SUZANNE BROUGHEL | ANNA LISE JENSEN | ELAINE KAUFMANN | JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW SANDRA MACK-VALENCIA | CARRIE RUBINSTEIN | ASYA REZNIKOV | YASMIN SPIRO

Model Home presents the interdisciplinary work of eight artists from the tART collective, a New York-based network of women committed to exploring the intersections of public engagement, education and activism through visual art. In Model Home, Suzanne Broughel, Anna Lise Jensen, Elaine Kaufmann, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Sandra Mack-Valencia, Carrie Rubinstein, Asya Reznikov and Yasmin Spiro foreground a heightened awareness of the role of objects in discussing cultural value, fetishization and identity. Through a broad survey of the domestic signifiers which simultaneously enable and oppress—mops, feather dusters, ovens, rubber gloves, kitchenware, and things-to-do-lists—this exhibition critiques the notion that there is a “model home” or “archetypal lifestyle” to which universal value can be ascribed and questions the governing political, lingual and cultural forces that write this Utopian yet heavily gendered vision into being. Model Home resituates household objects and actions outside of the diverse spaces we call home and within an exhibitory context to assert that meaning is derived from the intersection of origin and context. As global citizens, these eight artists highlight travel, tourism and routes of migration as major influences on the cultural vale of everyday objects and discuss individual agency—through what could be described as a Fluxist, visual rhetoric—as it relates to desire, self and otherness.

SUZANNE BROUGHEL

Dark Matter, Band-Aids, plastic, 7′ x 5′, 2004
99 and 44/100ths Percent Pure, Ivory Soap and African Black Soap, 3″ x 5″, 2004

Statement: As a white woman making work about racial issues, my sculpture and photo installations have an ideological content that is intentional. Yet my work is also autobiographical – growing up in Yonkers, New York, I was racially sensitized from an early age. Yonkers is a town steeped in defacto segregation. My family lived just within the borders of the predominantly black school district, which led my father to pull me out of the elementary school I loved and to later instruct me to lie about my address so I could attend the “white” junior high school. My work is concerned with issues of white skin privilege and white guilt, but also more personal levels of meaning – such as sexual desire, cultural desire, desire for identity. Developing my own visual language with which to enter the dialogue on race was fraught with starts and stops. I learned that I needed to look inward first, at self and family, as part of voicing larger concerns. My art materials became everyday household items – white sheets, Band-Aids, Ivory Soap, self-tanning lotions. The resulting objects and images are not without an awkward humor, which makes the serious subject matter more approachable to viewers.

ANNA LISE JENSEN

Swedish Housing #1, diptych, unframed, Ed. 10, archival pigment prints

Cluster 3, prints sold individually or as whole cluster, each print an edition of 10. Archival pigment prints, unframed.

Statement: My work is about the making of personal space: researching, finding, creating and sharing spatial pockets outside and within existing structures – in order to rest, facilitate interactions and bring about action. Swedish Housing, are diptychs of interiors from an aunt’s first and last residence in Sweden. Moving to Sweden in her 20′s, a textile industrialist provided her employment and a maid’s room inside his home – where his descendants now run a Bed & Breakfast. The Swedish government provided her the assisted living apartment that was her home at the time of her death. The images are a reflection on traces of the living and the dead, the mirroring of the two places as well as the intermingling of public and private spheres.

ELAINE KAUFMANN

A Couple’s Bathroom (from the series International Design), 2008, graphite on paper, 12 x 9.5 inches
Island Getaway (from the series International Design), 2007, graphite on paper, 12 x 9.5 inches

Statement: Kaufmann’s work examines contemporary media in order to comment on social phenomena. By appropriating images and texts, she seeks to expose the ways in which newspapers and magazines disguise an unspoken agenda. International Design is a series of pencil drawings that appropriate the layout and text of articles about home design. In each drawing, she replaces the article’s original photograph with an image of housing in the developing world. By juxtaposing luxury with conditions stemming from rapid urbanization in the global south, she connects the fantasies of first-world affluence with the production of third-world poverty. This relationship reveals how newspapers and magazines promote the extremes of wealth and poverty as natural and unproblematic.

JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW

Duties’ Call, performance video, edition 1/5, 6 min 29 sec, 2005 (Sound score is a digital remixed version of the excerpt from the play, “Dead Man Walking” a 2002 play written by Tim Robbins)
Duties Call shows the protagonist, played by the artist, doing a chore and becoming the victim attacked by an ordinary household tool. The drama unfolds as a cynical and cathartic experience is exposed and reveals psycho-dramatic notions of desire and death.

Clean & Dry, performance video, edition 1 of 5.

Video footage is taken in Jamaica, West Indies and in Queens, N.Y. showing two perspectives of doing laundry. The clothesline of underwear is the foreground of a sunny country backdrop with an outhouse in West Jamaica. While this scenery plays, the position of each panty turns backwards subtlety, as a commentary on the modernized, capitalist way of doing laundry (in a place such as the United States), where machines are a substitute for the peaceful serenity that nature in a rural country-side provides. Sounds of each experience are interchanged and encapsulate the nostalgic feeling of being out of ones ordinary life routine, wishing that clothes would dry faster or daydreaming of being in a more peaceful place.

SANDRA MACK-VALENCIA

Mother Queen, transfer, flash paint and ink on paper, 2008, 14 x 17″ (unframed)
Domesticated Medusa, transfer and acrylic on wood panel, 2010, 36 x 42″

Statement: I grew up surrounded by the smell of oil paint, turpentine and linseed oil. I was taught to look beyond the basic colors and search for the subtle tones. A leaf was not just green; it could be yellow-green, red-green, or brown-green. This is how my father taught me to look at the world, and until today this is how I perceive it. I like to believe that I was born an artist; that it is my fate and that no matter what I do, I cannot deny it. I believe that there is a range of ways to approach a piece of art: From a strictly rational point of view, where we look for the signified, asking for answers or explanations, to a more emotional one that comes through sensations, with nothing to explain or understand, nothing to be interpreted, just open to the intensities that emanate from the work. My drawings should not be placed in either category, since they move back and forth between these two worlds. It took me a few years to realize that besides political, social or moralizing work, it was also possible to make art with a strong aesthetic component, work that obeys impulses and sensations. It is not senseless, since it comes from a process of thought like every creative act; but instead of trying to illustrate a concept or idea, it is the idea, it is the concept that comes through the hand in the form of a stroke, a color, a drip, a smudge.

ASYA REZNIKOV

Migration #2, 45-second stop animation, loop video with audio, edition of 8

CARRIE RUBENSTEIN

Lists, ink, pencil, thread, tacks, paper, variable dimensions, 2009

Statement: Lists in the circle shape were written by the artist’s younger sister, Robyn, who unexpectedly died in 2008. They were found in her apartment shortly after her death. They are lists of the dogs in Robyn’s dog-walking business. The five center lists are a combination of found objects from the apartment and written by the artist. They document the time and days before and during Robyn’s death.

YASMIN SPIRO

Comfort
synthetic fur, plaster, synthetic hair, pins.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT:

[panman productions.com]

Contact : art@panmanproductions.com

[nicowheadon.com]
[tartnyc.org]

Share on Facebook

In the field of guitar performance Dieter is deeply committed to the diffusion of new music, specially of Latin America, having recently performed works by Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Mario Davidovsky.

co-presented by the NYCCGS and Roger Smith Arts

The Solarium, 16th floor at The Roger Smith Hotel
Tickets $15, includes wine and cheese
pay at the door, cash only

For reservations, email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com
or call 212.339.2092

LISTINGS INFORMATION:
Dieter Hennings plays The Second Sundays Classical Guitar Concert
Roger Smith Arts & The New York City Classical Guitar Society
The Solarium at The Roger Smith Hotel
501 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, 47th and Lexington
Subway: E, 6, V to 53rd and Lexington or 4, 5, 6, 7 to Grand Central
June 13th, 2010 at 4pm
$15 includes wine and cheese
212-339-2092
http://secondsundays.tumblr.com

Share on Facebook

Everyone’s working full speed with the setup and we already got some interesting art on the scene. Stay tuned for more as this installation progresses!

