Questions posed by Edgar Arceneaux

Prior to his program at ICI’s Curatorial Hub on April 11, Edgar Arceneaux posed the following questions to his Facebook friends, calling on their “collective hive mind”:

Tuesday, April 9:

Dear FB collective hive mind,

Questions:
Is there a feedback loop between the content of our work and the means of distribution that one uses to market it?
Be it the gallery, store room floor or virtual space of the web. By what metrics would one gauge the health of this feedback loop?
How would you describe it’s characteristics which differ from
1990’s to the 2000’s economic realities?

Together, Let’s figure out the real questions affecting our practices in our 21c. Reality.
Please share your responses below!

Wednesday, April 10:

Dear FB collective hive mind,

Question:
Is entrepreneurship considered a value in art practice today? (By entrepreneurship I mean operating openly as an individual business entity aside from the gallery platform)

Thursday, April 11:

What cant be sold? From the last chain of responses,
Market forces appear to be synonymous to entrepreneurship? Though I wonder if this puts all emphasis upon objects in exchange. But what of the other parts, “ideas”, what forces dictate that part of a works distribution?

The In-Between: Artists Build New Frameworks for Institutions

The Studio, the Social, and New Financial Architectures for Creative Communities was moderated by Lisa Dent, Creative Capital’s Director of Grants and Services. In this Creative Capital blog post, Dent writes about artists creating new types of institutions, including Matthew Moore’s Digital Farm Collective; Jennifer Monson’s Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance; and Nick Szuberla’s Campaign for Prison Phone Violence.

“Over the years Creative Capital has noticed that an increasing number of grantees have decided to start their own organizations. We’re realizing that the financial and advisory services we provide our grantees help them not only complete their artistic projects but also find ways to address other needs in our society. These new institutions have focused on issues of social justice, food, product development and critical thinking skills.”

Click here to read the full post.

Kari Conte and Florence Ostende on ARTonAIR

Kari Conte and Florence Ostende on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on March 4, 2013.

A talk with curators Kari Conte and Florence Ostende on their documentation of the longest “exhibition in progress,” do it, the starting point for a discussion on exhibition histories and the rise of self-reflexive exhibitions. Started in 1993, do it employs an open curatorial format questioning the traditional definition of an exhibition as an event limited to a specific time and space.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Chus Martínez on ARTonAIR

Chus Martínez on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on February 18, 2013.

Chus Martínez‘s lecture, Belated Aesthetics, Politics, and Animated Matter: Toward a Theory of Artistic Research, addresses knowledge and the principle of skepticism. Recorded on Oct 17, 2012 at CUNY Graduate Center, The Segal Theater.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Mami Kataoka on ARTonAIR

Mami Kataoka on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on January 28, 2013.

Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, presents a lecture, Into the Equilibrium: Understanding the Changing World from an Eastern Perspective, for the fourth Curators Perspective of 2012. This event was produced by Independent Curators International and was held at the New Museum in New York on September 23, 2012.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Terry Smith & Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev on ARTonAIR

Terry Smith & Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on January 7, 2013.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director of Documenta 13 and art historian Terry Smith discuss his latest publication, Thinking Contemporary Curating, published by Independent Curators International (ICI), at the New Museum in New York City on October 14, 2012. Hear about Christov-Bakargiev’s “allergic reaction” towards curatorial discourse, and listen to Smith’s thoughts on his constituencies of contemporary curatorial thought: ... “exhibit arts work (exhibit the work that art does, not just works of art), renounce reticence, proliferate alternative exhibitionary venues, advocate the infrastructure.”

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Kathrin Rhomberg on ARTonAIR

Kathrin Rhomberg on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on October 29, 2012.

Based in Vienna, Austria, independent curator Kathrin Rhomberg shares “The Virtue of Unprofessionalism,” a lecture co-presented with the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Rhomberg’s lecture correlates late ‘90s and early 2000s Austrian politics with the commercialization of contemporary art. She also discusses the “freedom of art” and the affects of contemporary art on political debates, opinions and public consumption of art.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Stephen Vitiello interview with Australia’s House of Jack

Stephen Vitiello was recently interviewed for the Australian blog House of Jack in relation to his upcoming exhibition at MADA Gallery in Victoria.

How did you come about curating this exhibition?
I’ve always enjoyed curating – but definitely from the point of being an artist, and not a trained curator. I see curating as a format that allows you to create a kind of picture (sonic in this case) through selection, sequencing and creating a spatial context. In the case of this small exhibition, With Hidden Noise, I was invited by Independent Curators International (http://www.curatorsintl.org/) to organize a small, easily containable sound art exhibition. I focused on sound works mixed for the 5.1 surround format (5 speakers, with subwoofer). I listened for works that were distinct but also might have different kinds of connections that would connect to other selected works – some of the elements include field recordings, manipulated sounds of instruments and every day objects, an interested in sound as it moves through space as well over time.

Read the full interview (with great insight into the world of contemporary sound art) here.

Martha Wilson at Pitzer College: Keeping her Composure

A great review by Evan Senn in Inland Empire Weekly, “Pitzer College showcases the power of spectacular feminist art with “Martha Wilson
” states:

Before Cindy Sherman dominated the camera, before Guerrilla Girls had stolen the rebellious nature of feminist art and before Suzanne Lacy brought out “the quilt,” there was Martha Wilson. Wilson was frequently controversial, always busy and with a hand in everything edgy and modern in the late 1970s and ’80s art scene.
“Wilson was once denounced by Judy Chicago for ‘irresponsible demagoguery’ and described by art critic Holland Cotter as one of ‘the half-dozen most important people for art in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s,’” according to Independent Curators International (ICI).
To read the full review, please continue here.

Next Stop, Bushwick

Next Stop, Bushwick

Read full article here.

Review: Daniel Joseph Martinez

Review: Daniel Joseph Martinez in commanding form at Roberts & Tilton

Read full article here.

Marieluise Hessel and Tom Eccles

The Provocateur and His Well-Heeled Collaborator

Read more here.

Cecilia Alemani on Frieze New York

ARTINFO talked to curator Cecelia Alemani about her selections for the inaugural New York edition of Frieze Projects, and how participants in this year’s Frieze Talks have reflected on art’s ability to represent and map the world.

Read more here.

THE FORECASTER: RUBA KATRIB

ELLE’S 2012 FRESH MAKERS
They perform. They paint. They move and shake—and they’re all under 35. Meet the next generation of art-world power players.

Read more here.

Stephen Vitiello in MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight Festival

With Hidden Noise curator Stephen Vitiello has created the score and contributed music to 2 films in the Documentary Fortnight Festival (http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1351) at the Museum of Modern Art this month.

Lynne Sach’s Your Day is My Night will have it’s premiere at the festival. Screenings are: Sunday, February 24, 2:00pm (t2); Monday, February 25, 8:00pm (t1) followed by a discussion with Lynne Sachs and members of the cast.

Sabine Gruffat’s I Have Always Been a Dreamer has some music by me and will show: Friday, February 22, 4:30pm (t1); Saturday, February 23, 1:30pm (t2) followed by a discussion with Sabine. A downloadable schedule for the festival is here.

Thinking Contemporary Curating: Reviews

“Through his act of global metacurating, Terry Smith places different and sometimes contradictory curatorial practices and attitudes into a panorama that fascinates and intellectually engages the reader. It is a must-read for everybody who wants to understand the inner logic of contemporary art processes.”
–Boris Groys, Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University

“Smith’s book is undoubtedly, the first one to attempt a mapping of the elusive terrain of curating from a broad and solid, over-arching yet critical perspective, providing the reader with insightful distinctions and highly perceptive findings of key curatorial accomplishments of the last two decades.”
–Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Picked as one of Artforum Magazine’s “Best of 2012” by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, read what other people have to say about the first book in the Perspectives in Curating series.

