PROPS: A Moment of Silence?

Shikeith, Still from A Moment Of Silence?, single channel experimental video, 1:00 duration, 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Silent video by Philadelphia-based artist speaks volumes on racism

BlackArtistNews | July 4, 2015

We hold these truths:

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress signed the United States Declaration of Independence. That document certified the birth of a nation and its intent to sever ties with the British Empire.

Unfortunately, the white male patriarchal system that dominated European culture remained embedded in America’s DNA. The men who drafted and co-signed on the belief that “all men are created equal” didn’t regard African slaves as human, let alone men.

To be self evident:

So how do Black Americans celebrate an event that has nothing to do with their independence?

Multi-disciplinary artist Shikeith’s video “A Moment of Silence?” should spark some ideas.  

On the surface, it’s a poignant tribute to the victims of Charleston, NC and the countless number of Black lives quieted through racist practices in America.

More deeply, it offers viewers sound advice for breaking the silence on prejudice and discrimination.

Shikeith uses the black male body as a symbol for the dark, damaging effects of racism. It’s not something we want to ‘look’ at but we must. It’s uncomfortable. As it should be.

But he also uses it as a point of reason: rallying viewers to strip themselves from the misbelief that we will experience greater mobility if we conceal our vulnerability inside a cloak of invisibility. When that mindset comes to an end, we will have created an independence worth celebrating.

All men are created equal, [and] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

"A Moment of Silence?" questions Black perspectives on independence but it is also a visual testimonial that we shall overcome.

SHOW AND TELL: Terry Crews Reveals Secret Art Practice

1995 photo of actor Terry Crews with a work in progress (circa 1995). Image via sikids.com.

Actor shares his art portfolio during talk show appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live 

Text | Benjamin Sutton for artnet news

Published | September 4, 2014

Actor, former NFL player, Old Spice commercials star, and forthcoming Who Wants To Be a Millionaire host Terry Crews has another skill: He’s a talented artist. He revealed as much [during the September 3rd airing of] Jimmy Kimmel Live, sharing his portfolio of photorealistic sports paintings and sketches. His works are reminiscent of sports art giant Daniel A. Moore, though presumably Crews hasn’t faced the same kind of legal hardships as Moore over copyrighted team logos, colors, and other insignia.

Before Crews set out to become a football player, he honed his art craft in a most improbable setting.

“I come from Flint, Michigan,” Crews told Kimmel. “My first job in entertainment, I drew courtroom sketches for the worst murder case in Flint, Michigan history.” His talents with pen and paintbrush were such that when it came time for Crews to head to college, it was his art rather than his athleticism that opened doors. “I had an art scholarship before I had a football scholarship,” he explained.

During his brief career as a professional football player, Crews kept up his studio practice, even depending on it for extra income.

“I would get cut from a team—I played on six teams in seven years, so that happened a lot—so I would go back into the locker room and ask the players if they wanted their portraits painted,” he told Kimmel. “That’s how I survived, I was always on the end of the roster, I was never a big superstar, I was an 11th round draft pick. Humility gets you far. You gotta make some money, you gotta humble yourself…It would literally take me about two months to do a painting, and they would give me like $5,000 and I would survive off that, my whole family survived off that.”

Watch the whole segment with Terry Crews on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

Source Link

VIDEO: Floyd D. Tunson

Floyd D. Tunson: Chasing The Elephants Out Of The Room

Directed by Clifton Johnson Jr., Luke Atencio  and Wylene Carol

Video description:

Floyd D. Tunson holds a Master's Degree in Studio Art. His work is in the collections of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Denver Art Museum, the Kaiser Permanente Corporation, the Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American Art and Polly and Mark Addison. Tunson's eclecticism includes photography, printmaking, drawing, painting, mixed media, and sculpture. 

Floyd D. Tunson: Chasing The Elephants Out Of The Room from Luke Atencio on Vimeo.

VIDEO: Kerry James Marshall - Painting and Other Stuff

Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff (28 February – 4 May 2014) from Kunsthal Charlottenborg on Vimeo.

