Did you see the article on Votes for Women in yesterday’s AMNewYork? Check out Linda Perney and Lauren Johnson’s take on the show and watch Curator Maura Reilly discuss some prominent objects from the exhibition in a short video clip!
Opening…
Sustaining Vision: A Tribute to Arlene Raven opens March 5th at the Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery of New Jersey City University. Eight female artists have collaborated to organize a multimedia exhibition in honor of the late feminist art historian and critic Arlene Raven. In 1973, along with Judy Chicago and Sheila de Bretteville, Raven co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. Later in the 1970’s, Raven also helped launch Chrysalis magazine, was a founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art, and initiated the Lesbian Art Project. An artists panel will be held on March 18th, 5:30-7 p.m.; the exhibition runs through April 16th.
(Photograph of Arlene Raven taken by F. Stop Fitzgerald. Courtesy: New Jersey City University, The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery.)
Through the Looking Glass-Tattoos & Kimonos, paintings by Janice Urnstein Weissman, opens March 6th at Jenkins Johnson Gallery’s New York location. In her work, Weissman exploits a tension between the photo-realistic rendering of her subjects’ bodies and the mystical, other-worldly nature of her subjects’ tattoos. The resultant painting-within-a-painting effect is further elaborated when juxtaposed with another of Weissman’s key elements, highly patterned kimonos.
(Janice Urnstein Weissman, Tattoo VIII, 2002. Courtesy: Janice Urnstein Weissman.)
Now Open…
Elizabeth Dee Gallery hosts the debut of Adrian Piper’s most recent, on-going body of work entitled Everything. Piper is well-known for her early career as a first-generation conceptual artist who dealt with contemporary social and political issues of race, sex, and class. In this new series, Piper’s work centers specifically on the phrase “Everything will be taken away.” In addition to its obvious conceptual implications, the mantra is technically manifested in processes such as fading, scrubbing, and erasing.
(Adrian Piper, Everything #10. Courtesy: Creative Time, creativetime.org.)
A multimedia show of work made within the past few years, Nayland Blake: What the Whiskey Said, What the Sun is Saying at Matthew Marks Gallery, closes March 8th. Blake’s new small sculptures, made with found materials, represent a subtler, more abstracted version of the artist’s aesthetic. Blake’s drawings are sorrowful daily meditations that convey the alienation felt after the loss of a loved one.
(Nayland Blake, Untitled, 2007. Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery.)
A retrospective collection of work by legendary photographer Nan Goldin remains on view at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki through April 13th.
(Nan Goldin, Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC 1982. Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.)
La Durée at Listasafn Islands National Gallery of Iceland features work by Global Feminisms artist Emmanuelle Antille, as well as Gabríela Fridriksdottir and Gudny Rósa Ingimarsdóttir, through May 1st. These three artists engage with different mediums in their similar explorations of the ambiguities of space and time.
(Emmanuelle Antille, Julie and Arantxa I (from the series Angels Camp), 2002-2003. Courtesy: Galerie Akinci.)
(Anni Holm, Detail of NewWorking project, 2008. Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art.)
Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is holding an event called Stitch ‘n’ Bitch every fourth Tuesday of the month from 5:30-8:00 pm. This event invites knitters to bring their needles and yarn to knit and exchange techniques and stories. The event welcomes needle workers of all levels to participate in this fresh adaptation of the traditional sewing circle. This is going to be a great opportunity to experience and reflect upon the history of female labor and its relationship to visual art and culture. And on Tuesday, February 26, guest artist Anni Holm brings her NewWorking project to share with participants.
(Meg Webster, Warped Floor, 2007. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery.)
Meg Webster’s new works are on view from February 23 through March 22 at Paula Cooper Gallery. If “going green” is your motto for the year than this is a show that you shouldn’t miss. Shaping natural materials such as soil, salt, hay, and water into stark geometrics, Meg Webster’s art questions the fundamental relationship between nature and artifice.
(Diana Cooper , All Our Wandering, 2007, Courtesy of MOCA Cleveland.)
Overdrive, an exhibition of recent works by Diana Cooper is on view from February 23 through March 29 at Postmasters Gallery. Cooper’s creations are extremely labor-intensive; she uses doodling as a point of departure for artworks and recently her explorations have burst off the walls into complex sculptural installations. The center piece of the show is “All Our Wandering,” a multi-sectioned, blood-red structure of interlocking wooden shelves. Laminated onto the sculpture’s hollow interior are digital prints of Cooper’s earlier drawings which are then further drawn upon by the artist.
(Lea Barton, Promenade, 2008, Courtesy of the Artist.)
