Curators of The Armory Show 2024: Eugenie Tsai, Robyn Farrell, Lauren Cornell + Previous curators

Curators of The Armory Show 2024

Eugenie Tsai, Robyn Farrell, Lauren Cornell

Javit Center, New York

September 6 - 8, 2024

To commemorate the fair’s 30th Anniversary and celebrate New York’s global leadership in the arts, The Armory Show 2024 brings together three curators practicing in New York. As in previous years Platform, Focus, and the CLS will all benefit from a unified thread, with the 2024 curated sections examining an overarching theme of art-historical reverberations and echoes in the present. 

Curated by Eugenie Tsai, Platform will examine the overarching theme through large-scale installations and site-specific works that explore the interplay of memory, material, and spirit.

Introduced in 2017, Platform has previously been curated by Eric Shiner, Director, Andy Warhol Museum (2017); Jen Mergel, former Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2018); Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial (2019); Anne Ellegood, Executive Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2020); and Claudia Schmuckli, Curator-in-Charge of Contemporary Art and Programming, de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2021); and Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate, London (2022.); and Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2023). 

Eugenie Tsai 

Curator of the Platform section

Photo by Marco Giugliarelli

EUGENIE TSAI is a curator and writer based in New York. After sixteen years, she recently stepped down from her position as the John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, at the Brooklyn Museum. During those years, she shaped the Contemporary collection, and organized around forty loan and collection exhibitions. Before taking up her position at the Brooklyn Museum, Eugenie Tsai worked at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens as Director of Curatorial Affairs, and at the Whitney Museum in various curatorial roles including Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs. 

Curated by Robyn Farrell, Focus considers the experimental spirit of the fair’s founding in 1994 at The Gramercy Hotel and the namesake International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1913 at New York City's 69th Regiment Armory. Works in this section reflect on these avant-garde histories while probing the radical strategies and poetic interventions of interdisciplinary forms and cultural exchange.

Previous curators of Focus have included Jarrett Gregory, Associate Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); Gabriel Ritter, Curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2018); Lauren Haynes, Curator of Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2019); Jamillah James, Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2020); and Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2021); and Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago (2022); and Candice Hopkins, Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project (2023). 

Robyn Farrell 

Curator of the Focus section

Photo by Claire Britt

ROBYN FARRELL is Senior Curator at The Kitchen in New York where she organizes and oversees exhibitions, publications, live and online programming. Before The Kitchen, Farrell was an Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she served on the curatorial teams for fifty projects including career surveys with Barbara Kruger (2021) and Gregg Bordowitz (2019). Farrell holds an MA in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has served as a visiting lecturer moderator for the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Lauren Cornell will chair the seventh annual Curatorial Leadership Summit. The curatorial convening will directly examine conversations in and around art historical reverberations and echoes in the present. A public keynote presentation follows the closed-door session. In addition to the on-site summit, Lauren Cornell will be chairing the Virtual CLS event in the 2024 leading up to the fair.

Previous chairs of the CLS have included Naomi Beckwith, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University (2019); José Carlos Diaz, Chief Curator, The Andy Warhol Museum (2020); and Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2021), and Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2022); and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2023). 

Lauren Cornell 

Curatorial Leadership Summit 

Photo by Carrie Schneide

LAUREN CORNELL is Chief Curator at the Hessel Museum and Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College. At CCS Bard, Cornell has curated multiple monographic exhibitions including surveys of Sky Hopinka, Leidy Churchman, Nil Yalter, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Martine Syms and Dara Birnbaum. Previously, Cornell was the Curator and Associate Director of Technology Initiatives at the New Museum. From 2005–2012, Lauren Cornell served as Executive Director of Rhizome, an organization that commissions, exhibits, and preserves art engaged with technology. She is a coeditor, with Ed Halter, of Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century (New Museum and MIT Press, 2015), and has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs and art magazines. Lauren Cornell is a recipient of ArtTable’s New Leadership Award.

THE ARMORY SHOW

www.thearmoryshow.com

The Art Show 2018 Exhibiting Galleries and Highlights

The ADAA Announces 

Exhibitors and Highlights for

30th Annual Edition of The Art Show in 2018

February 28-March 4, 2018

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) announces the exhibitors for The Art Show, the US’s most respected and longest-running art fair, which celebrates its 30th year in 2018. Held annually in New York at the Park Avenue Armory, the 2018 edition will take place February 28 through March 4, 2018, with a Gala Preview on February 27, to benefit Henry Street Settlement – marking the ADAA’s thirty-year partnership with both the venerable community organization and the city’s foremost performing arts venue. Organized by the ADAA, a nonprofit membership organization of art dealers across the US, The Art Show offers collectors, art professionals, and the public the opportunity to engage with artworks of the highest quality through thoughtfully curated presentations that encourage close looking and active conversation with the nation’s leading art gallerists.

Each year, ADAA members wishing to participate submit proposals that outline inventive curatorial concepts for single artist, dual, or group exhibitions—a process which ensures the highest standard of artistic quality and connoisseurship that has distinguished the fair for 30 years. ADAA’s Art Show Committee selected 72 proposals from member galleries that represent the breadth and depth of the Association’s art and scholarly expertise, providing audiences with a diverse range of works from the pre-Columbian period through today, by artists of a variety of genres, practices, and national and international origin. The 2018 fair will include several first-time exhibitors, including Maccarone, Jonathan Boos, Altman Siegel, Chambers Fine Art, Sicardi Gallery, and Danziger Gallery, and longtime ADAA members who are newly returning to the fair, including Anton Kern Gallery, Anglim Gilbert Gallery, Lawrence Markey, and Miles McEnery Gallery.

“We are proud to celebrate the 30th year of The Art Show in 2018, which is a testament to the thriving group of member galleries comprising the ADAA and to the lasting relationships of our members not just with artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts, but with the entire cultural community,” said Adam Sheffer, ADAA President and Cheim & Read Partner and Sales Director. “In these three decades, The Art Show has served as an anchor of the New York cultural calendar, offering visitors a unique fair experience that encourages engagement with high quality works of art and with the foremost galleries in the country. We are thrilled to continue to offer our member galleries a chance to extend their programs beyond the gallery walls and to engage the public with the incredible range of perspectives they represent.”

For the 2018 edition, a number of ADAA members will offer thoughtful solo exhibitions highlighting artists throughout history and from around the world, including several presentations of new or never-before-seen works. New photographs by Catherine Opie will be presented by Lehmann Maupin, and a range of new works on paper by Nicole Eisenman will be presented by Anton Kern Gallery. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery will also exhibit new works on paper, alongside new sculptures and hanging installations by interdisciplinary Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno. The San Francisco gallery Altman Siegel will present new abstract paintings by local San Francisco artist, Liam Everett, and never-before-seen watercolors by Milton Avery will be on view from Yares Art, alongside major paintings by the influential artist.