Film & Interview by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller

From vimeo.com:

Kunsthal Charlottenborg proudly presents the first solo exhibition in Denmark by the renowned and iconic American painter Kerry James Marshall. The exhibition centers on historiography, identity politics and the history and construction of art. The exhibition is the result of the cooperation with three other acknowledged European art institutions: M HKA (Antwerp), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid) and Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona).

Kerry James Marshall, Mementos, 1999. Image via kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk.

Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff

February 28 – May 4,2014

Kunstal Charlottenborg

Nyhaavn 2

Copenhagen, Denmark

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Crossing the Line - Contemporary Drawing and Artistic Process

Curated by Dexter Wimberly and Larry Ossei-Mensah

July 11 – August 16, 2013

MIXED GREENS

531 West 26^th Street, 1^st Floor

New York, NY

Mixed Greens is proud to present Crossing the Line: Contemporary Drawing and Artistic Process, a group exhibition co-curated by Dexter Wimberly and Larry Ossei-Mensah. The curators initiate an expansive visual discourse that brings the act of drawing front and center, showing its importance as the foundation of art making. Crossing the Line features new works by a group of emerging female artists hailing from Nigeria, the Dominican Republic/Haiti, South Korea, Trinidad, Iran, and the United States. All are exploring drawing within the context of their dynamic artistic practices and re-defining how drawing fits into the broader global contemporary art conversation. The exhibition presents distinct approaches to representational and abstract drawing, as well as experimental, site-specific mixed media and video installations that are equally influenced by drawing.

The Artists:

Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze is a Brooklyn-based artist of Nigerian birth and British upbringing who has found empowerment in the authenticity of the hybrid. Amanze was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to create a new body of work in her native Nigeria to fully piece together the gaps in her identity. She has been greatly influenced by memories of architecture and space, the politics of home, nomadic stories, and urban landscapes. Drawing from her background in textiles and printmaking, Amanze’s drawings reflect a fragmented and layered material sensibility that is highly intuitive to process. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2004 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy in 2006. Residencies have included Cooper Union in NYC and Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ.

Firelei Báez is a Haitian-Dominican artist who makes large-scale, intricate works on paper indebted to a convergence of interests in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity, and “women’s work.” Her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies. Such societies often utilize cultural ambiguities to build psychological and even metaphysical defenses against cultural invasions. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union’s School of Art in 2004, participated in The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, and received an MFA from Hunter College in 2010. Her residencies include The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace and The Lower East Side Print Shop. Báez’s work has been written about in The New York Times, The LA Times, and Art in America, among others. She was a recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award as well as the Jaque and Natasha Gelman Award in Painting.

Born in Queens NY, Oasa Sun DuVerney’s works on paper and video performances use consumerist culture as a means to unmask our society’s collective aggression. DuVerney received her MFA from Hunter College and is the 2011 recipient of the Tony Smith Award. She exhibits her work nationally and has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Gotham Gazette. She also won awards from the Brooklyn Arts Council and the Citizens Committee for “The Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine,” a public project which brings together a small Brooklyn neighborhood every summer to confront gentrification through art making. In 2012, DuVerney’s work was exhibited in the three-person exhibition, Through a glass, darkly, at Postmasters Gallery in NYC and the group exhibition, Me Love You Long Time, at Aljira Art Center in Newark, NJ. She is currently an LMCC Workspace Artist-in-Residence. DuVerney lives in Brooklyn.

Sanam Enayati was born in the United States and raised in Tehran, Iran. Her newest body of work investigates the physicality of basic human emotions. By identifying one emotion and letting it transform and overlap with another, Enayati seeks to create a new, non-familiar space/reality through a series of “feminine” and “domestic” processes, repetitive movements, and obsessive behaviors. The emotions inspire a series of compulsive movements within the non-familiar space/reality, transmuting an orderly, obsessively made space into complete chaos. After making marks as memories of that space, Enayati then abandons the space and enters into the nostalgic episodes by making drawings and paintings. Enayati holds a BFA from the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, IL, an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and a Masters of Fashion Design focused on sociology and psychology from Istituto Marangoni in Milan, Italy.