Frieze Magazine

Modern Painters

Art Review

ARTINFO Ranks Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years in Canada’s Top 12 of 2012

ICI is thrilled that Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years, 1978–86 at McIntosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario, London was ranked as one of Canada’s top 12 art exhibitions of 2012:

What at first seemed like an uneasy pairing may have provided us a new model for evocative interactions. Jason McLean, the predominant Canadian autobiographist now living in London, ON, and Raymond Pettibon, the pioneering punk-core illustrator from California, share a wonderfully idiosyncratic aesthetic vocabulary with strikingly disparate conclusions. McLean is frenetically contemplative and cajoled by the deep significance (and yet mystery) of place while Pettibon spits visual venom through anti-establishment rhetoric and metaphor. Yet here it works. Pettibon’s influence on McLean is clear, particularly in his stylistic references to zine culture, revealing confessional writings and dexterous penmanship. And amidst McLean’s chatty and cacophonous mind mappings, his strong line evokes those in Pettibon, piquing their strident visual impact. Cleverly tying it all together is an unassuming display case featuring selected Pettibon works and magazines, all owned by McLean himself. – Matthew Ryan Smith

Who else made the list? Continue to ARTINFO’s website http://ca.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/851113/blouin-artinfo-canadas-top-12-shows-of-2012”>here to find out.

FAX at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery makes Top 10 Outstanding Bay Area Art Experiences List

Christian L. Frock for KQED lists ICI’s traveling exhibition FAX at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery as one of the Bay Area’s top 10 Art Experiences in 2012 stating:

“FAX at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery was part of a larger system of exhibitions organized all over the world, based on use of the (nearly obsolete) fax machine as a drawing tool. Several binders of faxes from previous shows were presented alongside new commissions by more than twenty local artists including Kota Ezawa, Pablo Guardiola, and Taraneh Hemami, among others. A series of public events created an interesting dialogue around art’s relationship to technology. Perhaps most interestingly, the premise was built on the simplest of ephemeral gestures and still had the capacity to travel widely and engage many, many people—when this is possible, art is at its best.”

FAX at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, co-organized by the Drawing Center and Independent Curators International, both in New York, with guest curator João Ribas with local programming curated by SFAC Galleries director Meg Shiffler and manager Aimee Le Duc.
To read who else made the list, please continue here.

Resource Center

DOWNLOADABLE CATALOGS

La Otra Tradición. Un encuentro con el arte contemporaneo en Honduras, 2000-2010
with contributions by Karenia Cintra, Ramon Caballero, Manuel Torres Funes, Adan Vallecillo, and Denisse Rondon

Download the catalogue (in English and Spanish)
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Proyecto Batiscafo (London: Triangle Network, 2012)
With an introduction by Dalila López

Download the catalogue (in English and Spanish)
Part I – Feb 08 (Jesús Hernández, Luis Carciga & Javier Castro, Rodrigo Rada, Santiago Contreras)
Part II – Apr/May 08 (Alfredo Ramos, Cintia Romero, Jorge Luis Marrero, Cristian Segura)
Part III – Sept/Oct 08 (Douglas Argüelles, Cesar Barrero, Karime García, Jorge Wellesley)
Part IV – Nov/Dec 08 (Diana Fonseca, Walter Velásquez, Lalo Quiroz, Giuseppe Campuzano)
Part V – Sept 09 (Yuneikys Villalonga, Beatriz Lemos, Pontogor)
Part VI – Nov 09 (Nuria Güell), Josuhé Hernandez Paglieri, Mauricio Esquivel)
Part VII – Feb 10 (Noëlle Lieber, Sandra de Berduccy, Gonzales, Aguiar, Rasúa, Maria Isabel Rueda, Dunieski Martin)
Part VIII – Apr 10 (Julio Mompié & Manolo Castro, Carla Bertone & Miguel Mitlag, Florencia Levy, Edgar Hechevarría)

Temas Centrales, 2000

Temas Centrales was the first regional symposium to discuss artistic practices and curatorial possibilities. At the end of a decade in which several proposals had sparked relationships and cooperative work within the Central American artistic field, TEOR/éTica, under Virginia Pérez-Ratton’s direction, organized in October 2000 an event that brought together a large group of artists, investigators, historians and cultural agents. The purpose was to share artistic proposals and discuss the most urgent problems present within the different contexts.

Some of the most active artists and critical agents of the Central American region, alongside notable international collaborators, where brought together—possibly for the first time—during these intense sessions, which took place in the National Auditorium in San José, Costa Rica. Moderated by Mexican curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, the event revolved around accounts presented by a speaker from each country. Each one rendered a general narration that provided an outlook on their nation’s local production. In most cases, this became a framework for a wider historical report. In addition to the presentation of “national” contexts, the papers and artists’ talks touched on themes that dealt with performance, artistic education, the lack of institutions to promote art, the urgency for independent initiatives, the work of the artist as a cultural agent and the controversial role of curatorship, amongst others. In some ways, the broad agenda proposed by the symposium aimed to provoke and function as a catalyst, thus becoming more than just a program.

Contributors: Adrienne Samas, Bayardo Blandino, Rosina Cazali, Porfirio García Romano, Rocío Fernández, Cuauhtemoc Medina, Aída Toledo, Anabella Acevedo Leal, Patricia Fumero, Galio C. Guardian and Maricela Kauffmann, Rafael Cuevas Molina, Irmino Perera Díaz, Miguel Huezo Mixco, Humberto Vélez, Cuauhtemoc Medina (English texts).

Download the catalogue in English

Download the catalogue in Spanish

Mapping Central America: Honduras

Fundación San Juancito

The FSJ originated through the humanitarian effort of artist Regina Aguilar, who arrived in San Juancito in 1991 to open a private workshop for fine and decorative arts. Initially the workshop functioned as her private studio. Later, realizing the need for training and employment opportunities for the townspeople, Aguilar began training local people through hands-on learning to create products for retail, providing employment and therefore income, while also imparting knowledge of artistic techniques that permit sustainable production indefinitely. Over time Aguilar became aware of the myriad problems in the community and saw the pressing need to form a foundation that would aid the local population of San Juancito to elaborate and undertake projects, to obtain funding for these projects, and to assure skills necessary for individual and community enhancement.

CURRENT PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES SPONSORED BY THE FSJ
Since its inception, the Foundation has been sponsoring the San Juancito Educational Workshop. This vocational training center, formed in 1991, trains ex-miners, farmers, and young people in soldering, forged iron work, metallurgy, wood working, and mosaic, ceramic, and lamp making.

In 1991, the San Juancito Educational Workshop initiated a complementary education program for its employees, enabling them to learn not only a trade but also general art skills along with marketing techniques and workshop management.

After three years, the students receive a diploma in fine arts, design, and production, approved by the Ministry of Public Education. Twice a year (June and December) the San Juancito Educational Workshop hosts a public exhibition of the artwork of its students. These exhibitions have taken place in the town and in Tegucigalpa.

roatanonline.com

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping Central America: Colombia (Caribbean Region)

La Usurpadora

La Usurpadora is an artist-run space in the city of Barranquilla, created by Maria Isabel Rueda and Mario Llanos, to support emerging artists. Tired of the so-called “local art scene,” La Usurpadora believes that art can be seen from a different perspective, more spontaneous and not so “institutional,” contrasting with traditional arts management practices in Barranquilla.

