Slideluck Potshow's attendees mingle before the slideshow.

Slideluck Potshow is a non-profit organization formed around two great ideas: food and art. Last night in New York City’s spacious Canoe Studios in Chelsea, SLPS put on its thirteenth NYC show. The event started, as the name would suggest, with a potluck dinner. Guests were asked to bring a dish and/or drink to share. I arrived about an hour later than the 6:30pm starting time, but there was still enough food around, a grill for brats and dogs on the balcony and plenty of desserts. DJ Moni provided the mingling music, as guests stuffed their faces watching the sun set over Jersey.

A sampling of the fare at the potluck

Eating and mingling while the sun sets over the Hudson River

The dessert table (with icebox pie, cupcakes, lemon crumb cake...)

Slideluckers wait for the show to begin.

The main event of the evening started around 9:30. The slideshow was simulcast into at least three packed standing-room only gallery rooms. This slideshow was anything but your grandparents’ last summer vacation. Each of the featured artists’ works were multimedia spectacles accompanied by music and sometimes video. The theme of this year’s SLPS XIII was “Now.” The diverse group of artists rose to the challenge wonderfully, from Chief White House photographer and esteemed photojournalist Peter Souza’s photos of the first family’s first year (set to the audio of the President’s Inauguration Address), to San Francisco’s Lisa Wiseman and her The New Polaroid series, a collection of dreamy whimsical images all captured with an iPhone.

An image from Claudio Papapietro's Demolition Derby series. c. Claudio Papapietro

For me personally, many of the most surprising, poignant and beautiful images of the night came from several photographers examining American subcultures. Claudio Papapietro’s Demolition Derby series shows a group of friends as they make preparations for and compete in a demolition derby. Papapeitro’s use of light and composition endows his working-class subjects with subtle nobility. Like Papapietro, Brooklyn’s Kim Reierson focuses on an underside of American culture in her Exotic World Dancer portraits. The photos of the burlesque competition’s contestants range from ages 18-80 and allows her subjects’ beauty to manifest through their flaws, rather than in spite of them. The Chicago-based Brian Ulrich’s Dark Store, Ghost Boxes and Dead Malls is a haunting reminder and warning of America’s financial struggles as photograph after photograph depicts empty malls, weed-plagued barren parking lots, and lonely storefronts with only ghost-letter impressions of the corporate names they used to carry.

I (Lego) New York by Christoph Niemann. c. Christoph Niemann

A major part of what made the collection of slideshows work so well was the juxtaposition of the vastly different artists and mediums. Whimsical and playful pieces like Jonah Sampson’s Pleasantville, a series of toy-like model people engaged in many comically-placed scenes of violence and debauchery, or Christoph Niemann’s crowd-favorite Lego art in I (Lego) New York were placed directly next to heavy, thought-provoking, difficult images like Portrait of a Genocide’s stark and heart-wrenching reminders of the atrocities in Rwanda by French documentary photographer Myriam Abdelaziz.

The evening was a success and a tribute to the work that directors Casey Kelbaugh and Alys Kenny have put into these shows nationally and internationally. I strongly recommend making your best dish and attending the next Slideluck Potshow either in its next return to New York or in the myriad of other locations where they set up a projector.

The spacious Canoe Studios on W. 26th Street hosted Slideluck Potshow's thirteenth New York show.

All photos by Joyce Tota unless noted.

Tags: American subculture, Brian Ulrich, Canoe Studios, Christoph Niemann, Claudio Papapietro, iPhone art, Jonah Samson, Kim Reierson, Myriam Abdelaziz, New York, Obama, Pete Souza, Photography, potluck, Rwanda, Slideluck Potshow, slideshow, White House.

Beginning today, the New York Photo Festival, which bills itself as “the future of contemporary photography,” takes over most of the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, with a variety of exhibitions, openings, lectures, and seminars. Four main exhibitions have been organized, each by a different curator, including “I don’t really know what kind of girl I am,” an exploration of photography where women are the subjects, including Edith Maybin’s lush images of a very strange sort of child - one whose head has been manipulated onto Maybin’s body, producing a very (un)natural blending of mother and child.

Photographer Edith Maybin at St. Ann's Warehouse

The Tobacco Warehouse, which has also housed Art + Commerce’s Emerging Photographer Festival in 2004 and 2005, is now home to the satellite show. Peek around and a glorious smattering of SX-70 Polaroids can be found, lovingly curated by French artist Véronique Bourgoin. Made with instant film that is no longer in production, these types of Polaroids have always transported their subjects back at least thirty years, if not passing them into a secret nether-decade between 1972-1984. Nudes tend to do especially well with this technique, of which there are quite a few here, though almost eclipsing the other subject matter.

"Magic Trick," a collection of Polaroid pictures curated by Véronique Bourgoin at the Tobacco Warehouse

Work by last year's Award Nominee Michael Corridore

Work by last year's Student Editorial Winner Tobias Kruse

The NY Photo Festival: May 13-17, 2009

Photo Awards Grand Ceremony, May 15th, 8pm. Tickets available here.

