Cabinet is pleased to present “Harry Smith: String Figures,” an exhibition drawn from the collection of John Cohen. Organized by painter Terry Winters, the show features twenty-two string figures created by Smith (1923–1991), the legendary artist, filmmaker, and ethnomusicologist.
BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2012, 10am-6pm
On Sunday, September 23, 2012, from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., a record 280+ top national and international authors and participants will join bibliophiles, booksellers and literary organizations on 14 stages at Brooklyn Borough Hall (209 Joralemon Street) and Plaza, Columbus Park, St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights Public Library, Brooklyn Law School, the Brooklyn Historical Society and St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church for the seventh annual Brooklyn Book Festival.
In his first novel in five years, beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author Michael Chabon provides a kaleidoscopic vision of urban America in transition, as witnessed by two intimately intertwined families in Oakland, California. Telegraph Avenue encompasses race, family, sexuality, gentrification, politics, jazz, funk, comics, kung fu, and a talking parrot, all with dazzling style and deep compassion. Chabon will read from his novel and answer audience questions before signing books.
On August 17, 2012 Molly Dilworth will begin work on Date the Time, as part of Recess’s signature program, Session. Session invites artists to use Recess’s public space as studio, exhibition venue and grounds for experimentation. For Date the Time, Dilworth will create a series of banners and flags, bearing patterns generated from user-submitted photos. Addressing digital content using traditional folk art techniques, Dilworth will distill issues of labor and consumer rights from unexpected sources.
In the large-scale “Fotobild” paintings, White continues to conjoin component canvases and then secures commercial storefront awnings above and atop painted canvases. These awnings and armatures, fabricated at a sign shop in Chinatown, feature human-scale snapshots that White has culled from her digital and print archives.
Stealth Reflections pulls back the layers of consciousness and exposes the viewer to an awakening of self reflection. Through his work, Miguel Ovalle seeks to reveal the inner psyche of the human condition through a myriad of interpretations and techniques. His steadfast approach defines his meticulous attention for detail.
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present ‘Control Over Nature’, an exhibition by Tessa Farmer in collaboration with an acoustical installation by Amon Tobin. For her second show at the gallery, Tessa has teamed up with Amon Tobin to mark his September 14th performance at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. With his groundbreaking audio/visual live show ISAM 2.0, the electronic music pioneer joined forces with Farmer for an extraordinary collaborative installation combining his sound design and elements from ‘ISAM’, alongside Farmer’s trademark sculptures (constructed from bits of organic material, such as roots, dead insects and bones). Hovering with a rarefied, jewel-like beauty, Tessa’s tiny spectacles resound with a theurgist exotica: their specimen forms evolve as something alien and futuristic. The collaboration perfectly captures the themes surrounding ‘ISAM’: sensory deprivation, disorienting situationism and the mechanization of natural things.
Join us for the grand opening of Wondering Around Wandering, and don’t miss Pulled: A Catalog of Screenprinting, making its final stop after a year of traveling.
Fishtank Ensemble is a band that offers a unique blend of Gypsy, Balkan, Flamenco, Klezmer and original tunes. The arrangements are always surprising and include instruments from many countries such as violin, accordion, flamenco and gypsy jazz guitar, shamisen, bass, saw and voice./Baby Soda! Developed by hoboes, perfected through science… Baby Soda is on the cutting edge of a new movement loosely known as street jazz; with an eclectic set of influences ranging from New Orleans brass bands, jug music, southern gospel and hot jazz.
Randy Rosenthal (editor of The Coffin Factory) and panelists Lorin Stein (editor of The Paris Review), Rob Spillman (editor of Tin House), and John Freeman (editor of Granta) discuss the impact of literary magazines in contemporary culture.
In this exhibition, Hegarty takes her point of departure from themes of consumption, lust,reproduction and greed. Playing with traditional still life and figurative painting, Hegarty cites as inspiration the cult comedy Little Shop of Horrors along with current newsheadlines concerning the enhancement and mutilation of body and food. These four new paintings metamorphose sculpturally, as the paintings burst, grow and propagate in bodily gestures, leading the overgrowth to travel ominously beyond the canvas boundaries.
Through choreography and manipulation, master puppeteer Hanne Tierney conducts an intricate counterweight system of over 100 strings, transforming a full stage of inanimate objects into the players of two emotionally charged tales.
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open its 2012-13 season with Nancy Davidson, featuring her inflatable sculpture, Dustup. This will be the artist’s first exhibition at the Gallery. The artist will be present for the opening reception. Davidson, a sculptor and video artist, is known for her unique media – larger than life inflatable sculptures – and for her interest in American icons and gender issues. In 2005 with the support of a Creative Capital Grant, she began her exploration on the myth and reality of the cowgirl. After researching western women’s history Davidson focused on the rodeo cowgirl.