The need to create La Usurpadora emerges from the absence of spaces for artists to show and disseminate their work, and the subordinate position of the local scene, in relation to a Colombian artistic circuit centered in cities like Cali and Bogota.

La Usurpadora wants to work with artists that can show an authentic stance towards the current events of contemporary art, regardless their age or curriculum. As stated by Michele Faguet in El Efecto Cenincienta (2008) [The Cinderella Effect], the strengthening of a local scene fully relies on the aperture of that scene to historical practices and divergent points of view.

Lacking a venue, La Usurpadora works as a nomadic space that occupies different places around the city, and temporarily adapts them to each project.

lausurpadoraespacioindependiente.blogspot.com

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Create at the Cantor Gallery makes a list of most memorable exhibits in Massachusetts in 2012

Chris Bergeron of the MetroWest Daily News places Create among the state’s most memorable art exhibits of 2012:

“By exhibiting work made by artists with profound developmental disabilities, the Cantor Gallery of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester invited visitors to consider the very nature of creativity. Organized by three San Francisco art centers, the two-part exhibit “Create’’ encouraged viewers to recognize how the artists on display possessed special gifts that allowed them to make such striking art. Looking at imaginative by people with Down syndrome and bipolar disorder and others who’ve been institutionalized for decades forced viewers to rethink their views about people with disabilities. No other exhibit in the region did that better than “Create.’‘

To read more please continue here.

State of Mind makes Kenneth Baker from the San Francisco Chronicle’s top ten

Kenneth Baker lists State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 as one his top ten favorite exhibitions of 2012 in the San Francisco Chronicle stating:

“the most informative and necessary to grasping less than obvious underpinnings of the new century’s art”

To catch up on the rest of the list, continue here.

MetroWest Daily News Video with Create’s Matthew Higgs

Chris Bergeron from the MetroWest Daily News reviews Create at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery and coinciding with this review is a video clip of Create curator Matthew Higgs introducing the exhibition.

“The art in ‘Create’ challenges our pre-conceived idea of the meaning of creativity,’’ Curator Matthew Higgs said. He stressed that the work produced by participants in the three programs was “not art therapy’’ but examples of “the latent creativity that exists in everyone.’’ He said the exhibit demonstrates “there’s an equal number of talented people with disabilities’’ in every city and that programs should be available to help them express themselves. “Until we create environments for them,’’ Higgs said, “we won’t be aware of their potential as artists.’’ Ranging from figurative to abstract, the art in the first installment was intriguing in it original use of material and popular culture.

To read the full review, please continue here.

Wesleyan University: Students’ Reflections on Performance Now

Students of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University have crafted reflections on specific works in Performance Now.

Abigail Sebaly on Jesper Just
Ayako Kato on Marina Abramović
Christy Bolingbroke on Boris Charmatz and Dimitri Chamblas
Deborah Goffe on Clifford Owens
Anna Efraimsson on Jérome Bel
Julie Potter on Nikhil Chopra
Katrina De Wees on Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla
Laura Kendall on Spartacus Chetwynd
Megan Brian on Ryan Trecartin
Michèle Steinwald on Jérôme Bel
Randal Fippinger on Omer Fast
Randi Evans on Kalup Linzy
Sherrine Azab on Christian Jankowski 

Continue to read more here.
 

El Plural reviews Living as Form at ARTifariti (Spanish)

In Tifariti, an oasis town in in the Western Sahara, artists from fifteen nations came together to participate in the ARTifariti, the International Art and Human Rights festival in Western Sahara. An iteration of Living as Form (The Nomadic Version) was presented, including artist Federico Guzmán to bring a world of culture and artistic practice to the Sahrawi refugee camps over a period of fifteen days. The artists engaged the local community and used their creative voices to raise global awareness of the situation in Tafariti. 

ARTifariti, is an international art festival in Tifariti where people have been living in the refugee camps for thirty-seven years.

To continue reading the full article in Spanish, please continue here.
To learn more about ARTifariti, please continue here.

State of Mind reviewed in Vancouver’s Here and Elsewhere

In light of State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver’s online magazine Here and Elsewhere has written a wonderful, in depth review of the exhibition, which considers the parallel’s between regional and conceptual art and how this show unearths often overlooked works from the era.

To continue reading the article in full, please continue here.

Performance Now Talks at Wesleyan

Performance Now Talks

WESeminar: Wesleyan Alums in Performance Art
Saturday, October 20, 2012 at 2pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
FREE!
Join a talk with Wesleyan alums working in performance art. Panelists include Liz Magic Laser ’03 (one of the artists featured in the Performance Now exhibit), Aki Sasamoto ’04, Arturo Vidich ’03, and Danielle Mysliwiec ’98. Moderated by Greta Hartenstein ’11 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery during the University’s Homecoming/Family Weekend.

Lecture by RoseLee Goldberg
Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 2pm
CFA Hall
FREE!
Ms. Goldberg will discuss ideas in her upcoming book, Performance Now, to be published by Thames & Hudson in 2014.

Please join us! More information can be found on the Wesleyan website here.

Wall Street Journal: Up in the Air - KAWS

BRIAN DONNELLY, THE 37-YEAR-OLD PAINTER, designer and master collaborator who goes by the handle KAWS—a name he began tagging on walls, billboards and trains as a teenager in his hometown of Jersey City, New Jersey, because, he says, he liked how those letters looked together—has, for perhaps too long now, been tagged as a street artist. Donnelly certainly got his start that way. Long before he could sell a group of paintings for $315,000, as he did earlier this year at the Paris-based Galerie Perrotin’s inaugural Asian show in Hong Kong, or float an enormous balloon of his own design in this month’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—an honor previously bestowed on only four other living artists (Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Tom Otterness and Tim Burton)—Donnelly toiled in grittier territory. His work was no less public.

Read the rest of the article here.

Cuauhtémoc Medina Wins 2012 Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement

Houston’s Menil Collection announced today that its 2012 Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement will go to the Mexico City–based curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, who earlier this year organized the generally well-received Manifesta 9 in Genk, Belgium. Mr. Medina will receive a $15,000 stipend for winning, and join a list of former Hopps winners that includes Eungie Joo, Maria Lind and Adam Szymczyk.

ArtInfo: Nav Haq and Jay Sanders Win 2012’s ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award

This afternoon New York’s Independent Curators International announced the winners of its 2012 ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award, hand-picked from the 15 nominees by uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and they are Nav Haq (above left), a curator at Antwerp’s Het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, and Jay Sanders (right), a curator at the Whitney who co-curated the 2012 Biennial.

Haq and Sanders are the first co-winners of the biannual award, and only its second recipients, following MoMA associate curator Doryun Chong’s win in 2010. The winners receive a $4,000 stipend to be spent on a forthcoming exhibition.

Read the article here.

Gallerist NY: Jay Sanders and Nav Haq Named Winners of ICI’s 2012 Independent Vision Curatorial Awar

Jay Sanders and Nav Haq have been selected as the 2012 winners of the Independent Vision Curatorial Award by Independent Curators International (ICI). Mr. Sanders, curator of performance at the Whitney Museum in New York, and Mr. Haq, a curator at MuHKA in Antwerp, Belgium, were selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of exhibitions and programs and director of international projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The award goes to emerging curators from around the world who have demonstrated “exceptional creativity and prescience” in organizing exhibitions, conducting research and for related writing. The biennial award comes with a $4,000 stipend to support the curators’ independent practice.

Read more here.

New York Observer: Stellar Opening! Zipora Fried’s New Show at On Stellar Rays

The wavy graphite drawings were visible from the street at On Stellar Rays last night, falling and curving in long smooth lines or crossing over and reversing in another layer. They were huge, and beckoning like long dark hair on a pillow. One of the works even had attractive flecks of grey. Hair, clearly.

