Exhibition Review by Iara Pimenta

An Installation to Immerse and Reconnect

In unstable and changing times, haunted by a pandemic and conflicts unfolding worldwide, the installation by artist Bel Falleiros creates an introspective space that allows us to pause and reflect on how we relate to ourselves and the environment. Presented at The Border Project Space and curated by Jamie Martinez, “To Ripple with Water” is an invitation to be present, to disconnect from the frantic times we live in, and reconnect to our bodies and to the earth, in a quietly performative experience.

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In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Alyssa Fanning: A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space

In Dialogue with Alyssa Fanning

A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space in Dumbo, Brooklyn, features Alyssa Fanning’s elaborate and richly layered graphite and colored pencil drawings on paper, focusing on the duality of strength and fragility of the natural world. The work includes drawings from two related series, created through a process of combining projection, stencil and improvisation. The pieces range in size from 2.75 by 4.75 inches to 16 by 20 inches and within these intimate boundaries, Alyssa Fanning creates intricate worlds which invite you to plunge in. The exhibition opens June 5th with an opening reception June 4th, and runs through July 3rd, 2021.

Down and Dirty at Duck Creek Arts
Exhibition Review by michelle weinberg

Down and Dirty at Duck Creek Arts

Down and Dirty, recent works by Bonnie Rychlak and Jeanne Silverthorne on view at Duck Creek Arts in East Hampton, NY, is a vaudevillian collection of subtly crafted works that tickle our collective psyche. The narrative of banal objects formed largely from wax and rubber elicits empathy, provokes thought and causes laughter, a complex jumble visually and emotionally. Arranged on the floor in the massive wooden barn, rejecting the hierarchical placement of art on pedestals, the works address a child-sized viewer, or perhaps an imp. They deftly implicate our inner child. The worn wood panels and flooring of the barn are complicit with Rychlak’s and Silverthorne’s works, collaborating to generate an experience in which the “feeling” or “haptic” sense is awakened, enriching the viewing experience. That Down and Dirty also blurs the boundaries between the works of the two artists is gleefully conspiratorial, the word defined here as “to breathe together.” It is a feminist gesture which includes an actual collaborative work titled Grate of Unintentional Consequences.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Beatrice Scaccia: My Hope Chest at Katonah Museum of Art

In Dialogue with Beatrice Scaccia

Beatrice Scaccia’s solo show at The Katonah Museum of Art includes a stop-motion animation and site-specific wall drawings, altogether exploring the links and tensions between tradition and modernity. This body of work by the Italian born and NYC based multi-disciplinary artist has developed based on a furniture item with layered connotations – Hope chests were (and are) used by young women to collect items in anticipation of married life. The show runs through June 27, 2021

In Conversation by Etty Yaniv

Patricia Miranda + Christopher Kaczmarek: Entering a Material Discourse

In Conversation

Patricia Miranda and Christopher Kaczmarek are artists and partners living and working in Washington Heights, New York City. Art Spiel prompts served as a catalyst for a dynamic conversation between them which they recorded as a free-flowing dialogue. Here is a short excerpt of what became a much longer free-ranging conversation about art, education, and life as an artist couple.

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Photo Story by Art Spiel

Form or Function at ArtPort Kingston

Art Spiel Photo Story

The group exhibition Form or Function at ArtPort Kingston features works of various media, exploring the relationship of objects in between contemporary art, design and craft with an attempt to blur the lines and create dialogue. The exhibition overall prompts a question – “Looking at everyday images, objects, tools and materials, we have very diverse emotional bonds with them. An artist creates a dialogue with their materials, providing intentions. Is it an object’s form, their history, or the story we create that attracts us?”

The show is curated by Laurie De Chiara, featuring works by Chuck von Schmidt, Karen Jaimes, Staveley Kuzmanov, Traci Johnson, Barbara Marks, Ellie Murphy, Courtney Puckett, Jim Osman, Rachel Urkowitz and Gabriele Hamill, Inna Babaeva, Clemens Kois, Sophi Kravitz, Christina Kruse, Jeanne Atkin, Kathleen Vance, Erika DeVries, and Rodger Stevens. The show runs through June 6th.

Photo Story by Art Spiel

Shifting Sands at ChaShaMa

Art Spiel Photo Story

SHIFTING SANDS is a group exhibition showcasing the creative breadth of 20 artists from the 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. Each of these artists has crossed physical borders, leaving one part of the world for another – in doing so, they hold space for various identities and shifting realities. From this common experience emerges unique perspectives on identity, belonging, home, memory, hope and resilience. Many of the pieces exhibited were created during the pandemic. They express the rollercoaster of emotions, the shifting states of being, and new possibility.

Exhibiting artists: Zeshan Ahmed, Katya Akuma, Ivana Brenner, Hedwig Brouckaert, Zorica Colic, Carin Kulb Dangot, Bel Falleiros, Nathier Fernandez, Vinay Hira, Jaejoon Jang, Hyun Jung Ahn, Ae Yun Kim, Geuryung Lee, Jiaoyang Lii, Spandita Malik, Levan Mindiashvili, j.p.mot, Ghislaine Sabiti, Leila Seyedzadeh, Sofia Suazo

Curated byYvette Molina, Ghislaine Sabiti and Hedwig Brouckaert

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Sammy Lee: Remind Me Tomorrow at the Emmanuel Art Gallery

In Dialogue with Sammy Lee

Denver-based, Korean American artist Sammy Lee’s solo exhibition at the Emmanuel Art Gallery explores motherhood, domesticity, immigration, and prejudice through installation, artist books, performance art, and sculptures. The artist is using a multitude of textures and mediums that re-contextualizes familiar objects, ritual, and scenes into art. Remind Me Tomorrow opens May 25, during Asian American and Pacific Heritage (AAPI) month to celebrate Asian culture and speak out against the alarming bigotry manifested against Asian people. The exhibition runs through July 15th, 2021.

Clive Knights: Fragmentary Intimations of Shared Meaning
Artist Interview by Etty Yaniv

Clive Knights: Fragmentary Intimations of Shared Meaning

Clive Knights practices architecture and art, in particular mixed media and monotype printmaking. He holds professional architectural design undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, and a Master of Philosophy in Architectural History and Theory from Cambridge University. Clive has taught architecture since 1984 and was a full-time lecturer at Sheffield University for six years before moving to Portland State University in 1995 where he currently resides as a professor and director of the PSU School of Architecture. His primary areas of interest include the cultural meanings of architectural representation understood through the phenomenology of the human body, with particular reference to the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; the revelatory capacity of metaphor in poetic work; and speculations in architectural design studio pedagogy. Publications include many journal articles and book chapters on the theory, history and pedagogy of architecture. 

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Natalie Westbrook: Surface Tension at Freight + Volume

In Dialogue with Natalie Westbrook

The Pittsburgh based painter Natalie Westbrook’s solo show at Freight + Volume in Tribeca features her recent body of bold and highly energetic paintings ranging from monochromes to vivid colors. Jeffrey Grunthaner writes in his essay for the show that Westbrook’s works “confront the limits of what painting makes possible.” The show runs from May 21st to June 26th, 2021.