Tag: brooklyn

Posted on , by Mary Annunziata

Marina Kassianidou: A Partial History

in conversation
Marina Kassianidou, A Partial History, 2024. Installation view, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY, USA. Courtesy of the artist and NARS Foundation

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.

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Posted on , 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.

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Posted on , by Anna Shukeylo

Gestural Painting in Spotlight at Independent Art Fair

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Matthias Franz (German, born 1984), infantile gestures, 2024, Oil on canvas, 170 x 160 cm. (66.9 x 63 in.) courtesy of GRIMM Gallery

From dark and moody to blithe and bright, gestural painting is having a resurgent moment at the Independent Art Fair this year. Representational, abstract, and everything in between, artists showcase a wide range of motions and gesticulations of the artists’ hand tell the stories.

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Posted on , by Etty Yaniv

The Space Between at Platform Project Space

Photo Story
Installation view

The Space Between, curated by Tracy McKenna at Platform Project Space, combines works in paint and fiber by Lauren Luloff, Tessa Greene O’Brien, Mark Olshansky, and Amy Kim Keeler. They all share a sense of desire to capture the elusive space in between—where the artist’s perception and hand meet your gaze.

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Posted on , by MICHELE JASLOW

Monika Drożyńska: Resistance Embroiderer

Photo Story
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Latte Capitalizm, hand embroidery on cotton, 8×14 inch

Polish artist Monika Drożyńska brings her resistance embroidery to a New York audience in a solo show at Open Source Gallery and her Urban Embroidery project. The connections she makes with words within many different languages are a dexterous game of text and symbols on fabric, an adept study of transformative change for a better world. Polish curator Bartek Remisko, speaking about the work, said, “Embroidery can be about threads that bring us together to create social change.” Remisko’s insight speaks to Drożyńska’s focus on embroidery techniques in contemporary art and textiles in public spaces to further the collective conversation and play with conventional expectations.

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Posted on , by Etty Yaniv

Judy Hoffman: Evolvers and Wildtypes at Sculpture Space

Hot Air

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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.

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Posted on , by Art Spiel

Simona Prives: towards the noise of dark waters at PRACTICE

Photo Story

Simona Prives, installation view

Simona Prives’s latest installation at Philadelphia’s PRACTICE Gallery, towards the noise of dark waters, combines projection and collage to explore themes of renewal and decay. This site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist features life-sized projections of collages built upon densely packed drawings, ink paintings, and various printmaking techniques. These collages suggest maps, geological patterns, and industrial imagery, creating abstract yet recognizable worlds.

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Posted on , by Hovey Brock

Tatiana Arocha: Mama Coca

Hot Air
Hojas en movimiento sobre el fuego [Leaves in motion over the fire], 2023. Soft Ground etching on Hahnemühle and pigment print on Kozo paper, hand-painted with acrylic. Triptych, each 35 1/4 x 26 1/2 inches. Photograph by Etienne Frossard

Tatiana Arocha is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice has focused on installations that include rubbings, photographs, and drawings of plants and landscapes taken from the many ecological niches of her native Colombia. Increasingly, her art and advocacy have focused on the coca plant, notorious for its role in the war on drugs, which has destroyed indigenous communities and their territories across South America. Informed by her research, her current installations and publications highlight the coca plant’s ceremonial role in the indigenous cultures that cultivate it, pushing back on the demonization it has endured in the West. Her work also suggests new avenues for how the plant can be a force for good in the Global North and South.

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Posted on , by Etty Yaniv

Among Friends

In Conversation
Co Curators of Among Friends, 2018, 2019, 2022

In the summer of 2017, Beth Dary and Patricia Fabricant visited the Museum of Modern Art to see the Robert Rauschenberg show Among Friends. As they were looking at the exhibition, they separated and later found each other at the installation of Hiccups, which consisted of ninety-seven sheets of handmade paper with original Xerox transfer collages zipped together. “At that moment, we both had the same thought—we could hand out zipper papers to our friends to create a great collaborative show,” they recall. Patty had been simultaneously talking with Alexandra Rutsch Brock, who was similarly inspired by Hiccups and had even gone so far as purchasing some zippers. They reached out to their friend groups, and it took off from there. “We had no idea how it would turn out, but we knew it would be a fun adventure,” the co-curators say. Since this art project initiative started during the Trump administration, when women’s rights were under attack. it was important for them to include a charitable component such as Planned Parenthood.

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