Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Renegade Trajectories, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Oliver Vernon. This is Vernon’s third solo show with the gallery, and the artist will be present at the opening reception on May 30.
 
Combining elements of landscape painting, figuration, and abstraction, Vernon’s practice pushes all of these categories beyond easy distinction, creating a hybrid visual language all his own. “The picture plane is a continuum of give and take,” says Vernon, “where positive and negative space give way to each other in rhythmic intervals. Energy oscillates and migrates, initiating changes along the way. And color is a navigational tool to guide the eye through the chaotic scape.”
 
Vernon lives in the Sierra Nevada region of northern California, and glimpses of these breathtaking vistas turn up frequently in his work. However, landscape is never a subject or even backdrop, per se, but instead a visual cue toward the expansive scale of Vernon’s abstraction. In many works, this takes the form of a wave-like torrent of arching brushstrokes and cascading patterns that dominate the canvas, devouring mountains, valleys, clouds, and the horizon, or nimbly swirling everything into the overall composition. The effect is destabilizing, imposing an abstract system on the more common notion of a fixed, physical reality—landscape gives way to visual frenzy, flights of imagination, and transformation.
 
In Renegade Trajectories, Vernon explores this dynamic with twelve medium-sized acrylic on linen or canvas paintings and a suite of twelve ink on paper works. The exhibition will showcase several large-scale paintings, the largest measuring nearly 8-x-7 feet. In the painting Excavation, a jagged cyclone of geometric shapes, architectural elements, and quasi-anatomical forms swirl about a distant horizon, pulling it in or ushering it forth. In the dramatic painting Flashback, this force takes the form of an orange and violet-tinted flood, inundating the picture with a chaotic rush of brushstrokes, graphic patterns, and semi-figurative material. As the artist notes, “These incidents or events take place in worlds within worlds. Everything is whirring with activity as parts of systems engage with other systems in a state of constant flux.”
 
In his works on paper, Vernon’s use of Sumi ink imparts an even sharper contrast of forces, of positive and negative space, in black, white, and subtle gray scale. Hard-edged but somehow serene, these pictorial spaces draw viewers into a spiral of connected facets (or dimensions)—cascading flower petals, lozenge forms, pulmonary or lung tissue, honeycomb—giving way to a brightening horizon beyond. Ultimately, the distinctions of figuration/abstraction, figure/ground, are not the artist’s primary interest. In all of his work, Vernon is most fascinated by the dynamic interplay between these surreally juxtaposed elements—in his own words, “not the what but the how.”
 
Reception Thursday May 30 from 6-8pm

Kent Fine Art is pleased to open a special project, Hypnotherapy, in tandem with The New Yorker‘s Passport to the Arts event on May 4, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Hypnotherapy, which continues through June 29, presents a multigenerational group of artists working in several media who share an intense and introspective working process:
 
Hypnosis is a way to connect with the subconscious rather than the conscious mind. The mind accepts what the subconscious creates, however bizarre. Among these artists there is a common thread of a relentless, even myopic, focus on work so personal that its intrinsic value is much greater for the artist than for the audience. Their bond lies in their obsessiveness, idiosyncrasy, and disregard for the mainstream.
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JOHN BRILL (b. 1951, Newark, New Jersey) is a school-bus driver and self-taught photographer, whose work has been recently seen in exhibitions at the Austrian Cultural Council in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. He has been the co-chair of the Photography Judging Committee of the American Killifish Association since 1982 and is a former instructor with the International Center of Photography.
 
LLYN FOULKES (b. 1934, Yakima, Washington) came up in the Los Angeles art scene of the early 60s and has been both a maverick and a force to be reckoned with ever since. His recent exhibition credits include the 2011 Venice Biennial and Documenta 13. Foulkes’s current retrospective at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, curated by Ali Subotnick, is a tribute to his craft, his dark humor, and his relentless vision of America on the edge. The retrospective travels to the New Museum in New York, where it opens on June 12.
 
