Contemporary Art and Culture
During the slow and hot month of August, Art still thrives through ChaShaMa in unexpected places around midtown. ChaShaMa – a nonprofit organization that provides studio and exhibition spaces for artists in midtown real estate and other venues throughout the five boroughs – empowers unique and surprising opportunities for installations across the City.
Continue reading “Art Spiel Picks: Midtown Exhibitions in August 2024”In Dialogue
Virginia-based artist Emily Culver’s background is as multifaceted as her artwork. With a father who is a carpenter and contractor and a mother who transitioned from being a midwife to a nursing professor, she was raised in a world that merged craft and body. This upbringing influenced her own creative direction. Adept at procedural tasks, she nonetheless felt a pull towards a less constrained form of expression. College introduced her to painting, but she soon sought more than just surfaces, finding herself intrigued by the interplay of gravity, physics, and mechanics.
Continue reading “Emily Culver: The Idea of a Thing”By Daisy Archer
When she was eight years old, Isabelle Plat’s mother took her to the museum in Lyons, France, to see a show of works by the School of Paris. The young artist remembers being enchanted by the works of Matisse and Soutine and then and there decided she would be painter. Flash forward a decade and Plat was working toward her baccalaureate at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, which offered a rigorous five-year program of academic training. Plat concentrated on sculpture, following the age-old practice of drawing and modeling from antique casts.
Continue reading “Isabelle Plat Reinvents the Portrait”Featured Project: with curator Maria De Los Angeles
The group show, A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary Jersey City, curated by artist and curator Maria De Los Angeles, featuring 18 artists from Mana Contemporary whose work explores current political climate, love, and sense of place. The exhibition runs through 1/15/2022, 3rd floor, Mana Contemporary in Jersey City
Continue reading “A message from the Underground at Mana Contemporary”
“Amulets Ethereal,” the thought provoking group exhibition curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman at Barney Savage features works by Kharis Kennedy, Adam Krueger & Tableaux Vivants, Victoria Manganiello & Julian Goldman, Qinza Najm, Cheryl R. Riley, and Ashley Zelinskie. The artworks in this show run the gamut from manipulated found objects, like Cheryl Riley’s old farm tools and Qinza Najm’s carpet, to fabricated sculptures like Ashley Zelinskie’s 3-d printed futuristic cyborgs and Victoria Manganiello / Julian Goldman’s computerized weaving; from wearable art like the sewn tattooed silicon mask by the duo Adam Krueger and Tableaux Vivants to Kharis Kennedy’s mysterious painting of a masked figure with a goat. Collectively the artworks are recontextualized as open-ended ritualized objects and images endowed with the questionable power to shield the viewer from the most tenuous of perceived dangers. Continue reading “Amulets Ethereal at Barney Savage”