ART in CONTEXT

NEW WEBSITE

2011-03-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

ART IN CONTEXT HAS MOVED!
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ART REVIEW | Alessandra Sanguinetti @ AIB Gallery

2010-05-10T14:17:00.001-07:00

BY ANNA FINK

I had never known the work of Alessandra Sanguinetti until I came to school to study photography. I immediately fell in love with her work featuring two cousins, “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams.” I was drawn to these fantastical images in which young girls performed their visions of growing up. Sanguinetti captures the girls as they play dress up, wear wedding dresses, have pregnant bellies and ultimately hold a fake funeral. Although critics have questioned whether or not Sanguinetti forcefully instructs the girls, in her artist talk she discussed how “any other way of representing the girls would be a lie.” She doesn’t consider her photographs planned or scheduled, it is more of improvisation.

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Ray of Light, 2005

Sanguinetti has photographed these girls in the most pivotal years of their lives, a time where their bodies and minds are rapidly changing. She has captured their awkward moments and all their different personas as nine and ten year olds. As the girls play “make believe”, audiences are given insight into their lives and how they think. Guille for instance, is already worried about men leaving her because of what she’s seen in movies. Belinda is seen experimenting with different personas throughout the photographs; dressing as a man, explorer and a nun. Although these girls are playing, they are not acting out what one would assume young girls would act out. Guille and Belinda do not pretend they are princesses or animals, rather they are imagining themselves in a different period of their lives. Their mature ideas suggest the end of childhood and what is to come.

Just as in “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams,” Sanguinetti acts as a witness in her series entitled, “On the Sixth Day.” She first started photographing as a young girl when she realized that someday everyone would die. Her need to document these things pays respect to her subject matter and in addition creates a permanent record. “On the Sixth Day” refers directly to how God created animals on the sixth day of creating the earth. In this series, she focuses on our relationship to animals and our dominance over them. We decide when to feed, care and ultimately end the lives of animals.

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Untitled from the series On the Sixth Day, 1996-2004

There is a clear reference of man versus beast and how animals play sacrificial creatures. Her images explore the every day lives and life cycles of animals on her father’s farm in Argentina. As viewers, we get very close to these animals. We notice the rich colors of their fur, their expressions and even can begin to observe how they are feeling. We are shown things we do not see or think about often, such as a tiny cow fetus, blood stained hands and skinned animals. We get very upset when people die and excited when children are born, but it is not a big deal when an animal goes through these stages. Sanguinetti has photographed this series from a low perspective, similar to through the eyes of an animal and creates a new viewpoint for her audience. Her photographs of animals have a “fable-like” aesthetic, as she mentioned, however, a line is drawn between fantasy and real violence.

In all of Sanguinetti’s work she discusses the relationship between the real and the fantastical world. Although at first glance her work may appear highly imaginative, the realities of her subject matter are not light and comfortable.

Anna Fink is a senior photography student at the Art Institute of Boston.

TAVARES STRACHAN @ MIT LIST

2010-05-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home
MIT LIST Visual Arts Center
May 7 to July 11, 2010

The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home, the next phase of a new project by Bahamian-born, New York-based artist Tavares Strachan. Since 2006, Strachan has been working on this multiphase body of work that explores space and deep-sea training. “Orthostatic” means to stand upright, and “tolerance” refers to the ability to withstand pressure. Combined, the phrase refers to the physiological stress that cosmonauts and deep-sea explorers endure while exiting, and re-entering our home, the thin surface of planet Earth.

The Orthostatic Tolerance mirrors Strachan’s interest in establishing an Ocean and Aerospace Exploration Agency in Nassau (BASEC) both to continue his own exploration efforts while fostering educational outreach efforts for children in his home country. Strachan is perhaps best known for the work, The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want, 2004-06. For this project, Strachan embarked on an Arctic exploration during which he extracted a 4.5-ton block of ice and shipped it to his former grade school in Nassau, where it was kept frozen by a solar-powered freezer. For a year after the Arctic remnant was installed in the sub-tropical environment, Strachan presented lectures in elementary schools throughout the Bahamas. (MIT press release excerpt)

AIB Photography BFA Thesis: Marrow Mending featuing the work of Liz Affa, Kate Bullen, Malin Sjoberg, and Tiffany Ulrich

2010-04-30T06:52:00.001-07:00

April 30th from 6 - 8 PM at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery

601 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

This is the fourth BFA Photography exhibition for the 2010 graduation class at the Art Institute of Boston.

Liz Affa's work deals with how her perception of men has been tainted because of thought patterns she has inherited from generations of women in her family. The work is multi-media based involving illustration on fabric then sewn on a sampler and stained. Themes of domesticity and the idea of the house vs the home are inter-woven throughout the work.

Kate Bullen's photographs transport you to a constructed reality that is both inviting and disturbing. The black and white photographs trigger a sense of familiarity within these constructed worlds.

You can visit Kate's website here.

Malin Sjoberg's still lives explore psychological states of the mind as well as weaving in stories from her families past.

Tiffany Ulrich explores the idea of materials and their value and what happens when you strip them of their worth or elevate them through sentimentality. Tiffany's sculptures are embedded with her own family mythology as she attempts to mend the issues that have occurred to her family within her lifetime.

Fred Ricthin Lecture | PRC @ Northeastern University

2010-04-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

Fred Ritchin After Photography

Thursday, April 29, 2010
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Northeastern University (Building 20F, in West Village)
MBTA T-Stop (E-Line - Northeastern)
Click for campus map with directions

In a digital environment, what can emerge from a medium transformed? How will it change us as people? And how can we influence what comes next?

Fred Ritchin is author of the recently published book, After Photography, and has been writing on the digital challenge for media since a major article for The New York Times Magazine in 1984. He is professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and directs PixelPress. Ritchin was picture editor of The New York Times Magazine, executive editor of Camera Arts magazine, and founding director of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin has also authored In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (1990), and his essays have appeared in other books such as In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum PHotographers, An Uncertain Grace: THe Photographs of Sebastiao Salgado, Mexico Through Foreign Eyes, Sahel: End of the Road, and Under Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam. He is currently finishing another book Outside the Frame, on photography and human rights. He also writes the blog afterphotography.org.

Interview with Jenn Warren | Sudan

2010-04-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

April 27, 2010

AIB alumna Jenn Warren will join AiC via Skype and discuss her recent documentary projects in Sudan.

Jenn Warren is a documentary photographer based in East Africa, specializing in NGO, humanitarian, and development projects. Clients include Medecins sans Frontieres, UNICEF, CARE, WFP/PAM, Amnesty International, PSI, the National Democratic Institute, SafePoint, and TASC. She was recently awarded the 2008 Nikon Emerging Professional Scholarship to attend the Missouri Photo Workshop 60 and is featured in the Best of ASMP 2008, Alligator Juniper Photography Annual 2008, and the 2008 Center for Fine Art Photography Peace Corps Exhibition.

PLASTIC FOREST | NYT OP-ART

2010-04-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

AIB alumn Bryan Graf was recently featured in the New York Times OP-ART.

From the sereies Roadside Wildflowers
Photographs copyright Bryan Graf

These are photographs of plastic bags that I pulled from trees and shrubs in the woods near my home in New Jersey. To make these pictures — photograms — I took the bags into my darkroom and gently dropped them between my enlarger’s lens and a piece of light-sensitive paper. I then illuminated the scene with a flash of light for less than a second. The resulting images trace the objects gliding in the air moments before they come to rest. Like Earth Day, they are for me a prompt to reflect on the relationship — sometimes vexed, sometimes beautiful, always complicated — between humankind and nature.

—BRYAN GRAF

Photography BFA Thesis, On Life and Death: Molly Geiger, Christopher Hoodlet, Tara Sellios, & Paul Yem

2010-04-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

April 19-24th at The Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall

1815 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02239

Reception: 5-7 PM Thursday, April 22nd.

This is the third BFA Photography exhibition for the 2010 graduating class at the Art Institute of Boston.

Molly Geiger has been working on an on-going documentary project photographing midwives and home birth.

Molly's website can be seen here.

Chris Hoodlet's work chronicles his experiences within the land and his journey of life affirmation through landscape.

Paul Yem photographs the changes within the land he grew up in and how a photograph can function as a memory of an ideal landscape.

You can see Paul's other projects on his website here.

Tara Sellios translates her vision of the seven deadly sins through still lives depicting both beauty and repulsion.

Teenage Girls Explore Their Lives Through a Camera’s Eye | NYT

2010-04-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

By COREY KILGANNON

for the New York Times, March 2010

Visit NYT's slideshow

Alessandra Sanguinetti Lecture | AIB

2010-04-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

Strauch-Mosse Artist's Lecture
The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

APRIL 20, 2010 | 6:30 pm
Room 101, Boston University Kenmore Classroom Building
565 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Copyright Alessandra Sanguinetti

AiC GOES TO MassMOCA

2010-04-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

APRIL 20, 2010

InVisible: Art at the Edge of Perception

InVisible brings together a small selection of international artists working in a variety of mediums, and features Uta Barth, Christian Capurro, Joanne Lefrak, Janet Passehl, Jaime Pitarch, and Karin Sander. Curated by Katia Zavistovski, an intern from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Uta Barth, Sundial (07.14)

Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle's project Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With is based upon Mies van der Rohe's uncompleted project, the House with Four Columns (1951), a square structure open to view on all four sides through glass walls. In Manglano-Ovalle's work, the house will be constructed at approximately half scale and inverted, the ceiling of the original becoming the sculpture's floor, the floor becoming the ceiling, and all interior elements such as Mies-designed furniture and partition walls installed upside down.

Manglano-Ovalle's Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With at MassMOCA 2010

Guy Ben-Nur: Thursday the 12th

Over the past decade Guy Ben-Ner has become known for a series of playful videos which often star the artist and his young children. The humorous, home-made films have an authentic, do-it-yourself appeal, though their deceptive simplicity quickly reveals sophisticated cinematic and literary influences - ranging from the physical comedy of Buster Keaton and the humanist films of François Truffaut to literary classics such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Daniel Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe.

