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Jack Balas | Checkered Passed

January 9 – February 29, 2020

Opening reception: Thursday, January 9, 2020 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to announce “Jack Balas | Checkered Passed”—the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, and his third solo exhibition in New York City.

Jack Balas is an artist whose work primarily includes painting, drawing, and photography, often incorporating extensive textual elements. After earning BFA and MFA degrees in sculpture from Northern Illinois University, Balas moved from the Chicago area to Los Angeles, where he first worked as a cross-country art shipper, driving between Los Angeles and New York on a route that regularly took him through the western landscapes that have come to define much of his work. Eventually moving away from sculpture entirely, Balas began producing paintings of athletic young men annotated and layered with numbers, anecdotes, and other disparate elements that offer a depiction of idealized masculinity in America through the lens of the artist’s personal experiences, as well as a contemporary counterpoint to the art-historical archetype of the female nude.

In reference to “Checkered Passed (Tied) (#1574),” the artist writes: “’Checkered Passed (Tied) (#1574)’ is a painting that touches on race and all of the discussions and controversy in the United States these days. The black model has a white arm and the white model has a black arm. Visually thus, they are tied to one another (my original title for the painting was ‘Tied’). Further, note the lines literally tying the two models together. However, there is certainly a lot of wordplay going on. Being in a race is one thing, and tying instead of winning is another. The checkered flag signifies the winner in a race. Here the winning flag has been passed to the black model, which is literally pictured in the image. And, the whole history of race in this country is a sordid (i.e. checkered) past. In my mind the words and the image keep going around in circles—in a great way, and in an optimistic way as well. (It’s about time.)”

Indeed—words, stories, and memories are an integral element of much of Balas’s paintings and works on paper. In his monumental canvas “The Wall (La Pared), Nogales (No Puedo Decir Esto) (#1588),” the artist begins at the bottom left: “In Nogales, I walk across the border with no passport, and no one in Mexico is there to ask who I am. . .” Living between Denver, Colorado and Tucson, Arizona, Balas is witness to the realities and hardships related to race and nationality which have been brought to the fore especially in recent years.

Nonetheless, many of the themes running through Balas’s work touch upon his development as an artist [“This Time Around (#1237)”]; art history and the politics of the art world [“Roy Lichtenstein (#1694)” from the artist’s “Muse/Museum” series]; and (queer) sexuality [“First Draft (#1707)”].

A 1995 recipient of an Individual Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts, Balas is now represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Denver Art Museum, Colorado; the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; the Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico; and the Usiminas Cultural Institute, Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil; among others.

© Jack Balas, Ship of Cools, or, A Jolly Load of Boatmen Flat-Out Crossing the Mainstream, Some Being Kings, and Some Being “Vagabonds” (We Await Your Applause) (#1318), 2016, Watercolor, acrylic, and ink on paper (Diptych), 30 x 45 inches

#Jack Balas #Checkered Passed #ClampArt #contemporary painting #figurative painting #male figure #watercolor #works on paper

Photographs from the Collection of Steven Gelston

January 9 – February 29, 2020

Opening reception: Thursday, January 9, 2020 6:00 – 8:00 pm

ClampArt is pleased to present “Photographs from the Collection of Steven Gelston,” an exhibition of exclusively black-and-white prints of nearly all male figurative imagery collected over the past thirty-five years.

Steven Gelston grew up surrounded by art. His parents were intelligent and curious collectors of art who purchased works by largely living artists of their own generation still within attainable means. The collection came to include pieces by artists such as Josef Albers, Red Grooms, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, and Larry Rivers, among many others. Gelston’s parents possessed strong aesthetic tastes and enjoyed researching the artists who caught their attention. Gelston’s mother led art tours for other women in the community through the museums and galleries of Manhattan. She also organized the annual art show in her town, which included works by often very well-established figures. Eventually she pursued her master’s degree in art education at New York University and went on to teach elementary school art classes. After retiring, she worked as a docent at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Gelston’s family’s appreciation for art and artists rubbed off, and his first purchase of art for himself was an impressive, signed, limited-edition Claes Oldenberg print which he acquired while still an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The sophisticated and playful conceptual print graced the walls of his dormitory room.

Eventually Gelston began collecting WWI and WWII posters (combing his love for history), but his first acquisition of a photograph would not be until 1985 during a trip to Key West, Florida. There he acquired two prints by an artist named Chuck Pearson, and it was then that his passion was unleashed. Slowly and thoughtfully, Gelston began researching and buying photographs of primarily male subjects by living artists of the day. Not at all a trophy hunter going after the biggest and most recognizable names, Gelston instead followed his eye and purchased works to which he responded personally.

After years of assembling his collection of photographs, a friend pointed out the fact that the faces of all of the models were cropped out, turned away, or otherwise obscured. After that time with this in mind, Gelston knowingly acquired a photograph titled “Ivan Ivankov, Gymnast, Belarus” by the then up-and-coming artistic duo Anderson & Low, which pictures a shirtless athlete looking up at the lens of the artists’ camera with his arm reaching across just the lower half of his face.

Amusingly, Steven Gelston likely will cringe at all of the attention paid to him, but ClampArt’s exhibition is meant to honor his true appreciation of art and his ongoing support of young, developing artists who rely on such generous patronage.

Gelston is passing on the baton of custodianship for these wonderful works of art, and it is now an opportunity for others to live with and care for the photographs he lovingly singled out for his own enjoyment over the course of many years.

The exhibition includes prints by now well-known photo-graphers such as Anderson & Low, Bill Costa, Wouter Deruytter, Jim French, David Halliday, Annie Leibovitz, Harriet Leibowitz, Blake Little, Dianora Niccolini, Len Prince, Karin Rosenthal, and Joe Ziolkowski, in addition to younger practitioners including John Kenny and Sebastian Perinotti.

