Faith Ringgold @ Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC

Faith Ringgold

Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

November 14, 2025 – January 24, 2026

Jack Shainman Gallery presents Faith Ringgold, its inaugural exhibition dedicated to the trailblazing American artist, author, educator and activist. Spanning Ringgold’s extraordinary career, the exhibition foregrounds her groundbreaking and multifaceted practice in textiles—from her earliest ‘tankas’ to her iconic story quilt paintings—alongside pivotal early paintings, sculptures and rarely seen works on paper.

Restlessly creative and formally ambitious, Faith Ringgold explored the expressive potential of diverse media to create an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans. Her practice emerged from the political consciousness and activism she developed during the 1960s and 1970s in Harlem, New York. Ringgold’s early paintings and works on paper from this period combine her unique and graphic approach to figuration with a bold and innovative approach to constructing space, which she would continue to explore throughout her life. Through her desire to overcome the largely white, art historical tradition, Faith Ringgold sought out forms more suitable to the exploration of gender and racial identity that she so urgently pursued, leading her to travel abroad in the 1970s, first to Europe and then to Africa.

Faith Ringgold’s experimentation with textiles began with what she referred to as ‘tankas.’ Inspired by the religious and spiritually significant Tibetan thangkas she first encountered when visiting the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Ringgold’s version manifested as paintings on unstretched canvas adorned with sewn fabric borders. It was the potential of these objects to explore the intersection of the craft and fashion traditions she inherited from her family with the history and techniques of European painting that inspired Faith Ringgold and formally initiated her investigation into the medium that would become an integral part of her practice. They additionally provided the flexibility to make art that could be easily transported around the world for exhibition, allowing her to circumvent some of the many practical and economic barriers regularly faced by women artists of her time.

Ringgold’s first tankas, the Feminist Series (1972), feature lush and vividly colored forest scenes paired with hand-painted quotations by Black female abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders. The format inspired her to create Political Landscapes and Love Poems, two series of works on paper from the same year that were odes to her experiences utilizing her own words. These were followed by the Slave Rape Series (1973), in which Faith Ringgold used the likenesses of herself and her daughters to embody the experiences of enslaved women—an act of both identification and reclamation. 

Pushing the tankas into an increasingly abstract direction, Faith Ringgold developed the Window of the Wedding (1974) series, a collaboration with her mother Willi Posey. Inspired by Kuba textiles, these abstract compositions were conceived as hanging prayer rugs intended to bring happiness and protection to married couples. Perhaps Ringgold’s most formally daring tanka works—a series of paintings with raffia fringe titled California Dah—were made in response to her mother’s passing, attempting to bridge the gap between the earthly and the afterlife.

Her experiments with textiles soon extended beyond the two-dimensional plane into painted soft sculptures and performance masks, works that merged her visual and performative sensibilities. Drawing from African sculptural traditions and her own background in theater and education, these works transformed fabric into a medium for storytelling and political expression. The Atlanta Children (1981) soft sculptures, created in response to the murders of twenty-eight Black children in Atlanta, exemplify this shift. Combining sewn and painted fabric, these haunting figures memorialize the victims while confronting the violence of systemic racism—effectively turning textile into a medium of mourning, resistance and care.

Faith Ringgold’s later development of the story quilt in the 1980s both allowed her to work at successively larger scales and to connect with a global lineage of feminine creativity. Regularly combining her autobiography with scenes and episodes from the collective history of Black life in America, the story quilts are disarmingly intimate yet historically grand. The malleability of the form gave her the freedom to move between abstract and experimental series—such as the Politically Correct Sheets and Love Letters that she made in 1987—and more narratively grounded and figuratively descriptive ones, such as the Jazz Stories quilts made between 2004-2007. 

In Politically Correct Sheets and Love Letters, Faith Ringgold melded the printmaking plates she created at Robert Blackburn’s legendary printshop with impressionistic segments of quilting surrounding it, sharply contrasting the graphic nature of the former with the painterly expressivity of the latter. The later Jazz Stories quilts, by contrast, saw Faith Ringgold draw upon her lifelong love of the genre while also centering female performers. By inverting the gendered hierarchies that historically privileged men, Ringgold proposed a vision of justice that would resonate beyond the arts.

Faith Ringgold returned to the history of slavery later in her career with the Coming to Jones Road (1999-2010) series, which recounted the imagined journey of enslaved people traveling north along the Underground Railroad. The title references Ringgold’s own move to a predominantly white suburb in New Jersey and the racial prejudice she experienced while living there at the turn of the 21st century. This fusing of personal and historically derived narratives challenged the conception of the Underground Railroad as being a linear story towards freedom and underscored the ongoing obstacles that persist at the end of a journey and alongside a new beginning.  

