UNTITLED art fair opening

UNTITLED Art Fair Opening Night, Miami.

Opening :Monday, December 4th, 6 - 9.

Ocean Drive and 12th Street.

Open to the public:

Wednesday - Saturday, 11 - 7.

Sunday 11 - 6.

art-untitled.com

On Monday, December 3rd, the inaugural version of the UNTITLED art fair opened to a buzzing audience, brimming with curiosity about Miami's first beachfront art fair.  

Walking through a bright pink gate that acted as a Parthenon-like conceptual conceipt: its entire purpose as a signifier of the culture that you were about to enter, then walking a narrow gauntlet surrounded by sand into the actual structure. People arrived from light and noise: the tourist-laden 2-for-1-drinks hawking streets of Ocean Drive - to darkness, to a spotlit hot pink vinyl mini-house shape, and back to spot-lit walkway and black sky.

Right: image by Kianga Ellis.

Below: image of opening night gate by RedEye.

With gorgeous sunset views slowly fading into twilight over the ocean, and then moonlight coming through clouds and palm trees, this fair distinctively placed itself among nature, and the most uncrowded sightline of infinite sky and water. Unlike most fairs where after clogged aisles and artificial light, visitors returned to the visual overstimulation of Miami architecture and color, at UNTITLED visitors received the supine loveliness of the wide beach environment.

Inside, the fair had the same openness to natural light during the day, and even at night visitors could go on a balcony directly form the cafe to enjoy the ocean.  

Right: view from balcony outside UNTITLED cafe.

Below: Image of view from UNTITLED cafe.

All in all the opening was packed with patrons, with lines of people outside waiting to get in, and some not gaining entry due to capacity restrictions. The buzz was strong, the art-lookers serious and committed to checking out this brand-new fair, and the tall-tented open venue provided them 50 galleries and art spaces full of thoughtfully selected art. Curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud, each booth had a feeling of openness as well, showing the months of inividualized attention Chahoud gave to each gallery's program, selection and installation.  Architectural firm Keenan/Riley also deserved much credit for providing the atmosphere of freedom and time to explore and reflect.

Below: opening night madness, UNTITLED.

UNTITLED 2012 gave us a chance to see the possible future of fairs - taking its cue perhaps from this year's Frieze NYC's extreme freedom to create their own vision on Randall's Island in New York City, UNTITLED. More integrated into Miami's South Beach alternately beach-relaxed and manically touristic culture, UNTITLED aimed to both stand out as a uniquley-situated cultural beacon and slowly arise from the sand. We hope for many happy returns for future iterations of this fair.

Lisa Ross Catalog & Artist Talk

I am pleased to announce that the
Lisa Ross: After Night catalog is now available at the gallery. This has been a very exciting catalog to be able to produce, as Lisa's current series, on beds found in the desert landscape, is perfect for this format. The catalog is 22 pages, full color, $15: for inquiries please email the gallery at info@asyageisberggallery.com.

Lisa Ross will be giving an artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, November 12, at 1pm. A light brunch will be served.



The exhibition has also received press in aCurator magazine, Uprise Art, and soon in La Lettre de la Photographie. Check the NEWS section of the website for links.

"Salvajes"opening

Left: Installation; "Salvajes".

"Salvajes", an exhibition of eight artists, opened September 15. Curated by Guillermo Creus, "Salvajes" is inspired by the lyrical, political and metaphorical themes in the writing of Roberto Bolaño , conceptually aligning the Chilean writer’s characters and motifs with the works of eight contemporary Latin American artists. Drawing parallels between these artists and Bolaño’s persona as a nomadic writer, “Salvajes” intends to be Latin American in its essence, and universal in its language. The title of the exhibition, “Salvajes” (savages), refers to one of Bolaño’s most important novels, Los Detectives Salvajes, and to the stereotypical image of Latin Americans as the uncivilized.

Right: Curator Guillermo Creus in front of "Stela of the Gods of New York" by Irvin Morazan.

Alberto Borea (born in Peru) was educated at Bard and Skowhegan, and has had solo exhibitions at Galeria Isabel Hurley and the Y Gallery. He is currently in the Museo del
Barrio biennial show, The S Files. Awards and residencies include ISCP, Art Omi, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and a Sculpture Space Residency.
Florencia Escudero (born in Argentina) has a BFA from SVA, and is currently completing her MFA at Yale University.

Left: Florencia Escudero (Left) by paintings by Ricardo Gonzalez.

