By adopting 17th- and 18th- century American folk motifs, Seattle-based Anne Siems’ portraits and still life paintings emit a haunting awkwardness. With rosy cheeks, haunted gaze and flattened features, Siems’ highly stylized figures inhabit a dreamy colonial landscape. As the world itself seems frozen in time, the transparent figures float in the foreground, forever youthful and mysterious. The delicate patterning found in traditional embroidery is the main element used to define their clothing. A thick application of paint, at times intentionally crackled to create the effect of an aged surface, emphasizes folk painting and faux antiquity. Siems' paintings ‘borrow backwards’ with a refreshing whimsy and off kilter grace, participating in the current revival of ‘old, weird America.’ ARTDAILY.ORG March 2011

Siems, who is German-born and now living in the northwestern United States, has drawn inspiration from the Guide on Wildlife in Europe, featuring unforgettable animal portraits. These, along with her youthful cast of human characters, celebrate the joys and mysteries of life. Distinct identities emerge in each portrait with fable-like stories becoming the narrative. Ritual elements from Native American medicine and culture, rabbits, deer, owls and mythological animals, their pelts and feathers, are prominent subjects in Siems’ menagerie. The muse of the artist is both real and imaginary.
 
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: In 2001 it seemed like I never recovered fully from a flu, I constantly felt fatigued and achy. Several years later I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Ever since, I have been on a path to find healing. My work in psychotherapy has helped me to shift my nervous system to a calmer, less exhausting “gear” (in Fibromyalgia the nervous system is in a constant fight or flight pattern). This work has also gotten me more deeply in touch with the earth as a sacred being.
For a while now I have longed for more ritual and ceremony in my life. I was raised with little religion, but connected to Christianity through my time as a child in South America and my upbringing in Germany.
Lately, I have found my yearning for spiritual practice in the Native American traditions of shamanic medicine making. I believe in all of us is the genuine desire to connect first and foremost with that which sustains us. All of our ancestors were originally oriented toward ritual and ceremony that honored and celebrated the earth, the sky and all that exists in between.
I believe we can attain healing for the body, soul and planet by rediscovering our relationship to these roots of worship. Consciously thanking that which sustains us –the air we breathe, the earth that holds us to her and everything that surrounds us- allows for just that. — Anne Siems, 2013
 
Siems, a Fulbright Scholar, has exhibited in Canada and in Europe and widely throughout the United States.
Her work is included in such collections as the Arkansas Art Centre, Boise Art Museum, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and the Tacoma Art Museum.

October 18, 1977 opens at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert 524 West 19th St, New York, NY on Thursday, June 20, 2013- Friday, July 19, 2013. Summer hours start July 8: Mon-Fri 10 am – 6 pm
 
An exhibition organized by Birgit Rathsmann in collaboration with Michele Abeles, Erica Baum, Neil Bender, Becket Bowes, Tania Cross, Grayson Cox, Anthony Lepore, David Lukowski, Oliver Kossack, Jessica Mein, Filip Noterdaeme, Dominic Nurre, Paul Pfeiffer, Jochen Plogsties, Claudia Pena Salinas, Daniel Rich, Siebren Versteeg, Jenny Vogel, Kristof Wickman and Jeff Williams.
 
New York, NY April 18, 2013 — On a single night, three terrorists in a high-security prison die, allegedly by their own hands; a fourth is hospitalized with allegedly self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest. Ever since, the events of the “Death Night” of the members of the Baader-Meinhof group have reverberated through German society and culture. But what might those events mean to artists in another country gripped by fear of radical terrorists, albeit a generation removed and an ocean away? How might today’s artists respond to iconic pieces that addressed the events in their immediate aftermath? Those are the questions that guided Brooklyn artist Birgit Rathsmann as she worked with 19 other artists from the U.S. and Europe to develop October 18, 1977. The exhibition is a meditation on that infamous night when Andreas Baader and three others were found dead or wounded in their prison cells — as well as on the images that earlier artists created in response to the events of that night. Rathsmann “commissioned” new pieces and collaborated to varying degrees with the participants in the exhibition. This created a dialog among artists who share Rathsmann’s interest in the questions raised by the events of October 18, 1977 and those raised by earlier artworks that address those events. In other words, Rathsmann didn’t curate this show; she served as its catalyst. Many of the questions she and the exhibition’s other artists examine have lingered for 36 years: Did the terrorists have a suicide pact? Was it set into motion when they learned that a hijacking intended to win their freedom had failed? If so, how did Andreas Baader and another terrorist manage to get guns into the isolated, high-security cells where they were held in solitary confinement? How did Baader manage to shoot himself in the back of his head? Why were there no fingerprints on either of the guns? How was the sole survivor of that night able to stab herself in the chest four times? Is there evidence to support her allegation that the deaths were summary executions rather than suicides? Those and other questions about that night encapsulate the dramatic relationship between the state and violent non-conformists — a relationship that becomes more relevant with each new act of mass violence. A number of works in October 18, 1977 respond directly to the eponymous cycle of 15 paintings by Gerhard Richter which depict the dead terrorists and the prison where they died. The paintings are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (169.1995), far from the location of their creation and the events that inspired them. Other works in this exhibition directly address specific aspects of the deaths and their cultural setting: the psychological effects of prolonged solitary confinement, the aesthetics of mid-twentieth century German institutional architecture, and the era’s proliferation of ‘zine-like publications that openly expressed sympathy for terrorist organizations. Some works even go so far as to imagine alternative histories. Taken together, the works in the exhibition present a multifaceted examination of that confounding historical moment in the Germany of 1977 and its lingering cultural influence — an examination that’s especially relevant in New York City of 2013.
 