Tags: Brooklyn, DUMBO, Edith Maybin, festivals, Michael Corridore, New York, photo festival, Photography, Polaroids, SX-70, The NY Photo Festival, Tobias Kruse.

Via Gothamist.com:

Politicker NY reports today that New York City cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, and the American Museum of Natural History are losing up to 42 percent of their municipal funding due to budget cutbacks by Mayor Bloomberg’s administration. This news comes in on the heels of Bloomberg’s press conference touting the free activities available to residents in our city’s museums, parks, theaters, etc..

Facade of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, New York. Photo by Paul Masck, released with a Creative Commons license, July 2005.

With drastic cuts being made or proposed at many city-funded agencies, it’s not unusual to see arts funding slashed at the Department of Cultural Affairs. However, Bloomberg’s cuts seem to be in opposition to a commitment the city made at the Creative New York Conference just two years ago, to establish a dedicated industry desk for cultural nonprofits overseen by the city’s Economic Development Corp. The desk focuses on recruiting and helping nonprofit groups get financing, real estate and workforce training.

Despite the cuts, the mayor himself has a had a long-standing history of personal philanthropy, funding cultural programs of all sizes in New York City out of his personal fortune, and through significant “anonymous” gifts to the Carnegie Corporation. According to the New York Times, in 2005, Bloomberg had donated over 140 million to many local institutions during the last years of his first term alone, leading critics to speculate that the donations were an effective way to stifle dissent and influence voting constituencies that benefited from his largesse.

What are the ramifications of substituting large sums of private money for public funds in support of government-backed programs and institutions? Can the artistic community, and others who rely on, or run nonprofits be bought?

This year, with the end of the mayor’s second term approaching in 2009, the Times reported that Bloomberg and his aides finally called in the favor last month. The administration asked organizations who have received donations from the mayor to show their support for his bid for a hotly contested third term in office, a move which was met with harsh disapproval from top political figures in the city.

Supplied with testimony from leaders at cultural organizations like the Public Art Fund and the Alliance of Resident Theaters, the City Council voted to extend term limits for all elected officials in the five boroughs on October 22nd.

It’s payback time, and except for Bloomberg, I’m not sure who wins.

Tags: Alliance of Resident Theaters, Art, arts, Bloomberg, budget, Carnegie, city, City Council, corporation, cultural institution, Department of Cultural Affairs, funding, Gothamist, Lincoln Center, mayor, Metropolitan, Museum, Natural History, New York, New York Times, philanthropy, Politicker NY, Public Art Fund, term limits, third term.

Last night, the Fjord photography collective held a one-night exhibition at Meet Waradise, curated by Fjord co-founders Alana Celii and Grant Willing. Over sixty photographers’ unmounted, unframed small prints were strewn across two long tables for attendees to browse through.

Having spent time and expense making photographic prints, I felt some initial discomfort with the notion of having a crowd of strangers putting their hands all over another’s work. But the actual experience was surprising and refreshingly personal, akin to finding a flea-market gem in a stack of old family snapshots. Only there were a good number of gems in the pile, including:

by Michelle Arcila, 2005. Copyright Michelle Arcila

by Kamden Vencill. Copyright 2006-2008 Kamden Vencill

Instead of the “be-seen scene” typical of a night out in Chelsea, the atmosphere at Meet Waradise was familial and low-key, with earnest artists in attendance who were interested in meeting one another and speaking with a participatory audience. One can imagine similar exchanges between Abstract Expressionists in the West Village of the 1940s, or among denizens of the loft communities in 1970s SoHo.

Meet Waradise is a temporary storefront venue at 17 Orchard Street, established by director Alice Wells, curator Karen Archey and designer Caroline Askew, which “seeks to establish connections within the ever-growing pool of young artists inhabiting New York City.” Observing the Fjord collective sharing their work among friends, I think the organizers are on to the right idea.

Tags: Alana Celii, Alice Wells, Caroline Askew, Chinatown, collective, Fjord, Grant Willing, Kamden Vencill, Karen Archey, Lower East Side, Meet Waradise, Michelle Arcila, New York, photographers, Photography, temporary.

William Eggleston’s long-awaited retrospective Democratic Camera recently opened at the Whitney Museum of Art, and the number of works on display made me glad I packed a lunch.

"Untitled", c.1971-73, from "Troubled Waters", 1980. Dye transfer print, 15 7/8 x 19 15/16 in. (40.3 x 50.6 cm). Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., museum purchase with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., a federal agency, and the Polaroid Corporation © Eggleston Artistic Trust

In fitting with its title, the exhibition is organized in a very egalitarian manner, with most of the color photographs similarly sized, framed and hung at the same level throughout the three large galleries they occupy. The curators may have decided to arrange the artist’s work in this way in order to complement Eggleston’s own reluctance to to impose hierarchies on his work.

