving barge boasting a 20-foot-wide LED screen. Night Watch displays silent video portraits of 12 refugees who received political asylum in the United States, images that make tangible what it means to leave one’s homeland in the face of violence and discrimination. The project will be accompanied by live music and dance performances at waterfronts along the barge’s nightly routes, events at over 40 Bay Area partner organizations, and a solo exhibition of Attie’s work at Catharine Clark (Sept. 18–Oct. 30)."
The DART Board - Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe, Continuing through December 12 at the Armory Center for the Arts and the Benton Museum, Los Angeles
By: Peggy Roalf
Published on: August 18, 2021
Coninuing through December 12 | Armory Center for the Arts and the Benton Museum, Los Angeles
Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe, a two-venue retrospective of the work of Alison Saar, features over 30 years of the LA-based artist’s sculptures, installations, paintings, and drawings, highlighting her explorations of the duality of body and spirit. Above: Hygiea, 2020
The Armory Center for the Arts focuses on her sculptures of Black, female figures, carved out of wood or hammered out of pieces of scrap tin ceiling. She surrounds them with metaphorical objects like antlers, water jugs, butterflies, invoking mythical histories. The Benton Museum will feature sculptures, paintings, and drawings, as well as a 12-foot-tall figure of the Yoruba goddess Yemaja, mother of all living things who controls the waters.
Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe, Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA Info. The Benton Museum of Pomona College, 120 W Bonita Avenue, Claremont, ,, CA Info Photo courtesy of Alison Saar
Image (top): Lenka Clayton, Houseplants Tended by Anni Albers (03/10/2021) in the series “Typewriter Drawings,” 2021. Typewriter ink on paper, rendered with a portable 1957 Smith-Corona Skywriter typewriter, 14 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches framed. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.
Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 based on the belief that the study of art was central to education. Over the years notable faculty and students included textile artist and printmaker Anni Albers, experimental composer John Cage, and San Francisco sculpture superstar Ruth Asawa. Although the school closed in 1957 it had an outsized impact on the American avant-garde, which continues today.
Open Field: Nine Artists Respond to the Ideals of Black Mountain College, on view at Catharine Clark Gallery on Utah Street, features contemporary artists working in the tradition of innovation and experimentation, while referencing figures from the school’s history.
See the World Through the Eyes of Artists in Hawai‘i State Art Museum’s New Exhibit, “Altered States”
Masami Teraoka, Lauren Trangmar, Sally French and others contribute never-before-seen works for display alongside some from the state’s collection.
By: Lisa Shiroma
Published on August 24th, 2021
Have you ever wondered what the heck goes on inside an artist’s head? Curator Elizabeth Baxter lets us take a peek with HiSAM’s new exhibit, Altered States. “Artists have always been known and renowned for their unique perspectives and alternative visions of the world,” she says. The way artists take in information and process it through their special filter opens up a creative gateway. “These artworks reflect transformations and changes—as well as critiques, questions and concerns—while delving into such themes as death, spirituality, global warming, politics and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Baxter hand-picked 23 works from the Art in Public Places collection, a mix of never-before-seen pieces as well as older ones, for this exhibition. The newer works were purchased virtually during the pandemic and with the help of Neighbor Island art consultants.
“2nd Ave. Ramen Stop/NY Governor and Pussy Riot” by Masami Teraoka. Photo: Lisa Shiroma
Displayed front and center is Masami Teraoka’s gold-leafed triptych “2nd Ave. Ramen Stop/NY Governor and Pussy Riot.” Created in response to the turbulent times of 2020, the painting features New York’s former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a member of the punk group Pussy Riot, a geisha doing double duty as a nurse, and political commentator Anderson Cooper. The figures appear overwhelmed by the chaos happening around them, with Notre Dame burning in the background and an atomic bomb exploding in a bowl of ramen directly in front of them. The word “vote” in capital letters on the masks of the individuals sends an urgent plea to the viewer, loud and clear. Teraoka says: “In collapsing a wartime past with the calamities of the present day, I want the viewer to reflect on how our seemingly ordered world can be perilously thrown out of balance by forces beyond our control—viruses, fires—as well as those firmly within it, namely our political and governmental institutions, as well as our collective public health response. The composition is meant to inspire humor, perhaps shock, but most importantly contemplation about our responsibility to one another within society.”
