Tag Archives: Arts & Events

Middle East Institute at Columbia University Shares Anas Albraehe’s Solo Exhibition

Anita Rogers Gallery is thrilled to present The Dreamer, a solo exhibition of work by Syrian painter Anas Albraehe.

The exhibition will be on view June 29 through August 27 at 494 Greenwich Street, Ground Floor in New York City.

The gallery will welcome visitors on the evening of Wednesday, June 29, 6-8pm for a reception.

You can read the poem that accompanies the exhibition here.

Albraehe paints expressive portraits of men asleep – these are laborers and refugees enjoying a brief respite from the day to day. There is a historical precedent for painting sleeping figures – and men in particular (vs the ubiquitous reclining female nude) – artists from Goya to Bacon to Van Gogh have broached the topic. Born in Syria in 1991, Albraehe is a multidisciplinary artist focused on painting and theatre. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Painting and Drawing from Damascus University of Fine Arts in Syria in 2014. After the beginning of the war in Syria, he moved to Lebanon where he obtained a Master’s degree in Psychology and Art Therapy from the Lebanese University in 2015. His recent work combines his interests in the fields of art and psychology to produce a portrait that explores the psychology of color and the gaze of the Other. Albraehe has had solo exhibitions in Paris, Jordan, Beirut, and participated in group exhibitions worldwide. The artist’s work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Arab World in Paris (IMA) and he is a member of the French Artists Syndicate. He now lives and works in Beirut.

View more on Columbia’s website. 

View on AnitaRogersGallery.com 

Recommended Destinations for Vaccinated Travelers

As the summer rapidly approaches and more of us are receiving Covid-19 vaccinations every day, many families are beginning to feel comfortable booking travel again. While many destinations are still closed or have tight restrictions on travel, the team here at British American Household Staffing has put together our list of safe travel destinations with minimal requirements for vaccinated travelers. Whether you’re planning a family trip or a solo weekend getaway, be sure to plan ahead, look into local guidelines then relax and enjoy your trip once you arrive.

The Bahamas

After over a year inside, many are eager for a beach vacation with top quality food, drinks and views. For vaccinated travelers, no advance testing is required (although a rapid test is required on day 5) to enter the Bahamas; unvaccinated travelers are allowed with advance Covid-19 testing. Click here for a full breakdown of the travel requirements. Stay at the luxurious Ocean Club to enjoy 5 miles of private beach, 35 acres of Versailles-inspired lawns and gardens, three pools, a golf course and multiple bar and restaurant options, including a restaurant led by Michelin-starred chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. If you’d prefer to cook or bring your own chef for a private getaway, book a waterfront home through Airbnb Luxe. Whether you’re looking for an intimate oceanfront property or a sprawling estate, there are several options on the platform. We love the Villa Sul Mare, which can accommodate up to ten guests. Located inside the gated community of Ocean Club Estates on Paradise Island, the home includes a private pool with ocean views, a 3,000 square foot outdoor area, a beautifully designed kitchen and living area and daily housekeeping service.

 

View all destinations on British American Household Staffing’s blog. 

George Negroponte in Approaches to Abstraction by Greek Artists of the Diaspora

George Negroponte, Corner Painting, 1981, oil on canvas, 2 panels measuring 50″ x 35″ each
Museum of Contemporary Art in Andros of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, photo credits © Chris Doulgeris 
 
George Negroponte currently has a painting on view in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros as part of their current group exhibition “Approaches to Abstraction by Greek Artists of the Diaspora: Works from the B&E Goulandris Foundation Collection.” The exhibition features twenty Greek painters and will be on view through September 27.

James Scott Films Streaming This Summer

James Scott Films Streaming This Summer

James Scott’s Summer Streaming continues with the following schedule:

July 6 – 12: The Great Ice Cream Robbery (1971) 40 mins
July 13 – 19: Coilin and Platonida (1976)  80 mins
July 20 – 26: Nightcleaners (1975) 90 mins
July 27 – August 2: ’36 to ’77  (1978) 85 mins
August 3 – 9: Fragments (2019) 43 mins

To view any of the films in the summer’s rotating schedule, go to https://vimeo.com/404435215/27ac239848.

In The Great Ice Cream Robbery (1971), which was proposed to the Arts Council as a two-screen film, the idea was to mirror the language and philosophy of Oldenburg towards temporality and ephemerality in the nature of the work: happenings, soft materials, impermanence. With two 16mm projectors and separate sound systems, its form of presentation would insure the potential of change every time the film was shown. Sadly, it meant that over the years, the film was rarely screened except by risk-averse and totally dedicated curators. Now for the first time in the digital age, it is actually possible to see this as a two-screen presentation as close as possible to how it was originally intended to be seen. We suggest using headphones or a stereo sound system for viewing.

