Interviews – Page 10

June 14, 2024June 16, 2024, by Art Spiel

Women Heavy at Gardenship Gallery

In Dialogue

Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, QUALIA – YOU MATTER TO ME, immersive installation, UltraHD, color, sound, 10 minutes, 2024. Courtesy of the artists

Throughout the group exhibition Women Heavy at the Gardens Gallery in Kearny, NJ, curator Donna Kessinger references contemporary and second-wave feminist ideas. The curator aims to create a clinical and visceral experience by investigating broad concepts and featuring among many notable others work by Charlie Spademan, Gwen Charles, Jeanne Brasile, Josh Knoblick, Judi Tavill, Kasia Skorynkiewicz, Charlee Swanson, Lauren Vroegindewey, Kristin J. DeAngelis, Michael Angelo, Richard Gaines, Suzan Globus, Vikki Michalios, A.V. Ryan, Donna Conklin King, Anna Ehrsam, and Doris Cacoilo. In our interview curator D. Kessinger sheds some light on her curatorial vision.

June 8, 2024June 9, 2024, by Art Spiel

Mapping the Invisible at the Flinn Gallery

In Dialogue

Patrick Vingo: Mapping the Invisible gallery view 1.jpeg — Flinn Gallery Installation Photo by Patrick Vingo

Mapping the Invisible, the final show of the ’23-’24 season at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut, showcases the work of Laura Battle, Jaq Belcher, and Amy Myers, each of whom contemplate and explore the mysteries of our existence through the lenses of science, math, and geometry. Co-curated by Francene Langford and Caren Winnall, the show runs till June 19, 2024. Langford elaborates on the curatorial process and highlights the work in this show.

June 5, 2024May 22, 2024, by Jennifer McGregor

Sari Carel: A More Perfect Circle

Hot air

Artist and activist Sari Carel created A More Perfect Circle, a series of ceramic sculptures inspired by the single-use coffee cup, a ubiquitous object that brings into focus people’s daily experience of interacting with trash. Lentol Garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, hosts its first public art project that includes columns built of stacked ceramic forms and disks in the shape of plastic cup covers. The handmade, intentional, and individualized quality of each unit contrasts with the mass-manufactured coffee cup that inspires this project. Some of the drawings, experiments and observations that inform the installation are on view at the Greenpoint Library. A series of programs with 350Brooklyn and Climate Families NYC accompany the exhibition. Find out more here. The project is organized by KODA, a New York-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to mid-career artists of diverse backgrounds. It is curated by Jennifer McGregor, who interviews Sari Carel for the Hot Air section in Art Spiel.

June 3, 2024May 24, 2024, by Art Spiel

Judi Tavill: Entanglements at Ivy Brown Gallery

In Dialogue

*The artist with PROBE, 20.5” x 15” x 15”, ceramic/paint/graphite/varnish, 2021, Photo Credit: Lisa Jennison*

Entanglements, Judi Tavill’s solo show at Ivy Brown Gallery, unfolds a world of biomorphic abstractions. From intimate to immersive, her curvilinear ceramic sculptures feature intertwined graphite lines on the surface that seem to emanate from within and radiate outward. Tavill’s subsequent works on paper echo these forms, creating a captivating visual journey. Tangible forms of tree systems, mycelium networks, and biological structures intertwine with intangible psychological states, interpersonal relationships, and sociopolitical tension, entangling to form elaborate networks.

May 20, 2024May 17, 2024, by Art Spiel

Anna Gregor: Double Space at D. D. D. D.

In Dialogue

Double Space at D.D.D.D., Installation shot. Photo taken by Rachel Kuzma

Anna Gregor often remarks, half in jest, that she wishes she were a poet. Poems, to her, come closest to immateriality; they exist in the mind and can be accessed anytime. In contrast, a painting is a unique object that must be seen in person, confined by paint, the artist’s technique, and the viewer’s presence. Gregor, a painter in New York City currently pursuing her MFA at Hunter, examines the divide between body and mind, material and immaterial, in her art. She sees a painting as having a dual nature: a physical object of paint sharing space with the viewer and an immaterial idea formed in the viewer’s mind. This mirrors the human condition, where body and mind coexist. Gregor says she often feels trapped by her physical form and its social labels—gender, age, race, and ability. Yet, she recognizes that her body is essential for her consciousness. For Gregor, making a painting is a confrontation with matter, a commitment to the material world while striving to go beyond its limits. Viewing a painting involves a similar struggle to find meaning in the artist’s creation. “ Without the physical painting, there is no idea. But without the idea, the painting is just inert matter,” she says. This intricate relationship is central to her solo show, Double Space, at D. D. D. D.

