Goings On | 03/09/2020

Contents for March 09, 2020 (Scroll down for more information):

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1. Shayna Dunkelman, FF Fund Recipient 2018-19, at FiveMyles, Brooklyn, Mar. 24-25
2. Jaimie Warren, FF Alumn, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, April 4-11
3. Cortney Andrews, FF Alumn, at Jack Hanley Gallery, Manhattan, thru April 5
4. Nancy Spero, FF Alumn, at Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna, Austria, Mar. 19-Apr. 30
5. Christa Maiwald, Charles Yuen, FF Alumns, at MOCA LI, Patchogue, NY, thru April 19
6. Aline Mare, FF Alumn, at Diana Berber Gallery at Mt Sac, Walnut, CA, opening March 15th
7. Margia Kramer, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, now online
8. Iris Rose, FF Alumn, at Pangea, Manhattan, March 22
9. Madeline Sunley, FF Intern Alumn, at Columbia University, Manhattan, April 3
10. Karen Shaw, FF Alumn, at Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, Torrington, CT, opening March 13
11. Laurie Anderson, FF Alumn, at Australian Institute for Machine Learning
12. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, in the Brooklyn Rail, now online
13. Karen Finley, FF Alumn, at Freight + Volume, Manhattan, opening March 19
14. Adam Putnam, FF Alumn, at PPOW, Manhattan, March 13
15. Marja Samsom, FF Alumn, at Club Berlin, Manhattan, March 15
16. Alicia Grullón, FF Alumn, at The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, March 20, 26
17. Katya Grokhovsky, FF Alumn, at EFA Project Space, Manhattan, opening March 18
18. Mama Donna Henes, FF Alumn, at Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, March 19
19. Amy Khoshbin, FF Alumn, receives Pratt Fine Arts’ Fellowship in Civic Engagement

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1. Shayna Dunkelman, FF Fund Recipient 2018-19, at FiveMyles, Brooklyn, Mar. 24-25

Answer to (XX)

Starting March 24th, 2020 7:00pm – Ending March 25th, 2020 7:00pm FiveMyles, 558 St Johns Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Entry or re-entry is not allowed between 11pm and 8am, however you may stay as long as you want once you enter) Free (or donation)

Shayna Dunkelman, percussionist in NYC brings Answer to (XX), a performance exploring relationships and power dynamics between “band leaders” (henceforth referred to as XXs) and herself. There will be 6 XXs, Ava Mendoza, Mindy Abovitz (Tom Tom Magazine), Sokio (New Latin Wave), William Parker, Du Yun, Emily Wells. Shayna will “answer to” them for 24 continuous hours as long as they follow the preset guidelines. The requests will be creative/performative or even a mundane task. RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/answer-to-xx-tickets-98920484833

*This event will be filmed

Shayna Dunkelman:
“The work I do with bands is artistically intimate and personal, but is inevitably governed by the fundamentally asymmetrical power dynamic that arises from the accepted roles of “project-leader” or “bandleader,” which finds its clearest expression in one person paying another. This is often at odds with the supposedly collaborative artistic environment.
This disconnect allows XXs to treat me like a co-equal collaborator when it is convenient with the option to assert absolute control at any time.

However, I’m inviting people who embody the opposite these power wielding bandleaders, who assert power whenever convenient, to join me in protest. This performance is part of a documentary film I’m creating with producer Irina Dvalidze (Bustle) to envision what a sustainable music industry might look like. I encourage people to join me and share your own experience by talking to a “confession cam” that will be set at the venue.

This performance is supported by Franklin Furnace, an organization whose mission is to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, cultural bias, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content and made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, The SHS Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Bio: Shayna Dunkelman is a musician and percussionist based in Brooklyn, NY.

Dunkelman is known for her versatile and unique techniques, and use of electronics to access a sonic pallet not found in acoustic percussion. Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan to an Indonesian mother and an American father, Dunkelman became a multi-instrumentalist performing alongside her mother. In addition to solo performances, Dunkelman tours with Du Yun, Balún, Emily Wells, Peptalk, Ali Sethi, and her percussion duo Nomon with her sister Nava Dunkelman. Dunkelman has also performed with pioneers of avant-garde experimental musicians such as John Zorn, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and Xiu Xiu.

http://www.shaynadunkelmanmusic.com

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2. Jaimie Warren, FF Alumn, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, April 4-11

Please visit this link:

https://pioneerworks.org/programs/the-miracle-the-musical/

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3. Cortney Andrews, FF Alumn, at Jack Hanley Gallery, Manhattan, thru April 5

Hi friends,

I’m excited to announce my solo exhibition, I See You, at Jack Hanley Gallery in NYC, in the upstairs gallery.

