It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Check out Danelle Manthey's Christmas USA at Jenkins Johnson Gallery opening tonight from 6-8pm. 

"A childhood family ritual served as inspiration for Danelle Manthey’s series of photographs entitled Christmas USA; every holiday season, her family loaded into the car and traveled around their South Dakota area, looking at houses covered in Christmas lights, much to the chagrin of Manthey, who would have preferred to be at home opening presents. When visiting her family as an adult, the renewed tradition sparked curiosity within the photographer, causing her to wonder about the people behind the lights. Manthey, who has twice been selected as Chashama’s Artist in Residence, began documenting the families of these decorated homes in front of their masterpieces in December of 2003, and continues to do so each year at Christmastime, shooting in South Dakota, upstate New York, New Orleans, Florida, and New York City, among others. As Manthey states, her “images are but a glimpse into the world of [her] subjects. Identity and the question of individuality are the themes”that are pervasive within the series”; her ultimate goal is to communicate something about the subject and have it understood through the portrait process."

Christmas USA will be on view until January 8th.

Jenkins Johnson Gallery

521 W. 26th St

5th FL.

F.L.O.A.T Gallery Opens

A new gallery is opening in Brooklyn this week. Check out the opening this Friday night:

2 Shows, 1 Building. Opening Tomorrow at 111 Front St

Klompching Gallery presents Jim Naughten’s first solo exhibition in the United States, featuring photographs from Re-enactors.

In this body of work, Naughten has photographed some of the thousands of people, who step out of their daily lives to transform into historical characters from the First and Second World War.

Naughten has investigated the phenomena of re-enactment culture with a formal photographic rigour, that contributes to the role of photography in reinventing history. The portraits, themselves, are mostly three-quarter profile, from the legs up and with a stark, neutral backdrop. The striking detail of each image draws attention to the exactness of the costumes being worn and to the expressions of the subjects. Titled only with reference to nationality, unit and rank — nothing of the real lives of the individuals is revealed. The viewer is compelled to look and to wonder about who chooses to play a WWI Gunner, a US Medic or an SS Officer?

Inspired by Richard Avedon’s In The American West, Naughten has stripped away the context of the participants, heightening the sense of artifice. These flawless digital prints — that include tanks and battle scenes — chromatically echo photographs of the past, yet are undoubtedly contemporary.

Jo Ann Walters  Vanity + Consolation at Kris Graves Projects

Jo Ann Walters has been practicing photography since the early 1980's. This selection of exquisite color photographic portraits from Walters' series Vanity + Consolation were made between 1985 and the present. She has been described by seminal photographer William Eggleston as "one of the few independently original photographers working in color today.” These original color prints have never been exhibited in New York. Walters uses her small blue-collar hometown, Alton, Illinois, as her continuing inspiration. Approaching her subjects through the eyes of an insider with all of the ambiguities and contradictions this implies. Walters observes the intimate moments of the women, girls, children, and families pictured within the confines of the domestic space, Walters examines the complexities and forcefulness of inner life.

Both shows run November 4th - December 18th. Join me at the openings tomorrow evening from 6-8pm.  Click here for directions.

After All

Laura Letinsky in Conversation with Lynne Tillman, Wednesday, September 15th, 7 pm at the SVA Theatre. On the eve of her upcoming solo exhibition, Letinsky will discuss her work with fiction writer and art critic Lynne Tillman.  Letinsky's solo exhibition, "After All," will be on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery from Sept 16- Oct 30th.

Digression

Please join me this Sunday for the opening of Digression at Hendershot gallery. I am very excited to be showing my installation Time, in Memoriam. This is sure to be a fantastic show featuring work by my fellow LMCC alums Kenya (Robinson) and Liz Magic Laser as well as Simone Leigh, Chitra Ganesh, Mary A. Valverde and Divya Mehra. Details below:

A New Kind of Beauty

                                                                                               Michael                                                           

A NEW KIND OF BEAUTY — Phillip Toledano

SEPTEMBER 9 — OCTOBER 29, 2010

Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 8, 6:00pm—8:00pm

Brought together for the first time as a solo exhibition, these breathtaking and provocative portraits depict people who have reconfigured their bodies by means of extensive plastic surgery. The photographs raise questions about self-perception and social paragons relating to what constitutes perceived notions of beauty. 

Don't miss this exhibition! 

KLOMPCHING GALLERY is located in the vibrant district of DUMBO, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. 111 Front Street, Suite 206  Brooklyn, NY 11201

Aperture and Steven Kasher Tomorrow Night

Aperture Gallery Presents: Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain

A new exhibition of photographs from Eirik Johnson’s body of work and recently released monograph Sawdust Mountain will open at Aperture gallery April 15th and will remain on view through June 4th.

In Johnson’s words his photographs are “a melancholy love letter of sorts, my own personal ramblings.” This poetic sensibility is apparent in the images of Sawdust Mountain which consider the environmental impact and sustainability of industries reliant on the natural resources of Oregon, Washington and Northern California. Depicting towns at the heart of the worlds of logging and salmon farming in the U.S., Johnson captures the uncertainty that follows after an industry boom has ended as well as the hazy light and landscapes of the Northwest.

Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain

Opening Reception:

Thursday, April 15, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505 - 5555

A group show titled Between the Bricks and the Blood: Transgressive Typologies, co-curated by Steven Kasher and Damon Brandt, will be on view at Steven Kasher Gallery from April 15 to May 8. The show will feature grids of work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andy Warhol, Walker Evans, Emory Douglas, the Minneapolis Police Department, Ara Galant, Alexandra Penney, Hyers and Mebane, the IRT Corporation, Anonymous and more. The exhibition will explore a grid of themes, including: the portrait as incarceration, anonymous engineers as artists, the inverse effects of seriality, revolution and repetition, the bureaucratic gaze returned, and chance as a disruptive strategy. The opening reception will take place on April 15 from 6-8 pm. 