“It looks like hair but the intention was not so much hair, it was more about movement,” the artist Zipora Fried told The Observer, adding that she makes the works with a simple pencil like the one we were using to take down her words. Ms. Fried, one of the gallery’s first artists, has worked with pencils before but her earlier works tended to be solid coverings of the canvas, incrementally blotting out everything white, whatever the material…

Read the full article here.

WhiteHot Magazine: Olaf Breuning: The Art Freaks

Currently on view at Metro Pictures upstairs gallery is Olaf Breuning: The Art Freaks. The exhibition, his second solo with them since 2009, is composed of larger than life-sized color photographs which make sometimes obscure, sometimes obvious references to well-known 20th Century artists. Each photograph demonstrates an investigational approach into the visual recognition of seminal artists who have been celebrated within the realm of Modern Art and culture…

Read the full article here.

Brooklyn Rail: ELLEN GRONEMEYER Affentheater

What is to be done when one generation’s entertainment becomes the next generation’s disparagement? Does one laugh, cringe, or contemplate? If we can draw any conclusions from the paintings of Ellen Gronemeyer, whose work engages this very question, then it would seem all three reactions are equally valid. Her current exhibition, Affentheater, which translates as “Ape Theater,” refers to the cadres of chimps that would impersonate humans in various comedic sketches on stage. Apparently quite popular during its heyday, the pastime evolved into an idiomatic expression in the German language for situations that are generally noisy and chaotic, as well as any behavior that appears exaggerated and ridiculous…

Read the full article here.

NYTimes: Laurel Nakadate

A Provocateur Who Talks to Strangers

“IT’S a little like sneaking around your old school,” Laurel Nakadate said, flashing a conspiratorial grin as she led a visitor up a staircase to the second floor of the repurposed school building that houses MoMA P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens. Closed and quiet on a mid-December day, that exhibition complex would soon display Ms. Nakadate’s first major museum show — “Only the Lonely,” opening Sunday — and she had just moved into a temporary studio there, across the hall from the galleries where the 10-year survey of her film, video and photography projects would be installed….

Read the full article here.

T Magazine: Jonas Wood

With one foot in Modernist cool and the other in vibrant Pop Art, Jonas Wood gives breathing room to densely patterned paintings of domestic interiors that celebrate the logic of incongruity. “I think painting’s fun,” Wood says in “Interiors,” the catalog accompanying his exhibition, on view from Mar. 31 through May 12 at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, where Wood lives. Austere his work is not. The bold parrot-and-leaf print on a bedspread that nearly consumes a guest room fairly shrieks at the unperturbed Bertoia wire chairs that face it. The Keith Haring figures on a bathroom shower curtain dance to the visual music of intersecting, overlapping grids of colored tile. As the son of art-inclined parents, Wood grew up in such environments, exaggerating them in paintings that pack multiple viewpoints, labyrinthine spaces and iconic images by Picasso, Matisse, Calder, Warhol and others into kicky cabinets of curiosities that feel just like home….

Read the full article here.

NYTimes: Adam Marnie: ‘Locus Rubric’

Expanding on the punched-sheetrock pieces he has exhibited elsewhere, Adam Marnie combines photography and collage with bold architectural interventions in his Chelsea solo debut. In doing so, he refreshes each one of these mediums by making it contingent on the others.

Viewers enter the gallery to find a large sheetrock box with a fist-size hole punched through the center. A framed photograph of a similar wound or fissure hangs on the reverse side of the box, split neatly in two so that light from the aperture on the other side passes through. It’s a pinhole camera with a process-art twist….

Read the full article here.

NYTimes: Lisa Oppenheim: ‘Equivalents’

In her latest solo show Lisa Oppenheim dives deep into photographic history, but knows when to come up for air. In the main gallery at Harris Lieberman, two quasi-abstract bodies of work revisit 19th- and early-20th-century themes and techniques. One, “Leisure Work,” begins with a nod to the pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot, a photogram of lace. But it evolves as Ms. Oppenheim folds the lace in her work, multiplying and blurring its floral pattern…

Read the full article here.

ArtSlant: Shannon Finley

Glossy Geometries
by Parker Tilghman

Do not let size fool you, for it is in their scale where Shannon Finley’s paintings carry the most weight. For his first solo exhibition at Silverman Gallery, Berlin-based Finley has produced a series of small, yet complex, brightly-hued paintings. From afar, the alternating colors and geometric patterns crack kaleidoscopes into distorted illusions of depth and movement. That’s just from afar. Upon closer inspection, the picture plane of these acrylic-on-canvas paintings flattens and I’m drawn directly to the varying surface of the painting and its multitude of textures. A natural play seemingly culled from Japanese anime, video games, and the flashy thrill of frenzied carnival rides offset the seriousness of these works true maturity in their rigorous, formal considerations…

Read the full article here.

ArtForum: Miller Updegraff

Dark ecstasy, expertly withheld, haunts Miller Updegraff’s latest exhibition. The drawings feel enveloped in an ominous silence, while in the separate gallery of paintings, the tinkle of old-timey music seems to leak through a peephole cut from the wall, which when peered through reveals a slow-motion séance. The paintings are quite fine but the drawings are finest. Drawn in an almost holographic coloring of red and violet watercolor pencil and painted with oil, each precise scene murmurs with otherworldly potential, nothing untoward or overtly occult beyond a stilled cinematic cross-fade (well, there is that one with the gorilla, the goat-man, and the radioactive cemetery angel). Each of these paintings and drawings feels tremulous with some mystical feeling of perdition and esoteric ritual….

Read the full review here.

NYTimes: Sam Moyer

Sam Moyer’s beguiling, expansive pictures oscillate astutely between the sublime and the decorative. How she made them is hard to tell just by looking. Mounted on panels whose dimensions range from about 5 to 10 feet, they resemble much-enlarged, black-and-white aerial photographs of mountainous topographies, possibly on another planet. They also are like giant, dark photocopies of profusely wrinkled bedsheets. In most cases they are crossed by paler, translucent bands that appear as if caused by a flaw in the reproductive machinery…

Read the full article here.

ArtReview: Brendan Fowler with Joel Mesler and Carol Cohen

By Christopher K. Ho

Few artists, of whom Brendan Fowler is one, manage to mediate the too-cool-for-school camp (Gedi Sibony, Wade Guyton, anyone at Andrew Kreps) and the always-in-school group (Whitney Independent Study Program alums). It takes a high-wire act to be both visually laconic and verbally sanguine (being a musician doubtlessly helps with the former, while being an editor of ANP Quarterly facilitates the latter). Like that of his closest compatriot, Seth Price, Fowler’s writing, which he issues prolifically in the form of interviews, press releases and essays, hovers on the precipice of foreclosing the actual artworks’ interpretive possibilities. Formal and material impact is necessary to counterbalance such verbiage, and Fowler’s recent show at UNTITLED, Brendan Fowler with Joel Mesler and Carol Cohen (Spring 2011), exceeds the task.

Read the full article here.

PAPERMAG: The Cult of KAWS

In an age where cultural figures are supposed to be somewhat larger than life, and when bad boys (and girls) still get props for their antics, Brian Kaws is perhaps the most unlikely of art stars imaginable. Neither lacking in ambition or vision, Kaws remains uncannily modest and reserved in a way that borders on shy. But when asked about the bizarre discontinuity between the almost hermit-like workaholic and the renown by which just about anything he does sets social media a-twitter, Kaws is not just being coy when he says, “I know the work is getting out there beyond my studio and that I have a lot of opportunities at the moment, but I don’t really think about it a lot.” With Kaws, one has the sense that he eschews such matters mostly because they would be a distraction from what he really cares about, which of course is his work….