Jack Hanley is located at 327 Broome Street, New York, NY.

http://www.jackhanley.com/exhibitions

The show will run through April 5, 2020.

Hope to see you there!

Best,

Cortney

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4. Nancy Spero, FF Alumn, at Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna, Austria, Mar. 19-Apr. 30

NO PITY!
‘An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.’ (Nina Simone)

Vlasta Delimar, Laura Fitzgerald, Parastou Forouhar, Vlatka Horvath, Eva Kotátková, Evelyn Loschy, Veronika Merklein, Carol Rama, Denise Schellmann, Nancy Spero
19.3. – 30.4.2020

The exhibition NO PITY! shows no mercy and highlights artworks questioning the artist’s duty to reflect reality. The artworks vary in mood from lacerating to shocking, violent to desirable and comical to autobiographical narratives and focus on the de/coded female body and its representation in politics, society and social life.

The show consists of works by ten women of different age and origins, and includes work in all media-painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance. An autobiographical note often appears in the works where the working process leads the object position and the subject position to coincide, which is then questioned. Shame, guilt and pity – all very strong emotions and social power mechanisms that have been imposed on the female gender throughout history in order to form a standardized image of women and responsibility. The show illuminates where women have been, where they are now and where they are going.

The topic of sexual identity with a special emphasis on female sensuality was already dealt with by the Italian artist Carol Rama in the first half of the 20th century. She often depicts women as psychophysical ruins; whether she portrays them armless, legless or reshapes female anatomy, she shamelessly highlights the orifices. The young Austrian Evelyn Loschy also shows the body fragmented in the mental state of emergency of an existential moment and uses emotional vocabulary, as with her kinetic sculptures, thereby awakening hidden sensations and forgotten memories.

The American artist Nancy Spero was a leading figure in the feminist art movement of the 1960s and has been involved in several feminist and anti-imperialist art groups. Her art reflects her political, radical and feminist commitment: The glorification of war and the domination of men and the “natural power” of women. Language – the way it genders power or expresses violence – is a central theme in Spero’s later conceptual art.
Parastou Forouhar, too, deals with issues such as repressive political mechanisms and the position of women in Muslim societies. As an Iranian artist, who lives and works in Germany, she continuously thematized in her artistic practice her country Iran. Her conceptual work is particularly relevant in today’s mediated society, especially in the face of the Iraq War and the torture and prisoner abuse. Shocked by the political murder of her parents in Tehran, her work has a strong political and autobiographical connotation.

The Croatian performance artist Vlasta Delimar has been questioning and breaking the freedom of female sexuality and sexual taboos and its codification through stereotypical roles in a patriarchal society since the 1980s.The main medium of her work is her elementary, very often naked body. In a counter-process, she masks the body with female attributes such as laces, ribbon veils, etc. seeking a refuge of unprotected, female identity.

The German artist Veronika Merklein comes from the younger generation, she is also a performance artist and works with different media. Merklein is herself the protagonist of her work and she starts from “the pure an brutal (inner)life of human beings” let them speak from the perspective of their experience. In her artistic practice, Merklein fights against all kinds of discrimination and violence in our society, starting with her own body and prejudices and stereotypes towards fat people. In the exhibition she deals with the subject of sexual abuse in the performance documentary “I did not say anything” in the form of a comic-like photo story.

Croatian-born artist Vlatka Horvat currently lives in London, after 20 years in the US. Often at the centre of her conceptual practice is an interest in breakdown, fragmentation, and collapse, and the possibility of repair and renewal. Horvat’s works may seem abstract or formal but they examine and dissect local circumstances and political contexts. In her work Anatomies bodies and limbs are first disassembled and then transformed/distorted into abstract forms/ornaments.

Artist and pharmacist Denise Schellmann from Austria sees the human body in the form of many coloured cells and empty spaces that are otherwise visible under the microscope. In her drawing process, she conveys what she sees and experiences deeply intuitively, which also expands the meaning of the work and creates new possibilities of interpretation.

