Photography

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.

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).