Model Home
Posted on 07. Jul, 2010 by Birdsong in Art at Roger Smith, Arts, Community
MODEL HOME : ON VIEW JULY 1 – AUGUST 15, 2010. The 16th floor Solarium @ The Roger Smith Hotel
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]
Fourth Sundays Chamber Music Series: Jason Eckardt
Posted on 09. Apr, 2010 by Editor in Arts, Chamber Music Series, Events, Hotel
Sunday april 25th, 4pm
The Talea Ensemble, along with the iO Quartet, presents “When Music Becomes Unruly”. The concert focuses on award-winning composer Jason Eckardt’s 16 for flute and string trio. Jason writes, “The work’s title refers to the sixteen words that should have been excised from George Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” This false claim illustrates the policy of deceit typical of the morally impoverished current administration. As an artist angered and ashamed by my country’s actions, my deepest response is expressed in my work and my faith in art’s ability to contribute to, if not transform , society.
Additionally Jason has curated the concert. Complementing his work will be Brahms’ fierce and tragic c minor String Quartet. Jason will speak about the ideas of struggle and adversity within a musical work.
The Solarium, The Roger Smith Hotel
tickets $15 on the door, cash only
includes wine and cheese
For reservations please contact 212.339.2092
or rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com
Fourth Sundays Chamber Music Series: Stefano Gervasoni 3/28
Posted on 22. Mar, 2010 by Editor in Arts, Chamber Music Series, Events, Hotel
Sunday, March 28th @ 4pm
As part of the Talea Ensemble’s Out of Italy Festival to celebrate Italian Contemporary Music, the Talea Ensemble has invited Composer Stefano Gervasoni to curate and attend the March 28th concert, which will feature his viola solo, Tornasole, Franz Schubert’s Quartettsätz and Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade performed by the iO Quartet. Mr. Gervasoni will discuss his work as well as trends in Italian Contemporary Music.
Hugo Wolf Italian Serenade
(performed by the iO Quartet)
Stefano Gervasoni Tornasole for solo viola
(performed by Elizabeth Weisser, Talea Ensemble)
Franz Schubert Quartettsätz
(performed by the iO Quartet)
The Solarium, The Roger Smith Hotel
tickets $15 on the door, cash only
includes wine and cheese
For reservations please contact 212.339.2092
or rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com
Second Sundays Guitar Series: Daniel Acsadi
Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by Editor in Arts, Chamber Music Series, Events, Hotel
Sunday March 14th, 4PM.
Daniel Acsadi is the Director of the Boston Classical Guitar Society and is finishing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at New England Conservatory with Eliot Fisk. Through his acclaimed performances, arrangements, and teaching, Dan is a passionate advocate for both the guitar and the music of his native Hungary. Dan’s arrangements encompass art and folk music of the 18th through 21st centuries, innovatively expanding the guitar’s repertoire. He is firmly committed to the guitar as a versatile chamber music instrument, performing regularly with voice, viola, violin, flute string quartet, and guitar ensemble. Beginning his musical studies at age six, Dan earned his M.M. from New England Conservatory (NEC) and B.A. from Cornell University, where he double majored in music and economics. Dan has previously studied with Pablo Cohen and John Hall, and has performed in the masterclasses of Manuel Barrueco, Leo Brouwer, Eduardo Fernandez, and Adam Holzman. Dan maintains a large and diverse teaching studio in the Boston area.
co-presented by the NYCCGS and RogerSmithArts
The Solarium, 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
Fourth Sunday’s Concert Series
Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by Editor in Arts, Chamber Music Series, Events, Hotel
New Music quartet loadbang presents a unique program of all-original music conceived by members of the group. Each member (Alejandro Acierto, bass clarinet; Jeff Gavett, baritone voice; Andy Kozar, trumpet; Will Lang, trombone) has contributed equally to the project by composing one quarter of the program.
These new pieces take advantage of loadbang’s facility in improvisation, while pushing the ensemble in new directions. Andy Kozar’s work for this concert is a kind of translation; Chinese characters are stripped of their semantic meaning and broken down into shapes to be realized as musical contours. Jeff Gavett’s work is concerned primarily with formal aspects of time. Large temporal divisions are delineated with great specificity, but the ensemble is left to fill these durations on the fly, improvising and imitating one another. Finally, one half of the group’s compositional personalities will be heard for the first time as Alejandro Acierto and Will Lang will present their premier compositions for loadbang.
All of the works to be presented are literally experimental: each performer-composer has branched out into unknown territory musically and notationally. Guided improvisation. Game pieces. Graphic scores. Loadbang’s originals straddle these categories.
