Bklyn College MFA Open Studios - Nov 19 & 20

Less than two weeks away! Brooklyn goes hard - and we get open.



Visit Visit BrooklynCollegeOpenStudios.com for more info.

Or RSVP via Facebook.

Or download the press release.

BEDLAM Group show SAT Nov 13

BEDLAM

SAT NOV 13TH
7PM - 10PM

113 LEROY ST NYC

anthony titus • eric fertman • david sena • john furgason • laura napier • nichole van beek • carlos little • cy amundson • boveda • jeremy williams • rebecca haskins • antonio serna (B.C. 2010) • patricia gaeta • philippe arman • max miller • jeremiah stewart • kim reinhart • serban ionescu • kathryn lynch • erin krause • kora manheimer • brent owens

BC Alum Night Take 2: Thurs Oct 28th 8-11PM

From Jeff Frederick (BC MFA 2010)

- - - - -

Dear Fellow Artists,

Thank you so much to those who came to the first Alum Night! More than 25 people stopped by over the course of the evening, including some delightful alumni significant others. Hare Field Road is a comfortable place, not too hipster, not too divey, and not too loud to talk.

We're going to try it again, this time on a Thursday, so that current first years may be able to attend. Please join us for Brooklyn College Alum Night, an unofficial, casual gathering of BC MFA Art alums. Drink and converse. Share tips and techniques. Network, or just gossip about the art world.

When: Next Thursday, October 28th, 8-11PM
Where: Hare Field Road
769 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 388-6870

How: L Train to Graham Avenue (2 doors from White Castle)
Who: Brooklyn College Art MFA Alums! Current 1st and 2nd years are welcome, significant others are welcome, everyone is welcome.

Please pass this invitation along to any other BC alums you know. At the bottom of this note is a list of people for whom I am missing e-mails. If you have it, please let me know!

All the best,
Jeff Frederick
BC MFA 2010

http://www.jefffrederick.net

HELLO! My Name is CUNY, 2nd Annual CUNY MFA Meet-up

HELLO! my name is CUNY 2010
2nd annual CUNY MFA Meet-Up & Slide-Showdown!

SUNDAY April 25th, 5-8PM
@Tom & Jerry's Bar 288 Elizabeth St, NYC (NoHo)

BROOKLYN COLLEGE • CITY COLLEGE • HUNTER COLLEGE • LEHMAN COLLEGE • QUEENS COLLEGE

Current CUNY MFA Students from the boroughs will project their work while knocking 'em back. Open to alumni, faculty, and friends of the CUNY MFA system. Unlike last years event where we hung our work, this year your work will be projected.**

THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO ALL CUNY MFA STUDENTS AND ALUMNI


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE CUNY ART MFA GROUP FOR MORE INFO: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cunyartmfa/

**IF YOU ARE A CURRENT MFA STUDENT, PLS send 10 jpgs to brklynartmfa@gmail.com by SATURDAY MIDNIGHT - Deadline Extented!.

FORMAT:
* email subject line: "CUNY MFA Meet-up 2010 SLIDES"
* include first and last name & website URL if you have one.
* size: 1024px x 768px at 72dpi (we dont need super hi-rez)
* use this format for titling:

BC_LastF_01.jpg <-- where BC is School initials, BC, QC, CC, HC
BC_LastF_02.jpg <-- followed by LastnameFirstinitial & slide number

Projects in Bucharest

June-July, Works From the Balcony, an alternative project space in Bucharest will be opening its doors to the public for the first time this June in parallel with the Bucharest Biennial 4. Located in district 2 of Bucharest the space is easily accessible sizing at 1000 square meters of raw space in an early 1900’s villa.

Here we will be hosting a series of events and exhibitions encouraging immediate public access to cross-cultural values in the contemporary arts and culture.