Guy Ben-Ner's video installation Tursday the 12th at MassMOCA 2010

Photography BFA Thesis | AIB

2010-04-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Carlie Bristow, Jena Duncan, Sam Matsumoto & Jennifer Morgan

April 12-17 at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery
601 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

Reception: 6 -8 PM on Friday April 16th
This is the second BFA Photography exhibition for the 2010 graduation class at the Art Institute of Boston.

Carlie Bristow's work is a combination of performance and video exploring her relationship with food. The videos show her playing out this relationship through narratives of pleasure seeking and resistance.

Her website can be seen here.

lobster adventure from Jena Duncan on Vimeo.

Jena Duncan has taken on the task of eating within a hundred miles of Boston for 60 days as a performance-based art piece. Her work exhibits the perks of local-eating but also the struggles and conflicts that it creates on oneself in today's society. She works with many different mediums to go along with this performance and her exhibition includes plants she is growing, photographs, a map of where her food has come from, a cook book, as well as videos posted on her blog chronicling her experience.

Jena's blog "Jena Performing Local" can be seen here as well as her website of her past work here.

Sam Matsumoto has two different bodies of work on display at this exhibition. The photographs in the World of Rugby series investigates the strength and fragility of female rugby players.

The Self Myth series explores issues of identity and how we invest personal narrative into photographs.

Sam's other work can be seen on her website.

Jen Morgan's documentary “Gone Phishing” is a film about the journey of a Phish fan. Living on the road, going from one concert to another regardless of the passage of time, Jen shows how this life can actually sustain Phish followers and how they always come back to do it again. This film represents her own quest for self-discovery and the next step on the path to pursue in life.

A trailer to her previous exploration of the Phish fan can be seen here.

ART REVIEW | Roni Horn aka Roni Horn @ ICA Boston

2010-04-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

BY JARED KUZIA

Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is now on display at The Institute of Contemporary Art, which lies quite literally on the shore of the Atlantic ocean in Boston, Massachusetts. The show spans several floors and is divided into seven quaint sections. Horn has worked in several medias over the last thirty years, and this retrospective display includes her eclectic choice of materials and media including glass and gold sculptures, color and black and white photographs, collaged drawings, sound, books, and installation.

Bird, 2008
Copyright Roni Horn

One might ask, how do all of these medias work together? Well, you can either walk from room to room and draw your own conclusions like I did on my first round, or you can use the assistance of the seven postcard descriptions located in each section of the show. The cards offer a description of the materials used, and give some insight into Horn’s concepts, even quoting her at times. To top it off, they all fit nicely into an envelope acquired in the first room stamped “RONI HORN AKA RONI HORN”. Personally I loved these cards; they allowed me to walk around and spend time with my own thoughts for a while rather then being instantly confronted by a statement giving it all away. Having them all together at the end also helps to draw connections between the different periods and mediums involved in her work. It also gave me a wonderful object to take home and cherish, reminding me of the experience (and her name…).

This is me, This is you (detail), 1998–2000 (ninety-six chromogenic prints)
Copyrigth Roni Horn

Horn was born and studied in the U.S., but her love for Iceland plays a large role in a lot of the work. The geography and climate of Iceland quite clearly fit into her reoccurring themes of weather. It also holds a certain aesthetic that is also translated into the work not directly involved with the particular location. The theme of weather, and themes of our relationships with nature, translate as metaphors for her themes of perception and more importantly identity in flux. The theme of shifting identity is quite eloquently spoken about in several places throughout the show, one of my favorites being room three: “Is this me?”. This curatorial masterpiece separates onto two opposing walls, the photographs of her niece over the course of a couple years. The viewer is caught in between these walls physically engaged in the act of looking back and fourth, questioning exactly what are the signifiers of identity and how it is changing this girl.

River Thames 2
Copyright Roni Horn

Also attributed to the curator is the location in which these works of art are housed. Visitors actually have the opportunity to sit down on the upper floor and listen to recordings of philosophies surrounding the idea of water, while looking out the floor to ceiling windows onto the Atlantic. Other work that is close enough to the windows is also able to change as clouds move in and out and the sun rises and sets, correlating directly to these issues of flux.

This is well thought out curating accompanied by well thought out work. I was able to go from room to room drawing strong connections between the different pieces, with only a couple of the rooms feeling a bit out of step. With the opportunity I would remove some of the drawings and collages, as it feels much less connected and far less emotive than the photographs and some of the incredibly involving sculpture. All things considered, the show is well worth your time.

Jared Kuzia is a photography junior at the Art Institute of Boston.

Visiting guest artist SHARON HARPER

2010-04-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

The Art Institute of Boston
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
1:30pm

Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No.1
July - October, 2003
New York, New York; Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright Sharon Harper

Sharon Harper uses photographs and video to record a subjective experience of landscape. Geographically descriptive elements in the work transform, giving way to a psychological, interior rendition of the natural world. Technology has a dual purpose in the work. It interferes with a direct experience of nature by mediating the encounter, yet it offers perceptual experiences unseen and unattainable without it via camera optics, high-speed trains and nighttime digital vision. This work seeks out the spirit of the experiences celebrated by the Transcendentalists in a landscape irrevocably altered by technology while offering perceptual experiences that new technology affords. It engages traditional notions of the sublime and re-evaluates them in the context of the contemporary natural world in an experiential manner.

Harper received an MFA in photography and related media from the School of Visual Art in New York in 1997 and a BA from Middlebury College in literary studies. She has had solo exhibitions at Rick Wester Fine Art (2010), NY, Marcel Sitcoske Gallery in San Francisco, Savage Art Resources in Portland, Oregon, and the Goethe Institute in New York, among others. Her work was also included in the Greater New York exhibition at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in February 2000.

Harper’s work is in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Portland Art Museum, and Bayerische Vereinsbank. She was an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, in 2002 and she has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She received a Meredith S. Moody Residency Fellowship at Yaddo, the Sam and Dusty Boynton Residency Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, and a Film Study Center Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006.

ART REVIEW | Krzysztof Wodiczko @ ICA

2010-04-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

BY MOLLY GEIGER

In the darkness of a giant room, patrons struggled to discern the silhouette and unmistakable sound of a landing helicopter. Perplexed by the sight, none were ready for the sniper fire that tore through the windows and the car bomb that sent the outside marketplace scattering. It plays with your senses and makes you question if you’re still in Boston or a real war zone in Baghdad. Adrenaline pumped as the mind scrambled to make sense of the chaos unfolding. That frightening moment of confusion was Krzysztof Wodiczko’s desired effect. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) on Boston’s waterfront is hosting Wodiczko’s project “…Out Of Here: A Veterans Project” from November 4, 2009 to March 28, 2010. “…Out Of Here“ is an innovative piece that depicts the horror and uncertainty of trauma as it is experienced by soldiers and civilians alike. Wodiczko has broadened the definition of veterans to include any persons who are submerged in harm’s way in his artist statement.

Krzysztof Wodiczko's "…Out Of Here: A Veterans Project" at the ICA

Krzysztof Wodiczko was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1943. He currently works and resides in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1980, Wodiczko has created over seventy large-scale video and slide projections of politically inspired images and projected them on famous monuments worldwide. His projections are geared towards human rights, democracy, violence, and estrangement. His work acts as a bridge between art, trauma, healing and justice. The mission of these mobile installations has been to identify and expose issues that society would rather neglect or not discuss. The Gallery looks like the interior of an old warehouse or military base with video projections of seven windows near the ceiling that provides a skyward view. Outside this warehouse, on the outside we imagine to be on the other side of the projected windows, the sounds of an Iraqi marketplace echo through the streets. A group of children are laughing and playing as one kicks a soccer ball up into one of the windows, cracking it. All the talking and laughter is replaced by sudden chaos as an explosion detonates and a sniper fires several rounds through the windows. Black smoke billows skyward panic ensues. Between shouting U.S. soldiers and Humvees barreling into the scene, intense automatic gunfire fights erupt all around. After a few moments of radio chatter, machine gun fire and the eventual departure of the soldiers, the street returns to eerie silence. It is at this moment that a woman discovers her mortally wounded son. Her cries fill the abandoned streets, as her son has become collateral damage. Then the project loops back to the beginning and starts again. What is amazing artistically about this piece is the fact that the art is in what the viewer imagines and feels, not much in what we’re actually seeing. To properly portray the realistic spectrum of horror, Wodiczko interviewed U.S. medics and soldiers as well as Iraqi civilians. From their accounts of hit and run guerilla warfare in a public place, Wodiczko created a reenactment of the battle scene. The consequence of war on soldiers and civilians alike became visible and tangible for the general public. From the safety of our homes, we can read literature and reports of first hand accounts of war and watch the news or see combat depicted in film but written or filmed accounts of battle try to encompass all the details, but this may be the closest most people can come to any experience like it. This is something Wodiczko recognizes. He says, “"I believe that if there is any truth, it lies in realizing the impossibility of gaining full access to the truth of such an experience."

The art lies in our senses and minds, and I think its absolutely genius. Stuck inside a giant room, it isn’t very difficult to image you’re actually there. The sounds alone wouldn’t do it, but he sounds in a giant warehouse, where you feel vulnerable and unsure, completely take over. The viewer creates a mental picture of this battle scene and experiences the fear of ambiguity and vulnerability in guerilla warfare, and receives no closure as to what’s actually happening. After experiencing the intensely disturbing simulated conflict, one can start to comprehend the devastation that war has on anyone involved in such close combat. The ability to trick the mind and the senses into a simulated state of survival and momentary panic is the triumph of Wodiczko’s project.

Molly Geiger is a graduating Senior at the Art Institute of Boston. Her recent work includes an expansive documentary essay on Home Births. For more information please visit her website.

Grants Nurture Arts Spaces and Housing

2010-04-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Strom for the New York Times

Photo Michael Falco for The New York Times
Luis A. Ubiñas took over as president
of the Ford Foundation in 2008.

As part of an effort to increase the impact of its giving, the Ford Foundation is to announce a plan on Monday to dedicate $100 million to the development of arts spaces nationwide over the next decade. The plan is by far the largest commitment the foundation has ever made to the construction, maintenance and enhancement of arts facilities. More...