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For more information please contact: HYPERLINK “mailto:gassergrunertsummer@gmail.com” gassergrunert@gmail.com 646.944.6197 For press inquiries and images contact: Margaret Fasel HYPERLINK “mailto:margaret@gassergrunert.net” margaret@gassergrunert.net 816.289.2693

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Sunsets and Pussy. This exhibition brings together two classic themes of summer wonder – so saccharine and ubiquitous we forget their awesome power. Spanning three generations, artists Ed Ruscha, Lucien Smith, Betty Tompkins, and Piotr Uklański each engage in the delight of exposing the clichéd beauty and banality inherent in these timeless images.
 
For further information regarding Sunsets and Pussy or images of the works, please contact Veronica Levitt at 212.680.9889 or veronica@marianneboeskygallery.com.

Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to present a questionable low point in our program: Birth of a Legend, by nomadic artist Cameron Gray. Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz claim that “Cameron Gray is too big too fail,” and Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City asked for “more cheddar” with her order of Cameron Gray. Gray’s latest exploit serves up a Dionysian smörgåsbord of state-of-the-art digital technology, where kaleidoscopically bright palettes and hypnotic kitsch run rampant. With your senses utterly titillated and suitably doped, you‘ll discover his artistic touch is as light as his work is raucous; speed of play carefully calibrated, execution satirically dead-pan, and content spot-on HOT. Straddling the line between comfort and the disquietingly uncanny, Gray’s gargantuan installations flash, blink, twirl, and pulsate off the walls in utter pandemonium, culling visual and auditory white noise from the vast Internet in something akin to a holy art apocalypse. As Gray descends into the deepest realms of the web world, we can only look on and marvel at the chaos that we have created.
 
Frequently likened to the second coming of Koons and thoroughly rooted within postmodern sensibilities, Gray is an incredibly articulate forager of the irreverent. In I Was Made For Dancin’, All, All, All Night Long, Gray achieves near tantric nirvana, emblazoning a glossy, hollowed Leif Garrett poster with psychedelic patterns and prismatic forms; two all-seeing eyes flicking every which way as he sluggishly sings the work’s eponymous and utterly cheeky song. Acid Zen Garden imbues a glowing cherub figure and assorted fauna with Gray’s unrivaled knack for mischief. Like-wise, in Ice Cream for John Wayne, a duo of melting waffle cone treats take residence upon John Wayne’s dreamy visage. Not content to simply tear the ‘mask’ off such iconic machismo, Cameron spatters many a surrounding wall with fluorescent, glow-in-the-dark paint—effectively taking on Abstract Expressionist bravado as well.
 
A shaman of digital technique and reprographic means, Gray sets forth an alternate universe rife with under-auto black lighting and over-the-top pop, instinctively splaying nonsensical sights and sounds across an ambitious range of mediums: video collages chock-full of outlandish abstractions, including an all-encompassing 12 foot wide work comprised of 27 monitors; an epic 7-foot-tall pin bricolage in which 3,000 photographic images abut embedded 3-D video, spinning disco-lights, and utterly unrelated bric-a-brac; manipulated c-prints of classic American icons; and circular, Archimboldo-like smiley-face sculptures in which fake food is adhered to densely-patterned, wood-mounted table-cloths, with fake plastic ‘turkey dinners’ forming the eyes of one piece, and a glazed faux Jell-O mold its nose. Simultaneously chaotic, organic, orgasmic, and narcotic, Gray delivers the Cadillac of collage, the epitome of hyper-stimulation, and the ultimate state of transcendence – a meaningless yet tantalizing void, where nothing is sacred. Indulge yourself this summer in this orgiastic, optical feast and celebrate with us the 10-year anniversary of Mike Weiss Gallery.
 
