photogravure – Art Spiel

July 28, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Spiritual World at RAINRAIN

Photo story

Installation view, photo courtesy of the gallery

Spiritual World, the title of the current group show at RAINRAIN, references Alfred Stieglitz’s Spiritual America, a 1923 photograph of a harnessed, castrated horse. The powerless restrained stallion—a traditional American symbol of unstoppable prowess—symbolized for Stieglitz the loss of spirituality in his contemporary American culture. The organizer of Spiritual World, Theodor Nymark, a Copenhagen-based artist who also shows work in it, brought together seven artists from Denmark, Korea, and the USA to explore how spirituality can exist today outside conservative religious ideals and ultra-liberal new-age paganism. In a text for the show, Nymark specifies further how he sees spirituality—”like a multifaceted metaphor, many-sided, a prism with no central outpost, only imagination. Not just a lake, a mirror. Not just a car, a vehicle.” These notions reflect the overall premise of this show.

August 6, 2021August 10, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Instituting The Re Institute in Millerton

In Dialogue with Henry Klimowicz, founder and director

The Re Institute empty, 2021, photo courtesy of Henry Klimowicz

The Re Institute is an extension of Henry Klimowicz’s studio, a very large 1960s dairy barn outside of Millerton, New York. About 11 years ago sculptor Henry Klimowicz started the gallery as a response to living in the “center of nowhere”, as he puts it. The artist says that the gallery allows him to have extended working relationships with other artists and their work. “I try not to know what a show will be about before it opens and I get to spend the length of the exhibition becoming aware of all of each show’s nuances,” he says about his curatorial process. A normal season at Re Institute includes 4 to 5 shows, which mostly feature 2 to 3 artists showing in the large space upstairs and another person downstairs. “I try to get each artist to have a specific reason for showing in the gallery outside of the possibility of selling work,” he says. This fits his vision of Re Institute as a non-profit institution. It’s important for him that the featured artists will find reasons to use the space uniquely. “There has to be something in the process of showing an artist that brings depth to the artist’s understanding of their own work or the process of exhibiting their work,” he says. These different ways of interacting with each artist have become the most important aspect of the space for him.

July 20, 2020August 8, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Paulette Myers-Rich – Eyes with a Sense of Touch

*Soft Black Petal,* silver gelatin print, 20×24”, 1985

Paulette Myers-Rich ‘s photography-based art books and prints reference abstracted landscapes where industry and nature intersect. Paulette Myers-Rich has consistently focused her gaze on the very moment of transformation in both interior and exterior spaces, when a place, nature, history, altogether shift. The artist shares with Art Spiel how she has developed her practice, her notions on book making, and how she sees her role as an artist today.