In the deeply psychologized and surreal works of the Czech artist Eva Kotátková the body and are always On the border between the real and the fictitious, she transforms an original story into abstraction. Her works deal with social structures and evoke feelings of control and anxiety. She is interested in the difference between natural and learned or institutionally regulated behaviour

The human body and psyche are always included in enigmatic, ambiguous or fragile constellations in Eva Kotátková’s deeply psychological and surreal works. On the border between the real and the fictional, the Czech artist transforms an original story into an abstraction, triggering very strong emotions. Her works deal with social structures and evoke feelings of control and anxiety. She is interested in difference between natural and learned or institutionally regulated behaviour.

Laura Fitzgerald is a young visual artist from Ireland and working across drawing, painting, text & video. Through her work she tells us autobiographical and fictional stories for which she finds the starting point in her own rural background and insecure artistic employment. And while she is worried that making art is – in fact – useless, she concentrates on using humour as a tool; an antidepressant and a coping strategy to everyday lived experience.

We would appreciate a report/mentioning in your medium. I hereby confirm the approval for the free of charge publication of all sent images / text. Courtesy: artists / galerie michaela stock

If you should need any further information or have any questions left regarding the artists and their works, please don’t hesitate to contact us > info@galerie-stock.net

Galerie Michaela Stock, Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna-Austria www.galerie-stock.net info@galerie-stock.net
P: 0043-1-9207778 / M: 0043-699-19207778 Opening hours: Tue-Wed 4 -7 pm, Thu-Fri 11 am – 7 pm & Sat 11 am-3 pm

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5. Christa Maiwald, Charles Yuen, FF Alumns, at MOCA LI, Patchogue, NY, thru April 19

CONSUMMATE PLUSH
PATCHOGUE ARTS COUNCIL • MOCA L.I.
CONSUMMATE PLUSH March 7 – April 19, 2020 Reception March 7 from 5-7 PM
Consummate Plush, an exhibition organized by artist and independent curator Janet Goleas, takes its name from an Emily Dickinson poem titled, Part One: Life, CXXXVIII. Fueled by Dickinson’s expansive intuition, veracity, and her elastic use of language, the exhibition will explore identity, abstraction, and the phenomenological nature of vision.
Selected artists include Virva Hinnemo, Laurie Lambrecht, Christa Maiwald, Linda Miller, George Negroponte, Judith Page, Bonnie Rychlak, Daniel Wiener, Lucy Winton, and Charles Yuen.
The enigmatic genius of Emily Dickinson has been studied for over a century, yet she remains a beguiling literary and literal conundrum. Part mystic, part heretic, she wrote in metaphor with aching clarity. Dickinson envisioned the mind and spiritless as concepts than as actual places; she feigned conventionality in her dress and manner yet was an early feminist, and her use of language and grammar upended literary convention. She questioned faith, morality, pain, and ecstasy. A botany aficionado and gardener, the poet also assembled an herbarium of 424 flowers, now residing at the Harvard Houghton Rare Book Library. Her posthumous success revealed Dickinson to be one of the great modernist voices in American poetry.
Consummate Plush is a response to Dickinson’s quiet yet radical oeuvre, her flexible use of structure, and the depth of her self-inquiry. Judith Page’s veiled figures and Daniel Wiener’s fantastical motifs possess vestiges of the Gothic, touching on Dickinson’s plastic sense of identity and mortality. Christa Maiwald’s embroidered images recall the stitched bundles of poetry found in Dickinson’s bureau after her death. Lucy Winton and Charles Yuen share a sense of the dreamscape – places where the chimerical exists alongside this-ness and otherness. Virva Hinnemo’s use of gesture and spatial depth transport us to an environment in which writing and imagery coexist. Bonnie Rychlak’s subversive drains offer both a sense of escape and reflection, and Linda Miller’s examinations of organic form elude to abstract figuration and the monumental. For George Negroponte, an incisive use of pastiche and tight, visual reciprocity conjures Dickinson’s startling poetic structure. In Laurie Lambrecht’s embroidered, photographic images, it is the poet’s genteel life in the botanical that confers a sense of natural wonder, order, and reverence.
Join curator Janet Goleas and selected artists on Saturday, March 28th from 10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon for a gallery breakfast and discussion, sponsored by the Patchogue Medford Library.
Patchogue Arts Council • MOCA L.I.
20 Terry St, Suite 116, Patchogue, NY 11772

