Artists Unite Issue

May 1, 2013

Call for Art

MTA –Artists Unite Subway Elevator Poster Project

CALL FOR ARTWORK: Phase 4

Northern Manhattan Artists

Deadline: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 Midnight
Administrative Fee: $10

Dear Artists, Friends and Community Members,

The MTA-Artists Unite Subway Elevator Poster Project, a long standing effort by the community is happy to announce this fourth call for artwork to be placed in the subway elevators at the A-Line 184h St (181st. Subway Stop) & 190th St. Subway Stations.

This collaborative project acknowledges the uniqueness of our community and fulfills Artists Unite Mission to bring art to the public in creative new venues. The third set of posters can still be seen in the elevators.

We are looking for six (6) original artworks by artists residing in CB 12* to be produced as posters and placed, one in each of the 3 elevators per station. Work will be seen by thousands of residents and tourists en route to the Cloisters Museum. See Instructions below.

* CB 12 covers Manhattan north of 155th street, river to river.

Guidelines:

• Material must be sensitive to and respectful of the diversity of the community.
• Materials may (but need not) reflect icons associated with the surrounding neighborhood (by way of example, local parks, places of interest, etc.); they may not include depictions of commercial establishments or photographs of individuals, pets, or private residences.
• Materials shall not include written or printed text.
• Materials shall not include messages that might reasonably be interpreted as an endorsement or advocacy of any political, religious, social or ethnic organization, cause, or belief nor contain logos or other symbols of same.
• The transit system is used by a diverse population, and accordingly, the materials shall be appropriate for viewing by persons of all ages and varying backgrounds. They shall not include content or references which might be reasonably construed as being of a sexual or violent nature.
• Proposed art must lend itself to reproduction as a two-dimensional poster, no more than 29.5 inches wide by 45 inches long, (vertical/portrait orientation).
• There will be a seven-inch strip running across the bottom of the poster on which will appear the MTA New York City Transit logo.
• Of the 6 posters frames, 5 are portrait, and 1 landscape. Please indicate the direction of your image.

Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 12:00 Midnight. Previous Winners Not Eligible.

Posters will be exhibited for a minimum of six months.

Instructions:

Please submit no more than 4 images in JPG format for viewing. JPG files should be no more than 1440 pixels in any direction (e.g., 800 by 1440, or 1440 x 800 pixels). Include artist’s last name in the filename for each image (e.g., Rodriguez-landscape1.jpg).

Original work may be in any medium: painting, collage, sculpture, photography.

Selected artists will be contacted regarding image specifications for reproduction.

Send Images by e-mail to: rosa@artistsunite-ny.org along with your address in CB12 (Manhattan north of 155th street, river to river). In the subject line enter Poster Contest 2013.

Mail the Administrative Fee: To be considered by the judges, you must mail in the Administrative Fee postmarked by Wednesday, June 5, 2013. Please send a check for $10.00 payable to Artists Unite and mail to: Artists Unite, 720 Fort Washington Ave. #2K, New York, NY 10040

For More Information:

Contact rosa@artistsunite-ny.org or call: 212.740-9378

Judging:

Artists Unite will convene a 3-7-person panel to select artwork. Final approval is by the MTA in accordance with listed guidelines.

We look forward to your entries.

Thank you,

Rosa Naparstek,
Co-Director, Artists Unite

On a mini gallery crawl in Chelsea, topping my list was McKenzie Fine Art, Inc., where I stopped by to see Don Voisine’s show just before the opening. I was disappointed to not be able to take in all the energy of the opening, but there was a great advantage of having the gallery to myself – the calm before the storm. It was electrifying!

Voisine is a notable player in an increasingly visible contingent of artists painting in an abstract, hard-edged geometric style. Neo-geo, minimalism, I’m not sure what the current tag is for this work, but the jargon and semantics hold little interest for me, especially when the work itself is so compelling. I believe the loosely connected group of artists, if one would call it that (more like a Facebook friends’ mutual admiration society?), might be clustered around a vision of ‘reductive abstraction’ or something like that. I suppose labels are effective marketing tools, but that’s not the point of what’s going on here.

The artist and blogger Joanne Mattera is among the ranks of these painters, and has found a way to use Facebook for good instead of evil. Recently, she asked her Facebook friends who worked in geometric abstraction to send her images of their work featuring rhomboid shapes. Mattera then curated a wildly varied and potent on-line exhibition of these works. A piece by Voisine is included, and the grouping is a great overview that demonstrates the startling variety of approaches and visions within this relatively cohesive bunch of contemporary artists. Introducing the show, “Rhomboid Rhumba,” Mattera writes, “The works in this scroll-down reflect a variety of ideas: tectonic shift, Archimedian displacement, spiritual thinking, a textile sensibility, references to the body, constructivist principles, optical challenge, formal push/pull, and the pure pleasure of geometric abstraction. Materiality, another of my interests, is very much in evidence here as well.” Minus Space is another place to visit to extensively explore work in this vein. (Voisine can be found here too, along with some others worth knowing about like Karen Schifano and Douglas Witmer.)