As we were editing The Great Ice Cream Robbery, I also started to work with my friend Marc Karlin on a political documentary about janitors (mostly immigrant women of colour and Irish women) who worked through the night, cleaning office buildings. Little did we realize that we had embarked on a five-year project. We were joined by Humphry Trevelyan and Mary Kelly and called ourselves the Berwick Street Film Collective. Nightcleaners came out in 1975 at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

After the intensity of Nightcleaners, I wanted to move to a completely different kind of film and in 1975 began Coilin and Platonida for German television. This was to be a silent narrative film set in a remote part of Ireland at the turn of the century and based on a Russian short story by Leskov. I had come across the story in Walter Benjamin’s essay on storytelling. This essay very much influenced my filmic approach using 8mm refilmed to 16mm. I found local non-professionals to play the parts as well as using my two young children.

Upon completing Coilin and Platonida, Marc drew me back once more into the Nightcleaners story.  It had been a struggle without an end. The victory strike at the Ministry of Defense had come too late to be included in ‘Part 1’ and so the new film, ‘36 to ‘77 (1978) was to take this victory, and through the eyes of Myrtle, one of the janitors, look back on the campaign and reflect on how it had changed her life.

We end up with my last film Fragments, which in some ways connects to the first art film with David Hockney, Love’s PresentationFragments is a film about the painter Derek Boshier preparing for a new exhibition. Both Love’s Presentation and Fragments are films about process, but separated by over 50 years. Derek and David first met at the Royal College of Art and remain friends to this day. Both started as ‘pop’ artists and then followed very different trajectories.

Fragments was completed at the end of last year and premiered in January 2020 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

– James Scott

Jack Martin Rogers: Drawing – Digital Catalog Now Available

Anita Rogers Gallery is proud to present a selection of works on paper by British artist Jack Martin Rogers (1943-2001). Anita Rogers, the owner of the gallery, is the daughter of the artist and now owns seventy-five percent of his estate. This will be the artist’s second major solo exhibition in the U.S. and the first to highlight the artist’s creative process and the centrality of drawing in his practice. The show will debut online in April 2020 and continue in the gallery when we are able to reopen.

The collection features a selection of preparatory drawings, never before seen by the public, that reveal Rogers’ immense dedication to observation and detail. The artist studied anatomy and fine art at the Birmingham School of Art in the UK, often dissecting and sketching bodies of the deceased to learn how to better illustrate the human form. While in school, his meticulous methods took root and they remained at the heart of his work for the rest of his life.

In conjunction with the show, the gallery has released a digital catalog highlighting over thirty works by the artist, the majority of which have never before been seen by the public. Download the digital catalog here.

Email us to pre-order your print copy ($20).

Gordon Moore Awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship

On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and writers. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-sixth competition.

 

 

 

 

GORDON ENNIS MOORE:

Born in Iowa and raised in Kansas, Gordon Moore began painting pictures at the age of 6 and has never stopped. Being a product of the Great Plains the dominant thematic in his work has long been informed by that experience and that environment and can be defined to this day quite simply as: Space. The creation of which, in an abstract Painting and Drawing idiom, is the fuel which drives his imagination. After finishing the Academic requirements of a formal education in Art, first at the University of Washington in Seattle and then at Yale in New Haven, he moved to the TRUE University of Art and Life In 1972: New York City, where he has lived ever since. In the ensuing years Moore’ work has developed an interest in a refined clarity of edge vaguely redolent of Architectonic space as well as fragments of shapes found from the street experience, most notably – the Bowery, close to which he has lived for nearly half a Century. His work has been most often shown in one-person showings since 2000 and he has received a number of awards and fellowships.

ArtNet: 13 of Our Favorite Gallery Shows From Coast to Coast That You Can Visit Virtually

Art galleries provide necessary spaces for creative discovery and connection—experiences we all may be seeking in our current existences. Luckily, many galleries across the country can still be visited virtually, and at your work-from-home leisure through Artnet Galleries.

If you’re in need of an art break, here are 13 of our favorite exhibitions, from New York to California, that you can gallery hop through your laptop.

2. “Mark Webber: We Shall Be City Upon a Hill” at Anita Rogers Gallery, New York

Free

Time: All day, every day

Take a virtual tour of Mark Webber’s exhibition here. 

View select pieces from Mark Webber’s solo exhibition.

Installation view of “Mark Webber: We Shall be a City Upon a Hill.” Photo by Jon-Paul Rodriguez

Installation view of “Mark Webber: We Shall be a City Upon a Hill.” Photo by Jon-Paul Rodriguez

 

 

Virva Hinnemo and George Negroponte Featured in ‘Consummate Plush’ at the MOCA L.I.