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6. Aline Mare, FF Alumn, at Diana Berber Gallery at Mt Sac, Walnut, CA, opening March 15th

Aline Mare, FF Alumn, at Diana Berber Gallery at Mt Sac, Walnut CA, opening March 15th (4-6)

I am pleased to announce a five year survey show called “Entwined Roots: Symbiotic Relationships”
featuring myself and my husband of 25 years: Gary Brewer…

“An erotics of painting permeates both their work: the pleasures of sheer beauty expressed in seductive veils of rich color, sensuous lines and organic forms infused with sexual and procreative innuendo. Their unapologetic embrace of beauty in the face of cultural cynicism and sublime threats of annihilation indicates the divine power of Venus and Mars are in constant play.” -catalogue essay by Constance Mallinson

Curated by Fatemeh Burnes, exhibition design Humberto Reynoso

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7. Margia Kramer, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, now online

Please visit this link:

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8. Iris Rose, FF Alumn, at Pangea, Manhattan, March 22

It’s back! My thoroughly researched tribute to my best friend — the television! Oh, the rich bounty of songs I found there. This is not a bunch of TV theme songs (there are only two in the whole show). Instead you’ll hear an avant-garde cello-backed re-imagining of space hippie songs from Star Trek, a lounge-y paean to bourbon from Bob’s Burgers, a plaintive ballad from Twin Peaks’s red room, a prayer for peace from a legendary cartoon band, and so much more. Plus, special guest Joe Siena and I will be singing a duet called Misbehavin’! With Chris Berg, Philip Sheegog, and Brian Waterhouse. Details below.
Tickets here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4536501

BOX OF GEMS
Sunday, March 22nd at 7pm
at Pangea
178 Second Avenue
212-995-0900
Tickets are $20 online or $25 at the door (cash only)
Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4536501

There is a $20 per person food or beverage minimum at the tables.
Dinner seating begins at 6:00pm.
Seating at Pangea is communal. Other guests may be seated at the table.

Design by Chazz Petersen of Gatlin Dean.
If you would prefer to be unsubscribed from this mailing list, please let me know

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9. Madeline Sunley, FF Intern Alumn, at Columbia University, Manhattan, April 3

On Friday, April 3, at 8 p.mI’ll be giving a presentation on my oil painting series Ten Thousand Year Mystery, which is about the proposed marker for a nuclear waste site.

“Art and Time: Axial precession, archaeastronomy, and marking a desert nuclear waste site for the next ten millennia” is in the Public Outreach lecture series of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. These talks are free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary. Talks are followed by rooftop telescope stargazing if weather permits. Directions can be found at http://outreach.astro.columbia.edu/directions/ Pupin Hall is a four-block walk once you’re inside the campus entrance gate.

I’ll be giving a brief introduction to New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and the recommendations of the expert groups that met to discuss marking the site for the next 10,000 years. One idea that fired my imagination was to use the changing positions of stars over the millennia (axial precession) as a non-verbal way to convey long time spans. I’ll go over some astronomy basics, such as what causes the 26,000-year cycle of precession.

We don’t know what cultural changes there will be over the next 10,000 years, but we can look back at the past. The ancient Chinese, Babylonian, and Mayans recorded, interpreted, and accurately predicted events in the night sky, such as eclipses and the cyclic disappearances and reappearances of Venus. And although the earliest knowledge of precession is usually attributed to the Greeks, it’s possible that some pillars in Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe, the world’s oldest structure, recorded precession as well.

At the end I’ll show a few of the Ten Thousand Year Mystery paintings, along with land maps (remote-sensing and topographic) that I’ve used. Since all the paintings contain accurate future sky maps, I’ll focus on a few where I’ve done interesting things with the stars. For example, in Openings (Kou) the Chinese character for “mouth” or “opening” appears in place of the largest stars, on a backdrop of the night sky consisting of the warning message in shades of dark blue. The stars are speaking the message…

I’d love to see people from a variety of backgrounds in the audience, so please feel free to forward this email. Hope to see you there!

With best regards,

Madeline

Instagram: madeline_sunley

See my oil paintings at madelinesunley.com

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10. Karen Shaw, FF Alumn, at Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, Torrington, CT, opening March 13

Karen Shaw FF alum, participating in Power Figures at Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, Torrington CT March 13 to April 18.