PABLO HELGUERA (b. 1971, Mexico City) is a visual and performance artist whose projects have included a school that traveled from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego, complete with portable schoolhouse; the recording of dying languages on wax cylinders; a memory theater; and the founding of the Instituto de la Telenovela. His work has been seen most recently at CIFO in Miami, the 2012 Havana Biennial, and the Centro de Arte Reina Soffia in Madrid. Helguera‘s first solo show with Kent Fine Art will open in September 2013.
 
DAVID LYNCH (b. 1946, Eagle Scout) was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, painting “figures just sort of coming out of the darkness,” when he made his first film, in 1966: “The only reason I did a film the first time was to see a painting move . . . and feel a mood.” In the 70s Lynch began to work seriously in film and made his name with Eraserhead in 1977. Although he went on to make many more acclaimed films, he has continued to paint and exhibit. In 2007 the Fondation Cartier in Paris mounted a forty-year survey of his art, film, and music.
 
JILL SPECTOR (b. 1976, York, Pennsylvania) has called her sculptures both “performers” and “performances” . . . and has even referred to a sculpture as “she.” Working in improbable combinations of materials, she builds movement from the inside out, in open structures that offer audience and backstage views. Spector’s work was included in the recent exhibitions Drawing, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils, curated by Diana Thater for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
 
Special Appearance by ALEISTER CROWLEY.

A selection of Frank Gehry process models will be on display at Leslie Feely Fine Art from April 11 to June 29, 2013. Drawn from significant constructions and concepts of the architect’s prolific career, these organic forms stand as testament to Gehry’s tactile approach, enhancing our perception of this sculptural architect and his work. Projects on view include the California Aerospace Museum and Theater (1984), the Winton Guest House (1987), the Chiat/Day Building (1991), the Barcelona Fish or Peix completed for the 1992 Summer Olympics, and the Beekman Tower/New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street (2011).
 
This exhibition presents over 30 diverse process models from 1985-2012, comprising a wide array of materials and approaches that begin to illuminate the subtleties of Gehry’s thought—and working—process. Several renditions of Gehry’s concept for Sonderborg Kunsthalle, for instance, experiment with varying shapes and degrees of fluidity embodied in the structure’s metallic skin. Studies pertaining to an unrealized tower for the Brooklyn Arena utilize materials ranging from basswood, vinyl, and plexiglass to gatorboard and paper. Each successive stage of a given model’s development illustrates the exploratory nature of Gehry’s practice, and the playfulness and originality inherent to his work.
 
Distinguishing his methods from conventional, precision-based modes of development, Frank Gehry’s process is similar to that of artists, sculptors, and scientists. In a 1980 interview he explained, “It’s kind of like throwing things out and then following the ideas, rather than predicting what you’re going to do.” His models can therefore be understood as conceptual drafts, or three-dimensional sketches, integral to project development and design. Moreover, the structures are admirable in themselves as aesthetically beautiful sculpture.
 
This show provides insight into Gehry’s indelible mind, one of the most brilliant—and provocative—of contemporary architecture and design. Photographic reproductions of his studio, the architect at work, and certain realized projects accompany the models on display. This exhibition reveals otherwise concealed aspects of Gehry’s process and practice, while simultaneously inspiring an array of new questions. Ultimately, these architectural studies culminate in a perceptive study of the architect himself.
 
This is Frank Gehry’s second exhibition at Leslie Feely Fine Art, which also held his first ever gallery show in 2007 and featured his models at Art Basel Miami Beach 2011. Solo exhibitions including his process models have been presented by ArtisTree, Taikoo Place, Hong Kong, 2011; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008; New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2001; the Triennale Design Museum, Milan, 1997; and the Walker Center, Minneapolis, which organized a major retrospective of Gehry’s work in 1986.
 
Gehry is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, Americans for the Arts (2000), the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (1999), the National Medal of Arts, National Endowment for the Arts (1998), and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989). The architect graduated from the University of Southern California in 1954 and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1956. Frank Gehry lives and works in Santa Monica, California.
 
For more information please visit www.lesliefeely.com, email gallery@lesliefeely.com, or call 212-988-0040.