Cameron Gray, Birth of a Legend.
 
Born in Geneva in 1980, Cameron Gray lives and works in London, Basel, and Los Angeles. Graduating egregia cum laude from Bruce High Quality Foundation University, Gray also holds no less than six degrees from such prestigious institutions as Yale, Columbia, and UCLA. Prior to his ascension into the upper levels of the art historical pantheon, Gray will have participated in two Venice Biennales, including the one to take place in 2015, and three Whitney Biennials, including those in 2016 and 2018. In 2012, Galerie Eva Presenhuber included his work in the seminal show I Wanna F*ck You But We‘re Just Gonna Cuddle, and one of Gray’s massive pin collages was a show-stopping success in The Gag Reflex is Mysterious at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2011. Grey‘s work is included in the Ludwig-Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany; the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT; and 17 other prominent collections. Cameron Gray is currently represented by Mike Weiss Gallery, David Zwirner, Thaddaeus Ropac, Sprueth Magers, White Cube and Pace Beijing, amongst others.
 
Your mom loves Cameron Gray’s work. Ask her, she told us so.

For Immediate Release
 
Geoff Chadsey
Angela Dufresne
Vera Iliatova
Jake Longstreth
Marcial Ramos
Cynthia Talmadge & Kevin Zucker
Craig Taylor
Andrew Witkin
Alexi Worth
 
June 20 – July 26, 2013
Opening reception: Thursday, June 20, 6 - 8 PM
 
slap that cunt • autumn • failure • cars • fear • cages • ephemerality • shadows • chaos • duality • escape • violence • hotels • the subconscious vs. the self • breakage • cocaine • redemption • pornography • honesty • the periphery of society • Armani • not giving a shit • loneliness • transcendence • alcohol • grit • sex • killing • insomnia • glamour • aggression • morality • voyeurism • darkness • deceit • narcissism & superficiality=tools for avoiding intimacy • I’m dripping • anxiety • ego • let’s disappear • beauty • relief • night • anger • obsession • the road • prostitution • style • self-destruction • dreams • loneliness • starting over • trash • escape • light • perversion • a man alone in a room • sex is not about sex • guns • mood • Pandora’s box • disconnect • flesh • suicide • sacrifice • instability • decay • isolation • let’s fuck • redemption through violence • homosexuality • writing • Mercedes • alienation • mirrors • blood • taupe • guilt • vanity • revelation • defiance • depression • decadence • discovery • self-reflection • venetian blinds
 
"What fascinates me are people who want to be one thing but who behave in a way contradictory to that. Who might say, ‘I want to be happy, but I keep doing things that make me unhappy.” - Paul Schrader
 
- Katherine Kennedy and Monya Rowe, 2013
 
Curated by Monya Rowe Gallery
 
Katherine Kennedy is the singer for Autodrone and is currently studying Russian Language and Culture at Columbia University, New York.
 
Gallery summer hours
June: Tuesday – Saturday, 11- 6 PM
July: Tuesday – Friday, 11- 6 PM
August: Closed
 
For more information or images please contact the gallery at 212 255 5065 or info@monyarowegallery.com
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SIMON DENNY
All you need is data: the DLD 2012 Conference REDUX rerun
 
June 20 – July 27, 2013
 
Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Simon Denny entitled, All you need is data: the DLD 2012 Conference REDUX rerun, from June 20 to July 27, 2013. This is the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery. A catalogue published by Koenig, including an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, texts by Karen Archey, digital law expert Michael Littger and an introduction by co-curators Bart van der Heide and Saim Demircan, will accompany the show.
 
All you need is data: the DLD 2012 Conference REDUX rerun focuses on the 2012 edition of Munich’s annual Digital Life Design (DLD) conference dld-conference.com/. The conference is a high caliber platform for the exchange of ideas between digital media, the sciences and culture, which had the theme “All You Need Is … DATA?” in 2012. Denny’s exhibition was first presented at the Kunstverein Munich at the beginning of the year, alongside the 2013 DLD conference.
 
