Photographer

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.

Dueling Lectures, September 17, 2009

There are at least 3 competing Lectures tonight. They are all battling for me to attend who will win...

In this corner, the Chairman of the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media at School of Visual Arts...


Burlington, VT, 1990, Pigment print. Copyright Charles H. Traub, Courtesy Gitterman Gallery

Charles Traub
The Camera Club of New York Lecture series.

Thursday, September 17th 7pm
The School of Visual Arts Amphitheatre
209 E. 23rd Street (2nd and 3rd avenues), 3rd Floor
(please bring photo ID)

Book signing and sale to follow the lecture.

Free to CCNY members, SVA students, faculty, and staff
General admission $10, $5 for other students with valid student ID

Charles Traub will be speaking about two of his projects: In the Still Life, his most recent book; and his forthcoming one, Still Life in America: Looking at US. He describes his work as such, ”Real world witness is my concern and for one such as me, the road and the street are the muse. Whether standing on the street corner or on the road trip, it is the great irony and humor inherent in the human condition. To record such is the great delight of my life.“

Mr. Traub is Chair of MFA Photography, Video and Related Media, School of Visual Arts in New York City, the largest independent college of art in the United States. He holds an MS from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a BA degree from the University of Illinois. He was formerly the director of the prestigious Light Gallery of New York. He is President of the Aaron Siskind Foundation for support of creative photography. He is one of the co founders of Here is New York, a Democracy of Photographs, which received the Brendan Gill Award of the Municipal Arts Society, Cornell Capa Infinity Award, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Children‘s Aid Society of New York. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions including Marcus Pfeifer Gallery, Van Straaten Gallery, Art Directors Guild of New York, Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Light Gallery and the Hudson River Museum. His work is currently represented by the Tom Gitterman Gallery in New York. Mr. Traub has authored and edited many books including Beach, Italy Observed, and Angler‘s Album, and has had his work published in Connoisseur, Fortune, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, American Photographer, Popular Photography, Aperture, and Afterimage. He has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, Hendrecks Foundation, Illinois Art Council, Manda Foundation, Olympics Arts Organization Committee, and the Mary McDowell Center for Learning. His textbook In the Realm of Circuit was published by Prentice Hall in the spring of 2003. In the Still Life, a monograph of his recent color photography, was published in September 2004. He recently co-edited the book Education of a Photographer.

And in this corner...

Words Without Pictures presents

Confounding Expectations VI: Photography in Context

Thursday, September 17, 2009 7 pm

FREE Admission

Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street, New York City

Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis

This first event celebrates the launch of the innovative Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) book project Words Without Pictures, which documents roughly one year of conversations about the most pressing issues shaping contemporary photography.

Moderator:

CHARLOTTE COTTON is the Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously, she was the Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1992-2004). She is the author and editor of books, including Imperfect Beauty: the making of contemporary fashion photographs (2000), and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2004). Charlotte will be returning to London later in the fall to take up a new position of creative director of the London space of the National Media Museum, which will open in 2012.

Panelists:

DENISE WOLFF is a photobook editor, known for her work with both contemporary and historic photography. She recently joined Aperture from Phaidon Press. Throughout her career, she has had the opportunity to work on many beautiful books with the world’s top photographers, including Mary Ellen Mark, Martin Parr, Eugene Richards, and Stephen Shore to name a few.

MATT KEEGAN is an artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. His work has been exhibited at venues such as Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles; D'Amelio Terras, New York; White Columns, New York; and Wallspace Gallery, New York in collaboration with Leslie Hewitt. He is co-founder and publisher of the annual publication North Drive Press.

ALEX KLEIN is an artist based in Los Angeles and the editor of Words Without Pictures. In Spring 2007, she co-organized with James Welling the conference Around Photography at the Hammer Museum. She is currently the Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellow in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and an adjunct faculty member at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.

With special guests Fia Backstrom, Johanna Burton, Melissa Catanese, Sarah Charlesworth, Moyra Davey, Darius Himes, John Lehr, Miranda Lichtenstein, Arthur Ou, Ed Panar and Laurel Ptak.

The lecture series is presented with generous support from the Kettering Family Foundation and the Henry Nias Foundation. The program is made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

More info at the New School website here

And lastly,

At the SVA Theatre

Dave Hickey: The God Ennui

Thursday, September 17, 7pm

Writer and educator Dave Hickey is the author of two highly regarded collections of critical essays, The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (Art Issues Press, 1993); Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (Art Issues Press, 1998) and the forthcoming Pagan America (Simon and Schuster, 2010). He was the recipient of a 2001 MacArthur Fellowship, and is currently Schaeffer Professor of Modern Letters at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department.

SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street
Free and open to the public

Who will win my attention? I don't even know yet!