Pieter Hugo's NOLLYWOOD | REVIEW by Kat Kiernan

2010-03-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Big Red & Shiny published an excellent review by Kat Kiernan (AIB Junior) on Pieter Hugo's Nollywood exhibit, currently on view at Yossi Milo, NY.

Pieter Hugo, Gabazzini Zuo. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008

PIETER HUGO @ YOSSI MILO
BY KAT KIERNAN

I am not sure how to best treat a bloodstain. Is it cold water? Tide? Or must the ruined article of clothing be thrown away? These are the thoughts that ran through my mind while viewing a man gut a bull, ruining his white dress shirt in the process. This oddly grotesque image is one of the many striking staged photographs in Nollywood, a Pieter Hugo exhibition at Yossi Milo gallery in New York.

Entering the gallery I was met with a cold stare from a machete-wielding little person. His gaze locked with mine and set the tone for the rest of the show. The larger than life scale adds to the cinematic context of the work but upon closer examination the artist moves past the creation of a “film still.” The color is a bit de-saturated so as not to artificially heighten the absurdity, and the focus on the work moves from the film aspect to the cultural aspect. In our society we are told not to stare “don’t stare, it’s not polite” but in a gallery setting, in a white cube, the 30x40 black framed images invite the viewer to stare. So I do. Presented in this setting it is required.
MORE...

Visiting guest artist YOAV HORESH

2010-03-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Art Institute of Boston
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
1pm

Rosh Hashana Dinner (45 minutes) Zofar, Israel 2008
From the series Intransition
Copyright Yoav Horesh

Born in Jerusalem, Israel. Yoav Horesh received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and an MFA from New York's Columbia University.

For the past decade, Yoav has worked on water and landscapes series, as well as a number of photographic projects that deal with conflict, memory and recovery in Israel, Laos, The Gaza Strip, the American Southwest and more recently in Germany.

Currently Yoav is adjunct faculty at Mass College of Art in Boston, Queens College and Columbia University in New York. He has exhibited his work in the United States, Europe and Israel.

SELECT GENDER @ FARMANI GALLERY

2010-03-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Curators: Rafael Soldi, Paolo Morales & Elle Perez

Farmani Gallery
111 Front Street, Suite 212
Brooklyn, NY

April 01, 2010 – May 22, 2010
Press Preview: Thursday, April 1, 2010, from 5-6PM
Opening Public Reception: Thursday, April 1, 2010, from 6-830PM

Diana Russo

Kate Hutchinson

Caleb Cole

The show is co-curated by three young artists, including Paolo Morales from AIB(!), and includes works by Daniel Aguirre (also AIB), Carl Bower, Caleb Cole, Nicolas Djandji, Jason Hanasik, Jamil Hellu, Monique Bergen Henegouwen, Kate Hutchinson, Katie Koti, Diane Russo, J. Aiden Simon, Sarah Sudhoff, and Molly Landreth + Amelia Tovey.

Select Gender revolves around the themes of gender-based identity, self-awareness and gender-specific culture. Whether they are discussing their own identity or that of others, this diverse group of emerging photographers shows us different aspects and interpretations of perceived gender roles. The juxtapositions of gender queer, hyper masculinities, and ambiguous representations force the viewer to question his or her own perceptions and the legitimacy of a gender binary. Ultimately the goal of Select Gender is not to expose, shock, or titillate, but to offer reflection on the constructs and wide range of possibilities for gender expression.

Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian born, New York based photographer. He holds a degree in Photography and Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work has been shown in NY with Humble Arts Foundation and Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Conner Contemporary Art in Washington D.C. as well as in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Baltimore.

Paolo Morales has studied at the Art Institute of Boston, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Art Institute and School of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited in New York and Boston. He is a curator of Gallery South at the Art Institute of Boston.

Elle Perez is a photographer currently based in Baltimore, MD. She has studied Photography and Gender Studies and she has exhibited in Maryland and New York. Perez is the director of the Wlgus Gallery at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Amy Stein at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

2010-03-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Amy Stein's photographs in her series Domesticated explore the tenuous relationship between humans and animals. These scenes are constructed using taxidermied animals and are inspired by true events in the setting of rural Pennsylvania. Her series is currently on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History through April 18th.

Stein was named one of the top fifteen emerging photographers in the world by American Photo magazine. Her work has exhibited at the ClampArt gallery, New York, NY; Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Pool Gallery, Berlin, Germany; and the Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.

PRC Student Show

2010-03-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

"From its large universities to its smaller colleges, New England is rich with gifted students and scholars. Among these programs, photography has always flourished, making this an area celebrated within photo history. This annual exhibition honors academic diversity and thus features work selected by the schools themselves. Students and visitors alike enjoy seeing the work displayed in a gallery setting, as well as the opportunity to witness each program’s unique approach to photography and related media."

The PRC student show is up until April 4th and features work from: Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Boston College, Boston University, Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University, Endicott College, Emerson College, Fitchburg State College, Hallmark Institute of Photography, Massachusetts College of Art + Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newbury College, New England Institute of Art, New England School of Photography, Northeastern University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Rhode Island School of Design, Simmons College, University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and Wellesley College.

For more information on each school's submissions and photography programs visit the PRC's website by clicking the title of the post.

AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW New York

2010-03-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

Tu, March 23rd at 1:15 @ MIT/LIST with Mark Linga

2010-03-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames Street, Bldg. E15
Atrium level
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
617-253-4680

Letitia Huckaby (AIB alumna) @ South Dallas Cultural Center

2010-03-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

South Dallas Cultural Center
LA 19 (God's Daughters): Works by Letitia Huckaby
Through Saturday, April 24

As is often true for many artists, Letitia Huckaby's latest project, LA 19 (Daughters of God), did not start recently, but developed over the course of her life. Her extended family that, for the most part, lived on or off of Louisiana state highway nineteen, hence the title of this show. LA 19 (Daughters of God) honors Huckaby's female family members who helped to create a new aesthetic of quilts, the jazzy patchwork quilts, out of sheer craftiness and necessity. These Jazzy quilts seemed to parallel the more male dominated world of jazz music. Many of the women made these quilts, so as a visual artist Letitia felt inspired to take hold of this rich visual legacy and make it a part of her work. Letitia Huckaby blends her love of photography with her long time connection to traditional quilt making forming a wholly personal aesthetic.

For more info on Letitia Huckaby visit her website

RONI HORN aka RONI HORN @ ICA Boston

2010-02-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

February 19 to June 13, 2010

“Experiencing Roni Horn’s art against the dramatic backdrop of the ICA—where light, weather and water are continuously in flux—crystallizes some of her key themes of change, perception and memory,” says Jill Medvedow, Director of the ICA. “Her work invites close observation and viewers are all the richer for the beauty and pleasure Horn’s art reveals.”

“In Horn’s work, nothing is quite as first appears,” says Hopkins. “A sculpture that appeared solid can look liquid when approached from a different angle, while a pair of gold mats can appear to glow when the sun lights up the space between them. For Roni Horn, the experience of looking at an object and perceiving these changes is as meaningful as the object itself.”

Many of Horn’s works are presented as pairs or series, which on close observation reveal subtle differences between their parts. You are the Weather (1994–5), for example, is an installation that creates a horizon-line of 94 close-up photographs of a woman immersed in hot springs in Iceland—a place whose unique landscape, geology and climate have been an inspiration for the artist since the 1970s. The viewer notices small, indeterminate changes in the woman’s expression. Is she happy? Is she sad? Or is it the effect of the hot temperature on her skin? We don’t know. The 'You' in Horn's title addresses the viewer, who might wonder if they are causing the shifts in the woman's expressions.

Visiting guest artist EIRIK JOHNSON

2010-02-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

The Art Institute of Boston
February 23, 2010
1pm

Eirik Johnson
Confluence of the Rogue and Illinois Rivers, Oregon
2006

Eirik Johnson
Starlite Drive-In, Roseburg, Oregon
2006

All of my photographic work deals with strange and momentary scenes within makeshift landscapes. Whether it is following the journey of pilgrims in the high Andes of Peru, walking alleys and sidewalks of the West Oakland neighborhood, spelunking down a subterranean urban river, or noticing the burrowing of rabbits in a landfill, I am curious to see how the relationship between human and natural interaction can create improvised environments. There is a temporal and fleeting nature to these environments, sometimes hinting at the sublime. - Eirik Johnson

Eirik Johnson is a photographer currently based in Boston, MA. His work has been exhibited at spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the George Eastman House in Rochester, and the Aperture Foundation in New York. He has received several awards including the Santa Fe Prize in 2005 and a William J. Fulbright Grant to Peru in 1999-2000. His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Fulbright Foundation, and the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection. His first monograph, BORDERLANDS, was published by Twin Palms Publishers in 2005. Eirik Johnson is represented by Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco and G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, WA. Johnson is an assistant professor of photography at Massachusetts College of Art.

For more information visit his website.

Revising the Guggenheim

2010-02-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

TAKE THIS MUSEUM AND SHAPE IT
CONTEMPLATING THE VOID
By Roberta Smith for the New York Times

The show features works, like this one from Saunders Architecture,
that re-imagine the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Ted Loos writes: "Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum," which opened Friday, features 193 schemes for Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fifth Avenue rotunda, that corkscrew structure that has delighted many (and also maddened quite a few) since it was built in 1959.

The exhibition is part of the museum’s continuing 50th anniversary celebration, and most of the designs will be auctioned off at an event in March, with proceeds going to future programming."

200 artists world-wide were invited to submit proposals.

Below, Anish Kapoor's proposed "smoke event."

Watch slide show here.