Participating artists:

Tudor Bratu (video & sculpture)
Lansing-Dreiden (video)
Nadja Verena Marcin (video)
Declan Rooney (video)
Ama Saru & Hsiao Chen (video and sculpture)
Antonio Serna (site specific installation with video and sculpture)
James Sham (video)
Layard Thompson (video performance)
Rancourt & Yatsuk (video performance)

Visiting Artist: Clements, Donegan, Treib

Brooklyn College MFA Fine Arts
Graduate Studies Visiting Artist Lecture Series:

Art & Teaching Panel w/
DAWN CLEMENTS
CHERYL DONEGAN
PATRICIA TREIB



Thursday April 22nd, 2010, 10:00 a.m.
BC Library Woody Tanger Auditorium

DAWN CLEMENTS
Clements’ endeavor to draw what’s around her often draws her into very large-scale work; the first work I saw 10 years ago was a 78-foot long drawing done during a residency in Middlebury, VT. Her work usually develops in a serendipitous way—she responds to what she sees and doesn’t know the end point until she reaches it. She may begin working on a very modest scale but the work often ends up many times larger as she glues pieces of paper to the edges of the working drawing where she decides to continue drawing. The wrinkles and tears that develop as a result of her process are the record of a very active, performative drawing practice. (above: Boiler, ink on paper. 2010)

CHERYL DONEGAN
Cheryl Donegan defines a generation of artists, many of whom are women, who first engaged in a new conceptual art practice in the early 1990s. Her work integrates the time-based, gestural forms of performance and video with forms such as painting, drawing, and installation. Provocative and irreverent, her body-based, performative video works put a subversive spin on issues relating to sex, gender, art-making, art history, and pop culture. (above: Untitled, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2009)

PATRICIA TREIB
Patricia Treib’s works were recently exhibited in “Besides, With, Against, and Yet: Abstraction and The Ready-Made Gesture” at the Kitchen. A solo presentation of her work was exhibited at John Connelly Presents in 2008. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Andrew Kreps and Guild & Greyshkul in New York, and Sutton Lane in Paris. She was awarded a studio residency through the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in 2007. Treib lives and works in Brooklyn. (above: Icons, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2008)

MFA Showcase Opening Reception-- Tonight 4/13, 5:30 to 8PM, SUBO 4th Floor

The Graduate Art Students Union (GASU), in collaboration with the Brooklyn College Student Center (SUBO) and the Art Galleries of Brooklyn College, presents MFA Showcase, a rotating exhibition now on display on the 4th Floor of the Student Center. The inaugural exhibition will be on view through October 2010.

An opening and reception for the artists will be held Tuesday, April 13th from 5:30 to 8:00 PM on the 4th floor of the Student Center (SUBO). Please join us for lots of food, drink and conviviality.

MFA Showcase is a group show featuring the work of 23 artists currently enrolled in the Brooklyn College Art MFA program. This new exhibition allows anyone in the Brooklyn College community to view, all in one place, a sampling of the world-class artwork that is being produced in the student studios of Boylan Hall. The artworks will visually enhance the fourth floor meeting and event spaces for the campus community.

Next fall, when a new group of Art MFA students arrives and has started working, the exhibition will be re-hung with all new work. In that way it will be regularly refreshed and will continue to represent the students currently in the program.

www.mfashowcase.blogspot.com

THIS FRIDAY & SAT: Open Studios at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College MFA
Open Studios Spring 2010

Boylan Hall, 4th, 5th, & 6th Floors
2900 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn NY (map)

2 or 5 train to Flatbush Ave.