Read the rest of the article here.

Terry Smith in Conversation with Jens Hoffmann

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents Jens Hoffmann in conversation with Terry Smith.

In conjunction with the exhibition When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes (on view at the Wattis through December 1, 2012) and the recent release of Terry Smith’s book Thinking Contemporary Curating, CCA Wattis Director Jens Hoffmann and art historian Terry Smith discuss the current state of curatorial practice and the thinking that underpins it.

Art Review: The Power 100 - Dasha Zhukova

It’s been 11 years since ArtReview first produced its annual ranking of the most influential people in the artworld, and it’s been quite a ride – past the ecstatic and the furious, bruised egos and big heads, baffled frowns and knowing smiles.

The contemporary art that we get to see (as opposed to contemporary art in general) and the discussions we have about it are determined by a complex and shifting network of forces and interests. Since its inception, the Power 100 has aimed to map and document these forces and their shifts as clearly as possible. As a result, the list is founded on observation rather than judgements about who is best and who is worst. And you don’t get a crown, a robe, a prize or even a certificate for being number one.

The artworld’s expanding, fragmenting scene faces some big questions: beyond Big Money, there are Big Ideas to be fought over, about who art is for, as much as what it is for. At a time of constant muttering about the 1% and the other 99%, the artworld might be living proof that art really does imitate life.

View the list here.

Ellsworth Kelly: Spectral Colors

Ellsworth Kelly: Spectral Colors
October 26 - December 8, 2012

Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl is pleased to present Spectral Colors, a series of seven new color lithographs by Ellsworth Kelly, on view in the gallery from October 26 – December 8, 2012

On Friday, October 26, the gallery will host a reception from 6 - 8 pm

RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or (212) 249-3324

Read More

Click here for a preview of Kelly’s work for ICI’s Annual Fall Benefit & Auction.

Martha Wilson: ARTFORUM Critics’ Pick

Becky Huff Hunter reviews Martha Wilson at Arcadia University for Artforum’s Critic’s Pick:

Philadelphia
Martha Wilson
ARCADIA UNIVERSITY GALLERY
450 South Easton Road
August 24–November 4

“THE ARTIST OPERATES OUT OF THE VACUUM LEFT WHEN ALL OTHER VALUES ARE REJECTED,” notes Martha Wilson in her early photo-text composition A Portfolio of Models, 1974. Referring to her negotiation and subsequent refusal of cookie-cutter female identities—from “housewife” to “lesbian”—the statement also works as a concise thesis for her interdisciplinary, activist practice. Part of a curatorial project from Independent Curators International, which also generated the Martha Wilson Sourcebook, 2011, Wilson’s traveling retrospective kicked off in Montreal and tracks four decades of her development as an artist, writer, punk singer, collector, and founder-director of the alternative New York space Franklin Furnace.

Working deftly with selections from a vast archive of materials collated by curator Peter Dykhuis, director Richard Torchia has installed an elegant, visual chronology and reference library within Arcadia University’s compact gallery. Particularly dazzling gems are to be found in three distinct groupings of short videos displayed on three monitors, focusing on the artist’s early-1970s work in Halifax, Canada; her 1980s performances with feminist art-punk gang DISBAND; and her later individual practice. Grainy, black-and-white videotape captures oddly cheery, narrated performances such as Deformation, 1974, in which the artist becomes progressively more vulnerable and ugly with the help of makeup and lighting. More recent works like Wilson’s politicized drag acts—where she poses in wigs and pearls as madcap versions of First and Second Ladies—are darkly comedic and raise crucial questions about arts funding, censorship, and the social value of creative work.

A wall-based, multimedia time line traces Franklin Furnace’s evolution from an artists’ publication archive, founded in 1976, to a pioneering, Web-based advocate for ephemeral and “politically unpopular” art. Images of Ana Mendieta’s bloody gestures, Karen Finley’s scrawled commentaries on abuse, and Tehching Hsieh’s yearlong performance of homelessness are reminders that Wilson supported radical practice long before its institutional acceptance. Utilizing diverse technologies that speak to specific historical moments—screenprinted T-shirts, looped analog video, well-stocked slide carousels, and iPads streaming Vimeo.com—“Staging the Self” casts Wilson as being savvy to the ever-shifting ways in which values are mediated while doggedly preserving safe spaces for alternative forms of art and life.

To read the article on Artforum’s website, pleas continue here.

Artforum Posts Curators Talk at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Artforum has featured this special video of State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 curators Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss’s public talk at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver

To stream the video on their website, please continue to the Artforum website here.

Terry Smith Videoconference, 9th Shanghai Biennale

Terry Smith delivers the presentation, Thinking Contemporary Curating (largely drawn from his book of the same title) via videoconference to attendees of the 9th Shanghai Biennale. After the presentation, Professor Smith answers questions from the Shanghai participants.

Zdenka Badovinac on ARTonAIR

Zdenka Badovinac on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on May 9, 2011.

On March 14, 2011, Ljubljana-based curator Zdenka Badovinac spoke at The Curator’s Perspective, an ICI series in which invited curators examine artists who excited them and exhibitions that make them think, and express their views on developments in the art world.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Weng Choy Lee on ARTonAIR

Weng Choy Lee on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on January 1, 2011.

Curator and critic Weng Choy Lee analyzes biennials and the format of the mega-exhibition, particularly with regard to Asia. A skeptic of the power of generalization and overarching theories, Lee discusses the potential of a globalized—loaded skepticism placed on “globalized”—art world in Asia and Singapore. This event was produced by Independent Curators International and held at the New Museum, New York, on December 12, 2010 (59 minutes).

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Paul Chan and Philippe Vergne on ARTonAIR

Paul Chan and Philippe Vergne, Exhibition Machines, on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on June 13, 2011.

Philippe Vergne, Director of the Dia Art Foundation, and Paul Chan, a New York-based artist, discuss the relevance, appropriateness and invasiveness of the exhibition model and the institutions that support it. This discussion is introduced by New Museum Director Lisa Phillips, under the title Exhibition Machines. This event was co-presented by ICI and the New Museum, New York, and held at the New Museum on March 10, 2011.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Dialogues in Contemporary Art: Take 1 on ARTonAIR

Asia & The Caribbean: Hitomi Iwasaki & Herb Tam on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on May 28, 2012.

Hitomi Iwasaki, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Queens Museum of Art, and Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, speak with Leeza Ahmady about their research on the presence of Asia in Caribbean culture and art. Inspired by the occasion of the upcoming exhibition, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World (June–December, 2012), Tam and Iwasaki address the significant void of Asian cultural traces in the region.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Rodrigo Moura on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perspective: Rodrigo Moura on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on July 16, 2012.

On November 9, 2011, Rodrigo Moura presented a lecture focusing on Inhotim, the outdoor contemporary art museum in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, where he has been curator since 2004, and outlined the broader perspective of artistic practice in the last years, especially in Brazil. Moura’s talk is introduced by New York-based art historian and Chief Curator at Inhotim, Allan Schwartzman.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Hou Hanru on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perspective: Hou Hanru on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on April 2, 2012.

Hou Hanru, Director of Galleries and Public Programs at The San Francisco Art Institute and an international curator, discusses locality and institution within the transnational community, new modes of cultural production, and how changes brought about by the production of new economic systems and communities affect the art-producing world. The Curator’s Perspective is an ICI series in which invited curators examine artists who excited them and exhibitions that make them think, and express their views on developments in the art world.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Maria Lind on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perpective: Maria Lind on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on October 1, 2012.