Boston Combat Zone @ Yezerski

2010-02-20T07:17:00.000-08:00

Howard Yezerski Gallery
February 12 to March 16, 2010

Deriving its name, Combat Zone, from the brawling sailors and soldiers that frequented the number of movie theaters, bars, restaurants and lounges during the 1950's and 1960's. It was largely an unrestricted public sphere teeming with all kinds of activity and human behavior legal and otherwise. By the 1970's, an unprecedented social and cultural transformation had taken place. Many theaters began to screen adult movies and strip clubs such as "Teddy Bare Lounge", the "Naked Eye", and the "Two O'clock Club" along with the burlesque house, "The Pilgrim Theatre", grew in popularity. These establishments have since been demolished, their demise attributed to a number of socio-political and economic factors that have changed the urban landscape of Boston.
The works of Angier, Berndt and Goodman depict the Combat Zone during the pinnacle of its transformation, and provides a view into the complex world of adult entertainment, still today a lightning rod for cultural conflict in American society. Jerry Berndt and John Goodman photographed the provocative and at times, arresting energy of the streets as well as the personas that inhabited them. Roswell Angier provides an intimate perspective of the nightclubs and their performers. These three photographers created a unique portrait of a time and place as they captured the energy of the street, the clubs, and the general mayhem of the night that was the Combat Zone.(press release excerpt)

LISTEN TO JOHN GOODMAN AND HOWARD YEZERSKI TALK ON WBUR

Who's Afraid of New Media @ MFA Boston

2010-02-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

10:30 am — 4 pm
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Remis Auditorium

Daylong seminar exploring the world of new media, examining the phrase “new media,” its historic meaning, how it is practiced, and the art it references today.

George Fifield, independent curator and founding director, Boston Cyberarts Festival; Georgie Friedman, artist; Wendy Richmond, visual artist, author; Michael and Ann Spalter, collectors; Mark Tribe, author, artist, assistant professor, Modern Culture and Media Studies, Brown University.

Alfredo Jaar lecture @ MFA Boston

2010-02-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

Deborah and Martin Hale Visiting Artists Lecture
Alfredo Jaar: It Is Difficult

Remis Auditorium
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
7 — 8 pm

Celebrated artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar confronts in his work issues of displacement, globalization, and violence. Known for his public interventions and installation works, Jaar speaks on recent projects around the world.

The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, 1996
From the series The Rwanda Project 1994-2000
Copyright Alfredo Jaar

The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, 1996
From the series The Rwanda Project 1994-2000
Copyright Alfredo Jaar

Caritas, Real Pictures, 1995
Copyright Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar was born in Santiago, Chile in 1956. He attended Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano de Cultura, Santiago (1979) and Universidad de Chile, Santiago (1981). In installations, photographs, film, and community-based projects, Jaar explores the public’s desensitization to images and the limitations of art to represent events such as genocides, epidemics, and famines. Jaar’s work bears witness to military conflicts, political corruption, and imbalances of power between industrialized and developing nations. Subjects addressed in his work include the holocaust in Rwanda, gold mining in Brazil, toxic pollution in Nigeria, and issues related to the border between Mexico and the United States. Many of Jaar’s works are extended meditations or elegies, including “Muxima” (2006)—a video that portrays and contrasts the oil economy and extreme poverty of Angola—and “The Gramsci Trilogy” (2004-05)—a series of installations dedicated to the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned under Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
Jaar has received many awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (2000); a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1987); and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987); and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985). He has had major exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2005); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2005); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1999); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1992). Jaar emigrated from Chile in 1981, at the height of Pinochet’s military dictatorship. His exhibition at Fundación Telefonica Chile, Santiago (2006) is his first in his native country in twenty-five years. Jaar lives and works in New York. (bio taken from art: 21)

Visiting artist BARBARA BOSWORTH

2010-02-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

The Art Institute of Boston
February 16, 2010
1pm

Carlisle, MA 2008
Copyright Barbara Bosworth

Born in Novelty, Ohio in 1953, Barbara Bosworth recounts the deep forest surrounding her family’s home as the earliest influence on her photography. Working like a naturalist, collecting specimens of flora and fauna, tracing mountains and rivers, Bosworth takes careful measure of the world with her lens. Rather than a simple accumulation of facts, however, her photographs describe a world richer than the sum of its parts. Bosworth seeks the fluid, transient aspects of the landscape that are less easily categorized, carefully unfolding a personal and spiritual connection to the world around us. Photographing exclusively with a large-format view camera, Bosworth speaks with a singular passion and sentiment for the American landscape.

"Barbara Bosworth's photographs are graced with an uncommon elegance and intimacy," "The expansive sweep and clarity of her prints open the landscape before us with a deceptive agility, but it is in their richness of experience and sensation that they are so compelling."

-- Toby Jurovics, Princeton University Art Museum

Bosworth received her MFA at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work has been exhibited at Cleveland Art Museum, O'Sullivan Art Center, Regis College, Princeton Art Museum, Huntington Gallery, Boston, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nassauischer Kuntstverein, Wiesbaden Germany, Candace Perich Gallery, Addison Gallery of American Art, among others. She is the recipient of the Buhl Foundation Grant, a John Simon Guggehheim Foundation Fellowship, a New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Bernheim Foundation Fellowship, and a Friends of Photography Ruttenberg Fellowship.

Post Minimal to the Max | New York Times

2010-02-14T07:18:00.000-08:00

By Robertha Smith

Edel Rodriquez for the New York Times

Kiki Smith @ Brooklyn Museum

2010-02-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

KIKI SMITH Sojourn
Brooklyn Museum
February 12 to September 12, 2010

Kiki Smith and her piece Singer (detail), 2008
Photograph: Martine Fougeron (New Yorker)

In Sojourn, Smith, who is known for a psychologically acute, non-narrative approach to constructing installations, begins from the position of the adult female artist and cycles through a series of experiences and artistic genres that venture far beyond the autobiographical. Religion, mythology, and spirituality surface repeatedly throughout Smith’s work, and in this installation, the Annunciation is used as a metaphor for identifying the unknown and unexpected sources female artists draw upon for inspiration. Sojourn presents a variety of work by the artist in a range of media, including unique sculpture, cast objects, collage, drawing, and photography. To extend the conceptual relationships she will develop in the Sackler Center galleries, Smith will also incorporate two eighteenth-century period rooms in the Museum’s nearby Decorative Arts galleries into her project. (press release excerpt)

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO @ ICA

2010-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

"...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project," installation view, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York. Photo: John Kennard.

For three decades, Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has addressed timely political, social, and psychological issues in his artwork, creating over 80 large-scale public projections around the world. In these works, he transforms the stories, voices, and gestures of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances by projecting them onto public monuments and landmarks.

In a new, projection-based work for the ICA, Wodiczko focuses on veterans engaged in active combat in Iraq, as well as Iraqi civilians. In ...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project, the routine sounds of life are interrupted by the noise of destruction and chaos as Wodiczko’s narrative unfolds across three walls of the gallery. (read more of press release...)

Krzysztof Wodiczko
"Art in the Twenty-First Century," production still
2005 | Season 3. Episode: "Power"
Art21, Inc. 2005

Gallery Exhibition

2010-02-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Here are two different examples of how you can do your ideal gallery exhibition layout. For my exhibition, I decided to design my own space for my work. Tara did her's differently by selecting a museum that she felt would work really well with her aesthetic.

Ben Sloat Lecture @ AIB

2010-02-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

Conversation with AIB photography faculty member Ben Sloat
Tuesday, February 2nd @ 1pm in room 215

Ben will discuss his recent Fulbright Scholar grant for a seven month photo research project in Taiwan.

"[Ben's] current work examines the cultural and ecological richness of rural areas, and how these areas confront such issues as development, modernity, and a changing cultural fabric." - Yellow in August press release

Photograph Ben Sloat, Taiwan 2009

Ben Sloat received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley (’99) and a MFA from the Museum School/Tufts University (’05). Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Front Gallery in Oakland, CA and Safe-T Gallery in Brooklyn NY - group shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Gallery 1600 in Atlanta, GA. His photographic work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Oakland Tribune, and the Boston Globe, and he has guest lectured at UC Berkeley, RISD, UC Santa Cruz, UMass Boston, Boston University, and SCAD. Having taught at Tufts University, Mass Art, and the SMFA, he currently teaches photography, digital media, and photo history at the Art Institute of Boston.

He is represented by OH+T Gallery in Boston.

Virtuoso Illusion @ MIT LIST Visual Arts Center

2010-01-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

VIRTUOSO ILLUSION: Cross-Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde
MIT LIST Visual Arts Center
February 5 to April 4, 2010
Reception: February 4, 6-8pm

Virtuoso Illusion: Cross Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde explores what has traditionally been called gender crossing or cross-dressing (drag) as a tactic for media artists that has been central to the development of the current avant-garde. The show explores how experimental art has been invigorated and advanced by artists who cross dress for many different reasons as part of their conceptual process. It is not intended as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected. This exhibition is organized by guest curator Michael Rush, former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

For several artists working today, cross dressing is not even an apt term. For video artist Ryan Trecartin, for example, gender appearances are just that, appearances. In his dizzyingly fast-paced videos, sexual leaps are one part of a multitasking language system that communicates multiple perspectives on his characters’ lives. For performance artist John Kelly, drag (a term he does use) is a theatrical tool applied to a character, like any other tool he might use in a non-drag performance. In Michelle Handelman’s work, lesbians, drag queens, women playing men playing women create a post-gender scenario not so different from many second-life experiments on the web. (press release excerpt)

Photographs by VII @ Tisch Gallery | TUFTS

2010-01-27T16:34:00.000-08:00

Questions Without Answers:
A Photographic Prism, 1985-2010
Photographs by VII
January 21-April 4, 2010
Tisch Gallery

Public Opening Reception: Thursday, January 28, 5:30-8pm
Remarks by VII Photographers at 6:30pm

Alexandra Boulat
Women's Day in Mazar-e-Sharif's Hazrat Ali Shrine, 2004

Questions Without Answers presents photographs from the renowned VII Photo Agency depicting defining events of the post-Cold War period and their aftermaths, from the Fall of the Berlin Wall and September 11, 2001, to Iraq and Afghanistan, The Balkans and Congo, Chechnya and Gaza, among others. The unique contributions of the independent photojournalists affiliated with VII are highlighted in more than 125 photographs, newly printed for the occasion, many displayed for the first time. These photojournalists collectively embody the tradition of concerned photography as their mission is to “document conflict -- environmental, social and political, both violent and nonviolent -- to produce an unflinching record of the injustices created and experienced by people caught up in the events they describe.” As Stephen Mayes, CEO of VII, comments, “[VII’s] work has never been about simplistic representation, but rather about supporting debate and contributing to change.” (press release excerpt)

Joseph Beuys @ Mary Boone Gallery

2010-01-26T16:08:00.000-08:00

JOSEPH BEUYS
WE ARE THE REVOLUTION
until February 6, 2010

Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery

JOSEPH BEUYS: “WE ARE THE REVOLUTION" is a comprehensive exhibition of original works and multiples from the Hall Collection by this influential German artist. The exhibition has been organized and installed by independent curator and art historian Dr. Pamela Kort.