A number of members will present an extensive variety of works on paper, including drawing, paintings, and watercolors, such as Salon 94’s presentation of historic works on paper by Sudanese surrealist artist Ibrahim El-Salahi. A presentation by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects of new works by American painter and printmaker Amy Cutler will also be on view, as well as significant works on paper by notable Op art exponent Bridget Riley, exhibited by David Zwirner. Washburn Gallery will offer a selection of recently rediscovered landscapes and tree studies by abstract painter Myron Stout, and Chambers Fine Art will exhibit recent abstract ink paintings on rice paper by noted Chinese artist and calligrapher Wang Dongling, alongside mixed-media paintings by Yan Shanchun.

“We are pleased to bring together ADAA members for the 30th edition of The Art Show in 2018,” added Anthony Meier, Chair of The Art Show in 2018, and founder of Anthony Meier Fine Arts. “This year’s fair demonstrates the high-quality works and dynamic viewing experience that have become synonymous with The Art Show, offering visitors the opportunity to discover centuries of art history and artists from around the world. This year, a number of members are spotlighting significant works on paper that provide new insight on the role of the medium within artists’ practices, and we are pleased that so many never-before-seen works will also be on view.”

Organized by the ADAA as a platform for dealers and a resource for the public, The Art Show is one of the nonprofit organization’s philanthropic partnerships. Admission from The Art Show and proceeds from the Gala Preview benefit Henry Street Settlement, one of New York’s leading social service, arts, and health care organizations. AXA Art Americas Corporation, a pioneering specialist in the fine art and collectibles insurance space, has returned for the seventh consecutive year as Lead Partner of The Art Show and tenth year as partner of the ADAA.

The Art Show 2018 - List of Exhibiting Galleries

303 Gallery
Brooke Alexander, Inc.
Altman Siegel
Anglim Gilbert Gallery
Berggruen Gallery
Peter Blum Gallery
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Jonathan Boos
Bortolami
Chambers Fine Art
Cheim & Read
James Cohan
Thomas Colville Fine Art
Crown Point Press
Danese/Corey
Danziger Gallery
Maxwell Davidson Gallery
Debra Force Fine Art, Inc.
Fraenkel Gallery
Peter Freeman, Inc.
Galerie St. Etienne
James Goodman Gallery
Marian Goodman Gallery
Alexander Gray Associates
Howard Greenberg Gallery
Hauser & Wirth
Hirschl & Adler Galleries
Hirschl & Adler Modern
Hosfelt Gallery
Casey Kaplan
Paul Kasmin Gallery
June Kelly Gallery
Sean Kelly Gallery
Anton Kern Gallery
Krakow Witkin Gallery
Lehmann Maupin
Galerie Lelong
Locks Gallery
Jeffrey H. Loria & Co., Inc.
Luhring Augustine
Maccarone
Lawrence Markey
Matthew Marks Gallery
Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art
Barbara Mathes Gallery
Fergus McCaffrey
Miles McEnery Gallery
Anthony Meier Fine Arts
Menconi + Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC
Donald Morris Gallery, Inc.
Jill Newhouse Gallery
David Nolan Gallery
P.P.O.W
Pace Gallery
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Pace Prints & Pace Primitive
Petzel
James Reinish & Associates, Inc.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC
Salon 94
Susan Sheehan Gallery
Sicardi Gallery
Fredric Snitzer Gallery
Sperone Westwater
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
Van Doren Waxter
Meredith Ward Fine Art
Washburn Gallery
Michael Werner
Yares Art
Pavel Zoubok Gallery
David Zwirner

THE ART SHOW
Park Avenue Armory
Park Avenue at 67th Street
New York City

Organized annually by the ART DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (ADAA)
205 Lexington Avenue, Suite #901, New York, NY 10016
www.artdealers.org

Kati Horna @ Americas Society, NYC

Told and Untold: The Photo Stories of Kati Horna in the Illustrated Press
Americas Society Art Gallery, New York
September 13 - December 17, 2016

Kati Horna

El iluminado, 1944

Gelatin silver print

Private collection, Mexico City

© 2005 Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández

Renowned for her innovative images documenting Mexico City’s urban expansion and vibrant cultural scene, KATI HORNA (Budapest, 1912 – Mexico City, 2000) was already a widely published photographer of the Spanish Civil War when she arrived in Mexico at the end of 1939. Her prolific career will be the focus of the exhibition Told and Untold: The Photo Stories of Kati Horna in the Illustrated Press on view at the Americas Society Art Gallery from September 13 to December 17, 2016. Curated by Michel Otayek and Christina L. De León, the exhibition is the first solo show in the United States to examine Kati Horna’s influential collaboration with the illustrated press. Featuring Kati Horna’s photographs displayed alongside the newspapers and magazines that put them in circulation, the exhibition will comprise some never-before-seen materials including contact sheets, montage cuttings, and personal albums.

Born in Budapest to a wealthy Jewish family, Kati Horna (née Katalin Deutsch Blau) settled in Berlin in the early 1930s and became part of a group of activists, artists, and intellectuals close to the dissident Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht. At a time in which photojournalism was emerging as a phenomenon of mass culture, Horna was able to seize upon the field’s opportunities for professional, aesthetic, and political engagement. In 1933, forced to flee Germany due to the rise of National Socialism, she briefly returned to Budapest where she studied photography with József Pécsi. She then moved to Paris, living there until she left for Barcelona a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the military uprising against the Spanish Republican government, the exhibition explores Kati Horna’s work as a photographer and photomonteur engaged in the construction of a forceful anarchist narrative. At age 24 she became one of the few women to photograph the frontlines of war. Her images appeared in a wide range of propaganda materials including brochures, newspapers, and wide-circulation magazines like Umbral, an anarchist weekly where she held the position of lead photographer and graphic director.

“This exhibition demonstrates that in order to grasp some of the subtleties and complexities of Horna’s mature work in Mexico it is crucial to consider the depth of her intellectual upbringing, the extent of her political radicalization as a young artist, and the true nature of her involvement with the anarchist fringe of the Spanish Civil War,” says curator Christina De León.