Reception is Friday the 13th 6-8:30.at Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, 33 Main Street, Torrington CT. The other participants are: Greg Kessler, Brian McClear, Michelle Thomas and Lisa Warren.
Hope to see you there

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11. Laurie Anderson, FF Alumn, at Australian Institute for Machine Learning

AIML announces groundbreaking AI artistic research intitiatives
Laurie Anderson is first artist-in-residence

Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML)
Lot Fourteen
Cnr North Terrace & Frome Road
Adelaide SA 5000
Australia

artintelligence.ai

The Australian Institute for Machine Learning and Sia Furler Institute at the University of Adelaide announce new initiatives at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence.
Launching this month under the banner Art Intelligence, the project pairs world-class AI and machine learning engineers with leading contemporary artists, supporting their collaboration in mediums from VR and robotics to music and architecture.
“This project will help shape the future of AI and of art,” says Anton van den Hengel, the Director of AIML. “There is a lot of art about AI, but very little that is AI. We’re aiming to change that.”

Artist residency and MURMUR
The centerpiece of these initiatives is an artist-in-residence program, with American avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson as its first resident. Anderson is a performance artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work has spanned the media spectrum. Of this new opportunity, she muses:
“One of my favorite quotes about technology is from my meditation teacher: ‘If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology-and you don’t understand your problems.’ When people say the purpose of art is to make the world a better place I always think: better for who? Art is not medicine or science. It’s not about creative problem solving. If I had to use one word to describe art it would be freedom. I’m curious about whether this freedom can be translated or facilitated by AI in a meaningful way.”

Queries such as these and the creative experiments they incite will be shared with the public via MURMUR-an online and offline exhibition space nested within Art Intelligence to capture emergent thinking and creative forms born of the artist-engineer collaboration process.

Working group on Not-Knowing
The project is informed by an international working group of curators, scholars, and activists who will reflect together about philosophical and ethical facets of AI, and are charged with nominating future artist-residents.

Its members to date include: Dakin Hart (Senior Curator, Noguchi Museum, New York); Amanda de la Garza (Director, MUAC, Mexico City); Stephanie Rosenthal (Director, Gropius Bau, Berlin); Nancy Adajania and Ranjit Hoskote (curators and cultural theorists, Mumbai); Uzma Rizvi (Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies, Pratt Institute, New York); Rory Pilgrim (artist-activist, Rotterdam); Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir (Director, Museum of Design and Applied Arts, Iceland); and Enrique Rivera (Director, Media Arts Biennial, Santiago).

The working group is convened by the Netherlands-based platform Slow Research Lab, whose director Carolyn F. Strauss has invited members to explore “Not-Knowing” as a tool for embracing the potentialities of AI. She explains, “Not-Knowing offers an expanded space: one that can hold diverse bodies and stories, tempos and temporalities, and as such can be a portal to new forms of caring and community. Looking at AI through this lens helps chart open and truly pluralistic trajectories of artistic expression for the future.”

Leadership and institutional partners
These initiatives are governed by a board consisting of members of AIML and the Sia Furler Institute along with local and international thought leaders and creative pioneers.
Tom Hajdu, Director of the Sia Furler Institute describes the impetus: “The duty of the artist is to respond to and reflect upon the human experience. The edges of that experience are being challenged by the machines we are rapidly welcoming into our lives. At this pivotal moment in human history, deep and sustained dialogue between artists and technologists feels essential.”

The Australian Institute for Machine Learning is a globally-renowned machine learning research group based in South Australia. It is located at Lot Fourteen, a 7-hectare innovation hub that supports cross-pollination of ideas and research across science, arts and culture.

The Sia Furler Institute was founded in 2017 by the Elder Conservatorium of Music at University of Adelaide. Operating across diverse disciplines, the institute aims to equip graduates with entrepreneurial, creative and leadership skills to help shape the future of South Australia.

Additional confirmed partners include the Computer Music Center at Columbia
University.