Ricardo Gonzalez was born in Mexico City and completed his MFA at New York University, with exhibitions at Apexart, Kathleen Cullen, and LaMama Gallery.
Claudia Joskowicz was born in Bolivia and has an MFA from NYU. She has had solo exhibitions at Thierry Goldberg, Museo Nacional de Arte in La Paz, Bolivia, and Momenta. She has received an AIM residency, LMCC residency, a Fullbright Scholarship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been included in group shows at LMAK Projects, the Sao Paolo Biennial, the Sharjah Biennial, the 10th Havana Biennial, and Socrates Sculpture Park.

Right: Asya Geisberg, Guillermo Creus, and Claudia Joscowicz, by photo of Alberto Borea.

Irvin Morazan was born in El Salvador. He has a BFA from SVA, and is completing his MFA at Hunter College. He is included in the current Museo del Barrio show “The S Files”. He will be performing September 30th for Salvajes, and will be included in Performa 11 with a performance on November 2nd.
Meyer Vaisman is an influential artist of the 1980-90s New York art scenes, and together with Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, and Peter Halley known as the ‘Fantastic Four’. Born in 1960 in Venezuela to Romanian-Ukranian Jewish parents, he brings a cross-generational aspect to this exhibition, as a pioneer Latin-American artist that reached the New York art establishment “from inside”. He has exhibited at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Leo Castelli, Jablonka Gallery, and Patrick Painter among others.
Manuela Viera-Gallo (born in Rome, grew up in Chile) received her BFA and MFA from
the Universidad Catolica in Chile. She had a solo exhibition at the Y Gallery in 2011 and is widely exhibited in New York, South America, and Europe.
Carlos Vela-Prado (born in Guatemala) is currently completing his MFA at Yale University.

For images from the exhibition, go to asyageisberggallery.com.

"Things Fall Apart" opens Thursday July 7 at SVA

"Things Fall Apart"

July 5 - August 13, 2011
Reception: Thursday, July 7, 6 - 8pm

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents "Things Fall Apart," an exhibition of work by students and recent graduates of the MFA Fine Arts Department and curated by Asya Geisberg.

The exhibition's title reflects the mood of the world at large, as during the past few years economic and political tumult has produced financial 'corrections,' regional upheavals, and overturned assumptions of fealty among allies and enmity among foes. Decades of inertia have abruptly turned into revolutionary fervor in the Middle East, while at home political sureties have crumbled - the words 'gay marriage' have swung the polls in opposite directions. With no culmination in sight, this constant sense of repositioned status quo, of definitions and boundaries blown up, is reflected in art being produced today."

In "Things Fall Apart," artists refuse to take easy categorizations or art-historical imperatives for granted. Andrew Brischler (current student, MFA Fine Arts Department) upends the essence of painting, Betty Hart (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) acts as a modern alchemist with photography, and Jenny Santos (current student, MFA Fine Arts Department) disrupts perceptions of stability and solidity with seemingly simple gestures. Theresa Friess (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) mixes ethereal materiality with functional paradoxes, while Kim Smith's (current student, MFA Fine Arts Department) surfaces spark a confusion of additive and reductive marks.

Sharona Eliassaf's (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) media-influenced conflations and Joey Varas's (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) deconstructed war mementos decontextualize recognizable elements of our current state of "always-plugged-in" and "always-at-war." Katie Cercone (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) takes sensory overstimulation into the performative realm, enveloping her actions and videos in equally cacophonic environments. Julie Schenkelberg's (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) sculpture absorbs knowledge into a symbolic dead-end.

Emily Weiner's (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) symmetrical paintings start with the broken tradition of exalted nature, while mocking the impossibility of reaching the Ideal. Gudmundur Thoroddsen (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) dissolves dichotomies of the sacred and the profane, leaving the Ideal behind altogether. Angela Branco (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) reenacts what some might consider the essence of destructive and ritualistic power. Miyeon Lee (MFA 2011 Fine Arts), seemingly wishing for things to be back together, tries to show us a world of cosmic infinity, pinning the unknowable within the picture plane.