Beginning with a pencil drawing made while Beuys was still a student at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, through the notable “plastic work” (sculpture) Horn of 1969, to a suite of three large blackboards heavily inscribed during the course of Beuys’ “Action” Third Way in 1978, the original works provide a philosophical and iconographical context against which his numerous and well-known multiples unfolded over time.

The making of multiples was integral to Beuys’ life; he championed them as a vehicle for disseminating his aesthetic ideas to a wide audience, often utilizing commonplace found objects, materials and images that were familiar, yet loaded with personal significance (blood, fat, and felt chief amongst them). This exhibition includes over one hundred and seventy-five of Beuys’ multiples, including such exceptional and sought-after editions as Celtic (1971), as well as the iconic Sled (1969), Felt Suit (1970), and Capri Battery (1985). (press release excerpt)

No Man's Land @ Rick Wester Fine Art

2010-01-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

Richard Misrach @ Pace/ MacGill

2010-01-17T16:14:00.001-08:00

Pace/ McGill Gallery Chelsea
January 15 - February 20, 2010

Cloud #232, 1993
Copyright Richard Misrach

TIM BURTON @ MoMA

2010-01-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

Tim Burton
MoMA, New York
until April 26, 2010

Copyright Tim Burton

Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. It brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice, and from unrealized and little-known personal projects that reveal his talent as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer working in the spirit of Pop Surrealism. (MoMA press release excerpt)

Art in Context's Visiting Guest Artists 2010

2010-01-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

BARBARA BOSWORTH

Carlisle
Copyright Barbara Bosworth

Barbara Bosworth is professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
Her images concern our interaction with nature and the environment. Using a large-format 8 by 10 inch view camera to capture portraits of hunters, national champion trees, compelling extended landscapes and extraordinary moments from the every day.

"Barbara Bosworth's photographs are graced with an uncommon elegance and intimacy," "The expansive sweep and clarity of her prints open the landscape before us with a deceptive agility, but it is in their richness of experience and sensation that they are so compelling."

-- Toby Jurovics, Princeton University Art Museum

YOAV HORESH

Instituto de Educacion Secundaria(Ex. Prison). La Linea, Spain. 2008
From series Intransition
Copyright Yoav Horesh

Born in Jerusalem, Israel. Yoav Horesh received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and an MFA from New York's Columbia University.

He has exhibited internationally in Israel, Europe and the United States. Solo and group exhibitions including the Palazzo Reale di Milano, ProjektRaumBahnhof25 in Germany, Jerusalem National Theater, Nathan Bernstein Gallery (NYC), The Theatre for The New City (NYC) Office Ops with Amnesty International, Stone Crop Gallery and the Photographic Resource Center in Boston among other venues.

Yoav has been the recipient of the Mortimer Frank Travel Award, the Agnes Martin and M. Roche scholarships and other awards from the Rhode Island Photographic Society, Santa Barbara Photography Award and Agora Gallery International Competition award. Currently, Yoav is also on the photography faculty at Mass College of Art in Boston, Queens College and Columbia University in New York.

KENRO IZU

Egypt 107, 1983
From the series Sacred Places
Copyright Kenro Izu

Izu is a Japanese-born, NYC based photographer who has traveled the world in search of sites ancient and sacred. He makes images with a custom 16 x 20” view camera and prints with hand made platinum palladium paper.
Izu is the recipient of a 2007 Visionary Lucie Award and a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been exhibited worldwide. He founded Friends Without a Border, an organization devoted to raising funds for children’s hospitals in Cambodia. Profits from select prints and his book, Light Over Ancient Angkor, are donated to this cause.

EIRIK JOHNSON

Untitled, 2004
From the series Borderlands
Copyright Eirik Johnson

Eirik Johnson (born in Seattle, 1974) is an assistant professor of photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, George Eastman House, and Aperture Gallery, among others. His first book, Borderlands, was awarded the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2005 and he is the recipient of a 2009 Massachusetts Culture Council Artist Fellowship.

ROSS McELWEE

Copyright Ross McElwee

McElwee grew up in North Carolina. He graduated from Brown University and later from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received MS in filmmaking in a program headed by documentarian Richard Leacock.

His career began in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina where he was a studio cameraman for local evening news, housewife helper shows, and "gospel hour" programs broadcast by the local television station. Later, he worked freelance shooting films for documentarians D.A. Pennebaker and then John Marshall, in Namibia.

McElwee has been a visiting filmmaker at Harvard University for ten years and has been awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

JENN WARREN

Copyright Jenn Warren

We will conduct a Skype interview with Jenn as she is currently stationed in Sudan.

Jenn Warren (AIB alumna) is a documentary photographer based in East Africa, specializing in NGO, humanitarian, and development projects. Clients include Medecins sans Frontieres, UNICEF, CARE, WFP/PAM, Amnesty International, PSI, the National Democratic Institute, SafePoint, and TASC. She was recently awarded the 2008 Nikon Emerging Professional Scholarship to attend the Missouri Photo Workshop 60 and is featured in the Best of ASMP 2008, Alligator Juniper Photography Annual 2008, and the 2008 Center for Fine Art Photography Peace Corps Exhibition.

Harry Callahan @ MFA Boston

2010-01-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

Harry Callahan: American Photographer
Saturday, November 21, 2009 - Saturday, July 3, 2010

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999), Ireland, 1979, Photograph, dye-transfer print, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sophie M. Friedman Fund, © The Estate of Harry Callahan, courtesy Pace/MacGill, NY, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Gary Schneider @ Howard Yezerski

2010-01-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

Drawn from Life

January 8 - February 9, 2010

August Sander @ Gallery Kayafas

2010-01-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

People of the 20th Century
ends January 16, 2010

Korps student from Nuremberg, Cologne, 1928
Copyright August Sander Archive

Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?

2010-01-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

New York Times
By DENIS DUTTON

Denis Dutton is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.

Lu Gang wins W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund

2009-11-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

NYT on New Museum's conflict of interest

2009-11-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

Some Object as Museum Shows Its Trustee's Art
By Deborah Sontag and Robin Pogrebin for NYT
November 10, 2009

Nysocialdiary.com
From left, Lietta Joannou, Jeff Koons, Dakis Joannou and Justine Koons in a 2003 photograph. Mr. Joannou has been collecting Mr. Koons's art since before Mr. Koons was an art star.

NO MAN'S LAND @ AIB

2009-11-11T07:30:00.001-08:00

Bonnell Robinson | Dana Mueller

November 5 to December 5, 2009

Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall
1815 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA

Image on top: Bonnell Robinson, Marne, Western Front, France, 2007

Image on bottom: Dana Mueller, The Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia/ North Carolina border, 2009

Luis Gonzalez Palma @ AIB

2009-10-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

Strauch-Mosse Lecture Series
Visiting guest artist Luiz Gonzalez Palma on October 1, 2009

Comienza entonces a llover (Then it starts to rain), 2004

LALLA ESSAYDI: Le Femme du Maroc

2009-10-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

DECORDOVA MUSEUM & SCULPTURE PARK

Joyce and Edward Linde Gallery

September 26, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Lalla Essaydi, Le Femme du Maroc: Reclining Odalisque, 2008

Lalla Essaydi is a New York-based, Moroccan-born photographer, painter, and installation artist. Over the past decade, she has risen to international prominence with her timely and beautiful work that deals with the condition of women in Islamic society, cross-cultural identity, Orientalism, and the history of art. Like her feminist Muslim expatriate contemporaries—Ghada Amer, Ambreen Butt, Emily Jacir, Sherin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander—Essaydi has developed a powerful and personal artistic voice that calls into question prevailing myths, power hierarchies, and traditions that limit human freedom. (press release)

Gallery Talk

Senior Curator Nick Capasso: Saturday, November 21, 3 pm

Panel Discussion
Women, Culture, and Islam: A Cultural Historian's Perspective on Lalla Essaydi's Photographs: Sunday, October 11, 1 pm
DeCordova welcomes Senior Resident Scholar Elinor Gadon from Brandeis University's Women's Studies Research Center for an afternoon discussion of Lalla Essaydi's photographs. Framed within the context of anthropology, art, and religion, Gadon brings her unique perspective as a cultural historian to this intriguing exhibition.

Alec Soth @ MassArt

2009-09-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

Dog Days Bogotá by Alec Soth

September 9 - November 28, 2009
Stephen D. Paine Gallery
Massachusetts College of Art + Design
Boston, MA
Reception: Thursday, October 1, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Artist Lecture: Monday, October 26, 6:00 PM

In 2002 Alec Soth traveled with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia to adopt a baby girl, Carmen. Carmen's birthmother gave her a scrapbook book with this note; "When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things." Taking this message to heart Soth set out to capture the city during the two months it took the courts to process the paperwork. As in his other series, Sleeping By the Mississippi and NIAGARA, beauty makes itself apparent through ramshackle architecture, the companionship of animals, and the complexities of human relationships. Because of the very personal nature of this journey, Dog Days Bogotá is both poetic and haunting, he says, "I wanted to share my honest impressions, including my fears." Soth has exhibitions on view this fall at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, and in 2010 at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. This exhibition was organized by Magnum Photos. (excerpt MassArt press release)

BORDER @ Davis Museum

2009-05-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Michal Rovner: Border

DAVIS MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER
Wellesley, MA
March 11 - June 14, 2009

“This is not a true story.” Thus begins the seminal art video Border, which Michal Rovner shot along the boundary between Israel and Lebanon during 1996-1997.