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12. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, in the Brooklyn Rail, now online

Please visit this link:

https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/art/MARK-BLOCH-with-Megan-N-Liberty

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13. Karen Finley, FF Alumn, at Freight + Volume, Manhattan, opening March 19

Pungent Dystopia
March 19th – April 19th, 2020
Opening reception: Thursday, March 19th, 7 – 9:30pm
97 Allen Street, New York NY 10002

Freight+Volume is excited to present Pungent Dystopia, a group exhibition of works by Bradley Biancardi, Tony Bluestone, Sam Bornstein, Becky Brown, Nick Cueva, Nicholas Dileo, Bel Fullana, Peter Gallo, Nora Griffin, Anthony Haden Guest, Karen Finley, Marcel Hüppauff, Dylan Hurwitz, Samuel Jablon, Diane Kotila, Emilia Olsen, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Dan Schein, and Eric Wiley. The exhibition will run from March 19th through April 19th, 2020. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, March 19th from 7-9:30pm at 97 Allen Street.

Confronting the anxiety, dysfunction, and hysteria of modern society, the works on display embody aspects of escapism and fantasy across alternatingly text-based, figurative, and narrative pieces. Paralleling our “post-truth” political climate, marked by deception, misinformation, and media manipulation, the artists included in the exhibition dive headfirst into their respective aesthetic constructs, deconstructing the precarious state of contemporary society with its own mechanisms. Like an oddly-familiar Bosch landscape, populated by refractions of quotidian life yet innately otherworldly, Pungent Dystopia is rife with imagined IDs and surrogate egos, such as Fullana’s naive, child-like figures and Stark-Menneg’s ethereal avatars, among others. On the other hand, Jablon and DiLeo’s purposely jumbled, disorienting compositions, grounded in text and abstraction, respectively, provide visual analogies of hyper-stimulation and a world in which even journalistic facts are called into doubt.

With their pastel hues and crude forms, Fullana’s canvases radiate a saccharine, childlike sensibility that is offset by her often garish and explicitly sexual subject matter. In All Inclusive and Fountain, she presents sex as a sort of commodity, detached from emotion, recalling the hyper-sexualization of teens and society as a whole. Paradise Birds presents a surreal scene wherein a disembodied, distorted female head hovers above a jungle; surrounded by glowing white birds, the subject appears simultaneously distressed and transcendent, reflecting Fullana’s ability to draw seemingly mundane imagery into larger dialogues. Juxtaposing sentimental scenes of children playing baseball with apocalyptic backgrounds suggesting nuclear devastation, Hüppauff’s paintings similarly blur the lines between nostalgia and anxiety, obliterating innocence with the extreme outcomes of war, and force the question of whether children coming of age in contemporary society still have the possibility of experiencing a true childhood.

Weaving abstraction and figurative forms within his geometrically divided panels, DiLeo’s work expresses the vacuous gulf between fact and fiction that has come to define our current political climate. However, he molds this malleability of truth into a creative tool, constructing riddle-like networks of strange, psychedelic forms. In Trouble and Delicious Life (II), Jablon skews the spacing and orientation of individual letters, opening his snatches of text to vastly divergent interpretations. Emphasizing the physical forms of each letter to the point that they take on their own meaning, Jablon’s similarly appears to ruminate on the dissolution of unequivocal meaning and truth in contemporary life.

Inspired by VR, 3D animation and video game graphics, Wiley’s canvases fixate on a red-haired, avatar-like character. Recalling the notion of the “uncanny valley”, a theory that as robots become more realistic, they reach a point where their human likeness becomes unsettling, his paintings meditate on the increasingly common presence of virtual reality and our haphazard ways of coping with it.

Amidst the manic, theoretical conjurings and dreamscapes of Pungent Dystopia, Sam Bornstein’s Pink Flag stands as a flare of clarity, marking both the exhibition’s grounding in day-to-day life as well as reaffirming our individual sovereignty and ability to work as agents for change. Appropriating traditional revolutionary imagery, muted with pink and lavender tones, Pink Flag presents a vision of progress linked to the fundamentally transformative power of the individual.
Pungent Dystopia chronicles dysfunction and injustice in the world, but ultimately, as in paintings like Pink Flag, has more than just an apocalyptic message – optimism, love, and hope are manifested, and conveyed by the artists, for the planet, and for mankind.

Please join us for the opening reception with the artists on Thursday, March 19th, from 7pm to 9:30pm.

A full-color, limited edition artist book will be available for purchase at the gallery or online.

