Join Artspace New Haven for its annual fundraiser “Love Notes“ in support of their experimental and civically-driven work as an institution. Artspace invited artists to submit a Love Note to this community event, creating one-of-a-kind works of art to be sold for the benefit of Artspace.

All artists remain anonymous until purchases are made.

This year, Love Notes will take place May 3, 2023, in conjunction with The Great Give of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. From 6:00–8:00 PM, Artspace’s gallery doors will open for a Love Notes reception. Music entertainment for the evening will be provided by New Haven Jazz Underground, and light refreshments curated and cooked by Steve Roberts.  All are welcome!

This event is in-person and will be held at Artspace New Haven, 50 Orange St. New Haven, CT.

All Love Notes will be displayed at Artspace for the week of the Great Give, May 3 through May 16, 2023. Love Notes can be purchased up until the show closes. All artwork will be on sale for flat price of $95 and all proceeds for Love Notes will go towards this year’s 2023 Summer Artspace Program. 

All Love Notes on sale for flat price of $95. This fundraiser is fully in-person with suggested entry donation of $45 and items will not be sold online. Purchasers will pick up their Love Note after May 16, 2023.

All sales and Donations should be made through The Great Give.

Artspace New Haven is a contemporary art gallery and non-profit organization located in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1987 by artists, Artspace centers community-building and education while providing a platform to present the work of visual artists in the city of New Haven. Artspace has received recognition and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, NEFA, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, VIA ART, CT Humanities, and the New Alliance, Andrew Mellon and Andy Warhol foundations.

Make a donation to Artspace through The Great Give here.

Artspace fosters engagement with the visual arts by bringing artists and communities together to catalyze new ways of learning, thinking, and being.

KRAKOW WITKIN GALLERY ANNOUNCES THE ANNUAL AIDS BENEFIT

After much Covid-era replanning, reprogramming, etc., Krakow Witkin Gallery is proud to announce that the Annual AIDS Benefit is happening!

As in past years, the benefit goes live at exactly 10 am EST on Saturday, November 28, in support of World AIDS Day.

This year, the benefit will be entirely online here.

Once the site goes live, one can browse all the artworks but none are visible before 10am on the 28th.

As always, works of art in this exhibition have been generously donated by artists, many working in the greater Boston area and some from beyond. The small works (approximately 15" x 15" or so) are each available for $350 that goes to the Dimock Center's Boston Pediatric and Family AIDS Program.

Michelle Fornabai: act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily")

04 February - 28 February 2019

Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201

City Hall's 50th Anniversary Event: 07 February, 2-3:30pm

 In honor of Boston City Hall's 50th anniversary, the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture is pleased to present a special exhibition of Michelle Fornabai's act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily").

From poetic installations in public spaces to performing a song in floating concrete, Michelle Fornabai's work balances on the edge between impossibility and inevitability. Situated throughout City Hall's historic galleries on the anniversary of the building's 50th, act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") comprises more than 200 artifacts documenting the inaugural Boston Artist Fellow's conceptual art practice in dialogue with Boston's Brutalist architecture over the past year.

act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") begins with Fornabai's installation /performance of her concrete poem in dialogue with Paul Rudolph's "essay in concrete" at Government Service Center. In the third floor gallery, act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily") punctuates the space with video, audio and sculptural installations documenting Fornabai's six day performance at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, which offers voluntary treatment to Boston's most vulnerable and houses 150 resident patients within Government Center. The work first debuted in October 2018 at the Boston Room with daily access to the chapel.

The contrast between the temporal dynamics of Fornabai's perceptual field of floating concrete set against Rudolph's "concrete corduroy" in the Boston Room at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center lends itself towards a momentary reflection upon the fragility of strength and paradoxically, the poignant force of vulnerability. Employing existing professional, cultural and political structures, in part, to construct the "Boston Room," Fornabai's installation /performance mediates between perception and state to find places and possibilities for artists.

Fornabai's art practice spans art, architecture, DIY and construction industries as a form of "malpractice," making art mistakes within architectural standards of practice. Her work concretely transforms and recasts the viewer's understanding of materials and methods. The fifth floor gallery hosts an installation of 50 Landscapes in F# Minor in honor of City Hall's 50th anniversary. The work takes inspiration from the artist's 20 years practicing art against the backdrop of the history of concrete in Boston--from beton brut to artists' labors of love.

THE BOSTON CITY HALL GALLERIES, City Hall, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201

Michelle Fornabai: act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily")

01 October - 06 October 2018

Government Center, 25 Staniford St., Boston, MA 02114

Closing: 06 October, 5-6pm

10am-4pm (daily): exhibition | performance

4pm-5pm (daily): film screening

5pm-6pm (daily): artist talks

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture is delighted to announce the debut solo exhibit in Boston of Michelle Fornabai's act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily"). The exhibition will reflect upon the fragility of strength and paradoxically, the poignant force of vulnerability at Government Center, where Boston's most vulnerable have been placed at the center of government service.