In 1939, following the war’s end, Kati Horna and her husband—Spanish artist José Horna—settled in Mexico City, where she began collaborating with the country’s illustrated press. Registering the city’s rapid transformation and cultural landscape in the mid-twentieth century, Horna’s photos appeared on the pages of magazines such as Nosotros, Arquitectura México, and Mujeres: Expresión Femenina. In Mexico, she was active in several artistic and intellectual circles. This included her friendships with Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as well as her association with Mathias Goeritz, a seldom-recognized connection that proved to be one of the most fruitful partnerships of her career.

“Horna conceived much of her work as series for the illustrated press, some of them with a powerful narrative impulse,” says curator Michel Otayek. “We want to invite viewers to consider the circulation of Horna’s images in a wide range of print materials and get a sense of her intellectual sophistication, understated sense of humor, and fondness for collaborative work.”

In the 1960s, Kati Horna produced a remarkable body of deeply personal work, some of it as photo stories for magazines such as the avant-garde publication S.nob. Related to issues of gender, transience, and desire, these stories testify to Horna’s creative flourishing as a mature artist in exile. Parallel to these projects, Horna also undertook numerous assignments of architectural photography during this period. Her arresting formalist photographs of landmark modern Mexican architecture as in Ricardo Legorreta’s Automex factory in Toluca reflect Horna’s interest in pure form, a time she later remembered as the creative pinnacle of her life. In later years, Horna concentrated on her work as a teacher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Universidad Iberoamericana, serving as a mentor to numerous young photographers, including Flor Garduño, Victor Monroy, Estanislao Ortíz, and Sergio Carlos Rey.

Told and Untold: The Photo Stories of Kati Horna in the Illustrated Press will be accompanied by a hardcover, fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Miriam Margarita Basilio, Christina L. De León, Andrea Geyer, Ana María Norah Horna y Fernández, Cristóbal Andrés Jácome, Michel Otayek, Maria Antonella Pelizzari, and Gabriela Rangel.

Told and Untold: The Photo Stories of Kati Horna in the Illustrated Press is presented by Americas Society in collaboration with Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna, S.C.

The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of PHILLIPS, lead sponsor of Americas Society’s Visual Arts Program, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by Genomma Lab Internacional, Mex-Am Cultural Foundation, the Smart Family Foundation, the Consulate General of Spain in New York, the David Berg Foundation, as well as AMEXCID, the Consulate General of Mexico in New York, the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and Aeroméxico.

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue at 68th Street
New York, NY 10065
www.as-coa.org

Ron Cooper @ Franklin Parrasch Gallery, NYC

Ron Cooper

Franklin Parrasch Gallery, NYC

January 29 - March 13, 2015

Franklin Parrasch Gallery (New York) presents an exhibition of recent works by New Mexico-based artist Ron Cooper. Not keen to indulge the expectations of others, Cooper is a true Renaissance man: artist, homesteader, producer of superlative mezcal, vehicle enthusiast, lone wolf. It’s no wonder his work deftly rides the fine line between the “Light and Space” and “Finish Fetish” monikers, both conceptually hard hitting and eye candy-tasty. Cooper - like his contemporaries Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Doug Wheeler - is fluent in the uniquely Southern Californian minimalist visual language; yet he does not limit his art making to any certain boundaries.

Ron Cooper emerged into the Los Angeles art scene in the mid-1960s following study at Chouinard Art Institute with fellow students Mary Corse, Allan Ruppersberg, and Wheeler. At this time, Cooper directed his focus upon two geometric forms: the square – shallow, poured-resin constructions he named “Light Traps”, and the rectangle – exaggerated “Vertical Bar” forms made of Plexiglas, upon which smooth, translucent mica-laden pigments were applied “like the exhalation of a breath.” Impelled to make pieces relating to a human scale, and inspired by the full-swing growth of 1960s SoCal tract housing developments, Cooper conceived of these bodies of work with stock building materials in mind. The “Light Trap” pieces consider the depth of 2x4 framing with standard drywall facing; the “Vertical Bar” series, the actual measurements of the common 4x4 lumber stock.

These bars, acknowledged early on by visionary gallerist Richard Bellamy, were first exhibited in a group show entitled “Arp to Artschwager” (cur. Bellamy at Noah Goldowsky Gallery, 1967); soon thereafter, they were the focus of a solo exhibition at Los Angeles’ ACE Gallery. The current grouping of Vertical Bars in this exhibition recall the proportions and structure of the early bars; in this series, however, Ron Cooper has employed contemporary surface pigments that allow greater potential and range in their chatoyant properties.

Franklin Parrasch Gallery

53 East 64th Street, New York

www.franklinparrasch.com

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Christie's, New York. Works from the collection of Alexis Adler

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT 
WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF ALEXIS ADLER 
Christies's, Exhibition at Rockefeller Center, New York
1-28 March 2014 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

© Alexis Adler

Before Jean-Michel became Basquiat, and could afford studios and canvases, he painted all over his apartments — on walls, doors, refrigerators, clothes and any other bare surface he could find. In 1979, the artist began transforming the East Village apartment he was sharing with Alexis Adler, just such a living installation. Christie’s is honored today to announce a blockbuster month-long curated exhibition featuring a grouping of approximately 50 works coming from the Lower East Side apartment, where she lived with Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1979 to 1980. The three major works, a glyph-like work on plaster that reads Olive Oyl, a door titled within as Famous Negro Athletes and Milk painted on a radiator will highlight the First-Open sale of Post-War and Contemporary on March 6th, and a selection of 41 works and items will be sold through a dedicated Online-Only sale to be held March 3-17. To be comprehensive, the exhibition will also present works and archive photographs on loan from Alexis Adler’s collection.

The exceptional month long exhibition will take place on the 20th floor of 1230 Avenue of the Americas, at Rockefeller Center in March 2014. The show will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, featuring never before published images of the artist and several unique photographs of Basquiat taken by Alexis Adler.

“Jean was just a young and wonderful person that had a lot to say. Everything around us was about art at that time, everything was about creativity, and whatever he could find became art. He was only 19 and just absorbing and creating. It’s been really wonderful living with these pieces for almost 35 years, and I hope that the next owners get as much joy as I did. Living with it is a responsibility. There are beautiful pieces, and they mean a lot to me because I was there, have remembrances.  But I know that Jean gave them to me as a gift, and I enjoyed them as such, I have just the memories. I’ve always been interested in sharing and I have realize that today young people are willing to learn more about Jean and are really interested in his art.  I'm really excited to be able to have the show at Christie’s, as well as pass on, and share the artwork with other people so they can enjoy it. I’ve been enjoying it for a long time,” declared Alexis Adler.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alexis Adler cohabited from 1979 to 1980, when Basquiat was nineteen, and creating punk-influenced photocopied collages and painted clothing for sale on the street. Alexis Adler’s collection includes never before exhibited items including paintings, drawings and postcards as well as painted clothing kept private since the 80’s when the artist and Alexis shared the Lower East Side apartment.