Allen’s signature use of cutting and repurposing book illustrations has not vanished. Instead of the pulp fiction genre, Allen plays with 50’s era versions of clean cut youths and domesticated moms. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D in photography with his deft cuts and crimps, establishes a magical world in which a boy and girl play tag creating their own kind of electricity, a milkman makes a very special delivery in space, young toughs play marbles with the solar system and a mother busily sews her own version of “string theory.”
David Stoupakis is an internationally recognized painter who creates eerie portraits of beings that appear wise beyond their years. The self-taught artist adds both haunting imagery and grim fairytale-like elements to his work to juxtapoz childhood innocence with macabre surroundings. InAshes to Sorrow, his new collection of drawings and oil paintings, David creates a continuation of his previous body of work-Walking with These Shadows./With his new work, Matthew Bone continues to explore the visual language he created as a child when massive unmonitored media consumption informed his worldview. A latchkey kid from an early age, pornography, comic books and movies formulated his ideas of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity- in essence reality and perception were sculpted by imaginary worlds steeped heavily in sensationalistic imagery.
Following his acclaimed project SEEK, featured as a 2011 TED Talk, Hembrey’s new work attempts to visualize his 20 year exploration of dark matter and dark energy (scientifically hypothesized to comprise over 95% of the cosmos). Hembrey’s paintings and sculptures are a collective meditation on the unseen structure of our universe. Painted with trompe l’oeil technique, the series Unstill Lifes attempts to visualize the tangible structures of matter pared down to bits. Ghostly wisps of smoke appear to the viewer at certain angles and improbable assemblages of matches, tree branches, and string appear to float off of the inky blackground.
Larsen is an accomplished painter who has always challenged herself to invent new styles and ways of composition. Her recent oeuvre marks a synopsis of previous works ranging between abstraction and figuration. Using modernist Russian constructivist paintings as a point of departure for numerous compositions, she also engages ideas of reverse perspective and conflicting vanishing points, as can be found in Japanese narrative scrolls. Her pool of inspirations is vast, ranging from masterpieces of Renaissance through 20th century art, to traditional Japanese puppet theatre, to photographs she has taken of classrooms and faculty meetings during her 35-year long Professorship in Florida.
Roulette with Ghostly International and Rvng Intl. are pleased to present an evening of electroacoustic music, featuring a rare US performance by Polish composer Jacaszek and San Francisco based Holly Herndon.
Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of eleven 2012 still-life and jungle-landscape paintings by Erik Parker (b. 1968 Stuttgart, Germany; lives and works in New York City). Updating these traditional art-historical genres through the pictorial idioms and sly humor of satirical cartoons, psychedelia, and underground comic books, Parker’s paintings provide vistas into brilliantly colored worlds of semi-sentient flora and idiosyncratic geometries.
The members of Rusty Belle swagger between raw blues, tiny tangos, country waltzes and backyard symphonies. Sometimes a walk with the Roma, a twisted tale in metered time, or a yell-along-after-dinner drunken opera. A dance band that tries to tie your shoes together. The music is littered with dented paint cans, smashed up trashcan lids, old hacksaw blades, and broken glass. Like junkyard songbirds, they sing sweet through all the rubbage.
After seven years since Stephen Powers’ last solo exhibition in New York, Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures. In this new exhibition series, the prolific artist will present a panoramic assemblage of paintings that will occupy the entire breadth of the gallery. A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures will consist of a multitude of enamel on aluminum paintings, ranging from 10-x-8 inches to 10-x-10 feet.
Choreographer Jonah Bokaer and artist Anthony McCall explore total motion in this breathtaking collaboration that places dance within an installation built from shifting avenues of light and spatialized, sonic images. Featuring four dancers as well as a special appearance by Bokaer,ECLIPSE utilizes the unique flexibility of the Fishman Space, with a four-sided seating configuration to create an utterly intimate experience between artists and audience.
LONG DISTANCE POISON play live music & soundscape to the film. Composer David First will be sitting in with LONG DISTANCE POISON on Friday and TELECULT POWERS member Matthew Regula will be sitting in on Saturday.
The Shirey is pleased to present Bushwick Blackout, an immersive multi-media exhibition and video screening of luminous works that twinkle and glow in the dark.In this exhibition, traditional gallery lighting is abandoned. The only sources of light are ultraviolet lamps and the works themselves. Emerging from the walls, ceiling, and floors, the works create a three-dimensional constellation, encompassing the viewer and transforming the conventional gallery space into a spellbound landscape.