John Arsenault | American Queen, American Dream: 30 Years of Self Portraits

November 21, 2019 – January 4, 2020

Opening reception: Thursday, November 21, 2019 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Artist talk: Saturday, December 14, 2019 4:00 – 5:00 pm

ClampArt is pleased to announce “American Queen, American Dream: 30 Years of Self Portraits by John Arsenault.” This is the artist’s sixth exhibition at the gallery.

Growing up in a small town in northern Massachusetts, John Arsenault began taking photographs at sixteen years of age. He moved to Boston shortly after high school, where he lived for several years before relocating to New York City to pursue a BFA at the School of Visual Arts. From the beginning, one of Arsenault’s frequent subjects has been himself. Turning around his lens, he began to produce an outlandish and absurd, wild and exotic account of his life as a young, gay artist. “I wanted to produce a visual monologue about my life. I wanted to reveal the aspects of myself that I find most mystifying…” Exploring facets of his personal relationships, his sexuality, and his identity, Arsenault has constructed varied scenarios that not only tell the story of his experiences, but also comment upon society at large through the course of three decades and many homes from Provincetown to Palm Springs and Los Angeles back to New York City. Arsenault’s recurring use of the American flag represents the artist’s claim to his rights and citizenry despite vociferous intentions by others in this country to deny him of certain basic dignities that citizenry should automatically afford.

Arsenault has a great eye for the strange, the unexpected, and the laugh-out-loud ridiculous. He is not afraid to poke fun at himself, and thus, is able to comment upon matters of broad cultural import without seeming shrill or pedantic. Writer Dan Halm has commented, “By tackling timely social issues in his over-the-top photographs, Arsenault not only casts a spotlight on these issues but at the same time delves into his own personal history.” Arsenault’s work is vulnerable and honest with an intention of inclusiveness. In young adulthood, he often navigated universal themes of heartbreak and longing, while more recently he has devised a nuanced exploration of the dynamics within his close relationships, the most momentous of which is his marriage to his husband, Raf. As Halm concludes, “One can learn a lot about oneself through another’s eyes.”

John Arsenault’s photographs are represented in the permanent collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City. His first monograph, Barmaid, was published in 2015 with Daylight Books, and his second monograph, For You!, came out in 2017, also with Daylight Books.

#John Arsenault #ClampArt #American Queen #American Dream #photography #self portraits

Marc Yankus | New York Unseen

October 3 – November 16, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 3, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to announce “New York Unseen”—an exhibition of photographs by artist Marc Yankus. This is the artist’s sixth solo show at the gallery.

Marc Yankus’s newest photographs continue his investigation of bustling New York City, but without the noise, traffic, and people—an unseen New York. The artist expertly eliminates extraneous movement and distractions, and distills his images down to an essence—the majesty of more than a century of architecture. The work from the past few years still includes a selection of lesser-known, more nondescript buildings, but Yankus now incorporates many of the city’s iconic structures as well, including a handful of the world’s most celebrated museums (several in panoramic format). Another departure from previous work is dramatic, oblique, aerial perspectives, providing views of famous buildings and familiar city streets from a decidedly unfamiliar vantage point.

The exhibition at ClampArt coincides with a solo show of Marc Yankus’s work at Grand Central Terminal. Organized by MTA Arts and Design, the exhibition is titled Landmark City, and will be on display in the Dining Concourse through July 2020.

Marc Yankus’s fine art and publishing experience span a period of more than forty years. Yankus’s work has been included in exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the South Street Seaport Museum, New York City; and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. His artwork has graced the covers of books by Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and Alan Hollinghurst, among many others. His images have also been used for theatrical posters for such acclaimed Broadway shows as Jane Eyre; August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; and John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Doubt.” Yankus’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the New York Historical Society, New York City; and the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

#Marc Yankus #New York Unseen #ClampArt #architectural photography #architecture #photography #New York City #NYC architecture #gallery exhibition #press release

Isa Leshko | Allowed to Grow Old

October 3 – November 16, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 3, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to announce “Isa Leshko | Allowed to Grow Old”—the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition coincides with the publication of the artist’s new monograph, Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries (University of Chicago Press, Hardcover, 10.2 x 9.5 x 0.7 inches, $40).

For nearly a decade, photographer Isa Leshko traveled to farm sanctuaries across the United States to create intimate portraits of elderly rescued farm animals. She began the project soon after caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease. Leshko writes: “The experience had a profound effect on me and forced me to confront my own mortality. I am terrified of growing old and I started photographing geriatric animals in order to take an unflinching look at this fear.”

Leshko approached each portrait as an opportunity to reveal the animal’s unique personality. Prior to taking a single photograph, she spent hours to days with each animal in their environment—often on the ground, in the dirt—until they felt comfortable with her presence. She worked with natural light and minimal gear in order to be as unobtrusive as possible. Observing how these animals endured the physical struggles of growing old with stoicism and grace, Leshko was reminded that old age is a luxury, not a curse.

After meeting these rescued animals and hearing their stories, the artist felt compelled to advocate for them. Through her photographs she urges viewers to consider these farm animals as we do companion animals—as sentient beings who are able to think and feel, form bonds, and express their own likes and dislikes. Leshko states: “Nearly all of the farm animals I met for this project endured horrific abuse and neglect prior to their rescue. Yet it is a massive understatement to say that they are the lucky ones. Roughly fifty billion land animals are factory farmed globally each year. It is nothing short of a miracle to be in the presence of a farm animal who has managed to reach old age. Most of their kin die before they are six months old. By depicting the beauty and dignity of elderly farm animals, I invite reflection upon what is lost when these animals are not allowed to grow old.”

Isa Leshko is an artist whose work examines themes relating to animal rights, aging, and mortality. She has received fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation, the Culture & Animals Foundation, the Houston Center for Photography, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography. She has exhibited her work widely in the United States, and her prints are in numerous private and public collections including the Boston Public Library, Massachusetts; Fidelity Investments, Boston, Massachusetts; the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.