“It's a pleasure to be able to present to the public this wonderful grouping of material from the collection of Alexis Adler. The sum total of these works provide an intimate view of Basquiat before his fame and while he was practicing graffiti in the streets and getting by on his own wits and the good will of others who recognized his tremendous creative spark. His name was SAMO and it was written everywhere, he was infamous before becoming famous. This body of work exhibits the artist’s early grasp of his ability and potential, many of the words and forms represented here carry over into his canvases which will be created just a few months later. We are indebted to Alexis Adler for having the foresight to preserve these early pieces and present them to the public now for the very first time,” stated Jonathan Laib, Christie’s, Senior Specialist, Post-War & Contemporary Art.

Adler has just graduated from college when they met. She became part of the downtown scene along with Basquiat, Michael Holman, Al Diaz and Shannon Dawson – young friends with an alternative style who became regulars at the Mudd Club and other downtown fixtures.  When they first started going together neither Basquiat or Adler had a home, and they sometimes stayed together with some friends. In 1979, they both moved in an apartment on East 12th Street near Avenue B. It was his first permanent address after leaving his father's home in Brooklyn. He had a room in the back of the railroad apartment filled with papers where he made his drawings and poetic phrases. Adler had studied art history at Barnard, and majored in Biology in college; she is today a successful embryologist in New York. Jean-Michel Basquiat was fascinated by her Biology textbooks, and copied many of the Biology and Chemistry symbols into his drawing.

The collection also includes writings and early drawings, as well as his postcards and painted clothes. In these early years, Basquiat painted on walls and objects in other apartments he stayed at, or left drawings on paper as gifts. But many of those were thrown away and painted over, and other objects sold when prices for his work first started rising.

BASQUIAT'S WORKS TO BE OFFERD IN THE FIRST OPEN OF POST WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART, 6 March 2014

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) 

Olive Oyl 

paint on wall, 48 x 30 in. 

Estimate: $400,000-600,000 

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Famous Negro Athletes)

paint on door (Detail), 80 x 24 in.

Executed in 1980-1981

Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Milk

paint on radiator, 24 x 16 x 6 in.

Estimate: $300,000-500,000 

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

“I met Jean (which is what everybody called him, I think, until he got famous—I never called him that while he was alive), toward the beginning of 1979 when he was 18.  (I was at the self-dramatic Jesus’s crucifixion age.)  But we treasured the same information and we spoke the same language and that put us on the level.  I never thought of him as a kid, but as a wise guy/wise man.  He was a rebel.  What are you rebelling against?  What have you got?  Hey, I found him by tracking down the words he wrote on walls on the street, and that was the beginning of a permanent friendship.  I was always glad to see him show up.  He was always up for perpetrating some fun.  He would tell you something interesting, ask you a question you couldn’t answer, give you a gift you didn’t expect, play your records, look through your books and in the refrigerator, and leave you a drawing. Thanks!

Alexis’s collection is the pure pro-bono production of an artist on fire with ideas.  These are the roots and the seeds of thing to come. Already in 1979 he was developing his own vocabulary of words, characters (Popeye and Olive Oyl) and signs.  Here’s the crown and the wheel, the dotted line, the spilled ink.  He’s trying things out.  With the postcards he’s doing Warhol and Rauschenberg, pop art, and with the clothes he’s doing Franz Kline and Pollock.” Glenn O’Brien, writer and friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Extract from the text written for the Christie’s dedicated exhibition catalogue. 

BASQIAT'S WORKS TO BE OFFERD ON THE ONLINE-ONLY SALE, 3 - 17 March 2014

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Typical Cancer)

ink and collage on paper, 11 x 8 1/4 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $20,000-30,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled

collage and mixed media on paper

7 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $8,000-12,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Rock Hudson)

collage and ink on paper

6 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

Estimate: $20,000-30,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Untitled (Flag)

watercolor and typewriter type on paper

2 3/8 x 5 in.; 11 7/8 x 12 1/4 in. (framed)

Executed in 1979-1980

$50,000-70,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)

Mead Sketch Diary

spiral notebook with red ink inscriptions

11 x 8 1/2 in.

Executed in 1979-1980

$80,000-120,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988)
Blue paint on sweatshirt
Executed in 1979-1980
Estimate: $10,000-15,000

Image courtesy Christie's, New York 

Exhibition
Rockefeller Center, 20th Floor on 1230 Avenue of the Americas, March 1 - 28, 2014
Monday to Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday March 2, 1pm – 5pm
Closed on Sunday March 9, 16 and 23

First open sale: March 6, 2014
Christie’s 20 Rockefeller Plaza

Online-only sale, March 3 – 17, 2014
Christies.com/pwconline

Christie’s Website: www.christies.com

Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New, MoMA, NYC

Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New 

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC 

Through April 21, 2014

The Museum of Modern Art pays tribute to the legacy of the legendary gallerist and collector Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007) with an exhibition of works reflecting the activities of her galleries in Paris and New York from the 1960s through the 1980s, revealing her remarkably prescient selection of the art of her time. Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New, on view through April 21, 2014, celebrates the Sonnabend family’s generous 2012 gift of Robert Rauschenberg's Combine Canyon (1959) to MoMA, and salutes Sonnabend’s commitment to introducing groundbreaking art to the public. Some 50 works by 41 artists, including Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Morris, Mario Merz, Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, John Baldessari, and Jeff Koons, are drawn from MoMA’s holdings and from other public and private collections, spanning a range of mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and live performance. The exhibition is organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Claire Lehmann, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture. 

During a career spanning half a century, Sonnabend helped to shape the course of postwar art in Europe and North America, championing some of the most significant artists of her time. Opening her first gallery in Paris in 1962 and her second in New York in 1970, Sonnabend displayed a steadfast commitment to exhibiting demanding new art. This interest stemmed from a deep curiosity. Sonnabend once noted, “I like what I do not at first understand,” and she was instinctively drawn to art that she considered “difficult to classify on the basis of things already known.” Embracing an ambassadorial role, Sonnabend was instrumental in bringing new art across the Atlantic, helping to introduce American Pop art and Minimalism to Europe in the 1960s and Italian Arte Povera to the United States in the early 1970s. In the ensuing decades, she continued to seek out and support work that reinvented the notion of what art could be. 