A multidisciplinary call-and-response experience, the FLASH POINT/ NYC ensemble of writers and composers interweave new hybrid texts, flash fiction, micro memoir and prose poems across the harmonic rhythms, inversions, melodies and lines of original live jazz. Synchronicities and spontaneities emerge, converge and diverge to cross genres, provoke tradition and explore the territories ahead.
Butoh Electra August 29 – September 8
Irondale Center The magnificent, intense and intelligent Butoh Electra is created and performed by the highly acclaimed ensemble, The Ume Group. A “beautiful and disturbing” piece (NYTheatre.com), Butoh Electra presents Sophocles’ Greek revenge tragedy as the story of a woman whose vibrant inner life is corrupted by the world of walking dead in which she lives.
Churner and Churner is pleased to present “On My Way Gone,” an exhibition of new work by Joanne Bittle. With an installation, over twenty-five paintings, and the artist’s first film, the exhibition is Bittle’s largest and most ambitious to date. This is her second show with the gallery.
The 22 is headed out this Saturday to check out Atlas Obscura’s tour of Newton Creek. We’ll have a full update afterwards, but in the meantime buy your tickets and join us! We will be exploring the petroleum and waste transfer districts of the Newtown Creek watershed in North Brooklyn. Heavily industrialized, the area we will be walking through is the heart of the Greenpoint Oil Spill and home to scores of waste transfer stations and other heavy industries. We will be heading for the thrice damned Kosciuszko Bridge, which is scheduled for a demolition and replacement project which will be starting in 2013. Photographers, in particular, will find this an interesting walk through a little known and quite obscure section of New York City.
“Battle on Bergen” is a site-specific performance incorporating elements of dance, street theater, puppetry, and live music, depicting certain events from the Battle of Brooklyn and drawing parallels between the American Revolutionary War and events today. Sometimes forgotten in the very neighborhoods where it took place, the Battle was fought on August 27th, 1776 weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. ”Battle on Bergen” is co-directed by Selene Colburn and features David Freeman, James Hannaham, Aaron Stanley, Willis Bigelow, Alan Balicki, Katie Merz, John Bauman, Tyler Sussman, and J.J. Hill-Wood.
A celebration of the under-appreciated creatures that roam the planet. From the Australian Bilby to the deep-sea Magnapinna Squid, to the Saddleback Caterpillar. The songs are brought to life by a gaggle of curious instruments and peculiar sounds including theremin, claviola, stylophone, and more.. With Michael Hearst, Ron Caswell, Allyssa Lamb Ben Holmes and Kristin Mueller.
Day Joy is the creation of Peter Michael Perceval and Michael Serrin of Orlando FL. Their music began acoustically on the porch and recordings began with just the duo layering instrumentation together and and creating the lush and layered Dream Folk/Pop recordings you can hear now.
AFP returns to The Paper Box in East Williamsburg for a new monthly multimedia experience showcasing some of the finest emerging talent NYC has to offer. Most recently, AFP hosted “Brooklyn Beat Music and Arts Festival” at The Paper Box, and will continue the multidisciplinary arts experience with their new monthly series “Mixed Greens.” Taking place on Saturday nights the third week of each month, “Mixed Greens” will bring together a fresh new mix of musicians, artists, and DJ’s, creating an eclectic experience.
Sound Off is an intimate performance series of sound art and experimental music that connects audiences with composers, musicians, artists, and one another. It takes place in a simple loft: no stage, no curtain, and little distance between performer and audience.
The Australian so-called “graffiti artist” LUSH is having his debut New York solo exhibition at Klughaus Gallery on Saturday, August 25, 2012. Following successful shows in Australia and London, LUSH is going to be bringing his “Art” to the Big Apple.
A multidisciplinary call-and-response experience, the FLASH POINT/ NYC ensemble of writers and composers interweave new hybrid texts, flash fiction, micro memoir and prose poems across the harmonic rhythms, inversions, melodies and lines of original live jazz. Synchronicities and spontaneities emerge, converge and diverge to cross genres, provoke tradition and explore the territories ahead.
Young and Reitzenstein combine pre-recorded sounds — ranging from oceans to railways — with two of Young’s stringed instruments, one wood and the other a prototype in aluminum. Their approach is a playful exploration of sound that integrates soundscape with unusual tunings.
Butoh Electra August 29 – September 8
Irondale Center The magnificent, intense and intelligent Butoh Electra is created and performed by the highly acclaimed ensemble, The Ume Group. A “beautiful and disturbing” piece (NYTheatre.com), Butoh Electra presents Sophocles’ Greek revenge tragedy as the story of a woman whose vibrant inner life is corrupted by the world of walking dead in which she lives.