However, because Eggleston’s keen eye for color and his odd compositions don’t waver in the selected prints, the order of the images makes it somewhat difficult to track changes in a career that spans over forty years. I found myself wishing for additional distinguishing elements in the presentation as I followed the image flow from room to room. Eggleston’s portfolio of 14 Pictures selected by Walter Hopps, hung in a small grouping by themselves, and his black and white prints and video, Stranded In Canton, were the notable exceptions.

Stills from Stranded in Canton, 1973. © William Eggleston

"Untitled", (Memphis, Tennessee), 1971, from "14 Pictures", 1974. Dye transfer print, 15 7/8 x 19 15/16 in. (40.3 x 50.6 cm). © Eggleston Artistic Trust

Whitney Museum of American Art

November 7, 2008 - January 25, 2009

P.S. The New Yorker and New York Magazine both published interesting profiles of the artist, but the International Herald Tribune’s review comes closest to how this longtime admirer sees Eggleston’s work.

Tags: Democratic Camera, New York, Photography, retrospective, video, Whitney, William Eggleston.

I remember my first encounter with James Castle’s handmade books in college, at the AIGA gallery on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The carefully printed, often reversed alphabets and illustrated block panels on found paper, ads and magazines gave the sense that I was looking at rare artifacts from a universe parallel to our own. They seemed like personal journals, graphic novels recorded by an alien scribe observing our world from a distance, and in a sense, this was the case. Deaf since birth, Castle chose imagery over speech as the primary method of understanding and communicating with the world around him.

James Castle, Untitled, 20th c. (calendar/double sided). 8.5 x 10" Courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery

The documentary film, James Castle: Portrait of an Artist, by writer-director Jeffrey Wolf, produced by the Foundation for Self-Taught American Artists, is one of the highlights of the artist’s recently-opened  retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Wolf’s documentary gives an insightful introduction into Castle’s life, and a well-organized overview of his work. The film includes interviews with Castle’s relatives, and wonderful commentary by John Yau and Robert Storr. A DVD of the documentary is enclosed with every copy of the exhibition catalog, which I highly suggest you run out and buy in addition to seeing the retrospective.

The hundreds of drawings, collages and assemblages exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum are only a fraction of the works that Castle created in his lifetime, and are inspiring on many levels. Castle’s inventive compositions and constructions, and his constant rethinking of the familiar spaces in his life are apparent in his work, taking it beyond what we have come to think of as the work of an untrained “outsider.”

James Castle, Untitled, Not dated. Found paper, soot, string, graphite. 15.5 x 14.5". Courtesy J Crist Gallery

James Castle, Untitled (Shed Interior with Drawings, Constructions, Books, and Objects), n.d. Soot and spit on found paper Sheet (irregular): 8.5 x 10". Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Ann and John Ollman in memory of Maurice and Kathryn Hammond, 1998. Photo by Lynn Rosenthal and Andrea Simon

James Castle, Untitled (Morton Salt Girl), n.d. found paper, color of unknown origin. 7.5 x 6" Collection of Susan Chereskin. Photo courtesy J Crist Gallery, Boise

October 14, 2008 - January 4, 2009
www.philamuseum.org

Tags: AIGA, assemblage, books, collage, documentary, drawing, Foundation for Self-Taught American Artists, James Castle, Jeffrey Wolf, John Yau, New York, outsider art, paper, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, retrospective, Robert Storr, soot.

In Matthew Marks’ 24th Street space, Andreas Gursky shows four new photographs of the Cocoon Club in Frankfurt from a omniscient, dissecting distance and perspective that recalls his images of Formula One pit-stops exhibited at the gallery last year. Excluding a portrait in which the artist photographs himself for the first time with his son, the spectacle of these new works seem to revisit familiar subject matter without exploring any new emotional or psychological nuance.

Gursky’s single photograph of a coal mine locker room near Dusseldorf, however, more than compensates for what the Cocoon works lack. The miners’ possessions seem to levitate like so many souls toward heaven, and renewed my belief in Gursky’s ability to find the human aspect in the unlikeliest of places.

November 6 - December 24, 2008
www.matthewmarks.com

Tags: Andreas Gursky, coal mine, Cocoon, Matthew Marks, New York, photograph, Photography.

Amelia Biewald integrates a diverse range of materials, from leather to velvet and wood to create a dynamic body of drawings and sculptures exhibited in her second solo show Intrigue at Magnan Projects.

The baroque works are influenced by the life and legend of Catherine the Great and feature recurring fantasy imagery of horses, women and other mythological figures. The artist’s sureness of hand is best exemplified in her bleach paintings on upholstery velvet.

Courtesans, 2008. © Amelia Biewald, Courtesy Magnan Projects

Her Brilliant Career, 2008. © Amelia Biewald, courtesy Magnan Projects

November 6th - December 20th 2008
www.magnanprojects.com

Tags: Amelia Biewald, Catherine the Great, drawings, Intrigue, Magnan Projects, New York, paintings, sculptures, velvet.