Voisine’s bold blacks and crisp compositions have enough of the artist’s hand visible, paired with enough sensuality to engage the viewer immediately. The work is hard-edged but with a dry wit instead of being just dry. It says HEY to get your attention, but the conversation immediately gets deeper. The paintings slyly change as you move in front of them, rewarding the patient eye over and over with their idiosyncratic symmetries, subtleties and shifting planes and voids. Voisine’s self-imposed limitations result in a flourishing body of work that feels anything but restrictive and repetitive. These are paintings made to stand up to a lifetime of looking.

I recently saw Voisine’s work at the American Academy of Arts & Letters Invitational exhibition, and had hoped to have a chance to write about it then. Happily, I heard he received a coveted Arts & Letters Purchase Prize, so the work can still be seen at the gallery on Audubon Terrace until June 12th, as well as at McKenzie until June 11th, and I will definitely be making another trip to revisit this show before it closes. Here’s congratulating Don Voisine for doing terrific work and garnering well-deserved recognition for it.

I sometimes make note, at least a mental note, when gallery owners or staff are either exceptionally talented or awful in their dealings with the public, collectors, press, and/or artists. In this case I would like to recognize gallery owner Valerie McKenzie for her friendly and knowledgeable interaction. Her enthusiasm and astute conversation about the work she is representing are superbly refreshing. She sets the bar a little higher for others in the field.

Images from top to bottom, all © Don Voisine, Courtesy McKenzie Fine Art, Inc.
“Pan, 2011 Oil on wood 13 x 24 inches
“Off Register,” 2011 Oil on wood 16 x 17 inches,
“N,” 2011 Oil on wood 20 x 16 inches
“Otto”, 2011 Oil on wood 32 x 60 inches

[This article is reposted from Sky Pape's blog "Drawn Together"]

Appropriation may be an old topic, but it still is a tricky issue. In photography, I’ve often looked at something someone else has created, either as art or craft, architecture or landscape hobby and had second thoughts about whether a photo of it constitutes more than just documentation.

Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine looks at appropriation as tribute in her interesting, history-referencing article. Check it out.

http://www.dancemagazine.com/blogs/wendy/3694

From artist Peter Walsh:

Join us April 7th at Caerleon Isle for the opening of Through the Virtual Looking Glass and the premiere of the Your Voice as Art, Field of Voices. Slurl, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Isle/113/85/41

Collaborators Dekka Raymaker, Misprint Thursday, Penumbra Carter, Selavy Oh, and Aequitas have encapsulated the theme of the Real life / Second Life crossover exhibition with their Networked Collaboration, Field of Voices previously mentioned in New World Notes January 21, 2010.

The idea was to illuminate the shift of perception from outside to inside the virtual world. The visitor is presented with a beautiful expanse of white columns not unlike a circuit board or a graveyard. Jumping down in to the field we are treated to the voices of a diverse group of real people belaying the sterile perception of Second Life, and social media in general by reminding us there are people behind the virtual avatar on the screen. The effect is quite touching and before you know it the visitor falls through the floor and is treated to a soothing light show as they walk through the amusing, touching, and clever proximity activated voices in the poles.

This is all part of Virtual Art Initiative and the the RL/SL crossover exhibition Through the Virtual Looking Glass opening April 7th in five real world galleries and other spaces in as many countries, specifically, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and the United States.

Australia will also participate in the April events virtually, while hosting a real world exhibition at a time later this year.

Organizers of the exhibition in each country will choose its content and methods of display which will include interactive artworks from the virtual worlds Second Life and OpenSim, images and machinimas (virtual world videos) shown on plasma screens and digital frames, prints of virtual artworks, physical sculptures and paintings inspired by virtual art, some with embedded electronic components, and literary readings and musical performances occurring in the real world exhibition spaces and streamed live into Second Life and OpenSim.

Through the Virtual Looking Glass is organized and presented by a network of international groups, all of them leaders in the field of virtual art, including the Caerleon Sims/Virtual Art Initiative, Cybernetic Art Research Project/Diablous, Museo del Metaverso/Uqbar, Pirats, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Western Australia.