For his exhibition, Denny has created a display structure for 89 canvases that represent a visual summary of events that took place at DLD12, harvesting insights from the many speakers such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Chris “Moot” Poole (4chan) and David Karp (tumblr), among others. The viewer is lead through the exhibition following a railing system that displays individual canvas “screens” that feature photos, pull-quotes and reconfigured stage and graphic designs from the conference. This content is flattened and depicted using iOS “skeuomorphic” style with app-like components. Only print media is used to illustrate the entire high-tech conference chronologically from beginning to end, forming what critic Kevin McGarry has described as “a structuralist memento mori”.
Simon Denny explores the materialization and commodification of “future visions and experiences,” and the lifespan of information in the context of fast paced, tech-driven commerce. The exhibition is a revealing format for how predetermined futures are promoted from the perspective of the digital economy. As such, the ‘REDUX’ in the title suggests a revisit of these future forecasts and is also indicative of the ‘Director’s Cut’ or a re-edit as a means of artistic appropriation.
Simon Denny was born in New Zealand in 1982 and received his degree at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, with shows at the Aspen Art Museum and Kunstverein Munich in the past year. He will be included in this year’s Venice Biennial as well as have an exhibition at MuMOK, Vienna this summer as a winner of the Art Basel Statements Baloise Preis in 2012. He is also a nominee for this year’s German Nationalgalerie Preis at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Simon Denny lives and works in Berlin.
Petzel Gallery is located at 456 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. Gallery hours will switch to our summer schedule, Monday through Friday from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM starting July 8th through the end of the exhibition. For press inquiries, please contact Andrew Black at andrew@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.
For general inquiries, please email andrea@petzel.com.

RICCO/MARESCA GALLERY is pleased to present Rebecca Norris Webb: My Dakota. This exhibition brings together works from Webb’s acclaimed book recounting the sudden loss of her brother through intimate landscape portraits of her home state of South Dakota. My Dakota serves as a lyrical elegy, depicting the hypnagogic process of grieving and visually chronicling the fragility of life and the inexplicable changes that occur while mourning.
 
Rebecca Norris-Webb moved to South Dakota at the age of 15. The artist originally found expression as a poet, before exploring photography after college. For Webb, language could not fully capture the totality of the world around her, nor satisfy her innate curiosity for visual exploration. The artist’s latest book, My Dakota, blends poetry with photographs of her home state as a multi-layered portrait that marries aesthetic representation with lyrical record. The heart of the book lies in the enigmatic photographs where the artist is seemingly searching for significance behind continuation and meaning beyond an emotional chasm. Reflections and windows play a significant role in the series as a way of capturing memory within the present while exuding a sense of abandonment and disconnect from life’s fleeting moments. Rooted in sentient exploration, each work is open to interpretation – giving viewers an outlet to draw their personal recollections and emotive conclusions.
 
My Dakota transcends artistic privy and instead maintains a core universal empathy. The artist states, “Looking back at My Dakota, I now realize that I was photographing this dark time in my life in order to try to absorb it, to crystallize it, and, ultimately, to let go of it. Not only did my first grief change me, but making My Dakota changed me as well, both as a human being and as an artist.”
 
My Dakota was first shown in 2012 at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, and will be exhibited at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, North Dakota from June 5 - August 6, 2013. Friday, June 21: Lecture at Aperture Foundation, 547 W. 27th, 4th fl., 7:00-8:30 pm (with Alex Webb) and Q&A led by Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs, the Museum of the City of New York, and Denise Wolff, Aperture Senior Editor; book signing to follow; Saturday, June 22: Artist talk/walk through of “My Dakota” at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 5-6pm.
 
REBECCA NORRIS WEBB, MY DAKOTA
June 20 - August 17, 2013
Opening reception Thursday, June 20, 6-8PM

OPTIC NERVE: The Prints and Multiples of Sean Mellyn (1993-2013)
JUNE 20 - AUGUST 1, 2013
 
CURATED BY MICHAEL STEINBERG
 
UNDERLINE Gallery is pleased to announce a major retrospective of the prints and multiples of Sean Mellyn. From a 1993 drypoint, Boy In The Bubble, to two new digital prints created to celebrate the exhibition – Tour Group and The House What Eye Built – the artist’s innovative utilization of a broad range of printmaking techniques will be on view. Commenting on the various modes of editioning, Mellyn writes:
 
“There seems to be a pecking order with perfection in print-making - Silkscreen being the most accident-prone and the now almost perfect digital techniques are flawless representations. I've been working on how to make accidents before the image is scanned, or to try and do something that will corrupt the file.”
 