An Israeli commander and the artist herself are the film’s two central characters. As they attempt to enter each other’s worlds, two narratives emerge. One concerns the actual political and physical border—the beautiful, rocky landscape; soldiers and civilians who populate it; and tense atmosphere. The other follows Rovner’s relationship with the commander, whose movements she chronicles and who participates in creating the film. (press release excerpt)

Alessandra Sanguinetti visits Art in Context

2009-05-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

In March 2009 Art in Context at the Art Institute of Boston hosted a talk with Alessandra Sanguinetti, which was one of the highlights of this year's visiting artist series. Alessandra was truly inspiring, insightful and gracious when she shared her experiences as one of the leading contemporary photographers.

She recently received the Peabody Award 2009.

Alessandra Sanguinetti speaks to Art in Context, March 2009

Bonnie Robinson and Alessandra Sanguinetti, Art Institute of Boston, March 2009

THE EDGE OF VISION Abstraction in Contemporary Photography

2009-05-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Curated by Lyle Rexer

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York

May 15 to July 9, 2009

Talk and book signing with Lyle Rexer:
Tuesday, June 16, 6:30 pm

Aperture Gallery presents The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, curated by Lyle Rexer. From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision showcases the work of nineteen contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction. Rexer defines abstraction as “a departure from or the eliding of an immediately apprehensible subject.” Within this broad definition, a host of approaches explore aspects of the photographic experience, including the chemistry of traditional photography, the mediation of lenses, the direct capture of light without a camera, temporal extensions, digital sampling of found images, radical cropping, and various deliberate destabilizations of photographic reference.

Going Softly Into a Parallel Universe / NYT

2009-05-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

By Carol Kino for the New York Times

Claes Oldenburg at the Whitney Museum, where two exhibitions of his work are on view.
Photograph by Evan Sung/ NYT

IN 1961, early in his career, the Pop artist Claes Oldenburg wrote a manifesto: “I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all. I am for an artist who vanishes.”

+

Art Review | Claes Oldenburg
A Low-Cost Show Reinflates a Big Bag
By Kareen Rosenberg for the New York Times

Soft Shuttlecocks, Falling, Number Two, 1995
Claes Oldenburg

Giant Fagends, 1967
Claes Oldenburg

slideshow

NYT introduces LENS

2009-05-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Lens is a new photojournalism blog that presents some of the most interesting visual and multimedia reporting. It will be a showcase for the work of New York Times photographers, and will highlight great images from other news organizations and from around the Web.

Robert Capa/ NYT article

2009-04-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

New Works by Photography's Old Masters

By Randy Kennedy/ New York Times

A look inside Robert Capa's Mexican Suitcase, photography from the Spanish Civil War that was long thought to be lost.

A shot of a woman and child at a Spanish refugee camp in France, taken by Robert Capa in March 1939.

Lisa Wiltse's essay on Teenage Pregnancy

2009-04-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

BURN MAGAZINE
Photographic Essay by Lisa Wiltse, AIB Alumna

Parola Tondo District, Manila, Philippines
© Lisa Wiltse

Pregnant teenagers pass the time in the alleyways and slum of Parola Tondo district, Manila, Philippines
© Lisa Wiltse

Teenage pregnancy is widespread in the Philippines, especially amongst the poor. In Manila, this contributes to overpopulation and the vicious cycle of poverty, another child borne into the ghettos and a teenage Mom bearing the burden of raising a child before her own maturity and adulthood. An estimated 70,000 adolescent mothers die each year in developing countries.
Young mothers face enormous health risks, obstructed labor is common and results in newborn deaths and deaths or disabilities in the mother.

Children are everywhere, tangible evidence of the city’s teenage pregnancy problem. Every year, 13 out of 100 girls aged between 15 and 19 of the Filipino population get pregnant. Health care for Manila’s urban poor is almost nonexistent, while opportunities to learn about contraception in this strictly Catholic country are rare. (excerpt from burn Magazine)

Lisa Wiltse graduated from the Photography Department at the Art Institute of Boston in 1999. Lisa currently works as a freelance photographer who has generated self-funded projects focusing on humanitarian issues in countries such as Australia, Uganda, Bangladesh, Romania and most recently the Philippines. A former staff photographer for the Sydney Morning Herald, her work has been awarded several honors including first prize at PX3 Prix de la Photographie, The Oxfam Humanitarian Award, and the Gordon Parks International Photography contest, among others. Lisa was announced as one of the 2008 Magenta Flash Forward Emerging Photographers and is represented by Aurora Photos.

Sophie Calle @ Paula Cooper Gallery

2009-04-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Sophie Calle Take Care of Yourself

April 9 - June 6, 2009

Art Review | 'The Pictures Generation'

2009-04-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

At the Met, Baby Boomers Leap Onstage

By Holland Cotter/ New York Times

Blue Tile Reception Area, 1983
Laurie Simmons

alter ego @ Nave Gallery

2009-04-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

Images Made with Toy Cameras and Alternative Photographic Processes

Nave Gallery
Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church
155 Powderhouse Blvd., Somerville, MA

May 2-21, 2009
Reception May 7, 7-9 p.m

During times of change, there are always those who rebel. In the current era of digital media, many photographers are reaching for ways to create work that is relevant in the world today, but by using manual processes that have enriched photography since it's inception. Be it with taped up plastic toy cameras from the 1970s, to making their own pinhole cameras, to creating cyanotypes outside in the sun—these are not photographers who simply want to plug in their memory card and click away to create an image. There is a lot of trial and error, duct-tape and elbow grease in making each of these images.

Many alternative photographers live by the mantra “don’t think, just shoot”. There are minimal options and settings in the cameras, and much is is left to chance, intuition and happy accidents. The process takes on a life of its own--be it light leaks in the camera, one frame overlapping to the next, or variations in environment and chemistry-- the intentional loss of control over the medium gives the artist an ability to let go of what might be sacred, as what is being captured through these mediums many times is unknown until the film is processed. It is a balance of give and take between the artist and the medium.

These photographers portray work that is whimsical, nostalgic and engrossed in their respective mediums to create the work that has been chosen to display. With polaroid, cyantope and other analogue techniques falling to the wayside in this digital age, we hope to celebrate these artists and their unique processes at the Nave.

Artists include Leslie Bastress, Heather Blakney, Kayla Brenes, Mark Richard Brown, Derrick Burbel, Christina, Myriah Leshea Douglas, Erica Frisk, Alice Grossman, Mellisa Gruntkosky, Janisha, Theresa Kelliher, Ariel Kessler, Mary Kocol, Cassandra Martin, Karen Molloy, Natasha Moustache, Dana Mueller, Denyse Murphy, Eric Nichols, Cade Overton, O Gustavo Plascencia, Serrah Russell, Shayna, Erika Sidor, Annie Smidt, Roberta Stone, David Strasburger, Andy Takats, Tricia, Molly Van Nice, V VanSant, Ann Zelle and Lexie Zippin.

Wicked Local Somerville article

Visiting artist Alessandra Sanguinetti

2009-04-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Art Institute of Boston
Friday, April 17, 2009

Left:
Untitled
From On the Sixth Day
Fujiflex Print
1996–2004
Right:
Time Flies
Cibachrome Print
2005
© Alessandra Sanguinetti

The twins Ahmed and Mahmoud, Heritage Center, Bethlehem, C-Print , 2003
© Alessandra Sanguinetti

Alessandra Sanguinetti was born in New York City in 1968 and currently lives and works in both Buenos Aires and New York City. Her work has been exhibited extensively abroad, including a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, and is part of several collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the International Center of Photography, New York. She has been awarded numerous grants and prizes, including the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award.

Ben Sloat in Taiwan/ Conference Interview

2009-04-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Temple Portraits, Ben Sloat

Art in Context will conduct a conference interview with Ben Sloat who is currently on a Fulbright Scholarship in Taiwan.

Photographs Ben Sloat, Taiwan 2009

He is represented by OH+T Gallery in Boston.

NYT Art Review | Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West

2009-03-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

Mythic West of Dreams and Nightmares

By Ken Johnson/ New York Times

c) Stephen Shore

MOMA exhibit visit here

March 29, 2009–June 8, 2009

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West examines how photography has pictured the idea of the American West from 1850 to the present. Photography's development coincided with the exploration and the settlement of the West, and their simultaneous rise resulted in a complex association that has shaped the perception of the West's physical and social landscape to this day. For over 150 years, the image of the West has been formed and changed through a variety of photographic traditions and genres, and this exhibition considers the medium's role in shaping our collective imagination of the West. (excerpt press release)

Untitled (Cowboy), 2003
c) Richard Prince

c) Robert Adams

Marilyn, 28 Years Old, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1990-92
Philip-Lorca diCorcia

The Art of Dinh Lê/ Aidekman Arts Center/ Tufts

2009-03-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

A Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Lê
January 22-March 29, 2009
Tisch Gallery

Mot Coi Di Ve
Dinh Q.Lê

Lê’s tapestries and video installations reveal a two-decade-long introspective journey in which the artist has brought his vision to bear on the dislocation and cultural displacement he experienced, first in fleeing his homeland, then with his immersion in American culture, and ultimately upon the return to his estranged and yet familiar country. Through his art, Lê has sought to negotiate the differing perspectives he holds—Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese, and American—on Vietnam, the American-Vietnam War, and his place in the two societies in which he finds both belonging and alienation.

The Imaginary Country, 2006
Dinh Q. Lê , Three-channel video installation made in collaboration with Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Ha Thuc Phu Nam

By literally and metaphorically weaving together images that speak for his conflicted cultural identity, Dinh Q. Lê’s work allows us to experience the uncertain balance of personal memories within a collective memory forged largely by cinematic constructions. The works in this exhibition embody Lê’s vivid sense of the struggle to find one’s own place within the framework of superimposed, alien, and collective identity. (press release excerpt)

Untitled, 2008/ From the series Hill of Poisonous Trees

Cate McQuaid
Globe Correspondent
Photo tapestry explore war and identity

Visting artist LAURA MCPHEE

2009-03-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

The Art Institute of Boston
March 24, 2009

© Laura McPhee, 2008
From the series Guardians of Solitude
On view at Bonni Benrubi, NY until April 11, 2009

Laura McPhee earned a BFA in Art History from Princeton University in 1980, where she studied with Emmet Gowin and a MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. McPhee was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and Fellowship in 1998 for work in India and Sri Lanka and a residency in Idaho from Alturas Foundation 2003-2005. She was also awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 1995 and a John Simon Guddenhaim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1993.

Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

Smoke above Fisher Creek, Valley Road Wildfire
40,838 Acres Burned, Custer County, Idaho, 2005
From the series River of No Return
© Laura McPhee

She is the daughter of award winning author John McPhee and photographer Pryde Brown, sister of novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, architectural historian Sarah McPhee, and Joan Sullivan, founding principal of the Bronx Academy of Letters.

Sluices at a reservoir, part of a two-thousand-year-old irrigation
system now updated, near Badulla, Sri Lanka 1998
From the series No Ordinary Land
© Virginia Beahan & Laura McPhee

NYTimes on Larry Gagosian

2009-03-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Pulling Art Sales Out of Thinning Air
By David Segal, NYT

Charlie Powell, New York Times

Bill Burke Visit to AIB on March 17th

2009-03-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Holzer at the Whitney

2009-03-13T07:56:00.001-07:00

The Films of Werner Herzog @ the MFA

2009-03-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

March 11 to 21, 2009

Aquirre: Wrath of God, 1972
Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog (b. 1942) is a director, screenwriter, and actor whose perspective on the world has earned him critical and popular acclaim. Whether shooting in Antarctica, Alaska, the Peruvian jungle, or Wisconsin, Herzog’s films often focus on characters with seemingly impossible dreams or those who have a unique and unusual talent. Since his first film Herakles in 1962, Herzog has made over 50 films. This eight-film retrospective is only a glimpse of Herzog’s extraordinary imagination and vision.

Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art/ PEM

2009-03-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

To watch video click on image

The Peabody Essex Museum
Mahjoing: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection

(press release excerpt)
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, an assemblage of provocative works organized by the Berkeley Art Museum. Featuring paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and video, Mahjong reflects four decades of artistic exploration.
The last forty years of unprecedented social, political and economic transformation forged a generation of Chinese artists unlike any who came before. From times of restriction and relative obscurity, through more recent years of increased artistic freedom and record-breaking international auctions, Chinese artists observed the changes around them and navigated their own internal landscapes. Now China is home to one of the most dynamic and innovative contemporary art scenes in the world.

From Family Tree, 2000 (9 photographs)
Zhang Huan

Miracles and Exorcised Demons: “Drei” (i.e. “three”)

2009-03-06T13:55:00.000-08:00

Roaring Twenties, Otto Dix, 1927-28

An Exhibition In Stuttgart on the Triptych in Modern Art

by Birgit Sonna in the Goethe Institut Journal/ The Arts

Boris Mikhailov - At Dusk

2009-03-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

DEWEER Gallery
Belgium
February 22 to April 5, 2009

Untitled, 1993
From the series At Dusk
© Boris Mikhailov

At Dusk (1993) consists of 13 panoramic photographs, tinted with blue ink. The photographs remind us of the second World War. It is a dark and dramatic depiction about some of the artist's personal recollections of the war, during which Mikhailov was evacuated to the Ural. He remembers being brutally woken up in the middle of the night by wailing sirens. The dark blue tints refer to these traumatic experiences and also to the capitalist system that was rapidly taking control of his post-communist country at the time he made the series. At Dusk is one of Mikhailov's most striking body of work. (text taken from actuphoto).

Untitled, 1993
From the series At Dusk
© Boris Mikhailov

More information on Mikhailov visit HERE

David Hilliard @ Carroll and Sons

2009-03-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

Being Like

Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston

February 18 – March 28, 2009
Reception Friday Mar 6, 5:30–7:30

David Hilliard Photographs

"For years I have been actively documenting my life and the lives of those around me, recording events and attempting to create order in a sometimes chaotic world. While my photographs focus on the personal, the familiar and the simply ordinary, the work strikes a balance between autobiography and fiction. Within the photographs physical distance is often manipulated to represent emotional distance. The casual glances people share can take on a deeper significance, and what initially appears subjective and intimate is quite often a commentary on the larger contours of life.
For me, the construction of panoramic photographs, comprised of various single images, acts as a visual language. Focal planes shift, panel by panel. This sequencing of photographs and shifting of focal planes allows me the luxury of guiding the viewer across the photograph, directing their eye; an effect which could not be achieved through a single image.
I continually aspire to represent the spaces we inhabit, relationships we create, and the objects with which we surround ourselves. I hope the messages the photographs deliver speak to the personal as well as the universal experience. I find the enduring power and the sheer ability of a photograph to express a thought, a moment, or an idea, to be the most powerful expression of myself, both as an artist, and as an individual."

Visiting Artist LISSA RIVERA

2009-03-01T14:22:00.000-08:00

The Art Institute of Boston
Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Assignment, Brighton, Massachusetts, 2005
From the series Public Education
© Lissa Rivera

Art in Context is proud to present AIB's photography alum Lissa Rivera. Lissa graduated from the Art Institute of Boston in 2006 and is currently pursuing her MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Sylvia Plachy named Rivera one of the 25 Under 25 Up-and Coming American Photographers. Her work has been shown at the National Museum of Woman in Arts, Washington D.C., the Tisch School of Arts, NY, the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA, and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, among others. Rivera is the recipient of several awards including the 2008 Aaron Sisking Award and the 2007 Woman to Watch Award. She is represented by Gallery Kayafas.

Alumni Room, Beta Gamma Epsilon, Northeastern
From the series Greek Letter Societies
© Lissa Rivera

The bodies of work Public Education, Privat Education and Greek Letter Societies were created while studying at the Art Institute of Boston. Lissa's new work is currently on exhibit in fourselves at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall at Lesley University. The exhibit is open until April 11; the opening reception will take place on March 5, 5:30 to 7:30pm.

Carve, 2008
New Work
© Lissa Rivera

The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art!/ NYT

2009-02-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

New York Times Article
By Holland Cotter

Damien Hirst's Golden Calf sold for $18.6 million last year.

Visiting Artist Juan Jose Barboza Gubo

2009-02-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

The Art Institute of Boston
February 10, 2009

Above
Memory series 4, Detail, 2008

Juan Jose Barboza Gubo received his BFA in Sculpture at the Pontifical Catholic University, Lima, Peru in 2000, and his MFA in Painting and Sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art + Design in 2007/8. Gubo is the recipient of several international awards and his work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the US, South America and Europe.

Left
Pieta series 2, 2005

Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand/ ICA Boston

2009-02-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

The West Gallery / February 6 to August 16, 2009

The first museum survey of one of the most influential street artists of our time now at the ICA Boston.

(from press release)
Fairey's multi-layered renderings of counter-cultural revolutionaries and rap, punk and rock stars, as well as updated and re-imagined propaganda-style posters, carry his signature graphic style, marked by his frequent use of black, white, and red. Recently, his portrait of Barack Obama, a ubiquitous sight on the campaign trail, drew a new level of attention to the artist's work and was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, for its collection.

The controversy: Shepard finds himself in a copyright battle with the Associated Press over the Obama image.

Left: Photograph by Mannie Garcia, AP

THE ARREST on NECN.com

Articles:

Artist Sues AP/ NYT (2.9.2009)

AP claims Obama image/ NYT (2.5.2009)

FAST COMPANY RISD Pride.... (2.4.2009)

Walker Evans' Postcards as Muse @ the MET

2009-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

A selection of postcards that were collected by photographer Walker Evans are on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

February 3 to May 25, 2009
The Howard Gilman Gallery

Main Street Postcards as Muse
By Roberta Smith/ New York Times article

Evans' 1935 photograph Street Scene, Morgan City, LA almost perfectly matches the vantage point of a postcard that he owned.

Walker Evans
Street Scene, Morgan City, LA, 1935

Unknown artist
Front Street, Looking North, Morgan City, LA, 1929

2009 prc student exhibition

2009-02-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

PHOTOGRAPHIC RESOURCE CENTER at Boston University
February 6 to March 15, 2009
Reception Thursday, February 5, 5:30-7:30pm

(press release)
From its large universities to its smaller colleges, New England is rich with gifted students and scholars. Among these programs, photography has always flourished, making this an area celebrated within photo history. This annual exhibition honors academic diversity and thus features work selected by the schools themselves. Students and visitors alike enjoy seeing the work displayed in a gallery setting, as well as the opportunity to witness each program’s unique approach to photography and related media.

AIB students featured at the 2009 PRC Student exhibit are Jeff Allen, Kevin Barton, Kelly Burgess, Lily Carlson and Joseph Mygan.

Melanie Smith: Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures

2009-02-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

MIT LIST VISUAL ARTS CENTER
February 6 to April 5, 2009
Reception Thursday, February 5, 6-8pm

Melanie Smith, Spiral City, 2002 (in collaboration with Rafael Ortega)

(press release)
Melanie Smith: Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures, an exhibition organized by curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, includes paintings, photography, and video works, that artist Melanie Smith has made by herself and in collaboration with other artists. These works constitute an aesthetic and social investigation of Mexico City, where she has lived and worked since 1989.

Examining the city from all angles–from the air and the ground; from the crowded grid of city blocks to the commerce on the street–Smith has created a visual vocabulary that draws from the visual impact of the megalopolis while simultaneously relaying an interest in the history of art and the ways in which “abstract” art relates to the urban environment. Using colors, textures, materials, and found objects from the urban environment, Smith examines the complex and chaotic visual elements of the 21st-century city.