FRI APRIL 16th 6-10 pm
SAT APRIL 17th 1-6 pm

Twenty-seven young artists from the Master of Fine Arts program at Brooklyn College (CUNY) will open their studios and invite the public to engage with their creative processes:

MFA Students: Linda Bernal • Julia Cocuzza • Jeff Frederick • David Friedman • Gregory Hayes • Megan Hays • John Keck • Luiza Kurzyna • Michele Liebler • David Loncle • Hector Madera-Gonzalez • Elias Melad • Allison Merz • JungHwa O'Connell • Madison Omahne • Juan Ortega • Marina Pavlutskaya • Ivan Rivera • Noosheen Roostami • Antonio Serna • Natalie Taylor • Miryana Todorova • Boris Torres • Matthew Wilson • Dominik Wyka • Erin Zelley • Jacob Zurilla

DOWNLOAD STUDIO FLOOR PLAN
2009/2010:
Brooklyn College Open Studios (pdf)

To See: Versus from the Abstract (FRI MAR 26th)

VERSES FROM THE ABSTRACT
Selections from the Queens College MFA Studio Art Program

CURATED BY HERB TAM • MARCH 25th- APRIL 3rd, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY MARCH 26™ 5 - 8PM

Organized by the Queens College MFA Program in
cooperation with Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Program
11-03 45th Ave Long Island City, Ny 11101
718.937.6317 • www.dorsky.org

Lisa Candage, Jim Cass1dy, Joyce Chan. Pansum Cheng, Lacey
Fekishazy, Becky Franco, Justine Beih Gartner, Matthew F Greco,
Pahy Harris, Osaretin Ighile, Iris Jaffe, Kaitlin M. Kelty. Fran
Krause, Matthew Mahler. Matthew Palmer, Antonia A. Perez. Kim
Sheridan, William Ste1nman, Woody Williams And Debra Zechowski.

cunyqueenscollegemfa.blogspot.com

Directions: E or Vto 23rd St./Ely Ave or 7 to 45th Road/ Courthouse
Square or G To Court Square.


Funding provided by
Queens College, Office of
Institutional Advancement

To See: Boris at Bowman/Bloom

Boris Torres will participating in KWAWRK, a groups show opening this Friday:

KWAWRK
Charles Lahti
Steven Salzman
Boris Torres

@ Bowman/Bloom Gallery
95 E. 7th St (b'teew 1st and A)
March 19-April 11

Opening: Friday, March 19th, 6-8 pm

Visiting Artist: Tehching Hsieh

Please join us for a lecture by...

Tehching Hsieh
Thursday March 11, 12:30- 1:30
Brooklyn College Library Room 411

Pass it along to anyone who might be interested in attending.

Tehching Hsieh is a legendary performance art pioneer. Born in Taiwan, he arrived in the United States in 1974, when he jumped ship from a merchant marine vessel in Philadelphia. He settled in New York, and in 1978 he created the first of a series of one-year performances: in the Cage Piece (1978–79) he lived in a cage inside a loft with a bed and refrained from speaking or reading. This was followed by performances in
which he punched a clock every hour for one year (Time Piece, 1980–81), lived outdoors with only a sleeping bag (Outdoor Piece, 1981–82), was tied to a fellow artist with an eight-foot rope (Rope Piece, 1983–84), and refrained from creating or talking about art (No Art Piece, 1985–86). From 1986 to 1999, in 13-Year Plan, he created art but refrained from showing it. In 2000 he stopped making art altogether. He has described his work as "about being human, how we explain time, how we measure our existence."- Samuel Hoi

THURSDAY FEB 25th_12.30PM::DANIEL BOZHKOV::Visiting Artist Spring 2010

Brooklyn College MFA Fine Arts and Graduate Studies &
Meier Bernstein Visiting Artist Lecture Series Present:

DANIEL BOZHKOV
THURSDAY, February 25th - 12:30PM
MAROON ROOM, 6th floor SUBO building
(FREE & OPEN TO ALL CUNY STUDENTS)


Daniel Bozhkov, 'Training in Assertive Hospitality', 2002,
Intervention and mural Courtesy of the artist

Daniel Bozhkov is a Bulgarian-born conceptual artist based in New York City. He employs a variety of media, from fresco to performance and video, and works with professionals from different fields, using different strategies to activate public space. Bozhkov enters the worlds of genetic science, department mega-stores, and world-famous tourist sites as an amateur intruder/visitor who also functions as a producer of new strains of meaning into seemingly closed systems.