Mellyn has worked with such distinguished master printers as Jean-Yves Noblet, Jennifer Melby, Andre Ribuoli. Additionally, he was invited to create several editions at New Mexico’s Tamarind Institute, where he worked in collaboration with master lithographer Bill Lagattuta. One of the works he produced there, Boy With Mask, is included in a traveling exhibition and book celebrating Tamarind’s fiftieth anniversary. Among the significant print collections that have acquired prints by Sean Mellyn are New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New York Public Library and The Brooklyn Museum of Art.
 
While the current show encapsulates many of Mellyn’s major themes, his on-going concern with issues of vision – seeing and being seen; surveillance and paranoia; and art historical issues such as the cataracts in Monet’s eyes – emerges very clearly.
 
Mellyn notes: “I really started using eyes after 9/11 as it was clear that we would soon become a people watched. I always thought it’s so ironic that reality tv shows would be such a big deal; that it’s less Warholian 15 minutes of fame, and more scrutiny in government - judgement- busted kind of way.”
 
In addition to the print editions on view, the show will feature the highly-collected three dimensional multiples Mellyn has created. These include t-shirts, handkerchiefs, Paper Monet plates and a number of small sculptural objects. Some of these works were originally done as to benefit such institutions as The New Musuem.
 
Optic Nerve: The Prints and Multiples of Sean Mellyn (1993-2013) has been curated by Michael Steinberg, who, as a publisher, gallerist and collector has had a long involvement with Sean Mellyn’s work.
 
UNDERLINE Gallery is a visual arts gallery that underscores important, innovative works by some of today’s most talented artists. The Gallery’s unique perspective–often marked by color, dimension, humor, and spirit–reflects an intimate and non-exclusive environment that facilitates art appreciation. A variety of price points and a range of small and large-scale works bring together a community of artists, curators, art lovers, and collectors.

The weather is heating up, and so is the atmosphere at Agora Gallery as we present art that has the ability to inspire and energize. The French Perspective: Contemporary Art from France features artworks that seem to have a life of their own, infused as they are with the passion and power of the artists who created them. Delightfully poised between the simplicity of frankness and the complexity of a conscious awareness of the world, the works speak in a language that is both compelling and persuasive. In Pathway to Abstraction, artists glory in the wonder of life and their own comprehension of it, passing on a message of optimism and understanding to us through their work. These works will capture your attention and enthrall your emotions, bringing you in to become an active interpreter of what you see. Sensorial Realms introduces us to a sense of mystery that seems to infect and enliven the banal and the everyday. The essence of creativity animates every aspect of the works, though each artist has allowed impulse and their artistic process to guide them in different ways and to produce a mood and atmosphere unique to them and their work. The exhibitions begin on June 28, 2013 and run until July 19, 2013 The opening reception takes place on the evening of Thursday, July 11, 2013. Entrance is free and art lovers looking for inspiration are warmly encouraged to attend and meet some of the artists who created these dazzling works.
 
Exhibition Dates: June 28, 2013 – July 19, 2013
Reception: Thursday, July 11, 2013, 6-8 pm
Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, New York City
Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 11a.m. - 6 p.m.
Event URL: www.agora-gallery.com/receptionexhibitions/7_11_2013.aspx

For Immediate Release
April 30, 2013
 
Dia Art Foundation presents Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument from
July 1–September 15, 2013
 
Thomas Hirschhorn’s first Monument in the United States and Dia’s first public commission since Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Oaks in 1996
 
(New York, NY) – Dia Art Foundation will present Gramsci Monument, a new artwork by Thomas Hirschhorn, on the grounds of Forest Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, New York. Gramsci Monument will be open to the public from July 1–September 15, 2013.
 
MONUMENT
“My decision to do Gramsci Monument does not come from an understanding of the philosopher Antonio Gramsci, rather it comes from my understanding of art and my belief that art can transform.” — Thomas Hirschhorn
 
Gramsci Monument is the fourth and last in Thomas Hirschhorn’s series of “monuments” dedicated to major writers and thinkers, which he initiated in 1999 with Spinoza Monument (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), followed by Deleuze Monument (Avignon, France, 2000) and Bataille Monument (Kassel, Germany, 2002). This fourth monument pays tribute to the Italian political theorist and Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), famous for his Letters and Prison Notebooks (1926–1937). Gramsci Monument is based on Hirschhorn‘s will “to establish a definition of monument,’ to provoke encounters, to create an event, and to think Gramsci today. My love for Antonio Gramsci is the love of philosophy, the love of the infinitude of thought. It is a question of sharing this, affirming it, defending it, and giving it form.”
 