The exhibition includes works from important exhibitions held at Sonnabend’s galleries in Paris and New York, such as Jasper Johns’s Device (1962), which was part of the inaugural show at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. Also featured are major works by American Pop artists whose European solo gallery debuts took place at Sonnabend: Roy Lichtenstein’s Little Aloha (1962); Claes Oldenburg’s Tartines (1964); James Rosenquist’s Volunteer (1963–64); Andy Warhol’s 1947 White (1963); and Tom Wesselmann’s Great American Nude #75 (1965). 

Artist Michelangelo Pistoletto helped introduce Sonnabend to many of the Arte Povera artists in Italy whose work she presented in Paris and the U.S. Pistoletto’s early mirror painting Due Persone (Two People) (1963–64) is included in the installation, as is Igloo Fibonacci (1970) by Mario Merz, which was featured in the artist’s American debut at her New York gallery. In the late 1960s, Sonnabend brought the first wave of American Minimalism across the Atlantic to European audiences, represented in the exhibition with works by Robert Morris, Larry Bell, and John McCracken. 

In the 1970s, Sonnabend sought out and supported some of the most noncommercial Conceptual, new-media, and performance-based art of the day. She grasped very early that photography and video were being used as tools in Conceptual artists’ practices. The exhibition includes Winding Towers (1966–97) by Bernd and Hilla Becher, a German artist duo she brought to America for their first solo gallery show in 1972. The following year she began showing work by John Baldessari, whose Throwing Balls in the Air to Get a Square (1972–73) is also featured in the exhibition. 

Live performance was a key element of the Sonnabend Gallery’s program in the 1970s. The exhibition includes Da inventare sul posto (To Invent on the Spot) (1972), a work by Jannis Kounellis that encompasses both a painting and a performance featuring a violinist and a ballerina, which was shown in Kounellis’s first North American solo show at Sonnabend’s New York gallery. Film documentation of Vito Acconci’s provocative 1972 exhibition, at which he debuted Seedbed and two other performances, is also featured. A selection of films and videos from Castelli-Sonnabend Tapes and Films, which Sonnabend founded with Leo Castelli in 1973, provides a glimpse into this groundbreaking initiative to distribute moving-image works produced by artists associated with the duo's respective galleries. 

In the 1980s, the diversity of Sonnabend’s taste encompassed an array of innovations. She promoted the work of artists such as Terry Winters and Carroll Dunham and helped introduce German Neo-Expressionist painters to American audiences, giving A. R. Penck his American solo debut. She also took on a group of artists who would become synonymous with the Neo-Geo movement, represented in this exhibition by works including Ashley Bickerton’s Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles) (1987–88) and Jeff Koons’s Pink Panther (1988). 

ILEANA SONNABEND BIOGRAPHY: 

Ileana Schapira was born in Bucharest, Romania, on October 28, 1914, the daughter of a prominent Jewish industrialist. She met Leo Castelli when she was 17 and married him the next year. After the outbreak of World War II, the couple escaped Europe and settled in New York City, where Castelli opened a gallery in their home in 1957. They divorced in 1959, and Ileana went on to establish her own career in the art world. She married Michael Sonnabend, a Dante scholar, in 1960, and in 1962 they opened the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, later opening another gallery in Manhattan in 1970. A voracious collector and pioneering gallerist, Sonnabend’s 50-year career helped shape the course of art in the 20th century. 

ILEANA SONNABEND - CATALOGUE:

Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, featuring the work of 41 artists who exhibited in Sonnabend’s eponymous galleries in Paris and New York from the early 1960s through the late 1980s. A biographical essay by Leslie Camhi, artists’ recollections of working with Sonnabend, and individual entries on the featured works provide further reflection on the legendary gallerist's taste and lasting influence. 172 pages, 56 color and 54 black-and-white illustrations. Hardcover, $29.95. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and available in December at MoMA Stores and online at MoMAStore.org. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson outside the United States and Canada.

The exhibition is supported by the MoMA Annual Exhibition Fund. 

MOMA

Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor

www.moma.org

Tony Feher, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Tony Feher 
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York 
Through January 18, 2014 

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. presents Encore, a solo exhibition of work by TONY FEHER. The show marks twenty years since the gallery, then called Wooster Gardens, first presented Tony Feher’s work in his premier solo exhibition in New York.

Over a career that spans more than twenty-five years, Tony Feher has defined a unique place in contemporary art by creating elegant and poetic sculptures and installations using familiar, everyday objects. Imposing order on these materials is an artistic gesture—one of collecting, stacking, arranging—that mirrors basic human impulses and long-standing art historical traditions. Feher’s post-minimalist, serial constructions are rooted in Robert Irwin’s reductive vocabulary, Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades,” and Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, which elevated objects of mass production to the status of art objects.

The artworks’ aesthetic character is dictated by the essential form, color, texture and weight of the original material as evident in Tony Feher’s shelves of bottles partly filled with dyed water. When glowing light filters through the colored water, the sculpture adopts the significance of stained glass despite its modest material quality.  Pairing an original sense of humor and wit with a controlled minimalist aesthetic, Feher accentuates and exploits these material characteristics to alter our understanding and appreciation of these simple objects and thus also altering our world view.

TONY FEHER was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1956, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, with early stops in Florida and Virginia. He received a BA from The University of Texas, and currently resides in New York City. Feher’s work can be found in important international public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.

An in-depth retrospective organized by Claudia Schmuckli, Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the university of Houston, premiered at the Des Moines Art Center in 2012, and traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. The exhibition is currently on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through February 16, 2014, before traveling to the Akron Art Museum from April 16 through August 17. A fully illustrated monograph published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. was published to accompany the survey.

Upcoming exhibition: Josephine Halvorson, January 23 - March 1, 2014

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. 
530 W 22nd Street - New York, NY 10011
www.sikkemajenkinsco.com

Ham Jin exhibition at Doosan Gallery New York

Ham Jin: Unseen 
DOOSAN Gallery New York 
November 14 - December 21, 2013 

DOOSAN Gallery New York announces korean artist HAM JIN’s solo exhibition Unseen. This exhibition will comprise of approximately fifty miniature sculptures from a recent series, all created using black polymer clay. 

Ham Jin’s installations of miniature sculptures constructed with materials such as collected dust particles, polymer clay, and dead insects satirize the contemporary condition of individuals trapped in the world of their own making. For his recent works, he employed only black polymer clay due to the material’s lightness and flexibility, which gave immediate form to Ham’s ideas, while limiting the color palette allowed him to focus on the forms and structures, and the properties of the material itself. 