James Juthstrom
(1925-2007)
 
FIGURES:
paintings and drawings, 1950s - 60s
 
Curated by James Cavello
 
May 11 – June 29, 2013
 
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC exclusively represents
the Estate of James Juthstrom
 
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC is pleased to present an exhibition of figurative paintings and drawings by James Juthstrom. For 50 years this reclusive artist dedicated himself solely to the creation of art in his SoHo loft. Even though he lived near a thriving gallery scene and created artwork alongside the camaraderie of New York School artists and Abstract Expressionists, he was reluctant to find representation. The drawings and paintings on view reflect Juthstrom’s intensive exploration into his private inner life as an artist.
 
The 27 works of art on exhibit provide insight into Juthstrom’s lifelong quest to balance his representational concept with his abstract vision. Trained at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art, he studied life drawing and created an expansive body of work. In a New York Times review of a Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition, Roberta Smith speaks of drawing as “the most intimate and honest of all art mediums.” Juthstrom’s drawings are indeed very personal, meant as an artist’s exploration of form and line.
 
From the early line drawings, masterful in their simplicity and expressiveness, Juthstrom moved on to large scale paintings on canvas, challenging his perspective within the confines of space. His idiosyncratic depiction of his loft and the anonymous figures populating the empty rooms provide a unique psychological portrayal of an artist who severed his ties to the world of commercialism. The paintings always depict the artist’s studio with emphasis on the floorboard and a faceless figure, most likely the artist himself. The scenes of the interior become cryptic, with mirror like boxes reflecting hidden figures or space. Shadowy figures lurk in the background, watching the interior from behind screens; no faces are visible, except maybe as reflections. Often, the symbolic compositions disintegrate into pure color, line and form, reminiscent of fauvism. The narrative is always mysterious; his dystopic vision is most explicitly expressed in his color figurative drawings, which can be seen as a diary of the secretive artist’s innermost experience. The paintings illustrate the artist’s decision to withdraw from the outside world and create in the solitude of his studio.
 
James Juthstrom’s artwork has recently been re-discovered, uncovering five decades of painting, drawing, etching and sculpting. Westwood Gallery NYC is archiving the artist’s work of five decades including paintings based on circular abstract shapes and series of esoteric figurative work.
 
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James Juthstrom was recognized by critics early in his career and was included in numerous museum group exhibitions, including Whitney Museum of American Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Detroit Institute of the Arts and Brooklyn Museum. He also had several solo exhibitions at galleries, including Gallery G in New York, which received a review in the New York Times, Paul Schuster Art Gallery in Cambridge and Landmark Gallery in New York. He died in May of 2007, leaving behind a legacy of his lifetime dedication. Since the release of his estate collection, museums and collectors are reviewing the artwork for acquisition and discovering the history of this brilliant artist. Juthstrom’s most recent retrospective exhibition was reviewed by ARTnews and Art in America.

Chloë Bass
The Bureau of Self-Recognition
May 31 - June 30, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, May 31, 6 - 9pm
 
Events:
Friday, June 14, 7pm: Book Launch Party + Artist‘s Talk
Friday, June 21, 7pm: Free Consultations Post Mortem
Sunday, June 23, hourly 3 – 6pm: Closing Performance
 
The Bureau of Self-Recognition is a single installation capturing the results of an long term conceptual project. From October 2011 through December 2012, Chloë Bass performed as the Bureau of Self-Recognition: a business designed to track self-recognition as a process. The project attempts to define the nature of the “daily” as either fully formed within us or as a social construct. Bass conducted various exercises (with herself, with single participants in one-on-one performances, and with larger groups) that used various standardized lenses (a therapist’s office, a bank, a restaurant) as strategies to identify and modify habitual behavior. Individual works within The Bureau of Self-Recognition include Practice of the Daily, Everyday Interiors, Free Consultations, The Bank of Self-Recognition, and Tea Will Be Served.
 