Michelle Fornabai will place her concrete poem, act 3 mix ("To a Water Lily"), in dialogue with Paul Rudolph's "essay in concrete" at Government Center during a six-day performance. Materially, Fornabai works with concrete using its substance, sounds and sensitivity to environs. In her works, concrete—typically a monumental, monolithic, static, permanent material—becomes infinitesimal, manifold and transient, engendering movement. Choreographies of construction enacted over months and critically brief performances or "concerts in construction" over days evince concrete's poetic potential. Rudolph's building, perhaps like many Bostonians, is known for its bristly exterior yet weathers the elements to protect a secret, generous and imaginative interior.

Michelle Fornabai was selected by the City of Boston as one of its five inaugural Artist Fellows. Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture announced the recipients of the City's first-ever Artist Fellowship Award to support the advancement of artists living in Boston in 2017, made possible by funding through the Boston Cultural Council and the City of Boston. The pilot program, designed to recognize exceptional original artistic work while helping recipients advance their careers, invests a total of $50,000 in the advancement of five individual artists. Over the past year, Fornabai has been working with the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture on an exhibition from her work, Concrete Poetry: 10 Conceptual Acts of Architecture in Concrete.

During the duration of Fornabai's performance, two landscape-scale works in floating concrete, resonated by a song from Edward MacDowell's Woodland Sketches, will be installed and exhibited in the Boston Room at the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center (10am-4pm) and accompanied by the screening a five hour video "Resonance|Performance" over five days (4-5pm) in the Chapel.

With the exhibit, a series of informal artist conversations, The Concrete Corduroy Chats, with invited guests have been organized daily from 5-6pm as a kind of "mixer" to include other voices from art, architecture, music, dance, construction that have formed the larger, local site and context for Fornabai's work as part of her concrete poem. In her words, "As an artist, to acknowledge and share with Boston the voices I've heard that have encouraged and inspire me remains central to any poem reflecting upon fragility or strength."

In respect for those providing and receiving care in the building, we are only allowing a limited number of people to attend the screenings in the Chapel and ask that you reserve a ticket if you are planning to attend.

The concrete corduroy chats to date (additional guests may be added) 1-6 October from 5-6pm in the Boston Room:

Mon 1 Oct: Jennifer W. Leung, Ryan Davies, Diana Martinez

Tues 2 Oct: Daisy Nam, Chris Grimley

Wed 3 Oct: Scott Wheeler, Wendy Jacob

Thur 4 Oct: Kurt Forster, Andrew Witkin

Fri 5 Oct: Hanny Ahern, Yolande Daniels

Sat 6 Oct: Michele Loh, Arthur Zegelbone, Judith Leemann

The concrete corduroy chats, 1-6 October, 5-6pm in The Boston Room, Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, Government (Service) Center, Boston, MA  

“Velvet trousers — their whistling sound (in walking) by brushing of the 2 legs is an infra thin separation signaled by sound (is it not? )” –Marcel Duchamp, Notes, arranged and translated by Paul Matisse

Why do artists talk? Who do they talk to?

The concrete corduroy chats will explore ways of rethinking the "artist talk" (which contextualizes the work, its process, its influences) and the "group show" (that places the artists work with similar works).

Most likely, the concrete corduroy chats will be small, intimate perhaps almost verging on imperceptible, but they may be a whisper of difference, nonetheless.

What is the difference?

By indirect perceptions of physical phenomena, small gestures and reciprocal nuances in an environment might produce infinitesimal changes, challenge knowledge, and deeply affect.

ART OLYMPIA 2017, co-sponsored by the Ningenkokuho 'National Living Treasures' Museum

Art Olympia is a public exhibition held as a biennale with the goal of discovering artists with talent from around the world and supporting their work. Judging will be conducted by domestic and overseas judges using a fair "points system." Also, the aim is to facilitate international cultural exchange through art. —Art Olympia Executive Committee

 In 2017, 1717 artworks from 1037 artists from 81 countries over the world; 100 selected for final.

ART OLYMPIA 2017 Judges

Akira Tatehata

Born in Kyoto in 1947. Graduated from Waseda University, department of literature. He is presently President of Tama Art University, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and chairperson of the Japanese Council of Art Museums. Previously he worked at editorial department of Shincho Art, served as Director of The National Museum of Art, taught as a professor at Tama Art University. Tatehata specialized in modern and contemporary art and also served as the Japanese Pavilion Commissioner at La Biennnale de Venezia in 1990 and 1993, Artistic Director for Yokohama Triennale 2001, and Aichi Triennale 2010. As a poet, he received awards from several of his publications including: the Reiteki New Poet Award with “Yohaku no Ranna (Runner in the margins)” Shinchosha Publishing, Takami Jun Award with “Reido no inu (The dog of zero degrees)” Shoshiyamada Publishing, and Hagiwara Sakutaro Award with “Shigo no ressun (Lesson of Dead Language)” Shichosha Publishing.

