Contemporary Art and Culture
During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.
Julie Torres is a Hudson NY-based artist and co-director of LABspace gallery, a vibrant cultural hub in Hillsdale NY. She runs it with her partner, artist Ellen Letcher.
Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Julie Torres/LABspace”
The NYC based artist Denise Sfraga intersects in her work photography, drawing, and painting. The evolving processes, history, and aesthetics of photography altogether inform Denise Sfraga‘s thought process and practice. This results in an abstracted biomorphic imagery resonating with botany and other organic life forms. At first glance her well defined colorful shapes appear as beautiful abstractions but as you spend more time with them, you may realize that their beauty is a camouflage for darker, mysterious and disorienting undercurrents. Denise Sfraga first elaborates for Art Spiel how her way of thinking came about and then takes us through different series of work to reflect on her process in depth.
Continue reading “Denise Sfraga: Constructing and Disclosing”In dialogue with Jason Urban & Leslie Mutchler on their collaborative project at Nars Foundation
Artists Jason Urban and Leslie Muchler who have been collaborating on art projects since 2012, share with Art Spiel their ideas, process, and ways of collaborating on their current exhibition, Geochromatic Studies, at NARS.
Continue reading “Intermediate Geochromatic Studies at Nars”In Dialogue with Andrew Woolbright
Andrew Woolbright, a NY based artist, curator and founder of Super Dutchess, shares with Art Spiel the genesis of this lower east side art space, sheds some light on its key organizers, and describes the philosophy behind it. He elaborates on Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard, the 3-person current show that he has curated at the venue, with an upcoming reception on January 10th.
Continue reading “Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard at Super Dutchess”In Dialogue with Liz Garvey on her Programming
Liz Garvey says that one of her favorite aspects of the Garvey/Simon Select program is seeing how artists reinvigorate traditional media with innovative techniques. Established in 2010, Garvey/Simon is both a private dealer and art advisory service co-founded by advisor/dealer/curator Elizabeth K. Garvey and contemporary collector, Catherine G. Simon. In this interview Liz Garvey sheds some light on her gallery model and her upcoming programs.
Continue reading “Elizabeth Garvey – on Garvey/Simon”In Dialogue with Jennifer Wroblewski Founder of Gold/scopophilia
Gold/scopophilia is a rigorous artist run art venue in Upper Montclair NJ, founded in 2017 by Jennifer Wroblewski. The founder shares with Art Spiel the story behind her gallery, programming, and current exhibition featuring the work of Leah Tacha.
Continue reading “Stay High – Leah Tacha at Gold/scopophilia”Art Spiel in Dialogue with Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen
Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen has curated The process of calculating one’s position at NARS Foundation. This group show features NARS 2019 season IV residency artists: Esther Hovers, Niklas Asker, Jiin You, Tavi Meraud, Fiona McGurk, Dominique Doroseau, Martin Vongrej, Joonhong Min, Ella Weber, Martin Désilets, Sophie Dupont and Tali Keren. It runs through December 13th. The curator shares with Art Spiel the ideas behind the show, the artists, and a bit about the NARS Foundation venue.
Continue reading “Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen on The process of calculating one’s position at NARS Foundation”
“Wisdom was the feeling for what is high, great, broad, sharp, even, heavy, bright, light, colorful . . . Wisdom was the feeling for an essentially shared reality, for the mystical, for the indeterminate indeterminable, for the greatest determinacy of all . . . but art is reality, and the reality we share must assert itself beyond all particularity.” Hans Arp, Introduction to a Catalogue
Continue reading “Plastic Expressions in Particularity: Nature Moves in Tracy McKenna’s Shift at Able Baker Contemporary”
Throughout her multi-faceted installations, the German-born Canadian based artist Iris Häussler has been slipping in and out of multiple characters. Her invented underdog protagonists live through diverse historical periods and traverse vast geographies. Häussler’s rigorous installations transform any categorization. They are placed between life and art, coalescing multi-disciplinary collaborations including performance, literature, and richly layered visual vocabularies such as drawing, installation and sculpture. The visitor is invited to experience an individual’s life within a specific context of place and history, to decipher the clues from the artifacts and materials throughout installations that reflect on fiction, history and the meaning of a creative identity.
Continue reading “Iris Häussler – Invented Biographies”
Message in a Bottle, installation view at Ground Floor Gallery, 2019, photo courtesy of Jordan Rathkopf
In Message in a Bottle, the current solo installation show at Ground Floor Gallery in Park Slope, the Gowanus based artist Karen Mainenti transforms the gallery into what at first glance looks like an upscale beauty boutique. Mainenti uses this platform to explore the mechanisms at work in the packaging and marketing of beauty products over time, drawing on her own complex relationship to the products themselves. Much of Mainenti’s work examines the subtle but powerful societal expectations of women that show up in ordinary objects. The delicately cast porcelain replicas of her own cosmetics highlight the way objects can be gendered, even when reduced to their elemental forms. Often using humor as a sly way to invite the viewer in, her drawings of creams, lotions and serums using marketing language from real products highlight the inherent contradiction in the ways we read these messages as absurd, yet suspend that disbelief at the cash register when we buy them. Having visited the show when it opened, I was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Karen about how this exhibition came together and how the various series within it have developed over time.
Continue reading “Karen Mainenti: Message in a Bottle at Ground Floor”