Maria Lind spoke at the CUNY Graduate Center on February 15, 2012, as part of the Curator’s Perspective. Her talk focuses on the Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm, where she has been Director since January 2011. The Curator’s Perspective is an ICI series in which invited curators examine artists who excited them and exhibitions that make them think, and express their views on developments in the art world.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Jack Persekian on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perspective: Jack Persekian on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on June 18, 2012.

Jack Persekian, founder and director of the influential Gallery Anadiel and the Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem, and former director of the Sharjah Biennial, spoke on current happenings in contemporary art at the New Museum on Oct 9, 2011, as part of ICI’s Curator’s Perspective series.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Rosina Cazali on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perspective: Rosina Cazali (Guatemala) on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on August 20, 2012.

Rosina Cazali, an independent curator, specialist in contemporary Guatemalan art, and former Director of the Centro Cultural de España of Guatemala, gave a talk at the New Museum as part of ICI’s Curator’s Perspective series on March 12, 2012.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery, operating at ARTonAIR.org.

Bisi Silva on ARTonAIR

The Curator’s Perspective: A Conversation with Bisi Silva on ARTonAIR.org. Originally aired on May 21, 2010.

In Independent Curators International (ICI)‘s second curatorial talk series at the New Museum, independent curator Bisi Silva joins ICI Executive Director Kate Fowle for The Curator’s Perspective: A Conversation with Bisi Silva. Silva is the founder and director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CCA, Lagos). Silva discusses the mission and history of the Centre, which opened in December 2007, also recounting her career as a curator and the guiding principles by which she has operated, ones she continues at CCA, Lagos. Silva speaks to the various political, social, cultural and artistic notions that CCA, Lagos’ exhibitions have undertaken and dissected, and offers an overview of its numerous programs and workshops. She concludes with a discussion of the work of photographer Zanele Muholi and multimedia artists Safa Erraus, Mary Sibande and Bright Eke.

These programs are produced in partnership with the radio station of the Clocktower Gallery operating at ARTonAIR.org

Reanimation Library Featured on Hyperallergic

Collection (Not) as Curation: How Exhibitions are Different From Libraries
By Janelle Grace

In advance of Shadows and Outlines: An Incomplete Portrait of the Reanimation Library at ICI, Janelle Grace interviewed Andrew Beccone on the difference between collecting and curating.

“Is a library collection like a curated exhibition? As the use of the verb “curate” proliferates outside of conventional exhibition organizing, especially in regards to the ways people collect and arrange visual material on online platforms such as Tumblr and Pinterest, backlash against terming such casual content organization “curation” continues. While there seems to be some consensus on the specificity required of actual curation among those questioning these new uses of the word, another term has yet to become the new standard, though the word “collecting” is often juxtaposed against curating. But how do we define “collecting,” especially since it also already exists in a specific professional context? If someone were to draw a Venn diagram with “collecting” and “curating” as intersecting circles, how much would they actually overlap?...”

Martha Wilson review in Title Magazine

Daniel Gerwin writes of the show at Arcadia University, “The exhibition reveals a career both extensive and courageous.”
He continues, “Wilson’s commitment to art’s digital life reflects the ferocity of her desire to change the way art is encountered. By offering truly populist access, she seeks to vault over the power structures currently controlling the exhibition of art. In her talk on the night of the exhibition opening, Wilson envisioned an art version of Pandora, through which one could use a personal computer to experience a varied selection of artworks with a self-selected theme. Her straightforward pragmatism is unusual in art and has made Wilson a force to be reckoned with in her 65th year as much as in her youth.”

To read to full review please click here.

“(Pre)Fabricators” at Creativity Explored

Create artist Lance Rivers will be featured in a groundbreaking three-phase project involving five Creativity Explored artists and a range of collaborators. This project, (Pre)Fabricators, is a unique partnership with curators, a team of students from California College of the Arts, IDEO, and Jack Fischer Gallery that will result in two exhibitions and the production of new works. (Pre)Fabricators, the exhibit at Creativity Explored, is phase one, and is a showcase of works by the five CE artists who will be participating in this exciting project. As selected by art critic, curator, writer, and educator Glen Helfand and San Francisco gallery owner Jack Fischer, the pieces reflect an energetic range of interests and sensibilities, as well as a cohesive sense of community.

(Pre)Fabricators

Curated by Glen Helfand and Jack Fischer

Five Creativity Explored artists inspire a collaborative project
involving Glen Helfand, Fabricators – an ENGAGE at CCA course,
IDEO, and Jack Fischer Gallery
 
October 4 – November 18, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, October 4, 7 – 9 p.m.
Creativity Explored Gallery
3245 Sixteenth Street, San Francisco

For more information and images, please continue to the Creativity Explored website here.

Martha Wilson in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Edith Newhall describes Wilson as the “quintessentially downtown New York artist.”

To read the full article click here.

Terry Smith Featured in Modern Painters

Art Theorist Terry Smith on His New Tome, Thinking Contemporary Curating
By Orit Gat, Modern Painters

“In October, Independent Curators International will publish Terry Smith’s Thinking Contemporary Curating, the first book in a new series about current curatorial perspectives. Smith and ICI are launching the book with a reading from it on September 18 at New York University. Orit Gat talked to him about what makes curators—and the way they think—so different from art historians and critics.”

The Global Times Covers Project 35 Volume 2 at SH Contemporary

Massimo Torrigiani, director of SH Contemporary 2012 and the Global Times recently sat down for an interview about the progress and changes of this year’s fair:

The Video Room this year is curated by New York-based Independent Curators International: 35 single-channel videos selected by 35 international curators who each chose one work from an artist. It is the first time that most of the artists featured are being shown in China.

The entire article can be read on the Global Times website here.

Wesleyan’s President reviews Performance Now

Wesleyan University President, Michael S. Roth has written a review of Performance Now on the exhibition blog, he writes, “The entire gallery space seems transformed, and there is so much to look at, listen to, laugh with, and be absorbed by.” To read the full entry click here.

Performance Now in the Wesleyan Argus

Adam Keller has written an exhibition review for the school’s newspaper.
Keller comments, “...I can truthfully say that the talk and gallery are not to be missed. Goldberg’s central thesis—that the interaction of performance art and other mediums will form the primary artistic trends of the early 21st century—is articulated through a dizzying array of captivating pieces. Most are filmed performances that, even through the removal of digital video, address and subvert the boundaries between artist and spectators.”

To read the full article click here.

Project 35 Volume 2 makes its debut at SH Contemporary art fair!

ICI is thrilled to announce that our continuing success with Project 35 has spurred a second version of the single-channel exhibition now called Project 35 Volume 2. This traveling exhibition of 35 video works chosen by a new group of 35 international curators will make its debut at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair in China in the Video Room, a space dedicated to the latest developments in moving image and new media.

SH Contemporary is one of the most prestigious art fair in Asia and attracts some of the highest number of collectors, art lovers and VIP’s from across the world.

The SH Contemporary 2012 takes place from September 7th to 9th and to learn more about the fair, continue here.

Mapping the Caribbean: Dominican Republic

International Triennial of The Caribbean

The International Triennial of The Caribbean was founded in 2010 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The first triennial was conceived as a unique platform for the empowerment of contemporary art and artists in the Caribbean and Central America proposing a new commitment to multicultural dialogue.

Open to the public from September 1 to October 24, 2010, it was curated by Dominique Brebion (Francophone Caribbean curator), a committee of curators (Anglophone Caribbean curators), Jorge Gutiérrez (Grand Caribbean and Miami curator), José Manuel Noceda (curator in Central America), Jennifer Smit (Dutch Caribbean curator), and Danilo de los Santos (Hispanic Caribbean curator).