Leshko’s images have been been published in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In April 2019, the University of Chicago Press published her first monograph, Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries. The book includes essays by activist Gene Baur, New York Times bestselling author Sy Montgomery, and curator Anne Wilkes Tucker.

#Isa Leshko #Allowed to Grow Old #ClampArt #animal photography #animal portraits #elderly animals #farm animals #farm sanctuaries #animal rights #photography #gallery exhibition #press release

Sex Crimes

August 15 – September 28, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

The exhibition “Sex Crimes” provides artwork and literature with homosexual content that was often created in a shadow world of criminality, organized crime payoffs, and under the threat of arrest. These pieces, aimed primarily at gay men, were often passed surreptitiously from person to person. Producers of the artworks faced imprisonment and harassment if they were caught.

The body of work presented in “Sex Crimes” provides a window into the camaraderie and defiant response of sexual outlaws to governmental, religious, and cultural homophobia that has historically criminalized them. Until the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay people had not collectively organized in resistance to repression and discrimination. And it was not until 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas that the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that nonremunerative sex between consenting adults in private was protected by the Constitution and could not be criminalized.

Specifically included in the show is ephemera such as early mimeographs of erotic stories written on typewriters by gay men to be passed secretly from hand to hand; illustrated stories by Blade (Neel Bate) from the 1950s and 60s, also circulated among gay men as pornography; and examples of governmental and mental health manuals and brochures outlining how and why gay people should be jailed/treated for their sexual orientation.

A variety of pre-Stonewall works by queer artists are included in “Sex Crimes.” Some pieces, such as male portraits by George Platt Lynes and John S. Barrington, which were then not allowed to be displayed publicly, were created to appeal specifically to a gay audience; while other works by Bruce of Los Angeles, James Bidgood, Mel Roberts, and Jim French, were originally created as pornography and circulated in the shadows. Many artists in the show were targeted, harassed, and punished by authorities for their sexual preferences.

Ward 5B is an archival and curatorial service specializing in late 20th-century urban ephemera and art, with a focus on punk aesthetic, radical spaces, performance art, drag, experimental theatre, camp, queercore, and guerrilla/street art projects.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

Magic Time!––Art & Ephemera of the Caffé Cino

August 15 – September 28, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Organized by Ward 5B and Caffé Cino alumnus Magie Dominic, “Magic Time!—Art & Ephemera of the Caffé Cino” coincides with the theatre’s designation as an historic site by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission in June 2019.

In 1958 at the age of 26, Joe Cino opened a coffeehouse at 31 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village. Soon Cino started to allow the production of small, avant-garde theatre productions in the venue. Caffé Cino would serve as one of the earliest safe spaces for gay artists to perform their plays, songs, and poetry, despite the illegality of depicting homosexuality on the stage at the time. By paying off both the local organized crime racket as well as the NYPD, Joe Cino was able to create a radical environment where the New York underground took root. As the Theatre of the Ridiculous founder, John Vaccaro, stated: “The Caffé Cino is the beginning! This is it! The major things done in New York were done there, and nowhere else. I don’t give a shit what anybody else says. They’re lying.”

Operating until 1968, Caffé Cino has been widely acknowledged as the birthplace of Off-Off Broadway Theatre, along with the formation of American Queer Theatre. The Caffé Cino was the cradle of gay culture, informing future generations with its fiercely independent spirit. (Known for many, many productions, The Cino was also the place where Bernadette Peters performed “Dames at Sea,” one of her very first theatre ventures.)

ClampArt’s exhibition will feature artwork of collagist and memoirist Magie Dominic, in addition to works by Kenny Burgess—the artist and designer of the original Caffé Cino posters. Both were a part of the Caffé Cino and are represented in The Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University and in The New York Library for the Performing Arts Archives at Lincoln Center. The exhibition will also feature an extensive collection of ephemera from the Caffé Cino itself.

Ward 5B is an archival and curatorial service specializing in late 20th-century urban ephemera and art, with a focus on punk aesthetic, radical spaces, performance art, drag, experimental theatre, camp, queercore, and guerrilla/street art projects.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

Unknown Photographer, Untitled (Joe Cino and Mary Boylan), 1961, Vintage Polaroid print (Unique), 3.5 x 3.5 inches

#Caffé Cino #Ward 5B #ClampArt #Joe Cino #mary boylan #Kenny Burgess #art #ephemera #avant-garde theatre #avant-garde theater #american queer theatre #american queer theater #underground theatre #underground theater #off-off-broadway #NYC history #New York history #queer culture

Zack Seckler | Above

June 27 – August 9, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 27, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to announce “Zack Seckler | Above”—a mid-career retrospective of work surveying three series of aerial photography from Iceland, Botswana, and South Africa.

In his mission to capture stunning aerial views of land, sea, and wildlife, Zack Seckler takes to the skies in tiny, single-propeller, light-sport aircrafts. His abstract photographs offer an extraordinary perspective of some of the planet’s most remote locations. Seckler uses the maneuverability of the small planes to his greatest advantage, instructing his pilots to fly precisely to locations which catch his interest.

The artist describes the experience and the images he endeavors to capture: “From elevations between 50 and 500 feet, the landscape hovers on the line between things looking very real and recognizable and being more abstract. That’s what really draws me in—the line between reality and abstraction.” Deliberately avoiding the horizon and often shooting from the plane window at an angle perpendicular to the ground adds to the disorientation of the curious, two-dimensional images.

He continues: “Being in that airspace, you’re seeing the world from a perspective that’s largely hidden from the human eye. The view simplifies the landscape in some ways while also revealing complexities. It’s our world but it’s also a new world. The experience is very powerful and I hope some of that feeling comes through in the photographs.”

