sam vernon News

Made You Look: Hidden Narratives Unveiled

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:49:52 CDT

NEW YORK, NY – Spattered Columns, an exhibition space operated by the non-profit Art Connects New York (ACNY), is pleased to announce the opening of “Made You Look: Hidden Narratives Unveiled” on May 9, 2012. In homage of the Hatch-Billops Collection, this group exhibition curated by rising NYC-based curator Krista Saunders features site-specific installation by artists’ whose practice involves archiving the underrepresented and overlooked aspects of contemporary culture. Similarly driven by a compulsion to document, collect, and share themes largely neglected by prevailing discourses, these prolific artists both honor and perpetuate the legacy of the Hatch-Billops Collection and its committed creators.

Housed in the same SoHo building as Spattered Columns, the Hatch-Billops Collection is a remarkable archive of African American art, culture, and oral histories. Founded by Camille Billops and James Hatch in 1975, more than 30 years later Hatch-Billops continues to collect interviews, scripts, artwork and documentation by visual and performing artists of color. While renowned artists such as Faith Ringgold, Dizzy Gillespie and playwright George C. Wolfe have been featured, the Hatch-Billops Collection has also been instrumental in fostering the awareness of little-known pioneers such as Willis Richardson, the first African-American to mount a show on Broadway.

Participating artists in “Made You Look: Hidden Narratives Unveiled” include Damali Abrams, Brendan Carroll, James Fitzgerald, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Karen Schoellkopf, Tattfoo Tan, and Sam Vernon. This exhibition is in commemoration of the Hatch-Billops Collection’s immeasurable cultural contributions and enduring support of artists of color upon the printing of their final edition of the “Artists and Influences” journal.

The opening reception for “Made You Look: Hidden Narratives Unveiled” will take place from 6pm-8pm on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at Spattered Columns, 491 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10012. The exhibition will run until May 31st. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 12-6pm. An accompanying tour of the Hatch-Billops Collection will take place from 6pm-8pm on Wednesday, May 30th. RSVP REQUIRED at StephanieL@artconnectsnewyork.org; $5 Suggested Donation.

For more information on “Made You Look: Hidden Narratives Unveiled” at Spattered Columns, please visit www.artconnectsnewyork.org or contact Stephanie Lindquist at StephanieL@artconnectsnewyork.org.

DON'T WORRY WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS MOSTLY WITHOUT YOU

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:56:29 CDT

Radiator Gallery

10-61 Jackson Avenue, 3rd Floor

Long Island City
May 4 - May 27, 2012
Opening: Friday, May 4, 6 - 9 PM

Artists: Jeanie Choi, Camilo Godoy, Ted Kerr, James Richards, Aldrin Valdez, Sam Vernon
Curated by Kris Nuzzi

Radiator Gallery presents Don’t Worry What Happens Happens Mostly Without You, an exhibition that explores the personal identities of artists Jeanie Choi, Camilo Godoy, Ted Kerr, James Richards, Aldrin Valdez and Sam Vernon, as they navigate through a world shaped by experiences of marginalization, silencing and difference. Whether speaking from their own life, recreating a historical memory or representing an underrepresented community, their work explores poetic and subtle ways to communicate issues of immigration, race, queerness and desire. Together they reveal the connections and differences between these loaded social issues and invite the viewer to share in their intimate experiences.

Artist Jeanie Choi explores our longing to confess the unspeakable. Through a series of collaborations, her work mediates a language through gesture and silence by examining the relationships between the confessor and the unreciprocated other. Using photography, video and performance, the reiteration of symbols and mistranslations never reach a conclusion, but reassure us that we are all trying to broaden the possibilities of truth between us.
Camilo Godoy’s work is concerned with the politics of migration and citizenship in the U.S. by drawing upon the immigrant experience and playing upon narratives extracted from government documents. Through these intimate and powerful works, we hear their personal stories in deportation proceedings while addressing the quotidian struggles detained immigrants face in the U.S.

Ted Kerr’s piece FOR MYSELF IN THE SCENE is a poster installation comprised of 3 posters that are available for viewers to take. Through the work, Ted works to find himself amid socio-political-sexual anxieties produced in a time of ongoing AIDS, increased articulation of queer vs. LGBT politics, self-as-brand and digital culture. Using the poster, a format popularized during the AIDS crisis by Fierce Pussy, Gran Fury and General Idea, this work explores identity, activism and visual culture. At the same time, James Richards’ poster Don’t Worry is inspired by a quote by Joseph Albers and is part of an ongoing project by James and artist Matt Keegan. He works with existing text, accessible images and footage from disparate sources that he then remixes and returns back into the world.

Aldrin Valdez tells his story through an installation that is a personal mix of collage and family photos, piecing together memories of his childhood. He presents images of being a child in the Philippines, photos of his parents in the U.S. when he and his siblings had not immigrated to America yet, and collages that explore patterns and surfaces.

Exploring identity and memory, Sam Vernon creates fictional characters that symbolize parts of her culture while blending aspects of neo-futurism with stereotypes, images, spirits and ghosts. Her work takes the form of drawing, painting, installation, photography and printmaking to pay homage to the past, while addressing questions of postcoloniality, racialization, sexuality and historical memory. Her work reminds us that our ghosts and past histories always remain with us and at times are unsettling and challenge us to remember.

The exhibition is on view from May 4th to May 27th 2012. The opening reception will feature a performance by Marni Kotak. In conjunction with the exhibition, on Sunday, May 20th, there will be an event on deportation titled Retracing I.C.E., organized by artist Camilo Godoy. On Sunday, May 27th, there will be a salon organized by Ted Kerr and Kris Nuzzi titled I am not alone in this way, featuring live performances that invite viewers to consider how our most intimate ways of being—striving and surviving, often in a hostile world—can be viewed as responsible for positive social change.