“The significance of Faith Ringgold’s life continues to be felt and understood in new, urgent and relevant ways, from pedagogy to artistry, from the personal to the political," said Jack Shainman. “Just as she fought tirelessly against the prevailing sentiments of racial and gendered exclusion of both her time and our own, so too did her inimitable work in textiles provide an example of how life and art—so often presumed to be separate—are in fact deeply and fundamentally intertwined. This exhibition marks the beginning of our commitment to furthering the legacy of one of this country’s most important and vital artists.”

Artist Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) is recognized as one of the most significant cultural figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, whose impact and influence can be seen throughout the worlds of art and activism today. Over more than six decades, Ringgold distinguished herself as an artist, author, educator and organizer, as she understood the necessity of addressing the politics of race and gender in America in more ways than one. Restlessly creative and formally ambitious, Ringgold worked in a variety of media—from quilts and paintings to performances and children’s books—to create an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans.

In 2022, Faith Ringgold was the subject of a major retrospective, Faith Ringgold: American People, which opened at the New Museum, New York, before then traveling to the de Young Museum, San Francisco and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In 2019, Serpentine Galleries, London opened Faith Ringgold, which then travelled to both the Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden and Glenstone Museum, Potomac. From 2010 to 2013, American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s opened at the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York and traveled to the Perez Art Museum, Miami, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Faith Ringgold is included in numerous public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery, Washington, DC; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Neuberger Museum of Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Public Art for Public Schools, New York; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Studio Museum, Harlem, New York and The High Museum, Atlanta.

JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY

46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10013

jackshainman.com

Ben Shahn @ Jewish Museum, NYC - 'On Nonconformity' - A Retrospective Exhibition + Catalogue

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity

Jewish Museum, New York

May 23 — October 12, 2025

The Jewish Museum presents the first U.S. retrospective in nearly half a century dedicated to social realist artist and activist BEN SHAHN (1898-1969). Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity examines the prolific and progressive artist’s commitment to chronicling and confronting crucial issues of his era, spanning from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. Featuring 175 artworks and objects from the 1930s to the 1960s, including paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs, commercial designs, and ephemera, the exhibition highlights the enduring relevance of Shahn’s art across media, while revealing new insights into the complexity of his aesthetic and his decisive shift from documentary to allegorical and poetic styles in pursuit of a visual language that would resonate widely.

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity extends the Jewish Museum’s history of exploring Shahn’s far-reaching ideas and deep impact of the artist. The exhibition is organized by Dr. Laura Katzman, guest curator, in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Brown, Jewish Museum curator, and is drawn from the recent retrospective curated by Dr. Katzman at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

“Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity showcases the extraordinary work of a pioneering artist whose commitment to social justice across ethnic, class, and racial divides could not have greater relevance today,” said James S. Snyder, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director. “There is no better place for this timely exhibition than the Jewish Museum, which presented Shahn’s last U.S. retrospective in 1976. The affirmation of shared universal humanity in his art parallels the Jewish Museum’s own mandate to explore the cross-cultural connectedness of Jewish experience throughout the global diaspora over 3,500 years.”

The exhibition draws its title from Ben Shahn’s credo of “nonconformity,” which the artist asserted as an indispensable precondition for both significant artistic production and all great societal change. This philosophy is centered in the exhibition as the foundational thread that runs through the artist’s oeuvre, which investigates issues such as unemployment, discrimination, authoritarianism, and threats to freedom of expression, while championing labor, civil, and human rights. Shahn’s later spiritual work, which embraces the Hebrew language and biblical stories, also reflects his exploration of a tradition of social justice activism within Jewish culture.

Born to a Jewish family in Russian-controlled Lithuania, Ben Shahn immigrated to the United States with his family in 1906. He began his career as a lithographer, mastering drawing, engraving, and typography, before expanding and experimenting across a vast array of mediums. The exhibition demonstrates Shahn’s rejection of a strict hierarchy among mediums, based on a belief in the power of images in all forms to stir the conscience of the public.

“Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity offers a reappraisal of the artist through a contemporary lens,” said Dr. Laura Katzman, guest curator. “Shahn’s understanding of art’s critical role in the perpetual struggle for a more just future resonates powerfully today. The exhibition invites visitors to examine the issues that were important to Shahn through our modern understanding of social justice. It also uplifts the richness and complexity of his aesthetic, which drew inspiration from various artistic movements in the postwar era—from abstract expressionism to conceptual art—and capitalized on the reach of mass media, raising commercial production to a high art.”