Heeseop Yoon was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She is known for her large-scale line drawing installations and very intricate black and white drawings. Yoon’s concentrated freehand drawings record cluttered spaces and comment most directly on the (in)accuracy of perception. She holds her BFA from Chung-ang University in Seoul and an MFA from City College of NY. Yoon has had solo and two-person shows at prestigious venues including Triple Candie, NYC; Smack Mellon, NYC; and Arario Gallery, Seoul, South Korea. She has exhibited in museums and art centers internationally, including MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; John Michael Kholer Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; The Bronx Museum, NYC; Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea; and CAST, Australia and Median Art Center, Beijing, China. She has participated in several residencies including the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program, Skowhegan’s School of Painting and Sculpture, Artist Alliance Inc, and Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen in Germany. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

The Curators:

Contemporary art curator and entrepreneur, Dexter Wimberly, was born and raised in Brooklyn. Curatorially, Wimberly focuses on contemporary urban history. “I love art that reflects our times, and I am excited to be in the position to work with artists who are shaping contemporary culture and bringing the beauty of under-exposed aspects of modern life to a greater public. I feel that this is my calling within the arts.” A passionate collector and supporter of the arts, Wimberly has personally exhibited the work of more than 70 individual artists. Dexter Wimberly also maintains a critical dialogue with emerging artists throughout the world by way of group exhibitions, public programs, and lectures at institutions such as The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Brooklyn Historical Society, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), The Savannah College of Art and Design, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The Brooklyn Arts Council.

Larry Ossei-Mensah is an independent curator and cultural critic who has emerged as dynamic voice for the rising creative class. Ossei-Mensah is a modern day flâneur who documents cultural and contemporary art happenings for various publications such as Arise, Uptown, and Whitewall Magazine in addition to his personal blog My Global Hustle. His writings include profiles of Swizz Beatz, El Anatsui, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, Rashid Johnson, and Derrick Adams. In 2009, Ossei-Mensah was featured in the NY Times Styles section curated by the legendary Bill Cunningham “Celebrating Art and Music.” The multihyphenate Ossei-Mensah was chosen for Young Curators, New Ideas IV in the summer of 2012 where he demonstrated a curatorial acumen that makes him one to watch. Ossei-Mensah received his BA from Clark University in Business Management and earned his MBA in Marketing from Les Roches in Switzerland. He currently serves on the acquisitions committee for the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council and is on the board for ArtBridge. Ossei-Mensah lives in NYC.

Crossing the Line: Contemporary Drawing and Artistic Process from Mixed Greens on Vimeo.

Exhibit Link

Follow Crossing the Line on Tumblr

PERFORMANCE: Narcissister

BlackArtistNews photo. All rights reserved.

Dirty Looks NYC launches year-two of Dirty Looks: On Location with an evening of videos and performance by artist Narcissister! 

Monday, July 1, 2013, 7 pm – 12 am

Performance at 8 pm, reception to follow

THE SPECTRUM

59 Montrose Avenue

Brooklyn, NY

From the Dirty Looks web site:

Narcissister has amassed a diverse revenue of venues (MoMA, Abrons Arts Center, America’s Got Talent) in her 20 plus years working in contemporary dance and performance. This screening will be the first to survey the artist’s video works and will be followed by a performance. The Spectrum, a former residential dance studio-cum-queer community arts space, being the initial point of inspiration for the evening—which emerged from a late night dialogue between the artist and curator Bradford Nordeen, in that very locale.

The Spectrum opened its doors in 2011. Situated behind a residential façade in the site of a former dance studio, the Spectrum offers weekly classes in dance, yoga, “queerlates” and “queerballah,” as well as a rich assortment of dance parties and performance events. The brainchild of Gage Boone and Nicholas Gorham, the Spectrum offers all of its event to the queer community on a sliding scale admission structure.

Dirty Looks: On Location is a series queer interventions in New York City spaces, from July 1 – 31, 2013, artist film and video will appear in thriving queer social spaces and former sites of queer sociality (like shuttered bars, bathhouses and former meeting zones). A new piece, a different setting, each night in July.

