Artistic interpretations of self are inhabiting the nave of Manhattan’s Church of St. Paul the Apostle, with contemporary sculpture, painting, college, and other media installed alongside the candlelit chapels and religious icons.
Joy Curtis
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The Story of 13 Artists Who Sat Down at a Communal Table
One of the group shows I was most anticipating during the 2014 Bushwick Open Studios was Communal Table, a group show curated by artist Björn Meyer-Ebrecht, and last night I attended the early opening to discover that it was most certainly worth the wait.
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Delicious Eye Candy at Socrates Sculpture Park
The Emerging Artists Fellowship Exhibition at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City is certainly worth the trek to Queens. The whimsical sculpture show, which launches a yearlong celebration of the park’s 25anniversary, was an excellent showcase for young talent. The diverse sculptures work in congress with the amazing view of Manhattan’s skyline to create an art viewing experience that is at once soothing and sublime.
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45 Artists are So Happy Together
Artist Julie Torres hosted two months of collaborative drawing nights at Hyperallergic HQ in February and March of this year. The project generated 100 drawings that are currently on display at Norte Maar in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The resulting show, titled So Happy Together: Forty-five Artists and Their One Hundred Collaborative Drawings, opened last night during the first night of the 2011 Bushwick Open Studios.
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Sculpture Today: A Discussion with Joy Curtis & Rachel Beach
On Wednesday, I wrote about two painting shows (Kristine Moran & Gianna Commito) that I felt shared an aesthetic connection. Today, I wanted to draw your attention to two sculpture shows on Ludlow Street by two artists who I’ve been following for years, Joy Curtis and Rachel Beach. Both artists make sculpture and their shows made me wonder what it must be like to be a sculptor today. I decided to interview them together via email in order to understand their work through their words. The following conversation took place this week.
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Sculpting with Ruins or Imposing Force on Matter
For her second solo exhibition at Klaus von Nichtssagend, Empty is Run About Freely, Bushwick-based sculptor Joy Curtis has created several large sculptures comprised of casts she made of interior moldings and architectural details of 77 Water Street, an unused downtown Manhattan bank building, which the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council employed as studio space during Curtis’ residency in 2009. She has been working with the material collected during this residency almost exclusively for the past year. Speaking to the work on display, Curtis told me, “[As artists] we mine the world for materials, and then we impose a force on that matter. I am interested in showing the evidence of imposing force on matter, and showing the evidence of the passage of time.”