May 14, 2024July 19, 2024, by Mary Annunziata

Marina Kassianidou: A Partial History

in conversation

During her solo exhibition at the NARS Foundation, artist Marina Kassianidou spoke with Mary Annunziata, who previously curated Marina’s work, A Partial History, as part of the inaugural Immigrant Artist Biennial in 2020. In her exhibition at NARS, Marina presents new work inspired by her grandmother’s collection of 19th and 20th-century schoolbooks from Cyprus. On display are four photographs of selected pages from these books, four artist’s books that recreate the full original texts, and four large sculptural drawings. The show celebrates a call and response with ancestors’ material history, showcasing Marina’s time-intensive artistic process in which she works with surfaces found in her surroundings, such as walls, floors, fabrics, paper, and screens, and experiments with ways of marking that respond to the surface’s appearance, use, or history.

May 13, 2024December 6, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

David Samuel Stern: Does a portrait need a subject?

Stern positioning two fabric-wrapped models during a shoot in Chelsea in 2022. Photo by Jaymye Thomas

In 2018, I interviewed David Samuel Stern about his process of creating woven photographic portraits. In these portraits, he interlaced photographs into intricate, tactile artworks, emphasizing the medium’s tangible qualities. Stern has been relentlessly exploring what it means to portray through photography and the medium’s place as a recorder of time and nature. Since our initial interview, he has produced captivating new work. Here, we survey his evolution over the last six years and his current work.

May 6, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Jeanne Ciravolo – the resistance in making do

In Dialogue

A person standing in front of a wall with paintings

Description automatically generated — Residency at the Anderson Center, 2019, Red Wing, MN

In her mixed-media work, Jeanne Ciravolo integrates collage, print, and stitching, materializing the stories of her female relatives—their stories of loss and hope. The female figures often reference representation of women in art history, such as medieval carvings or paintings from the Renaissance. The figure imagery is based on Ciravolo’s sketches, figure drawings, photos from newspapers and magazines, or photos she took.

May 4, 2024May 4, 2024, by Katie Hector

Katie Hector & Ernesto Renda: on East & West Coast exhibitions

In conversation

Ernesto Renda and Katie Hector in their studios. Images courtesy of the artists.

Ernesto Renda and I first met on the internet, as more and more artists do. A follow turned into likes, which developed into mutual curiosity and respect for each other’s practice. Renda, who lives in New York, and I in Los Angeles, kept in touch for months, viewing miniature backlit versions of the other’s work while each suspecting there was more than met the eye. As fate would have it, Renda’s solo exhibition, The Moment of Truth, opened at Moskowitz Bayse in Los Angeles; subsequently, my solo exhibition, EGO RIP, opened at Management in New York City two weeks later. Viewing the work in person was enlightening and generated conversations around material play, intuition, and the verisimilitude of our subjects. These brief yet poignant chats inspired us to pose the questions below from the perspective of one visual practitioner to another.

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Judy Hoffman: Evolvers and Wildtypes at Sculpture Space

Hot Air

A person standing next to a sculpture

Description automatically generated — The artist with Big Yellow, 18″ x 11″ x 7.5”; ceramic; 2017. Photo Credit: Linda Cunningham

Ten years ago, Judy Hoffman became enthralled with clay and hand-building. The current exhibition Evolvers and Wildtypes at the Long Island City Sculpture Space is her first solo show of these ceramic sculptures. Hoffman’s ceramics’ imagery and forms tap into a previous installation work made from sculpted paper pulp, natural materials, and man-made debris. Paper clay techniques permit the bonding of wet clay to fired forms, enabling the construction of diverse configurations. These components are conjoined to initiate a dialogue between organic and mechanical elements, yielding imagery that defies expectation. The artwork evolves through a rhythm of construction and deconstruction, encapsulating cycles of creation, deterioration, and renewal. Viewers are meant to encounter an elemental rawness, surprise, and a touch of humor.