Hiroshi Senju

Painter. Hiroshi Senju’s representative work “Waterfall” received Honarable Mention at the International Art Exhibition, La Biennale de Venezia, in 1995. He was commended by Foreign Minister of Japan for his outstanding achievement in worldwide reputation with his waterfall and cliff images in 2016. From 2007 to March 2013, he served as President of Kyoto University of Art and Design and currently teaches there as a professor. He also serves as Director of Koyodo Museum of Art which is affiliated with the Kyoto University of Art and Design; President of the joint education system Geijutsu Gakusha (Institute of Art) between Kyoto University of Art and Design and Tohoku University of Art and Design; masters committee member of L’ÉCOLE of Van Cleef & Arpels.

Aomi Okabe

Tokyo born, and Tokyo and Paris based art critic and curator. After teaching at Musashino Art University for 12 years, Okabe holds current position as Artistic Director of exhibition department of Japanese Culture House of Paris, as well as an adviser of Shiseido Gallery. She graduated from International Christian University with a bachelor’s degree, and from Paris-Sorbonne University with a master’s degree. She completed 3rd course at Ecole de Louvre. As a curator, she co-curated “Japon Des Avant Grades 1910-1970” at Pompidou Centre in Paris, curated "Art Project in Miyagi” after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and recently Japan Media Art exhibition in Paris. Okabe’s publishing includes; "Art Field French contemporary art”, Ato to josei to eizo (Art, women, and images), co-written and co-edited Ato ga shiritai (Want to know about Art), and her video direction work “Atsuko Tanaka; mou hitotsu no gutai (another Gutai)”.

Toyomi Hoshina

Vice President of Tokyo University of Arts.Hoshina is studying at Tokyo University of Arts to compelete his docotoral program in art. In 2002 and 2003, He visits the United States as a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology research worker abroad, in order to inquire about the new possibility of the environmental art installation of the United States and Europe. He organized the first Setouchi Triennale “Story of the Island Art Project” in Shodoshima in Kagawa prefecture in 2010. As an artist, his works were exhibited at “Paris Biennale” at Paris Citizen Museum of Art in 1982, 2nd Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in 2003, International Media Art Biennale” Beijing, China in 2008, Ichihara Biennale “3D Landscape painting project” in 2014, and many other exhibitions. He was an invited artist for Ueno Royal Museum grand prize.

Akiko Endo

Painter. Professor of Musashino Art University.Born in Tokyo in 1947. Graduated from Musashino Art University Junior College. Paticipated Japanese Ministry of Education Research Program in India between 1986-1987.She received many awards including Takeshi Hayashi Prize at Showa-kai Exhibition in 1978, Awarded Yasui Award prize at The 29th Yasui Award Exhibition in 1986, The 2006 Minister of Education's Art Encouragement Prize in 2007, Medal of Honour, Medal with Purple Ribbon (Shiju Hosho) in 2014. Her work is in the collections of Cultural Affairs Agency of Japan, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki, the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Yokohama Museum of Art and many others.

Brett Littman

Brett Littman has been the Executive Director of The Drawing Center since 2007. Previously he was the Deputy Director of MoMA PS1, Co-Director of Dieu Donné papermill and Associate Director of UrbanGlass. He has contributed news and commentary to a wide range of international publications and critical essays to many exhibition catalogues. As a curator, Littman has organized exhibitions for The Drawing Center and other non-profits and galleries worldwide.

Kara Vander Weg

Kara Vander Weg is a Director at Gagosian Gallery New York, where she has worked for more than eight years. Her primary focus is the management of established artists and their estates, including The Richard Avedon Foundation, the Estate of John Chamberlain, the Estate of Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney, and Mark Tansey. She has organized more than a dozen exhibitions and affiliated books for the gallery. She was a Director at the James Cohan Gallery in New York, and she worked in the curatorial department of the Solmon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, from 1998 until 2003. She has written on art for publications such as Art on Paper, Contemporary, Gentleman’s Quarterly Magazine, and Glass Quarterly. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Northwestern University and an M.A. in Art History from Williams College.

Chu Teh-I

Chu is a painter who lives in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the founder and director of the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts as well as the professor of the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. He graduated from L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts De Paris, and L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Arts-Decoratifs De Paris in France. Chu is the advisor for visual arts section of the Ministry of Culture and the National Culture and Arts Foundation. He has been involved with many public arts projects and the establishment of the Art Bank in Taiwan. He is also the committee member of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Taipei
Fine Arts Museum.

Florence Derieux

Florence Derieux is Curator of American Art of the Centre Pompidou Foundation and Curator-at-Large of the Centre Pompidou. She formerly was Director of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (2008-2016); Curator of Art Basel Parcours (2013-2015); Associate Curator of Le Magasin-Centre National d’Art contemporain in Grenoble (2007); Curator for Contemporary Art of the Museum of Fine Arts in L ausanne (2005-2006); Deputy Director of the Picasso Museum in Antibes (2002-2004); Curator at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2000-2002). She is a member of Etant donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art since 2012. Her most recent publications include “Tom Burr. Anthology: Writings 1991-2015” (Sternberg Press, 2015) and “Agnes Denes: Work 1969-2013” (Mousse Publishing, 2016).