Click here for complete Dirty Looks: On Location schedule

UNFRAMED: Gerald Jackson at gallery onetwentyeight

Outside looking in: a photocopy of Gerald Jackson's Media Beauty XV greeted visitors at the door of his solo art exhibit n New York City. Photo ©2013 BlackArtistNews. All rights reserved.

An artist who takes the work out of the frame  

BlackArtistNews | February 10, 2013

Gerald Jackson is an artist who has operated outside the infrastructure of the commercial art world. So it’s only befitting that none of the works in his show at gallery onetwentyeight in New York (on view January 10 – February 10, 2013) were framed.

Well, there was one: a visual mash-up of an Egyptian funerary mask and supermodel Kate Moss entitled Media Beauty Series XV. (A black and white photocopied version of the work was posted on the door of the gallery.) While it’s hard not to question whether the image was appropriated in part from Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, it’s clearly a matter of semantics whether it’s actually a framed collage or freestanding assemblage. Since Media Beauty addresses accepted notions of beauty embedded in the framework of our culture, it’s reasonable to conclude that the frame is a material element of the work, intrinsic to its meaning. Its function is not to protect the work but to project the idea of it.

This kind of mental sleight of hand was apparent in most of the work displayed which ranged from large scale figurative works on paper and abstract paintings to a pyramid-shaped sculpture and a video performance piece. It was a solo show that looked and felt like a group show. In the below video, a studio visit conducted by Stanley Whitney for BOMB magazine, Mr. Jackson gives clarity to the disparity: “My work has always been both figurative and abstract… my mind didn’t have any limitations about what I shouldn’t or should do. Whatever I was doing didn’t have that type of categorized thinking that goes with the college disciplines and things like that.”

Not much biographical information can be collected on Mr. Jackson but it isn’t really necessary. Within moments of the BOMB video you realize that his intellect isn’t guided by conventional wisdom. Gerald Jackson’s history is felt far more viscerally in the space between his words and one’s mental process of them – a considerably more engaging way of receiving biographical info than a timeline of exhibit highlights.

GERALD JACKSON interviewed by Stanley Whitney for BOMB Magazine on Vimeo.

YouTube: Gerald Jackson, Untitled, 2008-2010

Gerald Jackson installation view of works at gallery onetwentyeight in New York. Image via galleryonetwentyeight.org. 

Exhibit images

Gerald Jackson at Gallery Onetwentyeight

Picture this: Gerald Jackson at Gallery 128

VIDEO: Art Gathering: The Collector

Art Gathering: The Collector 
Selected Works from the Patric McCoy Collection
January 15 - February 6, 2013

VISUAL ARTS GALLERY AT GOVERNORS STATE UNIVERSITY
1 University Parkway
University Park, IL 

Featured artists include:

Dalton Brown
Susan Clinard
Luis De La Torre
Stephen Flemister
Theaster Gates
Skip Hill
Barbara Jones-Hogu
Marva Pitchford Jolly
Tim Lemming
Joyce Owens
Max Sansing
Julian Williams

Exhibit Link

VIDEO: KUT's Portrait of an Artist: Wura-Natasha Ogunji by Rebecca McInroy

http://youtu.be/QgpyExYkXkc

Wura-Natasha Ogunji online

VIDEO: The Confessions of Steve McQueen by Alison Chernick

The Confessions of Steve McQueen on Nowness.com.

The Artist and Filmmaker’s Dark Parable On the Shame of Sex Addiction

Cornered in his hotel room during the Toronto Film Festival, the ever-provocative Steve McQueen ruminates on free will, desire and his film "Shame" in Alison Chernick’s latest short. Recipient of the Camera d’Or and Fipresco prize for debut feature "Hunger," McQueen has earned a reputation as one of our most prolific and challenging visual artists, winning The Turner Prize in 1999 for his short black and white film "Deadpan," and representing Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Co-written with Abi Morgan (Brick Lane), the director’s sophomore feature takes an unflinching look at the destructive nature of sex addiction, following Michael Fassbender’s corporate drone Brandon through a solitary routine of meaningless sexual encounters and the fallout that occurs when his equally damaged, self-harming sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay. “I wanted to discuss the theme of imprisonment in his films—in this case psychological," reveals Chernick. "But after seeing 'Shame' I was more focused on the collide between morality and addiction, where one ends and the other begins.”