----Asya Geisberg

Visual Arts Gallery: 601 West 26th street, 15th floor

Monday through Saturday, 10am - 5pm

NYT review of "Hearts of Oak"

One simply cannot describe the feeling of going out in the cold morning, picking up a New York Times in one's sweatpants, throwing it on the kitchen counter, tearing a section rapidly in search of the page where one's name is found, not once, not twice, but...you get it. I know the review is of the Annie Attridge exhibition, which in addition to the reviews she received in the L magazine and Artlog she richly deserves. But, the ego is a sensitive creature, and when its fur is gently petted by the silken palm of "All the News that's Fit to Print", a gentle purr occurs.

In other words, yay!

Check out the Roberta Smith review below:


----------------------

February 3, 2011

ANNIE ATTRIDGE: ‘Hearts of Oak’

By ROBERTA SMITH

Asya Geisberg Gallery

537B West 23rd Street

Chelsea

Through Feb. 12

The British artist Annie Attridge shows a lot of awkward promise in her New York gallery debut. She works small and mainly in glazed porcelain, pushing traditionally demure tabletop figurines into compromising, often ribald positions while downsizing the heroic conventions of royal portraiture. The rearing horse is a favorite device, except that the rider tends to be a nude woman, a voluptuous breast or a pair of female buttocks swathed in frills, rather than a king.

There is not a man in sight here, only women offering up their bodies — or parts of them — in various ways. This can include being bound, possibly bleeding, to a truncated tree in the manner of Goya’s “Disasters of War” etchings.

Ms. Attridge’s slurred forms are more immediately indebted to the British sculptor Rebecca Warren, who also works with clay, and the Swedish claymation genius Nathalie Djurberg. At this point their very different skills in combining abstract and narrative force exceed hers.

Nonetheless, Ms. Attridge has a sure way with materials and a perverse sense of form that extends into small charcoal drawings and also bronze sculpture, especially the gleaming variation on a cathedral termite mound that culminates in three breasts.

Most of all there is the sexual and sexualized defiance of her vision. She has women on the brain in ways that would probably be frowned upon these days were she not a woman herself. As it is, Ms. Attridge is extending a tradition of small lascivious sculpture that reaches back to ancient times.

Art LA Contemporary

My first art fair as a participant brought about a few lessons on what to do, and what not to do. These lessons can be applied to anyone, whether hosting a party, or running a gallery, or doing any kind of dealing with the public.

1. Do not have a trash can. This might seem counter-intuitive, as you would think trash should be kept away from the clean and elegant environment you no doubt wish to preserve. I bought a lovely minimal perfect-sized white trash can to sit daintily (and discreetly) under my desk. However, as the VVIP opening went into the VIP opening and then to the general opening, I found that the more "V"s were in front of the "IP"s, the more crudely did people think it permissible to throw coffee cups (with coffee) glasses (with bright red-colored alcohol) and food into my lovely unsoiled can, which by the way was inches away from my legs, so it felt particularly invasive and insulting. Some people spied the can from the hall and threw it from afar. I kid not.

Left: stuff...

2. The less stuff the better. I love information, and like to provide it so that people don't have to ask but can look for themselves. Not so at an art fair. Less is more I realized. Put everything in one notebook, and then sit back and relax. Or rather...

3. Sitting is the devil. My back each morning was more and more agonized- perhaps it was all the LA driving, but most likely it was the awful chairs that I sat in for hours. By day 3 I realized that the intermittent shuffling and fake IPhone-scrolling of the dealer opposite me was actually a back-saving strategy. While constantly standing and pacing outside the perimeter of his booth, he somehow managed to not look like a caffeinated tchotchke-seller at the suk, but a chillaxed dude, who just happened to be the dude you would contact at the booth.

Right: Angelina Gualdoni corner of booth, with uncomfy devil chair.

4. People expect Art 101 and want to "chat". I had a woman come back twice to have me explain "how long should I hold onto an artwork before I sell it?" Another man asked me about how value is defined in art and wanted a full debate. A grumpy old man attacked with "Is this the state of the art world today? If so, then my four-year-old could do a lot better." I was expected to debate the meaning of art, explain the point of art fairs, defend the ethics of dealers, and nutshell the art-as-investment theory, all on a busy Saturday. I have encountered this in triplicate at the gallery of course, but having 100 square feet makes one feel beleaguered. Hence, the beauty of the dealer pacing outside the booth.

