Art Out: Hassan Hajjaj, Pixy Liao, Rachel Phillips
Hassan Hajjaj, Alexander Nilere, 2013/1434 (Gregorian/Hijri), Metallic Lambda on 3mm Dibond in a Poplar Sprayed-White Frame with Green Tomato Squeezies, 55 1/2" x 40 1/2" x 4 1/4" (141 x 103 x 11 cm), © Hassan Hajjaj, Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
Hassan Hajjaj: My Rockstars
March 18 - May 29, 2021
Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to present the New York premiere of Hassan Hajjaj's celebrated My Rockstars series featuring exuberant and playful mixed media portraits of performers, musicians and friends of the artist taken all over the world. My Rockstars will open on Thursday, March 25, with extended hours at the gallery until 8:00 PM, and remain on view through Saturday, May 29. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.
In his series My Rockstars, Hassan Hajjaj pays tribute to the individuals by whom he has been artistically inspired, capturing a range of international performers, from recording and visual artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Cardi B., to lesser-known music bands like Arfoud Brothers and Nigerian singer-songwriter Keziah Jones. From the year 2000, Hajjaj has photographed these figures in colorful pop-up studios constructed from textiles and plastic mats typical of Morocco and North Africa, which he sets up in the streets of London, Marrakesh, Dubai, Kuwait and Paris. Outfits designed or styled by the artist, including custom suits, shoes and hats, pop with loud colors and dazzling patterns, empowering his subjects to explore larger-than-life personas before the camera. Each portrait is bordered with a custom handcrafted frame outfitted with miniature shelves and actual consumer products, such as cans of tomato sauce, car paint tins and soda cans, often with Arabic logos. The products are chosen for their origins, names, content as well as colors and aesthetics. The uninterrupted border of commercial packaging and corporate logos mimics with irreverent Warholian flare the repetitive motifs framing traditional Islamic mosaics and offers clues about the subject of each photograph.
Dior, Vogue: The Arab Issue series, 2012/1433 © Hassan Hajjaj. Courtesy of the Artist and M.E.P Paris/France
Hassan Hajjaj: VOGUE, The Arab Issue
Mar 19 - Nov 7,2021
Vibrant portraiture set inside a world of bold colors, varied textures, and frenzied patterns commands attention in VOGUE, The Arab Issue. Hassan Hajjaj’s photography challenges the viewer through an eclectic confrontation of styles, and invites them to re-examine cultural stereotypes and cliches. Alive on Fotografiska New York’s third floor, this immersive exhibition brings together five important series developed over the past three decades. Hassan Hajjaj is a British-Moroccan photographer and multidisciplinary artist with a diverse practice including portraiture, installation, performance, fashion and furniture design. He is entirely self-taught and embraces a melting pot of influences in his work - from popular culture and street style to hip-hop and haute couture.
VOGUE, The Arab Issue, was inspired in the 1990s while Hajjaj was assisting his stylist friend on a fashion shoot in Marrakech. He says - I sat there and realized all these people were from Europe – stylists, photographers, fashion designers, makeup artists – using Morocco simply as a backdrop, which frustrated me but also made me think. Rather than just using the country as the prop, I wanted to make it look grand. I wanted to take the Moroccan clothes and the people and shoot them in this celebratory way.
For his shoot, he asked local women to pose wearing his creations – traditional Moroccan djellabas, hijabs, caftans and babouches covered with candy-coloured polka dots, leopard prints or counterfeit brand logos – in the streets of the Medina, often parodying the poses typical of Western models. The photographs are dated with two different years, one from the Western calendar (such as 2000), followed by one from the Islamic calendar (1421).
The title VOGUE, The Arab Issue evokes a double meaning – the word “issue” refers not only to a copy of the monthly magazine, but also to an important topic or problem for debate or discussion, one he also probes in his video Naabz and the series Hijabs and Handpainted Portraits.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Please click here for more infomation about this exhibition at Fotografiska
Relationships work best when each partner knows their proper place, from the Experimental Relationship series, 2008. © Pixy Liao
Pixy Liao: Your Gaze Belongs to Me
April 2 - September 5, 2021
Pixy Liao is exemplary of a new generation of photographic artists experimenting with the possibilities of portraiture in depicting modern partnership. Her works emerge from personal experiences and her own intimate spaces, challenging conventional socio-cultural ideas of gender constructions and questions of nationality in a globalized world.
Your Gaze Belongs to Me is part of an ongoing, long-term project called Experimental Relationship. The project began when Liao, a Shanghai native, met a Japanese musician in 2006 while studying at university in Tennessee. This first museum solo exhibition of Pixy Liao’s work is arranged thematically, and includes more than 50 works from two series, Experimental Relationship, and the outgrowth series For Your Eyes Only, as well as individual video and sculptural works that Liao is showing together for the first time.
In her photographs, shot with cinematic warmth and a somewhat laid-back, “vintage aesthetic,” Liao often portrays herself in a dominant role, while her boyfriend assumes positions of submission. These subtle stagings intelligently reverse “expected” gender roles.
Five years her junior, Liao credits Moro as the inspiration for this ongoing series, explaining –
Moro made me realize that heterosexual relationships do not need to be standardized. The purpose of this experiment is to break the inherent relationship model and reach a new equilibrium.
Your Gaze Belongs to Me is curated for Fotografiska by Holly Roussell.