After graduating from college in 2003, Seckler began working as a photojournalist, but by 2008, he had acquired a taste for a conceptual approach to the medium requiring unique problem-solving, and he dove into commercial and personal art projects. The first series, “Botswana,” was photographed the following year in 2009 when he was in the country for an assignment and asked his client for suggestions of what to do with his last few free days. Soon Seckler was introduced to a pilot who took him on an ultra-light flight over the salt flats. “It’s just me and the pilot sitting right next to each other, knees practically touching,” says Seckler. “There are no real doors, no windows—there’s only a windshield, propeller, and wings.” Botswana, situated in the southern part of the African continent, is the home to a wide range of animals, including zebras, wildebeests, and African buffalo, all of which appear prominently in the artist’s images from this body of work.

It was not until November 2015, six years later, that the artist would get back into the air to shoot: “[W]ith winter fast closing in, photographer Zack Seckler strapped himself into an ultra-light aircraft and headed off into squally skies over southern Iceland. He returned with incredible images that show a different view of the wild Nordic landscapes. . . Away from the volcanoes and sheer-walled glaciers that have come to symbolize Iceland, Seckler’s aerial shots reveal an ethereal, textured world where ice-blue meltwaters swirl into crystalline seas populated by seals, sea lions and seabirds.” (Barry Neild, CNN)

Then, in 2016, Seckler traveled to South Africa to shoot the country’s enormous natural diversity where, in one week, he and his pilot covered nearly 2000 miles in 45 hours of flight. In his most stylistically varied series to date, the artist captured images of candy-colored landscapes populated by dolphins, sea turtles, giraffes, springbok, flamingos, giant herons, and even occasionally humans.

Zack Seckler was born in Boston. He studied psychology at Syracuse University, and later, traveling solo with a point-and-shoot camera in northern India, his mind opened to the visual world. Upon returning to Syracuse, he took coursework in photography at the renowned Newhouse School. With an internship in a Hong Kong photo studio and editorial work in New York City, he developed his vision for image-making.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website. Summer gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturdays are by appointment.

#Zack Seckler #ClampArt #Above #landscape photography #aerial photography #contemporary photography #Botswana #Iceland #South Africa #gallery exhibition #retrospective #press release

Victor Cobo | Remember When You Loved Me?

June 27 – August 9, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 27, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is proud to present “Remember When You Loved Me?,” an exhibition of dramatic, black-and-white photographs by artist Victor Cobo. The show is Cobo’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Through his photography, Victor Cobo paints a dark, sometimes sinister world of ambiguity. At turns autobiographic and then entirely fabricated, he weaves blustery landscapes with high-contrast figurative imagery including animals, self portraits, and female subjects of adoration, awe, and dread. His lurid and playful melodramas address the primal mysteries of sex, birth, death, damnation, and salvation.

Born in 1971 to a Spanish mother and an American father, Cobo is a self-taught photographer who draws inspiration from Surrealism, Film Noir, and German Expressionism. Repeated visits to The Museo del Prado in Spain with his taxi-driving grandfather and seeing midnight thrillers in Florida with his father as a child changed his life.

Cobo writes: “When I was four years old my parents went through a torturous divorce. My father had been using all manner of drugs including heroin and was an acute alcoholic as well. The relationship had been abusive, often to the point of serious violence, and finally my mother had no choice but to flee with me. . . As a child I was sent to visit him during summer breaks from school. Each day he would insist that we go out and take photographs of each other. Years later I realized the pictures he was making were illustrations of an imaginary relationship with me that he had created in his mind.” Today, Cobo explains, “[T]he private universe that reveals itself in my work is my own mechanism of escape.”

In 2016, L’Artiere Edizioni Books published the monograph Exit Pleasure with an introduction by celebrated photographer Larry Fink, in which he touches upon the importance of ritual in Cobo’s imagery: “This was work which was drawn to its subject by bloodletting maggots, cleansing leeches, not to mention a certain odd classicism. It was informed by art, but art was not the point, ritual was. . . But, there is no escape from ritual. There is no release from pleasure. There can be no moral pain in an underground throbbing. But therein lies absence, dark frivolity, heavy breathing, a sodden wink. Exit pleasure—enter pain.”

In 2007 Victor Cobo’s photographs were included in “Masters of American Photography” at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art with William Eggleston, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander. In 2010 Cobo’s works were included in “Hauntology” at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, alongside such artists as Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon, and Diane Arbus. The exhibition was curated by Scott Hewicker and Lawrence Rinder. His works are represented in the permanent collections of the Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; BAMPFA, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California; Center for Photographic Art, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, Oregon; Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, Washington; and William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, Connecticut; among others.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website. Summer gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturdays are by appointment.

#ClampArt #Victor Cobo #Remember When You Loved Me?#black and white photography #contemporary photography #piezography #gallery exhibition #press release

In Close Range

Rhode Island School of Design 2019 MFA Photography Show June 13 – 21, 2019

Opening reception: Thursday, June 13, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to present an exhibition of the work created by the 2019 graduates of the RISD MFA Photography Program: Dylan Everett, Stephen Foster, Shterna Goldbloom, Viktor Hubner, Izabela Jurcewicz, Rachael McArthur, Michelle Peters, Armando Zamora, and Andong Zheng.

Writer and educator Serge Shea observes:

“Tear, rip, cut, divide, slice, cleave, slash, rupture, sever, rift, chop are all acts of separation. In math we use addition, at home glue, in welding a bead, in sewing a stitch, in engineering a bridge to connect, patch, fix, attach, join, append, bond, fuse and mend.

“I once sliced the edge of my palm while cutting through a frozen bagel. It was a new, machine-sharpened knife; the bagel was stiff with freezer burn. My hand required seven stitches. The doctor was older and out of practice. His hands had protruding veins and a slight shake. When he finished tying off the final stitch, the line was crooked. It healed but a scar from the injury and the stitches remain.

“’In Close Range’ features nine graduates of the Photography MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), who use photography in a process of mending. Their cameras act as the catgut pulling two, or more, tissues together to create one. This is neither an easy nor clean practice. It’s not as simple as sewing and, at times, it can be messy and unpredictable. This is of course only a metaphor. They are not medical professionals. They are artists.