Here’s the link to the main article:

TheGreatNude Invitational

Catch you guys later,
DannyGoulash

Friday, May 14th

The setup is complete and large amounts of paintings and artifacts are displayed all over the Mezzanine floor of Roger Smith Hotel. Here are the results of the hard work put in the last two days!

Recap of the finished Great Nude Invitational show with Danika Druttman of the LAB gallery.

Share on Facebook

Private Preview: May 13 4pm-6pm VIP’s/Media/Art Professionals

Opening Night Reception: May 13 6pm – 9pm $20.

Daily Admission: May 14,15,16 12pm – 6pm $10.
2 for $10 with Invitational Postcard
$5 with valid museum membership card
$5 – Seniors and Students with valid ID’s

Drawing Workshop: May 14 & 16 1:30pm – 3pm Included with Daily Admission Fri & Sun

Evening Admission: May 14 & 15 6pm – 11pm $25. Includes 1 Free drink
8pm – 11pm Sketch Party with Nude Models

Visit http://www.thegreatnude.tv/invitational/Schedule.html
RSVP to media@thegreatnude.tv
Contact: Robert Curcio: 1-646-220-2557
Media/Art Professionals: http://www.thegreatnude.tv/invitational/press/press-registration.php

Opening Night Reception on Thursday, May 13th is from 6pm to 9pm; Live Nude Sketch Parties on May 14th and 15th. Come draw the models with exhibiting artists or just have a drink and view the Invitational. On Sunday May 16th, join our Panel discussion The Nude in Contemporary Art with exhibiting artists, and then join Sherry Camhy presenting two drawing workshops sponsored by Faber-Castell. Discounts for Lilly’s Bar & Restaurant downstairs are available and The Roger Smith Hotel is offering a discount of 10% on any during the event, which includes Full-Access Pass to the Invitational.See Schedule/Tickets online in order to purchase advance tickets for reception, events, hotel package and other information.

Donald Kuspit, noted curator, writer and Invitational Host Committee member, in his essay The Nude Ascending, sets the tone for the Invitational — The nudes in this exhibition do not comfortably settle down in pre-ordained grooves of art, but convey the élan vital of the body, promising the aesthetic perfection of ideal beauty—the sensuous and sensual subtlety of the body sublimated in epitomizing form–without denying the vulnerability of the all too human living flesh.  In other words, they are as full of mind as they are ripe with matter.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Doug Auld, Meredith Bergmann, Sherry Camhy, Bob Clyatt, Janet A. Cook, Camilla Fallon, Tapp Francke, Chambliss Giobbi, Scott Goodwillie, Krzysztof Izdebski-Cruz, Mary Larsen, Daniel Maidman, Walter Robinson, Paula Rubino, Eric Sonntag, Nicolas Turner, Francine Turk, Marc Vinciguerra, Jeffrey Wiener. Corpus Hermeticum: Odd Nerdrum, Adam Miller, Richard T. Scott and Fedele Spadafora. http://www.thegreatnude.tv/invitational/exhibitors/artists/Exhibitor-List.html

Sponsors/Partners

Get a 10% Discount at The Roger Smith during TheGreatNude Invitational
Use code “GNI” when making your reservation
Guests also receive a Full Access Pass to TheGreatNude Invitational and a 10% discount at Lily’s Bar & Restaurant.
Click to make reservations online at www.rogersmith.com

Share on Facebook

Opening night was a huge hit and guests were truly impressed with Susan’s talent.