Boston galleries looking for new artists

2009-02-01T10:38:00.000-08:00

ERC Art Space on 286 Newbury Street

espressproyalecaffe@gmail.com

www.flickr.com/aiboston

send images to aibwebgallery@gmail.com

LAURA McPHEE Guardians of Solitude/ Bonni Benrubi, NY

2009-01-30T08:27:00.000-08:00

LAURA McPHEE : Guardians of Solitude
Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC
February 5 - April 4, 2009
Reception February 5, 6 to 8pm

Laura McPhee, Beaver Ponds on Fisher Creek After Wild Fire,
White Cloud Mountains, Idaho, 2007, C-print
Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery

(press release)
Bonni Benrubi Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by photographer Laura McPhee. “Guardians of Solitude” is built upon McPhee's work from her 2003-2005 “River of No Return,” series consisting of studies of the landscape and a small rural community in a remote region of central Idaho: Sawtooth Valley. “Guardians of Solitude” celebrates the unsurpassed splendor of a fabled region, while also presenting the environmental complexities of managing a vast landscape in which the needs of ranchers, biologists, miners, tourists, and locals seek a finely delineated balance. In images spanning all seasons, McPhee depicts the magnificence and history of the Sawtooth Valley in central Idaho. This new body of photographic work presents queries about our contemporary notion of the utopian American landscape -- what it was and what it will become. Panoramic in its scope, the photographs examine conflicting ideas about landscape in America and scrutinizes our values and beliefs about the natural world. The nature/culture dilemma is endlessly complex and these images describe this kaleidoscopic; a fragmented, and contested relationship, within one place and among one group of people. Photographer Laura McPhee follows in the tradition of 19th-century artistic approaches toward the sublime, relying on a large-format view camera to capture images of exquisite color, clarity, and definition. Rooted in the work of Carleton Watkins and Frederick Sommer, McPhee has taken the traditional genre of landscape to it's contemporary self both in medium and content.

The New Gallery Concert Series

2009-01-29T09:41:00.000-08:00

A SENSE OF HOME
Part of the Young Composers Festival 2009
Featured visual artists from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University
Event Thursday, January 29, 2009
7pm

From left to right:
Emma in 4 o'clock Sun, July 2007
© Margaret Hall

Suncatcher, 2008
© Kelly Burgess

Untitled
© Tara Sellios

Struggling Artists Join Forces/ CNN Video

2009-01-28T15:35:00.001-08:00

CNN's Ben Tinker reports on artists sharing their workspace, materials and ideas in these tough economic times.

Brandeis to Close Rose Art Museum/ ARTINFO

2009-01-28T12:45:00.000-08:00

BOSTON—Facing a major budget crisis, Brandeis University has announced it will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off its entire 6,000-work art collection.

Courtesy Rose Art Museum

Rose Director Michael Rush says he was informed of the decision to close the museum shortly before it was announced.

John Blanding / Globe Staff

Rose Art Museum

Spring Schedule 2009

2009-01-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

January 27
Intro

February 3
Curators Talk Andrew Mroczek + Bonnell Robinson

Photographic Figures Museum of Fine Arts Boston

February 10
Visiting Peruvian artist Juan Jose Barboza Gubo

February 17
ICA Boston 1pm
Talk with ICA curator
Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand
Momentum 12: Gerard Byrne
2008 James and Audrey FOSTER PRIZE
ICA Collection including new acquisitions

March 3
Visiting artist Lissa Rivera

March 10
SPRING⎮BREAK

March 17
Visiting artist Bill Burke

March 20 + 21
NYC ⎮ Galleries & Museums

March 24
Visiting artist Laura McPhee

March 31
MIT LIST Visual Arts Center
Tour & Talk
Melanie Smith: Spiral City and Other Vicarious Pleasures

April 7
MassMOCA
Simon Starling: The Nanjing Particles
Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape
These Days: Elegies for Modern Times
Anselm Kiefer: Sculpture and Paintings

April 14
Skype Interview with Ben Sloat in Taiwan/ China

April 17
Visiting artist Alessandra Sanguinetti

April 21
open
RISD/ BROWN/ Providence

April 28
Final Presentations

Audio Slide Show: A War's Many Angles/ New York Times

2009-01-25T06:08:00.000-08:00

NYT Photographer's Journal

The photographers Tyler Hicks and Moises Saman documented the fear, loss and destruction wrought by the three-week war in Gaza.

See also Photographer's Journal: Kabul in Transition by Tyler Hicks/ NYT.

PULL OF GRAVITY: Photographs by Emmet Gowin and Elijah Gowin

2009-01-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

Griffin Museum of Photography
January 29 to February 29, 2009

From Changing the Earth
© Emmet Gowin

"In Pull of Gravity both Elijah Gowin and Emmet Gowin deal the viewer a mysterious and contrary hand, yet they do so in very different ways," says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. "We are captivated by the dual and opposing nature of the photographs as we look for the meaning in what we are seeing. At the same time, father and son utilize scale as a means of conveying the fragile quality of our lives and the world we inhabit."
(excerpt from press release)

From Of Falling and Floating
© Elijah Gowin
Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery

Elijah Gowin website
Emmet Gowin link

It's Complicated: The American Teenager

2009-01-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

ROBIN BOWMAN
Catherine Edelman Gallery
Chicago, IL
January 9 to March 7, 2009

Faduma Mohamed, age 16, Said Ahmed, age 15, Minneapolis, MN,
July 12, 2004
© Robin Bowman

(press release)
Robin Bowman's five-year journey into the heart of teenage America resulted in a series of 419 collaborative portraits, in which she shares her discoveries of a generation now coming of age. In searing and intimate contemporary photographs, presented with the young people's own voices of passion, pride, embarrassment, lust, dread, pain, anxiety, instability and rage, the book charts the coming of age of the largest generation ever in America, almost double the 1960s baby boomers.

In her exploration, she traveled 21,731 miles to photograph teens in every region of the country and every socioeconomic group: from a Texas debutante to teenage gang members in New York City; from a drag queen in Georgia to a coal miner in West Virginia. Her intimate photographs invite individuals to look more closely at how complex challenges facing a rising generation of Americans have informed individual identities. The photographs also ask us to reconcile preconceived ideas and stereotypes of teenagers with the diversity of individuals in the portraits.

Jason Kramer, age 18, Rockland, ME, July 5, 2002
© Robin Bowman

Art New England/ Bonnell Robinson

2009-01-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

Eskimos, Excavations, Executions, and Explosions:
Archiving the Boston Herald-Traveler Photo Morgue

by Bonnell Robinson

Tsar Nicholas II and Family, 1913
Herald-Traveler Photo Morgue
Courtesy of Boston Public Library

Bonnie Robinson's article on the Boston Heralds-Traveler Morgue Collection at the Boston Public Library is now featured at Art New England's December/ January 2009 issue.

Make sure to pick up a copy and check it out.

VISITING ARTISTS spring 2009

2008-12-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

AIB's Art in Context is proud to present
the visiting artists in spring 2009

Laura McPhee

Igloo Built Following Plans Downloaded from the Internet, Park Creek, Custer County, Idaho, 2005
From River of No Return

Lissa Rivera

Carve, 2008

Alessandra Sanguinetti

Madonna, 2001

Juan Jose Barboza Gubo

Pope Series 2, 2006-7
Oil on canvas, 6'x7'

Bill Burke

I Want to Take Picture, Site 8, 1986
From I Want To Take Picture

EXPOSURE

2008-05-20T12:59:00.001-07:00

2008 Annual PRC Juried Exhibition
May 23 to July 2, 2008

Guest Juror Lesley A. Martin
Publisher Aperture Foundation Book Program

EXPOSURE features 14 selected artists of photography and related media whose themes include conflict, community, commerce, work and family.

Benjamin Lowy
From Iraq Perspectives, 2005-present

Robert Knight
Eli & Ben (#2), Chestnut Hill, MA 2006
From Dwellings

Martine Fougeron
From Tête-á-Tête I

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL

2008-05-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

The Future of Contemporary Photography
Curated by Martin Parr, Lesley A. Martin, Tim Barber and Kathy Ryan

DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
May 14 to 18, 2008

Photograph Jonathan Smith

Exhibtion map

Visit New York Photo Awards

IN REVIEW Cai Guo-Qiang

2008-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Exploding Globally

Cai Guo-Qiang's I Want to Believe currently at the Guggenheim

Review by Jon Bakos

Inopportune: Stage One, 2004
Guggenheim exhibit I Want to Believe, 2008

Jon Bakos will be a senior BFA candidate at the Art Institute of Boston this coming fall. Jon's astute critical thoughts on contemporary art are reflected in his writings and discussions, which he shares on his website www.jonbakos.com. His work has been chosen for the second year to be included in TAKINGIN Best of AIB Photography.

Two Chinas: Chen Qiulin and Yun-Fei Ji

2008-05-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

WORCESTER ART MUSEUM

Through September 21, 2008

Chen Qiulin, Bei Fu (Farewell Poem), 2003
Still from color video, 9 minutes, Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2007

This exhibition considers the rapidly changing conditions in China through the lens of new acquisitions created by two young Chinese artists, Chen Qiulin (b. 1975) and Yun-Fei Ji (b. 1963). Both artists have responded to the altered landscapes and human displacement caused by flooding, which is a result of China’s Three Gorges Dam project. Chen Qiulin uses video in Bie Fu (Farewell Poem), from 2003, to revisit her childhood memories and China’s past amidst the rubble of Wanzhou, her hometown and one of the cities flooded by the dam project. In Yun-Fei Ji’s monumental scroll-like painting, Below the 143 Meter Mark, from 2006, allusions to classical landscape painting are transformed by grim contemporary details - houses and hillsides crumbling, a ghost town littered with abandoned bundles and bicycles.
(Excerpt from press release)

ABELARDO MORELL/ Bernard Toale Gallery

2008-05-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

PICTURES in PICTURES

Bernard Toale Gallery
Boston

May 14 to June 28, 2008

Santa Maria della Salute with Scaffolding in Palazzo Bedroom, 2007

TAKING IN @ AIB University Hall Gallery

2008-05-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University presents

TAKINGIN The Best of AIB Photography

Juried exhibit of The Art Insitute of Boston's best contemporary photography. The 2008 TakingIn jurors were Kristen Dodge, Co-Director of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Jim Fitts, Director of the PRC, Arlette Kayafas of Gallery Kayafas and Rania Matar, photographer.

Book Release and Reception May 15, 6pm

University Hall Gallery
Porter Square, Cambridge
May 15 to June 15, 2008

Paul Yem, Untitled, 2008