Featured Project: with founder and curator Magdalena Wisniowska
Johanna Strobel, Low Affinity, 2021, installation view
Johanna Strobel’s mind-bending multi-media sculptural installations at GiG Munich resonate with an urgent longing for an orderly system while a sense of entropy surfaces simultaneously. Plug going into socket, red and blue lights turning on and off—hint at an unstable world where information is lost through failing USB cables and unreliable mnemonic devices.
Elisa Gutiérrez in conversation with Miguel Gleason, Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in NY, at the opening of Common Frequencies. Background video shows Marcela Armas’ video piece “Tsinamekuta”. Image: @onwhitewall
Common Frequencies brings together a group of Mexican artists whose work explore the intersection of art and science through sound, urban ecology, language, and collective imageries through performance, installation, photography, sound, and drawing. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of free bilingual educational programs that encourage the participation of families. The exhibition runs through October 16th. 2021.
Logan Gabrielle Schulman + Benjamin Behrend in Conversation
Gallery View of Exhibition A Golem Sleeps and Wakes in the Mourning, 2021
A Golem Sleeps and Wakes in the Mourning, featuring works by Philadelphia based artist Logan Gabrielle Schulman and writer Benjamin Behrend,is a collaborative interactive exhibit of images, objects, and video from the theatre of grief, on view at the Old City Jewish Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA through July 2nd. Benjamin Behrend, a writer and performer, says he has recently been straddling the worlds of comedy, performance art, and also various explorations of faith, especially these past few years. Logan Gabrielle Schulman (they/them) is a queer interdisciplinary artist, with a background in theatrical performance, directing, playwriting, and designing, while also developing over the last few years a foundation in the visual arts. They say their work “primarily investigates modern crises of faith and collapse,” which they started investigating initially by drawing on their theatrical design experience through installation work, and gradually later on, in smaller scale work as well. Schulman’s work also draws upon their experience as a Jewish educator teaching about the Jewish diaspora and Holocaust history.
Lydia Viscardi’s scintillating multimedia tarpaulins festoon the airy, post-retail environs of Five Points Gallery in Torrington CT. This quaint looking old mill town straight out of middle America may seem an unlikely destination for contemporary visual art, but Viscardi’s new work is worth a trip to the hinterlands. Ostensibly Viscardi’s imagery encompasses the weighty notion of life after death, but I was inspired by their joie de vivre.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.
David Borawski with his work You go forward I go backward somewhere we will meet, 2020, in the exhibition Mill St. in New Haven. Photo by Peter Brown.
David Borawski is a multi-media installation artist and an independent curator living and working in Hartford, Connecticut. His artistic practice is comprised of sculpture, video, drawing and digital prints. Conceptually driven, the work reflects upon pop culture, radical politics, art history and the dark alleys of society while drawing upon lived personal experience.
Surveillancescapes, Archival pigment print on cotton paper, 2019
Tim van den Oudenhoven is a Belgian-born artist who currently lives and works in Berlin. His photo-based depictions of desolate landscapes with a strong suggestion of surveillance inspire conversations on the dynamic between the visible and the invisible, the witness and the witnessed: in brief, the nature of being seen.
In Dialogue with Juan Puntes on PERFORMA 19 @WhiteBox Harlem and beyond
Juan Puntes, who founded WhiteBox as the original Chelsea non-profit alternative art space in 1998, built a highly reputable venue known for its thought-provoking exhibition with cutting edge contemporary artists vis-à-vis little known avant-garde historical influential producers. While focusing on site-specific work, performance, and video projects, WhiteBox is also offering a wide array of programming including readings, lectures, and panel discussions. Juan Puntes is sharing with Art Spiel some of WhiteBox’s history, his vision, and his upcoming programs.
Nancy Bowen, Princess T, ceramic, turtle shell, metal stand, mixed media,, 48 x 20 x 20 inches
Nancy Bowen‘s layered sculptures, installations, and collages coalesce stories of different cultures, of past and present. Her objects bring to mind a flavor of unidentified myths, archetypes and rituals, often involving images of the female body. The artist talks about her art making process, projects, and the way she sees her role as an art educator.
Jessica Segall, (un)common intimacy, 2018, video still
Throughout her highly imaginative multidisciplinary projects, Jessica Segall has been engaging with a wide range of fragile ecological sites, frequently with animals as her collaborators – for instance, swimming with tigers and sculpting with live bees. Jessica Segall shares with Art Spiel some of her work and thought process, as well as her upcoming projects. You can meet her and hear more about her work during the 2019 Dumbo Open Studios weekend.
Katya Grokhovsky‘s performances and sculptural works embody raw energy fueled by her rigorous and uncompromising process. Grokhovsky’s work is extreme, fearless, cohesive, and ambitious. With great agility she combines media like performance, video, drawing, and sculpture to create immersive environments that delve us deep into a chaotic unknown – the complexity of self, the duplicity of social norms, the twilight zones of life and art. In this interview for Art Spiel Grokhovsky elaborates on her impetus, ideas, and projects as a prolific artist and curator.