Simon Njami

Simon Njami (born in 1962 in Lausanne) is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.Njami is the co-founder of Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art, and he was Visiting Professor at UCSD (University of San Diego California).After conceiving the Ethnicolor Festival in Paris in 1987, he curated many international exhibitions being among the first ones to think and show African contemporary artists work on international stages. Njami is the curator of “Africa Remix”, showed in Düsseldorf, London, Paris, Tokyo, Stockholm and Johannesburg, from 2004 to 2007. He co-curated the first African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He is the Artistic Director of the 12th Dakar Biennale (May 2016).

website: Art Olympia and co-sponsor Ningenkokuho 'National Living Treasures' Museum

results: live broadcast of judging from Tokyo, Japan

review: Bruce Heylander, "Art Olympia 2017," The Huffington Post

The first of December is World AIDS Day and - as always - the Barbara Krakow Gallery will
hold its annual benefit exhibition in the continuing effort to respond to this ongoing epidemic. 
 
This year our focus will be on the local program:
Boston Pediatric/Family AIDS Project (based at the Dimock Center in Roxbury).
   
People can purchase works for $350 each, 100% of which will go toward assisting children infected with HIV/AIDS and their families.  For the last number of years, we have sold every single donation, making this an incredibly effective benefit.
 
In the spirit of fairness to all, works are not viewable prior to Saturday at 10 am.  It is only at 10 am (promptly!) that the exhibition is viewable.  The same goes for the works being viewable on our website, which will be accessible through:
 
Barbara Krakow Gallery, The Annual Aids Benefit Auction
 

In meanwhile, a small hint...

Benefiting Boston Pediatric/Family AIDS Program and African AIDS Initiative

The benefit exhibition opens promptly at 10 AM on Saturday, November 28.  The website, with images of all donated works, will go live at 10 AM, as well (and not beforehand) on the gallery's current exhibitions page. 

There are no previews (keeping it fair to all) but we can tell you that many artists donate small works (approximately 14" x 14") and they are available for a donation of $350 to one of two causes:

THE BOSTON PEDIATRIC/FAMILY AIDS PROGRAM
and/or
THE AFRICAN AIDS INITIATIVE INTERNATIONAL, INC.

The artists' generosity and purchasers of the works combine to make an incredible gesture that has been overwhelmingly appreciated.  100% of the proceeds go toward assisting children infected with AIDS and their families.  Since this benefit began, we have raised close to $850,000.

And so, if you are interested in purchasing, please come in Saturday, November 28 or be ready to load the webpage the same day!  Works go swiftly and the benefit exhibition is only a few days long so please do act quickly!

All works will be available to view at the gallery and online at 10 AM, November 28 (not beforehand).
 
Thank you for your support and for helping us respond to this continuing worldwide epidemic.
 

website: Annual Aids Benefit Auction 2015 at the Barbara Krakow Gallery

As part of her Synesthesia Series paintings, Michelle Fornabai has painted upon 16 measures of the Frank Loesser song "The Inchworm" in ink on mylar, a pre-digital convention of architectural drawing. Synesthesia, an experience by which one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to an automatic, involuntary experience in another--sound to color, form, texture, or text--is engaged by painting, literally, on a song.

The sixteen musical measures of "The Inchworm" act as both a medium (paper support) and an acoustic milieu for Fornabai's process of painting over a defined duration. The original song, a mnemonic device for children ("two and two are four, four and four are eight, eight and eight are sixteen..."), evinces two metrical patterns which structure the drawing, a rhythmic play between alternating strong and weak beats (a duple pulse) as sums are repeated, coupled with a triple time strong, weak, weak pattern (slow waltz) as the worm inches along the marigolds.

Upon exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the drawing may be played by viewers while two Lepidoptera Gemetridae (commonly known as "inchworms"), released into the Storefront exhibition by Ms. Fornabai, kinesthetically measure the space with their movements. The title of the drawing, "4x4 Measures (Inchworm)," refers to the four different sensory measures taken of the space – acoustic, tactile, kinesthetic and cognitive – whose trace is indicated visually in the drawing at four scales – by minute, inch, foot, and geometric measure.

website: "Measure" at the Storefront for Art and Architecture

review: Anya Lawrence, "Measure," in  Disegno.

The benefit exhibition opens promptly at 10 AM.  The website with images of all donated works will go live at the same time.  There are no previews (keeping it fair to all) but we can tell you that manyartists donate small works (approximately 14" x 14") and they are available for a donation of $350 to one of two causes (Boston Pediatric AIDS Project and/or The African Aids Initiative International)

And so ... if you are interested in purchasing, please come join us on Saturday November 29 or be ready to load the webpage the same day!  Works go quickly and the benefit exhibition is only a few days long so please do act quickly!

website: Annual Aids Benefit Auction 2014 at the Barbara Krakow Gallery

This exhibition focuses on two of the world’s leading centers of art -- New York and Beijing -- and offers a visual pairing of five New York-based artists with five Beijing-based artists. The ten artists have been engaged in five different global, cross-cultural, artistic dialogues over the course of two years via email, Skype, in person, sometimes with translators, about issues ranging from political and social upheaval, the concept of global culture, and questions about materials and techniques. Some of the artists are creating new works for the exhibition including two site-specific works being created at the Museum, others are represented by existing or historic works.