For more information, please contact nick@freightandvolume.com, ashley@freightandvolume.com, or call 212.691.7700

For more information, contact nick@freightandvolume.com, ashley@freightandvolume.com, or call 212.691.7700

FREIGHT+VOLUME
97 Allen St. NYC 10002
T 212.691.7700

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14. Adam Putnam, FF Alumn, at PPOW, Manhattan, March 13

Please Join us in celebrating the release of Adam Putnam’s book of photographs – Portholes
and a book of poems by Genya Turovskaya – The Breathing Body of this Thought.

Friday March 13th @PPOW gallery 6-8PM
535 W 22nd Street

There will be a short reading and a performance at 6:30

purchase copies here:
https://www.penumbrafoundation.org/putnam

and here:
https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780999702826/the-breathing-body-of-this-thought.aspx

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15. Marja Samsom, FF Alumn, at Club Berlin, Manhattan, March 15

Marja Samsom

the clock ticks

a brief performance
7.30pm

March 15, 2020
Club Berlin
25 Avenue A

Event runs 7.30 to 8.30
Plan to attend?

RSVP kc@thekitchenclub.com

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16. Alicia Grullón, FF Alumn, at The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, March 20, 26

“Presence”- The Artwork of Alicia Grullón
March 20 @ 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
The Old Stone House at Washington Park
336 3rd Street
Brooklyn, 11215
718-768-3195
info@theoldstonehouse.org
www.theoldstonehouse.org

Presence is an exhibition curated by Katherine Gressel which explores the evolution of artist Alicia Grullón’s socially-engaged work over 15+ years.

The exhibition opens with a public reception on February 6, followed by open gallery hours on Fridays from 3 pm – 6 pm, or by appointment.

Grullón describes her performances, both live or for photography or video, as “critiques of the politics of presence – an argument for the inclusion of disenfranchised communities in political and social spheres.” By inserting her own body in spaces “that have historically not been meant for [her] or designed so [she has] little control over how [she is] represented in them,” Grullón aims to disrupt mainstream historical and cultural narratives. This includes collecting and performing the stories of individuals whose voices might otherwise be absent. Her interventions have included public spaces, cultural and academic institutions, the dominant history of the United States, government policy, environmentalism, feminism, the United Nations, and the mass media.

In the tradition of deconstructionist philosophy, Grullón’s work challenges traditional binaries between past and present, and presence and its typical opposite, “absence.” In her photographs, “what is alluded to within the frame is largely informed by what is not in the frame.” In addition to evoking missing narratives from past, current, and future events, the work selected for this exhibition focuses on Grullón’s use of costumes, props and other methods of obscuring her own identity (leading to the absence of a uniform artist figure throughout the work), sometimes to augment the voices of others. In her essay “The Missing Body: Performance in the Absence of the Artist” Cindy Baker argues that through this type of physical obfuscation, “risk, transgression, and a false illusion of distance are taken on by both artist and audience member, expanding a capacity for intimacy between artist/art and audience that few artworks can.” Through inhabiting a world of her own creation, Grullon also subverts a traditional European, male gaze.

In keeping with OSH’s mission to make local history relevant, Presence is comprised mainly of works rooted in Grullón’s native New York City and that address such topics as gentrification, immigration and community preservation. Several works on view were inspired by OSH itself and its Dutch Colonial and Revolutionary War past.

Presence is the first in a series of four 2020 OSH exhibitions exploring how contemporary artists encourage participation and civic engagement.

Closing Reception/Public Programs
On March 26 from 7-9 p.m., we invite the public to view Storytelling, a performance for video in which Grullon re-enacts stories as they were told to her by seniors at the Jackie Robinson Senior Center in Harlem. A Q&A session with the artist and curator to follow. Additional public programs may be added at a later date- check the OSH website or newsletter for more information.

Presence is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs

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17. Katya Grokhovsky, FF Alumn, at EFA Project Space, Manhattan, opening March 18

Hello and Happy Spring!

I have been working hard on establishing The Immigrant Artist Biennial ! The first iteration of which, under the title Here, Together! is set to launch this Month in NYC!