“Ben Shahn is one of the great American artists of the twentieth century who believed in the value of dissent and the essential function of art in the life of a democratic society,” said Dr. Stephen Brown, Jewish Museum curator. “The first major presentation of his work in the U.S. in decades, the Jewish Museum exhibition is something of a homecoming for Shahn, who has been part of our collection since 1947 and who was educated and politicized in New York City.”

The exhibition includes artwork and ephemera from throughout Shahn’s career, on loan from more than 30 museums, galleries, and private collections. Across seven sections, Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity explores the artist’s multifaceted use of photography and mass media, his inventive re-purposing of imagery across media, and his layered interrelations of word and image. The sections are organized thematically around the most pressing issues of Shahn’s time, including:

— Art and Activism encompasses Shahn’s earliest social realist work from the 1930s, highlighting the artist’s response to high-profile injustices perpetrated by the American judicial system;

—- A New Deal for Art presents Shahn’s powerful photographs, posters, and mural studies made for U.S. government art projects that championed programs aimed at alleviating the devastation wrought by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Also on view are Shahn’s “personal realist” paintings, which dignify the ordinariness of everyday life that he encountered on his photographic travels for New Deal agencies;

— The Labor Movement features Shahn’s mass-produced posters and graphics that speak to his commitment to the cause of labor and to promoting the dignity of manual labor, executed in the mid-1940s when he led the Graphic Arts Division of the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ Political Action Committee;

— War and Its Aftermath explores Shahn’s work created both during and after World War II: propagandistic posters commissioned by the Office of War Information, which confront the horrors of war, and more reflective paintings that grapple with wartime destruction and postwar liberation;

— Age of Anxiety: The Cold War includes the works Shahn made during the era of McCarthyism and the emergent Atomic Age, which both protest America’s anti-communist hysteria and warn of the looming nuclear threat both at home and abroad;

— The Struggle for Civil Rights reflects Shahn’s fervent support of the nonviolent movements for civil rights in the U.S. and for the broader resistance movements against colonialism that were rising up around the world in the 1950s and 1960s;

— Spirituality and Identity—the final section of the exhibition showcases Shahn’s return to the biblical stories and Hebrew texts he grew up with as a child, illuminating how re-engagement with his Jewish roots was yet another lens through which he commented critically on history and society.

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity builds on the Jewish Museum’s long history of presenting Shahn’s work to American audiences. In 1976, the Museum hosted a major Ben Shahn retrospective, and in 1998, to mark Shahn’s centenary, organized Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, focusing on the role of allegory in the artist’s later, lesser-known paintings. Twenty-two years later, in 2020, the conceptual artist Jonathan Horowitz curated We Fight to Build a Free World, which situated Shahn’s work at the heart of an exhibition that examined how artists responded to cultural and political challenges with art primarily from the early 20th century to 2020.

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity

Laura Katzman 

Contributions by Beatriz Cordero Martín, 

Christof Decker and John Fagg

Published by the Jewish Museum, New York and 

the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 

in association with Princeton University Press

288 pages, 8 x 10.5 in., 290 color illus.

ISBN: 9780691273112 - Published: June 3, 2025

Book Cover image courtesy of Princeton University Press

Publication: The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, published by the Jewish Museum, New York, and the Museo Nacional Centro Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in association with Princeton University Press. Drawing on media studies, cultural studies, and museological approaches, the catalogue brings international perspectives and new insights to the work of artist Ben Shahn. With a foreword by James S. Snyder, the book is authored by Laura Katzman, Professor of Art History at James Madison University, with contributions by Beatriz Cordero Martín, Professor of Art History at Saint Louis University, Madrid; Christof Decker, Professor of American Studies at Ludwig-Maxmilian University, Munich, Germany; and John Fagg, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Cultures at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity was organized by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and adapted by the Jewish Museum, New York. The New York exhibition is curated by Dr. Laura Katzman, Professor of Art History at James Madison University, in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Brown, Curator at the Jewish Museum. Dr. Katzman also served as guest curator of the recent Ben Shahn exhibition in Madrid. 

JEWISH MUSEUM, NEW YORK

thejewishmuseum.org

Updated Post 24-10-2025

Noah Purifoy @ Tilton Gallery, NYC - "Poetry as Politics: Seeing Beyond the Object - Noah Purifoy and Kindred Spirits" Exhibition

Poetry as Politics: 

Seeing Beyond the Object 

Noah Purifoy and Kindred Spirits 

Tilton Gallery, New York 

March 20 - May 24, 2025 

Tilton Gallery presents an exhibition of works by NOAH PURIFOY (1917-2004) and a few of his contemporaries who were kindred spirits in their attitudes and philosophy towards art making. The exhibition centers on Purifoy’s signature assemblages and include works never before exhibited in New York. Works range from his important early 1965-66 Watts Remains from the rare group of works made for the exhibition 66 Signs of Neon in response to the 1965 Watts Rebellion to indoor and outdoor works from his period in Joshua Tree. 