“Viewed through this metaphor, there are a few who favor a surgeon’s precision. Dylan Everett falls into this category. No trace is visible; like a plastic surgeon, scarring is the enemy. Everett’s images play with the viewer’s sense of space and sometimes read as actual surfaces (or is that a corner?). Even the content refers to the flatness of the decorative: flowers (lots of them), wallpaper, and patterns. Everett’s images are a controlled process of lighting, construction, photographing, and re-photographing. It is hard to decipher what is aesthetic and what is content; what is two- or three-dimensional. You need to look closely.

“Another artist, Rachael McArthur applies a certain care and exactness selecting specific spaces, such as love hotels, which become stages for her narratives. Blanche Dumont (McArthur’s alter ego) is usually at the center of these constructions. They emphasize various desires that meld sex, pain, toys, and role-playing. The viewer is voyeur as they peek through the doorway or window as desire and the roles of author, participant, and power are explored.

“Stephen Foster and Andong Zheng are practiced at suturing. They are not fixing small accidents; they are working to repair culture and identities. Zheng excavates the American west for historical evidence of early Chinese laborers who settled in America. His images are evidence that these cultures are intertwined, existed and still exist. His camera records this evidence to say look, this history exists; it is here, here, here, and here.

“Foster’s work investigates a deep wound that forms American society, politics, and culture. Foster presents videos of intimate rituals that are part of the American black experience. These documents and creations make up a larger body of work that unthreads and unravels oppression in America—from the inner workings of the incarceration system to stories of those who have experienced this system.

“Shterna Goldbloom’s and Izabela Jurcewicz’s work has no intention of hiding scars. They are interested in the very visibility and existence of the scar. Goldbloom collects LGBTQIA individuals’ images and voices, specifically those who because of their sexuality or gender are at odds with their ultra-orthodox Jewish communities. By including multiple voices and stories, the complexity and diversity of these individual experiences is deepened and woven together into a new document that is archive, instruction, and community.

“Jurcewicz’s camera captures the debriding of a wound. Her debriding consists of restaging and reenacting personal traumatic experiences. For Jurcewicz, the re-staging of traumas offers a way to re-write the experience (lifting the scab, inspecting it) and becomes an act of healing. Her camera and process become tools of alternative healing.

“Michelle Peters and Armando Zamora also mine themselves and their personal histories for content. Peters constructs images that are poetic and rich with myth, and at the same time foreboding. Distinct and symbolic in her use of light and dark; they become their own subjects. Their richness is so well balanced that it is hard to know if the light is swallowing the darkness or if the darkness is swallowing the light.

“Exploring a sense of spirituality, Zamora melds performance and narrative. Part record of rituals inspired by psychomagic and part spiritual stories, Zamora’s images play with the viewer’s sense of narrative. The viewer is left with questions as well as inspiration.

“Viktor Hubner’s practice is that of the war medic working in the field. His camera treats the greatest range of subjects. His images are an excerpt of a larger project in which he hitchhiked, crisscrossing the U.S.A. while documenting the people he encountered. When placed together, his images can be appreciated for the expansive divides he tries to mend: geographies, economies, habitations, realities, voices, and stories.

“In their various processes and engagement with the world, these artists share their cameras’ stitching, weaving, and mending on the flat surfaces of the photograph.

All of these artists have been guided in critiques and thesis committee meetings by a rich and diverse group of faculty and guests. Odette England and Brian Ulrich have led the graduate group critique. Students benefited from individual and guest critiques from artists Jill Magid, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Ina Jang, Alejandro Cartagena, John Edmonds, Curran Hatleberg, Bill Jacobson, Eve Fowler, and Doug DuBois, among others; critics Lucy Gallun and Lyle Rexer; and gallerist Brian Paul Clamp (ClampArt).

All graduates have completed a thesis book, monograph, and a portfolio of prints—now part of the RISD photo archive, which includes work by such former graduates as Bill Burke, Talia Chetrit, Jim Dow, Linda Connor, Emmet Gowin, David Benjamin Sherry, and Francesca Woodman, among many others.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website. Summer gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturdays are by appointment.

Aziz + Cucher | Distant Mirrors

May 2 – June 8, 2019

Opening reception: Thursday, May 2, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Artist talk: Saturday, May 18, 2019 3:00 p.m.

ClampArt is proud to present “Distant Mirrors,” an exhibition of tapestries, monoprints, and screen prints by Aziz + Cucher (Anthony Aziz + Sammy Cucher) to coincide with their inclusion in the group show “Suffering from Realness” at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. “Distant Mirrors” is Aziz + Cucher’s second solo exhibition at ClampArt.

Comprised of three large Jacquard tapestries from the Some People Tapestry Cycle, two monoprints from the Frieze series, and a selection of screen prints, “Distant Mirrors” explores notions of cultural conflict and the cyclical nature of human struggle. Fusing historical processes and contemporary imagery, Aziz + Cucher capture the collective sense of modern-day dysphoria in multilayered scenes of chaos, conflict, jubilation, industry, absurdity, and ambiguity.

Writer and curator Glenn Adamson states: “Rising tides of populism and alarmism feed on one another in a vicious cycle, churning faster than the speed of thought. In America and Europe, there is a sense that society is deeply fractured, at odds with itself. And—partly as a result of this dysfunction—there are actual civil wars unfolding, in Syria and elsewhere. This is the literal and figurative background for Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher’s powerful new tapestries, each of which shows a pageant of bodies, in freeze-frame against an unsettled landscape, pinned like butterflies within time and space itself.” Adamson describes how the compositions evoke confusion and anxiety through the layering of “innumerable figures, intentionally non-specific. Are they refugees? freedom fighters? terrorists? tourists? And what are they up to?” The figures brandishing cell phones suggest that despite living in an era of hyper-connectivity and compulsive documentation, our anxiety is only heightened as “truth” becomes nothing more than a cacophony of whispers in a reality distortion field. Other elements such as the peacock in “The Visitor” and groups of sheep in “The Road” reference the symbolism of Renaissance religious imagery while also alluding to the absurdity of endless cycles of human conflict.