It’s never too late to share your voice and participate! more info here. http://arsactual.com

If you haven’t had a chance to contribute your voice to the project we open simultaneously in six countries: Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Brazil, and the USA this April 7th. Students seem to be the most creative at this point and we have an overwhelming majority from the US with Australia a close second. Is your country represented? I made a new video showing a tease of what the visitors experience is withholding a few surprises for the opening. I contacted William Powhida about adding the project to his #class extravaganza. If your in NYC and went to the Whitney instead of this, shame on you. Here’s a chance to make your voice heard in new media art throughout the world.

I am working on a project which is kind of snowballing lately and was wondering if anyone knows a gallery that wants to get in on this. I have pasted part of a letter below which explains it a wee bit. There is a website forthcoming. I will be placing embedded electronic components and am leading a virtual collaboration which you can see a trailer of and participate in here.

http://arsactual.com/collab/

> I am writing to invite you to participate in a series of international

> exhibitions in the month of April, 2010 the purpose of which is to introduce

> the art currently being made in such Virtual Worlds as Second Life, OpenSim,

> and VastPark to real life audiences. The project originated at my university,

> the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The art gallery on our campus, the

> Harbor Gallery, will be hosting a month-long exhibition of virtual art this

> April, mostly presented with large scale computer screens, digital projectors,

> and digital frames, though we will also show prints of virtual work as well as

> physical sculptures inspired by virtual art, some with embedded electronic

> components. I organized the exhibition to coincide with an online course I am

> teaching next term titled, Art and Philosophy in Second Life and Other Virtual

> Worlds.

>

> Recently a number of galleries located in different countries have asked me if

> they could host similar exhibitions in April under the title we are using in

> Boston, Through the Virtual Looking Glass, as part of a connected set of

> international exhibitions. We now have galleries in France and Holland

> committed to hosting exhibitions in those countries, as well venues in Germany

> that will host real life literary events that will be streamed into a virtual

> literary cafe in Second Life. Key figures in the virtual art world are now

> exploring the possibility of holding similar exhibitions in Italy, Brazil, and

> Mexico.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

>

>

> Best,

>

> Gary Zabel

> Department of Philosophy

> University of Massachusetts at Boston

Artist Peter Walsh is a writing fellow for Performa ‘09. He just let me know about the project Scoring Performa, which has a number of writers, well, scoring the annual performance art festival. The resulting document is a wide variety of takes on what the assessment of art can be: critique, summary, reaction, etc.

From Peter’s own post (an excerpt):

“Some Notes on Liveness: Part One”

By PETER WALSH

I’m addicted to the privilege of “being there.” In a society where the eyewitness testimony of one person can put another person behind bars – or set them free, it’s hard not to be. We honor the power of the witness. As a sensing person, my being shaped by a constant bodily flow of information, I prefer, for example, a well-made meal to simple calories. I also prefer theater to cinema, a big movie premiere to stuttering YouTube videos, the passion of a lover to the secondhand “sexiness” of pop culture….

Washington Heights artist Hector Canonge’s work Tabula Lunar was the subject of the second in a series of projected exhibitions staged by Artists Unite in 2009. Canonge’s work serves as a public intervention and was a perfect match with the Projection Show series attempt to bring the experience of art directly to the public rather than through the venue of gallery or other specialized location.
Canonge worked with a custom video mixer to combine his collected footage of things “lunar,” including animation, classic film, and stills with live images of people in the street. The work effectively places the public into the artwork. From Canonge’s artists statement:

Public Intervention Projection explores the universal fascination of people with the moon while evoking mythical, romantic, fantastic, and obscure attributes of the celestial body. TABULA LUNAR is an ephemeral surface on which people’s street presence is incorporated into visuals of and narratives about the lunar landscape appropriated from popular cinematic culture. Poetic and intrusive, familiar yet out of this world, intimate yet made into a public collaborative performance, the project prompts a possible dialogue of our connection to the night sky and what can be seen of it in an urban setting.

More information about the artist can be found at www.hectorcanonge.net.

More photos from the event are available at http://artistsunite.ning.com/photo/albums/tabula-lunar.

Watch for the next in the Projection Show series in late November/early December.

Creative Venues/Projection Show is made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities and the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, both supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Artists Unite LIVE! is funded in part by a discretionary grant from Councilmember Robert Jackson. Artists Unite receives support from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone.

A nice interview from Studio Banana TV

Dear Stephen,

As an assistant to an artist representative and curator based in New York
City, I am always looking for wonderful artists. After seeing some of your
works, I am very motivated to assign a writer to review your works.

I think you work is very strong,
wonderful compositions and lovely use of color.

We wish to start our collaboration by giving your works immediate
international exposure in prestigious publications. Please check below to
see the list of opportunities we are able to give you.

