Friday, May 8, 2009

Performances, screenings, & closing receptions this Saturday!

SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009

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FUN FLU : Performance Art class event

10am – 10pm: 
Abigail Nedelka, 7th floor lobby
Cassandra Xin Guan, 2nd floor hallway
Dmitri Hertz, 8th floor Peter Cooper Suite

1pm – 10pm:
Laura Miller, 8th floor Peter Cooper Suite

2pm – 2:10pm:
Devin Kenny, room 715

4pm – 4:30pm:
Christhian Diaz, 1st floor lobby

7pm – 10pm:
RECEPTION in Peter Cooper Suite with performances by Christhian Diaz, Amy Reid, Eliza Winston, Feliz Solomon, Katya Tepper, Alex DeCarli, Kelly Zutrau, and Sam Ashford.

(times are approximate.)

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Noelle Raffaele : ANIMARE - CLOSING RECEPTION & SCREENING
Great Hall Gallery
6pm

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Emani Heers & Sam Vernon : How Ghosts Sleep - CLOSING RECEPTION
6th Floor Lobby
6pm

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Cooper Union Foundation Building
7 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Sonia Finley, “No Place, Here” 2nd Floor Lobby

Notes:

The audience in Sonia’s video projection, “Room 715F,” can enter and leave as they want. This is the open invitation of this exhibition, too, as Sonia says in her wall text, “stay for a long time or a short time, or leave and then return later.”

In her video, Sonia and Christian interact in a room with or without an audience. It looks as though they are seeking an entrance into one another. The quality of the video obscures specifics so that at times the two bodies make a single form. But the impossibility of what they are trying to do asserts itself, and they have to separate.

We are invited to sit and read her book “No Place, Here,” which includes photographs and text. The large spandex lumps that we’re encouraged to sit on are made from the same materials and correspond to the forms recorded in her photographs. These forms are bodily and speak to skin, folds, torsos, and backbones. Although made of cheap, flashy material, the forms are transformed by the seductive quality of the photographs.

The show discusses “here,” the experience of being in this place (the gallery) at this moment. The photographs demonstrate bodily forms occupying space, and her book addresses this question directly, asking a viewer (of something) “What was it like to enter this space?”

A miniature silicone version of the lump form rests on the arm of a small white topless box that is installed on the wall of the lobby. How does it interact with its space? Why does it stay outside of it? The tone of this piece feels slightly different, but related.

Three of Sonia’s photographs are placed on the main gallery wall, but pushed to the far left side. The show is careful to leave enough space for the viewer and this wall, usually the main gallery space for artists using the 2nd floor lobby, is left open.

Henry

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Postcards 5-5


Sonia Finley : No Place, Here
2nd Floor Lobby



Noelle Raffaele : ANIMARE
Great Hall Gallery


Emani Heers & Sam Vernon : How Ghosts Sleep
6th Floor Lobby


Abigail Nedelka : Extrospection
7th Floor Lobby

Thursday, April 30, 2009

GO DEEP closing screening

Just letting everybody know that we are having a closing screening on Friday at 7, after which we can all watch a feature film together. I think the second floor is having a closing reception, as well.
Keep deep,
Feliz


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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

“Each Other,” Andrew Francis and Rina Goldfield on the 7th Floor

Notes:

1. This show suggests rupture with punctures, cracks, volcanic eruptions, and the dislocation of body parts. But because the pieces are built around rupture, or because rupture is incorporated into a piece from the beginning, it is used as a strategy of construction.

2. Rina uses staples, thread, or in the case of the volcano paintings, beautiful varnish to “repair” rupture. These decisions, except for the varnish, allow or force the images to be objects. These function as solutions to a problem posed in paint.

3. Andrew’s bather sets up a moment of realization when the viewer first sees that the body parts don’t, in a sense, belong to one another. Each body chunk—two hands, two knees, and a head/torso piece—float separately in the confined space of the tub.

4. The bather piece is made up of poetic moments, some planned and others unplanned by design. The slight shifting in water of the body parts-as-islands. The porcelain tub. The chin touching the chest.

5. The texture of the paper becomes incredibly important in Rina’s crumpled drawings. Could the drawings have worked with less other information? And I also wonder that about the piece made by two identically sized panels separated slightly. The folds embedded in the lightly treated canvas have much to say. Did the piece need more information?

Henry