Veronica Klaus delves into the amazingly broad songbook of the inimitable Miss Peggy Lee and brings her own sultry, smokey soulful style to some favorites and some lesser known gems from the Lee songbook, with the Tammy Hall Trio backing her, this is a great night of music for fans of jazz and the immortal Peggy Lee!
Neil Rolnick works for violin, piano and computer, with violinist Todd Reynolds and pianist Vicky Chow. Including Hammer & Hair, Digits, Fiddle Faddle and Robert Johnson Sampler.
Record release party for Harry Pussy’s Let’s Build A Pussy (1998) & One Plus One (1992-1993) with solo sets and a world premere duo performance by Bill Orcutt (one of the most influential noise artists of the 20th century) and “one of the most exciting drummers on the planet”, Chris Corsano.
Leland Sundries, a band from New York led by Nick Loss-Eaton, is dedicated to storytelling in a way that recalls Woody Guthrie and his Folkways brethren.Raquel and David are performing a rare duo set of past songs from their now defunct band, Norden Bombsight, and some of their new material from recently formed, Mesiko (Ray Rizzo, Chris Rodahaffer).”Taking her cues from the bold ladies of classic Americana country, Angela Perley’s vocal whippoorwill twang and down-home lyrics are so darling they will keep you up at night.
Neverheard Inc and Klerkx Art Agency will be presenting ICY AND SOT’s Made in Iran at Openhouse Gallery. The street art duo will be debuting at Openhouse 379 Broome in Nolita. Made in Iran will expose viewers to site-specific installation and new stencil work that has been seen on the streets of Paris, Turin, San Paolo, New York, and many other cities.
Critically acclaimed pianist TAKA KIGAWA will present a solo piano recital on Monday, August 27th, 2012, at 8:00 pm, at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Doors open at 7:00 pm. For this recital, Mr. Kigawa will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 (complete.)
The Snow is a cinematic literary-pop quartet from Brooklyn, New York led by Pierre de Gaillande (Bad Reputation, Melomane, Morning Glories) and Hilary Downes. The Snow’s influences are as diverse as its sound – having been described in turns as post-apocalyptic French cabaret, gypsy pop, and carnival Americana.
The Cosmonaut is the story of a young man who left earth once upon a time and has returned to find that everything has changed…A film by the storytellers of VINEGAR HILL.
I truly enjoy outer space. It’s absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Director, producer, activist, musician and Academy award winning actor Tim Robbins was born in West Covina, California on October 16, 1958 and raised in New York City. He began acting in the early ’80s and went on to star in such films as Bull Durham, Jacob’s Ladder, The Player, The Shawshank Redemption, The Hudsucker Proxy and Mystic River. He won a Best Supporting actor for the latter, and was nominated for Best Director for 1995’s Dead Man Walking. In 2010, Robbins rleased his debut album, Tim Robbins & the Rogues Gallery Band, a nine-track collection of self-described “raggle taggle and rousing gypsy Americana,” produced by Hal Willner, which featured the talents of Kate St. John, Leo Abrahams, David Coulter, Roger Eno, Rory McFarlane, Andrew Newmark and Dudley Phillips.
The Center is pleased to continue its series of Art Study Tours. Class will be taught off-site, behind-the-scenes at various institutions, collections, and artists’ studios. This summer series will take advantage of the cultural resources in New York City and will focus on color and the uses and making of pigments. Consisting of 3 visits throughout the city this July and August, students may sign up for all three in the series or just for one class, each taking place on a Thursday afternoon.
LISTEN:
Illuminating Fashion at the Morgan Library and Museum. Visit this special exhibition and discover the uses of color in medieval manuscripts with an expert in the field, Karen Gorst. Drawn from the Morgan’s collections, over fifty illuminated medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books are featured in the exhibition. Join us and discover the difference between the depictions of contemporary fashions and the actual colors used in clothing of the time period. Students will discuss from a historical perspective the process of making paints and dyes. The exhibition will be used as a backdrop for a discussion on the different artistic techniques employed to produce the color in medieval manuscripts and on fabric from the medieval period.
Please join Asya Geisberg Gallery for the second annual Chelsea Art Walk on Thursday, July 28th from 5 – 8 pm.
At 6:15 pm we will host a wine reception and talk with the artists Thomas Bangsted and Allison Gildersleeve about the exhibition “The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep”.
