Johnny Abraham’s panel paintings are made up of various relationships between pattern, shape, and composition, using two colors and a single width of band. Line is perceived where no line exists, and shape is created through the termination of many “lines” along an implied edge. These reduced elements and restricted colors form a pattern, which in repetition makes a composition that emphasizes clarity, stability, or instability. A pattern is selected for it’s impact on perception. Creativity, in this process, has no causal agency over outcome; instead, rules and restrictions determine results which are then measured and observed.

Photographer Michel Nafziger envisions woman’s body as a revelation. A revelation of the form and raw emotion, unveiled as momentous and spontaneous, yet captured cautiously through a prolonged exposure. The whirlwind of the body’s movement in Nafziger’s works encompasses refined classicism of Venus and the Odalisque, yet storms - so gracefully - into the Modernist seduction and opacity of Modigliani’s nudes. Nafziger’s first solo show in New York will feature large-scale prints and an edition of portfolios, which complement each other as do the striking revelations carried by his works.

The Winter Antiques Show celebrates its 59th year as America’s most distinguished antiques show, featuring exceptional objects exhibited by 73 specialists in American, English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts from antiquity through the 1960s, all vetted for authenticity. The 2013 Honorary Chairs are Mr. and Mrs. Claudio Del Vecchio and Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill. 

The 2013 loan exhibition will celebrate The Preservation Society of Newport County. Newport: The Glamour of Ornament showcases fine and decorative art from The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms, Rosecliff, Chateau-sur-Mer, Kingscote, Isaac Bell House, Hunter House, and Chepstow. For the seventeenth year, the loan exhibition is sponsored by Chubb Personal Insurance.

All net proceeds from the Show benefit East Side House Settlement, which provides access to quality education and technology training as gateways out of poverty to students in the South Bronx, one of the nation’s poorest congressional districts. Their goal is to help motivated students graduate from high school, enroll in college, and build the skills necessary to secure good jobs.

The Winter Antiques Show hours are 12 p.m.-8 p.m. daily except Sundays and Thursday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Daily admission to the Show is $20, which includes the Show’s award-winning catalogue.

To purchase tickets for the Opening Night Party on January 24, 2013, or Young Collectors Night on January 31, 2013, call (718) 292-7392 or visit http://www.winterantiquesshow.com/

The exhibition Zarina: Paper Like Skin, organized by Allegra Pesenti, Curator, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, travels to the Guggenheim Museum as part of its international tour. This retrospective of Indian-born American artist Zarina Hashmi is the first major exploration of the artist’s career, charting a developmental arc from her work in the 1960s to the present and includes many seminal works from the late 1960s and early 1970s, woodblock prints, etchings and lithographs, and a small selection of related sculptures in bronze and cast paper. The Guggenheim’s recent acquisition of 20 works from a major series of pin drawings from 1975 to 1977 serves as a fulcrum for the New York presentation, which is conceived in close collaboration with the artist. An exhibition catalogue provides insights into her life and work. The New York presentation is organized by Sandhini Poddar, former Associate Curator, with Helen Hsu, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The second of the two-part annual exhibition Illustrators 55 will be held at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators from January 30 through March 2, 2013.  The exhibit features works by leading contemporary illustrators worldwide, selected by a prestigious jury of professionals.  

The exhibit includes works in the Editorial, Book and Advertising Categories. 

Illustrations featured in the Editorial category include work commissioned by newspapers or magazines, medical and scientific journals or online magazines.  This year's Gold Medals are awarded to Jason Holley for his piece titled "Bike Pain", Donato Giancola for "J.R.R. Tolkein", and Mark Ulriksen's "Capturing Memories."  Silver Medals go to John Cuneo for "Erotic Art", Leo Espinosa for his piece "Young European Composers", and Frank Stockton's "Nuke 'em."