All of the imagery used in the tapestries was created from the artists’ own photography. The figures are collaged from photographs of costumed dancers performing dramatic poses and choreographed movements against a green screen. The subjects are then composited into landscapes the artists documented while traveling internationally. The final scenes are then transposed into a large digital weaving file from which the tapestries are created on a Jacquard loom in Belgium.

All of the works on paper included in the exhibition isolate the artists’ figures against blank or simply patterned backgrounds. Devoid of any geographical context and the desolate desert terrain in the tapestries, the subjects dance, fight, protest, worship, play music, take selfies, and sometimes collapse appearing to die. Each of the Frieze works on paper are unique; they are produced using layers of ink and 24-karat gold leaf on Hahnemühle paper. The screen prints in the show include a group of complex, 40-color compositions and a pair of monochromatic pieces titled “Shadow Play.”

Raised as a Zionist, Sammy Cucher’s family lives in Israel. Anthony Aziz, who was raised in the United States, has extended family in Lebanon. The artists’ personal, biographical experiences unfold against ongoing violence in the Middle East placing a “local conflict in the global context of life in the age of terror” (Tami Katz-Freiman, “From Body Politics to Conflict Politics: Aziz + Cucher Come Out of the (Biography) Closet”).

Anthony Aziz (b. Massachusetts) and Sammy Cucher (b. Lima, Peru) have been living and working together since 1991. They are pioneers in the field of digital imaging and post-photography with projects exhibited at numerous venues, including the 1995 Venice Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, Fondation Cartier in Paris, National Gallery of Berlin, Photographer’s Gallery in London, List Visual Arts Center at MIT, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the International Center of Photography. They have received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Their prints and other works have been collected extensively by numerous institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Denver Museum of Art, Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. They are both members of the Fine Arts faculty at Parsons School of Design, New York. They are based in Brooklyn.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#Aziz + Cucher #Distant Mirrors #tapestries #monoprints #screen prints #textile arts #contemporary photography #collage #ClampArt #gallery exhibition #press release

Pipo Nguyen-duy | (My) East of Eden

March 14 – April 27, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 14, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk: Saturday, March 16, 2019 3:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to announce “(My) East of Eden,” Pipo Nguyen-duy’s second solo show with the gallery.

While working as a Guggenheim fellow to document Vietnamese war amputees in 2012, Pipo Nguyen-duy began working on “(My) East of Eden” in the Mekong Delta. This project is the artist’s attempt to reclaim his childhood memories of growing up in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Beyond serving as the means to tell his stories, Nguyen-duy intends for these images to address issues such as legacy, hope, and regeneration. Working with rural Vietnamese children in school uniforms, the artist created portraits and staged photographs reminiscent of 19th-century British landscape paintings where the environment and its inhabitants coexist in harmony. Against the backdrop of landscapes that bear the physical scars of war, “(My) East of Eden” is a celebration of the resilience and beauty of humanity. Forty years after the war, the once destroyed landscape with school children provides the perfect environment for photographs addressing regeneration, hope, history, and legacy. The uniformed kids placed in the idealized landscape without the presence of adults signify the beginning after the end. In one image a boy emerges from the lush landscape, while in another a boy and a girl lit by an ethereal light sit tranquilly by a duck pond that was once a bomb crater. These seemingly comforting images are in contrast to a photograph of school children playing war games and another portrait of a boy submerged in water as a drowning victim. With this body of work Nguyen-duy endeavors to weave a complex and multilayered narrative about the delicate attempt to rebuild a decimated paradise.

Pipo Nguyen-duy was born in Hue, Vietnam. Growing up within thirty kilometers of the demilitarized zone of the 18th Parallel, he describes hearing gunfire every day of his early life. He later immigrated to the United States as a political refugee.

Nguyen-duy has taken on many things in life in pursuit of his diverse interests. As a teenager in Vietnam, he competed as a national athlete in table tennis. He also spent some time living as a Buddhist monk in Northern India. Eventually Nguyen-duy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics at Carleton College. He then moved to New York City, where he worked as a bartender and later as a nightclub manager. Finally, Nguyen-duy earned a Master of Arts in Photography, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, both from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Nguyen-duy has received many awards and grants including a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography; a National Endowment for the the Arts; an En Foco Grant; a Professional Development Grant from the College Arts Association; a National Graduate Fellowship from the American Photography Institute; a Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission; a B. Wade and Jane B. White Fellowship in the Humanities at Oberlin College; and three Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. He participated as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s garden through The Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Artists at Giverny Fellowship; as an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California; and participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program.

Nguyen-duy has lectured widely and his work is part of many public collections in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is currently a professor teaching photography at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#Pipo Nguyen-duy #(My) East of Eden #Mekong Delta #Vietnam #portrait photography #contemporary photography #gallery exhibition #press release

Pipo Nguyen-duy | Hotel Window

March 14 – April 27, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 14, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Artist Talk: Saturday, March 16, 2019 3:00 p.m.

ClampArt is proud to present “Hotel Window,” Pipo Nguyen-duy’s newest body of work. The exhibition coincides with “(My) East of Eden,” an earlier series presented in the gallery’s main space.

Pipo Nguyen-duy moved to the United States in 1975 as a Vietnamese refugee. Consequently, cultural identity and cultural authenticity are ongoing themes in all of his artwork. The artist writes: “[S]ite-specificity has been an integral part of my studio practice, as I always consider geographical, historical, and cultural significance of the locations in my research.”

For “Hotel Window,” Nguyen-duy rented the same sixty-four square-foot room in Ho Chi Minh City, District 1, over the course of several trips to Vietnam from 2015 to 2017. For close to six months he photographed obsessively from dawn until deep into the night, breaking only for food and sleep. “The second-floor window offered a commanding view of the alley where it widened” before it narrows at a sharp left turn located under the hotel. The alley serves as a shortcut between a congested street where it begins and a crowded market where it terminates on the other end. The artist’s lens sat witness to all of the human traffic and adventures that unfolded before its steady gaze.

