Carl Grauer’s “A QU(i)E(t)ER Interior” opens at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Artist Profile
Portrait of the artist in his studio in Poughkeepsie, NY. Image Credit: Matt Moment

In Carl Grauer’s latest suite of paintings for Carrie Haddad Gallery titled A QU(i)E(t)ER Interior, the Kansas-born visual artist elicits a disregard for distinction between the animate and the inanimate. Throughout, Grauer characterizes the home he shares with his husband Mario in Poughkeepsie, paying special attention to the majesty of light as he portrays his abode and the mementos that adorn it. Hearkening back to his Lost & Found series from 2017—wherein Grauer also documents everyday objects—he now contextualizes his personal artifacts in space and time. At once, he conveys his meditations on queerness, mortality, and the omnipresence of his mother, Janice, who passed away early in 2023 following her battle with Alzheimer’s.

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Jesse Pallotta – QT Art Camp

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund

Project Profile: QT Art Camp Brings Free Art Workshops to Queer and Trans Youth

Photographer: Carmen DeCristo

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

QT Art Camp just announced its summer series of art workshops for queer and trans youth taking place in New York. These workshops are free and welcome to youth ages 13-19. During the workshops, youth will work with NYC-based trans artists. Workshops including vogueing, film photography, painting and drawing. Youth are encouraged to learn new skills, discuss art with their peers and mentors, and will leave with a finished art piece. QT Art Camp is starting local but hopes to reach youth nationally, especially in smaller cities that don’t currently have many resources for queer and trans youth.

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Decolonizing Ecological Encounters at The Gallatin Galleries

Featured Project with Co-Curators Anastasia Amrhein and Patricia Eunji Kim

Gallery view with works by Tessa Grundon, David Nasca, Joiri Minaya, Himali Singh Soin and Alexis Rider, and micha cárdenas.

Fluid Matters, Grounded Bodies: Decolonizing Ecological Encounters at the Gallatin Galleries in New York City explores complex questions around impermanence, belonging, transformation, and erasure as they relate to human and non-human lives and the earth itself. The exhibition showcases the work of several contemporary artists, of various backgrounds, who utilize a broad range of media. It includes work by Farah Al Qasimi, Beatriz Cortez, micha cárdenas, Tessa Grundon, Joiri Minaya, Ada M. Patterson, Himali Singh Soin, and Alexis Rider, among others. The show runs from July 22 to August 17, 2022. Co curators Anastasia Amrhein and Patricia Eunji Kim shed some light on this group show.

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The Baroness at Mimosa House London

Art Spiel Photo Story

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (c. 1921-22), George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, LC 5677-2. From digital scan of photograph.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (c. 1921-22), George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, LC 5677-2. From digital scan of photograph.

The Baroness at Mimosa House in London is a group exhibition dedicated to Dada artist, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927). The exhibition manifests the ongoing influence of the Baroness on contemporary artists and poets, showcasing artworks and performative contributions created in homage to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven or influenced by her radical work and effervescent personality. The show questions the legacy of Dada poetry and performance today, in a feminist and queer dimension in particular. How can artists navigate the art world, politics and society while creating a work which resists and disrupts the conventional canon? Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven becomes a role model and inspiration for international artists of different generations and media of work.

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Evan Paul English – VIEWFOUND at Chashama

Featured Artist


VIEWFOUND by Evan Paul English at ChaShaMa Gallery, curated by Salt Gallery.

Brooklyn-based artist Evan Paul English uses a small viewfinder to discover compelling compositions within the fabrics he collects and enlarges them to abstract paintings of different scales, working across painting, sculpture, murals, and wallpaper. VIEWFOUND, his current solo exhibition in Brooklyn, features work along these lines and is on view at 324 5th Avenue through December 6th, 2021. Presented by Salt Gallery in collaboration with ChaShama, the show includes eight new works that translate American vintage floral design into paintings, referencing gender, sexuality, and class.

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Vick Quezada: Interconnected Matter


Artist photographed with their work, Tabled Remains, 2018. Currently on view at El Museo del Barrio. Photograph by Jill Richards

Vick Quezada (they/them) is an Indigenous-Latinx artist, they queer the archaeological through hybrid forms and aesthetics. Inspired by the guiding principles of Aztec Philosophy, Quezada integrates the theory of interconnected matter and how it’s embedded in the cosmos, planet earth, ecology, and all lifeforms. These elements of matter cannot be governed by sovereign powers as they are inherently queer and infinte. Quezada activates these themes and histories through their work, and this is conveyed by way of digital photography, video, performance and sculpture. 

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Julia Kunin at Kate Werble Gallery

In Dialogue with Julia Kunin


The artist with Queen of Mars

Running through March 4rd, Julia Kunin’s exhibition Mechanical Ballet at Kate Werble Gallery features ceramic wall reliefs and caryatids that create an imaginary narrative of sexually charged figures. “They are at once fortresses in themselves, a merging of body, machine and architecture, ready to become weaponized,” the artist says. The works draw from the hard-edged geometric rhythm found in Art Deco objects and the relentless patterns pay tribute to Art Nouveau and Op-Art. Her most recent large wall pieces are made up of multiple sections, with the potential to be re-arranged and taken apart. Julia Kunin refers to them as sculptural drawings in clay, that vibrate with iridescence — “the destabilizing psychedelic color enables the figures to change and move in their ever-shifting narrative frieze,” she says.

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Will Hutnick – Artist as Facilitator


At the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collar Works, Granville, NY, July 2019, Photo by Monica Hamilton

Will Hutnick is an artist, curator, co-director of Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn from 2015 to 2020 and Director of Artistic Programming at the Wassaic Project upstate NY. In his paintings Will Hutnick is using rollers, and includes other mono-printing-like methods to create repetitive passages which form playful and unexpected relationships between shapes and colors. He shares with Art Spiel some of his work process, reflections on the ways his paintings have developed, and some of his other art related practices.

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Instagram’s Shadow

In Dialogue with Curator Jac Lahav

Tiffany Saint Bunny: Bumper Sticker

Now that many cultural institutions are still closed and we get much of our visual information from social media, artist and curator Jac Lahav has launched the provocative group show Instagram’s Shaodw exploring through the stories of 17 artists how their artwork is being censored on social media and how they are fighting back. The show started in June 1st and will be online through August 31st, then it will go live on the website as an archived history. It includes work by Betty Tompkins, Christen Clifford, Chiara No, Clarity Haynes, Joanne Leah, Raw Meat Collective (Kyle Quinn), Karlheinz Weinberger, Kumasi Barnett, Lissa Rivera, Leah Schrager, Michael X Rose, Micol Hebron, Peter Clough, Shona McAndrew, Steve Lock (Bill Arning), Sara Jimenez, and Tiffany Saint Bunny. Jac Lahav discusses here why he sees this group show as particularly timely and shares the background for some of the work.

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Artists on Coping: Tim Tate

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Sacred Heart of Chance, 18 x 10 x 4, Blown Glass, Found Objects

Tim Tate is an HIV+ studio artist co-founder of the Washington Glass School in Washington, DC. Tim’s work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. He was president of the Triangle Artist Group ( TAG -a queer artists coalition ), and chairman of the first Art Against Aids in Washington, DC. He was also the 2010 recipient of the Virginia Groot Foundation award for sculpture, 2nd place in the 2017 London Contemporary Art Prize, and is a 2018 James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Artist. He participated in the Glasstress show with Ai Wei Wei and Vic Muniz during the 2019 Venice Biennale.

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