Wow We Have Come This Far / BFI 5year Anniversary

'Worlds Without End Part I,' 20 x 37 inches, ©2009 Harlan Erskine

I'm happy to announce that I will have the above print included in the BFI Portfolio. If you are in Miami please stop by the benefit this Thursday November 12th. Hope to see you there!

THE BAS FISHER INVITATIONAL CELEBRATES ITS 5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH A BENEFIT AND PREMIERE OF THE PORTFOLIO "WOW WE HAVE COME THIS FAR"

Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 7 - 10 p.m.
Tickets: $50 per person (cash or check only)

Location: The Bas Fisher Invitational
180 NE 39th Street, Suite 210
(inside the Buena Vista Building in Miami’s Design District)

Featured artists in portfolio "Wow We Have Come This Far":

Kevin Arrow | Alex Cardenas | Clifton Childree | Jessica Dickinson | Harlan Erskine | "Freegums" aka Alvaro Ilizarbe | Frederico Nessi | Rebecca Schiffman | Francine Spiegel | Jen Stark | Mike Taylor | Jonathan Thomas

The Bas Fisher Invitational (BFI), an artist-run, alternative arts space in Miami's Design District, is throwing a cupcakes and cocktails soiree to mark its 5-year anniversary and portfolio premiere on November 12, from 7-10 p.m. “Wow We Have Come This Far” features exclusive, limited-edition prints exploring silk-screen, giclée, photography and etching, among other mediums, by 12 BFI alumni artists.

Attendees will be treated to deejayed tunes by BFI organizers Naomi Fisher, Jim Drain and Kathryn Marks, with the added pleasure of knowing their $50 ticket goes toward future programming and events.

Founded in Summer 2004, the BFI has hosted 30 exhibitions, many of which have launched the careers of emerging artists: Francine Speigel went on to show with Deitch Projects in New York; Jessica Dickinson and Alejandro Cardenas are represented by James Fuentes, an edgy, downtown New York gallery; and Jen Stark, Alvaro Ilizarbe and Clifton Childree are among Miami's most respected talent.

In gratitude for their success, these portfolio artists contributed to raise funds and ensure support for the next generation. All ticket and print sales go toward matching the Knight Arts Challenge grant awarded to the BFI from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This matching grant provides funds to maintain year-round programming including exhibitions, lectures, community outreach and artist residencies in association with the Fountainhead Residency, as a nonprofit, non-commercial venue under the umbrella of the Dade Community Foundation, a 501c3. The Knight Arts Challenge is a $40 million initiative to bring the South Florida community together through the arts.

About the Bas Fisher Invitational

For over five years, the Bas Fisher Invitational (BFI) has consistently maintained a presence in Miami as a thought-provoking artist-run gallery space. As a zero-profit, alternative venue for unrepresented artists the BFI has allowed artists to receive full benefit of their hard work and to make great professional connections. The BFI was created by Naomi Fisher and Hernan Bas (now managed by Fisher, Jim Drain, Agatha Wara and Kathryn Marks). Since 2009 the BFI has been under the umbrella of the Dade Community Foundation, a 501c3.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote community engagement and lead to transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

The Bas Fisher Invitational is generously supported, in part, by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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: "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.