The Solarium, The Roger Smith Hotel
Tickets $15 at the door, cash only
For reservations please contact 212.339.2092
or rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com
Classical Guitarist Mattias Jacobsson, Sunday 1/10 at 4pm
Posted on 08. Jan, 2010 by admin in Arts, Chamber Music Series, Events, Hotel
Mattias Jacobsson 4:00pm in the Solarium, 16th floor Roger Smith Hotel, 47th and Lexington, NYC Tickets $15 – Free wine and cheese Reservations, email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com or call (212) 339-2092
As the chosen guitarist for Televisión Española’s centennial celebration of Francisco Tárrega,Mattias Jacobsson has emerged as one of the up-and-coming guitarists on the international stage today. The program “Es Música” will be broadcast bi-weekly throughout 2009.
Engagements include concerto appearances in The United States and Sweden, live performances at WQXR Radio and performances with guitarist Sharon Isbin at the Aspen Music Festival where they performed music by Howard Shore from Martin Scorsese’s movie The Departed, which was later broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today to an audience of 1.1 million. In June, 2008, Mr. Jacobsson was featured in the BBC documentary series “Imagine” about Oliver Sacks; in August, 2008, he replaced Angel Romero in both Concierto de Aranjuez andFantasia para un Gentilhombre by Rodrigo; and in March, 2009, he made his debut with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
At the age of 17, Mr. Jacobsson made his recital debut at the Stockholm International Guitar Festival on very short notice, immediately followed by a tour of Estonia, along with his first recording album containing music by Bach, Poulenc, Mertz, Lauro, Albéniz, Sor and Tárrega. Since then, he has performed with principal members of Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and The Royal Danish Opera, and has been broadcast on BBC, TVE, WQXR, NPR and SRP2, the Swedish classical radio. He has also made recital and chamber music appearances in major Swedish venues as well as Alice Tully Hall, New York.
Born in Sweden in November, 1984, Mattias Jacobsson began studying the guitar with Erik Möllerström and Bo Hansson. He continued his studies at the Malmö Academy of Music with Göran Söllscher and Gunnar Spjuth and at The Juilliard School with Sharon Isbin.
Mr. Jacobsson plays exclusively on guitars by Thomas Fredholm.
Tommonlino at the Roger Smith Hotel
Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by AdamWallace in Art at Roger Smith, Arts, Community, Events, Hotel
On Thursday August 20, 2009 Damon Tommolino opened his art exhibit that embodies the concentration of time and space of sequential motion.
Artist Statement:
The common link between the thoughts behind my work is that I am extremely interested in the ongoing argument between Creationism vs. Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design vs. The Ancient Mystery vs. Who we really are today.
The point of my paintings is to provoke as much thought as possible. I try hard not to overly point a viewer in any one specific direction. I don’t believe this is my job as an artist. I would much rather present several ideas or options or paths for any viewer to take throughout any given piece. Therefore, I purposely leave a certain amount of ambiguity in the work. At its best, viewers will be able to make connections between the characters I paint and their own lives.
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I strive to bring awareness to the way in which we live. My paintings reflect our society, our nation, and our most intimate relationships. Is there room for improvement or growth in our lives?
Love the Art. Molly Barnes and Damon talk about artist etiquette , and the nature of collectors in an art market.
Tommolino, Salvador Dali’s “Un Chien Anadalou” and The Morning Pages (LIVE)
Posted on 19. Aug, 2009 by AdamWallace in Arts, Community, Events
On Thursday August 20, 2009 join us for a very special evening of great art, film and music. Damon Tommolino opens the evening with an art exhibit that embodies the concentration of time and space of sequential motion.
Tommolino’s solo exhibit is followed by the 1929 short film “Un Chien Adalou,” written by Salvador Dali.
Closing the night, The Morning Pages play live what Time Out NY writes, “Rootsy combo the Morning Pages is based in Brooklyn but delivers a pleasingly vintage, warm, country-rock sound that’s far more suggestive of Nashville. ”
6 PM Tommolino Opening Reception
9 PM Special Screenig of “Un Chien Andalou” written by Salvador Dali (16 minutes)
10 PM Live Music by The Morning Pages
The event will be held in the 16th floor Solarium of the Roger Smith Hotel, 501 Lexington Ave. (at 47th st).
Suggested donation of $5
4222 Studio Visits: Tommolino
Posted on 12. Aug, 2009 by AdamWallace in Arts, the LAB
Tommolino said that he would let me do the studio visit under two circumstances: one, that we drink a bottle of fine brandy together, two, we play chess. Being an obligatory creature I had no objections to Damons clauses. Then he smiled. Thats what Damon Tommolino is like: a morsel of truth encased in an even finer casing of truth, which is always humor, the heart of the Universe. There was an even more exacting truth all of this that I was aware of. If I stood to produce any coherent work myself I would need to seek out the visionary eye of somebody who I trusted. Thats where Abi Prince came in. Abi is a Panman Production colleague, but more importantly a visionary filmmaker and editor that I knew could handle the surreal nature of this encounter. Regardless we were not about to take any chances so Damon made sure to keep filling Abis glass with fine African Shiraz. What was recorded that evening was the delicate, unadulterated, result(s) of the incident of three artists coming together to make sense of the world around them through each others eyes. – Marlo L. Brown, film maker