5. Save the best outfit for de-installation. I had brought a variety of comfortable and unremarkable outfits to wear, which all proved wrong as the temperature at the unheated airplane hangar plummeted at about 3pm each day, so that some dealers were seen wearing furs and scarves (and coats!) all day. By de-install, I had switched into jeans, while a prominent French dealer was seen attacking a 6 foot crate with a massive screw-gun while in a tight dress and 4-inch stilettos (so very French). As half the lights in the booths were off, another dealer, with long hair and a tall lanky build, stood still holding a large framed piece. A spotlight shined on his immaculate fuschia suede shoe, making it leap from the quiet darkness: one of the more aestheticized moments of the entire fair.

Overall, a great experience!

Newsweek in print

Newsweek article by Sameer Reddy out in print!

"Hot New York art galleries" p.49 - 51.

AGG mentioned on p.51, with two photos of paintings by gallery artists Angelina Gualdoni ["Fragment"] and Melanie Daniel ["Peacock"] on p.50.

AGG in NEWSWEEK!

Around Christmas, a charming gent interviewed me for journalistic purposes, and lo and behold as the New Year arrived I found that Newsweek International published a feature, "New Galleries Heat Up Art Market", featuring Asya Geisberg Gallery, the ladies originally from Deitch currently involved in the Hole, and a new space called fordProject, all new NYC spaces.

Excerpt below, click on link to read full article. And whether you are traveling through Istanbul, Irkutsk, or Ougadougou, pick up the print issue!











By Sameer Reddy, January 2, 2011

...Several significant new gallery spaces have begun to open their doors in Manhattan. And with the freedom that comes from reinventing the system, they are pursuing unconventional curatorial programs and, in some cases, setting up shop in unexpected places. ...The shift encouraged Asya Geisberg to open her own eponymous ground-floor gallery on West 23rd Street, in a space formerly occupied by Goff + Rosenthal. Four of the five artists on Geisberg's evolving roster happen to be women, and she's conscious of the role she can fulfill in creating a more level playing field. "It's not something that I consider an overt mission, but I'm very happy that by definition there are more women artists out there that people can see and buy," she says. "[Women's artwork] doesn't need to be more interesting than [men's], but why shouldn't it be valued as much? I'd like to do whatever I can to eliminate any kind of bias that might be latent, but still exists." Geisberg is also trying to inaugurate a series of artist talks-the kind of opportunity typically available only to insiders who arrange for a studio visit.

Click here to read the full article.

"Girls Just Want to Have Funds"

Rema Hort Mann Foundation panel at PPOW Gallery.

On Tuesday night, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation sponsored a fantastic panel on the not very Cyndi-Lauperian topic of why women artists fail to achieve anywhere near the prices that men do, especially at the upper echelons of the market. To standing-room only crowds, the dedicated director of the Foundation, himself markedly not a woman artist, explained the need for the focus on women artists, and promised to have a similar panel in exactly a year to see where things stood. Indeed, the evening was full of numbers and near-scientific figures, a way to measure and gauge success over time. The moderator, the enlightening and clear-voiced Sarah Douglas, introduced the discussion with statistics that clarified that through all strata of the artist's career arc, men out-earned women, and were disproportionately represented in galleries. She noted that at the height of the market, in 2007, of the top 100 earning artists, only 4 were women, and the highest price for an American woman was $7 million for Joan Mitchell. And while 50% of all MFA students were women, even those galleries that showed emerging artists were already more focused on men in their roster.

Right: Marilyn Minter, "Parted", 2010, 30" x 24", enamel on metal, $35,000.

Indeed, Douglas said that several dealers complained that they were hard pressed to find the talent among women, which of course the mostly-female audience booed under their breaths. A more likely excuse was suggested by the younger artist on the panel, 20-something Xaviera Simmons, who said that women needed confidence, and a business-like approach, in order to succeed. When Sculpture Center Director Mary Ceruti was asked by trustees why her shows were mostly of women, she had to explain that the opposite was true: so many men who were talented already had weighty exhibition histories, while mature talented women were left out, and ripe for a non-profit museum. Amy Capellazzo, the head of Contemporary Art at Christie's, had the most "go-get-'em" approach of all: what women were missing was a sense of entitlement that men seemed to automatically have. If women just believe that they deserved more money, higher salaries, bigger studios with assembly line production, more critical acclaim and approval, then they too could break the $1 million dollar auction price barrier, and be a more saleable brand. Her advice had some resonance, as in her example of the change in women's attitudes over the past 30 years concerning their sexuality, and certainly it was refreshing to hear voices of encouragement and not empathetic coddling of the "woe-is-me" variety. Capellazzo even ended the evening with a reiteration of her call to arms: if you decide you want economic parity, you can achieve it, she coached the crowd. Still, to some of the audience, certain questions remained - for instance, the fact that some of the discrimination and insistence on male supremacy came from women in power. Marilyn Minter, a raucous addition to the roster, and an artist whose rise in economic power has been well-documented, mentioned that even a woman collector had questioned whether her prices were prudent, while dealer Tony Shafrazi claimed only men earned "that kind of money".