Steven Kasher Gallery 521 West 23 Street New York, NY 10011

Vestige Opening Reception

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday April 9th 7-11pm, 58 Gallery, 58 coles st jersey city nj. 07302

DIRECTIONS: 58 Gallery is easily accessible from NYC by PATH train. Enter the PATH station on 6th Ave. at 33rd, 23rd, 14th, 9th, Christopher St., or World Trade in Manhattan and exit at Grove St. in Jersey City. Take a short walk up Newark Ave., make a right onto Coles St. The gallery is between 3rd and 4th. 58 Coles Street.

For more info, visit: Fifty8.com

Vestige pairs the work of Justine Reyes and Sonja Thomsen. Through both photography and installation both artists’ work tackle the concepts of memory and loss.

Justine Reyes: These Last Things consists of large-scale color photographs of the interior of four drawers. I took these drawers out of my uncle's dresser after he passed away.  The title refers to the Novissima or the Four Last Things that every man must face; Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. I chose this title not only because my uncle was Catholic and very religious but also because it refers to the things we leave behind when we die. These drawers are the last physical trace or vestige of my uncle, left untouched in his memory.

 Sonja Thomsen: As the word Lacuna references both intellectual and physical gaps, the temporal installation titled lacuna is a metaphor for memory and aging.  70 small images hang on the wall, some in stacks of reproductions waiting to be peeled away.  Throughout the duration of the installation the images are removed, fade and reveal an impression in plexi of the image that was once there. Place and person become symbol and impression in the work creating an emotive narrative suspended in the gap between; a man straddling dementia, a boy in his teenage prime, hands cradling the last harvest of raspberries.  

Photos and Philly Cheese-Steaks!

Photo by Klara Kallstrom
The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center presents it's second exhibition Going from Nowhere: Accumulated Images curated by Sarah Stolfa and Christopher Gianunzio.
For this exhibition, the Internet becomes both a practical means of acquiring imagery as well as a conceptual strategy. The exhibition includes works from 8 artists from around the world shooting with any digital device (camera, phone, computer), who will then submit images electronically to PPAC each week. PPAC will print the images and add them to the exhibition, thereby taking the show from nothing to a full show over 3 months. The exhibition space will continuously change and grow, starting with 2 photographs by each artist and ending with 24.
Rather than presenting finished bodies of work, the aim of this exhibition is to discover what happens when new projects are shown together. The end result is a group show whose appearance may resemble that of a studio rather than the traditional white cube. The gallery will be transformed into a non-traditional exhibition space; work will be hung salon style, without frames and printed at various sizes. This method of presenting work serves as a metaphor for our image saturated culture and reflects how digital imaging and the Internet has changed the way we experience and create photographs.

Artist included are:
Nathan Baker, Berlin, Germany
Jen Davis, New York, United States
Emmanuel Guillaud, Tokyo, Japan
Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt, Gothenburg, Sweden
Conor O’Brien, Sydney, Australia
Michael Schmelling, New York, United States
Suyeon Yun, Seoul, South Korea

December 1, 2009 – February 28, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION: December 10, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Lecture by Lucy Gallun, Curatorial Fellow of ICA, 7:00 pm

Opening Night!

So this is it. Labor day is here, no more white shorts and dresses, back to school, back to work. Summer is officially over but that means one thing to look forward to here in NYC. First Thursdays are back in Chelsea in full force. There will be a lot of great shows to go check out, but this Thursday I will be at ClampArt for the much awaited New York show of Amy Stein's Domesticated. See you this Thursday 9/10/09 from 6-8!

AMY STEIN
DOMESTICATED

September 10 - October 31, 2009

ClampArt is pleased to announce the exhibition of Amy Stein's photographic series, "Domesticated"- the artist's first show with the gallery.

In this body of work Stein explores the archetypal motif of man verses nature. More specifically, her photographs explore the tenuous relationship between man and animals as human civilization continues to encroach upon nature. Informed by actual newspaper accounts and oral histories from citizens of the small town of Matamoras in Northeast Pennsylvania, which borders a state forest, Stein's photographs are inspired by true events.

The artist writes: "My photographs serve as modern dioramas of our new natural history. Within these scenes I explore our paradoxical relationship with the 'wild' and how our conflicting impulses continue to evolve and alter the behavior of both humans and animals. We at once seek connection with the mystery and freedom of the natural world, yet we continually strive to tame the wild around us and compulsively control the wild within our own nature. Within my work I examine the primal issues of comfort and fear, dependence and determination, submission and dominance that play out in the physical and psychological encounters between man and the natural world."

Amy Stein was raised in Washington, DC, and Karachi, Pakistan. In 2007, she was named one of the world's top fifteen emerging photographers by American Photo Magazine. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and in Europe, and her photographs are represented in such prestigious public collections as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; the San Jose Museum of Art, California; and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona.

Copies of Stein's first monograph will be available for sale during the run of the show. [Domesticated (Portland, Oregon: photolucida, 2008), 64 pp., 25 color illus, $24, with an essay by George Eastman House curator, Alison Nordström.]

Image: © Amy Stein, "Riverside," 2008
Digital C-print (Edition of 3)
30 x 40 inches
Courtesy of ClampArt, New York

 

 CLAMPART

521-531 West 25th St
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001
+1 646.230.0020

CLAMPART

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