Contemporary Art and Culture
at Griffiss International Sculpture Park , Rome, NY
Linda Cunningham – Divisions
… hunger and fear can vanquish all human resistance, and all
freedom … Freedom consists in knowing freedom is in danger.
But to know … is to have time to avoid & prevent the moment of
inhumanity … the infinitesimal difference between the human
being and the non-human being …
————–Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity
Continue reading “Divisions: To Be Human Is To Act Humanely”
Bat Ami Rivlin, who has lived in New York City for over a decade, finds her artistic practice profoundly shaped by the city’s relentless cycle of object turnover. The daily expulsion of waste from restaurants, buildings, and homes onto the streets, followed by the inevitable clear-out, is a stark reflection of urban existence. This phenomenon sparks contemplation on how these transient objects organize our spatial interactions, both during their use and after their disposal.
Continue reading “Bat Ami Rivlin: Functional Narratives”
The current group exhibition at The Boiler | ELM Foundation, Transgressing Lands, curated by A.E. Chapman, features work by Jeannine Bardo, Nancy Cohen, Cristina de Gennaro, Deborah Jack, Natalie Moore, Itty S. Neuhaus, Nazanin Noroozi, Lina Puerta, Corinne Teed, Elizabeth Velazquez, and Letha Wilson, who interpret the horizon’s role as a foundational element for understanding our place in the world. The artists confront pressing issues—preserving landscapes under threat, the ramifications of climate change, the realities of displacement and conflict, the significance of mindfulness, challenging colonial legacies, and the ever-present cycles of destruction and rejuvenation. Chapman’s direction for the exhibition invites viewers to engage with how landscapes can anchor us in the present moment and our collective history.
Continue reading “Transgressing Lands at the Boiler”
As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023, artists Carlos Franco (b. Puerto Rico) and Keren Anavy (b. Israel) both showed their work in the group exhibition Enmeshed: Dreams of Water at NARS Foundation. Franco’s work often deploys appropriated images and linguistic symbols. He seems to be exploring the contextual complexities behind how signification takes shape and how signification continues to evolve as a context-dependent subject. Anavy’s site-specific work has been connected to the multifaceted paradigm of “ecological order,” according to the book Transnational Belonging and Female Agency in the Arts. Her fabricated environments consider the “liminal geographic spaces between political art and escapism.”
Continue reading “The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue”In Dialogue with Linnéa Gad, Magdalena Dukiewicz, and Anna Ting Möller
Instead of transcribing a previously established set of ideologies through scholastic mediums, Linnéa Gad, Magdalena Dukiewicz, and Anna Ting Möller engage with materials that “breathe”—materials whose lives and afterlives warrant separate biographies.
Presented within the context of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone, Swedish artist Gad creates sculptures with limestone, oysters, lapis lazuli, and other materials profoundly connected to the Earth’s carbon cycle. On Governors Island, her sculptures, Shoals I-II, evoke humanity’s resonance with and reliance upon nature. Polish-born artist Dukiewicz juxtaposes industrial components with provocative, organic materials such as hair and blood. In the group show, Enmeshed, Dreams of Water, at NARS Foundation, Dukiewicz’s Object #6 (2023) contains decay, regeneration, and fluidity elements into beautifully translucent and sculptural artwork. Chinese-born Swedish artist Möller, whose work will be presented in Parasites and Vessels at Accent Sisters, unpacks the convoluted social history of kinship via kombucha cultures. The oysters, hair, and kombucha are not subjected to manipulating the artists’ hands; instead, the materials are collaborators in these projects, bringing their subjectivities, histories, and sociological implications into the creative process.
Together with TIAB’s co-curator, Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, the artists speak about their work about technology, materiality, and ecosystems.
Continue reading “The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue”
Donna Zarbin-Byrne, Like Water from a Rock. Here Once Was Ocean, still image from augmented reality animation. Photo courtesy, Donna Zarbin-Byrne
In her installation-based exhibition, Like Water from a Rock, at Arts Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX, Donna Zarbin-Byrne responds to the landscapes of the Chihuahuan desert of West Texas and the West Maui mountains, connecting material sites with an internal process. Western art traditions often portray the landscape as an idealized place to conquer and expand. Zarbin-Byrne frames the landscape as a place to experience the sensate.
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With her public sculptures, Jean Shin makes powerful statements about the climate crisis out of discarded and obsolete materials. She often engages communities in her materials sourcing, mixing social practice into her public sculpture practice to create platforms for discussion. Ingenious and esthetically considered, her works show novel ways to engage with the climate crisis.
Continue reading “Jean Shin the Alchemist: Turning Waste into Art”
Bay Ridge through an Ecological Lens is a multi-faceted public art exhibition hosted by Stand4 Gallery and presented in collaboration with ecoartspace
This interactive, public, community arts exhibition is curated by Jennifer McGregor, featuring artists Rebecca Allan, Aaron Asis, Chris Costan, Kate Dodd, Peter Edlund, Kristin Reiber-Harris, Ellen Coleman-Izzo, Sergey Jivetin, Nathan Kensinger, Rita Leduc, Christopher Lin, Nikki Lindt, E.J. McAdams/ Jimbo Blachly, Nancy Nowacek in collaboration with Carla Kihlstedt and Carlos Alomar, Benjamin Swett and filmmakers: Aaron Assis, Nate Dorr, Sean Hanley, Nathan Kensinger, Nikki Lindt, Emily Packer and Lesley Steele, and Kristin Reiber-Harris
It consists of nature walks and community interventions in the gallery and various locations throughout the Bay Ridge community from April 15 through June 17, 2023. Art Spiel will feature a series of interviews related to this project throughout its duration, here with curator Jennifer McGregor.
Continue reading “Bay Ridge Through an Ecological Lens: Jennifer McGregor”
Bay Ridge through an Ecological Lens is a multi-faceted public art exhibition hosted by Stand4 Gallery and presented in collaboration with ecoartspace.
This interactive, public, community arts exhibition is curated by Jennifer McGregor, featuring artists Rebecca Allan, Aaron Asis, Chris Costan, Kate Dodd, Peter Edlund, Kristin Reiber-Harris, Ellen Coleman-Izzo, Sergey Jivetin, Nathan Kensinger, Rita Leduc, Christopher Lin, Nikki Lindt, E.J. McAdams/ Jimbo Blachly, Nancy Nowacek in collaboration with Carla Kihlstedt and Carlos Alomar, Benjamin Swett and filmmakers: Aaron Assis, Nate Dorr, Sean Hanley, Nathan Kensinger, Nikki Lindt, Emily Packer and Lesley Steele, and Kristin Reiber-Harris
It consists of nature walks and community interventions in the gallery and various locations throughout the Bay Ridge community from April 15 through June 17, 2023. Art Spiel will feature a series of interviews related to this project throughout its duration, here with artist Rita Leduc.
Continue reading “Bay Ridge Through an Ecological Lens: Rita Leduc”Featured Artist
A Grain of Salt | Un Grano de Sal, the new exhibition at the Boiler in ELM Foundation features Fernando Ruíz Lorenzo’s new body of work—a series of paintings and installations with solar salt, styrofoam, acrylic, and aerosol paint. Ruíz Lorenzo’s work merges the history and political narratives of Puerto Rico’s colonial relationships to Spain and the United States.
Continue reading “A Grain of Salt | Un Grano de Sal at ELM”