This month, I had the opportunity to have a studio visit with legendary photographer Martha Cooper.  We sat and “talked shop” about photography and New York City, thirty years back and now. I always knew of Martha Cooper, but there were things about her photographic career I only learned of that day. The 1980’s movie Beat Street – little did I know that she was the still photographer.  Perhaps she is best known for her extensive coverage of the early Hip Hop days, as it emerged from the Bronx. These images have been published worldwide, helping make Hip Hop the predominant international youth movement it is today. Looking at her collection of images and many published books,  (Street Play, Subway Art and New York State of Mind – to only name a few) it is evident that Martha had the desire to document NYC simply as it was, making images which hold views of complete authenticity which add to historic preservation.

Martha’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and published in numerous magazines from National Geographic to Vibe. She lives in Manhattan where she is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. For the past five years Martha has been shooting a personal project in SoWeBo, a neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore. Continue Reading More »

Rachel and Friends, 2009 ©Alex Prager, Courtesy of the Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery

Art enthusiasts have been anticipating this week’s VIP Art Fair – the first virtual art fair – with mixed opinions from all sides of the game. Fair booths and lounges have been translated on to the comforts of a (lonely) screen. An online art fair definitely saves all the legwork and on airfares, but without this pumping physical action, it filters out all the fun. In the midst of this virtual fair, we pulled a few highlights for those who don’t feel like becoming a registered VIP. If you’ve been to the fair, we’d like to hear your comments. Continue Reading More »

(Color Photos: Jenny Duffy, B/W Photos: Rameen Gasery) Continue Reading More »

18 Years Of American Dreams, 2010

An entertaining, animated oral narrator in person, Bryan Zanisnik is also highly talented at telling stories through visually complex works, stacked with symbols, metaphors, and signifiers. In a sort of choose-your-own-adventure visual narrative, the viewer is allowed to piece together the information to create, or re-create, his or her own personal story. Zanisnik photographs complex tableaus constructed from personal and found objects, stages absurdist performances, and shoots videos that follow a New Jersey couple (his parents) through domestic and familiar spaces. His new body of work, Brass Arms Upper Eyelid, is currently on view through February 19, 2011 at Horton Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, Zanisnik will present a live performance on Saturday, February 5, from 4-6pm.

Bryan Zanisnik (b. 1979, Union, NJ) lives and works in New York, NY. He received an MFA from Hunter College, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and is currently an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program. He recently performed at Galeria On, Poznan, Poland; PS1/MOMA, New York, NY; and Marginal Utility, Philadelphia, PA. This summer he will perform and participate in an exhibition at the Times Museum in Guangzhou, China. Continue Reading More »

Artcards Featured Event: Low Tide Chorus is tonight! We will all be there, so come say hello.

7-10PM at The Invisible Dog
$12 / pay at door

(indigo poster editions: HatnDesign)

I met this week’s featured artist, Robert Janitz, at Momenta Art in Williamsburg, where he is part of the new exhibition, Winter Break. Janitz grew up in Germany, and honed his artistic practice in France. His relationship to the space reflects this background. He arranges his paintings like installation, employing artificial backdrops made of cardboard. His interventions push as much against the old architectures of Western Europe as they do against the white of contemporary art galleries. When he speaks of the old great halls, and palaces of Europe, there is awe in his voice, though he speaks of tradition as an impossibly binding force.

When I first encountered them, the four paintings included in his show seemed sparse and harshly minimal. Looking closer, I realized each painting functions on a variety of levels. In them we see evidence of process, whether it’s the back of a canvas, or a portion of the stretcher, viewed through a translucent varnished surface. There is a serious level of self reflection in these paintings. This is not merely process painting, or art about art. Though they might speak with a different accent and walk with a strange gate, these are paintings nonetheless. To view Janitz’s work is to join the artist on a circuitous journey. Following him one gets the sense that the artist is searching for a new kind of space, somewhere to create work that is both powerful and approachable. Continue Reading More »

courtesy of Important Projects

It is uniquely appropriate that Maren Miller’s exhibition at Important Projects is set between the change of the calendar year.  Miller’s show, like the experience of temporal boundary of the New Year, allows for an unexpected moment for reflection. Miller’s two untitled pieces expose the ponderous phase change materially between painting and sculpture, while also slipping between formal and conceptual.

The pleasure of seeing “Now that I know” arrived after I had left the small room and the suite of object/paintings, and grew as time passed. The strength of Miller’s presentation lay in the paring of her objects, an unstretched shaped canvas on the wall and a stuffed worm-shape covered  by the alphabet on the floor. The canvas used, the always popular, faux realism to allude to a textile being stretched, which though clever relies on the non sequitor of the floor piece. Although the floor piece is quite strong alone, it is enhanced by its neighbor and the confined quality of the Important Project’s space. Miller’s “Now that I Know” expands the notion of visual experience beyond the present object into ideas and transitional phases. Like the alphabet so clearly and thoughtfully marked on the worm-form, an essential system of communication can lose its familiar meaning and become a lovely form of decoration.

“Now that I know”
Maren Miller

Important Projects, Rockridge, Oakland, CA
December 11, 2010 – January 15, 2011