More than 125 galleries and institutions participating in Chelsea Art Walk 2011 will be open for extended hours, artist talks, receptions, and other special events to showcase the vibrancy of the summer arts scene in Chelsea.
works by: Jaq Belcher, William Betts, Omar Chacon, Freddy Chandra, Carlos Estrada-Vega, Kevin Finklea, Adam Fowler, Teo Gonzalez, Susan Graham, Rainer Gross, Jus Juchtmans, Aric Obrosey, Joie Rosen, Analia Saban, Fran Siegel, William Steiger, Lars Strandh, Barbara Takenaga, Bill Thompson, Heidi van Wieren, and Venske & Spänle
Margaret Thatcher Projects is pleased to announce the opening of w h i t e-h o t, an exhibition of works by 21 artists, co-curated by Erin Brown and Margaret Thatcher. The exhibition, which includes work in a wide range of media from artists both represented in the gallery’s stable and guest artists, explores the visual and ideological possibilities of the color white.
@ THE STONE
7/26 Tuesday (NYDS)
8 pm
Kamala Sankaram / Drew Fleming / Pat Muchmore / Jeff Hudgins
Kamala Sankaram (compositions, voice, accordion, electronics) Drew Fleming (electric guitar, voice) Pat Muchmore (cello, voice) Jeff Hudgins (reeds, voice)
The Summer Music Project: themes for imaginary cartoons, Bollywood noir, and other assorted weirdness.
10 pm
Miguel Frasconi and David First
Miguel Frasconi (glass, electronics) David First (guitar, electronics)
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Wednesday, July 27, 8:30 PM “MIKE + RUTHY’S FOLK CITY”:THE SILVER HOLLERS
Amy Helm, voice, mandolin; Elizabeth Mitchell, voice, harmonium; Daniel Littleton, voice, guitar; Byron Isaacs, bass; Ruthy Ungar, voice, fiddle
Opening Reception July 29th 6pm – 10pm
Gallery Open July 29th through July 31st
Painting: a process, a reflection, an expression.
With the series “Confluence,” Jess Hartely explores all-over abstraction. She begins her work by creating a series of thin layers from which the painting begins to emerge and take on its own form. Depth and color develop as the painting is built up with each layer. She uses masonite board because it resists the water and does not absorb it like canvas would. This extended period of fluidity allows her to explore risk and uncertainty. For Hartley, abstraction is all about the experiment. The work in this series is rooted in Hartley’s own imagination, but follows the rules of experimental process that she has developed.
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Series: Strange NYC History Lectures@ BB.
A Rite of Return
Wednesday, July 27, 7pm, $10/$8 BHS Members
Out of an anonymous 1870 pocket-size diary bestowed on historian Ben Feldman, a fantastic story emerged, and a 100-year old rent in the cloth of a family’s history was repaired. Feldman will share the tale of Henry Knight Dyer (1846-1911), Brooklyn born and bred, who rose from a modest Fort Greene home and his first job as an office boy in the Dennison Paper Products Co. to become president of that multi-national enterprise at the turn of the twentieth century. Dyer’s daily scribblings in a cheap paper volume, as a single 24-year old living in Brooklyn and working in lower Manhattan, inspired Feldman’s lengthy journey for the truth of this man’s life and his wife’s sorry end after less than a year’s widowhood.
PopRally invites you to Arcade, an interactive evening of games selected by Kill Screen and inspired by the exhibition Talk to Me. Guests can play games in a variety of spaces throughout the Museum and the Sculpture Garden, including Bit Trip Beat, Canabalt, Limbo, and a new motion-based Kinect project from Ryan Challinor and Matt Boch of Harmonix, creator of the hit music game Rock Band. Heathered Pearls (Ghostly International, ISO50) provides the soundtrack for the evening. more…
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BOMB Magazine: Issue 116
Wednesday, July 27, 6:30–9 PM The powerHouse Arena 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Please RSVP: rsvp@powerHouseArena.com
Join the editors of BOMB Magazine and the contributors to the summer issue for an evening of readings, performances, and chilling out by the water in DUMBO. There will be raffles, poster giveaways, and other surprises!
Have a drink with BOMB staff and enjoy the literary stylings of writers Nicholas Elliott, Sarah V. Schweig, and Simon Van Booy. With a special theatrical piece directed by playwright and director Richard Maxwell starring Obie Award–winning actor Scott Shepherd.
Nicholas Elliott was raised in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and lives in Woodside, Queens. His plays have been performed in Luxembourg, France, and Denmark. He is a correspondent for French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and the company manager for the theater company New York City Players. His poems appear in BOMB’s summer literary supplement, First Proof.