At Momenta, Bass will be presenting phase four of the project. Previous phases examined the theory, practice, and dissemination of the work. Phase four involves both an installation and live performances, allowing viewers to take part in the Bureau both as an art object and as a lived experience. The installation will showcase photo, video, and found object materials produced and/or collected over the course of the full conceptual work. Bass will track three routes through the installation that encourage different experiential outcomes for each viewer. The exhibit coincides with the release of the Bureau of Self-Recognition monograph, published by am i human Press.
 
Friday, June 14, 7pm:
Book Launch Party + Artist‘s Talk
To document some of the experiential work of the Bureau of Self-Recognition, Chloë Bass produced an artist’s book with Jessalyn Wakefield and am i human Press (Portland, Oregon). The book includes essays by Esther Neff and Eric Heist, images produced both by Bass and other project participants, and text by Bass and Wakefield. This event will feature a discussion with both Bass and Wakefield about the art of turning a conceptual performance project into a story, and the collaborative processes shared between performance and book-making. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
 
Friday, June 21, 7pm:
Free Consultations Post Mortem
From July - December 2012, The Bureau of Self-Recognition held a Free Consultations program: one-on-one performances between Chloë Bass and individual participants. These performances took the form of therapy sessions, during which each participant was asked a standardized set of questions and then asked to complete a simple mirror exercise. Following the initial session, each participant was assigned a personalized exercise, which he or she then conducted for 30 days, sharing the results with Bass.
 
This discussion invites the participants in these performances to share their experience of working with Chloë Bass in a process both intimate and distanced. The conversation will be moderated by Esther Neff.
 
Sunday, June 23, 3 - 6pm:
Closing Performance
For the third and final event associated with the Bureau of Self-Recognition exhibit, Chloë Bass will reprise the private performance offered for the opening. In this performance, Bass will take on the docent's role and lead visitors through a guided tour of the exhibit. Tours will be offered on the hour, and will last for approximately 30 minutes.
 
Chloë Bass is a Brooklyn based performance and conceptual artist. She has received commissions from the Culture Project’s Women Center Stage Festival, the Bushwick Starr’s Bushwhack Festival, and 3rd Ward’s Moviehouse, and residencies from POGON (Zagreb, Croatia) and D21 Kunstraum/5533 art space (Leipzig, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey). Recent artistic work has been seen at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Exit Art, Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, ITINERANT Performance Festival, Glasshouse Project, Panoply Performance Laboratory, SCOPE Art Fair, Fountain Miami, Agape Enterprise, and the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City. Bass received her MFA (Performance and Interactive Media Arts) in 2011 from Brooklyn College and her BA (Theater Studies) in 2006 from Yale University. For more information: chloebass.com.

Munch Gallery is pleased to announce two solo exhibitions.
 
‘I Believe in Death after Life’ by Morten Hemmingsen (DK)
‘Summer Home Collection’ by Jeffrey Owen Ralston (US)
 
Both artists will be present at the Opening Reception Saturday, June 1 from 7-9 pm.
 
MORTEN HEMMINGSEN – I BELIEVE IN DEATH AFTER LIFE
Hemmingsen’s approach is not without humor, when he takes on the substantial topics of life and death. It’s not the loud slapstick humor, but a quiet subtle one that might make you chuckle, but there is often more at stake, an underlying thoughtfulness and sincerity. The exhibition contemplates our final destination, and invites the viewer to engage and reflect, but the artist himself has a significant view on life, and the aftermath in particular, which is expressed across multiple media.
 
With puns and play, Hemmingsen creates his iconic blue/white banners. Carved in wood but ceramic in appearance, they draw references to the tattoo and Danish/Dutch porcelain traditions. It’s an illusion of fragility paired with quirky lines and images. The banner with the exhibition title ‘I Believe in Death after Life’ emphasizes that life should be lived here and now - there is no “on the other side”. This is the artist’s conviction, and it is not the only work of art where Hemmingsen battles religious beliefs. Similar sentiment can be seen in the monochrome inverted black cross, with the carved text ‘Good God’. A work that attracts the viewer with its immediate exquisiteness, but behind the superficial glossiness the message appears cynical and questions the construction of our lives, and the faith in redemption. Death on the other hand becomes very tangible in the series ‘Victim’ where the remains of dead animals are explored – a dissected frog, a dismembered horse, an canidae autopsy.
 