Kris Nuzzi is a Brooklyn based independent curator and currently works as an art advisor. She received her BA in art history from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and her MA in the art market from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where her focus was site-specific installation art. She is the 2011-2012 recipient of the Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellowship, where she had the opportunity to curate the exhibition Figured as well as organize the public program Embody at the BRIC Rotunda Gallery. She is a former intern and continued supporter and volunteer for Visual AIDS, using art to fight AIDS through initiating dialogue and supporting HIV+ artists to remind us that AIDS is not over.

About the Performance artist:

Marni Kotak is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who creates multimedia works in which she presents her everyday life as art. Referring to her daily activities, life experiences and personal milestones as Found Performances, she has publicly performed everything from being born, to attending her grandfather’s funeral. “The Birth of Baby X” was a durational performance that Kotak conducted from October 8 through November 7 at Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn New York, culminating in the live birth of my baby boy Ajax, on October 25, 2011.

Kotak’s recent exhibitions include I have to get on with my life: Marni Kotak’s Found Performances from Birth to Present, held at Alice Chilton Gallery in Brooklyn, NY in January of this year.

*Title from Don’t Worry (2006), poster by James Richards.

Radiator Gallery: 10-61 Jackson Ave, LIC, New York 11106
Tel: 1.347.677.3418, email: info@radiatorarts.com, www.radiatorarts.com
Gallery hours: Saturday, Sunday 3-6pm or by appointment

Momenta Art Spring Benefit 2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:21:25 CDT

THE AFFORDABLE ART FAIR (SPRING 2011) MAY 4-8, 2011

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:39:42 CDT

Participating Galleries

A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
ACCOLA GRIEFEN GALLERY, New York, NY
ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation, Chicago, IL
Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, New Brunswick, NJ
Ceres Gallery, New York, NY
Concrete Utopia, Brooklyn, NY
Kris Graves Projects, Brooklyn, NY
SOHO 20 Gallery, New York, NY
Tabla Rasa Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

 

Special Installations

The Irregular Pattern by artist Lauren Simkin Berke
Big Sal by artist Daria Dorosh
Eat Me by artist Carolyn Clayton
UN_TIT_LED by artist Lizzie De Vita
The Pink Elephant in the Room by artist Mariangeles Soto Diaz
P(n,k)Combinatorics by artist Nancy Cohen

 

Recent Graduates Booth
The Recent Graduates exhibition Post, curated by Sam Vernon featuring work by women artists that have recently completed their MFA or BFA programs. Artists exhibited include: Sofia Berinstein, Alana Fitzgerald, Jenevieve Reid, Leslie Martinez, Erica Wessmann, Rina Goldfield, Jessica Williams, Sam Vernon, Hannah Herr, Vivian Wong, Krista Anderson and Alexandria Smith.
 

Women Talk

Hosted by A.I.R. Gallery

 

THURSDAY, MAY 5, 6:30PM

Narrative Abstraction  Daria Dorosh, Multimedia Artist
 

FRIDAY, May 6, 6:30PM

Female Photographers and the Fe(male) Gaze
Jeanette May, Photographer
 

FRIDAY, May 6, 7PM

Works on Paper at Art x Women
Ferris Olin, Co-Director of the Institute of Women & Art, Rutgers, The State University of NJ
 

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1PM

Women's Galleries & Feminist Art
Susan Bee, Painter

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 4PM

Collecting Work by Women Artists
Marjorie Martay of Art W

SUNDAY, May 8, 1:30PM

Interactions, Working with Digital Media, 
Cliché Verre and Printmaking Processes
Nancy Lasar, Printmaker 

UPCOMING GROUP SHOW: ART & LIES

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 04:19:04 CDT

Art & Lies features installations, photography, sculpture, video, and collage by six artists: Ryan Frank, R. Justin Stewart, Danielle Durchslag, Sam Vernon, Morgan R. Levy, and Kerry Downey.

HOURS: Wednesday-Sunday, 12p-7p
OPENING PARTY: Friday, April 1, 6-9PM (live music by Rafael Cohen!)
ARTIST TALKBACK: Sunday, April 9
FILM SCREENINGS (co-curated with Kerry Downey!): Wednesdays, April 6 & 13, 7-9PM
April 6: "Here & There" features work about the anxieties of place and time. This evening will feature short films by Kerry Downey, Cybele Lyle, Douglas Paulson, Gordon Sasaki, Lior Shvil, and Jennifer Sullivan.
April 13: "Do Me" showcases work by Kerry Downey, Rebecca Goyette, David Kagen, Jannicke Låker, Tara Mateik, Jennifer Sullivan and Andrew Steinmetz, and Amber Hawk Swanson.

MORE ABOUT THE WORK:
“Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring”, an installation by Ryan Frank, portrays a series of figurative sculptures representing one woman’s struggle with how to present her gender and her transformation from femme to butch. Presented in its NYC debut, is R. Justin Stewart’s “2AM to 2PM”, a 3-D sculptural map of the Minneapolis Bus System. “2AM to 2PM” has previously traveled to the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI, the Mesa Art Center in Mesa, AZ and the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO. Collages by Danielle Durchslag and photographs by Morgan R. Levy will be the only 2-D, wall-mounted work in the show. Durchslag’s portraits of infants collaged from different types of paper depict distress in childhood, while Levy’s large-format composite photographs portray the isolation of the wilderness in Iceland. Kerry Downey’s videos address alienation with dark wit, and Sam Vernon’s work recalls the disparate influences of Kara Walker and Edward Gorey to create a truly haunting environmental installation about violence, race and psychic trauma.