Installation view: Open Field. Foreground: Amy Trachtenberg, When I see you the sky is blue — when I don’t see you the sky is blue, 2021, disasembled bras, silk, steel, wire, dye, acrylic paint, glass, 136 x 61 x 13 inches
Within its stable of artists, the Catharine Clark Gallery found much evidence of that influence, and after years of mulling a response, it mounted Open Field: Nine Artists Respond to the Ideals of Black Mountain College. The exhibition doesn’t aspire to capture all that went on there – few galleries could — but it calls forth the spirit of the place with works that demonstrate the ongoing relevance of the college’s learn-by-doing approach. Pioneered by the philosopher John Dewey, it was seen as creating an enlightened citizenry capable of exercising the critical skills required by democracy. Significantly, Black Mountain wasn’t an art school; it was a liberal arts college that employed art education as a means to an end. The wonder of it rests with the fact that it produced so many history-shaping artists. They include John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Lou Harrison, Ray Johnson, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, David Tudor, Kenneth Noland and Robert Motherwell to name but a few.
Kevin Cooley: Shape Shifting and Controlled Explosions in the Desert Available to view at Laney Contemporary Fine Art, Savannah, GA
By: Author Not Listed
August 8, 2021 7:30 am
"Exploded Views": Available to view through Sept. 18, Laney Contemporary, 1810 Mills B. Lane Blvd. Savannah, GA 31405; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday; by appointment, 912-438-4442 or [email protected].
Photography and video. Los Angeles-based artist Kevin Cooley captures shape-shifting elements as line, curve, and shadow by conducting controlled explosions in the desert under the guidance of a master pyrotechnicist. Working with varied chemical compositions, he creates different shapes, forms, colors, and movements. In this sense, each image depicts time and light exploding in the form of colorful and abstract spirals, clouds, tendrils, and rays, much like the fireworks we see on display this time of the year. Inspired by wildfires, nebulae, jellyfish, the movement trails of distant stars, and smoke dynamics in the atmosphere, Cooley’s work explores the human fascination with natural formations and their shared visual properties.
Catharine Clark Gallery will be closed to the public through April 7, 2020 in respect of city and CDC guidelines regarding COVID-19.
Please note that Catharine Clark will be on-site by appointment Tuesday - Saturday from 12pm - 4pm; please call 415.519.1439 to schedule an appointment.
Over the coming weeks, we will launch a new series of digital programming and exhibitions, including artist talks, curated online presentations via Artsy, and a special online "screening room" of full length video works by represented and affiliated artists. Details to be announced soon.
Visit our inagural online exclusive exhibition for Artsy, Love in the Time of Distancing, by clicking the link here
*Pictured above: Nina Katchadourian, Rapture, 2011 ("Seat Assignment" project, 2010-ongoing). Edition of 5 + 2AP; 24 x 19 inches.
September 11, 2019
Crossing Culture | 2019 SF Dance Film Festival
Tuesday, November 5, 2019 7-9pm at Catharine Clark Gallery
Crossing Culture, screens eight dance films that examine the concept of dance as a means for personal expression and cultural defiance in an increasingly authoritarian world. The international lineup features films from Iran, Greece, Congo, Singapore, Japan and more.
Through July 14: Wanxin Zhang | Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA | Wanxin Zhang: The Long Journey
Through July 27: Lenka Clayton | Group Exhibition | New Typographics: Typewriter Art as Print | The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA
Through August 18: Nina Katchadourian | Group Exhibition| Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH | Creatures: When Species Meet
Through September 7: Stephanie Syjuco | Group Exhibition | The McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA | What is an edition, anyway?