Richard Maxwell is a playwright and director living in New York. He is the artistic director of New York City Players. A volume of his plays from 1996–2000 has been published by Theatre Communications Group. His most recent play, Neutral Hero, premiered in May at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and recently toured Europe. Maxwell interviewed actor Scott Shepherd for BOMB’s summer issue.
Sarah V. Schweig‘s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Columbia University, where her manuscript was recipient of the David Craig Austin Memorial Award. Her chapbook, S, is available through Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her poems appear in BOMB’s summer literary supplement, First Proof.
Scott Shepherd is a New-York based actor. Most recently, Shepherd took on the roles of two characters in The Wooster Group’s production of Tenessee Williams’s Vieux Carré. His performance as Nick Carraway in Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed Gatz, for which he delivered most of the narration in the nearly seven-hour production, earned him a 2011 Obie Award. Shepherd was interviewed by playwright and director Richard Maxwell in BOMB’s summer issue.
Simon Van Booy is a New York-based novelist and short-story writer born in London and raised in rural Wales. He has published two collections of stories: The Secret Lives of People in Love (2007), and Love Begins in Winter (2009), which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He has also edited three books of philosophy: Why We Fight, Why We Need Love, and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter. His novel Everything Beautiful Began After is just out from Harper Perennial. His conversation with author Siri Hustvedt appears in BOMB’s summer issue.
Founded in 1981, BOMB Magazine is celebrating 30 years of delivering the artist’s voice. Check out The BOMB Digital Archive at BOMBsite.com and don’t miss daily features about art, music, fiction, poetry, film, and dance on BOMBlog.
The Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey is one of the finest collections of automata–or moving mechanical toys popular in the 18th Century and 19th Centuries–in the world. Compiled over 50 years by heir to the Guinness beer fortune Murtogh D. Guinness (1913-2002), the collection features scores of immaculately preserved historic automata–many of them produced in 19th Century France–with subjects ranging from snake charmers to magicians, singing birds to anthropomorphic monkeys, Cleopatra in her death throes to a waltz-playing Mephistopheles; it also includes a number of mechanical musical instruments and a variety of programmed media ranging from player piano rolls to pinned cylinders.
This revelatory “secret history” illuminates the Feminist Art movement through interviews with and works by visionary artists, scholars and critics like Miranda July, The Guerrilla Girls, Yvonne Rainer, Judy Chicago, Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, B. Ruby Rich, Ingrid Sischy and Carolee Schneemann. Score by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein.
In person appearances:
Wednesday, June 1: Lynn Hershman Leeson & Alexandra Chowaniec at 6:10pm, Leeson, Chowaniec, & Kathleen Hanna at 8:10pm
Thursday, June 2: Chowaniec & Howardena Pindell at 2:10pm, Chowaniec & Carolee Schneemann at 6:10pm, Chowaniec & J. Bob Alotta at 8:10pm
Friday, June 3: Chowaniec& Janine Antoni at 12:10pm, Chowaniec & Joyce Kozloff at 6:10pm, Chowaniec & Martha Wilson at 8:10pm
Saturday, June 4: Chowaniec & Howarden Pindell at 2:10pm, Chowaniec & B. Ruby Rich at 6:10pm, Chowaniec & Guerrilla Girls Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz at 8:10pm
Sunday, June 5: Chowaniec & Howardena Pindell at 2:10pm
Monday, June 6: Chowaniec & Carey Lovelace, Chowaniec & Connie Butler at 6:10pm
Tuesday, June 7: Chowaniec, Carey Lovelace & Faith Ringgold at 6:10pm
Guided Tour: Wednesday, June 8: 6:30-8 pm Music Event: Thursday, July 14: 7 pm
Featuring work by:
Nicole Andrews Brandes, Natascha Belt, Dave Bevan, Dwayne Boone, Gerardo Castillo, Rick Charnoski, Edward Colver, Ale Formenti, Renée French, Joseph Griffith, Thomas Hauser, Mark Hubbard, Chuckie Johnson, Gary Kachadourian, Taliah Lempert, Doug Magnuson, Alfredo Martinez, William McCurtin, Stu Mead, James Niehues, Gloria Park, Daniel Pineda, Randy Turner, Dennis Tyfus, Unidentified Cameroonian barbershop painters, Sereno Wilson, Jesse Wine, Jason Wright.