Unseen denotes both that the works require up-close viewing to really see, as well as that the process of construction itself is not readily apparent to the viewer. In the recently finished Untitled series, abstract black sculptures appear as if they are black dots dispersed and floating inside the starkly white exhibition space. However, upon closer inspection, human faces emerge out of unidentifiable organisms, or in the urban series, New York City's buildings are standing aligned in rows, and sceneries that the artist directly saw and experienced are all part of Ham’s work. As in a poem where one word or one line could be interpreted and understood in countless ways, so is the nature of Ham Jin’s works.  

  

In this exhibition, Ham Jin’s intricate sculptures will provide a stimulating and pleasurable viewing experience that will occasion the opportunity to witness the artist’s unique vision and wit, along with the insight into another aspect and look at Korean contemporary art. 

HAM JIN (b. 1978) received a BFA in Sculpture from Kyungwon University. He has had solo exhibitions at pkm Gallery (2012/2011/2004, Seoul, Korea), Miki Wick Kim Contemporary Art (2008, Zurich, Switzerland), and Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (2007, Aomori, Japan). His works also have been included at Minsheng Art Museum (2010, Shanghai, China), Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton (2008, Paris, France), Rodin Gallery (2008, Seoul, Korea), Venice Biennale (2005, Venice, Italy), Mori Art Museum (2005, Tokyo, Japan), and de Appel Arts Centre (2003, Amsterdam, Netherlands). 

DOOSAN Gallery New York 

www.doosangallery.com

Paul Cocksedge: Capture, Friedman Benda, New York

Paul Cocksedge: Capture
Friedman Benda, New York
September 12 - October 12, 2013

Friedman Benda, NYC, will present PAUL COCKSEDGE: CAPTURE the British designer’s inaugural solo exhibition. Capture will introduce new works developed by Paul Cocksedge over the last four and half years that push the mediums of light and structure, including a large-scale light installation, a collection of dramatic, seemingly impossible, hand-wrought dome lamps, and Poised, a series of unyielding steel tables inspired by the delicacy of paper. Known for exploring the limits of technology, materials, and manufacturing capabilities, Paul Cocksedge Studio has produced both commercial and experimental work, as well as a series of high-profile public installations around the world. Capture finds Paul Cocksedge presenting a new series of concepts informed by his studio’s commitment to technological ingenuity, expanding the boundaries of physics, and the creation of works that are both thought provoking and unexpected. 

The works include Capture, a 5 ¼ ft (1.6 meter) hand-spun aluminum dome that appears to “hold” the peaceful glow of a warm white light. The piece is informed by a process of reduction—a recurring theme in Paul Cocksedge’s work—as it subtracts the typical infrastructure around light, instead creating a hemisphere that seems to stop light from escaping. For White Light, Paul Cocksedge will create a room within the gallery in which everything and nothing changes. For this work, the designer will create an illuminated mosaic of precisely calibrated and positioned colored panels on the ceiling of the gallery. The ceiling will slowly fade from a spectrum of colors to a warm white light, while the room itself will remain unchanged, demonstrating the ways in which we do and do not perceive the interplay of color and light.

The inspiration for Poised comes from the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation. Created following an intensive series of calculations regarding gravity, mass, and equilibrium, the table looks as though it is about to fall, but is perfectly weighted and stable. 

In addition to these new works, Paul Cocksedge will present three architectural models that take conceptual threads from Capture and White Light and reapply them to architectural settings outside of the gallery space. Central to Paul Cocksedge’s work is an appreciation for the ways in which people respond to and interact with his designs. As a result, potential real world applications of these new works will be explored in a series of architectural models.

FRIEDMAN BENDA
515 W 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
Gallery's website: www.friedmanbenda.com

Summer Art Shows at Lehmann Maupin NYC - Hernan Bas, Anne Chu, Mary Corse, Teresita Fernández, Klara Kristalova, Maya Lin

Hernan Bas, Anne Chu, Mary Corse, Teresita Fernández, Klara Kristalova, Maya Lin
Two Summer Group Shows at Lehmann Maupin, New York, 27 June - 16 August 2013

Lehmann Maupin announces the opening of two summer group shows at 540 West 26th Street and 201 Chrystie Street, New York. 

The exhibition at 540 West 26th Street gallery comprises the work of three artists – HERNAN BAS, ANNE CHU, and KLARA KRISTALOVA – connected by a shared interest in the wildly imaginative nature of storytelling, and the visual fusion of fantasy and reality in a narrative context. 

HERNAN BAS

A Private Show, 2012

Acrylic on linen, 60 x 48 inches / 60 x 152.4 x 121.9 cm

Courtesy of the artist Hernan Bas and Lehmann Maupin, New York

The works on view include new drawings by HERNAN BAS, completed during a recent residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. While all three artists look to literature as a primary source of inspiration, Herman Bas’s fascination with the paranormal and bizarre traces back to his childhood.

ANNE CHU

Putti with Flag, 2011

Ceramic, stone, fabric metal, 76 x 16 x 21 inches / 193 x 40.6 x 53.3 cm

Courtesy of the artist Anne Chu and Lehmann Maupin, New York

ANNE CHU draws from a wide range of cultures and eras, referencing ancient mythological and ritualistic tales. On view are a vibrant series of oil and egg tempera paintings, watercolors and sculptural works by Anne Chu.

KLARA KRISTALOVA

Nature Study, 2010

Porcelain, 11.81 x 7.87 x 6.3 inches / 30 x 20 x 16 cm

Courtesy of the artist Klara Kristalova and Lehmann Maupin, New York

KLARA KRISTALOVA mines the lost territory of childhood dreams, memories and nightmares. The works on view are a selection of glazed stoneware and porcelain sculptures by Klara Kristalova. 

At 201 Chrystie Street gallery, another three-artist exhibition exploring the role of perception and the innovative use of materials and technology to create meaningful experiences showcases new minimalist paintings by MARY CORSE; a variety of wall works by TERESITA FERNANDEZ; and two floor sculptures and a Pin River work by MAYA LIN. 

MARY CORSE

Untitled (White Multiple Bands With Flat Sides, Beveled), 2012

Glass microspheres in acrylic on canvas, 44 x 44 inches / 111.8 x 111.8 cm

Courtesy of the artist Mary Corse and Lehmann Maupin, New York

MARY CORSE's monochromatic, white paintings reveal the artist’s ongoing exploration with radiant and reflective surfaces and reveal the subjective nature of perception in progress. 

