Interviews – Page 33

December 3, 2020November 2, 2022

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Matilda Forsberg

C:\Users\MForsberg\Desktop\Current\New folder\Immigrant Artist\Art Spiel\feeding rite.jpg — *Matilda Forsberg, Feeding rite, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”*

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continued in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Matilda Forsberg’s paintings explore heritage, identity, and the duality between the past and present. Her practice is inspired by the complexities of family and cultural tradition, and its emotional and psychological influence on individuals as independent beings. Originally from Sweden, Matilda Forsberg is based in Newark, NJ where she is currently a resident artist at Gallery Aferro. Her work has been exhibited across the country in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Portland (OR). She received her BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020

Amy Butowicz: Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space

In Dialogue with Eric Fallen, Founder and Executive Director

A room full of furniture

Description automatically generated — Duet, 2020 76.5”h x 84”w x 53”d Canvas, acrylic paint, wood, furniture parts, wheels, and hinges

Amy Butowicz solo show Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space features a collection of domestically scaled sculptures staged as a group of characters which are readily associated with notions of sensuality, ornamentation, and haute couture. Bulging cushion-like forms, meticulously hand-stitched over wooden structures, display intricate patterns and rich material suggestive of bedding, vanities, corsets and human anatomy. Bold and tender simultaneously, these anthropomorphic forms defy the disdain and fear that are frequently imposed upon feminine artforms, spaces, and bodies. Eric Fallen, founder and executive director of the Red Hook based Peninsula Art Space elaborates on Amy Butowicz’s exhibition and on his art venue.

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020

Michele Brody – Embodying Daily Flux

*Michele Brody, working in home studio in The Bronx on handmade paper body sculpture for Annual Earth Celebrations Eco Pageant, paper made from recycled linen table cloths and caning, 2020.*
*Photo by Olivier Marcaud*

A fourth generation NY builder, artist Michele Brody loves working with materials. She recalls how her father groomed her early on to become an architect so that she could continue the family tradition of builders and land developers. Although she excelled in the study of Architecture, she was not attracted to pursue it as career. ” I prefer building with my own hands,” she says. So in 1994, instead of getting a degree in Architecture, she graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Fiber and Material Studies Department.

November 20, 2020November 13, 2020

Now + Never – Marcus Aitken

In Dialogue with Jacob Barnes, Editor in chief, Soft Punk Magazine

A picture containing background pattern

Description automatically generated — Marcus Aitken, Now + Never print, Limited edition of 50 on 300gsm Hanehmuhle German etching paper,42×29.7cm

Now + Never, a virtual solo exhibition of new works by London-based gestural artist Marcus Aitken, is released in tandem with Soft Punk’s latest publication. The exhibition will be made available online from November 16th, 2020 via Soft Punk’s web platform. In this interview for Art Spiel, Jacob Barnes, the London and New York based co-founder and editor of this literary arts and culture quarterly, shares some of the background for his publication and for Marcus Aitken’s virtual art exhibit.

November 18, 2020November 18, 2020

Americans Looking In at The Center for Book Arts

In Dialogue with Emilie Ahern and Sherri Littlefield

The curators, Emilie Ahern (left) and Sherri Littlefield (right), stand in the exhibition space among the works from Americans Looking In. Photo credit: Andrew Littlefield

In the thought-provoking group show Americans Looking In at the Center for Book Arts the curators Emilie Ahern and Sherri Littlefield explore what it means to be “American” mostly through media such as photography, book art, sculpture and prints. Their personal experience of coming from multicultural backgrounds and growing up in the States has prompted them to ask the question – What is American culture today, and what does an American look like?

November 16, 2020October 20, 2020

Bonny Leibowitz – Not This, Not That, Yet This and That

A close up of an animal

Description automatically generated — Bonny Leibowitz

Bonny Leibowitz makes site responsive sculptural installations with painterly sensibility – they hover in the air, spill on the floor, or sprawl on the walls. Her love of Baroque compositions, Abstract Expressionist gestures is underscored throughout her work. Bonny Leibowitz had a long-standing interest in the illusory nature of experience and the supposition of stability. In Terra Unfirma, her most recent body of work, she tackles what it means to deconstruct expectations and perceptions by using a variety of materials which play off one another – natural appearing manufactured, manufactured appearing natural – constructing environments which may feel ephemeral, eternal, fleeting, solid, light or looming at the same time. The artist refers to this quote: “Everything worth knowing is cloaked in paradox because everything substantial defies being revealed in its totality” – Mark Nepo

November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Art for Your Collection at the Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center

In Dialogue with Catherine Fosnot

A room with a large mirror Description automatically generated — Inside Atrium 106 showing the work of Karlis Rekevics, Richard Kalina, and Lisa Corinne Davis (left to right), Image courtesy of The Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center, New London CT. Atrium 106 is just one of three atriums being used for the exhibition

Art for Your Collection, the upcoming group show at Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center in New London, CT., features paintings and sculptures by 26 artists who were recommended by New York City art critics and curators. Catherine Fosnot, the founder of the gallery who is an artist herself, says that her own experience as an isolated artist during the pandemic has been an impetus for opening this art gallery as a hub for art discourse and art collection outside large metropolitan centers. The exhibition opens November 12^th and runs through December 30^th, 2020. Catherine Fosnot shares the genesis of her new gallery, her vision, and how this show evolved.

November 10, 2020November 10, 2020

Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary

In Dialogue with curator Aliza Edelman

Eunice Golden painting *Metamorphosis #20* in her East Hampton studio. Photo: © 2007 Walter Weissman

The excellent current exhibition Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary, rigorously curated by scholar and curator Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., features paintings and photographs by the 93 years old prolific artist from 1979 to 2009. Based in the West Village and in East Hampton, New York, Eunice Golden has made throughout five decades an outstanding and bold body of work with consistent commitment to her artistic vision and to feminism, while keeping her work admirably fresh and urgent all the way. In her later paintings the body is fragmented and anthropomorphized into a landscape, described by the artist as a philosophical and spiritual outgrowth of her earlier radical oeuvre of sexual body landscapes. Golden says on these recent works, “I am concerned with tactility and the sensation of touch, but also of thought on a primal level, where there are no boundaries and where natural phenomenon are blurred by processes of metamorphosis.” In this interview Aliza Edelman elaborates on the genesis of this show and the ideas behind Eunice Golden’s work.

November 9, 2020September 22, 2020

Pablo Garcia Lopez – Fibrous Neuroplasticity

Brainvolution 1, natural silk, PLA filament (3D printing) and fabric. Shadow Box (plexiglass covered) 48x29x7 inches, 2019

The Spanish born, New York based artist Pablo Garcia Lopez makes mixed media reliefs and sculptures which evoke hybrid forms resonating with Baroque imagery, biological forms, and at times Victorian delicate ornaments. His Spanish heritage, coupled with his background in biochemistry and Neuroscience largely inform his visual vocabulary and themes.

November 5, 2020November 5, 2020

With the Grain at New York Artists Equity

In Dialogue with Patricia Fabricant

Patricia Fabricant, with her work “Dream”

The group show With the Grain, curated by artist and curator Patricia Fabricant at the New York Artists Equity, features artists who work directly with wood grain. Patricia Fabricant, who is also a participating artist, shares some of her thoughts on the exhibition. With the Grainopens today, Thursday, Nov 5^th from 6-8PM and runs through Sat, Nov 28^th, 2020.