We hope to work together on other great projects in the near future such
as group shows in New York and our artist residency programs Beijing.

the following page collects these scams and should be checked regularly

http://www.atelier-rc.com/Atelier.RC/Art_Alarm.html

The Poets in the Galleries series utilizes the Museum’s exhibition space as an invigorating site for exploration, interactive readings and discussions. Each Sunday in September, a different poet will conduct a lively presentation in response to the Museum’s current exhibition, Tarjama/Translation. These gifted participants, all distinguished and emerging voices in the local, national and international literary scene, have been asked to devise an original presentation in response to the works on view. The current exhibition lends itself especially well to the series, by creating an open-ended forum in which the poets and visitors alike can explore the related themes of how poetry is translated across languages and cultures. Join us for a cocktail hour followed by the interactive gallery tour & readings by a different poet each week. Participating poets include Amir Parsa, Ali Husain Mir, Ammiel Alcalay, and Sinan Antoon.

An internationally acclaimed writer and poet, Amir Parsa is the author of over ten literary books, including Kobolierrot, Tractatüus Philosophiká-Poeticüus, Feu L’encre - Fable, Divan, Drive-by Cannibalism in the Baroque Tradition, Erre and the multilingual L’opéra minora. An uncategorizable body of work, Mr. Parsa’s literary oeuvre - written in English, French and Persian - constitutes a radical polyphonic enterprise that puts into question national, cultural and aesthetic attachments and discourses while fashioning new genres, forms and even species of literary artifacts. His work has been read and debated in galleries and museums, in streets and on rooftops, in broad daylight and in hiding, and at various festivals, events and curated venues. Books and photographs have been exhibited in both group and solo shows, most recently at the Uncomun Festival ‘08 and Engendered Festival ‘09 in New York. He was included in the anthology of new French and Francophone poets (Ed. Huguet 2004). Born in Tehran, Mr. Parsa was educated at Princeton and Columbia universities. He is Lecturer, Educator and currently the Manager of the Alzheimer’s Project at the Museum of Modern Art, and teaches at Pratt Institute.

Tarjama / Translation
Reshuffling the pertinence of geographical boundaries through the multivalent practices of translation, this unprecedented exhibition features artists from the Middle East, Central Asia and its diasporas. The exhibition examines the different ways with which artists engage with people, objects, images, and ideas traveling across geographic spaces, media forms, histories, and personal contexts. Encompassing a variety of media and artistic strategies, Tarjama / Translation treats the multiple processes of translation as dynamic and complex, from linguistic and textual maneuvers, to the transformation of consciousness engendered by the increasingly globalized world.

The Queens Museum of Art

New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens NY 11368
Telephone: (718) 592-9700
info@queensmuseum.org

Subway

Via #7 Flushing IRT. Exit Willets Point/Shea Stadium and follow the yellow signs on a ten-minute walk through the park to the museum, which is located next to the Unisphere. Alternatively, exit at 111th Street Station. Walk south on 111th Street past the New York Hall of Science. Left on 49th Avenue into the Park. Continue past fountain over the Grand Central Parkway bridge. Museum is on right, next to Unisphere.
Please Note: If you plan on taking the subway to the museum during the weekend, check the MTA Service Advisory Postings before leaving home.
Bus

48 to Roosevelt Ave and 111th Street.
Walk south through park (toward Unisphere)

Q23, Q58 to Corona Ave and 51st Ave.
Walk east through park.
Car

From West and midtown Manhattan: Take the Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway. Use Exit 22B, Grand Central Parkway West toward the Triboro Bridge. Exit the Grand Central at the first exit, Tennis Center (9P), turn right and follow signs to Museum.

From Brooklyn: via Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) to LIE Eastbound, to exit 22B exit 22B (Grand Central Parkway/Triboro Bridge), then exit GCP at Tennis Center (9P) and turn right to the Museum.

From North and Triboro Bridge: via Grand Central Parkway, exit at 9E or 9W and follow signs to Museum.

From East and Long Island: via LIE to GCP West, exit GCP at Tennis Center (9P) and follow signs to Museum. Free parking.

Dear Eva,

You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!

From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and your ability, the work you are doing sounds very good. ‘Drawing — clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger, bolder, real nonsense.’ That sounds wonderful — real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever — make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you — draw and paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as ‘to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end.’ You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO! [The DO's are drawn and decorated and very large.] I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work. The worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell. You are not responsible for the world — you are only responsible for your work, so do it. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO.

[Letter from Sol Lewitt to Eva Hesse, April 14, 1965.] …CONTINUED on Drawn Together - Sky Pape’s Drawing and Fine Art Blog