Nguyen-duy’s goal was to be as objective as a scientist gathering visual data. He set up his tripod in the same position day after day, month after month, careful to capture precisely the identical slice of view.

“With this work, I aim to document, as if from the perspective of a natural scientist or archeologist. Using the camera to record facts rather than regarding it as a subjective tool, I have become increasingly intrigued with the idea of mapping my ‘own’ culture in hopes of understanding it from an outsider’s point of view using the hotel room as a metaphor for an in-between place. The window curtain was the variable that changed, in addition to the light, which also varied throughout the day. The curtain was a literal veil to the world and the culture outside my window. It serves as a metaphor for the lack of clarity and insight that I may have of my culture. From the alley I am hidden or visible depending on how wide the curtain was kept and the time of the day. The neatly arranged architecture seen from my window illustrated the rich history and the complex transition of the Vietnamese culture from French colonial, to American modernist, to contemporary high-rise.

“The project began as a survey to categorize different types of people, record gestures and behavior, map traffic patterns, and capture ‘decisive’ moments of street scenes below. Conceptually, I intended this mapping project only to reveal my difficulties of defining home—however as the project grew, the complexities of the images also have become more layered. The first image of the series revealing a man masturbating at 6:00 a.m. while leaning against his scooter below the hotel window addresses the voyeuristic nature of the project. In one set of pictures, which followed my neighbors’ gestures and habits from dawn until dusk, day after day, the project’s surveillance technique questions the tension between private and public spaces. In another image, a group of scantily-clad fashion models head toward an older woman in traditional clothing with a straw hat. This image aims to document the dynamic social changes and conflicts in contemporary Vietnam. Inasmuch as it is a project about the nuances and complexity of contemporary Vietnam, ‘Hotel Window’ is also about the photographer’s struggle to find his place within the culture.”

Pipo Nguyen-duy was born in Hue, Vietnam. Growing up within thirty kilometers of the demilitarized zone of the 18th Parallel, he describes hearing gunfire every day of his early life.

Nguyen-duy has taken on many things in life in pursuit of his diverse interests. As a teenager in Vietnam, he competed as a national athlete in table tennis. He also spent some time living as a Buddhist monk in Northern India. Eventually Nguyen-duy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics at Carleton College. He then moved to New York City, where he worked as a bartender and later as a nightclub manager. Finally, Nguyen-duy earned a Master of Arts in Photography, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, both from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Nguyen-duy has received many awards and grants including a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography; a National Endowment for the the Arts; an En Foco Grant; a Professional Development Grant from the College Arts Association; a National Graduate Fellowship from the American Photography Institute; a Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission; a B. Wade and Jane B. White Fellowship in the Humanities at Oberlin College; and three Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. He participated as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s garden through The Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Artists at Giverny Fellowship; as an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California; and participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program.

Nguyen-duy has lectured widely and his work is part of many public collections in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is currently a professor teaching photography at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#Pipo Nguyen-duy #Hotel Window #photography #Ho Chi Minh City #Vietnam #topographic photography #urban photography #documentary photography #contemporary photography #voyeurism #gallery exhibition #press release

The City (And a Few Lonely People)

January 24 – March 9, 2019

Opening reception: Thursday, January 24, 2019 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to present “The City (And a Few Lonely People),” a group show inspired by Olivia Laing’s groundbreaking book, The Lonely City (Picador: New York City, 2016).

“You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people,” writes Olivia Laing. After an abrupt and particularly painful end to a short-lived but explosive romance, the author leaves her native England to spend time away in New York City. However, soon upon arriving, she experiences a profound, bone-deep loneliness previously unknown. The Lonely City is a searing and insightful memoir of sorts, which traces the writer’s experience of isolation in a cold, new place through the lens of a group of artists whose works reflect and ruminate upon the same emotion. Considering examples from a diverse range of artists across the expanse of the 20th century from Edward Hopper to Henry Darger, Andy Warhol to David Wojnarowicz, Laing questions what it means to be lonely in our present pixelated age, and how such isolation might “drive one to consider some of the larger questions of what it is to be alive.” Part autobiography, part art history, The Lonely City is an original and erudite example of new criticism informed by personal experience and emotional intelligence akin to other maverick essayists such as Rebecca Solnit and Maggie Nelson.

ClampArt’s exhibition takes The Lonely City as a springboard and explores isolation within urban spaces through pieces by artists specifically discussed by Laing (Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz) and many others who traverse the same terrain. While Laing considers painters, writers, photographers, and performance artists, the show at ClampArt looks at loneliness specifically through a photographic eye concentrating on the late 20th-century to the present, including images by Diane Arbus, David Armstrong, John Arsenault, Clarissa Bonet, Larry Clark, Jen Davis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Michael Massaia, Daido Moriyama, Mark Morrisroe, Lori Nix/Kathleen Gerber, Jack Pierson, Richard Renaldi, Laura Stevens, David Wojnarowicz, Frank Yamrus, and Marc Yankus.

“Loneliness, I began to realize, was a populated place: a city in itself.”

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

Luke Smalley | Exercise at Home

November 29, 2018 – January 19, 2019

Opening reception: Thursday, November 29, 2018 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is proud to present “Luke Smalley (1955-2009) | Exercise at Home” in celebration of the 10th-year anniversary of the premiere of the body of work. This is the artist’s third solo show at the gallery.

Smalley passed away far too young at the age of 53, but he left behind three major bodies of work, in addition to four impressive monographs. The new show at ClampArt will feature his second project, and his first in color, titled “Exercise at Home.”