"Shame" in select theaters December 2

Source

CHICAGO: David Hartt / MCA Chicago

David Hartt, Archive, 2011. Edition of 6 + 1 AP. Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago via mcachicago.org

MCA Screen: David Hartt
November 26, 2011 - April 29, 2012

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL

Chicago-based Canadian artist David Hartt’s latest work, Stray Light, inaugurates the MCA Screen, a new series of media-based exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago. Hartt’s films capture the social, cultural, political, and economic complexities of his subjects, which he then renders with a cool, dispassionate eye. His latest subject is the former Johnson Publishing Company building on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, famous for producing Jet and Ebony magazines and as a leader in African-American taste and culture. Stray Light includes a film displayed in a gallery with a carpet designed to evoke the Johnson Publishing Company, as well as a group of photographs in an adjacent gallery. MCA Screen: David Hartt is curated by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Michael Darling and runs from November 26, 2011 to April 29, 2012.

Hartt records the time-capsule nature of the Johnson Publishing Company space, with its original 1971 interior design by Arthur Elrod. John Moutoussamy, an African-American partner in the firm Dubin, Dubin, Black & Moutoussamy, designed the 11-story building as the headquarters of the Johnson Publishing Company, with an iconic presence on Michigan Avenue with its illuminated Ebony-Jet marquee at the top. The interior of the building is modern, colorful, and complex, an expression of founder John Johnson’s vision of what a leading, black-owned business could be. 

The title of the project, Stray Light, is a term used to refer to unpredictable light within a controlled environment. It is also a fitting metaphor for Hartt as an outside observer of a company that has influenced so much of African-American cultural history. His film and photographs provide an intimate portrait of the dreams and ideals of the Johnson family’s business which continue under the leadership of the founder’s daughter, Linda Johnson Rice. Stray Light is, in fact, the final means to capture the essence of the building, after the unexpected news that the building was sold in late 2010 and the company has relocated to another site. Thus, Hartt’s film is a lasting document of the style and ethos of this unique work environment. 

The soundtrack for the 12-minute Stray Light film is created by Chicago composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell. Mitchell is co-president of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an organization that, like the Johnson Publishing Company building, was created in the 1970s and has become a leader in the cultural community. 

This program is made possible by the generous contributors to the Allen M. Turner Tribute Fund, honoring his past leadership as Chairman of the MCA Board of Trustees, and by Emerge, a donor affinity group that supports the education, exhibition, and acquisition programs of the MCA. 

Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Family Foundation. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the Official Airline of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization accredited by the American Association of Museums. The MCA is generously supported by its Board of Trustees; individual and corporate members; private and corporate foundations; and government agencies including the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Museum capital improvements are supported by a Public Museum Capital Grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The Chicago Park District generously supports MCA programs. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the Official Airline of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Exhibit Link

David Hartt on Vimeo

VIDEO: Charlie Rose - An Appreciation of Romare Bearden / January 24, 2004



This 2004 broadcast of The Charlie Rose Show focuses on the work of artist Romare Bearden and the exhibit The Art of Romare Bearden with exhibition curator Ruth Fine, photographer Frank Stewart, and musician Branford Marsalis.

Source

MORE Romare Bearden on BlackArtistNews

VIDEO: Inside New York's Art World: Romare Bearden (1979)

BlackArtistNews proudly celebrates the art, life and legacy of Romare Bearden

This 1979 interview with Romare Bearden was conducted just prior to his 1980 exhibition at The Mint Museum. Bearden's 1980 retrospective at the Mint was a landmark exhibition for the museum.