Denise Bibro Fine Art is showing a recent series of multi-media works by Lea Barton through March 6. Barton’s show, titled South, features collage and paint combined with photography and printmaking techniques to create richly layered works that explore the material and political history of the South, and dissect stereotypes of femininity in Antebellum and contemporary Southern culture. Through photographic self-portraits, Barton takes on multiple identities such as the virginal veiled bride, burlesque vixen, prom queen, and Miss America, supported by female ephemera like dressmaker’s patterns, and lace.
(Pilar Albarracin, Mortal Cadencia, 2008, Courtesy of the Artist.)
La maison rouge in Paris presents Mortal Cadencia, a series of recent installations and video work by Pilar Albarracin. The show run from February 22 through May 18. In her work, Pilar Albarracin questions the traditional hierarchy of genres by traversing diverse mediums such as video, performance, sculpture, photography, and installation. Many will remember her video, Prohibido el cante / Forbidden Singing (2000) featured in Global Feminisms, but if you missed it, you can find part of it on Pilar Albarracin’s page on the Feminist Art Base!
(Untitled Film Still (1977-1980/2008) Billboard at Sunset Blvd at the corner of Sunset Blvd and Olive St, West Hollywood. Courtesy of the Artist.)
To commemorate the historical feminist movement’s streetwise and urban activism, Los Angeles hosts Women in the City, an intriguing public art exhibition throughout February and March. The work of four seminal feminist artists will be presented in the urban and social geography of the city: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman will all be showing their work in various locations on billboards, video screens, storefronts, and a movie theater.
**Many special thanks to Angela Oh for helping to compile some of these picks!
Today’s New York Sun “chats” with Ghada Amer, who opens up to writer Alix Finkelstein about her background as an artist, her take on Abstract Expressionism, and our exhibition, Ghada Amer: Love Has No End. Check it out here.
Votes for Women received some attention from Time Out NY this week in a wonderful feature article titled, “The Ladies’ Room,” by Dan Avery. Run out and pick up a copy at your local news stand or bookstore today–it may be off the shelves tomorrow!
On Wednesday everyone basically hit the ground running as we began the load in and installation for our latest exhibition Ghada Amer: Love Has No End. For months prior to the installation, the Museum’s associate exhibition designer, Lance Singletary, and Curator Maura Reilly worked alongside one another developing a layout and floor plan that really gives museumgoers a comprehensive experience of Ghada Amer’s oeuvre. It will be really interesting to see how the exhibition ultimately engages patrons in the space!
Visiting the gallery this week, I had to keep reminding myself that I was at the Museum and not some bohemian artist’s loft in Williamsburg–EVERYONE was lending a hand! Maura was rolling out butcher paper on the floor and escorting many rolls of wallpaper around the space, Lance and some of the art handlers were building a vitrine near one of the entrances, while Ghada busied herself with the configuration for groupings of the smaller works, and kept the staff upbeat with her warmth and good humor. Late in the afternoon yesterday, we received a surprise visit from Dr. Elizabeth Sackler, who stopped by the galleries for a sneak preview of the exhibition! Francesca Ford has documented some of these highlights and others over the past few days–check out her delightful slideshow posted above.
We hope that you will stop by the Museum tomorrow, February 16th, when Ghada Amer: Love Has No End officially opens to the public!
Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Having trouble seeing the slideshow? Photos are also on Flickr.
A few weeks ago, Maura and I paid a memorable visit to the Conservation lab in the Museum where several of the works from the upcoming exhibition, Ghada Amer: Love Has No End have made a temporary home. Associate Conservator Rachel Danzing and the entire Conservation staff have been working to meticulously restore these pieces to their original condition before the gallery installation later this week. One of the things that Maura and Rachel were looking at on the day of our visit was the wallpaper from The Reign of Terror (2005), an installation that Ghada Amer did at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center in 2005. The beauty and vibrancy of the color and pattern on this wallpaper is challenged by the definitions of “terror” or “terrorism”, which are printed in different languages over and over again on the paper, so naturally it’s important that none of this crucial text is cut off or missing prior to the final installation.
Curator Maura Reilly and Associate Paper Conservator Rachel Danzing examine the text on the wallpaper from the artist’s Reign of Terror installation. (Photo: Sarah Giovanniello)
Rachel was nice enough to provide me with a quote on what exactly she and Maura were looking for with the wallpaper: “If I remember correctly, each roll of wallpaper is one complete section where the top half is printed continuously with the bottom half, except the bottom half is printed upside down. In the photograph, Maura and I are checking the join where the top and bottom meet to confirm that the sentences do indeed join up where they should. The wallpaper will be cut and the two pieces joined on the wall to make one section.”
Maura and Rachel unroll the wallpaper to the end, and discover that the writing begins exactly where they hoped it would! Thankfully no unnecessary cutting is needed to ensure that the text matches up when it is pasted on the wall in the gallery. (Photo: Sarah Giovanniello)
After the question about the wallpaper was resolved, Maura and I stopped by the area of Conservation where two early works have been getting a lot of attention. Rachel performed some major conservation miracles on the piece, Untitled (1991). Now that the finishing touches have been made in Conservation, the exhibition is ready to be installed. Check back later this week for a preview of the exhibition during load in and installation!