Illustration in the Book category include all single image illustrations originally commissioned for use inside or on the covers of hardbound and paperback books, including fiction and non-fiction; children's and young adult literature and comic books.  Gold Medal winners include Anna and Elena Balbusso for their image "Tatyana", Victo Ngai's "Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill", and Sam Weber for "Lolita."  Silver Medals are awarded to Julianna Brion's "Wirefox", Etienne Delessert's "Ionesco Stories 2", and Yuko Shimizu for her piece "The Unwritten."

Advertising illustration includes work for advertisements appearing in newspapers, magazines or on television; video and CD covers; brochures, fashion, point-of-purchase and packaging illustration; movie and theater posters.  This year's Gold Medals go to Raymond Bonilla for "The Piano", Stephen Kroninger's "Grand Central", and Yuko Shimizu for "Tame Your Hair."  Silver Medals go to Josh Cochran for his piece "Go Fly a Kite", Aad Goudappel for "Ballet", and Adam McCauley's "Simplicity". 

The Illustrators 55 will now be exhibited throughout the entire building, including the 3rd floor Hall of Fame Gallery.  Moving Image entries will also be playing in the new Winsor McCay Screening Room.

LESSONS FROM MODERNISM:

ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS IN 20^TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE, 1925-70

A unique exhibition examining the influence of environmental design strategies in modern architecture long before the practice of green architecture or sustainable design was established

In conjunction with the show, award-winning architect Sara Wigglesworth discusses ecological innovation as the

2013 Eleanore Pettersen lecturer at The Cooper Union

WHAT: Lessons From Modernism examines selected works of architecture completed between 1925-70 through the lens of sustainability. This analysis of the use of environmental strategies — long before they were commonly used in 21st century buildings — opens at The Cooper Union’s Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery on January 29^th (reception at 6:30PM). 

Through an analysis of the influence of nature and the environment in architectural design, Lessons From Modernism provides new insights into works achieved by a diverse selection of architects, including Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Jean Prouvé and Oscar Niemeyer. The exhibition demonstrates how these architects integrated environmental concerns into their designs and explores the extent to which these practices have produced environmentally performative and distinctive architecture.

The 25 examples shown in the exhibition were extensively researched and documented by a team of Cooper Union students, faculty and alumni. These buildings demonstrate the importance of the aesthetic of clarity and utility that characterizes 20^th century modern architecture. This aesthetic, or really, these values, inform the contemporary green building movement today.

 The show also features:

• -Solutions to the challenges of particular climates: cool northern zones, hot arid zones and tropical and subtropical zones
• -Analytical drawings illustrating the sustainable design issues evidenced within each project
• -A timeline illustrating the evolving global environmental consciousness
• -25 three dimensional architectural models made specifically for the exhibition

This exhibition, presented by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design, was made possible by generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. It is free and open to the public.

carriage trade’s 2012 benefit exhibition to raise funds for its upcoming programming will open on December 18 at 62 Walker Street. Artwork can be previewed from 2-6 pm, from Wednesday, December 19 through Saturday, December 22. The benefit raffle will take place on January 15, 2013.

The number of tickets sold will equal the number of donated artworks. On the night of the raffle, ticket holders are entitled to choose an artwork once their numbers have been randomly drawn. The artworks will be presented anonymously, with the identity of the artist revealed after the ticket holder acquires the piece.

Raffle Tickets are $175 until December 31st, 2012 and $225 thereafter and are available now through PayPal (below) and at the gallery during regular hours. Each ticket will guarantee one artwork and two complementary drinks. Artwork will be available for pick-up at the end of the raffle event.

Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA) is proud to present this exhibition of works by members of the Peekskill Artist Club, a group of emerging artists from the Hudson Valley region who have been meeting monthly at HVCCA for dialogue and critique, eager to continue the growth found through discourse that characterized their time in art school. Though disparate in style and artistic medium, varied in esthetics and gallery representation as well as years of artistic practice, they share a common passion to grow and improve. 