Rachel Phillips, Argyll Hotel, 2021, Pigment transfer to antique envelope (1918), Unique, 4 1/4 x 5 1/4 inches,
Catherine Couturier Gallery
Rachel Phillips: Home from the Field
Exhibition on View: March 23rd- April 24th, 2021
Virtual Walkthrough and Conversation: Wednesday, April 7th, 7:00 PM CT
Catherine Couturier Gallery is delighted to present Home from the Field, an exhibition of new work by gallery artist Rachel Phillips.
The exhibition features more than 15 unique pieces by Rachel Phillips made in the past year. Working with a process that she first debuted at Catherine Couturier Gallery in 2013 in her solo show entitled Field Notes, Phillips uses antique envelopes, some dating from the 1800’s, and transfers her photographs onto them. Working across time and place, these pieces reference the cyclical nature of the seasons and offer a sense of hope and wonder.
Rachel Phillips is a California based fine art photographer who is best known for her series of projects exploring the photograph as object. Phillips began photography while completing her undergraduate degree at Skidmore College, graduating in 2005. Her work has been published in Harper’s Magazine (2018), Miami New Times (2016), and Lenscratch (2013). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including the traveling exhibition A Yellow Rose Project (2020-2021), Suffrage Now at the Elisabet Ney Museum (2020), and Diffusion Annual at Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins (2015).
Due to the pandemic, there will be no public reception, and private viewings must be booked in advance. A virtual walkthrough and conversation with the artist will be held on Wednesday, April 7th at 7:00 PM CT. To register, click here.
Events
LIVESTREAM - BOOK LAUNCH & TALK: Mona Kuhn Works
Apr 6 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, 2021
Join us for a discussion centering on Mona Kuhn: Works, the artist’s first retrospective, featuring images from throughout her career, accompanied by insightful texts by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Chris Littlewood, and Darius Himes. An interview with Elizabeth Avedon provides insights into Kuhn’s creative process and the ways in which she works with her subjects and locations, and achieves the visual signature of her imagery. This book introduces Kuhn’s distinct aesthetic to a wide popular audience. It is an essential volume for anyone with an interest in the human form in contemporary art.
Mona Kuhn is one of the most respected contemporary photographers of her time, best known for her large-scale photographs of the human form. Throughout a career spanning more than twenty years, the underlying theme of her work is her reflection on humanity’s longing for spiritual connection and solidarity. As she solidified her photographic style, Kuhn created a notable approach to the nude by developing friendships with her subjects, and employing a range of playful visual strategies that use natural light and bucolic settings to evoke a sublime sense of comfort between the human figure and its environment. Her work is natural, restful, and a reinterpretation of the nude in the canon of contemporary art.
Kuhn’s distinct aesthetic has propelled her as one of the most collectible contemporary art photographers—her work is in private and public collections worldwide and she is represented by galleries across the United States.
12pm – 1pm
Member Cost: Free, plus 20% discount on purchase of book*
Non-Member Cost: Free
* please note shipping within the US only
https://www.shopfotografiskanyc.com/recommended-reading
Hank Willis Thomas in Conversation with Margot Norton
Join us for a conversation with artist Hank Willis Thomas in dialogue with New Museum curator Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at the New Museum.
In conjunction with the New Museum’s exhibition “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” the New Museum is honored to host a series of artist conversations highlighting the practices of artists participating in this exhibition.
This program will be presented via Zoom, register for this online program here.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including the International Center of Photography, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Netherlands. Thomas’ work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), Writing on the Wall, and the artist-run initiative for art and civic engagement For Freedoms, which was awarded the 2017 ICP Infinity Award for New Media and Online Platform. Thomas is also the recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2018), Art for Justice Grant (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), and is a former member of the New York City Public Design Commission. Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in 2017.
Accessibility: we strive to make our programs as accessible as possible. For full accessibility information, including services available by request, please click here.
Ben Kinmont Project Series: Ian Wilson
A nine city printing event
April 6, 2021
12pm EST
Occurring simultaneously in nine different cities, this printing event will be streamed live from Los Angeles, Vancouver, Sebastopol (CA), Toronto, New York City, London, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin. There will also be a conversation between MoMA curator Christophe Cherix and Ben Kinmont discussing the publication, the work of Ian Wilson, and the Antinomian Press.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PUBLICATION
Project series: Ian Wilson is an interview between Ben Kinmont and Ian Wilson that took place on the 19th of October, 1997, in Kinmont’s home in NYC. With Ian’s consent and involvement, the conversation was recorded and later transcribed, but it was never published. Previous publications issued by the Antinomian Press in the Project series include those about Lee Lozano (1998), Chris D’Arcangelo (2005), and Seth Siegelaub (2016).
In the interview, Ian talks about the origin of his Discussion pieces, where and when they occurred, and their content and purpose. He mentions the work of Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner, the exhibitions of Seth Siegelaub, and the writings of Lucy Lippard. He also addresses when a conversation is and isn’t an artwork and how the interview is different from one of his Discussion pieces.
Project series: Ian Wilson is published by the Antinomian Press. Printed in an oblong format and stapled in the upper left-hand corner, it is fifty-two leaves long, includes one original color photograph tipped-in as a frontispiece, and a few illustrations in the text. As a publication, the interview challenges conventional rules of bibliographical description as there will be nine different first editions and no issue will have priority.
PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS & THEIR LOCAL TIMES
9am Pacific Time