Two early Ghada Amer works, Untitled (1991), and L’Ange (The Angel) (1991) are mounted on large easels in the conservation lab. (Photo: Sarah Giovanniello)
The video of the Guerrilla Girls performing and accepting their award at the Brooklyn Museum’s fifth annual Women in the Arts event on November 9th, 2007 is now posted! Included in the video is a “Q&A” session with the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center’s very own (and an honorary Guerrilla Girl herself) Maura Reilly. Thank you to the Guerrilla Girls for giving such an inspiring and eye opening presentation, and thank you Robert Nardi for making the video available to the public!
Opening…
Helen’s Odyssey, another signature photo series of classical-yet-contemporary pastiche by feminist artist Eleanor Antin, opens February 15th at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Antin, “determined to present women without pathos or helplessness” in her work (as she writes in her Feminist Artist Statement), here reaches back into the annals of ancient Greek history to give Helen of Troy her due subjectivity, agency, and r-e-s-p-e-c-t. Antin is also included in the Wack! exhibition opening at P.S.1 (see below!)
(Eleanor Antin, The Tourists, 2007, c-print. Courtesy: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.)
An extensive retrospective of the artist-duo Gilbert & George opens February 16th at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. Throughout their practice together, Gilbert and George have sought to erase the boundaries between art and life, using their own images and experiences as source material, and, in accordance with their “Art for All” attitude, to relate to audiences beyond the confines of the art world. The work of Gilbert and George integrates concepts and practices often found in explicitly feminist work such as the engagement with performance and the inevitable balance between artistic subjectivity and objectivity problematized by using their own bodies in their work.
(Gilbert & George, England, 1980, © Gilbert & George. Courtesy: de Young and Tate Modern.)
We’re especially excited to announce the opening of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at P.S.1 MoMA on February 17th. This comprehensive historical survey of feminist and feminist-inspired works, dating from 1965 through 1980, includes 120 international artists and artist-groups. In a genre that often eludes strict definition, Wack! invites valuable insight into both the common themes and the individual concerns of founding feminist artists. P.S.1 is also hosting a fabulous series of performances and related events through March.
(Magdalena Abakanowicz, Abakan Red, 1969. Courtesy: National Museum in Wroclaw and MIT News.)
Now Open…
Side Effects, new work by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, the pair who brilliantly conceived of and created Prada Marfa, remains on display at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin of Paris through March 8th. Side Effects, which opened in conjunction with Paris Men’s Fall-Winter 08-09 fashion shows, dresses abstract, yet undeniably anthropomorphic, sculptures in the latest designs. The inanimate works, thus strangely imbued with gender and social status, become bizarre occupants of the gallery space which require the viewer to consider the institutional context.
(Elmgreen & Dragset, installation view of Side Effects, 2008. Courtesy: Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin.)
Boys Are Us, an overview of Maria Friberg’s photo and video work made throughout the past decade, invites a more general interpretation of the artist’s practical concerns. While Friberg often deconstructs traditional symbols of masculinity, such as the suit and tie, this exhibition more broadly conveys the chilling sense of alienation her subjects express. Whether alone or with others, her characters are isolated and divorced from any recognizable time or place. The show is now open at Kulturhuset, in Stockholm, through April 13th.
(Maria Friberg, one of the series Still Lives 2003-2007. Courtesy: Maria Friberg/mariafriberg.com.)
Sure, chocolate covered strawberries and steamy kisses are nice. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sucker for those sugary treats with cute sayings like “Be Mine” and “You’re Sweet.” But this February 14, why not become part of a global movement? V-Day!
Eve Ensler is practically a household name thanks to her V-Day movement, which supports consciousness raising awareness events and workshops that respond to the impact of violence against women worldwide. Beginning in 1998, Ensler sought to raise awareness and money to support women who are victims of violent crimes such as sexual assault, rape and harassment. Now, in 2008, the supporters of the V-Day movement have raised more than 30 million dollars worldwide and educated just as many.
So what does this infamous “V” stand for? Valentine, Victory, and of course Vagina. Three symbols that Ensler embraces with pride. Events on V-Day include the re-staging of Ensler’s ground-breaking, Obie-award winning production The Vagina Monologues. Past Vagina Monologues productions have included many talented artists, activists, and performers such as Kirstie Alley, Linda Ellerby, Claire Danes, Robin Givens and Glenn Close, among others.
The Big Apple is a host to a handful of Vagina Monologues performances taking place at colleges and universities, and The New School and New York University are just two of the many colleges participating in this worthwhile event.
Get involved and don’t miss out on the show this week. For more information on V-day performances, or to find out how to get involved, visit the V-Day website.
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