Over this two and a half year period, their work has grown and morphed, gaining from group critique and constructive self-analysis.  This exhibition is a culmination of this period of their time together, a step along the path to greater artistic growth, self-knowledge and creativity.

“The Power of Place” Artists: Gulgun Aliriza (Westchester), Emil Alzamora (Beacon), Cristina Alvarez Arnold (Peekskill), Matthew Arnold (Peekskill), Andrew Barthelmes (Peekskill), Katrina Ellis (Cold Spring), Geoff Feder (Peekskill), Philip Hardy (Rhinebeck), Katherine Mangiardi (Croton-on-Hudson), James Mulvaney (Mahopac), Adam Niklewicz (North Haven, CT), Jason Repolle (Highland), Shara Shisheboran (Peekskill), Tim Smith (Peekskill), Ken Vallario (Rosendale), and Michael Zelehoski (Beacon).

“I lucked out-- went to the Andre Zarre Gallery, 529 West 20th St. I was immediately struck by the depth and originality of what I assumed were painted works by Beata Drozd. There is a clarity of line as well as a complex three-dimensional depth to her figures and backgrounds. The faces are vividly alive, the costumes are intricate with color detail. I thought there is humanity, subtlety and emotion in her brush. Then I found out that there is no brush— it’s all collage: thousands of pieces of paper cut from magazines and pasted on her canvas to form impossible pictures. I was stunned by the beauty and artistry of this multifaceted, elaborate work, and wished I could spend hours exploring each of these extraordinary pictures.”

Our seed is the core
(The core is our essence)
Our seed is growing roots 
But we forget

We deny 
We strive for deconstruction
from which is necessarily born: reformation
reforming and reshaping a vision: visionary -
But don't feign, don't fling out hyper-representative caricatures.

Feed the seed with soil, allow it to root, to nourish and to flourish
And once the seed flourishes in the rich soil
don't ignore it.
Allow the abstract essence and make it your own magic,
your tool, your instrument.


My thoughts, rooted in nature, are the entity of my work.
Roots, Wilderness, (Chaos) - Existence
Plants grow and die.

I’m the seed,
The creation is the soil,
The process is the root,
The painting is the plant,

The painting is the seed,
The process is the soil,
The creation is the plant,
I’m the root.

As in our civilization we built walls (Order).
We are confronted with frontiers (Society).
These walls know not of the pure root of existence.

I, as a painter, depict both the pains and joys
of seeking out and growing closer to our roots.

©Laura Tack Tarin Fasano

toomer labzda is pleased to present max warsh's first solo show in New York. the exhibition title, BILDER—German for "pictures"—

speaks to his interest in the dialogue between framing and building images.

his recent series of photo-based works look at the repetitive language of architectural facades through a process of photographing, collecting, cutting, painting and rebuilding. bold painted shapes emerge amidst densely patterned brick or tile, forming a visual syntax derived from the psychological experience of moving through a city. 

additionally, conveyor belts removed from the flows of production, hang motionless in the gallery. these readymades share a common vocabulary with warsh’s photographic work and his reinterpretation of systems of ornamentation and construction.

INTERVIEW:

where are you from / where’s your studio?  New York City / Ridgewood, Queens

what do you use most often in your studio? i always have a big jug of book-binding glue in the center of my studio. it holds everything together.

what is your favorite part of the creative process? most of my work starts by wandering around in unfamiliar places and neighborhoods. or by walking down the same street over and over again and seeing something that's been right in front of me but I might have missed. so, walking would have to be my favorite part.

what is your earliest memory of art? i can't recall any specific early encounter with art, but do remember sitting through many poetry readings as a child—my parents are both poets. then, a little later, but still early on, i remember becoming interested in graffiti. i was never any kind of serious graffiti writer, but some friends were, and i was just interested in that type of mark-making. 

how did you start working in your current medium? for a while, i've been trying to combine photographic space with painted space. in some ways, this was out of a desire to negate the photograph. but now, I try to work with photographic material as fluidly as paint, and the painted moments develop as a result of that process.

