On May 20, Kenya (Robinson) and Illya Szilak will discuss health and sexuality issues in prisons, through the lens of fleshlights.
Nurture Art
Posted inArt
From Books by Black Women to Electricians’ Stories, a Show Catalogues Alternative Archives
An exhibition at Nurture Art features evolving collections of art and testimony from people too often left out of official histories.
Posted inArt
Peruse a Pop-Up Library of Books by Black Women Authors in Bushwick
On April 2, exchange and peruse books by black women authors at OlaRonke Akinmowo’s Free Black Women’s Library at NURTUREart.
Posted inArt
Art Is Free …Sometimes
There are many an artist who dedicate themselves to subverting the commodification of their own work and the current exhibition at Nurture Art, Is This Free?, addresses the topic with a three-part summer exhibition.
Posted inArt
Bushwick Basel, a Very Small Art Fair
Despite Bushwick Basel’s tongue-in-cheek name, the title suits this new art fair, as it is an art fair, albeit a very, very small one. Bushwick Basel, which consisted this year of 11 local galleries, is the kind of fair you could imagine Nada or Pulse being like when they first began — a fair that features fresh work made by young artists, presented by small galleries in a somewhat casual fashion. Standing in Bushwick Basel, you can also imagine this fair growing exponentially, if it continues in subsequent years.
Posted inArt
Risky Business
A liver shot in boxing is a short, quick body punch delivered to the liver with a left hook. The effect can be devastating. (Bernard Hopkins knocked out Oscar De La Hoya with such a shot.) Unfortunately, the tool is often overlooked in today’s prizefights, as boxers prefer headhunting with right-hand crosses aimed at the opponent’s chin. What does the liver shot have to do with Nuture Art’s new show, Systemic Risk? Not much. The exhibition, unlike the body punch, exists in the realm of ideas; it’s a cerebral affair.
Posted inArt
WTF Is Up with Bushwick? Panel Discussion on the Future of Its Art Scene This Thurs
Hyperallergic has always kept its finger on the pulse of Bushwick’s growing art scene. This Thursday Hyperallergic editor, Hrag Vartanian, broadens the discussion, as he moderates the “Confronting Bushwick: A Discussion on the Nature and Future of the Bushwick Art Scene” panel at Bushwick’s Bogart Salon, one of the galleries in the burgeoning 56 Bogart Street art building.
Posted inArt
Reflecting on Nurture Art’s “We Are” Summer Experiment
We Are is Nurture Art’s summer innitative. All summer the nonprofit has lent its gallery space out to a number of Brooklyn-based artists, curators and galleries. According to the organization’s website: “This hybrid between art festival, short-term residency program and neighborhood jamboree is a honest statement of identification with the people that make our community.”
Posted inNews
Nurture Art Moving to Heart of Bushwick’s Art Scene
The well-respect nonprofit arts organization Nurture Art signed a lease today for a new space at 56 Bogart Street, which is quickly transforming into the hub of Bushwick’s burgeoning nonprofit arts and gallery scene.
Posted inArt
Summer Guests in Bushwick
The mercury in your thermometer can easily climb to 100+ degrees during these dog days of summer in north Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. The concrete streets are helplessly desolate and even the Bushwick pigeons seem to have given up. Bushwick has been quieter lately, and the local art scene might have been hiding in the close proximity of blasting air conditioners most of the time, but even with all these factor you can definitively say that it certainly is not dead. In fact, several prominent Bushwick galleries and art spaces opted out of the summer break and have been serving up refreshing art options.
Posted inArt
Is Ornament a Crime?
A small coconut tree grows in the corner of Nurture Art. Simply titled “Coconut” (2009), and created by artist Gudmundur Thoroddsen, the leaves seem to reach towards the skylight. A certain twist makes it art — a few of the leaves are painted pink. It resembles one of Matisse’s colorful trees come to life. A plain tree might boast a simple elegant beauty, but Thoroddsen’s concoction proves that an injection of pink can be such a guilty visual pleasure.
Like this tree, many works in this show, titled Duck and Decorated Shed, start with a bland surface and cover it with visual pepper. Theresa Himmer’s set of videos from 2009, The Mountain Series, zoom in on these humongous sequins that are adhered to the sides of unremarkable buildings in Reykjavik. They glisten with a strange glow. Himmer also pulls some basic film tricks that involve playing with the speed of the film. The end result is that this footage resembles clay-mation. Once again, nature looks cooler when it’s tweaked.
Posted inArt
Beyond Monotony: Nietzsche’s Eternal Return at Nurture Art
Repetition in art can be so juicy … when it’s done right. But second-rate minimalism has so deeply traumatized all us with its dull monotony and draining sense of sameness. Indeed, the fear that your favorite professor heard or saw you yawning after the 18th Judd slide in that dark lecture room binds us all together. But there is another facet of repetition that minimalism’s fierce rejection of ornament and narrative has left un-explored. The show closing tomorrow at Nurture Art, titled Eternal Return, reveals a more vivacious take on recurring forms.