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 1 at 6pm
Through August 9: LigoranoReese (Certainty of Ambiguity) | Group Exhibition | Currents 826, Santa Fe, NM | Stitching and Weaving in the Digital Age
Opening Reception: Friday, May 24 from 6 – 9pm
Related Events: CURRENTS NEW MEDIA Festival, June 7 – 23, 2019
Through September 29: Julie Heffernan & Shelly Mosman | Rockford Art Museum, Illinois | Chance Encounter
Related Events: Art in Bloom, June 25 – 27; Preview: Mon, June 24 from 6 – 8pm; Fashion in Bloom (Cocktail Party), June 27 from 5:30 – 8:30pm
Through September 1: Nina Katchadourian (Seat Assignment) at ProArtibus: Elverket Gallery & Sinne, Finland
Through August 25: Greg Niemeyer, Roger Antonsen, and Mullowney Printing | Group Exhibition | Palo Alto Arts Center, CA | Local Editions: Celebrating Printmaking in the Bay Area
Opening Reception: June 21, 6 – 9pm
Through September 22: Stephanie Syjuco | Group Exhibition | ICA Boston, MA | Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design
Through September 22: Lenka Clayton | Group Exhibition | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY | Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography
Members’ Preview Day: July 2, 10am – 5pm
July 3 - August 3: Kara Maria | Vanishing Fauna | Barry Sakata Gallery, Sacramento, CA
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 13 from 6 – 9pm
July 11 – August 30: LigoranoReese's IAMI | Group Exhibition at Ruth’s Table, San Francisco, CA
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 11 from 6 – 9pm
July 25 – December 22: Kal Spelletich | Solo Exhibition with Publication | St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga, CA | Significance Machines and Purposeful Robots
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5
Public Programming (time TBD): October 10
August 3 – October 5: Al Farrow: Wrath & Reverence | Southern Utah Museum of Art, Southern Utah University, Cedar City
Opening Reception: Tuesday, August 6
August 25 – October 31: Group Exhibition featuring Sandow Birk, Elyse Pignolet, Mullowney Printing | Maui Arts & Cultural Center, HI | Art & Activism: An Exhibition About Change
August 29 – October 2: Julie Heffernan at Miossi Gallery at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA
Opening Reception (time TBD): August 29
September 2 – October 26: Julie Heffernan: Mending a Reflection | Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
STEPHANIE SYJUCO'S TOTAL TRANSPARENCY FILTER (PORTRAIT OF N), 2017
Stephanie Syjuco @ Catherine Clark Gallery
Manila-born, San Francisco-based artist Stephanie Syjuco’s work at the fair includes Total Transparency Filter (Portrait of N) (2017), an image of a shrouded woman that is emblematic of her practice, addressing issues of race, immigration, and identity. Notes Syjuco, “What I’m doing is absorbing and processing the world around me and it’s becoming political. I don’t think I have a choice anymore, it’s just my reality.” The artist has had a breakthrough year: 2018 has seen her work featured in MOMA’s “Being: New Photography 2018” and on the cover of the April issue of Art in America.
Catharine Clark Gallery, in collaboration with San Francisco Dance Film Festival, present a program of Art/Experimental films that explore the rich intersection between dance, art, and film.
Featuring an international lineup of five dance films, the program examines the concept of gender and the ever-shifting nature of identity.
The program concludes at 7:30p with a live performance by Alex Jenkins and Nicholas Korkos of AnA Collaborations.
SFDFF events in the experimental category are part of Catharine Clark Gallery’s Box Blur Fall 2018 programming, which includes multiple exhibits and performances. In the main galleries: Josephine Taylor’s Beside Me, an exhibition of graphite drawings; in the media room, a collaborative video by Josephine Taylor and Jon Bernson titled Dylan Diaries; in the viewing room, an audio-visual installation by Jon Bernson titled Third Eye Moonwalk at Catharine Clark Gallery. Off-site, Box Blur is also presenting Bernson’s companion series of installations at Minnesota Street Project, which includes a full cast performance of his audio drama and a video in the media room titled Awakenment.
August 28, 2018
Catharine Clark Gallery is pleased to host Dance Kaiso and FOLSOM50 for an end of summer celebration on September 1 in conjunction with the closing day of the gallery's group exhibition, We Tell Ourselves Stories...In Order to Live.