what was the last exhibition you saw? i just saw the rosemarie trockel show at the new museum for the second time. this was one of the most generous shows I've seen in a while, and it was even better the second time. 

is there an artist you’ve always wanted to grab drinks with? definitely gordon matta-clark. his engagement with architecture and the city has influenced me heavily since i first saw his drawings at PS1 in 1998, and i'd love to talk with him about "anarchitecture”.

if money was no object, what artwork would you acquire? i've always been obsessed with Turner's landscapes, especially the stormy seascapes, i could live with one of those. 

is there one thing you wish you could do?  stop time.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

born in Henniker, New Hampshire and raised in New York City, max warsh received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004. he has exhibited his work in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Austin, including recently at Shoot the Lobster, New York and SOFA in Austin, Texas. he is co-founder of the artist-run gallery Regina Rex, Queens.

Press Release: For Immediate Release
Laura Tack “We Rooted and Forgot”
available for interviews and artist statements

Our seed is the core

(The core is our essence)

Our seed is growing roots

But we forget

We deny  

We strive for deconstruction

from which is necessarily born: reformation

reforming and reshaping a vision: visionary -

But don't feign, don't fling out hyper-representative caricatures.

Feed the seed with soil, allow it to root,
to nourish and to flourish

And once the seed flourishes
in the rich soil

don't ignore it

Allow the abstract essence
and make it your own magic,

your tool, your instrument

My thoughts,
rooted in nature,
are the entity of my work.

Roots, Wilderness, (Chaos) - Existence

Plants grow and die

I’m the seed,

The creation is the soil,

The process is the root,

The painting is the plant,

The painting is the seed,

The process is the soil,

The creation is the plant,

I’m the root

As in our civilization we built walls (Order)

We are confronted with frontiers (Society)

These walls know not of the pure root of existence

I, as a painter, depict both the pains and joys

of seeking out and growing closer to our roots.

DATES: 01/30/13 - 02/13/13

AT: Con Artist Ludlow Gallery
119 Ludlow St. Lower Level

Wednesday Jan. 30 / 8 til late /// Opening Party
Wednesday Feb. 6 / 8 til late /// Gallery Night
Wednesday Feb. 13 / 8 til late /// Closing Party
 
                           
Con Artist Collective & Gallery
119 Ludlow St. New York, New York 10002
For more info, contact Brian Shevlin
Email: conartistnyc@gmail.com
Mobile: 646 504 2323
Website: conartistnyc.com

The first New York exhibition in over a decade of the French conceptual painter Bernard Frize, known for his brightly colored paintings made by inventing rules or structures that remove choice or expression and instead rely on material or external constraints.

I work with text, video and performance, exploring the way in which different cultural and linguistic systems affect the actions of language. My experience of moving to the U.S. from Korea and learning English as an adult has shaped my artistic work—I am fascinated by the physical act of speaking. In my work I translate spoken words into text and vice versa, and explore the resulting disjunctures that uncover basic imperfections of language. I am interested in the elements that spoken words hold – accents, durations, emotions, hesitations, and mistakes – as well as how to present those elements in different written forms. I often use dubbing and subtitles, juxtaposing spoken and written words to explore the notion of “perfect” speech, the relationship between sound and image, and the ownership of language.

 This is a story for small children. a true-life love story has three main elements: English text, Korean voice-over and images. The written text is from the example sentences in English dictionaries and grammar books. I always find those examples fascinating as they display random, surprising and poetic qualities. Their fragmentary aspects also refer to the possibilities of varied narrative context. Subtitles typically function as a translation of the spoken (original) text in films.  However, the English text in this piece is the original and the spoken text (voice-over) is a translation.  There are two kinds of translation:  a translation from one language to another and from written text to spoken text. The B&W images were created as responses to both the English and Korean text.  The three elements had equal weights in terms of creating rhythms in editing process.