The Triennial focused on artists considering the construction of complex identities and contemporary social realities, as well as a major concern for the endangered biodiversity and environment in the region. The artists included Milton Becerra (Venezuela), Tony Capellán (Dominican Republic), Caryanna Castillo (Dominican Republic), Cristina Cuadra (Mexico/Nicaragua), Tirso Martha (Curazao), Colectivo La Torana (Guatemala), Marcos Lora Read (Dominican Republic), Charo Oquet (Dominican Republic), Fausto Ortiz/Colectivo Recycle2 (Dominican Republic), Francisco Salguero Leal/Colectivo Recycle2 (México), Jorge Pineda (Dominican Republic), Belkis Ramírez (Dominican Republic), Antuán Rodríguez (Cuba), Adán Vallecillo (Honduras), Verónica Vides (El Salvador), Patricia Villalobos (Nicaragua), and Wendy Wischer (U.S.).

trienalinternacionaldelcaribe.blogspot.ca

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping the Caribbean: Aruba

Prome Encuentro Bienal Arte Contemporaneo Di Caribe Aruba, 2011-2012

The Aruba biennial was organized by Fundación Encuentro Prome Bienal di Aruba as an initiative of award winning contemporary artist and manager Alida Martinez and art collector Roly Sint Jago. It was a multi-tiered event with exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and seminars. From November 2011 through June 2012, the biennial served as an artistic platform inviting the local audience and Caribbean artists, art critics, art teachers, and the international press to participate, and cross-pollinating the regional art scene. Cuban Curator Jose Manuel Noceda Fernandez, curator of Centro de Arte Contempraneo Wilfredo Lam in Havana Vieja, joined the artistic effort.

The Aruba biennial aims to serve as a platform or stage: a cycle of activities over some months reflecting a variety of thematic interests related to the current Caribbean milieu and its art. It also seeks to foster the area’s relations with other geocultural zones with similar characteristics and problems, inviting creative people from the Caribbean and elsewhere to exhibit their work in Aruba and share the fruits of their experience with the Aruban artists.

encuentroartaruba.org

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping the Caribbean: Haiti

Ghetto Biennale

The Ghetto Biennale was created by Andre Eugene and Leah Gordon in May 2008. The first Ghetto Biennale was held in December 2009, hosted by Atis Rezistans and co-curated by Myron Beasley and Leah Gordon. The first edition was hosted by the ‘Sculptors of Grand Rue’, a community of artists living in a downtown popular neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Over forty artists, filmmakers, academics, photographers, musicians, architects, and writers came to the Grand Rue area to make or witness work that was shown or happened in the neighborhood.

The second Ghetto Biennale was held in December 2011, co-curated by Andre Eugene, Leah Gordon, and Celeur Jean Herard, with curatorial assistance from Marg Duston and David Frohnapfel.

ghettobiennale.com

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping the Caribbean: Trinidad and Tobago

Alice Yard

Alice Yard Space, Friday 14 December, 2007; Nikolai Noel and Jaime Lee Loy working on 200 Drawings

Alice Yard is a non-profit organization located in the backyard space of the house at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain. Alice Yard is administered and curated by architect Sean Leonard, artist Christopher Cozier, writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin, and musician Sheldon Holder, with the help of a growing network of creative collaborators. Alice Yard incorporated under the laws of Trinidad and Tobago.

Since late 2006, Alice Yard has been home to 12, the band led by Holder. A series of weekly Friday-night “Conversations in the Yard” organized by Holder from 2006 to early 2008 brought musicians, artists, writers, and audiences together for informal performances and interactions. In September 2007, it opened a small gallery space that hosts exhibitions, installations, film screenings, and other projects by Trinidad-based and visiting artists.

aliceyard.blogspot.mx

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping Central America: El Salvador

Photography Festival ESFOTO

ESFOTO12 poster featuring photography El Golpe, by Delmer Membreño

ESFOTO was founded in 2005, by artist, curator, and cultural manager Walterio Iraheta, as a response to the lack of spaces for photographic production in El Salvador. This yearly event is aimed to promote and stimulate the field of photography, through a series of activities programmed every year during the month of September. Its structure echoes other photography festivals in Latin America that occur over the course of a month in different countries, such as the biennial Fotoseptiembre in Mexico.

Its sixth edition, which opened in September 2012 featured exhibitions, screenings, a series of public talks, workshops, and portfolio reviews by local and international guests. It collaborated with public and private institutions and individuals in El Salvador, such as Centro Cultural de España, CCESV, el museo de arte de El Salvador, MARTE y, and the city of Santa Tecla.

esfoto1.blogspot.mx
walterioirahetabio.blogspot.mx

Museo de Arte de El Salvador
The Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE- for its Spanish acronym) oponed in 2003. It is a private, non-profit institution operating under the responsibility of El Salvador’s Museum of Art Association. MARTE showcases a permanent exhibit of Salvadoran art, featuring masterpieces of its own collection as well as artworks belonging to private collections and to the national heritage.

marte.org

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping the Caribbean: Cuba

Espacio Aglutinador

Installation view of artist Sandra Ceballos’ Close Up at Espacio Aglutinador, Havana, Cuba

El Espacio Aglutinador is the oldest ongoing independent art space in Cuba, with Sandra Ceballos as the director and curator, and Rene Quintana as the curator and designer. It was created in 1994 by Ceballos and Ezequiel Suarez in their own home, with the objective of disseminating a different point of view about the fine arts in Cuba. It is above all a curatorial space that responds to the ideas of those who organize events in it. It has also been a platform promoting writing and publishing, with the input and curatorial role of Cuban writer and critic Orlando Hernandez, during the space’s early years.

Published texts by Hernandez addressing works and exhibitions shown at Espacio Aglutinador, along with other Cuban critics such as Gerardo Mosquera, Juan Antonio Molina, Ivan de la Nuez, Osvaldo Sánchez, Lazara Castellanos, and Eugenio Valdés, can be found and downloaded on the space’s website. In addition, Espacio Aglutinador has hosted literary events in which several Cuban writers have read their stories and poetry.

El Espacio Aglutinador welcomes proposals from foreign artists who are interested in presenting their work in Havana. Please note that the gallery does not have direct web access, but can receive images and texts via email. El Espacio Aglutinador also welcomes proposals from artists who would like to help the gallery to expand its presence on the web.

espacioaglutinador.com

Eleventh Havana Biennial Artistic Practices and Social Imaginaries
Under the title Artistic Practices and Social Imaginaries, the 11th edition of the Havana Biennial, organized by the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Arts Center, proposed “an assessment of the behavior of the relationship between visual productions and the social imaginary.” Through this notion, the curatorial statement did not refer to a theoretical body, but to the way people imagine their social space and express themselves through cultural and historical references, and to the symbolic dimension they acquire through art.

On view from 11 May through 11 June 2012, the works and interventions of 112 Artists from 45 countries inhabited a wide range of locations throughout the city, articulating the curatorial aim to instigate an international dialogue while transforming the Cuban context and the public scenarios into a temporary laboratory of art experimentation.

