Mariette Pathy Allen, Jennfier Greenburg and Laura Beth Reese
@ Mariette Pathy Allen. Lady and Laura, at the Las Vegas Club, Havana, 2012. © Mariette Pathy Allen, courtesy of the artist and Culture Lab LIC
Culture Lab LIC | Mariette Pathy Allen, BREAKING BOUNDARIES: 50 YEARS OF IMAGES, June 1st - July 30th
Mariette Pathy Allen has been photographing the transgender community for almost 50 years. Through her artistic practice, she has been a pioneering force in gender consciousness, contributing to numerous cultural and academic publications about gender variance and lecturing worldwide. From June 1 to July 30 (opening on the evening of June 3 from 6-9pm), Culture Lab LIC will celebrate Mariette's work with the exhibition Breaking Boundaries: 50 Years of Images alongside another exhibition with work by other artists inspired by, or in the spirit of, Mariette's work titled Breaking More Boundaries. The latter will feature invited artists Zackary Drucker and Jess T. Dugan.
Mariette Pathy Allen: “The importance of this exhibition in this retrograde, evil political climate, can’t be exaggerated. We hope that by presenting transgender and non-binary people as relatable, caring, and creative, we can help to dispel the misinformation and fear of gender and sexual non-conforming people. I am very grateful to the Culture Lab LIC’s Plaxall Gallery for giving me the opportunity to have this retrospective of some of my work on gender variance.
To view more, visit Culture Lab LIC’s website.
@ Jennifer Greenburg. Isabella, 2022, archival pigment print, 31 x 31 inches (image). © Jennifer Greenburg, courtesy of the artist and Klompching Gallery.
Klompching Gallery | Jennifer Greenburg, Constructed Portraits, June 6th — July 27th, 2023
These are groundbreaking portraits of female-presenting figures; they occupy the photographic frame, seemingly as beings that exude a self-consciousness—of being photographed, of being looked at, of being immortalized. But these figures are not reliably female, indeed they are not reliably human; except as representations authored by the hand of the artist.
In keeping with her oeuvre, Greenburg utilizes, as her initial source material, physical vintage vernacular photographs, intentionally selected from her vast archive. What follows are labor-intensive constructions incorporating digital collage, and assemblages of parts and processes. We bear witness to evidence of drawing, coloring, the pushing/pulling of shadows and highlights, and the compression and expansion of spatiality.
To visit more, visit Klompching Gallery’s website.
Laura Beth Resse. @kaitlynbristowe, 2021. 50 x 40 inches, archival pigment print. © Laura Beth Resse, courtesy of the artist and Abakus Project
Abakus Project | LAURA BETH REESE, #influenced, June 2nd — June 30th, 2023
#influenced explores the phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of reality television, celebrity, social media, and consumerism: the influencer. Influencers are otherwise-average people who acquire fame not through talent, but through some other means, like appearing on reality tv shows. Using social media, influencers market themselves and shape their lifestyle brands through their partnerships with a variety of companies who pay them to promote products on their feeds. The amount of money that they make for each advertisement is directly tied to the number of followers that they have on any given social media platform. So, in order to be a successful influencer, they must create compelling public personas and tightly curated aesthetics to maintain their follower count.