The concept for this show grew out of an earlier collaboration curated by Pan Qing at Columbia University’s Studio X in Beijing in 2010 between New York-based artist Michelle Fornabai and Beijing-based artist Qin Feng, both of whom are featured in the present show.

“Watching Michelle Fornabai and Qin Feng communicate silently through the brush helped to open my mind to the myriad possibilities of visual dialogues between artists from very different artistic backgrounds,” Qing explains. “After discussing this idea with the other curators and advisors of this exhibition — Michelle Y. Loh, John Rajchman and Sarah McNaughton — a decision was made to expand on this theme by seeking out more opportunities to pair artists from disparate cultures.”

The curators matched the pairs based partly on the kind of work that they do and their artistic processes, but more importantly on the type of dialogue in which they suspected the artists might engage within the context of their respective urban environments. Many of the ten artists are themselves peripatetic, on the move between global art centers, not only New York and Beijing, but also in Latin America and Europe.

Paired artists include:

Michelle Fornabai(NYC) and Qin Feng (Beijing)
Joan Snyder (NYC) and Wei Jia (Beijing)
Alois Kronschlaeger (NYC) and Lin Yan (Beijing)
Jorge Tacla (NYC) and Li Taihuan (Beijing)
Simon Lee (NYC) and Chen Shaoxiong (Beijing)

Selected artworks illustrate parallels between the pairs’ work and themes that arose during their conversations. Some of the artists are represented by existing or historic artworks, some have created new pieces, and some have collaborated to create site-specific work. The works range from Joan Snyder’s My Pain Is No More Than Being’s Pain, which dates from 1983 and is in the Bruce Museum’s collection, to pieces created specifically for this exhibition.

website: "Tales of Two Cities: New York and Beijing" at the Bruce Museum

review: Jane L. Levere,  "A Dialogue Between Hemispheres," The New York Times.

MICHELE FORNABAI INAUGURA EXPOSIÇÃO COM BURACOS CONCEITUAIS
ENTRE OS STUDIO-X DO RIO, PEQUIM E TÓQUIO
Inclinação: escavando até a China (buracos)”, é um “poema concreto” de Michele Fornabai moldado no Studio-X Rio utilizando materiais locais, e que constrói buracos conceituais entre Pequim, Tokio, e Rio, possibilitando assim uma ocupação de paisagens imaginárias, parte da série Poesia Concreta: Atos conceituais de Arquitetura em Concreto.

Antípodas são pontos opostos entre si no planeta. É comum dizer para crianças que escavando um buraco no chão pode se chegar até a China. Na verdade, se pudéssemos cavar um buraco em Pequim atravessando o planeta, chegaríamos aproximadamente 200km de Buenos Aires. Os planos inclinados da instalação “Inclinação: escavando até a China (buracos)” tem uma angulação precisa que mapeia pontos específicos no globo, cada plano materializa uma paisagem imaginaria desses pontos. Os moldes apresentados na instalação foram moldados no Studio-X Rio durante uma residência de seis semanas da artista. Uma instalação “inversa” foi construída no Studio-X Pequim em Outubro de 2013, local antípodo ao Rio, e apresentado no Museu de Arte Yuan.

TILT: DIGGING TO CHINA (HOLES)
MICHELE FORNABAI OPENS EXHIBITION WITH CONCEPTUAL HOLES
BETWEEN STUDIO-X RIO, BEIJING AND TOKYO
Michelle Fornabai's "Tilt: digging to China (holes)," a "concrete poem" cast with local materials on location at Studio X Rio, constructs conceptual holes between Beijing, Tokyo, and Rio which allow the viewer to occupy imaginary landscapes.

Antipodes are points opposite to each other on the earth, as if one were to dig straight through the center of the earth. Children are often told when digging holes, if they dig deep enough they will dig to China. Actually, if one were to dig a hole straight through from Beijing, one would end up roughly 200 km from Buenos Aires, Argentina (so technically only a child from here could reach Beijing). This installation, "Tilt: digging to China (holes)" constructs conceptual holes between South America and Asia. Each tilted plane in the installation maps to a specific point on the globe, and each panel materializes an imaginary landscape located at this point. A site- specific installation, the castings were made in Rio de Janiero during a six-week residency at Studio X Rio in the weeks prior to exhibition. An "inverse" installation was constructed at the antipodal site in Studio X Beijing, China in October 2013 and exhibited at the Yuan Art Museum. 

link: opening at Studio X Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The benefit exhibition opens promptly at 10 AM on Saturday, December 7.  
 
The website with images of all donated works will go live on the web page at the same time but not beforehand.
 
There are no previews (keeping it fair to all) but we can tell you that many artists donate small works (approximately 14" x 14") and they are available for a donation of $350 to one of two causes:
 
THE BOSTON PEDIATRIC/FAMILY AIDS PROJECT
and/or
THE AFRICAN AIDS INITIATIVE INTERNATIONAL, INC.