Bozhkov received the 2007 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation, Art Matters, and Artslink. He has exhibited at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, Santa Monica Museum of Art, IKON Gallery in Birmingham, United Kingdom, Skulpturenpark Berlin Zentrum, Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, Arthouse at Jones Center in Austin, Texas, and the Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta. His work has been presented in international exhibitions such as the 6th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, 9th Istanbul Biennale in Turkey, the 1st Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art in Russia and the 9th Baltic Triennale in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Daniel Bozhkov is represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York.

Two traps- Sterling Ruby

The only show worth checking out in Chelsea right now. (pacewildenstein) I tried to get him to come to Brooklyn College as a Visiting Artist but he couldn't make it...

Trap for 2011-2012?

Curator Walk-Through: AMY MACKIE

Brooklyn College MFA Fine Arts
GASU Critic & Curator Walk-Through Series:

LUNCH WITH CURATOR:
AMY MACKIE

Thursday Feb 18th - 12:30 p.m.
Boylan Hall, 5th Fl. Gallery, (east wing).

Amy Mackie is a curatorial assistant at the New Museum, New York where she curated The Deeper You Bury Me, The Louder My Voice Becomes, a site-specific installation by Rigo 23, C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience) a project by A.L. Steiner + robbinschilds, and co-curated Jeremy Deller’s It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq. In 2005 she curated Open, an exhibition in conjunction with Paul Ramirez Jonas’ public art commission, Taylor Square in Cambridge, MA. She has organized exhibitions or worked on projects with a number of mid-career and emerging artists including Ana Prvacki, Andrea Geyer, Mariam Ghani, and the New York-based collectives LTTR and Ridykeulous. She is the recipient of a 2009 CEC Artslink Grant.

www.newmuseum.org


C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience) at the New Museum October 2009.
Artist included: robbinschilds + A.L. Steiner with AJ Blandford

Visiting Artist: Fendry Ekel, Folkert De Jong, Astrid Honold

Brooklyn College MFA Fine Arts - SPRING 2010
Graduate Studies Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presents:

OFFICE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
/FENDRY EKEL
/ASTRID HONOLD
/FOLKERT DeJONG


Thursday Feb 4th - 12:30 p.m.
BC Library Woody Tanger Auditorium
(FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)

OFFICE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART is a contemporary art management office which supports a select group of individual talented young artists working in The Netherlands. It is an initiative of managing director ASTRID HONOLD, painter FENDRY EKEL and sculptor FOLKERT De JONG. In addition, OFFICE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART also maintains a collection international contemporary art and tribal art from South East Asia.

Folkert De Jong is a critically acclaimed sculptor working and living in Amsterdam. His recent mini retrospective at the Groninger Museum garnered much attention from the press. Folkert De Jong currently exhibits at James Cohan Gallery and is a graduate of the RijksAkademie.

Originally trained as an architect in Stuttgart Germany, Astrid Honold has been working in the field of Art Management and Consulting since 2003 when she founded OFFICE. Since then Astrid has been curating exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally and publishing monographs and various exhibition catalogs.

Fendry Ekel is a painter working and living in Amsterdam. He has exhibited consistently in Amsterdam and internationally in Italy, Mexico, and the US. His first solo show in the US is currently on view at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art and has just been reviewed in the New York Times. Fendry is a graduate of RijksAkademie in Amsterdam.



NEXT EVENT: AMY MACKIE / THE NEW MUSEUM / THURSDAY FEB 18th.
Organized by BC MFA Visiting Artist

Colonizing History, Culture

Kara Walker, An Army Train, 2005

The first task of the colonizer is to map out the land. To cut it up, make it easier to negotiate.