Right: Amy Capellazzo, Head of Contemporary Art, Christie's.

In fact, Minter was a good case study in success: her tenacity- creating art even when it was unpopular and not as rewarded -- won her a long wait-list of collectors, and the enviable position of having a studio with 6 assistants. Yet even she portrayed some traits that were a perfect example of why differences still remain, and why the path to success is perhaps slower (if not fully erased) for women: while Jeff Koons, Murakami, and Damien Hirst were well-known for having huge factories of assistants and therefore were able to earn disproportionately massive amounts of money, Minter had to be persuaded to increase her studio to 10 people, and she needed to know them personally, so that she could have a mentoring role. On the other hand, she spoke honestly and humorously about how hungry she was to get higher in the earnings department, and do her personal best to achieve parity with men.
Left: Suzanne Valadon, Self Portrait, 1927.

While the audience clapped most heartily when it was cruelly lured into thinking Cyndi Lauper herself had shown up to perform the titular song of the evening, the end of the panel's discussion beckoned the audience members to stay and dish about the topic of the night. Was pregnancy and motherhood adequately addressed? If Capellazzo claimed that biology wasn't destiny, then what else could women count on as definitive markers of lesser value? Prejudices that exist about the very nature of art made by women and men were not touched upon, and perhaps those very powerful ideas, found in both men and women, are the real reason behind the lack of financial potency in women's careers. I recalled the thesis I wrote on an artist of the turn of the century, Suzanne Valadon, and how her art was interpreted by critics and peers as uniformly "male", and not very saleable. Yet her son, Maurice Utrillo, with his run-of-the-mill paintings copied from postcards, went on to become a much higher earner, and today is a far more marketable name. Of course most women on the panel shared anecdotes about how times had changed from even 20-30 years ago. Let's hope that looking forward will define both progress in actual earning power and the underlying attitudes behind lesser representation.

Opening Pix of Asya Geisberg Gallery

"Angelina Gualdoni: Shadows Slipping" opened last week, and I have finally sat down long enough to post some opening night pix.

The images below were photographed by an assembly of "Asya Says" devotees, as Asya herself was distracted by "Saying" plenty in person.

Left: View onto 23rd street.

Right: The calm before the storm!

Warm weather and a smashing reception made for a great opening, followed by a lovely after-party or two.

I am so grateful for everyone's support and warm wishes!

And if I didn't have the opportunity to speak with you, my apologies...it was quite the turnout!



Left: Michele, Asya, and Diana.






Right: Pre-opening preparations...

Right: Angelina Gualdoni.

Left: Jerry Saltz perusing "Porosity".


I had to include at least one obligatory shoe/fashion shot, photographed on my behalf, so that the ethos of "Asya Says" endures.

Introducing Asya Geisberg Gallery!

New Gallery Opening in Chelsea --- Asya Geisberg Gallery


537B West 23rd Street New York
Inaugural Reception September 23rd from 6-8pm
Angelina Gualdoni: Shadows Slipping


ASYA GEISBERG will open her new gallery on West 23rd Street in Chelsea on the ground floor of the Tate Building, joining Leo Koenig, Daniel Reich, Perry Rubenstein, Margaret Thatcher Projects and Pavel Zoubok.

Ms. Geisberg will present a conceptually focused program of young international artists working in all media. The inaugural exhibition will showcase new paintings by New York artist Angelina Gualdoni. Future exhibitions will include Israeli artist Melanie Daniel, winner of the 2009 Rappaport Prize for Young Israeli Painters, and British artist Annie Attridge, whose most recent work was featured in "Grand National-Art from Britain", Vestfossen, Norway.

Asya Geisberg brings her talents as a curator, writer and artist to her new gallery. She has worked with many artists, most recently in "Freedom's Discontents: Resistance, Subversion, and Survival" at Visual Voice Gallery in Montreal. Her coverage of art fairs and international exhibitions can be found at ArtBistro.com, as well as, on her blog "Asya Says" AsyaSays.blogspot.com.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ms. Geisberg has lived in the US since 1977. She studied literature and history at Wesleyan and received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.