Besides wood cuts carved with one-liners or illustrated with every day objects, the exhibition will also present some of his other work; paintings made on the back of vintage school posters along with selected gouache work. This is Hemmingsen’s second exhibition at Munch Gallery.
 
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JEFFREY OWEN RALSTON – SUMMER HOME COLLECTION
It’s a typical morning. I am sipping tea, flipping through a CB2 catalogue, and listening to HGTV’s ‘Design on a Dime.’ I’m dressed and ready for a day trip to Ikea. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but just feel like browsing. My cart fills fast with random and perfectly matching objects. They all make so much sense to me. I’m back home and anxiously unwrap the packaging. I’m disappointed. Nothing seems to be how I imagined; nothing matches anymore. Everything is too small to fit anything into, and everything looks really cheap. I get a spoon for my ice cream and click the remote. There is a commercial on the television for Cindy Crawford’s Home Collection. I feel like Cindy is looking directly at me as we both lay on the sofa. I notice how flawless her collection is, how perfectly relaxed she is, and then I ask myself, “Why does she have a home collection?” I want my own home collection.
 
I created a Summer home collection that demonstrates the harmony of a curated store display. The items have a close relationship to one another, undisturbed and in unison. However, this is easily interrupted when an object leaves the group. A person once told me “The painting is only yours until somebody else sees it.” The same goes for this show, only re-phrased, “The home collection is mine, until somebody takes something from it.”
 
‘Summer Home Collection’ is made with household trash bags and disposable plastic tablecloths, a medium that is usually used in my work. Although I have always been attracted to it’s aesthetic qualities, I feel that I should recognize that the plastic used for this installation has a much deeper voice than times before. Its semi-gloss appearance along with it’s cheaply produced and disposable history resembles the manufactured merchandise found at many retailers. Beautiful in the context of a gallery or showroom, the plastic becomes nearly trash when taken home.

Pierogi is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Daniel Zeller. In his sixth exhibition at Pierogi, Zeller’s drawings continue to oscillate between micro and macro views of invented worlds and organisms. Using only graphite or ink and acrylic on paper, he explores incredible nuances of texture and structure that develop into powerful extensions of perceived reality.
 
The language of mark-making and imagery in his drawings to date has been entirely invented based on his interest in satellite images, topographical maps, electron micrographs, anatomical drawings, among others. Recently, Zeller has begun adding to this language elements referencing actual man-made structures and natural phenomena. In one work, “Vatican / al Haram,” his abstract marks surround and coalesce into the footprint of the Vatican complex with a river-like form leading to the mosque structure. In another, “Tar Sands Woodlands,” the organically shaped footprint of the oil sands mining operation in Alberta Canada, is juxtaposed to the rectilinear shape of the Woodlands Church Fellowship Campus, a mega-church in Texas. In each work an actual site is referenced but, as Zeller notes, fact and fiction merge to become something else, and of primary importance is invention through the drawing process.
 
All documents, images, and ideas grow increasingly fictitious with the passage of time and distance from their original context. Fiction, like most things, encompasses a scale ranging from wildly outrageous, to that which can seem indistinguishable from fact. We are inundated with information, virtually all of it containing an unknown ratio of fact and fiction. Each of these drawings incorporates features which have their origins in specific factual information, culled from a variety of sources, satellite imagery predominant among them. While the embedded information acts as something of a scaffold or a seed from which the work develops, the process of drawing remains central and is what ultimately determines the result. (Zeller, 2013)
 
Zeller’s process is direct — a fluid series of spontaneous choices governed by self-imposed rules and conditions. The main rule is to respect what has already been put on the page, not to cross or obscure lines already laid down. A tension between spontaneity and predictability is central to this process, allowing for its inevitable evolution.
 