Participating artists and artist collectives from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, Central America, and the Middle East included: Jin Shi (CN), Yukihiro Taguchi (JP), T.V. Santhosh (IN), Mona Marzouk and Khaled Hafez (EG), Ilya y EmSilia Kabakov (RU/US), Marina Abramovic (RS), Hermann Nitsch (AU), Quintapata Collective (DR), Marcel Pinas (SR), Maksaens Denis (HT), Humberto Vélez (PA), Diego Lama (PE), Patricia Villalobos (NI), Caja Lúdica (GT), Tranvía Cero Collective (EC), Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Pablo Helguera, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MX), Mujeres Públicas and Cristian Segura (AR), Carlito Carvalhosa and Laura Lima (BR), The collective international project Museo Aero Solar and Cuban artists Carlos Garaicoa, Los Carpinteros, Tony Labat and Jorge Pardo, among others.

bienalhabana.cult.cu

Proyecto Batiscafo

Work by Marianela Orozco. Source: Triangle Network

Proyecto Batiscafo started as an artist-run program of residencies in Havana, but from 2003-10 it grew and became a regular feature in the emerging Cuban art scene through numerous projects including open studio events, talks, performances, exhibitions, and many other public activities.

proyectobatiscafo.wordpress.com

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Performance Now Wesleyan Blog

Wesleyan University has created a blog in conjunction with the exhibition being held at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, it contains information about the artists featured, upcoming talks, and film screenings.

To continue to the blog page please click here.

Create reviewed by Vanessa Formato for Worcester Magazine

Exhibit Features Art by Individuals with Disabilities, Possibilities
by Vanessa Formato for Worcester Magazine

The Cantor Gallery is the first stop on the show’s debut Northeast tour, organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). Due to the size of the show, the Cantor Art Gallery will be presenting it in two parts, the first of which opens Aug. 29, with a reception on Sept. 5.

“The artists represent a wide range of art practice from drawing and painting to text-based work and sculpture,” says Rinder. “Their styles range from figurative to abstract. Some of them have been making art for decades while others are relatively new to professional studio work. I wouldn’t say they are unique per se, except insofar as any real artist is unique. What is somewhat unique is their studio practice, which is communal, whereas most artists work in private studios. The group studio allows for a more rapid exchange of ideas and techniques. I believe it inspires the artists by creating a sense of shared excitement and possibility.”
...
Create is a show that celebrates the incredible work of artists with disabilities and the programs that have made their work possible, but it’s much more than that—simpler than that, really. Create is an art show, and a stunning one to boot. Like any art show, it’s about artists and what happens when they sit down to tell stories. That’s the important part.

To read the full article, please continue here.

Stephen Vitiello & Lora Reynolds at testsite 12.2

testsite 12.2 ~ And the room into my buzzing head
Stephen Vitiello & Lora Reynolds
June 24 - August 26 *Exhibition extended, open by appt.

Stephen Vitiello will create a multi-channel sound piece and a series of small visual works in response to curator and gallery owner, Lora Reynolds’ proposal to create sounds that evoke a “sense of place” and ideas of “home.” Vitiello will capture recordings on-site during a short visit, leading up to the project’s opening. These recordings will be mixed in the house and spatialized in such a way that visitors may move through, listening to sounds both abstract and concrete. Gaston Bachelard writes in his book, The Poetics of Space that we crave domestic spaces that allow us to dream. Each space in a home has a vocabulary that includes sounds, smells as well as memories that resound in the woodwork. The artist and curator will follow that reasoning to explore sounds suggested by the home as well as sounds that home may not yet have imagined.

For more information on this exhibition, please visit testsite’s website here.

Kelley Walker in Dreams Without Frontiers

Dreams Without Frontiers
Manchester Art Gallery, June 29 - May 1, 2013

Dreams Without Frontiers is a bold new exhibition of work by international contemporary artists Cyprien Gaillard and Kelley Walker, curated in partnership with author and DJ Dave Haslam. The short film The Smithsons, 2005 by Paris-born and Berlin-based artist Cyprien Gaillard, is paired with Kelley Walker’s mixed-media installation. The exhibition explores how two significant contemporary artworks reflect and relate to Manchester and the city’s early 1980s music scene.

For more information on this exhibition please visit the Manchester Art Gallery’s website here.

Sara VanDerBeek to participate in the Daegu Photo Biennale

Daegu Photo Biennale
Daegu, South Korea, September 20 - October 28, 2012

The 4th Daegu Photo Biennale presents a broad spectrum of contemporary photography in the 21st Century, and is entitled, “Photographic!” This year’s exhibition aims to rethink the role and authenticity of photography per se and to highlight the pluralism of photography in various cultures as a visual language that affects other forms of art.

To find out more about the Biennale, please click on the link.

Lisa Oppenheim’s Cantastoria at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

Cantastoria
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, June 5 - September 22, 2012

Situated between Homer, Twitter, and the singing telegram, Cantastoria is an exploration of how contemporary artists communicate histories and culture using languages, messengers, and witnesses as creative material. This exhibition explores the notion of the cantastoria as a metaphor across cultures and specifically within contemporary art.

Revisiting conventional formats of history painting and narrative-driven compositions, Cantastoria presents artworks that communicate information through languages, song, storytelling, and lyricism. It analyzes origins and relationships with news media while touching on languages born out of cultural specificities of Utah itself or contemporary activism onto parallel and bygone eras such as the former USSR. Other artists reconnect us with dead and dying languages that are no longer understood as well as putting us in contact with those languages beyond our Earth. It is a way to look at how we transmit information, reminisce about languages of communication that are lost and obsolete, while exploring new pathways of connection that are emerging around us.

For more information on this exhibition, please visit the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s website here.

New York Times Article: Pauline Oliveros

ICI is thrilled that the New York Times has written an extensive profile and review of the past and recent endeavors of sound artist Pauline Oliveros.
“I’m not dismissive of classical music and the Western canon,” Ms. Oliveros said during a wide-ranging interview at the office of her foundation in Kingston, N.Y., where she lives with her longtime partner, Ione, a writer and performance artist. “It’s simply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jumping out of categories all my life.” She laughed, a hearty sound that liberally punctuated a generous, easygoing conversation.

To read the full text click here.

Mapping the Caribbean: Guadeloupe

L’Artocarpe
Located by the sea in Le Moule, L’Artocarpe is in the heart of Guadeloupe. Open since January 2010, its main purpose is to promote contemporary art through art residencies, conferences, artwork presentations, and discussions, as well as workshops and exhibitions.

artocarpe.net

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform

Mapping the Caribbean: Puerto Rico

Beta-Local

Courtesy of Beta Local

Beta-Local is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting aesthetic thought and practice through various programs including ‘La Práctica,’ a post-academic study and production program through which fellows coming from diverse disciplines take a project from concept to production; ‘The Harbor,’ a residency program for visiting international artists, architects, designers, and other cultural producers; and ‘La Ivan Illich,’ an open experimental school through which the participating public requests and creates courses and workshops.

There is a full schedule of public programming which includes exhibitions, lectures, pin-ups (open critiques), screenings, publications, and a small reference library—‘La Esquina’, focused on art and design that is open once a week to the general public.

betalocal.org

Chemi Room

Photo: Chemi Rosado

Chemi Room is the living room at Chemi Rosado’s apartment, converted into a ‘white-cube’ exhibition space. It emerges from the need to generate self-run art shows, projects, and exhibitions that would otherwise remain excluded from the national context of Puerto Rico. The program includes a wide variety of proposals ranging from site-specific projects to exhibitions that allow artists to share processes with their friends and colleagues and with a growing international community.

chemiroom.wordpress.com

La Loseta

Source: La Loseta

Managed by artist Juni Figueroa, La Loseta is a project which consisted of 12 exhibitions and events during 2011. The idea for its creation came from the need for consistent exhibitions and events under the notion of self-organization, at a time when galleries and exhibition spaces were affected by the economic crisis.

laloseta.tumblr.com

Reflecting the evolving landscape of the art scene, this platform will be updated as new information becomes available. Thanks to the artists and curators who have helped to shape and enrich the project to date.

Back to Mapping Central America and the Caribbean resource platform