In Conversation by Art Spiel

Gathering with Asianish

In Conversation

Co-curators Cecile Chong and Sophia Ma are delighted to present “Gathering,” an exhibition that showcases the connections between forty-five Asianish artists and their artwork. Asianish, an informal collective of AAPI artists and art professionals, was established in March 2018 to foster a safe and inclusive environment for a diverse community of Asian identities. Through conversations, artistic expression, and shared meals, the group explores themes such as code-switching in art contexts and the longing for a sense of belonging in their adopted homeland. The exhibition will be held at Tiger Strikes Asteroid–New York (TSA-NY) in Bushwick from June 24 to July 30, 2023, and at FiveMyles in Crown Heights from July 8 to August 13, 2023.

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Warding Off Bitterness

Last year, I watched a TikTok video where Kiersten Lyons, an actor, was hilariously recounting all her many misfortunes in love and career. Her whole video read like a voyage of self-discovery through rejection, a tale familiar to anyone pursuing a creative life. It was part of a trend on the app that encouraged creators to pair their comeback stories with a gospel song: In the Sanctuary by the Kurt Carr Singers. In the Sanctuary is one of those songs that seems to end, but then a few moments later, starts up again. And this plays out over and over, to almost comic effect, until you don’t know if it will ever end. And it really struck me as an analogy that could be widely applied to all the arts.

Artist Profile by Art Spiel

Deanna Sirlin: Wavetable

Artist Profile

Deanna Sirlin’s Wavetable, on view in the lobby of 211 East 43rd Street, New York, includes seven recent paintings, all 7 feet by 5 feet, arranged in a line that turns a corner. Produced between 2020 and 2023, at the height of the pandemic, the paintings in Wavetable offer an eye-popping meditation on connections. As the world went into lockdown and our interactions and connections with others were circumscribed, Sirlin explored interaction and connection through these paintings.

HOT AIR by Hovey Brock

Envisioning Adaptation – Symposium on Art and Adaptation to the Climate Crisis at the Catskill Art Space

On April 23rd, Earth Day, 2023, at the Catskill Art Space in Livingston Manor, NY, I moderated a panel on artists’ responses to the climate crisis titled “Envisioning Adaptation.” The panel was one of the many events the director of the CAS, Sally Wright, has hosted at the arts and performance space newly refurbished in 2022. The concept for the symposium was to create a forum of artists whose practices addressed the idea of adaptation to, as opposed to mitigation of, the climate crisis. The panel participants included David Brooks, Simone Couto, Alexandra Hammond, Brian Kelley, and J. Morgan Puett.

Exhibition Review by Elaine Rita Mendus

Sa’dia Rehman walks you through memories of displacement on the colonized lands of Governors Island

Sa’dia Rehman: Desire Lines is a solo exhibition as part of artist’s residency with KODA on Governors Island, New York. Rehman’s exhibition focuses on the building of the Tarbela dam in Pakistan in 1968-1976 – a hydroelectric dam responsible for the displacement and forced migration of 184 villages and the climate devastation following the completion of this project.

Dance by Etty Yaniv

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – JEANNE VERDOUX and JOVONNA PARKS

DANCE

The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is the conversation between artist Jeanne Verdoux and choreographer / dancer JoVonna Parks.

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Artist Interview by Amy Talluto

Ruby Palmer: Painter with a Kaleidoscope Eye

Ruby Palmer’s new acrylic and Flashe paintings, currently on display in her solo show Shift at Morgan Lehman through June 30, look like colorfully doodled Rorschach tests. Each work is densely populated with swirling kaleidoscopic symbols like flowers, feathers, and geometric shapes, all set over jewel-toned or neutral grounds. At her previous exhibition with the gallery, she showed wall sculptures made up of painted clusters of basswood, and her new paintings seem to take those networks of wood a step further and expand them outward like Hoberman spheres in a big-bang fashion. It was my pleasure to speak with her and find out more about this exciting new direction in her work.

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Sponsored Content by Daisy Archer

Isabelle Plat Reinvents the Portrait

Artist Profile

By Daisy Archer

When she was eight years old, Isabelle Plat’s mother took her to the museum in Lyons, France, to see a show of works by the School of Paris. The young artist remembers being enchanted by the works of Matisse and Soutine and then and there decided she would be painter. Flash forward a decade and Plat was working toward her baccalaureate at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, which offered a rigorous five-year program of academic training. Plat concentrated on sculpture, following the age-old practice of drawing and modeling from antique casts.

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – Tiffany Mangulabnan and Etty Yaniv
Dance by Etty Yaniv

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – Tiffany Mangulabnan and Etty Yaniv

DANCE

The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is my dialogue with choreographer and dancer Tiffany Mangulabnan about our collaborative process.

Collage and Then Some: Vitamin C+
Book Review by Paul D'Agostino

Collage and Then Some: Vitamin C+

Book Review

Recently released by Phaidon, Vitamin C+ is another noteworthy addition to the publisher’s boundlessly malleable series of anthological volumes gathering scores of artist profiles into luxuriantly illustrated, conceptually cohesive tomes. Medium, era, genre, or movement tend to be the organizational binders for these books, as might be expected, and they’re generally wonderful and inspiring as such. But they’re sometimes wonderful and inspiring in less obvious ways as well, furnishing readers with much more to delve into, reflect on, and revisit time and again.