The artists' generosity and purchasers of the works combine to make an incredible gesture that has been overwhelmingly appreciated.  100% of the proceeds go toward assisting children infected with AIDS and their families.  Since this benefit began, we have raised close to $750,000.
 
And so ... if you are interested in purchasing, please come in Saturday, December 7 or be ready to load the webpage the same day!  Works go swiftly and the benefit exhibition is only a few days long so please do act quickly!
 
All works will be available to view at the gallery and online as of 10 AM, December 7 (not beforehand).
 
Thank you for your support and for helping us respond to this continuing worldwide epidemic.

website: Annual Aids Benefit Auction 2013 at the Barbara Krakow Gallery

New York Beijing Here There

Curator: Yelin Qiu

Participating Artists: Lin Yan / Alois Kronschlaeger / Wei Jia / Michelle Fornabai

As boundaries seem more permeable in an increasingly globalized world, what is the nature of a place? What does it mean to produce site-specific art in this contemporary context? Perhaps the question of place no longer concerns simply the coincidence of the "here and now" but rather a nuanced consideration of the "here and there?" When “place” is increasingly losing its normative ground, “displacement” seems to become the new norm. The artists in the exhibition use various material media and artistic processes to explore a place “here”--Beijing--from a specific "over there"--New York. The works provoke reflection on "place" defined in multiple ways--materially as location, environs and circumstance, also conceptually as situation, condition and position. 

A place can be an area with definite or indefinite boundaries. A particular spot or portion of space occupied or belonging to a person or location, and yet it may be a conceptual place ("a place in one's heart), a relative standing ("to find one's place"), or even a particular situation or circumstance ("put yourself in my place") both physical and mental. From your birthplace to the place where you live, one can try to "put everything in its place" but place can still exist as a blank space to be filled. 

How do we locate "place?" Here, this place. There, that place. Yet, a place is relative to where the speaker is. It is in fact difficult to locate the artists in this exhibition --as Chinese, Chinese-American, American, living in Beijing and/or New York while working in Beijing and/or New York, or working "on location" which involves a workplace away from studio, elsewhere. While the artists may elude, all the works in the exhibition were produced for a specific location, the Yuan Art Museum. Perhaps journeying through the “location” and “dislocation” of these works, the viewers can find their own place. 

In Alois Kronschlaeger's site-specific piece, "Multicolored Grid" constructed at the Yuan Art Museum, a point in space becomes infinitely divisible, multiple and mobile, as each movement induces new perceptual experience. Lin Yan's “Sky” reflects on air quality by using ink，Xuan paper and light to track the condition of our environment, yet float across boundaries, materializing the ephemeral. 

Michelle Fornabai's "Tilt: Digging to China," a "concrete poem" cast with local materials on location at Studio X Beijing, constructs conceptual holes between Beijing and Brazil which allow the viewer to occupy imaginary landscapes. In Wei Jia's work, paper and traditional Chinese ink painting materials are transformed into conceptual ideograms experienced both physically and in the mind of the viewer.

Curator

Yelin Qiu, independent curator and art critic based in New York, graduated from Yale University with Film Studies and Political Science double-major. He helped organize Sotheby's New York's first exhibition on contemporary Chinese ink paintings. He also writes for various art magazines in New York.

website: "New York Beijing: Here There," at the Yuan Art Museum.

Curator:
Qing Pan, Curator for International Exhibitions, National Museum of China

Artists: 
George Chang
Michelle Fornabai
Liang Quan
Qin Feng

Sponsors: 
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Media Support:
The World Art Magazine

The exhibition, “One day in June,” explored the ‘spontaneous’ aspect of ink in painting and abstract film. 'Spontaneous’, by definition, is alternately described as a voluntariness or will, yet one which is inflected by pleasure, desire and frame of mind—the humor, mood, disposition and inclination of the impromptu, indeliberate, unmediated and unprompted. The ‘spontaneous’ implies a rawness of material and of untrained action balanced by self-control, determination and resolution. 

The artists in this exhibition displayed a diverse range of directions, applying chance, coincidence, accident, or incidental circumstance to disciplined mark making, thus freeing the drawing process of rational control. A series of abstract films that document a dialogue in ink between the participating artists was screened at the exhibit opening. By documenting the artists speaking to each other directly through the medium of ink, the films intended to provoke a consideration of the ineffable aspects of ink.

website: "ink--One Day in June," exhibit opening at Studio X Beijing

review: Iona Whittaker, "ink--One Day in June" in Frieze Magazine

Instantaneous and rhythmic, sensual and varied in aspect, harmonious or contrasting in structure — a philosophy in action — “ink” may incite a similarly moderated discussion of relations between abstraction and figuration; of oscillations between the material and the conceptual; of locality and temporality in indexical marks and associative meanings.
— Michelle Fornabai

Michelle Fornabai's "ink"exhibition, a series of ink-on-mylar drawings produced and exhibited for "conceptual acts in concrete," explores the question of how spontaneity as a flowing cognition, experienced through varying occupations in time, transforms ideas of habit, function, and program in the architecture of everyday life.  Having premiered at Studio-X Beijing in July 2008, "ink" now travels to Studio-X New York as part of the GSAPP's growing Studio-X Global Network Initiative.