Having once given up her dream because it seemed impossible, Susan Suh learned a valuable life lesson that one should never stop dreaming. Wings allow you to fly and she incorporates their aesthetic into her collection. Her jewelry signifies strength and elegance.

Our Video:

Store Hours: M-F 11am-8pm

Sat 12pm- 7pm, Sun 12pm- 6pm

For Mother’s Day we are doing a special giveaway!

Enter for a chance to win the Double Wings Necklace in sterling silver from the Freedom & Hope Collection.

Contest rules (US residents only):

1. Must be a fan of Susan Suh Jewelry on facebook and

2. Post a picture of you and your mother on the Susan Suh Jewelry fan page.

Contest begins: NOW

Contest Ends: May 1, 2010

The winner will be announced on May 1st at 2pm @RS POP-UP Shop, 501 Lexington Ave. & 47th St. NYC.

Share on Facebook

Recognized as one of the leading guitarists and guitar composers of the 21st century, Brad Richter has reinvigorated the guitar repertoire with a freshness and unaffectedness that transcends preconceived genres.

Brad began to compose music and teach himself to play guitar age 12. By 18, having had no formal musical training, he was awarded the Presidential Scholarship to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago where he began performing, composing, and eventually teaching professionally. After completing his undergraduate degrees in performance and composition, Brad accepted a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London where he studied with guitarist Carlos Bonell. He became the first guitarist in the college’s history to win the coveted Thomas Morherr Prize, and went on to win the Royal College of Music guitar competition before completing his Master’s degree and returning to the US to continue his concert career.

Throughout North America and Europe, Brad has performed as a soloist, with renowned chamber ensembles and in duos with artists such as Grammy winning cellist, David Finckel of the Emerson String Quartet. His performances and compositions are frequently heard on NPR and PBS stations around the United States and he has also written and performed the score for the Emmy award winning PBS television series, The Desert Speaks.

While at home in Tucson, Arizona, Brad teaches music at the University of Arizona and is the Artistic Director of Lead Guitar!, a not-for-profit he co-founded in 2006 which establishes guitar programs in schools around the country with large populations of at-risk-youth. He also enjoys hiking, running, biking and playing his guitar in the mountains and deserts that surround Tucson. The rugged beauty of the American southwest continues to be a source of inspiration for much his music.

“Richter’s compositions carry the audience away into a world of magical sounds. He captures typical American themes and transforms them into imaginative original music. His cultivated playing is as highly developed as the intelligent sound language of his compositions which move the listener with its emotional depths.”

(Concertino 1/2004)

co-presented by the NYCCGS and Roger Smith Arts

The Solarium, 16th floor at The Roger Smith Hotel

Tickets $15, includes wine and cheese

pay at the door, cash only

For reservations, email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

or call 212.339.2092.

Share on Facebook

The Penthouse, The Roger Smith Hotel  Sunday, May 2nd 2010  4-6pm

Tickets are free, seating is limited

Roger Smith Arts in pleased to announce Science Friction, a discussion series addressing the touted and contested grounds of collaborations between arts and sciences.

In this salon-style event, two notable artscientists will present their individual and collaborative work followed by a Q&A session.
Science Friction #2 will include Adrienne Klein, Director of Special Projects in the Office of Research at the Graduate Center of CUNY. She is also an artist and co-Director of Science And The Arts, a National Science Foundation-supported series of public programs. Also speaking is Virgil Wong, an artist, and Associate Director of Web & Multimedia at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is also Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The New School, and a PhD candidate in Cognitive Studies and Intelligent Technologies at Columbia University.