“A spectacle can be created from the most modest means…. Daniel Zeller manages with just pen and ink, and sometimes just pencil. His drawings…are pulse-quickening, reason-defying wonders, testaments to the boundless potential of the human mind and hand.” He “…traces complexity itself, as a condition, a matter of connections, divergence, transitions and completions, the known and the imagined reconciled with extravagant finesse.” (Leah Ollman, The Los Angeles Times)
 
Zeller’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions and is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), the Albright Knox Museum (NY), among others. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Light is to the Natural World as Abstract Space is to Geometry. —Robert Grosseteste, 1112
 
Pierogi is pleased to present an exhibition of drawings by Mark Reynolds, his first at Pierogi. These drawings are passionately developed and result from many years of investigation into geometry. Reynolds describes drawing the various systems of geometric structures he works with as exciting, meditative, exhilarating, and humbling.
 
Since his days in art school, Reynolds was committed to drawing and visually constructing geometries, enough to make this his life’s work. Although he has great respect for and is aware that his work has elements of Geometric Abstraction, Hard-edge painting, Minimalism, and other similar methods of drawing and painting, his work is more involved with the origins of geometry, how geometry works, especially with the human mind, how it builds things, and how it orders space and records the development of an infinite variety of choices and structures because of the ratios and relationships inherent in the system of geometric forms.
 
Many of the drawings in [this exhibition] “are taken from meldings of systems of geometry that are not related nor numerically commensurate, and attempting to make them so. I call these compositions, ‘Marriages of Incommensurables,’ and ‘Unions of Opposites.’ I am interested in the structures and the images – the forms – that result from these meldings.” (Reynolds, 2013)
 
“The nature of geometry is to compose. Each resulting composition is uniquely harmonic by the method in which it was drawn and what was chosen to be the unifying geometric principle for that drawing. Much depends on this original marriage, what specifically was being employed in the geometric construction involved in the union. Certain principles of geometry – ratios, proportioning systems, harmonic resonances or discordances – interface within the relationship. I make it visible by drawing the resulting geometric forms.”
 
These compositions are structures and spaces conceived by the nature of geometric form, and the interaction geometry has with a curious mind. Mark seeks to discover if this relationship is inherent in geometry, or within the mind as a construct a priori. More curiously, what is the relationship between geometric form and human thought?
 
Mark Reynolds is an artist, geometer, and educator. He has Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Art and Art Education from Towson University in Towson, Maryland. He also received an Andelot Fellowship to the University of Delaware for post-graduate work in drawing and printmaking. Additionally, Reynolds has been teaching courses in geometry and philosophical geometry to graduate and undergraduate classes at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for over twenty years and draws every day.

Katherine Wolkoff: Deer Beds
A solo show, Color Photographs
May 8-June 30, 2013
 
The exhibition will open on Wednesday, May 8th with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
Sasha Wolf Gallery is proud to present, Katherine Wolkoff: Deer Beds.
This is Wolkoff’s second solo show with the gallery.
 
Katherine Wolkoff’s show Deer Beds consists of seven pictures made on Block Island, located off the Rhode Island coast. The pictures are of the imprints made in the grass by sleeping deer. Wolkoff found these deer beds by following the paths of the deer to the nests where they spent the night. Each time she came upon a bed she felt as if the deer had just departed, leaving its warm impression on the earth. She was always aware of their proximity. The photographs are at once a physical reminder of a living breathing animal and an abstract rendering of a field of grass. In this work, Wolkoff continues her decade-long investigation of the flora and fauna of this small, unique island, where she also photographed the collection of birds for her previous show, Found.
 
This is Katherine Wolkoff’s second exhibition at the Sasha Wolf Gallery. Her photographs have been widely exhibited, including exhibitions at Danziger Projects, the New York Photo Festival and Women in Photography. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Addison Gallery of Art and the Norton Museum of Art and the Yale Library. Born in 1976, Wolkoff graduated from Barnard College and received her MFA in photography from Yale School of Art.