Additional artists include John Outterbridge, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, John Riddle, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Varnette Honeywood, Betye Saar and Donald Stinson. Many of these works also have rarely, if ever, been shown.

Noah Purifoy and the artists in his circle in Los Angeles from the mid-sixties on, many of whom worked primarily in assemblage, believed in the power of art, the poetry of art to effect change and to propel thought that went beyond the art object to move attitudes in real life and political thinking. 

Noah Purifoy has stated: “When you do art, you see beyond the object. That effort of seeing beyond the object is also present in human relations.” He believed that art is a powerful tool for social change and that creativity and activism go hand in hand. John Outterbridge also spoke often about the wrongs of the world and the power of art to touch people and shape change. These artists turned philosophy into the poetry of art. 

Works were rarely overtly political, but the artists wove their understanding of history and of their present world, their beliefs and their hopes into constructions and sculptures and collages made from discarded fragments. Materials include found pieces of metal, carved wood, fabric and repurposed objects and partial objects of every kind. 

Never didactic, much was left up to the viewer, allowing the strength of the artworks to speak for itself. Direct activism was reserved for real life and channeled into impacting arts education and creating institutions and cultural centers for their community. 

Noah Purifoy was Founder and Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1964 to 1975 where he created programs in the arts for the youth of the Watts community. He then sat on the California Arts Council for ten years from 1976 to 1987, promoting the arts and art education around the state. 

John Outterbridge (1933-2020) was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Compton Communicative Arts Academy in nearby Compton from 1969 to 1975. It was not only a haven for the community, but a center for art, poetry, music, dance and theatre. He then succeeded Noah Purifoy as Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1975 to 1992. He was a panelist for the California Arts Council and for the National Endowment for the Arts and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Getty Institute for Arts Education, all in 1978 to 1980. Other artists participated in different degrees in the activism of the times. 

This group of artists worked at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Arts Movement and impacted their contemporaries and generations to come. Not only did many of these artists teach formally, but they were generous in sharing their beliefs and many younger artists were impacted by their elders’ deep thinking. Their influence continues to the present; the Hammer Museum’s most recent Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, found inspiration in the work and life of Noah Purifoy.

TILTON GALLERY

8 East 76 Street New York, NY 10021

www.jacktiltongallery.com

Brian Maguire @ Crawford Art Gallery, Cork - Remains

Brian Maguire: Remains

Crawford Art Gallery, Cork

17 September 2021 - 9 January 2022

BRIAN MAGUIRE

Arizona 2, 2020

Acrylic on linen, 150 x 200 cm

Photo courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

© Brian Maguire

Crawford Art Gallery presents Remains, a series of large scale artworks by BRIAN MAGUIRE. The exhibition depicts the lives lost crossing the border to the US.

Artist Brian Maguire, known for his expressionist paintings addressing issues of social injustice, continues his creative enquiry into the Mexican/American border. In 2019, Brian Maguire visited Dr Greg Hess, Chief Medical Examiner for Pima County, Tucson, Arizona. Dr Hess gave the artist access to some thousand visual records of migrant lives lost in the crossing from South and Central America and Mexico, into the United States. Having combed through these records, Brian Maguire began a new series of paintings, acknowledging the many unidentified victims who undertook this perilous journey to the United States.

Curator Anne Boddaert says ‘When Brian shared his work with us, here in the Crawford Art Gallery, we were upended, we looked and simply could not look away. His works compels the audience to linger on issues of migration and global unrest‘. Anne Boddaert went on to say “Despite the challenging subject matter, visitors will be drawn to Brian’s expressionist style beautifully executed in these expansive paintings. This exhibition will showcase the artist’s poised technique and how he utilises open and rough brushstrokes to represent the harsh landscape of South and Central America and Mexico’ .

In late 2020, the Crawford Art Gallery secured the painting Arizona 3 for the national collection. This acquisition opened up a conversation with Brian Maguire about a showing of this emerging body of work, some of his most nuanced and ambitious to date. 

Brian Maguire

Remains

Exhibition Catalogue

A catalogue with full colour illustrations and texts by Dr Greg Hess, Christian Viveros-Fauné and Edward Vulliamy accompanies the exhibition.