NON-EXCLUSIVE AUDIENCE
Over the years, Hirschhorn has maintained a commitment to presenting his work in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, but also in “public space”: urban settings, sidewalks, vacant lots, and communal grounds of public housing projects. Every work of Hirschhorn’s aims to include the Other, and address what he calls a “non-exclusive audience.” “The Gramsci Monument will remain an affirmation of an autonomous art work that is made as a gesture of love. This gesture doesn’t necessarily call for an answer; it’s both utopian and concrete. I want to create a new form, based on my love for a “non-exclusive audience.”
 
“Gramsci Monument is a defining project for Dia, and working with Thomas is both a privilege and a learning experience. Every day we learn from his uncompromising commitment to art and audiences,” says Philippe Vergne, Director, Dia Art Foundation. “Gramsci Monument reinforces Dia’s commitment to off-site commissions, which is at the center of our mission. I am confident that through this project Dia will become a different, stronger institution — one that is even more engaged with the reality of art today.”
 
PRESENCE AND PRODUCTION
With Gramsci Monument, Hirschhorn will apply his guidelines for “Presence and Production” by being present and producing on location during the full course of the project. “To be ‘present’ and to ‘produce’ means to make a physical statement, here and now. I believe that only through presence—my presence —and only through production —my production— can my work have an impact in Public Space or at a public location.”
 
Hirschhorn’s ambition is to create through his work, a form of “co-existence,” where questions of autonomy, authorship, and energy are addressed, challenged, and ultimately reinvented.
 
FORM/PROJECT
Gramsci Monument will take the form of an outdoor pavilion constructed with easily available, “unintimidating,” everyday materials. The structure will be built—and later dismantled—by local residents of Forest Houses, coordinated by Hirschhorn and Erik Farmer, Forest Houses Resident Association President and long-time resident. As was the case in his previous monuments, it is the artist’s intention that Gramsci Monument be built and run with the help of local residents, employed temporarily and involved at every stage of the project.
 
The structure will include an exhibition space with a selection of archives and a library with books by (and about) Antonio Gramsci, borrowed from the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome, Casa Museo di Antonio Gramsci in Ghilarza, Italy, and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York, a theater platform, a workshop area, a lounge, an internet corner, and the Gramsci Bar, which will be run by local residents. The Gramsci Monument will be open daily, offering a daily program of lectures by philosopher Marcus Steinweg, a children’s workshop run by Lex Brown, a play titled the Gramsci Theater, a radio station, and a daily newspaper. Weekly programs will include Gramsci Seminars led by eleven scholars, Poetry Lectures and Workshops led by eleven writers, Art Workshops led by Hirschhorn, open microphone events coordinated by the community, and field trips organized by the project’s “ambassador,” Dia curator, Yasmil Raymond.
 
In order to be continuously present on location throughout the production of his artwork, Hirschhorn will temporarily reside in the South Bronx (from July 1 - September 15) with Lex Brown, Marcus Steinweg, and Dia’s curator, Yasmil Raymond.
 
“It has been a privilege to work alongside Thomas as he puts forth a new idea of the monument and creates an active space of exchange between people, ideas and communities. The depth of his engagement is exceptional. Thomas has the absolute will to include others, and wants to put the whole world in his work,” said Raymond,. “We are deeply grateful to NYCHA Chairman John Rhea and the hardworking team at NYCHA for embracing this project. Above all, our most profound gratitude goes out to the residents of Forest Houses —in particular Erik Farmer, Clyde Thompson, and Diane Herbert —for joining us in this beautiful effort and offering a firm handshake from day one.”
 
Hirschhorn has also created a website as part of the Gramsci Monument. It is an informative platform offering texts, notes, pictures and videos documenting the process of the artwork, from its earliest sketches. The website will be updated daily with the productions, philosophy lectures, newspaper and radio streaming that have taken place. It will also offer a “press-kit” with pictures and texts available for publication (free of rights). The website, following the monument’s guideline, is meant to be temporary, and will end on December 31, 2013. For additional information, visit www.gramsci-monument.com.
 
LOCATION
To realize this project, Dia and the artist are collaborating with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Hirschhorn began “field work” two years ago, visiting forty-six Public Housing sites all around New York City, and meeting with residents in three boroughs, before focusing on seven locations in the Bronx: Castle Hill, Soundview, Monroe Houses, Patterson, Bronx River, Claremont and Butler Houses and Forest Houses. The “encounters” at Forest Houses with Diane Herbert, Clyde Thompson and Erik Farmer were decisive for Hirschhorn: “I was challenged and taken seriously. These were the real encounters between me and the Other—and one can easily understand that without these encounters, no decision regarding a possible location can be taken. This is why the Gramsci Monument will take place at Forest Houses.”
 
