Ararat: Artists Coming Together in a Time of Crisis


Ararat Collective zoom session screen capture; Clockwise from left: Tusia Dabrowska, Orly Noa Rabiniyan, Jon Adam Ross, Diana Wyenn, Noa Charuvi, Randy Ginsburg, Agustin Jais and Robyn Awend

A new art collective was born out of the need to find purpose and connection during the shut down period caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Now the collective members launch a webzine that invites everyone to peer into their minds, get inspired and think of the various ways creativity has a potential to help cope with a global disaster.

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Melissa Joseph: Née at REGULAR•NORMAL

In Dialogue with Melissa Joseph

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Intergenerational, 42 x 131 in, needle felted wool and sari silk on inkjet print on Indian duppioni silk, 2020-2021

Née, Melissa Joseph’s first solo show in New York, features 27 wall based works and 5 sculptures, utilizing mostly wool felt and textiles assembled through a highly intuitive process. The show runs at REGULAR•NORMAL through May 2, 2021.

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Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents


Brandon Graving, Mother: Earth 2 detail, 2021, embossed monoprint, 41”x 108”, photo by artist

Brandon Graving aims to transfer and translate a sense of wonder in her artworks. She describes her process of making as exploring the connectedness of all things with ongoing “delight, immediacy and a sense of virginal untamed discovery with a nod towards Humbolt.” Some of her sculptural works are kinetic and turn, revealing elaborate intricacy and shadow play, while other works, including monoprints with handmade inks and semiprecious stones, alter dramatically in different light. She does not intend to depict nature but rather hone ideas and objects into simplified essential forms, some with elaborate treatment. Through her extensive attention to detail, she reflects on how the micro and macro within the work suggest a system that is both diverse and similar, how these dualities interrelate or even duplicate in nature.      

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Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS

In Dialogue with Kat Chamberlin


BEVERLY’S: Under Construction Sessions Peephole

Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS for BEVERLY’S: Under Construction Sessions includes works in drawing, glass and aluminum created in response to a year in quarantine and loss of work. In exchange for the year’s shifted labor conditions and loss of independence, the artist uses her 5-year-old daughter’s ideas as payback. The show runs through April 20th, 2021.

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Katya Grokhovsky: FANTASYLAND at Smack Mellon

In Dialogue with Katya Grokhovsky

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Katya Grokhovsky, Fantasyland, 2021. Images courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photos: Etienne Frossard


Katya Grokhovsky ‘s site-specific installation FANTASYLAND at Smack Mellon explores the rise and fall of a fantastical empire and its uncertain future. Giant plush toys, inflatable beach balls, deconstructed and re-assembled mannequins, an unfinished carousel structure, recycled parachute canopies, wallpaper, a glowing neon sign, and performance videos, altogether underscore American society’s surplus of objects, and unbridled desire for material possessions, ironically, the capitalist symbol of freedom. The artist scrutinizes the American Dream through an immigrant lens, exposing a desirable yet unattainable mirage. Katya Grokhovsky’s work is currently on view in the solo exhibition FANTASYLAND at Smack Mellon, through May 2nd, 2021.

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Gianluca Bianchino: An Attempt to Communicate with Reality at Bergen Gallery

In Dialogue with Gianluca Bianchino


Gianluca Bianchino, An Attempt to Communicate with Reality, 2021, Multimedia Installation. Dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Tim Blunk

An Attempt to Communicate with Reality, Gianluca Bianchino’s vibrant multi-media installation at Gallery Bergen in Paramus New Jersey, is a hybrid virual/in situ installation accompanied by the gallery navigable models of the installation as it has been created on site.

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Sue McNally: Learning how to Find

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Jockey for Postition

Sue McNally lives and works in Rhode Island and when life permits, as she puts it, in rural southeast Utah. Her landscape paintings and her self portraits encompass everything in between — the views of nature she has encountered, and her shifting states of being. Sue McNally reflects on her art making and shares ideas on her new body of work.

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Jessica Lagunas: With Every Fiber at Pelham Art Center


The artist and “Por siempre joven” (Forever Young) Series. Installation at the Bronx Museum’s The Block Gallery, 2019. Photo courtesy Argenis Apolinario/The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Jessica Lagunas is Interested in working with unconventional materials—makeup, hair, perfume, organic materials—through video-performance, installation, drawing, prints, artist books, embroidery, and recently, weaving. She is a New York City-based Latinx artist, whose group exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio’s The (S) Files Biennial, The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara and Laxart, among others.

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Brian Zegeer: Porous Identities


O for the days to be yowling down the valley at a full galoop! On Pfizer! On Moderna! On
AstraZeneca! clip from 22 second cg animation, 2021

In his stop-motion animation and mixed media installations the Brooklyn based artist Brian Zegeer creates fantastic landscapes which draw on his domestic family life, dissecting what is the meaning of identity – body as an organism, cultural heritage of childhood in Appalachia with Lebanese roots –altogether fuse into a mysterious and complex system where the viewer is prompted to get immersed.

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