BRIAN MAGUIRE

Irish painter Brian Maguire studied at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and the National College of Art and Design. He has worked with marginalised groups in institutions in Ireland, Poland and the US. Maguire represented Ireland at the São Paolo Biennale in 1998. He was appointed Professor of the Fine Art Faculty of the National College of Art and Design in 2000 and is an elected member of Aosdána. Brian Maguire has shown extensively in Europe and the US, most recently at the Museo De Arte de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and the Rubin Centre, Texas University at El Paso, Texas (September 2019), at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, (in 2020), the Rhona Hoffmann Gallery, Chicago, (January 2021), and Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (March 2021).

CRAWFORD ART GALLERY

Emmet Place, Cork, Ireland

www.crawfordartgallery.ie

Corita Kent @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC – "heroes and sheroes" Exhibition

Corita Kent: heroes and sheroes

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

July 8 – August 13, 2021

Andrew Kreps Gallery presents heroes and sheroes, an exhibition of artworks by CORITA KENT at 22 Cortlandt Alley. Centered on Corita Kent’s series of the same title made between 1968 and 1969, the exhibition marks the first time heroes and sheroes has been exhibited in New York in its entirety.

In the summer of 1965, following the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, Corita Kent reproduced the front page of the Los Angeles Times within her work my people. While in previous years, Corita Kent had appropriated text from consumer and mass culture, my people is the first example of Kent using appropriation as a direct response to the socially charged events of her time. The paper’s headlines were rotated and partially obscured by a swath of red, in which Corita Kent handwrote a text attributed to Maurice Ouellet, a priest and civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches earlier that year. Ouellet’s words form a rebuttal to the paper’s racially charged headlines describing the Uprising as a “Blood Hungry Mob.”  In response, Ouellet’s quote reads: “Youth is a time of rebellion. Rather than squelch the rebellion, we might better enlist the rebels to join that greatest rebel of his time-Christ himself.” 

In the years following, Corita Kent continued to create singular compositions, in which bold and colorful text promoted messages of faith, acceptance, and love. Simultaneously, Kent rose to national prominence as a public figure - she was named Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1966 and featured on the December cover of Newsweek in 1967. With this exposure came increased scrutiny of Kent’s outspokenness as the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles mounted intense pressure on both Kent and her order, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, over the changes they were making under the directives of Vatican II. In the summer of 1968, Kent would take a sabbatical from Immaculate Heart College, subsequently leaving the order and seeking dispensation from her vows.

This would mark a key turning point in Carita Kent’s work, as she began heroes and sheroes later that same year. Reflecting on the social and political movements of the time, much like my people before it, heroes and sheroes demonstrates not only Kent’s advocacy but also her acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Collaging images appropriated from newspapers and magazines with poetry, song lyrics, quotations from figures within the religious left (such as Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine), and Carita Kent’s own writings, heroes and sheroes addresses issues such as the civil rights, labor, and anti-war movements, nuclear disarmament, and the political assassinations that defined the 1960s. Works like the cry that will be heard reflect the urgency of the moment, imploring the viewer to “give a damn about your fellow man.” Other works, notably american sampler, position themselves as acerbic critique. Utilizing the colors red, white, and blue, Kent riffs on the tradition of the “sampler”, a piece of embroidery used to demonstrate a variety of needlework techniques. Here, Corita Kent’s sampler repeats the words AMERICAN, ASSASSINATION, VIOLENCE, and VIETNAM in stacked lines that resemble the stripes of the flag, using shifts in color to highlight different combinations of words such as SIN, I, and NATION. Prompting the viewer to consider their own individual and moral responsibility, the work’s last line poses the question “WHY” next to the answer: “WHY NOT.”

Filling the main gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley, the twenty-nine prints comprising heroes and sheroes reflect the enduring spirit that gave rise to Corita Kent’s nickname—“Joyous Revolutionary.” The series simultaneously highlights the potential of new life, a belief in the power of collective action, and the joy that exists in the everyday. Shying away from optimism, Kent instead emphasized the importance of hope in works like a passion for the possible, employing the image of an energetic crowd of demonstrators, arms extended upwards in peace signs. Positioned above the photograph is a text from activist and clergyman William Sloane Coffin, which still resonates over fifty years after its making: “...hope demands that we take a dim view of the present because we hold a bright view of the future; and HOPE AROUSES AS NOTHING ELSE CAN AROUSE A PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE.”

CORITA KENT (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. Earlier this year, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate Corita Kent’s former studio at 5518 Franklin Avenue as a Historic-Cultural Monument. Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; SFMOMA, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; mumok, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others. Notable exhibitions include: Corita Kent: Get With The Action, Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft (2019); Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2015); Someday is Now, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2007).