“The New York City Housing Authority is very much looking forward to our residents engaging in this very special endeavor,” said NYCHA Chairman John Rhea. “We especially thank artist Thomas Hirschhorn for bringing his unique vision to public housing, and totally involving Forest Houses residents. And we thank Dia Art Foundation for its generosity in making this artistic effort possible.”
 
Gramsci Monument will be Dia’s first public commission in New York City since 1996, when Dia extended Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Oaks on West 22nd Street from 10th to 11th Avenues. The opportunity to work with Hirschhorn represents a new manifestation of Dia’s commitment to enabling artists to achieve ambitious projects that cannot be realized within the museum context. In anticipation of the Gramsci Monument, from September 15–November 3, 2012, in New York City, Dia presented Timeline: Work in Public Space, which comprised a 30-foot linear layout of images, written statements, and text excerpts chronicling Hirschhorn’s interventions in “public spaces” in urban and rural sites from 1989 to 2011.
 
Dia Art Foundation offers special thanks to the New York City Housing Authority. Major support for Gramsci Monument has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Maja Oeri and Hans U. Bodenmann. Generous support has been provided by Dia’s Commissioning Committee: Jill and Peter Kraus, Leslie and Mac McQuown, Genny and Selmo Nissenbaum, and Liz Gerring Radke and Kirk August Radke; public funds from Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council; and the Jan Michalski Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Foundation, Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida, Stéphane Samuel and Robert Melvin Rubin, Lenore and Adam Sender, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
 
RELATED PROGRAM
Conversations and Lectures
Thomas Hirschhorn in conversation with Yasmil Raymond
 
Saturday, May 11, 2013, 6 pm
545 West 22nd Street, NYC
 
Thomas Hirschhorn
Thomas Hirschhorn was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1957. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich from 1978 to 1983. Over the past thirty years, Hirschhorn has become internationally renowned for his critically engaged and humanistic aesthetic. He has created over sixty works in public space that pair everyday materials with a universalizing approach that proposes that both the work of art and the process of artistic creation are collaborative and accessible to a broad ranging audience. Since his first solo show in 1986 (Bar Floréal, Paris), Hirschhorn has garnered much critical attention and has had solo exhibitions at international venues, including the Art Institute of Chicago (1998); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2001); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2005); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2008); and Secession, Vienna (2008). In 2009, he completed a new homage to Spinoza entitled “The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival,” in Amsterdam, and he has most recently held solo exhibitions at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2010); Les Ateliers de Rennes, France (2010); the Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2011) and Gladstone Gallery, New York (2012). Among many group exhibitions, he has participated in Skulptur Projekte in Münster (1997); the Venice Biennal (1999 and 2011); Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002); São Paulo Bienal (2006); the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008); Brighton Photo Biennal (2008); Tirana International Art Biannual (2009); the 8th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2010); Moma PS1 (2011) and, most recently, at the 9th Shanghai Biennale; La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012) and Kunsthalle Mannheim (2013). Hirschhorn has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Preis für Junge Schweizer Kunst (1999), Marcel Duchamp Prize (2000), Rolandpreis für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (2003), Joseph Beuys Prize (2004), and Kurt Schwitters Prize (2011). He has been living and working in Paris since 1984.
 
Forest Houses
Forest Houses
Bronx, NY
Gramsci Monument is located on the grounds of Forest Houses, off Tinton Avenue between 163rd and 165th Streets.
 
Directions
Subway: 2, 5 at Prospect Avenue
Head north on Prospect Avenue
Turn left onto 163rd Street
Pass Union Avenue
Turn right onto Tinton Avenue
Take first left onto pedestrian pathway leading into Forest Houses
 
New York Housing Authority
NYCHA is committed to increasing opportunities for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers by providing safe, affordable housing and facilitating access to social and community services. More than 400,000 New Yorkers reside in NYCHA‘s 334 public housing developments around the five boroughs, and another 235,000 receive subsidized rental assistance in private homes through the NYCHA-administered Section 8 Leased Housing Program.
 
Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation, founded in 1974, is committed to initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 in Beacon, New York. Dia also maintains several long-term, site-specific projects including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Oaks (1988), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), all in Manhattan; the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany, and The Lightning Field (1977) in Quemado, New Mexico; and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Dia also commissions original artists’ projects produced for the web and produces scholarly publications.
 