For more information, or  to reserve seats please contact Danika Druttman at email: rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com or phone: 212.339.2092

A Salon Discussion Series
The Penthouse, The Roger Smith Hotel
Sunday, May 2nd 2010
4-6pm
Tickets are free, seating is limited

Roger Smith Arts is a multi-disciplinary arts production company providing cultural entertainment as a way to promote dialogue within and between the leading disciplines of the New York and global art worlds. The company’s mission is to establish itself as a pre-eminent and sought after cultural institution to the city of New York. Recognizing dialogue as the backbone of any cultural organization, RSA embraces variety as a means to foster the exchange of creative ideas. RSA produces performance art and site-specific installation exhibits, jazz and acoustic singer/songwriter concerts, poetry readings, chamber music concerts, and ongoing speaker series, all with leading creative intellectuals of their various fields.

Share on Facebook

These films are in connection with the Brooklyn International Film Festival and John is super excited and pumped for the busy workdays and late nights. Here’s a detailed description of what’s going to happen and how much everyone is looking forward to the upcoming times! Enjoy!

Share on Facebook

Clean the Room by Dmitry Povolotsky from Panman Productions on Vimeo.

“Clean the Room”, is a film about mistaken identity and serendipity.   This physical comedy, which takes place in the Penthouse of the Roger Smith Hotel is a modern day Cinderella story in which the dreams of a maid strangely come true, while she cleans a messy hotel room. Clean the Room won Best Film at the Roger Smith Shorts Film Festival in August 2009.

About the Director

Dmitry Povolotsky is a writer, director, and choreographer living in Brooklyn. At the age of ten, he was selected to attend the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow to study classical ballet. After graduating from the academy nine years later, Dmitry was awarded a full scholarship to Juilliard in New York City where he received a BFA in modern dance and choreography.

Dmitry remained in New York City to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet for eight seasons and to teach ballet and choreograph for inner city youth at the Harlem School of the Arts.

After making his first short film in 2003, Dmitry left the dance world to study film at Columbia University Film Division. PAL/SECAM, his thesis film, has played at 40 film festivals all over the world, has won several prestigious film awards and was sold to 6 territories so far.

Credits

Written and Directed by Dmitry Povolotsky

Story Idea by Bilge Ebiri
Executive Producers -?Brendan Crane, ?John Knowles
Cast?Maid – Susan Brady

Bobby – Michael Mason

Superstar – Sarah Lilley

Crew

Director of Photography – Christina Voros

Art Direction – Julia Cairo

Assistant Director – Rebecca Conroy

Sound – Marin Conroy

Editor – Julia Kots
Wardrobe Provided by CMarchuska and The Green Room NYC

Special Thanks to the Roger Smith Hotel

Share on Facebook

Pia Gazarek-Offermann has been playing the violin since the age of four. Her music education was at the Spezialschule für Musik in Wernigerode. She then studied classical guitar with Prof. Thomas Offermann and Jens Wagner at several music schools in Berlin, Weimar and Bremen. In addition to her guitar studies she was a member of the internationally renowned Youth Radio Choir of Wernigerode and the international prize-winning Vocal Consort Weimar. Her musical and artistic formation has continued to include Masterclasses with Roberto Aussel, David Russell and Hopkinson Smith and many others. In 1994 she was a prize-winner at the International Classical Guitar Competition in Cracow, Poland.

Pia Gazarek-Offermann has given concerts in several European countries as well as in Asia and North America. She currently teaches in Berlin and is active as a jurist and teacher at several international competitions and festivals.

“…Exceedingly demanding, the music shone scrupulously on key and was full of such splendid finesse that the audience didn’t know whether it was coming or going… With hard glissandi and rapid runs Pia Gazarek-Offermann seemed to want to beat the truth out of her guitar…she conjured a cornucopia of atmospheric pictures – intoxicating…” – Bonner Rundschau

co-presented by the NYCCGS and rogersmitharts

The Penthouse, 16th floor

The Roger Smith Hotel

Tickets $15, includes wine and cheese

pay at the door, cash only

For reservations, email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

or call 212.339.2092.

Share on Facebook