Ms. Geisberg looks forward to being part of the Chelsea neighborhood adding a challenging new group of international artists to this rich arts environment.

Asya Geisberg Gallery | 537B West 23rd Street | New York, NY 10011 | +212 675 7525 | info@asyageisberggallery.com www.asyageisberggallery.com

Freedom Week Art Auction--Please donate!

The last week of September is Freedom Week, to bring attention to human trafficking, and we are organizing an art auction benefit. It's an under-reported cause, and one that I think deserves all the attention it can get. The benefit will be held on September 30, at Tele Design Studio, an event space in the Meatpacking District. It is sure to get press coverage, and will be the culmination of a week of events.

Please donate a work of art. The info on the project is below. If you are interested or have any questions about donation, please email:freedomweekbenefit@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Asya Geisberg, curator
Freedom Week Art Auction
-----------------------------------------

We are pleased to invite you to participate in New York City’s second-annual Freedom Week, September 25-October 2, 2010. Freedom Week is a citywide campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking and contemporary slavery, which is now the third-largest criminal industry in the world. According to the U.S. State Dept., at least 12.3 million people are trafficked and enslaved around the world, and that number is growing fast. Human trafficking is expected to soon surpass drug trafficking in scope and profit because it is a shadow industry that works under the radar. Most people do not know that it exists, let alone that New York City is one of the major portals for trafficking within the USA; this includes U.S citizens, especially children.

Our goal is to open people's eyes to this horrific industry and inspire the public to take action. As such, we are hosting an art auction to both raise awareness and funds to fight trafficking. Proceeds from the auction will go to organizations dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and providing after-care to victims who have been rescued.

We would love to have you add your voice to those who are raising awareness by generously donating a piece of artwork to the auction. If you have any questions about Freedom Week, please feel free to contact me at annlien@gmail.com. Our website is below if you'd like to see a summary of last year's events, where we were able to feature such luminaries as Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nicholas Kristof from the NY Times and the U.S. State Department's Ambassador Lou de Baca.

We hope you will join us in the fight against modern slavery and human trafficking.

Sincerely,

Ann Lien
Director, Freedom Week

http://freedomweeknyc.com/

Freedom Week Art Auction: Submission Guidelines

I am pleased to be curating this year's art auction benefiting Freedom Week.

The auction will be held at the Tele Design event space on Thursday, September 30th, from 6 - 9. For information on Freedom Week, please read .

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS:

Works can be in any medium, framed or unframed, maximum 36" in any direction including frame, and must be able to be installed on the wall. If you have a framed work, please supply wire Sculptors may include a small shelf for display. We recommend a minimum bid below $1,000.

Please prepare a 150KB jpeg, and the following information for the checklist.

Please email AND include with your artwork:

Name, address, phone, email, and website of artist.

Title, year, medium, edition number if any.

Estimated Value, and Minimum Bid (we recommend one third to one half of the estimated value).

Selected artworks must be delivered on September 29 and 30, we cannot inconvenience our host with individual deliveries or storage of artwork. Selected artworks are donations and all proceeds from their sales support the work of several important organizations working on human trafficking, including History Starts Now. Included artists are welcome to attend the event for free. Tickets to the benefit are $25.

Drop-off: September 29 and 30, at location to be announced.

Pick-up of unsold artwork: September 30 and October 1.

Questions or concerns should be directed to freedomweekbenefit@gmail.com.

Thank you for your interest and support of Freedom Week.

Riding on the Back of a Pig into a Pool of Mud

"Defrosted: a life of Walt Disney" opens June 29 at Postmasters

A few days before the start of the New York art world's summer lull, Postmasters opened a stellar group exhibition forcing vacationers awake. A conceptually taut revisionist riff on the life of Walt Disney, the show is organized by Adam Cvijanovic and David Humphrey, and features 14 additional artists. Summer in the city beckons most galleries to throw group shows, but this one, planned for 2 years, has thrown down the gauntlet.

Right: David Humphrey and featured artist Inka Essenhigh.

The entire main gallery is covered with a wall painting by Cvijanovic, with figurative parts painted by Humphrey, and additional canvases by Humphrey playfully hung throughout. By the entrance of the gallery, a timeline of Disney's life creates a comical leitmotif that throws the otherwise fantastical show into sharp relief, the kind of truth that our current reality-TV modernity finds prickly and illusive at best. Related works by artists both known and Ebay-anonymous hang on a scaffold recreating Magic Mountain, itself based on the Matterhorn.