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

Corita Kent: Works from the 1960s @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

Corita Kent: Works from the 1960s

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

April 26 – July 3, 2019

“It is a huge danger to pretend awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep on going. I am trying to make hope. And you have to grab it where you can.” – Corita Kent

Andrew Kreps Gallery and kaufmann repetto, New York present an exhibition of works by CORITA KENT (b. 1918, Fort Dodge, Iowa, d. 1986, Boston) at 55 Walker Street.

Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. In 1936, CoritaKent  joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. She began teaching in the Immaculate Heart College art department by 1947 and produced her first serigraphs in the early 50s. While her first prints consisted of dense, figurative compositions with religious themes and iconography, by 1962—after seeing Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles—her work evolved into a singular mode of Pop art. Reflecting a wide breadth of disciplinary interests, her bright compositions were not limited to the staple imagery and language of consumer and mass culture but also integrated philosophy, literature, street signage, scripture, and song lyrics in bold text and abstract forms.

The exhibition focuses on the years following 1962, displaying works that combine themes of faith, acceptance, and politics. Taking a celebratory approach to the everyday, Corita Kent combined texts from newspapers, supermarkets, and advertising, alongside passages from figures such as Daniel Berrigan, e.e. cummings, Martin Luther King Jr., and others. These vibrant calls to arms encouraged the viewer to work towards mutual respect and dignity for all people. As tensions surrounding the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War escalated in the late 60s, so did Corita Kent's response to current events as she asked: "Why not give a damn about your fellow man?" Following mounting pressure from the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as well as exhaustion from her increasingly public profile, Corita Kent ultimately left the order in 1968 and moved to Boston where she continued to pursue her work.

Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and others. Notable exhibitions include: ‘Corita Kent: Get With The Action,’ Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft, Ditchling, England (2019); ‘Corita Kent and the Language of Pop,’ Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (2015); ‘Someday is Now,’ Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); Yes ‘People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita,’ Museum Ludwig, Ludwig, Germany (2007).

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

55 Walker Street, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

Jota Castro Motherfuckers never die - Exhibition at Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands

Jota Castro Motherfuckers never die 
Museum Het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands
Curator: Roel Arkesteijn 
7 September - 2 December 2012

Jota Castro (Lima, Peru, 1965), a French-Peruvian artist living in Brussels, Belgium, is one of today’s most prominent activist artists. At the end of the 1990s he retired from his work as a diplomat at the European Union and the United Nations to devote himself fully to his activities as an artist and curator. Jota Castro has curated exhibitions including The Fear Society / Pabellón de la Urgencia for the 2009 Venice Biennale and more recently, Dublin Contemporary 2011. In his artistic work, he exposes the machinations of contemporary (consumer) society, sometimes with biting, politically incorrect humor, and he champions the protection of intellectual freedom and democracy. Jota Castro’s exhibition at Museum Het Domein, in the Nertherlands, deals with problems caused by the global economic crisis and developments in European politics. 

Jota Castro, London Calling, 2012, flag, safety pin, 200 x 290 cm. 

Courtesy Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

In a 2005 interview with Jerôme Sans, Jota Castro posited that ‘Society is changing and the powers that be are getting scared. People are looking for new references, they’re in search of information, they’re discussing it, sharing it. Our society is like clay waiting to be redefined, to be modeled unambiguously. For an artist, our age is the best of times!’ The artist’s recent work embodies a hope for radical change to our (consumer) society. In a visual register that could be characterized as political minimalism, Jota Castro reflects on such diverse subjects as crippling mortgages in the United States, recent genocides, the migration out of Africa, our dependence on oil, Chinese-American trade relationships, the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest due to Western consumption, and other forms of economic and ecological exploitation of Latin America. 

Jota Castro, Seguro. 

Courtesy Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

The exhibition Motherfuckers never die is the largest solo exhibition of Jota Castro’s work in the Netherlands. A large selection of the artist’s recent drawings, sculptures, and installations, supplemented by a few older key works, will be on display. Many of these works have not been previously shown or have been created especially for the exhibition. The exhibition takes its name from a new sculpture, created for the occasion, that condemns drastic cuts to the Dutch cultural budget. Such attacks on the freedom of expression have always been an issue, the artist states, and he hopes bring this to the viewer’s attention. In this context, Jota Castro’s work can be seen as an arena for free speech, subversive positions, and the desire for hopeful radical alternatives. 

On Sunday, October 7th, at 2pm, Jota Castro will speak about his work and will hold a conversation with Museum Het Domein’s curator of contemporary art, Roel Arkesteijn.

Museum Het Domein Website: www.hetdomein.nl

Andrea Bowers @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC - The New Woman’s Survival Guide

Andrea Bowers: The New Woman’s Survival Guide
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
October 29 – December 17, 2011

The Andrew Kreps Gallery presents Andrea Bowers’ second exhibition at the gallery entitled, The New Woman’s Survival Guide.  Consisting of drawings layered over wallpaper made up of handbills and protest signs collected by the artist, the show contrasts previous tropes of feminism with current ones.

The show’s title and subject matter uses this 1973 feminist zine as its nexus and impetus to consider the evolution of women’s issues and feminist activism today.  The original publication’s intent was to catalogue and document activities aimed explicitly at developing an alternative woman’s culture.  The original DIY book served as an encyclopedic collection of women’s organizations and services that existed throughout the United States during the second wave of feminism in the early seventies.  The artist’s discovery of the New Woman’s Survival Guide led Bowers through a process of questioning and investigating the progression and possibility of an alternative woman’s culture almost 40 years after the this tome was published.   

The exhibition continues her use of archival strategies in art making, which includes drawing, photography and graphic materials.  Bower’s belief in the importance of the partnership between art and politics is at the forefront of this exhibition and she celebrates a 40-year history of feminist political graphics highlighting specific images as homage or political focal points creating moments of humor, celebration, memorialization and rage. Twenty drawings hang on a huge wall installation, made of contemporary political placards and graphics combined with reproductions of the 1973 zine.  All the contemporary political graphics were collected by the artist through donations to feminist organizations like Planned Parenthood, NOW, NARAL, Radical Women, 9to5, Codepink, Another Mother For Peace, etc. 

The drawings comprise three bodies of work: text drawings, figurative drawings, and black and white feminist graphic drawings.  The text drawings, Make My Story Count are hand-drawn copies of letters written recently to Planned Parenthood by women in the Los Angeles area expressing their appreciation for the organization’s invaluable healthcare services.  The figurative drawings use as their source photos taken by the artist at 2011 May Day March in Los Angeles.  All of the drawings are of women and reflect the complexities of gender, race and global migration that must be confronted in today’s woman’s movement.  The graphite black and white drawings appropriate graphics from the 1970’s but become playful and contemplative 40 years later. 

By juxtaposing the historical and contemporary tropes of activism the artist foregrounds not only the trajectory and evolution of the feminist dialogue, but also it’s difficulties maintaining pertinence and purity in an ever-growing complex political environment.

A percentage of sales from the exhibition will be donated to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Andrea Bowers received her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna, Austria; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Sammlung Goetz, Seedamm Kulturzentrum, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
andrewkreps.com

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back - NMWA, Washington DC

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back 

National Museum of Women in the Arts - NMWA, Washington DC 

Through October 2, 2011 

GUERRILLA GIRLS

Guerrilla Girls (active1985- )

Untitled, 1986 

From the series “Guerilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years,” 1985-1990 

Color photolithograph on paper - 17 x 22 in. 

Courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts,

Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore,

in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay 

The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back is an exhibition featuring more than 70 works by the gorilla-masked crusaders, including posters, newsletters, stickers and erasers. The Guerrilla Girls Talk Back is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts –NMWA– in Washington DC since June 17, through October 2, 2011. 

The Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous artist-activists, critique the sexism and racism pervading contemporary culture. Through their populist art production, the group raises awareness about discrimination. 

GUERRILLA GIRLS

Guerrilla Girls (active1985- )

Hormone Imbalance. Melanin deficiency, 1993

From the series “Guerilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2” 

Photolithograph on paper - 17 x 11 in. 

Courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts,

Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore,

in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay 

Drawn primarily from NMWA’s collection, the exhibition presents posters from two portfolios, Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: The First Five Years, 1985-1990 and Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2, both donated to the museum by Baltimore-based collector Steven Scott.

The first Guerrilla Girls posters appeared in 1985, pasted onto structures in lower Manhattan. Combining bold advertising-style graphics with eye-opening facts and figures, the posters detailed discrimination by the city’s art galleries against women artists and artists of color. Since then, the group has produced scores of posters, billboards, and books to promote inclusiveness in the cultural and political realms.

GUERRILLA GIRLS

Guerrilla Girls (active1985- )

Erase Discrimination, 1999

Pink rubber with ink screenprint

1 1/8 x 2 1/2 x 1/4 in. each 

Collection of the Akron Museum of Art 

Photo: Courtesy Akron Art Museum 

Humor is a vital part of the Guerrilla Girls’s art, making the serious messages of their works accessible and engaging. In addition to the wry texts in their printed materials, members of the group wear gorilla masks that protect their anonymity during the lectures and actions/protests that they present worldwide. The group produces their works in quantity to reach a broad audience. Over the years, the Guerrilla Girls have broadened their range of targets for critique to include sexism and racism in Hollywood and the mass media; art censorship; government corruption and apathy; and the battle for reproductive rights.