Conceived as three “ink” events and “ink” exhibits which gradually broaden in scale and scope to be held over the course of a year—in Beijing, then New York, and again in Beijing—this series will explore ink’s rich and varied potential as a medium to reflect upon elusive aspects latent in intellectual and artistic expression.

As part of Columbia University GSAPP’s growing Global Studio-X Network Initiative, the “first truly global network for real-time exchange of projects, people, and ideas between regional leadership cities,” “ink” is proposed to foster interdisciplinary dialogues among scholars, artists, curators, calligraphers and architects in Beijing and New York. 

website: "ink" exhibit opening at Studio X New York

review: Gavin Browning "ink" in Places Journal/Design Observer

video: Mark Wigley, Qing Pan, Jonas Mekas, Michelle Fornabai on YouTube
 

墨 Ink--a discussion of the varied conceptual and material aspects of ink-- in painting, in calligraphy, and in architectural drawing.

墨黑 Inkiness blackens with pigment and tone, yet materializes all the variations of hue in the nuances of black.

 In concentration and dilution, to ink in is to implicate density, to suggest form with substance, to unify volume and movement. 

Inky suggests depth and darkness, in shade and shadow, in silhouette, yet one must infuse the brush with light.

翰墨 Opague, obscured, murky-- ink insinuates--from a glimpse of the hidden or secret, to the glimmering insight made through implication and allusion.  In thickness and fineness, ink intimates hidden relations between concrete things in the embodied gesture, drawing a coherent path in the stroke from the apparent disorder of phenomena.   To ink is to follow the inner lines of things to delineate an external reality.

墨水 An inkling mingles intuition with experience, cognition with recognition, perception with apprehension.  An enquiry through ink probes and tests, prompting and reminding through inspection and introspection.  In verve and reserve, to ink is to incarnate the rhythms and irrepressible instincts of situation and of imagination.  Mastered by practice, yet manifest the spontaneous, ink flows in the steady rhythm of gestures, unbroken.

飞白A coherent network, with an implicit factor of emptiness that allows it to function

墨迹  In ink painting, the brushstroke seeks to capture the inner line of things that have no fixed form (rocks, clouds, plum blossoms), held in mind by the artist.  Ink is both form and hue, it’s brush both instrument and gesture, it’s stroke both volume and rhythm. The ink brushstroke is not a line without depth, nor is it simply an outline of forms, but rather it is an animate stroke, which resolves the conflict between the representation of volume and the representation of movement. Both as an external reality and as an inner mind—practiced over a lifetime yet executed in a moment with a single irreversible pass of the brush--ink painting embodies circumstance and incarnates its artist, who unable to hide behind color or stylized forms, is utterly revealed ink.

 ink is both a potential material, and material potentiality.

墨 ‘mò’                           ‘ink,’ black, pigment, handwriting or painting, learning

墨黑 ‘mòhei’                   ‘black,’ pitch-dark

翰墨 ‘hànmò’                  ‘brush + ink,’ writing, painting, calligraphy (literary)

墨水 ‘mòshui’                 ‘ink + water,’ learning                 

飞白 ‘feibái’                    ‘flying white’ in brushstroke, rhetorical effectiveness in using incorrect words

墨迹 ‘mòjì’                      ‘ink + mark,’ true work (‘jì’ footprint, bloodstain, writing, remains)

墨渍 ‘mòzì’                     ‘ink + stain,’ ink blot (‘zì’ soak, stain)

罗夏墨迹测验  ‘l    ‘uó xià mò jì cè yàn’     ‘Rorschach Test’ (psychology)

绳墨 ‘shéngmò’              ‘carpenters guideline made by ink marking,’ discipline or standard

墨水绘制 ‘mò shui huì zhì’     ‘ink drafting’ (engineering)

“Am I Dressed Appropriately?”:

Tufts University Art Gallery Launches National Tour of the Exhibition

Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator

that Explores the Meanings of Clothing

September 8–November 13, 2005 • Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8, 5:30–8:30 p.m.

MEDFORD, MA – The first exhibition to explore the creative intersection of art, fashion, and human needs and desires opens September 8, 2005 at the Tufts University Art Gallery. Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator, organized by guest curator Judith Hoos Fox, will tour nationally through the spring of 2007. The exhibition includes 43 works by established and emerging artists from Germany, Italy, Spain, Honduras, Japan, England, Greece, Egypt, and the United States. The works in Pattern Language, which are either unique or editioned rather than mass-produced, include historical examples, contemporary objects, and new proposals, as well as interactive and wearable editions.

Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator investigates clothing as a means to express and fulfill primary human needs- needs of the mind, body, and soul. The works explore the interaction of clothing, fabric, and the body as a form of communication and as a way of suggesting new relationships between individuals and the coverings that protect, occlude, and redefine our bodies. The exhibition addresses a range of important themes: our need for shelter, social connections, protection, and entertainment, our desire for self-expression, and our need to articulate our identity.