The enigmatic genius of Emily Dickinson has been studied for over a century, yet she remains a beguiling literary and literal conundrum. Part mystic, part heretic, she wrote in metaphor with aching clarity. Dickinson envisioned the mind and spiritless as concepts than as actual places; she feigned conventionality in her dress and manner yet was an early feminist, and her use of language and grammar upended literary convention. She questioned faith, morality, pain, and ecstasy. A botany aficionado and gardener, the poet also assembled an herbarium of 424 flowers, now residing at the Harvard Houghton Rare Book Library. Her posthumous success revealed Dickinson to be one of the great modernist voices in American poetry.

Consummate Plush is a response to Dickinson’s quiet yet radical oeuvre, her flexible use of structure, and the depth of her self-inquiry. Judith Page’s veiled figures and Daniel Wiener’s fantastical motifs possess vestiges of the Gothic, touching on Dickinson’s plastic sense of identity and mortality. Christa Maiwald’s embroidered images recall the stitched bundles of poetry found in Dickinson’s bureau after her death. Lucy Winton and Charles Yuen share a sense of the dreamscape – places where the chimerical exists alongside this-ness and otherness. Virva Hinnemo’s use of gesture and spatial depth transport us to an environment in which writing and imagery coexist. Bonnie Rychlak’s subversive drains offer both a sense of escape and reflection, and Linda Miller’s examinations of organic form elude to abstract figuration and the monumental. For George Negroponte, an incisive use of pastiche and tight, visual reciprocity conjures Dickinson’s startling poetic structure. In Laurie Lambrecht’s embroidered, photographic images, it is the poet’s genteel life in the botanical that confers a sense of natural wonder, order, and reverence.

Selected artists include Virva Hinnemo, Laurie Lambrecht, Christa Maiwald, Linda Miller, George Negroponte, Judith Page, Bonnie Rychlak, Daniel Wiener, Lucy Winton, and Charles Yuen.

Join curator Janet Goleas and selected artists on Saturday, March 28th from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM for a gallery breakfast and discussion, sponsored by the Patchogue Medford Library.

Patchogue Arts Council • MOCA L.I.
20 Terry St, Suite 116, Patchogue, NY 11772

Mark Webber: We Shall be a City Upon a Hill in Art Daily

 

THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK

Picasso created his first version of Guitar sometime between October and November of 1912 and in that moment toppled the most fundamental and timeless rule of sculpture: solidness. Guitar consists of 7 pieces of cardboard stitched together with thread, string, twine, and coated wire. This work was likely slapped together in a flash and under the intoxicating sway of a first encounter. Picasso applied the ideas he and Braque had advanced about cubism and collage to an assemblage beautifully visualized in space. The yolk of the egg was broken, and the omelet was born.

Mark Webber assembles many different elements: hand-made, man-made, or found, in striking relationships using steel, stone, wood, glass, and hydrocal. He forges ahead with his visual fragments like a tireless explorer instinctively negotiating and shifting gears in search of surprising places. His images ooze rustic constructivism like a Joaquín Torres-García wood sculpture from 1930 brought up to code. Webber straightforwardly identifies his works in groupings with very simple designations such as structures, walls, portals, and vessels. But a preconscious sparkle also animates his images with anthropomorphic prompts and body language that simulate common gestures like a handshake or a greeting. Encounters between friends.

Mark Webber. Untitled. 2019. Copper wire, Hydrocal, Steel, Glass, Permanent Marker. 8 1/8h x 40w x 5d in

Some of Webber’s sculptures bring together parts or pieces that are curious and tantalizingly difficult. It is not hard to spot a cheeky calculation when a rock is bluntly attached to an L-shaped stucco form with a flat metal bracket that is reminiscent of a deadpan, take-a-hike Buster Keaton routine. In reality, the overall take from Webber’s work is elegiac: a solemn wink, a desolate location, and all in the service of commemorating another time and place. While some artists acknowledge the past with subtle pictorial nods, Webber firmly grounds history in the here and now, not unlike Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical images of empty cityscapes and piazzas. Let’s face it: Webber demolishes the present.

The best work of Webber is stoic and evokes an otherworldliness captured, set apart and isolated. His means are cloaked in quiet. Webber graciously spares us the nonsense of nostalgia by fusing fact and fiction, material and message, and a compelling amount of living human quotient. In a cluster, his sculptures create a diaspora of figures vying for attention but clearly performing in unison; collectively they create a timeless model of behavior and comportment. Peter Schjeldahl in his recent article “The Art of Dying” eloquently writes:

I like to say that contemporary art consists of all artworks, five thousand years or five minutes old that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes that there ever are.

Mark Webber is driven by a belief in the making of sculpture that is endangered. Today art arrives pre-packaged and with a mandatory “identity” meant as “admission” into the club. Gone is the hard-won effort to break free and gain true independence from the slavery of acceptance. Webber defies the odds. His work moves like lava from the mouth of a volcano: slow, deliberate, and mysterious.

– George Negroponte

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