ROBERT GRENIER
“Language Objects: Letters in Space, 1970 - 2013”
May 18 - June 30, 2013
Reception for (& presentation by) the artist, Sunday, 19 May 4 - 6 PM
 
SOUTHFIRST is proud to present “Language Objects: Letters in Space, 1970 - 2013,” a retrospective exhibition tracking (via notebooks, holographic & published texts, archival materials and works on paper) the evolution from early typewriter-generated forms to more recent four-color drawing poems in the work of American poet Robert Grenier between 1970 - 2013. The show will be on view from May 18 – June 30, 2013.
 
On Sunday, May 19, 4 - 6 PM, Robert Grenier will introduce the ‘idea’ for the show, and speak to/read from & provisionally ‘interpret’ certain of the materials set forth in the room.
 
Over the past 40 years, poet/artist Robert Grenier (b. 1941) has constantly pushed poetry into new frontiers of practice and utterance. His handwritten poems, produced in the last two decades, cross the upper limit of inscription to be both writing and drawing. His works include Series (This Press, 1978), SENTENCES (Whale Cloth Press, 1978), Oakland (Tuumba Press, 1980), A Day at the Beach (Roof Books, 1984), Phantom Anthems (O Books, 1986), and OWL/ON/BOU/GH (Post-Apollo Press, 1997), as well as more recent online color drawing poem sequences like POND 1 and PENN SCANS. A graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers‘ Workshop, Grenier has received two NEA fellowships for poetry writing and a 2013 grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. An archive of his work is housed in the Stanford Libraries’ Department of Special Collections. He lives in northern Vermont.
 
SOUTHFIRST, founded in 2000, is located at 60 N6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between Wythe and Kent Avenues. Gallery hours are Fri., Sat. and Sun. from 1 - 6 PM and by appointment. Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please contact Maika Pollack at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.
 
SOUTHFIRST
60 N6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718 599 4884
www.southfirst.org

Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 honors the legacy and the work of late iconic artist and photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would have turned 100 on November 30, 2012. The exhibition, organized by Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden and Assistant Curator Lauren Haynes, will feature approximately thirty black and white photographs of the Fontenelle family, whose lives Parks documented as part of a 1968 Life magazine photo essay. A searing portrait of poverty in the United States, the Fontenelle photographs provide a view of Harlem through the narrative of a specific family at a particular moment in time. This intimate exhibition will include all images from the original essay as well as several unpublished images—some which have never been displayed publicly.
 
The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Gordon Parks Foundation, a division of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation are together creating an exhibition catalogue for Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967, complementing the five-volume set German publisher Steidl is planning to publish in honor of Parks’s centenary.
 
Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 is supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Support for the exhibition catalogue provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
 
Special thanks go to the Gordon Parks Foundation, who provided essential support and assistance in organizing Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967.

Harlem Postcards commissions artists to photograph Harlem, and turns their unique depictions of the neighborhood into free, limited-edition postcards. Begun in 2002, this project was created to provide alternative, multifaceted views of Harlem, representing its complex and diverse history, and capturing the community in a critical moment of growth and change.
 
This exhibition represents the enormous, yet nuanced range of images created for Harlem Postcards. While many artists have been drawn to the visual vibrancy of Harlem—from its architecture to its colorful commercial goods—others seek to reveal its surprising, less familiar corners, or focus on the histories of Harlem’s different communities. Aiming the camera at the sidewalk, the storefront and the sky, artists have reinvented the notion of what belongs on a postcard, and what it means to represent a neighborhood to those who do not live there. Mass-produced and widely distributed, postcards function as souvenirs that commemorate visits or vacations. They have also long provided a template for artistic experimentation and correspondence. Celebrating the creativity of artists within the set limitations of 4 by 6 inches, this installation displays the postcards as aesthetic rather than functional objects.
 
Harlem has a rich photographic history, dating back to the work of James VanDerZee (1886‒1983), Roy DeCarava (1919‒2009) and the Kamoinge photography collective, founded in 1963. Over the past decade, this project has continued the legacy of these important artists, engaging the Studio Museum’s ongoing dialogue about the visual history of Harlem.