Join us from 4 - 6pm for a performance with Dance Kaiso, a collective founded by Wilfred Mark, Robbin Frey, and Val Serrant that conducts residencies in CA state prisons that culminate in performances of traditional rhythms and dances, group improvisation and original spoken-word, dance and musical compositions, arising from students’ collaborative efforts.
The gallery will also host a book drive for FOLSOM50, a collaboration by Tracy Schlapp and Danny Wilson that engages prison populations through music and narrative-based initiatives. Books from the September 1 drive will be donated to South Fork Forest Camp, a 200-man, low security facility in Oregon that provides training in forest restoration and firefighting.
Bring your reference, non-fiction, and poetry books (art, technology, archaeology, and music titles are a plus), and come support this important initiative.
May 24, 2018
Deborah Oropallo
Deborah Oropallo’s mesmerizing videos of environmental calamity at Catharine Clark Gallery
By Sam Whiting
May 23, 2018
“Removing Red,” from “Dark Landscapes for a White House” by Deborah Oropallo.
Last October, when Deborah Oropallo smelled the smoke from the North Bay firestorm, she looked out the window on her Novato dairy farm and saw a sky that was dark and orange at 6 a.m.
She is an artist before a farmer, so she realized that this calamity fit perfectly into an ongoing video project about oil and its effect on the climate.
Floods, oil wars, the diminishing polar ice cap and now the wildfire. All of these dire warnings come into play in “Dark Landscapes for a White House,” an absorbing multimedia exhibition with musical soundtrack, which commands the entire floor space at Catharine Clark Gallery, in the “DoReMi” arts district of San Francisco .
The four videos, varying from two to six minutes, are all political in that Oropallo would like to see them decorating the walls of the White House in Washington, D.C., hence the name of the show.
Review: Chester Arnold, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco | by DeWitt Cheng | Visual Art Source
Excerpt:
"In “Borderline,” Chester Arnold, whose epic-scale landscapes have often borne ecological messages, takes aim at our current plight. The oil paintings, small and large, are both detail-packed and cosmic, like the world landscapes of Pieter “the Droll” Bruegel the Elder, who combined a wealth of lovingly rendered detail with a tragicomic moral vision. “Borderline” refers to the Mexican border wall beloved of home-grown and unschooled xenophobes. Arnold’s landscapes of crumbling ruins of concrete and brick, defaced with graffiti, and maintained by small, faceless, lumpen workers, are absurd and sad, yet strangely beautiful; indeed, they’re Bruegelian. Think of the antlike figures clambering over the ramps, cranes and scaffolds in the 1583 painting, “The Tower of Babel,” warning of pride and failure; the tower, sporting Colosseum-style columns, invokes both fallen, decadent Rome and its often imperious, unholy successor, the Roman Catholic Church. Arnold writes, “The architectural expression of the will to contain or separate one group from another became the formal structure of many of these works.” So the armored, contested border in his paintings — which we view from above, as if from a high tower, with eagle-sharp vision, in an even, cool northern light — is an obstacle and prison, but one that the human hive chooses to build and repair. In Louis Malle’s 1981 prescient satirical film, “My Dinner with André,” André Gregory described New Yorkers who fantasize about leaving town, but never do, as prisoners in love with their prisons."
Review: Chester Arnold @ Catharine Clark | by Maria Porges | Squarecylinder
Excerpt:
"In Borderline, his current show at Catharine Clark, Arnold focuses on the greatest monument to folly of our time: the wall at the border between the US and Mexico, and all that building it represents. From the start of the exhibition, it’s immediately clear that the paintings on view are intended as a preview of a future time—perhaps decades from now, perhaps much sooner—when the wall has fallen into a state of decay. The three canvases in the gallery’s front room, for instance, all show a hole through its massive bulk, through which can be seen a desert landscape filled with scrub, cactus and distant violet mountains under a turquoise sky. As we peer through the jagged “window” pictured in Beyond This, the largest of the three (made at varying sizes, like the beds and bowls Goldilocks encountered in the three bears’ house) we see an adult and child scurrying up a steep hillside. They appear to be fleeing south, not north."