Tony Bennett unsuspectingly coined a new term of surprising relevance when he once said he liked what Oskar Kokoschka did “along the peripheter.” Though meaning the perimeter and periphery in the painting itself, he innocently zeroed in on a murky netherworld away from the formal where success and failure, acceptance and indifference, and Tony Bennett and Oskar Kokoschka meet. Like these two disparate personalities, the artists in The Peripheterists elude the standard definition of outsiders to form a diverse and unaligned but oddly complimentary non-scene that doesn’t really register with either the hoi polloi or the intelligentsia. In many cases low-key and unsung though prodigiously gifted, all are fairly unconcerned with and unknown in that rarely satisfying milieu known as “The Art World.”
The Peripherterists examines the wide-ranging connections, affinities, and allusions amongst works that posses the popular appeal often absent at the your typical white cube. That luck, social standing, ladder climbing, and a multitude of other variables determine who gets fêted is not news by any means, but it does give rise to an urge to address that vexing situation with a gathering of mostly uncelebrated rare birds. A few encounters amongst many will have Mark Hubbard’s fantastical diagrams for actual skateparks, Gloria T. Park’s expressionist wig designs, and Jim Nieuhues’ paintings that are the basis for ski area maps consorting with Sereno Wilson’s glittery Nubian goddesses, Nicole Andrews’ paper cutouts of ennui-suffused suburbanites, and Stu Mead’s poignant, troubling, and very funny depiction of sexually active adolescents. This is not a polemic but an excursion into parallel realm of wonderful art that combines the fiercely individualistic and unorthodox with the accessible, and brings up old-fashioned but eternal questions about what art is and why people bother.
Jocko Weyland is the author of The Answer is Never – A Skateboarder’s History of the World (Grove Press, 2002) and has written for Thrasher, The New York Times, Cabinet, Apartamento and other publications, and is also the creator of Elk magazine, books and gallery.
SCHISMISM: NATURAL LAW: Lisa Karrer’s multi-media performance is inspired by the life of Charles Darwin. Karrer’s collaboration with composer and multi-instrumentalist, David Simons, features an arresting assortment of sonic and visual backdrops, including video sequences linked with original soundtracks, voice, triggered theremin, and live acoustic and electronic compositions. These combined elements illuminate an interwoven collection of concepts, associations and stories that mirror Darwin’s complex exploration of evolution and universal connectedness. In the spirit of natural selection, audience members choose the sequence of onstage events during the performance.
CHANGING SKINS: Compiled and performed by Milbre Burch and directed by Emily Rollie, featuring photographs from “Meta-Genesis,” (above) an exhibit of portraits of transgender folk by Columbia, MO-based photographer, Jane Lavender.Changing Skins interweaves gender-bending folktales from cultures spanning the globe with musings on the construction of gender and identity. Compelling storytelling for grownups!
A smoking monkey dressed as a Marquis, a Wild West scalping scene created in beeswax, a cemetery scene made from the deceased’s hair, and stuffed pug dog puppies, all under glass domes!!!!!
The bell jar, or glass parlor dome, is synonymous with our memory of the Victorian Age (1837 – 1901). During the 19th century, these blown glass forms were referred to not as domes but as shades, and graced nearly every parlor, protecting a broad variety of treasures–including miniature tableaux, waxworks, natural history specimens, taxidermy of exotic birds and pets, automatons, and delicate arrangements of hairwork, featherwork, and shellwork–from dust and curious fingers. (READ MORE.)
WORK Gallery is pleased to present Museum of (Un) Natural History featuring new sculptures and a street installation by artist Kim Holleman. The Museum is a collection of environments that have all been drastically physically and/or psychologically changed by human intervention. Using mostly synthetic materials, noxious chemicals, and items culled from the trash or found on the street, Holleman creates models of parks, empty lots, nostalgic structures and architectural futures. Each miniaturized landscape represents and critiques our consumptive habits and land use, the visual results of which are both fantastical and grim. Hazardous threats to the environment’s natural balance overwhelm the landscapes, leaving an eerie beauty in the wake of irreversible destruction.
In a truck lot adjacent to the Museum is Trailer Park: A Mobile Public Park, a “portable, natural, public park” inside an RV trailer. The interior is an actual park, where visitors go inside to go outside. Masonry paths, a waterfall, and the splendor of living shrubs, trees are ready for dispatch to wherever a green refuge is needed.