NEW YORK: Public Announcement / Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center / August 18 - 30, 2011

The late twentieth century saw an explosion, in every part of our public spaces, of unsanctioned “outlaw” art as well as the proliferation of Madison Avenue advertising.   From August 18 - 30, 2011, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center, will bring us the Twenty-First century melding of these two worlds with the “Scrape and Peel” fine art of Lawrence Joyner, Tyson Hall, and Dean Richards. The show is curated by Bonnie Savage.

The Art

The twentieth century brought with it a new art form from the public stage.  French and Italian cities birthed the “poster ungluers”- artists who ripped layers of public advertisement papers from billboards, city walls, construction sites, and subway stations.  After recovering new “scrapes and peels”, the artists would then collage them together in violent cacophonies of words mixed with images layered and juxtaposed with other words and pictures. Originally the artist created a statement from pre-meditated material, whether it was with paint, a chisel, etc.  But within this new expression came the genius of the artist re-fashioning what lay already used in the city and forgotten as trash.  This refurbishing of public poster propaganda into representations of sex, class, struggle, and iconographic dreams created a new sub-part in naturalist art.

The Artists

Reared within the graffiti era of 1970’s New York City, Lawrence Joyner, Tyson Hall, and Dean Richards are three artists who add to the evolution of both graffiti (tagging) and “scrapping and peeling” art forms, melding the two into a modern mixed medium genre. These men pay homage to the original “poster ungluer” artists such as Francois Dunfrene, Raymond Hains, Jacques de La Villegle, and Mimmo Rotella, and graffiti artists such as Lee Quinones, Keith Haring, Jean-Michael Basquiat, and Michael Martin. They focus their energies into fine art, which voice the struggles, hopes, and perspectives of the American man of African descent. The art also hails civil rights artist/ activists such as Emory Douglas and contemporary street artists like Shephard Fairey. These pieces create an art history narrative that blends the original collage technique of Berdain with each man’s individual painting expression. Their message is one that demands an introspective investigation.

YouTube: Scrape & Peel featuring Lawrence Joyner, Tyson Hall, and Dean Richards

For Media and Press Inquiries contact:
Martha Banks
MB & Associates
917-595-9197

MBanks.MBassoc@gmail.com

VIDEO: Trenton Doyle Hancock - A Better Promise by The Seattle Art Museum

Artist Trenton Doyle Hancock discusses his installation/sculpture "A Better Promise" on view at the The Seattle Art Museum until March 12, 2012. 

Seattle Art Museum description by Marisa C. Sanchez, Assistant Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art:

For the past ten years, Trenton Doyle Hancock has been developing an epic saga between the forces of good and evil, featuring imagined creatures called the Mounds and the Vegans. Mounds are peace-loving beings, while the Vegans are an evil race who has lost the ability to see in color. Influenced by comics, graphic novels and cartoons, Trenton Doyle Hancock has created a dynamic narrative of mythological proportions. In the site-specific installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, the artist will continue telling his dramatic story through text and images, including wall drawings and some sculptural elements as well. As part of the work, Hancock issues a “call to color” by encouraging visitors to bring their own morsels of color—in the form of plastic bottle caps—to the park and drop them into the work of art. Visitors are encouraged to bring plastic bottle caps ranging in all shapes and sizes from detergent bottles, to clear water bottles to the black and white caps from drink bottles.

Source 

Educational Resources: 

To explore this exhibition a little deeper, download our bibliography.

The Bad Promise, 2008, Trenton Doyle Hancock, American, b. 1974, mixed media on canvas, 84 x 108 in., Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York, © Trenton Doyle Hancock

POSE: Swizz Beatz / Paper Magazine / Summer 2011

ARTICLE BY JOZEN CUMMINGS | PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAN MONICK

Given the fact that most people have an emotional connection to their tattoos one has to assume that music producer Swizz Beatz's decision to have Keith Haring's "Flying Man" embellished on his left AND right front shoulders indicates a genuine passion for art. It does. Swizz Beatz is an earnest art collector (of primarily Pop Art, i.e., Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Mr. Brainwash), devoted philanthropist, and serious art maker. His work is very derivative of the artists he collects but one hopes that as his art practice matures Swizz Beatz will find a visual voice as distinctive as the music he produces.