A new group show called “Being” moves away from last year’s navel-gazing digital obsession to explore reality-based portraiture, politics and gender.
By Arthur Lubow
March 9, 2018
At the last survey of new photography at the Museum of Modern Art two years ago, the atmosphere was so self-referential and hermetic that a visitor panted for oxygen. Often, the photos were images of images, taken off a computer screen or digitally created in the studio. It seemed as if photography, which continued to engage with the world after modernist painting and literature turned inward, had finally crumpled into solipsism.
A lot can change in two years. In response to the last exhibition and to the intervening political upheavals, the show “Being: New Photography 2018,” which opens on March 18, offers a broader and more stimulating range of work. The rubric of “Being,” which is defined as “notions of personhood and identity,” proves capacious enough to include portraiture, reportage, fashion, and pretty much everything you can turn a camera on. (The museum decided in 2016 to present exhibitions with a theme rather than simply highlighting promising photographers.) The show includes the work of 17 artists — two of whom collaborate as a team — all under 45.
The exhibition was orchestrated by Lucy Gallun, MoMA’s assistant curator of photography, who worked on the last one and agrees that this year’s represents a departure. “The strongest takeaway from the last show was about the dissemination of images and the way images circulate,” she said in a phone interview. “Here it’s a much more personal, intimate approach.” She added that she “tried to emphasize the diversity of approaches.” A sampling of artists included indicates she succeeded in that.
Although questions of racial and gender identity and politics perfume the air, the best photography in the show touches lightly, if at all, on these subjects. One artist who squarely addresses the political predicament is Stephanie Syjuco, 43, a Bay Area resident who was born in the Philippines and immigrated to this country when she was 3. Ms. Syjuco employs diverse formats — installations, performance and photography — to investigate such subjects as the distribution of goods under capitalism and the persistence of neocolonialism.
Her large black-and-white photographs, in which she appears in costume, bring to mind the work of the Samoan-born photographer Shigeyuki Kihara, who also stages self-portraits in the pose of native women in the Pacific islands, reprising how they were depicted in studios decorated with ethnic props by 19th-century photographers.
Impact of Jim Hodges, Kara Maria gallery shows impossible to reproduce
By Charles Desmarais
March 1, 2018
I have a friend — a well-known artist and critic for whom I have great respect — who says that all people make judgments about paintings based upon what they see in reproduction. I do not, and I am quite convinced others shouldn’t, either.
Reproductions can be useful tools. They remind us of works we have seen in person; they hint at what is in store.
Considered in the light of works we know from direct engagement, they can suggest themes and patterns in an overall body of work. But trying to understand or appreciate art — particularly painting, which relies so heavily upon texture, color and scale — by looking at its photographic likeness is like tasting food from a TV screen.
Kara Maria’s exhibition “Post-Nature” at Catharine Clark Gallery (through March 17) and Jim Hodges’ “Silence Stillness” at Anthony Meier Fine Arts (through March 23) have little in common but their utter irreproducibility in print or pixels. You need to get yourself in front of the actual works.
Both artists do have old-fashioned painterly skills. Maria employs hers with what at first appears to be wild abandon, applying brilliant color using a range of abstract strategies. Upon more careful consideration, however, it’s clear that what looks untamed is precisely planned.
On a single canvas, she might combine daubs and smears, aerosol bursts, and broad, featureless swaths of paint contained within precise hard edges. Forms loop, streak and explode across the picture plane, giving here an impression of flat design, there the illusion of storyland dimensionality.
The visual metaphor of feral versus restrained is suited to the subject of her exhibition. That theme dawns upon us as we pick through the abstract tangle to discover minutely detailed portraits of animal representatives of endangered species. Some are very shy, like the wolf lost in a work on paper called “Moondance.” But even the big-eyed primate (a lemur?) staring out from the center of “Mayday” is lost at first amid the painter’s frenetic sensual assault. It is telling that the animals, in every case, occupy the calm and still moments in a frenzied, decidedly unnatural environment.