MAYA LIN

Disappearing Bodies of Water: Arctic Ice (detail), 2013

Vermont Danby marble, granite base, 48 x 46 x 52 inches / 121.9 x 116.8 x 132.1 cm 

© Maya Lin Studio, Courtesy Pace Gallery

MAYA LIN’s use of technological methods to study topographical and geographic phenomena presents viewers with the opportunity to experience the natural world through a twenty-first century lens, and demonstrates the artist’s ability to translate the enormity of our world, in this case the Arctic, to a scale that is more relatable. 

TERESITA FERNANDEZ

Night Writing (Tropic of Cancer) (detail), 2011, 

Colored and shaped paper pulp with ink jet assembled with mirror, 17.32 x 198.03 inches / 44 x 503 cm

Courtesy of the artist Teresita Fernández and Lehmann Maupin, New York

TERESITA FERNANDEZ's work engages the surrounding architecture and the optical effects of light and color to create subtle, meticulous works of art that reference the landscape and natural phenomena. 

LEHMAN MAUPIN, NEW YORK

www.lehmannmaupin.com

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, International Center of Photography, NYC

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, International Center of Photography, New York, USA
Through September 8, 2013

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, a global survey of contemporary photography and video, is on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC) since May 17 through September 8, 2013. Filling ICP’s entire gallery space as well as its exterior windows, the exhibition features 28 emerging and established artists from 14 countries whose works speak to and illuminate the new visual and social territory in which image making operates today. Artists include Nayland Blake, A.K. Burns, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elliott Hundley, Gideon Mendel, Wangechi Mutu, Sohei Nishino, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nica Ross. A complete list is below.

Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse 

Windows, Ponte City 212.857.0045 (detail), 2008-2010. 

Photo © Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse

Courtesy Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Starting from the premise that most photography is now produced, processed, and distributed in digital form, A Different Kind of Order explores the sometimes unanticipated consequences of this shift as revealed in the work of a wide range of international artists. For the younger artists in the Triennial, the digital revolution is something that happened during their childhood, and dealing with its ramifications has occupied most of their creative lives. For artists of this generation (such as Sam Falls, Andrea Longacre-White, and Oliver Laric), mixing the new idioms of digital imagemaking with the existing visual language of painting, sculpture, and collage is almost second nature. Other Triennial artists, wary of the advent of “screen culture,” emphasize the handmade qualities of their work, yet even they recognize that their efforts are situated within the space of a fully digitized, networked world.

“The ICP Triennial, the only recurring exhibition in the U.S. to focus on international contemporary photography and video, provides an unparalleled opportunity for visitors to encounter new works by established artists and to discover emerging artists,” said Mark Robbins, Executive Director of ICP. “A Different Kind of Order reflects our present moment of a new kind of order shaped by social, political, and technological changes.”

The exhibition sketches the contours of the new visual and social territory in which photography finds itself today. A number of key themes serve as guidelines that link the works in the exhibition:

• Artist as aggregator identifies one of the main aesthetic offshoots of the digital image environment: the present-day descendants of the “image scavengers” of the 1980s who are now busy plundering and reorganizing found, online photographs into highly personal, web-based archives.

• The resurgence of collage is evident in works that combine photographic fragments, digital images, paint, three-dimensional objects, and audio and video material to blast open and reconfigure the space of the photograph in unprecedented ways.

• At a time when all manner of power structures are being called into question, mapping has become a renewed subject of artistic inquiry—part of a wider fascination with the power of ordering systems that has emerged in response to the dematerialized disorder of the Internet’s environment.

• The Internet’s dissolution of geographic distance has spurred the development of new forms of community, allowing artists to explore new forms of connection, collaboration, and multiple authorship that do not depend on physical proximity.

• In cooperation with ICP Associate Librarian Matthew Carson, the exhibition will also include an installation of approximately 100 recent photo books, which testifies to the extraordinary boom in selfpublished and small-press photo books now occurring around the world.

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial was organized by ICP curators Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers, and Joanna Lehan. See below for curator biographies.

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 EXHIBITION ARTISTS

Roy Arden b. 1957, Vancouver; lives and works in Vancouver

Huma Bhabha b. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan; lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York

Nayland Blake b. 1960, New York City; lives and works in New York City

A.K. Burns b. 1975, Capitola, California; lives and works in New York City

Aleksandra Domanovic b. 1981, Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia; lives and works in Berlin

Nir Evron b. 1974, Herzliya, Israel; lives and works in Tel Aviv

Sam Falls b. 1984, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles

Lucas Foglia b. 1983, New York City; lives and works in San Francisco

Jim Goldberg b. 1953, New Haven; lives and works in San Francisco

Mishka Henner b. 1976, Brussels; lives and works in Manchester, England

Thomas Hirschhorn b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland; lives and works in Paris

Elliott Hundley b. 1975, Greensboro, North Carolina; lives and works in Los Angeles

Oliver Laric b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria; lives and works in Berlin

Andrea Longacre-White b. 1980, Radnor, Pennsylvania; lives and works in Los Angeles

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer b. 1967, Mexico City; lives and works in Montreal

Gideon Mendel b. 1959, Johannesburg; lives and works in London

Luis Molina-Pantin b. 1969, Geneva, Switzerland; lives and works in Caracas, Venezuela

Rabih Mroué b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in Beirut

Wangechi Mutu b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya; lives and works in New York City

Sohei Nishino b. 1982, Hyogo, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo

Lisa Oppenheim b. 1975, New York City; lives and works in New York City and Berlin

Trevor Paglen b. 1974, Camp Springs, Maryland; lives and works in New York City

Walid Raad b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in New York City

Nica Ross b. 1983, Tempe, Arizona; lives and works in New York City

Michael Schmelling b. 1973, Pittsburgh; lives and works in New York City

Hito Steyerl b. 1966, Munich; lives and works in Berlin

Mikhael Subotzky / Patrick Waterhouse b. 1981, Cape Town, South Africa; lives and works in Johannesburg / b. 1981 Bath, England; lives and works in Italy, England, and South Africa

Shimpei Takeda b. 1982, Sukagawa, Fukushima, Japan; lives and works in New York City

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 EXHIBITION CURATORS

Kristen Lubben, Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions at ICP, has been a member of the curatorial staff since 1998. She has organized many exhibitions focusing on documentary practice, gender, and politics, including Susan Meiselas: In History, Magnum Contacts, Gerda Taro, Amelia Earhart: Image and Icon, and El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers. Kristen Lubben is the author and editor of several publications, including Magnum Contact Sheets (Thames & Hudson) and the catalogue for the exhibition In History.