Left: artist Nika Sarabi.

Right: detail of Nika Sarabi's work.

The crowded opening emphasized the room-filling expanse lushly imagined by Cvijanovic. An artist who makes painting seem as easy as brushing one's teeth, Cvijanovic continues to push his style into a modern reinvention of history painting. Humphrey's cartoony tendencies are also a perfect fit for this thematic exhibition. In cohesive yet distinctive styles, both artists re-imagine a workshop ideal, even asking Nika Sarabi, an artist familiar with graffiti, to add detail to an abandonned spaceship from Disneyworld's Tomorrowland.

Left: "Addio", Eva and Franco Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.org, hung on pedestal.

In the back room, several works were supposed to represent Walt Disney's crypt, and indeed it was a quiet somber room, with a video and giant Mickey sculpture. A truly ambitious undertaking, the entire exhibition concerned itself not just with the reinvention of biography and the collaborative process, but also the physical challenge of having imagery taking over the room. The exhibit placed the viewer in a warped Einsteinian time/space dimension, which particularly was pronounced during the packed opening. And yet as viewers looked up at the walls, they were brought back into the objecthood and subjectivity of each individual artist placing their work on the pedestal cum Matterhorn. A heady and yet perfectly summer-themed exhibit indeed--catch it before it closes on August 6!


Left: Paula Wilson, "After All", mixed media on wood, on pedestal.

Freedom Sparks in Montreal

"Freedom's Discontents: Resistance, Subversion, and Survival"

A triumverate of curators--Irys Schenker, myself and gallery director Bettina Forget put together a video exhibition at Montreal's Visual Voice Gallery. The show is up only through July 17, but viewable online at Visual Voice Gallery. My selections and essay (reprinted below) are viewable at LightCube Video.


The response to the Freedom Sparks open call for videos has been overwhelming, and has garnered submissions from all over the world. This is indeed the beauty behind a show such as this: curators from New York have looked at videos from Brussels, Japan, and Arizona, among others, and the works will be viewed in a gallery in Montreal. This process has informed the interpretation of the concept of freedom, and provided a range of reactions - personal, national, or abstracted, and with these examples we can glimpse the expanse of our world.

Biying Zhang abstracts black and white footage of the Pan Asian Games in China with abrasive editing and sound, into a reflection on the calamity and destruction behind the facade of governmental control. In a place where freedom has a nuanced history, a propaganda machine aims to portray a happy and modernized China, which the artist counteracts with his pointed video.

Elise Rasmussen similarly delves into local history: the disappearance of native culture in Newfoundland. Her poignant, meditative approach, combined with bilateral framing, gives a nuanced viscerally-felt evocation of place. In a free society, without overt warfare or pursuit of genocide, an ethnic group nonetheless slowly is eradicated. What can freedom mean when a groups survival itself is so tenuous?

Tobias Rosenberger investigates another disappearance: of landscape and its inhabitants, an erasure brought about by the results of commercial freedom. A development, the height of material choice, brings about a sudden death, and Rosenberger shows us the end result of deadening conformity.

Daniel Stitts provides a personal and hauntingly beautiful nugget of personal and sexual freedom. Motifs of hiding, disappearance, and even the use of recorded voice all create layers of obstruction to personal liberty. Simone Patterson's fun brightly-colored piece subverts her underlying themes of feminity submerged in domesticity, vanity, and modern womens forced juggling of roles. And finally, Robby Rackleff's humorous lecture, toying with the ease of home-made video fakery, posits freedom as something that each generation fears and resents.

Cuchifritos: bootie-licious

Left: The entrance of Cuchifritos Gallery, Installation view: "Collected:Working Space 10". Courtesy of the artists and Cuchifritos Gallery/project space. Photo: Scott Taylor.

On yet another sweltering NYC day, while gallery-hopping through the Lower East Side, I decided to stop by Essex Market, a wonderful locavore outpost that reinvents a neighborhood paradigm from the turn of the century into a thriving food-based marketplace. Luckily for me, I wandered into the cozy corner space of Cuchifritos Gallery, just as the opening for its new exhibit "Collected:Working Space 10" began.

Right: Crocheted floor, by Olek.