--Sujin Lee

 BIO:

 Sujin Lee has exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Art, Aljira: Contemporary Art Center, ArtStays International Contemporary Art Festival 9, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, The Soap Factory, The 3^rd Off and Free International Film Festival, and NURTUREart.  Lee has been awarded residencies from the Sidney Kahn Summer Institute at The Kitchen, Millay Colony of the Arts, Blue Mountain Center and I-Park.  She is currently an A.I.R. Gallery fellow and is participating in the Artist-in-Residence program at Newark Museum in January-February, 2013.       

 www.sujinlee.org

Gary Pennock experiments with the intrinsic properties of phenomena and materials to form an aesthetic experience. He attempts to capture the imagination with poetic presentations of Meta themes such as time, nature and mortality that often function at the threshold of perceptual awareness.  Attuning time based compositions to our visual and aural apparatus allows him to transform our engagement with screen-based technologies, into potentially therapeutic events that wash across the senses.

 Pennock’s installation at the AC Institute is arranged in a darkened space through which the viewer is led into intimate encounters with seven works whose immersive viewpoints encompass the body in a ritualistic experience of time.   Technology and the natural world form a symbiotic relationship mediated by the human body.

 Pennock’s sensory environments, be it projected light dancing on flowing fabric in Horizon in the Fold, or the auditory and visual A Line Through the Center of Space, and the sifting sands of Erode give voice to materials and phenomena that evoke meaningful connections with our sensing systems.  The artist focuses on the audience synthesizing minimal elements into their own universe, striving for a balance between subjective and objective.  He aims to operate at the boundaries of reality and illusion, thought and emotion.

 BIO:

Gary Pennock (born 1978) graduated from the University of Washington's Digital Arts & Experimental Media program with a BFA in 2008.  In 2010, he earned an MFA in Art & Technology Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He has exhibited video and works of light from coast to coast in a variety of formats.  Gary currently lives in New York.

China Blue is an artist who captures the tenor of our times by transforming common electronic waste into biomimetic artwork with an environmental focus that also sings.  In Firefly Tree, one of her works shown at AC Institute, she translates the firefly’s rhythmic signaling pattern into sound (the Firefly Chorus) and light (blinking LEDs).  Today fireflies are threatened due to habitat encroachment and light pollution, making memories of fireflies more precious as the illumination of the cities and towns overwhelm their delicate mating light show.

The rhythmic pattern of the firefly calls is a significant component of the Firefly Tree. This pattern is featured by the data sonification of the Firefly Chorus and the data visualization controlling the LED’s blinking rate. This dual reference underscores the biomimetic nature of the work both visually and acoustically while providing an original and imaginative way of simultaneously injecting both form and content. 

 Firefly Tree was Nominated 2012 Best Monographic Museum Show, Nationally by the International Association of Art Critics, and Awarded 2012 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in New Genres.  The work was also reviewed by Ed Rubin in Sculpture Magazine's November 2012 issue.

BIO:

China Blue is a two time NASA/RI Space Grant recipient a RISCA Fellowship, New Genres recipient and an internationally exhibiting artist who was the first person to record the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and NASA’s Vertical Gun in Moffitt Field, CA. She represented the US at OPEN XI, Venice, Italy an exhibition held in conjunction with the Architecture Biennale. Reviews of her work have been published in the New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, artCritical and Sculpture magazine to name a few. She has been interviewed by France 3 (TV), for the film “Com-mu-nity” produced by the Architecture Institute of America and was the featured artist for the 2006 annual meeting of the Acoustic Society of America. She has been an invited speaker at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Berkelee School of Music, Reed College and Brown University and an adjunct professor and Fellow at Brown University. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Engine Institute, Inc.  (www.theengineinstitute.org) a non-profit dedicated to promoting the nexus of art, science and technology.                       

www.chinablueart.com

A tradition at the Academy since its founding in 1826, the exhibition includes work by recently elected Academy members and highlights their important contribution to American culture.