Luke Smalley’s work has been described as pairing “a coolly minimalist aesthetic with a retro nostalgia.” Many of his images were inspired by yearbooks and fitness manuals from the beginning of the 20th century. After completing a degree at Pepperdine University—tellingly, in sports medicine—Smalley became increasingly interested in fine art (while earning money from modeling and working as a personal trainer). He spent fifteen years completing his first body of work, “Gymnasium”—a series of black-and-white gelatin silver prints depicting young, male athletes set in an ambiguous time and place. The subjects of the photographs were all local high school students from the small Pennsylvania town where the artist was raised.

Four years later, however, when Smalley completed his second major fine art series,“Exercise at Home,” the models were all professionals whom he had met through his fashion career, which was launched when the artist was discovered by British designer Kim Jones. Jones came across a copy of Smalley’s first monograph, Gymnasium, at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo in New York City, and soon hired the photographer to begin shooting his clothing line. (The collaboration ultimately culminated in Smalley’s second book in 2004 titled simply Kim Jones, which is now a rare and valuable collectible.)

“Exercise at Home,” which was premiered in exhibitions on both the East and West Coasts in 2008, coincided with the release of a second Twin Palms publication—the artist’s third book. This marked the artist’s initial foray into color, but followed “Gymnasium” in its themes of “adolescent growing pains acted out under the guise of earnest athleticism.” Teenagers take part in simple but strange competitions in order to establish their standing within the group. Two youths practice boating safety procedures on a small craft that happens to be indoors. Another pair have a psychological game of tug of war. And yet other boys practice swimming strokes on a gymnasium floor. As with the previous black-and-white series, Smalley painstakingly coordinated the creation of the work to the extent of constructing his own athletic equipment and other props, in addition to simple costumes. It was now Smalley’s intent to continue publishing artist books in small editions every few years, which could then be coordinated with gallery exhibitions of photographic prints, thus augmenting his ongoing commercial career. Sadly, only one more project and monograph were realized before the artist’s death the following year.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#ClampArt #Luke Smalley #Exercise at Home #photography #contemporary photography #figurative photography #color photography #athletic photography #NYC #art gallery #press release

Frances F. Denny | Major Arcana: Witches in America

October 4 – November 24, 2018

Opening reception: Thursday, October 4, 2018 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

ClampArt is pleased to present “Frances F. Denny | Major Arcana: Witches in America,” the artist’s second solo show at the gallery.

“Major Arcana: Witches in America” is a collection of portraits of women from across the United States who identify as witches. Each woman photographed for “Major Arcana” pursues a form of witchcraft, whether aligned with a religion (like Wicca or Voudou) or a self-defined practice. Many consider themselves pagan and engage in a diversity of traditions, including: mysticism, engagement with the occult, politically-oriented activism, polytheism, ritualized “spell-craft,” and plant-based healing.

Denny’s interest in modern-day witches began when she discovered during the course of research for a prior body of work that her 8th great-grandmother was accused of witchcraft in 1674 in Northampton, Massachusetts, and that nearly twenty years later, in 1692, her 10th great-grandfather presided as a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. She states: “[T]his ancestral coincidence stayed with me. What is a witch? Who does that word belong to—now?” In pursuit of her answer, Denny traveled coast-to-coast, meeting and photographing witches of diverse backgrounds with varying connections to the practice of witchcraft.

The historical oppression of those who practiced (or were merely accused of practicing) witchcraft is widely known; as early as 15th-century Europe, those condemned as witches faced torture and even death. However, recent decades have seen a reclaiming of the word “witch.” In the mid-20th century, emerging pagan communities in the United States and Europe began embracing the term, and since then, “witch” has been adopted by a diverse group of people. “Major Arcana” reflects that spectrum, re-framing the witch as a feminist archetype as well as the contemporary embodiment of a defiant, unsanctioned femininity. Today, as the current wave of feminism crests, one characterized by political activism, #metoo, and intersectionality—not to mention a certain cultural trendiness—witchcraft is suddenly relevant again to the mainstream.

Frances F. Denny (b. 1984) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work investigates the development of female selfhood and identity. Her monograph Let Virtue Be Your Guide was published by Radius Books in 2015. She holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from the Gallatin School at New York University.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#ClampArt #Frances F. Denny #Major Arcana #Witches in America #Witches #photography #portrait photography #witchcraft #mysticism #occult #paganism #polytheism #spellcraft #feminism #intersectionality #art #art gallery #NYC #press release

Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938): The Lost Murals

October 4 – November 24, 2018

Opening reception: Thursday, October 4, 2018 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Curated by Mark Beard

ClampArt is pleased to announce “Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938): The Lost Murals”—curated by New York artist Mark Beard (Bruce Sargeant’s great nephew).

Mark Beard has devoted more than two decades of his life to researching and collecting the work of Bruce Sargeant, a painter who largely concentrated on the idealization and celebration of the male form. Had Sargeant not met with a tragic and untimely death at the age of 40, he may have gone on to achieve the fame and renown awarded to such painters as James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer—artists to whom his style is often compared. Instead, Sargeant’s oeuvre remained relatively unknown for years until it was brought to light by the efforts of Beard.

“The Lost Murals” brings together large-scale canvases that were known to exist but hidden from public view for over half a century. After years of meticulous research, Beard located the murals and painstakingly arranged for their return from a number of locations around the globe. In the murals, Beard’s great-uncle portrays his favorite subject: muscular young men at the peak of form and athletic prowess. Clothed in wrestling singlets, tank tops, boxer shorts, and crisp, white dress shirts, the athletes are shown flexing and cavorting among ropes, rings, beams, and other gymnast equipment. Seen together for the first time, these murals are Sargeant’s Sistene Chapel ceiling.

Mark Beard (1956-) was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His portraits, nudes, bronzes, and handcrafted books have been exhibited worldwide, and he has also designed more than twenty theatrical sets in New York, London, and Germany. His works are in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Princeton, Harvard, and Yale University Museums, among many others.

For more information and images, please contact [email protected], or visit the gallery website.

#ClampArt #Mark Beard #Bruce Sargeant #The Lost Murals #Murals #art #painting #oil painting #NYC #art gallery #press release #gallery exhibition

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