It's a curious thing that the idea of the colonizer popped into my head yet again at the New Museums' lecture series. The first time was when Kara Walker made a proposition about the painter as the colonizer, the painting the colonized. I didn't contribute to the discussion, but I had very strong feelings about her presentation, specifically because in evolving from the metaphor of a painting as being colonized, nobody brought up, or had the courage to bring up the idea of history, specifically in her work, as what is being colonized -the body that is bought and sold. This makes Walker the colonizer, claiming so boldly what is "hers". Why didn't anyone put this question forward?

And now today I am reminded again, of the colonizers and their "maps" when Hans Ulrich Obrist spoke about "Maps for the 21st Century", spoke about his latest project. Though the idea of the colonizer isn't as heavy and as direct as in Kara's predicament, it's still an interesting angle to see it from. First of all the "Maps" project is customary of Hans Ulrich's process, that is to say it has been mapped-out before, most recently with his "Formulas for Now" book. It all begins with one idea, a minimal idea, this sets off a whole chain of events: idea/minimal guideline -> a call to the top artist -> artist respond -> eventually a show -> then a book, next project. It's seems very complete and contained, which, despite the fact that he did mention some ideas never make it that far an others go on, has a life span and follows a well known route, it is mapped. But does it have to be? (...more on the map, what is a map and what is not, later)



The first map showing the Americas by Martin Waldseemuller, 1507

According to Hans Ulrich Obrist the initial idea for these projects does come from an unmapped terrain, in his introduction he spoke about the Oulipo Group and how their experiments in writing were an inspiration for the way he sets up his curatorial projects. And that he was also interested in this element chance, that sometimes these experiments can fail, see his "Experiment Marathons" project. So why is it starting to feel very mapped out? I wonder if it has anything to do with the "colonizer" aspect. That value is a big part of this picture, that creating culture, or converting culture to value has a lot to do with how far his projects get. So everything has to be mapped out, no unpredictable names in his books. Chance was a lie, it's getting harder for his projects to fail. Museums and publishers bank on this. It all get's checked off rather methodically.

Before I go on I have to say that -if you don't know this already- Hans Ulrich Obrist uber-prolific, it is beyond human the amount of books, projects, shows, events, that he has put-out or helped with or whatever. I heard a rumor that he only sleeps 4 hrs a night- yeah, that kind of a guy. And of this output, I really only know of about a sliver of it. I probably can't even imagine all that has worked on, both realized and unrealized, (see his "Unbuilt Roads" project). I can almost bet that there must be a handful of his projects that shatter my "colonizer/map" thesis here.

None the less, I have to say, that if a curator of the 21st century wants to take the role of the instigator -as if artists no longer have the capacity and power to do so- then he/she should be willing to go as far as an artist to see that these ideas get pushed beyond their expected life, beyond what is on the map. Just as the world asks the artist to be brave and stand outside of their comfort zone-even if it means starvation, so then too an artist can ask the same of curators, critics, and museums. Much like we found the work of Henry Darger - pages and pages of exploration into his world- so should we find of a curator of the 21st century.(Alright, I've already been getting comments that Darger isn't the best example for what I'm trying to say, if there is a better one let me know. Or if it comes to me later, I'll revise this post.)

Henry Darger's Studio, photo by Lerner, 1972

An example of a Hans Ulrich Obrist project that I thought broke the mold was a project that sounded courageous, but not in an overly heroic way like his marathons, but rather courageous in it's simple gesture. His Brutally Early Club is a salon style event that happens all over London- simple as that, the brutal aspect is that it happens at 6:30AM -which I think is great, not because I'm a wanna be morning person, but because I think it's important to get that out of the way, just before going into the studio, not after. Night events have the tendency to drag on, or morph into some dunken dance party. So what of the night artist? Guston and all those Ab-Ex-Men? Simple, they can stay up working all night and come to The Brutally Early club afterward, go home sleep, repeat. Another big plus is the sunrise, when was the last time you saw the sun rise?