Although afterwards I will surly be trying to attend this Blind Spot related event:

From SLRs to disposables to digital cameras to PDAs, the photographic image is more prolific than at any point since the medium'

Rizzoli International and Ken Miller invite you to join us in celebrating
the publication of

SHOOT
@
New Museum of Contemporary Art
Thursday September 17, 7-9pm

SHOOT is a collection of 'photography of the moment' by Stephen Shore, Nan
Goldin, Walter Pfeiffer, Boris Mikhailov, Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen
Teller, Mark Borthwick, Ari Marcopoulos, Hiromix, Glynnis McDaris, Linus
Bill, Jason Nocito, Yurie Nagashima, Tim Barber, Peter Sutherland, JH
Engstrom, Dash Snow, Kenneth Cappello, Louise Enhorning, Michael
Schmelling, Nacho Alegre, Ola Rindal, Paul Schiek, Madi Ju, Jaimie Warren
and Thomas Jeppe.

"From SLRs to disposables to digital cameras to PDAs, the photographic
image is more prolific than at any point since the medium's inception.
Whether working in personal documentary, editorial, fine art or fashion,
the photographers in SHOOT share a democratic, emotionally intuitive
approach to picture-taking that reflects an era in which we increasingly
use ephemeral images to define our own lives."

SHOOT includes a foreword by legendary photographer Stephen Shore, in
addition to a critical essay by professor Penny Martin (of pioneering
fashion site SHOWstudio.com and the London College of Fashion) with a
historical overview by editor Ken Miller (Revisionaries; A Decade of Art in
Tokion).

Upcoming Fall 2009 New York Art openings... (updated x2)

These are the openings that I am excited to see coming soon. I will update this post for the remainder of the fall with new shows coming soon. I hope to go to as many of the opening as possible but if I post it here I will at least attend the show if a can't make opening night.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Group Show: OFF THE GRID: LUIS MALLO, ANDREW A. LUCAS, MICHEL CAMPEAU, AND TROY PAIVA
at KUMUKUMU Gallery

OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 9, 6-8 PM
On View: September 9 - October 1, 2009
42 Rivington Street

Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 First Edition
Photographs by Michelle Arcila, Daniel Cheek, Mike Sinclair, Parsley Steinweiss and Kurt Tong.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 6-8 PM
On View: September 10th - September 19th, 2009
6 Spring Street

Carter, And Within Area Although, Salon 94 Freemans
Opening Reception: September 9, 6-8 PM
On View: September 9 - October 24, 2009
1 Freeman Ally

Zipora Fried, Trust Me. Be Careful, On Stellar Rays
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 6-8 PM
On View: September 9 - October 25, 2009
133 Orchard Street

Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE, 30 YEARS OF BEING CUT UP, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 6-8 PM
On View: September 9 - October 18, 2009
14A Orchard Street

Colin Dodgson, Just because it's in your head, doesn't mean its not real.
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 6-9 PM
243 Broome Street (Corner of Ludlow)

Grace Kim, Under the Glass Bell, A Dream, Melanie Flood Projects
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9, 7-10 PM
On View: September 9th - October 7th, 2009
186 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York

Thursday, September 10, 2009

First off is my thesis advisor at SVA. I saw some of this while in progress at his studio and I'm looking forward to seeing it finished and installed in the gallery.

Simen Johan, Until the Kingdom Comes, Yossi Milo Gallery
Artist's Reception: Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6 - 8 pm
On View: September 10, 2009 -October 31, 2009
525 West 25th Street

Anthony Pearson, Marianne Boesky Gallery
Opening reception Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6 - 8 pm
On View: September 11 - October 10, 2009
509 West 24th Street

Juergen Teller: Paradis, Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday, 10 September 6 - 8 PM
On View: 10 September - 17 October, 2009
540 West 26th Street, New York

Nicholas Nixon, Old Home, New Pictures, Pace/Macgill
Opening Reception: ???
On View: September 10 - October 24, 2009
32 East 57th Street

Chris Ofili, Afro Margin. David Zwirner
Opening reception September 10, 6 – 8pm
On View: September 10 – October 24, 2009
525 West 19th Street

Nicolai Howalt, Car Crash Studies, Bruce Silverstein
Todd Hido, A Road Divided, Bruce Silverstein
Opening reception: Thursday, September 10th, 6 - 8 pm
On View: September 09 - October 24, 2009
535 West 24th Street

Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art, Aperture Foundation Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 6 - 8 pm
On View: September 10 – October 15, 2009
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor

Amy Stein, Domesticated, Clamp Art
Opening reception September 10, 6 – 8 pm
On View: September 10 – October 31, 2009
521-531 West 25th Street

Jason Hanasik, He Opened Up Somewhere Along the Eastern Shore, Kris Graves Projects
Opening Reception: Thursday, 10 September 6 - 9 PM
On View: September 10 - October 10, 2009

The Open, Deitch Projects LIC
Opening Septermber 10th 6 - 10 PM
On View: September 10 - October 25, 2009
4-40 44th Drive, Long Island City

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Tim Davis, The New Antiquity, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery
Opening Reception Brunch: Saturday, September 12, 2009 11 am – 4 pm
On View: September 10 - October 24, 2009
730 Fifth Ave., at 57th Street

Hans-Peter Feldman, 303 Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday , September 12 2009 6-8 PM
On View: September 12 - October 17 2009
547 W 21 Street

WOOD, A sculpture show featuring: Carol Bove, David Lamelas, Corey McCorkle, Oscar Tuazon + Eli Hansen Kaari Upson
at Maccarone Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12th from 6-8 PM
On View: September 12 - October 24th, 2009
630 Greenwich Street