Christopher Phillips, ICP Curator, organizes exhibitions of historic and contemporary photography. In 2004, he and Wu Hung of the University of Chicago organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China. He has curated exhibitions including Atta Kim: On-Air (2006), Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan (2008), and Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide (2011). He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, where he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Carol Squiers, ICP Curator, has organized exhibitions on a range of subjects, includ¬ing contemporary art, fashion photography, and the intersection of science, technology, and photography. She has published extensively in periodicals, books, and catalogues, and is the editor of the collections Over Exposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (2000) and The Critical Image (1990), co-author with Vince Aletti of Avedon Fashion: 1944–2000 (2009), and author of The Body at Risk: Photography of Disorder, Illness, and Healing (2005).

Joanna Lehan, Assistant Curator at ICP, co-organized Strangers: the First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in 2003 and the second Triennial, Ecotopia, in 2006. As a book editor for Aperture Foundation, she organized monographs by artists Thomas Ruff, Susan Meiselas, Zwelethu Mthethwa, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others. She has contributed essays to several photographic monographs, has served as a consultant to The Walther Collection, a private photographic collection and museum in Germany and New York, and has worked as a photo editor, researcher, and columnist.

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated catalogue, produced by ICP in partnership with DelMonico Books • Prestel, accompanies the exhibition. It includes sections dedicated to individual artists and contributions by ICP curators.

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial, ICP/DelMonico Books • Prestel 2013, 8 x 10 inches, Hardcover; US $49.95

Designers Stefan Sagmeister & Jessica Walsh, The Jewish Museum, New York, USA

First Exhibition by Designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh: Six Things: Sagmeister & Walsh
The Jewish Museum, New York, USA
Through August 4, 2013

Designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh

Sagmeister & Walsh 

Stills from If I Don’t Ask, 2013 

HD video, 2min., 12 secs. 

In collaboration with Santiago Carrasquilla 

© Sagmeister & Walsh

The designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh are known for their experimental typography and striking visual imagery. Six Things: Sagmeister & Walsh, on view at The Jewish Museum since March 15 through August 4, 2013, marks the first exhibition of their newly minted design firm Sagmeister & Walsh. For the last ten years, Sagmeister has researched the nature of happiness, asking, “Is it possible to train my mind in the same way I can train my body?” In five short films and a sculpture, the studio investigates six things, culled from Sagmeister's diary, that he believes have increased his personal happiness such as: “Now Is Better” and “If I Don’t Ask I Won’t Get.” In addition, intrigued by a recent nationwide survey in which Jews reported the highest levels of well-being of all religious groups, Sagmeister & Walsh are placing a text in the gallery that connects this scientific data to his personal exploration of happiness.

Before this partnership, Stefan Sagmeister was already taking an unusual approach to design. He has created signature album covers for Lou Reed, Talking Heads, the Rolling Stones, and OK Go, and others, and executed indelible ad campaigns for major companies such as HBO and Levi’s. In an iconic 1999 poster for the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), he incised type into the skin of his naked torso like a tattoo. At the contemporary art gallery Deitch Projects in 2008 he stacked 10,000 bananas against a wall. Unripe green bananas among the yellow ones spelled out the rallying sentence, “Self-confidence produces fine results.” The legibility of the text fluctuated as the fruit turned from green to yellow to black over the course of the exhibition. 

To stimulate his own creativity Sagmeister has gone on regular sabbaticals since 2000, traveling and investigating ideas. Over the last decade he has delved into the nature of happiness. Inspired by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose research connects spiritual wisdom with modern science, Stefan Sagmeister developed an intensive regimen of meditation, cognitive therapy, and mood-altering drugs as an experiment in self-discovery. From this emerged a forthcoming documentary entitled The Happy Film and from that The Happy Show, a traveling exhibition and its accompanying publications, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. 

Six Things is a continuation of this project on happiness, in which Jessica Walsh has been an integral partner. In five compelling short videos and a sound-activated sculpture, Sagmeister & Walsh examines six things culled from Sagmeister’s diary that he believes have increased his personal happiness: 

If I Don’t Ask I Won’t Get 

Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development 

Be More Flexible 

It Is Pretty Much Impossible to Please Everyone 

Now Is Better 

Feel Others Feel 

Sugar cubes, bubbles, and water balloons are just some of the materials used to spell out the phrases. The ambiguous connections between the six epigrams and the objects of which they are composed are left for visitors to decipher, a provocative game based in the pleasure of looking. 

A text in the Six Things exhibition gallery connects this scientific data to the personal exploration of happiness. It notes: “According to a recent nationwide survey, Jewish Americans report higher levels of happiness than all other major faith groups in the country. This finding is based on more than 676,000 interviews conducted in 2010-2011 for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Within each faith surveyed, very religious members are happier than their nonreligious counterparts. For example, observant Jews are generally happier than secular Jews. But a higher proportion of practicing members does not predict greater well-being for the faith. Interestingly, though Jews are among the least religious faith groups in America, with only 16.9% identifying themselves as very religious and 53.5% as secular, they still appear to be the happiest. The Well-Being Index does not definitively say that religious observance leads to greater happiness. It does note that belief in a higher power, prayer, acts of charity, and neighborly love can promote a sense of belonging; alleviate stress and depression; and lead to a positive outlook on life.”

Six Things: Sagmeister & Walsh has been organized by Rebecca Shaykin, Leon Levy Curatorial Assistant at The Jewish Museum. 

STEFAN SAGMEISTER & JESSICA WALSHS are the principals of Sagmeister & Walsh, a New York-based design firm. They have been engaged to create a new graphic identity for The Jewish Museum. 

STEFAN SAGMEISTER  born in Bregenz, Austria, in 1962, established the design firm Sagmeister Inc. in New York in 1993. He is the recipient of many awards, including two Grammy awards for his packaging designs, the Lucky Strike Designer Award, and an award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 

Born in 1986 in New York, JESSICA WALSHS  a multidisciplinary designer, has worked at Pentagram Design and Print magazine and counts The New York Times, AIGA, EDP, Computer Arts, and I.D. magazine among her clients. She was named Computer Arts' Top Rising Star in Design in 2009 and an Art Director’s Club Young Gun in 2010, as well as Print’s New Visual Artist for 2011.

Exhibition Related Program: On Thursday, May 2 at 6:30pm, Stefan Sagmeister will talk about his recent projects including the exhibition, Six Things: Sagmeister & Walsh.

Among other exhibition on view at The Jewish Museum in New York is the project: As it were … So to speak. A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom, Through August 4, 2013.

Support: This exhibition is made possible by the Irma L. and Abram S. Croll Charitable Trust. Additional support is provided by StampStampede.org. 

The Jewish Museum, New York, USA
Museum website: www.thejewishmuseum.org