With NYFA Fiscal sponsorship and the support of an amazing team: Anna Mikaela Ekstrand – Curatorial Advisor /Head of Partnerships, Mary Annunziata – Curatorial Advisor / Artist Liaison, Allison Cannella – Curatorial Assistant / Sponsorships, Teona Yamanidze – Fundraising, Alex Sullivan – Digital Production Manager, Juana Urrea – Administrator, Ariel Diaz – Graphic Design/Video Editing, we have successfully funded our Kickstarter Campaign at the end of 2019! Plus, our Central Group Exhibition, opening on March 18th 2020 at EFA Project Space has received a Creative engagement Grant from LMCC – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as well as support from “women & performance: a journal of feminist theory” public programs fund.

TIAB 2020 will take place from March to August 2020 in New York City across several venues, including Brooklyn Museum, EFA Project Space, Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, a program of Artists Alliance Inc., NARS Foundation gallery, Green-Wood Cemetery, C24 gallery, ¡CORÓNATE! Festival by Queens Museum and more, presenting 45+ artists.

Our Central Group Exhibition is Opening on Wednesday March 18th 2020 at EFA Project Space!
The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) 2020:
Here, Together!

Curator: Katya Grokhovsky

Curatorial Advisors:
Mary Annunziata, Allison Cannella, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

March 18th – May 9th 2020
Opening Reception and Curatorial Walkthrough:
March 18th 2020 5-8pm
Artists: Blanka Amezkua, Esperanza Cortés,
Bahareh Khoshooee, Daniela Kostova, Cole Lu,
Ana Mendieta, Levan Mindiashvili, Qinza Najm,
Anna Parisi, daàPò réo, Yali Romagoza.

EFA Project Space
Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts
323 W 39th St, New York, NY 10018
https://www.projectspace-efanyc.org/tiab
TIAB at EFA Press Release

About TIAB:

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a multi site artist-run project, presenting work by U.S based immigrant artists from around the world. TIAB sets out to form an international dialogue through exhibition of ambitious projects and events with an aim to facilitate a diverse and experimental discourse as well as build a globally connected and united community in the times of extreme anti-immigrant sentiment, unrest, discrimination and exclusion.

Yours in Art,
Katya Grokhovsky
Artist, Curator, Educator, Founding Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial
www.katyagrokhovsky.net
IG: https://www.instagram.com/katyagrokhovsky/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/katyagrokhovsky
TW: https://twitter.com/katyagrokhovsky
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/katyagrokhovskystudio
Artfare: https://www.artfare.com/katya-grokhovsky
https://www.theimmigrantartistbiennial.com
IG:https://www.instagram.com/theimmigrantartistbiennial/
FB:https://www.instagram.com/theimmigrantartistbiennial/

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18. Mama Donna Henes, FF Alumn, at Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, March 19

45th Annual World Famous Spring Equinox Celebration & Egg Balancing Ceremony with Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman

Brooklyn, NY — Feeling a little out of balance? Come balance an egg at this annual rite of spring and restore your equilibrium! Join Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman, for her 45th Annual World Famous Spring Equinox Egg Balancing Celebration: Eggs on End – Standing on Ceremony.

This year’s eggstraordinary event will take place on Thursday, March 19 at 11:30 PM at Bailey Fountain, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, rain, snow or shine. This is a free, family-friendly event. The equinox moment, at eggsactly 11:50 PM, signals the official start of spring. At this time, the sun crosses the equator into the Northern Hemisphere and it is possible to stand an egg up on its end.

According to Chinese custom, if you stand an egg on its end on the first day of spring, you will have eggsceptionally good luck for the entire year. The egg represents the life force in many cultures, and is particularly used to symbolize the rebirth of nature in the spring season.

A basket of 360 eggs will be provided by Foodtown of Prospect Heights for the eggshilarating standing ceremony.

COME AND SEE WHAT ALL THE EGGSCITEMENT IS ABOUT!

For info, contact:
cityshaman@aol.com
718-857-1343

Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than 100 cities since 1972. She has published five books, a CD, an acclaimed Ezine and writes for The Huffington Post, Beliefnet and UPI Religion and Spirituality Forum. A noted ritual expert, she serves as a consultant to the television and motion picture industry. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she offers intuitive tarot readings and spiritual counseling, and works with individuals, groups, institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.

www.DonnaHenes.com

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19. Amy Khoshbin, FF Alumn, receives Pratt Fine Arts’ Fellowship in Civic Engagement

Please visit this link:

https://www.artandeducation.net/announcements/288259/fine-arts-inaugural-civic-engagement-fellow-amy-khoshbin

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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller