Tuesday, October 1st, 7 – 8 PM
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003
Join the National Arts Club in welcoming renowned light artist Grimanesa Amoros. Known for her large-scale public works worldwide, Grimanesa’s lighting sculptures challenge the concept of time and interact with viewers‘ perceptions of space. Originating from Lima, Peru, Grimanesa draws inspiration from her cultural background, particularly the ancient civilization motifs and its nature, with a modern perspective. Amoros has worked globally on monumental sculptures as well as works for private collections; her artistic versatility makes her practice unique and provides her with a fresh perspective on lighting and the power of light.
Drawing upon critical cultural legacies and landscapes, Amorós is inspired by the communities she creates within. Installing and programming each piece on-site, direct interaction with the surrounding architecture is key to creating her work. „Ultimately, the piece connects the viewers, space, and light sculpture, merging them into one.“ Grimanesa Amorós‘ artwork ties the past, present, and future — pushing viewers to think beyond and challenging their initial perceptions.
Hosted by Parsons Elab in collaboration with Arts Media and Technology (AMT) and Integrated Design Program (IDP) Departments
Wednesday, September 18
1:30 – 2:30 PM
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, 66 5th Ave
Join us for an open discussion and presentation by the world-renowned artist Grimanesa Amoros!Known for her large-scale public works worldwide, Grimanesa’s lighting sculptures challenge the concept of time and interact with viewers‘ perceptions of space. But how did she become who she is today? How did she build her practice and studio? Let’s peek behind the scenes to see what it takes to bring her large-scale projects to life.Originating from Lima, Peru, Grimanesa draws inspiration from her cultural background, particularly the ancient civilization motifs, and its nature, with a modern perspective. Amoros has worked globally on monumental sculptures and works for private collections; her artistic versatility makes her practice unique and gives her a fresh perspective on lighting and the power of light.Her multimedia creative work explores community connections intersecting history, technology, and architecture. Her keen understanding of structure enables her to create monumental sculptures incorporating various elements such as video, lighting, and electronic components to create immersive environments and connect viewers to their surroundings. Technology compliments the concepts of her work without defining it—a medium of expression.
A shared passion for light and fragrance sparked the collaboration between Veronique, a renowned perfumer, and Grimanesa. Upon their introduction, Grimanesa discussed with Veronique her challenge in identifying a specific, captivating scent she had encountered during her travels to desert lands. Unable to replicate the blend she had experienced mixing desert oils, Grimanesa described the fragrance to Veronique, whose extensive experience allowed her to skillfully identify the components within Grimanesa’s unique collection. This partnership resulted in the creation of L’OASIS-DESERT ROSE, a collaboration inspired by Veronique’s profound connection to the Mediterranean Sea and Grimanesa’s admiration for deserts. The alluring scent’s composition captures the essence of Huacachina’s golden dunes and the freshness of Mediterranean waves, taking you on an aromatic sensory journey that transcends geographical borders. Imagine the elegant coast of the French Riviera meeting the enchanting landscapes of Peru – that is the essence of L’OASIS-DESERT ROSE
UZOMAH: How does the choice of voltage you use impact your material choices and color selection?
GRIMANESA: My projects are created from concept to realization. That is to say, the concept and visualization are completed first. The LEDs for the projects I make are entirely custom-made for the installation. Once the visuals are finalized, the LEDs and electrical hardware are ordered to match the voltage requirements of the space. This has no influence on color selection.
Massimiliano Gioni, the New York-based Italian curator and contemporary art critic, serves as the Artistic Director of NYC’s New Museum, as well as the Artistic Director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan. Hailing from Busto Arsizio, Italy, Gioni is a leading figure in the contemporary art world, having curated a multitude of celebrated exhibitions, including the 55th Venice Biennale, and authored numerous books, spanning Urs Fischer: False Friends to the definitive monograph on Paul McCarthy. While we remain largely housebound, Gioni shares with Something Curated a thought-provoking edit of reading material to discover, with a note stating, “Forgive my Italian bias, but these days my country needs all the attention and affection one can give her.” The below are his words.
The director of New York’s homegrown art fair says she is ready to make some „radical“ shifts following last year’s venue upset MARGARET CARRIGAN 26th February 2020 15:45 GMT via The Art Newspaper
“It’s always a risk for galleries, doing a fair,” says Nicole Berry. “And it comes down to the money—it’s expensive.” The director of New York’s Armory Show used to work the fair booths herself when on the staff of various Manhattan galleries, so she is well aware that it is not just the stand fees that can stretch a gallery’s budget, but also the expense of shipping and staff, not to mention the untold cost of exhaustion. “Burnout is real,” she adds.
Burnout is exactly what brought Berry to the art world. She started her career as an elementary school teacher, following in the footsteps of her mother. “I didn’t have any formal art history training, but I was always trying to incorporate it into my teaching plans,” she explains over gluten-free toast and green tea at Manhattan’s NoMad restaurant. But after six years of working in a state school, she says she needed to change. “It’s a very difficult job. There’s not a lot of support for teachers, financially or otherwise. It can be incredibly rewarding, but you’re ‘on’ all the time.”
It wasn’t just her career where she made a decisive break—around the same time she also divorced. “I thought, you know what, there’s nothing holding me back from trying something else,” she says.
Civita di Bagnoregio Palazzo Colesanti, Viterbo, Italy
The sun is an important star and has been for centuries. During my stay in Civita di Bagnoregio, I woke up early one morning and decided to explore my new surroundings. During my stroll, I was dazzled at the strength of the sun beaming on the square. It got me thinking about the town of Civita, it’s history, and it’s relation to the sun. I began researching about The Etruscan’s, who were an ancient people that founded the city, and the remnants of their civilization still linger. The name of this piece is CETHA, which was inspired by the town and its past, translating to sun in Etruscan. CETHA has red lighting with pink hues in its sequence, which represents the sunrise that burns red in the morning and streams its light throughout the town.
Grimanesa Amorós is a New York-based American interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research and critical theory. Through her art she conveys an ephemeral wonder, entrancing viewers from all different backgrounds and communities to become agents of empowerment. She makes use of sculpture, video and lighting to create works that illuminate our notions of personal identity and community. She was a guest speaker at TEDGlobal 2014, earned an NEA Visual Artist Fellowship and an NEA Artist Travel Grant, and participated in the Art In Embassies Program. Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Grimanesa Amorós is presented in Germany by epodium Gallery.
New York City’s Office of Strategic Partnerships has established a new fund to support opportunities for young New Yorkers to connect with local arts productions and civic projects. The Civics and Arts Fund will work with cultural organizations and community groups across the five boroughs to promote civic learning, engagement, and discourse. “New York City is home to some of the world’s best art and theater, and yet it’s not accessible to all,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “With this initiative the city is taking steps to change that.”
The fund’s first partnership will be with Tony-nominated Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me. Written by Heidi Schreck, who also stars in the production as herself, and directed by Oliver Butler, the play reflects on Schreck’s journey from the fifteen-year-old girl who gave speeches about the US constitution to put herself through college to adulthood and a new state of awareness about the document, which she notes does not guarantee women’s rights—it actually doesn’t even mention the word woman. The ninety-minute performance is currently being staged at the Hayes Theater on West Forty-Fourth Street through August 24.
The Whitney Museum has turned to two in-house curators to put together a show that celebrates diversity in American art—but as in 2017, the biennial is already mired in controversy
The Whitney Biennial in New York often proves a pressure cooker for US social politics, especially since the curator Elizabeth Sussman’s landmark 1993 edition directly tackled the Reagan-era Culture Wars with provocative works by women and LGBTQ artists. The last edition in 2017 was marked by protests prompted by the white artist Dana Schutz’s depiction of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955. The episode remains a hot-button issue for the biennial’s organisers two years later.
Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley, the curators behind the 2019 edition, are perhaps unusually positioned to navigate these tricky political waters. In a departure from previous editions, where guest curators have been brought in, this year’s organisers are on staff and know first-hand the controversies that the biennial can inspire.
“We’ve tried to use the challenges and conversations that came out of the last [edition] as a productive lens for our work,” Panetta says. To that end, there is a great deal of work in the show that grapples with socio-political concerns around race and gender, financial inequality, gentrification and the vulnerability of the body.
You can pick up a copy from the MoMA and these independent NYC bookstores: Strand Book Store, Books Are Magic, McNally Jackson Books, Quimby’s Bookstore NYC, Oliver, Whole Foods, Barnes and Nobles. Alternatively, you can purchase a copy on the official website: https://awomensthing.org/shop/.
Grimanesa Amorós is a TEDGlobal guest speaker, a recipient of The NEA Visual Artist Fellowship, Art In Embassies Program, X Tumi USA Award, and Visionary Art Exhibition Lifetime Achievement Award.
A Women’s Thing Magazine is a print and digital publication dedicated to reshaping society’s ideas of what “women’s things” are. They find and highlight the women who are making history today.
Performance Space 122 has a new name and renovated digs. Jenny Schlenzka, its director, envisions a “vital center for community.”
By SIOBHAN BURKE,
via The New York Times
Nomadic since 2011, Performance Space 122 has returned to its East Village home. For anyone who frequented the old PS122 — the site of rebellious experiments in dance, theater and hard-to-classify performance — the new, extensively renovated one may take some getting used to. There’s an elevator. And a lobby. And a 3,600-square-foot theater that feels larger than the two old, grittier theaters combined, with soaring ceilings, flexible seating and windows overlooking Lower Manhattan. There’s a brand-new smaller theater, too, that can double as an exhibition space.
VISITING ARTIST | GRIMANESA AMORÓS Reception: Tuesday November 14, 6 pm at Chace Center Lobby. Artist Talk: November 14, 7-9 pmMetcalf Auditorium, Chace Center/RISD Museum, 20 North Main St. Providence, RI
Grimanesa Amorós is an interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research and critical theory. Through her art she conveys an ephemeral wonder, entrancing viewers from all different backgrounds and communities to become agents of empowerment. She makes use of sculpture, video and lighting to create works that illuminate our notions of personal identity and community. She was a guest speaker at TEDGlobal 2014, earned an NEA Visual Artist Fellowship and an NEA Artist Travel Grant, and participated in the Art In Embassies Program. Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. For more info, please visit the link below: https://events.risd.edu/event/grimanesa_amoros_talk_reception
In August 2015, Janine Foeller finally closed her gallery Wallspace, which she had started with Jane Hait 12 years before in Chelsea. “It was no longer sustainable,” Ms. Foeller said in a recent interview.
But she did not give up on the art world altogether. Instead, in September Ms. Foeller opened the Park Slope pop-up gallery and cafe Wifey with the artist and floral designer Simone Shubuck.
“The idea is to create a model that is more affordable and flexible and allows galleries to come and occupy a space for a designated period of time,” Ms. Foeller says. “There has to be a new way forward, and new models have to be investigated and explored because it’s just not working. We’ve seen too many of our colleagues having to close because of rent and other factors.”
Findings detail the supply side of the digital sales equation, point toward hybrid models
by SARAH P. HANSON | 29 June 2017
The Art Newspaper
The size of the online market depends on the definition and price range of artworks, Tefaf's addendum report finds
The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht today (29 June) released its Art Market Report: Online Focus, a supplement to the annual Art Market Report released in March.
Her findings mostly confirm the most noticeable trends, namely that large auctioneers who have embraced their digital platforms—Heritage, Christie’s, and Sotheby’s—claim the largest share of an estimated $3.1b market (which the Hiscox Online Art Sales Report puts it at $3.75b; Art Basel’s The Art Market 2017 report, $4.9b). Pownall’s report further qualifies that of the $3.1b, fine art and antiques account for only $2.6b (the rest being other collectibles, automobiles, wine, etc).
The data is derived from “profiles of 100 companies”, 39 of which responded to a survey; a survey of more than 8,000 dealers, with a response rate of 8%; and a sample of data from 3,349 auction houses who list on Tefaf partner Invaluable. In her surveys, Pownall defined art as “objects including fine art, antiques, decorative art, collectibles, haute jewellery, photography, and design”, but the queried companies include e-tailers like Etsy and RubyLane alongside art-specific businesses.
Dealers are rethinking the bricks-and-mortar model in favour of temporary, collaborative and virtual platforms by ANNY SHAW | 13 July 2017
The Art Newspaper
For dealer Anthony Reynolds, the turning point came when the lease on his London gallery ran out and his landlord announced he was tripling the rent. “I thought to myself, I can either find another space or I can find a different way to do this,” the gallerist says.
Reynolds chose the alternative route and, after 32 years in three successive premises, closed his permanent venue in 2015. “Essentially I abandoned the tyranny of the single space,” he explains. “You have to keep funding it and filling it, and artists have to think about how to use it. What was more interesting was to think about operating a gallery as normal, but without a fixed space.”
Representing the same 20 artists as he did before he closed, for the past two years Reynolds has been staging exhibitions in other commercial galleries, including London’s Annely Juda Fine Art, Independent Régence in Brussels, and Àngels in Barcelona. There are further plans to show in Tehran and Tokyo. The aim is to develop “collaboration between galleries rather than an alternative to galleries”, Reynolds says, noting that costs and proceeds are usually split down the middle with the hosting gallery.
PERFORMA ANNOUNCES DETAILS FOR PERFORMA 17
NOVEMBER 1–19, 2017
THROUGHOUT NEW YORK CITY
PERFORMA 17 COMMISSIONS INCLUDE:
YTO BARRADA (Morocco/France)
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE (South Africa)
TARIK KISWANSON (Sweden/Palestine)
KEMANG WA LEHULERE (South Africa)
JULIE MEHRETU (Ethiopia) and JASON MORAN (USA)
ZANELE MUHOLI (South Africa)
WANGECHI MUTU (Kenya)
KELLY NIPPER (USA)
JIMMY ROBERT (France)
TRACEY ROSE (South Africa)
NEW YORK – Performa, the internationally acclaimed organization dedicated to live performance across
disciplines, announces select commissions and the historical anchor for Performa 17—the seventh
edition of the Performa Biennial, to take place November 1–19, 2017, at locations throughout New York
City.
Since its inception, Performa has been a leader in commissioning artists whose work has collectively
shaped a new chapter in the multi-century legacy of visual artists working in live performance. Founded
by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg, the organization is dedicated to exploring the critical role
of live performance in the history of twentieth-century art, as well as its enormous significance in the
international world of contemporary art.
Performa 17’s team of curators and producers will present commissions and projects around curatorial
research themes focused on a cross cultural dialogue between Africa and the West, the legacy of Dada,
and the intersection of architecture and performance, that represent timely opportunities to work with a
diverse range of global contemporary artists. The resulting commissions and scholarship examine
immediate and critical concerns confronting our urban centers, the shifting political and cultural currents
of our turbulent world today, and ultimately the role of the arts and of artists in supporting afflicted
communities. This edition of the Biennial will focus on the sociopolitical context informing contemporary
art today, and how best to engage audiences in significantly understanding and absorbing its aesthetics
and intrinsic values. Additional commissions, projects and details will be announced in the coming
months.
Artists respond to the new global order with works that range from amusing to acidic
by GABRIELLA ANGELETI | 3 March 2017
(via The Art Newspaper)
The effects of fractured political systems are looming themes at Armory week satellite fairs geared toward younger dealers and artists. At Volta, running 1-5 March at Pier 90, the centerpiece is a curated section, organised by the Brooklyn-based curator Wendy Vogel. Titled Your Body is a Battleground after the famous Barbara Kruger photomontage, created on the occasion of the 1989 Women’s March on Washington, the mini-exhibition comprises works by eight artists dealing with the idea of resistance, including a colossal installation titled PATRIOT (2017) by the Kentucky-based artist Melissa Vandenberg that spells out its title with sewn and stuffed surplus military fabric.
There is no term more ubiquitous, obnoxious, and self-serving in our current lexicon as “woke.” Woke is safety-pin politics, masturbatory symbolism, and virtue signaling of a deflated Left insulated by algorithms, filter bubbles, and browser extensions that replace pictures of Donald Trump with Pinterest recipes.
Woke is a misnomer — it’s actually asleep and myopic. Woke is a safe space for the easily distracted and defensive pop culture inbred. Woke is the Left curled up in a fetal ball scribbling think pieces about Broad City while its rights get trampled by ascendant fascism, domestically and globally.
Forget opening galleries in far-flung territories—globalisation is benefiting the traditional hubs by Melanie Gerlis | 14 October 2015
(via The Art Newspaper)
Global financial hubs: London and New York remain the go-to cities for the art world
Although international galleries have spent the past decade wooing collectors in far-flung countries, opening spaces in Asia in particular, the next set of moves will result in an even greater concentration of the market in its two traditional hubs: London and New York.
London’s White Cube (FL, D4) is looking for office space in New York to “service its international client base”, a spokeswoman for the gallery confirms. Peter Brandt, who was the co-director of its space in São Paulo until it closed in August, could soon be spending more time in Manhattan. The Paris- and Salzburg-based dealer Thaddaeus Ropac (FL, A5) is known to be looking for a space in London, having originally considered opening in Istanbul. The Cape Town- and Johannesburg-based dealer Liza Essers of Goodman Gallery (FL, A17; FM, G17) is also seeking a space in London. London-based Lisson Gallery (FL, B5; FM, E7) is due to open a huge space in New York next year, while Hauser & Wirth (FL, D6; FM, D1) plans to upgrade to a new five-storey building in New York in 2018.
PINK LOTUS, a light sculpture installation by epodium artist Grimanesa Amorós installed on the The Peninsula New York landmark facade and as a part of “The Art of Pink” campaign, curated by Circa 1881 and sponsored by The Peninsula Hotels in honor of breast cancer awareness month. The work is on view from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15.
Limited edition PINK LOTUS tote bags can be purchased at The Peninsula New York. All proceeds will benefit SHARE, a nationwide community offering support, information and the benefit of experience to women diagnosed with breast and ovarian cancers.