Dia currently presents temporary installations, artist lectures, and readings on West 22nd Street in the Chelsea section of New York City, the neighborhood it helped pioneer. Plans for a new project space are underway.
 
For more information please visit www.diaart.org.

Louise Bourgeois
Günter Brus
Borden Capalino
David Dupuis
Daniel Gordon
Aneta Grzesykowska
Kineko Ivic
Lionel Maunz
Maria Petschnig
Chloe Piene
Adam Putnam
Aura Rosenberg
Davina Semo
Bobbi Woods
Rona Yefman

Open Call: Charge! Women are rising to great political power in societies around the world and we are just beginning to see a shift occur as more women step into positions of global leadership. This is just the beginning.
 
SOHO20 is hosting an exhibition to celebrate women leaders and to provoke discussion and action about what more can be done to give young people inspirational role models, to provide fair opportunity to women regardless of race and class, and to cultivate a human race that values good ideas and strong ethics based on their quality and not gender.
 
WOMEN IN CHARGE! is an open exhibition (all work accepted) of artists working in all media that address the power and value of our women leaders. Leaders past, current and what we imagine them to be in the future. This group exhibition will explore this topic individually through artists works and collectively as a whole.
 
SOHO20 will have a printed invitation that artists can pick up at the gallery. We will not mail cards out to artists due to costs. All participating artists names will be featured on the SOHO20 website at www.soho20gallery.com and an opening reception will take place on Thursday July
 
18th that is free and open to the public.
 
A panel discussion in conjunction with the exhibition is being planned and details are TBD. Stay tuned for further information.
 
DEADLINE: Saturday June 15, 2013
 
ELIGIBILITY: Open to all artists 18 years and older, working in any media. Performance artists are encouraged to submit stills or video of work. Please email the gallery for live performance inquiries. info@soho20gallery.com
 
ENTRIES: SOHO20 will accept works in any media provided it meets the requirements stated below. SOHO20 reserves the right to reject any work that does not meet the requirements or work that is misrepresented in the online application. All work that meets the requirements will be accepted and exhibited for the duration of the show.
 
What to submit
 
-a jpeg of the work to be exhibited via our online application process. (10MB limit) Work should be no larger then 16 inches in any direction. All work must be ready to install with any necessary hardware. (i.e. If work is unframed and you want it hung with magnets, include the magnets.) Video is accepted, the artist must supply all equipment and materials for mounting it on the wall and be available for installation. No exceptions. Artist’s will be notified in the event that SOHO20 cannot accept any further works. Work is accepted on a first come first serve basis.
 
*If SOHO20 installers feel the work cannot be hung as is it may be omitted from the exhibition.
 
ENTRY PROCEDURE: $40 per image. Applications MUST be uploaded online. Please include a brief artist’s statement (limit 500 words) and a one-page resume. These are cut and pasted in to the “profile” portion of your application. Please include title, date, medium, dimension, price for each work submitted. Work need not be for sale. SOHO20 takes a 40% commission on sales. Once you’ve completed uploading your information you must click SUBMIT and pay the $40 application fee via paypal. Paypal will send you an email notification, SOHO20 will not send a submission confirmation, please consider the paypal notice confirmation of your submission.
 
ACCEPTED WORKS: All complete submissions are accepted for exhibition unless the artist is notified otherwise by SOHO20. Please do not email or call the gallery to find out if your work is accepted. Follow the guidelines and assume it is.
 
DROP OFF
 
Work must be shipped or delivered to the gallery between July 9-13, between 12-6pm. Shipped work must also include return shipping labels. *ALL WORK MUST INCLUDE THIS SUBMISSION FORM. Please print form, fill out and turn in with your submission.
 
PICK UP
 
Pick up of work is August 17 -18, between 12-3 pm. All shipped work must include a pre-paid return-shipping label. Artists picking up work at the gallery will be required to sign out their work or authorize someone to do so for them. The gallery accepts no responsibility for work not retrieved by the deadline and will charge the artists $5.00 a day for storage. After 30 days the gallery may discard the work. LIABILITY: SOHO20 works with experienced art handlers and great care will be taken with work, however SOHO20 accepts no responsibility to lost, stolen or damaged artwork and/or equipment. Artists are also responsible for insuring their work if they so desire.
 
SALES: A commission of 40% will be charged on all work sold through the exhibition. Work need not be for sale.
 
APPLY ONLINE at www.soho20gallery.com