Curated by Erin Riley-Lopez, the exhibit features work of the artists in the Lower East Side Rotating Studio Program, housed nearby. The show managed within a confoundingly small space to be a testament to the high caliber of the artists, as well as the range of conceptual work within. Although the works were in video, painting, sculpture and performance, the idea of mark-making outside the boundaries of conventional drawing was profoundly felt.

For instance, Chris Yormick used Connect Four checkers to create a blunt facial pattern, and Natsu's red filament-and-bead web took over a corner of the space. Echoing its organic/cosmic patterning was Olek's camouflage-meets-sportswear carpet, which covered the entire floor. The one actual drawing used marks to extend beyond the paper: Blane de St.Criox's "Gitmo: abandonned camp x-ray" pushed past political authority by using barbed wire's thwarted beauty as mark to suggest freedom's grand schemes unravelled.

Left: pile of used booties.

The artist Olek sat by the entrance offering slippers to all entrants, pantomiming as her mouth was embroidered shut. Her crocheted carpet effectively thrust mark-making into the three-dimensional realm, and labeled each guest as participant. The gallery was taken over by the mark, and within its womb-like space, a sea of pink and purple, each foot trod carefully on the art, each leg yet another mark, extending upward.

Right: Olek, at right, silently waiting to proffer slippers.

"Painting with Pictures": loco con sabor!

I am very excited to announce the show I co-curated with David Gibson and Savannah Spirit, "Painting with Pictures", opened last night at the Casita Maria Center in the Bronx. The show of 32 artists revisits the concept of collage, and will have a follow-up "Part II" in the winter. Casita Maria is a gorgeous building, a few minutes walk from the 2, 5, and 6 trains, and the show is on the top floor, affording lovely views of city rooftops, sunsets, and the elegant stream of ever-present traffic on the Bruckner Expressway.

Right: Hector Madera-Gonzalez installation of collage on found posters.

Left: Artists Tim Rollins and Conrad Vogel.

After a lovely opening, the madding crowd assembled at a Mexican restaurant across the street, and supped on deliciosos Camarones a la Mexicana, freshly-chopped guacamole, and endless glasses of "apple juice" (code for beer). I could barely hear anyone as the jukebox regaled us with forlorn ditties in Spanish, and as I stumbled into the wrong door to have a breath of fresh air, I was pleased to be mortified by a posse of 6 decked-out gals, who clearly felt I had stumbled not only into the wrong door but perhaps the wrong neighborhood. I look forward to revisiting the show in the light of day, as the art changes in the daylight, and the neighborhood beckons with fruit vendors, vibrant graffiti, and a street culture that encourages interaction. Casita Maria has been a fixture in the neighborhood for over 74 years, but the building is only 2 years old and looks it, with gleaming floors, brightly colored walls, and kids energized by their exposure to art and culture.

Right: Director of Development for Casita Maria David Dean adjacent to a matching collage by Amelie Chunleau.

The exhibition continues through July 21, and features works by: Michael Anderson, Melissa Barrett, Chris Bors, Lesly Canossi, Amelie Chunleau, Nancy Drew, Chris Fennell, Carla Gannis, Liam Hanna-Lloyd, Halsey Hathaway, Daniel Kayne Scott, Kiernan, Isolde Kille, Elissa Levy, D. Dominick Lombardi, Hector Madera-Gonzalez, Leah Oates, Sarah Olson, Deborah Pohl, Alexander Reyna, Elizabeth Riley, Ron Rocheleau, Pamela Saturday, Raven Schlossberg, Kaeko Shabana, Jennifer Shepard, Mary Ann Strandell, thefactory101, Austin Thomas, Conrad Vogel, and Michael Zansky.

This exhibition explores the use of collage as an artistic medium, dissecting its impulses and agendas while providing a wide cross-spectrum of its usage in contemporary art. It addresses the role of material culture in mediating our shared view of reality, the notion of a borrowed aesthetic, and how specific visual agendas express differing cultural attitudes. It includes a variety of mediums and aesthetic agendas, presenting not only traditional collage, but works which establish a collage mentality in the liminal forms of photography, video, digital manipulation, painting, sculpture, printmaking, children’s books, commercial signage, portraiture, and others. In the end, it will posit collage as a cause, rather than a symptom, of both artistic style and generational meaning.

Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education; Casita Gallery, 6th Floor
928 Simpson St (Bet Fox/Baretto St & 163rd St)

For more information, check out their website: Casita Maria Center.

Right: Savannah Spirit, Lyla Rose, David Dean, and Asya Geisberg.