Art Out: Meryl Meisler, An-My Lê, Christiane Feser
© Meryl Meisler, "Magnolia Tree," Gates Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, May 1983, Archival pigment print (Edition of 10), 17 x 22 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City
Meryl Meisler, Paradise Lost: Bushwick Era Disco
ClampArt: June 3 – July 9, 2021
Opening Reception and Book Signing Sat., June 5th, 2021
Parallel Pictures Press proudly presents New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco, Meryl Meisler’s scintillating new book that will launch with exhibits at ClampArt and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco is an intimate journey to the pandemonium and paradise of the 1970s through early 1990s New York City. Meryl documented a tumultuous time in NYC’s history – epidemics of arson, crime, crack, and AIDS, intensified by a paralyzing blackout, political and fiscal crisis. Frequenting Manhattan’s legendary discos that arose amongst disorder, she captured hedonistic havens, celebrities, and revelers of the night. In contrast, daylight revealed the beauty of those who loved and thrived in burnt-out Bushwick, where she was a public school art teacher who photographed what she saw.
Her effervescent images are personal memoir – love letters filled with compassion and humor mixed with angst, kept secret for decades until she retired from teaching. Meryl was headed to Studio54 the night of the ‘77 Blackout; the next day, she and the world heard of Bushwick, a hellish neighborhood where fires and looting erupted. In 2013, at BIZARRE, a Bushwick Drag / Burlesque Nightclub, she noticed a disco ball in the restroom, another over the dance floor. OMG – an epiphany! Bushwick was now THE sizzling club scene. The disparate worlds of Bushwick and Disco collided, becoming intertwining strands of NYC’s story and her journey. She realized the two bodies of work belonged together.
An-My Lê, Sugar Cane Field, November 5, Houma, Louisiana, 2016. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery
Much Unseen is Also Here: An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander, An initiative of Toward Common Cause
MoCP: June 3- August 29, 2021
CHICAGO—The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) presents Much Unseen is Also Here: An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander, an initiative of Toward Common Cause, from June 3 – August 29, 2021. This exhibition brings together the works of two major artists who both consider the theater of the landscape, monumentality, cultural history, and representation.
The exhibition is organized by guest curator Abigail Winograd, MacArthur Fellows Program 40th Anniversary Exhibition Curator, Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. Probing monuments and identity, MacArthur Fellows An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander explore history’s embeddedness in our present. Lê’s The Silent General (2015 - ongoing) presents large-scale views of places and people in the contemporary American landscape, while Sikander uses sculpture, drawings, and animation to examine representations of intersectional femininity that is prompted by questions of who monuments historically depict.
With The Silent General, Lê negotiates her relationship to the tradition of American Road photography in particular, that storied genre associated with the likes of Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Danny Lyon. These pictures confront the political rhetoric of the moment and tackle current events, while Sikander’s work examines the intersection of power, gender, empire, and self. Highlights include a deconstruction of traditional form entitled Promiscuous Intimacies (2020), in which two female figures sculpted in bronze----a Greco-Roman Venus and an Indian Devata (deity)----are intertwined.
Through this unique curatorial endeavor, Much Unseen is Also Here presents the work of two Asian- American women artists who are both probing their relationships to America, its monuments, and the history of art in the midst of our nation’s collective upheaval.
Christiane Feser, 2021 Photo Object and Archival Pigment Print, Transparent Paper. 16.5 x 23.6 x 1 inches (40 x 60 cm) unique
Christiane Feser, In Between
Von Lintel Gallery: May 22 – July 27, 2021
Opening reception: Saturday, May 22nd 2 – 7 pm
Feser approaches photography uniquely. She is not content with making a photograph that references a past situation or moment in time. She makes a three dimensional sculptural object and then photographs it, rendering it two dimensional. Feser often prints two copies of the same photograph and cannibalizes one of them to add three dimensionality back to the original flat photograph. It is a very complex process to describe, as each physical intervention is unique, whether it be cutting, folding, puncturing or adding additional material. This is photography taken way beyond pushing the shutter release button to take a picture. Feser’s constant change from material to photograph back to material, due to her meticulous interventions, confronts the viewer with a key question which is: What am I looking at? What is physical and what is a reproduction?
In her new Series ‘Tiefer’ (‘Tiefer’ is German for deeper) Feser concentrates on the various aspects of focus in photography. Focus in images can be interpreted differently, either in terms of sharpness when motion is involved or in depth of field. In these works Feser generated the lack of focus by using transparent paper in both the original photograph as well as physically adding it onto the print itself. The work now seems to point to a space behind the image by suggesting transparency. Feser is hereby once again pushing how she is forcing the viewer to question what they are seeing.
Von Lintel Gallery will first open its doors to the public on May 15th, with its first opening scheduled for Saturday, the 22nd of May, 2021 from Noon to 7pm.
Talks/Events:
SF Camerawork: Artist Talk with Rea Lynn de Guzman. In conversation with Shirin Makaremi
May 26, 2021, 6:00 - 7:30 PM PDT (Online Event)
Rea will share her liminal art practice, conceptual and material explorations, as she moves through multiple series that form her work. She will also talk about her curatorial projects surrounding "Wander Woman," a group show series featuring Bay Area-based, immigrant, women artists of color. We welcome you to learn more about her work in a moderated conversation with curator and programming committee member Shirin Makaremi followed by audience Q&A.
Register and learn more here.
Stanford University: In-Conversation: The Mark Ruwedel Photography Archive at Stanford
Thursday, May 27, 2021, 2:30 - 4:00 pm (Online Event)
Stanford Libraries invites you to a conversation with Photographer Mark Ruwedel (Professor Emeritus CSUB), National Gallery of Canada Chief Curator of Photographs Emeritus Ann Thomas, Stanford Professor of History Emeritus Richard White, and Stanford Libraries Photography Curator Peter Blank to commemorate the opening of the exhibition Between: Artist Books, Albums, and Portfolios from the Mark Ruwedel Photography Archive at Stanford.
This talk will explore Ruwedel's identification as a photographer operating in an artistic territory between a diverse array of influences and how Stanford Libraries’ photography initiative is empowering rich research opportunities.
Active since the 1980s, Mark Ruwedel’s influences include 19th-century western expeditionary photography, Westward expansion and the rise of the railroads, the documentary tradition of Walker Evans, Surrealism, the New Topographic photographers, America's nuclear testing program, and Earthworks artists, among others.
Learn more here.
J. Sybylla Smith: Photobook Group: Unscripted Conversations With Contemporary Photographers
Thursday, May 27, 2021, 12:00- 1:30 PM
Photographer Donna Ferrato goes on a radical 50-year road trip across the USA as women fight for equality in the bedroom and the boardroom. Holy follows her journey from the sexual revolution of the '60s through the #metoo era of today.
Holy is forged from one woman's outrage against a woman-hating world. May it anger you. Donna Ferrato's radical photographs show what women are capable of surviving. More than survive, Holy depicts women who prevail. Holy is an invitation to understand how it feels being held down by the patriarchy-what we are fighting for, what we are up against--and how we manage to maintain a sense of desire and appetite. Fighting for equality in the bedroom and the boardroom, Ferrato's journey follows the sexual revolution of the '60s through the #metoo era of today.
Register here.