“I always have coffee and porridge for breakfast. My breakfast happens very early, at 6.30am, because I wake up early. I founded a club, which is called the Brutally Early Club. It’s basically a breakfast salon for the 21st century where art meets science meets architecture meets literature. The reason why I decided to do my club at 6.30am in different cafés, which are open so early, is because in 21st-century cities it’s become very difficult to improvise. Everybody has a schedule and it becomes really difficult to decide from one day to the next to gather for a meeting. You have to plan it weeks and weeks in advance. It’s so important to have improvisation in cities. Most people are free at 6.30, so that’s the idea of the Brutally Early Club and I have done it ever since I moved to London.”
-from The Q&A: Hans Urich Obrist at MoreIntelligentLife.com.

I noticed on The Brutally Early Club website that they have one in New York City. Anyone know where that is? Or want to establish a New York chapter with me?

Cosmonaut Polyakov or Avatar?

Looking for an alternative to James Cameron's Avatar? I am. I haven't seen Avatar despite some of my closest friends demanding that I see it. I'm too much of a realist when it comes to films. When I see how fake the wigs or the lighting, especially the lighting- I'm reminded of the Hollywood machine with all it's formulas and tricks. I don't doubt I'll enjoy Avatar, it was engineered that way- it's a whole 2hrs of engineered cinematic experience- not one nostril hair left un-engineered. But that's really all it is, a formula.



I'm looking forward instead to watching Dana Ranga's Cosmonaut Polyakov, a film selected by Urs Fischer, that's being screened through-out the span his solo show at the New Museum. It's a documentary film about space and politics just like Avatar, that's why I thought it would make for a great alternative. But the reality might make for a better take-away, Polyakov holds the record for being in space for the longest span of time, one year and two months.. and "for the first time he speaks publicly about the KGB, being in exile, and the struggle of space travel."

Friday January, 22. At the New Museum Theater
5:00pm

Cosmonaut Polyakov(2007)
110 min, Russian language with English subtitles
Dir. Dana Ranga
This highly acclaimed 2007 documentary directed by Dana Ranga (East Side Story, and Story). Cosmonaut Polyakov follows Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who holds the record of the longest trip into space: one year and two months. For the first time he speaks publicly about the KGB, being in exile, and the struggle of space travel.

other films in Urs Fischers Film Selections:

January 22, Friday
5 p.m.: Cosmonaut Polyakov
7 p.m.: Up the Yangtze

February 5 Friday:
5 p.m.: Touki Bouki
7 p.m.: Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris

Artistic Automata

Kristoffer Myskja built a machine to synthesize Cellular Automata rule No.# 30 among other things...

The Click Click machine below, is what I had in mind in Vito's Master Project studio review when I imagined Matthew Wilson building a machine that could in a second synthesize his work, only instead of clicks, I imagined it making several thousand strokes.

Afterwards I kept thinking about what it means to create and then synthesize that creativity mechanically. Reading Rosalind Krauss' The Optical Unconscious today I came across a a passage about a praying mantis, an insect that can play dead to fool it's pray. But more surprisingly, with it's head cut off it can play alive as well as play dead when it is in fact dead. Is that a twisted metonyn or metaphor?  or simply rambling on my part?

(links by way of Social Fiction then Data is Nature, an endless source of inspiration... a true time killer.)

Flower, a New Game About Nature

"Each level takes place in a different flower's dream as it sits on the windowsill of a dull city apartment. As the player progresses through the game, the apartment and city gradually becomes more vibrant and colourful, until it climaxes at the 100% completion mark and the cityscape is replaced by a vibrant field with mountains in the background. The player guides a petal through brightly coloured, abstract fields by tilting the motion-sensitive controller; pressing any button on the controller gives a speed boost. The aim is to guide the petal into other flowers in the field, triggering an explosion of colour that spreads through the game world." Wikipedia: Flower