Tonight, Artist's Talk with James Welling at Aperture Foundation

Also, tonight James Welling will be giving a talk at Aperture Gallery. I saw a brief talk he did as part of the Whitney Biennial in 2008 that was nice so if you haven't see him speak I would go for sure.

Artist's Talk with James Welling

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
7:00 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Aperture and the Parsons Department of Photography at The New School present an artist's talk with James Welling as part of the ongoing Parsons lecture series. Welling's career constitutes a comprehensive conceptual examination of the many forms of photography: from documentary and staged to nonrepresentational. He was recently featured in the Aperture publication The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography.

JAMES WELLING (b. 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut) studied drawing at Carnegie-Mellon University before transferring to the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied video. His work has appeared in over sixty solo and group exhibitions, and is included in many public collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York, among others. Welling was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bard College. Since 1995, Welling has lived in Los Angeles, where he is head of the photography department at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work was featured in issue number 190 of Aperture magazine.

Opening Tonight: Naomi Fisher, The Brave Keep Undefiled A Wisdom Of Their Own

Miami to New York! Tonight Miami native and friend is coming up for her opening at Leo Koenig. I'll be there and many others. Also, as mentioned in a previous post, Leo Koenig is having some sort of art pot luck next door.

Leo Koenig, Inc.
545 West 23rd Street, 212-334-9255
Chelsea
Leo Koening website

September 18 - October 24, 2009
Opening: Friday, September 18, 6 - 8 PM

Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Naomi Fisher entitled "The Brave Keep Undefiled Wisdom of Their Own." With this exhibition, Fisher strives to explore the reciprocal relationship between the force of nature and its tendency towards chaos as it stands in opposition to the order and structure of civilization and culture. It is an investigation through movement, landscape costume and adornment.

Figuring most significantly in this new series of photographs, videos and drawings, are the women depicted in the images. Some of these women have been photographed by the artist for over a decade, and are all trained dancers and performers whose personal visions parallel those of Ms. Fisher's. Other intrinsic elements of inspiration for the exhibition came from the location (Oleta State Park), and a chance happening of what can only be described as the "Garage Sale of a Lifetime" where the artist stumbled upon the sale of the contents of an unpaid storage unit in Miami. There, Fisher amassed 3 garbage bags full of clothes that ended up containing vintage Versace.

"Camp Primitivo" was the name which was given to Fisher's "bubble world," and leopard print was their uniform. Oleta State Park, is on an island in Biscayne Bay between North Miami Beach and the City of Miami. Truly hidden in plain site, the park has miles of mangroves, forests and beaches nestled between metropolis and ocean. Life there was basic, food, beach, insect repellent, sleep, cook dinner over a campfire, drink, dance, thunderstorm, scream, repeat. The resulting images convey an atmosphere of spontaneous expression tinged with just a bit of mystery. The women, clad in their leopard-print and sequined outfits, exude an impulsive and unguarded playfulness, while at the same time leaving the viewer with the feeling that they might never really know the whole story.

Growing up in Miami and traveling abroad while her botanist father collected and studied tropical plants has given Ms. Fisher a unique perspective to recontextualize the modernist fascination with the tropics and the "wild" women for whom the jungle is their natural habitat. The images in this exhibition are a culmination of a project where the artist invited four women to camp with her and shoot for 9 days straight. The intimacy is apparent in the images. For the duration of the project each performer was able to tap into a reservoir of darkness and emotion which was effortlessly communicated with humor and abandon. Likewise, the artist's direction became an intuitive, and organic process. This seamless reciprocal gesture could only be the result of years of familiarity and collaboration.

Naomi Fisher is an artist born and raised in Miami. Fisher has exhibited internationally in such venues as the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev; Halle fur Kunst, Luneburg; Kemper Museum, Kansas City; Kunsthalle Wein, Vienna; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Deste Foundation, Athens; and the New Museum, NY. Fisher graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1998, and is a recipient of a 2008 Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John and James L. Knight Foundation. She also co-founded and jointly runs the Bas Fisher Invitational, an artist run alternative art space in Miami.

The artist would like to thank Jacqueline Fritz, Nancy Garcia, Jessie Gold, Elizabeth Hart, and Nikki Rollason for their inspiring performances.

Opening Tonight: "Don't Perish" Curated by Joseph Montgomery and Jesse Willenbring

"Don't Perish"
Curated by Joseph Montgomery and Jesse Willenbring
September 18 - October 17, 2009

Opens September 18 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte
Chelsea
541 West 23rd Street, 212 334 9255

EAT WELL BRING FOOD
Potluck Dinners every Tuesday & Saturday Eve

The metaphors linking food and art are abundant. They persist: the ideas of sustenance versus subsistence, to satiate concomitant with nourishment, to simply serve, or to present. Don't Perish posits the independent creativity of the artist within the anomaly of an inventive community. Don't Perish is an exchange suggested as an exhibition:

"We want to live with work we like, work we are curious about, work we have the chance to eat dinner with if we put it into a group show that incorporates tables, chairs, and food. In order to understand the work, get to know it, we invite our friends and strangers to look at the work with us over a meal."

Montgomery and Willenbring have done this before. Rose Colored Glasses was mounted at Passerby in 2008. That exhibition shared the same impetus as Don't Perish, which was and is, a desire to experience works of art in a setting that provides an alternative to the passive viewing parameters usually encountered when visiting a gallery. There was and is the intention that the participant will find sustained albeit earned nourishment in the work as well as the meals. In addition to the individual works providing stimulus, the context provided by the visual storage and organization of non-perishable food throughout the gallery inspires another level of sightlines, interruptions, jumps in conversation and information that keeps perspective un-fixed.

Abstract and conceptual works lend themselves particularly well to durational viewing. When considering pieces for the exhibition, Montgomery and Willenbring specifically chose works by artists that combine rigor and formalist underpinnings, with an understated yet sublime beauty. They have grouped an unexpected bevy of artists into a space activated by dinner-time conversations puzzling the connections and discovering the complements.

At the core of this exhibition is the emphasis on responsibility. Montgomery and Willenbring are creating a pantry within the gallery for food the visitor donates to the Food Bank of New York*. They ask the diners to bring food to share to the table when they come to dinner. Montgomery and Willenbring are bringing food to the neighborhood by hosting a farm stand on Saturdays.

Each artwork will also initiate queries on responsibility through its language of abstraction, investigate the necessity or uselessness of interpretation, and weigh the burden or enlightenment of context.

Joseph Montgomery and Jesse Willenbring are artists that live and work in New York City.
Joseph Montgomery holds a BA from Yale University and both he and Jesse Willenbring hold MFA's from Hunter College.

With many thanks to the generous loans from Paula Copper, Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Steve Henry, The Hall Collection and Jack Tilton.

Fall gallery hours will be Thursday through Saturdays 10-6, (Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment). Please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo for further information and/or visuals.

*Non-perishable food items may be donated during gallery hours.

Dinners will be held on;
September 19th, September 22nd, September 26th, September 29th, October 3rd, October 6th, October 10th, October 13th, October 17th.