PAPERMAG Swizz Beatz article online

Swizz World Art

Swizz Beatz has an eye for Modern Art

KICKSTARTER: Shani Peters

New York artist Shani Peters seeks Kickstarter funding for public art project "We Promote Knowledge & Love"

Shani Peters in Harlem passing out a promotional flyer for her public art project We Promote Knowledge &Love.

THIS PROJECT WILL BE FUNDED IF AT LEAST $3,000 IS PLEDGED BY THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2011, 1:01 PM EDT. AS OF THIS POST $1, 315 HAS BEEN RAISED. 

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Have you ever walked down the street, had a random flyer shoved in your hand, gave it a quick scan, and thought ‘what a waste of paper?!?’  The We Promote Knowledge & Love project turns that experience inside out and floods the Harlem, NY community with street flyers of unexpected substance while awakening the sleeping giants of the neighborhood's legendary past.

We Promote Knowledge & Love is a social practice, community art performance project that borrows the aggressive street advertising tactics of pawnbrokers in urban communities as a vehicle to promote knowledge, self-empowerment, and love rather than commerce or monetary wealth. The project engages the community in which it is enacted through the dissemination of familiarly designed flyers that encourage uncommon exchange. Volunteers for the project wear custom screen printed sandwich boards that read “We Promote Knowledge & Love” imitating the design of those worn by the “We Buy Gold & Diamonds” pawn broker promoters-for-hire on busy street corners (in Harlem, and beyond), and pass out flyers featuring insightful quotes from thoughtful historical figures.

We Promote Knowledge & Love has been enacted 3 times in small groups of 2-6 individuals in Brooklyn, Harlem, and at the Bronx Museum of Art.  Each of these rounds have been warm up’s for we’re planning this time… an over-the-top, parade inspired performance complete with 40+ volunteers, over-sized paper maché replica heads of the quoted historical figures, and the dissemination of 10,000+ wisdom-rich flyers, to be passed out to  an audience of 900,000+ during one of the countries largest annual parades: Harlem’s own 42th Annual African American Day Parade.

With the funds raised through this Kickstarter campaign we will be able to the put words of Malcolm, Martin, Marcus, Fredrick, and Harriet directly into the hands of a generation who largely view these phenomenal individuals as mere black history-month quiz answers or names on street signs.  We all know the schools and libraries are under-funded… let’s give an introductory lesson to what they’re missing!

We Promote Knowledge & Love: Parade Day in Harlem Kickstart Video:

Click here to pledge

ShaniPeters.com

VIDEO: Behind the Scenes - Conserving Chris Ofili by TateShots

Tate's Conservation Department work behind the scenes to ensure future generations can enjoy the Tate Collection. It's not just old masters that get their attention; contemporary artists work in such a diverse range of materials that the team undertakes extensive research to help them in their task. In this film, paintings conservator Natasha Walker explains how she went about making replica versions of Chris Ofili's paintings, in order to carry out tests that could never be made on the real works of art. With help from the artist, his assistants, and an elephant at Whipsnade Zoo, Natasha and her team's 'Chris Ofilis' might not be as good as the real thing, but they will help protect them well into the future.

Source

VIDEO: Andrew Dosunmu Photography Exhibit @ The Palms Shopping Mall, Lagos, Nigeria

A shopping mall is an unorthodox place to showcase art but photographer Andrew Dosunmu makes it all make sense in this YouTube feature entitled Music: A Symbol of Nigeria's Independence, An Exhibition of Photographs by Andrew Dosunmu at the Palms in Lagos, Nigeria. Exhibit took place in 2010 and was curated by Kunbi Oni. 

AndrewDosunmu.com

REMEMBRANCE: Eleanora Fagan (1915 - 1959)

Billie Holiday recorded live in Paris, November 1958. The camera angles and stark lighting give this performance an ominous feeling especially since the singer died eight months later on July 17, 1959. The final shot is especially chilling: the harsh spotlight casts a larger-than-life silhouette of Holiday against a white backdrop that looms over her like the shadow of death.   

Watch on YouTube