Pattern Language represents guest curator Fox’s ongoing interest in art as a signpost for and critique of culture. She explains: “It is exciting to make connections between fashion and art and between art and design across generations of artists; to bring together the work of ethnically and culturally diverse artists; and to show work that involves cutting-edge technologies as well as couture tailoring.”

The exhibition will travel to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University Art Museum at the University of California Santa Barbara, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

A DVD compilation of works in the exhibition being worn or performed and a fully-illustrated 56-page catalogue with essays by Judith Hoos Fox, Robin Givhan, and Jeff Weinstein accompany the exhibition.  

"Petal Pant" by Michelle Fornabai, unfolding choreography, 2004 (below).

"possible objects | impossible figure," 2005

"possible objects | impossible figure" (2005) shows the construction choreography of unfolding the "Petal Pant" (2004) from garment to shelter—the "Petal Pant" may exist as two possible objects (a pair of pants, a tent), yet it constructs an impossible figure (the body performing the act would be doubled and turned inside out). The video accompanied the "Petal Pant" on exhibition and screened in 2010 for "No Fixed Points in Space," sponsored by the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation.

website: "Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator" at Tufts University Art Gallery

catalog: Judith Hoos Fox,  Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator on Amazon

review: Sarah Tomlinson, "Fashion Forward" in The Boston Globe

Architecture By Numbers
at Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria

From March 25 to July 9, 2004, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria will present Architecture By Numbers, an exhibition that investigates architecture and its essential relationship with the numerical. The exhibition includes drawings, digital prints, and three-dimensional work by Preston Scott Cohen, Marsha Cottrell, Michelle Fornabai, Laura Kurgan, and Ben Nicholson. Architecture By Numbers has been organized by the Whitney Museum’s adjunct curator of architecture, K. Michael Hays.

The five architects in this exhibition seek out numerical information in the architectures of objects, places, or ideas of such singularity that some may see the projects as aberrations or even obsessions. The obsessions include the mystical numbering systems of labyrinths, the digital record of extreme landscapes, complex geometrical transformations or even the landscapes of information that can be derived from punctuation marks.

From the very beginnings of architectural theory as it emerged out of Pythagorean-Platonic philosophies of harmony and proportion, to our own time when, it seems, the entirety of our experience has become digitized, architecture has been understood as a fulcrum between the material world of things and their construction, and the transcendent mathematics of the cosmos itself. Architecture exists in these projects not as a practice of building, but as a frame for thinking about specific artistic or social problems such as authorship and production, the abstract calculations endemic to contemporary space versus the particularity of spatial experience, or sociological representation versus individual expression. Architecture exists in these projects as patterns that map culture’s unconscious.

Architecture By Numbers is partially funded by the Architecture Committee, Whitney Museum of American Art.

Ben Nicholson — part architect, part mathematician, part iconologist — explores the numerology of labyrinths and the taxonomy of geometries in obsessively precise drawings and analytic notes. His ultimate goal is to correlate number, geometry, and religion, in particular the three Abrahamic religions that have made such important contributions to architecture’s history.

Preston Scott Cohen also begins in geometry, but now geometry turned back on itself, taking itself as its own subject matter. In meticulously drafted constructions, Cohen transmutes architectural figures into perspectives of perspectives, until they finally become nothing more than traces of projective geometrical processes. The animation on the LCD screen is a demonstration of similar processes performed digitally.

The digital information behind Marsha Cottrell’s work originates from keyboard characters that have been strewn, layered, repeated, scaled, spliced, and organized into myriad configurations. The typewritten units, altered in stages and subjected to an untraceable series of improvisational actions, are the foundation of a vast and expanding digital library. Cottrell extracts from and adds to this repository of virtual debris as she builds the drawing.

Laura Kurgan uses digital images, acquired by Ikonos and QuickBird satellites. The geographic location of each photograph — latitude and longitude — is expressed as a number corresponding to a unique position on the earth that the satellite's sensors are instructed to record. The heat value of each position is expressed as a number that is in turn assigned a standard color.

Between numerical information and its manipulation, and the materials and techniques of fabrication, lies the idea of pattern as explored by Michelle Fornabai. She uses mathematical algorithms to produce a series of bands of material heat-formed into reiterative loops. The resulting screen produces the visual effects of fluctuating interference and pulsating pattern.

Free gallery talks are offered every Wednesday and Friday at 1:00p.m. The Whitney Museum at Altria is funded by Altria Group, Inc. 

website: "Architecture by Numbers" at The Whitney Museum of American Art

books: Adam D. Weinberg and Shamim M. Momin, The Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria: 25 Years by Yale University Press, on Amazon

K. Michael Hays in A. Krista Sykes Constructing a New Architectural Theory: Architectural Theory 1993-2009 on Amazon

reviews: Grace Glueck, "ART IN REVIEW; 'Architecture by Numbers' -- Preston Scott Cohen, Marsha Cottrell, Michelle Fornabai, Laura Kurgan and Ben Nicholson" in The New York Times

K. Michael Hays, "Architecture By Numbers" in Praxis