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 Alejandra Seeber and choreographer Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon.
Noa Charuvi, Cairn, 2023, oil on canvas, 36×72 inches
45 Jacob took a stone and erected it as a pillar. 46 He instructed his kin, “Collect some stones.” They gathered stones, formed a heap, and shared a meal beside it. 47 Laban named it Jegar Sahadutha, while Jacob named it Galeed. 48 Laban declared, “This heap stands as a witness between us today.” Hence, it became known as Galeed.
Genesis, Chapter 31, Verse 45
A Gal’Ed symbolizes a location marked by significant events—deathly moments or sacrifices. As it appears in the Old Testament, it signifies a covenant. In Hebrew, ‘Gal’ is a heap of stones, and it is the same word for ‘wave.’ ‘Ed’ means a witness. This heap of stones becomes an emblem of the pact between Jacob and his father-in-law: their agreement not to harm each other’s possessions or families. Serving as a symbol of shared promises, Jacob sanctifies it, offering to God on this stone.
Finally! What a joy to meander through a show that is not just a formulaic scaffolding rendered to execute a marketing plan rather than make art. Walking into the building that houses September Gallery’s new space in Kinderhook, NY, The first thing you see is not a wall or architectural ornamentation but a monumental scroll that immediately hints you might be here for a while. This colossal collage introduces Myth Maker, the second exhibition at September Gallery by Laleh Khorramian.
Sanié Bokhari. It’s 11.49 pm here, 2022. 3 x 4 ft. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.
The second edition of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, titled “Contact Zone”, will showcase the work of 48 artists at seven locations across New York and New Jersey from September to December 2023. The curatorial trio adopted the biennial’s theme from a term coined in 1991 by linguist and critical theorist Mary Louise Pratt, which she used to describe “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations.” Katherine Adams, co-curator and an affiliate of EMPAC, explains in a statement how this concept guided their curatorial research: “It allowed us to work with a productively fractured relationship to place. It also encapsulates our attempt to find an organizational concept for artistic infrastructures that are diasporic in form and not only content—that can deal with effects of situations such as exile, alienation, or simply the elusive concept of home.”
Deanna Sirlin, Wavetable, installation view at 211 East 43rd Street, NYC, NY
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.
John Molloy Gallery: installation view “Cutting Corners”
Bob Seng’s collages at John Molloy remake and reimagine the iconic EXIT sign. The artist says that he has chosen these ubiquitous signs for their attitude, a “go out” directive to an alternate space and time, and for their combative red and black elements. Initially he approached these signs as if they were archaeological excavations, selectively removing layers of the red and black paint to reveal what he imagined as “lost” civilizations buried underneath, “possibly a harbinger of our own in future time.”
The work included in Strange Brew, Denise Sfraga’s solo show at the Garage Art Center, explores the life cycle of plants. This fascination with plants has always been at the root of the artist’s creative inspiration. Sfraga, who is based in New York City, says that working in her own garden and experiencing its constant state of flux, gives her the opportunity to witness first hand actual seed germination, leaf and flower growth, the dispersion of the next generation of seeds and the final stages of decay, “an ever evolving landscape of life forms that change color, shape and appearance daily.”
Gabriela Vainsencher with “Epic, Heroic, Ordinary” at Asya Geisberg gallery, March 2023
In her solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery Gabriela Vainsencher exhibits wall hanging porcelain reliefs, referencing the nuts and bolts of motherhood entangled in layers of epic mythological context—Medusa reveals a worried woman with a frying pan and a baby’s pacifier as weapons at hand. The show runs through April 8th, 2023.
Installation view, David Syre: The Black Drawings, SARAHCROWN New York, 2023.
The creative process is inexplicable. It doesn’t require anything but what the creator needs or chooses to use, and there are no guidelines as to how it works: Tolstoy felt he had to write “each day without fail.” Robert Rauschenberg often had The Young and the Restless on television at his studio. Virginia Woolf used to walk miles and miles. There is no telling what will ignite the process, but like a flash of lightning or fireworks in the night sky, it contains such a force that with the right conditions, generates sublime beauty. American outsider artist David Syre found this force when he was only a child in his Pacific Northwestern family home: The intuitive act of pushing crayons on paper on the floor of his grandmother’s kitchen remained in the heart of his practice. Syre’s art evolved and transformed in time, but the pastels remained––in the end, it turned into a persistent, continuing series of over 4500 pastel drawings on black paper. 40 of these drawings are now hanging on the walls of SARAHCROWN New York, a young contemporary gallery in Tribeca, and at the gallery’s booth at the Outsider Art Fair, gathered for two concurrent solo exhibitions titled David Syre: The Black Drawings.
Emma Golden (Executive Director), Mark Golden (Founder and CEO of Golden Artist Colors and President of the Board, The Golden Foundation), Barbara Golden (Founder of Golden Artist Colors and Secretary/Treasurer of the Board, The Golden Foundation)
The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Residency Program began as a dream of Sam Golden. Sam was a paint maker for most of his life at Bocour Artist Colors in New York City and in retirement, moved to upstate New York with his wife Adele. Sam was an incredibly restless retiree. Emma Golden, Sam’s granddaughter says that with the push of Adele, he called up his son, Mark Golden, and asked him to come help him make paint. That is how Golden Artist Colors started in 1980—in an old cow barn in rural New Berlin, New York. This fall I had the wonderful opportunity to be a resident at the Golden Foundation and after this deep experience I wanted to share with Art Spiel readers some insight into this unique residency by interviewing Emma Golden, who currently runs it. When he realized retirement wasn’t for him, he began making paint in a barn, delivering it to his artist-buddies’ studios in New York City.