OPENING RECEPTION
THURSDAY JUNE 2, 2011, 6-9PM
SOUND PERFORMANCE BY IAPETUS
RUNS THROUGH JULY 3
“I create fictional spaces that explore the intersection of memory, history and myth through the landscape-as-image. My method is to photograph, collect, deconstruct, and reassemble photographic material — collapsing multiple points in time and space into a single scene. This mirrors the fragmentation and flattening of experience as it occurs in the creation of memory while reflecting a sense of dislocation from place. As an atavistic response to the landscape, my images engage ‘land’ as a site of indifferent natural forces. Seen through a texture of skin, ash and the blackened fuzz of a violent guitar, each work is subsequently a nostalgic articulation of our histories, new histories made impossible by memory and mythology”. Jeremy Dyer lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
NoMAA is pleased to announce the arrival of the Uptown Arts Stroll 2011, the most anticipated annual community arts festival in Washington Heights and Inwood. The Stroll will showcase the outstanding painters, photographers, writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and other creative people and arts groups that are contributing to the cultural life of Northern Manhattan. These artists will exhibit and perform in local businesses and institutions, open spaces, parks and other local venues throughout the month of June.
This year, NoMAA is delighted to partner with the 12th Annual Carnaval del Boulevard, a celebration of Dominican & Latino culture produced by the Juan Pablo Duarte Foundation, The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, and the Washington Heights Business Improvement District, to kick-off the Stroll with a community celebration on Thursday, June 2nd, 6–8:30 p.m. at The Shabazz Center. On Saturday, June 4th, NoMAA and the Stroll will join El Carnaval del Boulevard and the Washington Heights BID from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. on St. Nicholas Avenue from 181st to 188th Sts., presenting art and performances from our local artists. read more »
an exhibition of multiples and prints including: Gregory Curry, Glen Einbinder, Ross Racine, Chuck Jones, Jody Hanson, Luca Bertolo, Andrew MacDonald, James Leonard, Celeste Fichter, Peter Feigenbaum, David Shapiro, Jan Obornik, Chiara Camoni, John O. Smith, Julia Whitney Barnes, Rik de Boe, Lotte Lindner and Till Steinbrenner, Sarah Vogwill, George Spencer, Emily Roz and Cammi ClimacoAlarums and Excursions is the sixth exhibition of multiples and prints by Fuse Works, an organization dedicated to exhibiting and promoting editioned artwork. The exhibition presents new work by 21 artist comprising prints, multiples, books, and digital works. (READ MORE.)
Japan Society presents 416 MINUTES
Thursday, June 2, 7:30 PM
333 East 47th Street
Join us for a surprise work-in-progress presentation of WaxFactory’s 416 MINUTES, featuring an extraordinary collaboration with artists from Japan and Eastern Europe, and inspired by the imagination of Haruki Murakami. In the company’s signature multidisciplinary style, this unsettling new work shadows an actress whose escape from a film studio sets her on a trail of chance encounters during the hours of the night when things take on a particularly eerie glow. Conceived and directed by Ivan Talijancic. Free Admission. Reception to follow.
Over the past 15 years, David Sandlin has produced eight major volumes (and several side works) of narratively connected artist’s books, collectively called A Sinner’s Progress. The books have ranged in format from hand-silkscreened limited editions to tabloid-style newspapers and pulp comics, each in service to its narrative function. Thanks to a fellowship from the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2010, Sandlin has begun work on a graphic novel, which he intends to be the culmination of the series. Belfaust, a love-triangle mystery loosely based on the Faust legend, will depict the backstory of the three main characters in A Sinner’s Progress and bring the narrative to closure. Sandlin’s presentation will discuss his influences and process in regard to the series.
Stemming from old world styles and techniques, Cirque des Batardes is an avant-garde approach to classical forms such as vaudeville, commedia dell’arte, buffon, ventriloquism and, of course, cirque. Essentially taking on the form of a comic variety show, Cirque features a dozen acts including dancers, actors, and musicians to create a hilarious evening of spectacle and oddity. Led by their questionable emcee, the entire company seems to come from a different time. The entire production, in fact, appears in sepia tone like an old film dusted off and rediscovered. The company of misfits and performers must learn deal with their old school ways in the modern context in order to survive.
FEATURING:
Erin Debold
Krista Worby
Jo Mei
Jack Ferver
Amelia Meath
Becky Abrams
Colin Drummond
Nessa Norich
Nick Choksi
William Popp
Carly Hoogendyk
Mark Junek
Julia Eichten
Addison Anderson
Join Danny Lyon for a signing of his book Deep Sea Diver.
With his vintage Leica and accompanied by a young translator named Lolly Pop, American photographer Danny Lyon traveled across Shanxi Province in North West China six times between 2005 and 2009. The result of Lyon’s unfailing enthusiasm for immersing himself in local banter and customs is an extraordinary portrait of China and the Chinese, one seldom seen by foreigners. Lyon’s unparalleled photographic findings and discoveries are presented in this limited edition photobook alongside his handwritten annotations and commentary, as well as his ever-inquisitive and non-judgmental prose.