GUERRILLA GIRLS

Guerrilla Girls (active1985- ) 

Horror on the National Mall!, 2007 

Color photolithograph on paper 

23 x 13 in. 

Courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts,

Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore,

in honor of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay

National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) 

Washington, DC 

www.nmwa.org

Act Up! Documentary film on the history of the organization

Gus Van Sant, Executive Producer of ACT UP!, a documentary chronicling the early days of AIDS activism, to host benefit for film. Star-studded event’s sponsors include Susan Sarandon, Christine Vachon, Phil Donahue, Judith Light, Carson Kressley and Ted Allen

On Wednesday, May 25, 2011, Academy Award-winning director Gus Van Sant will host a cocktail reception from 6:30-8:30 PM at New York City’s LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street (between 7th & Greenwich Avenues) in Manhattan to raise funds for ACT UP!, a new documentary film now in production.* Van Sant, the acclaimed director of films including Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Good Will Hunting and Milk is overseeing the production. A portion of the proceeds from the fundraiser will benefit AIDS organizations worldwide through a collaborative partnership with UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

The film traces the history of ACT UP – the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power – a group of New Yorkers who mobilized when municipal, state and federal government all turned a blind eye as their friends, families and loved ones were being decimated by a then-untreatable disease. ACT UP’s urgent mission was to pressure government to acknowledge the raging AIDS epidemic and take emergency measures to combat it. ACT UP’s founding New York chapter spawned branches throughout America and across the globe. Refusing to be passive victims, AIDS activists updated the civil disobedience tactics of the 1960s with a media-savvy flair that riveted the attention of the nation. Ultimately, ACT UP forced timid political leaders and an apathetic government bureaucracy to respond comprehensively to a grave public health crisis.

Assembled from hundreds of hours of historic footage and contemporary interviews under the guidance of Producers/Directors Scott Robbe (Queer Eye For The Straight Guy) and Jerry Kolber (National Geographic Television, Jedi Junkies), a major asset of the film is never-before-seen footage shot in 1987 and 1988 by Scott Robbe featuring interviews with key members of ACT UP! amidst the organization’s most tumultuous period. ACT UP! is being co-directed by Ellen Spiro (Body of War, named Best Documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review).

Within a few years of its founding, ACT UP’s strategically-targeted activism spurred the Food & Drug Administration to shave years off the approval process for medications that held promise to treat AIDS and led to an almost 50% decrease in the cost of treatments. It is the legacy of ACT UP to have transformed what was once a death sentence into a manageable disease. Importantly, ACT UP!  shows how ordinary citizens can mobilize to successfully challenge outmoded government policies and protocols. Indeed, ACT UP! sparked the emergence of dozens of patient and consumer advocacy groups around the nation and worldwide to strategically pressure government, corporations and institutions to be more alert and responsive to life-threatening health crises.

By drawing on extensive archives of footage filmed on handheld cameras by video activists, the film captures the dynamic energy of protest. You are there as demonstrators aggressively take their fight to jar public awareness into the majestic halls of Grand Central Station, onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and directly to the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA in Washington. Combined with current interviews of key participants and contemporaneous news reports on ACT UP’s often shocking tactics, spliced together in a fast-paced, music video style of editing with a hip, kinetic soundtrack, the audience’s senses are carried along with the irresistible force of democracy being fulfilled.

One reason why ACT UP! is an essential film for our time is because it captures the story of what was one of the most effective grassroots movements of the modern era. Now, when HIV transmission rates are on the rise among many demographics and the battle for marriage equality is being fought in voting booths and courthouses across America, a new generation of activists need to be inspired and emboldened. Just as Van Sant’s Milk brought the important story of the early gay rights movement to a new generation, ACT UP! will recontextualize the powerful accomplishments of AIDS activists for a 21st century audience.

ACT UP! is currently in production with the expectation of premiering at Sundance 2012, followed by wide theatrical release and television broadcast. A companion record album produced by Anthony Rapp (Rent) and a coffee-table book co-written by producers/directors Scott Robbe and Jerry Kolber will accompany the film’s release. Sponsors of and participants in the May 25th fundraiser for the film in addition to Gus Van Sant include Susan Sarandon, Christine Vachon (Producer, Far From Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), fashion guru and author Carson Kressley of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, talk show host Phil Donahue, food critic and Chopped host Ted Allen, and openly-gay and HIV-positive New York State Senator Tom Duane.

* Mr. Van Sant may have scheduling conflicts that could prevent him from attending the event.

Feed Your Head Productions

www.feedyourheadtv.com