#a.i.r. gallery

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic is proud to announce we have a piece (scopOphilic_micromessaging_675) in the A.I.R. Gallery opening tomorrow, Friday June 28th, 2024. Opening reception: Friday, June 28, from 5–7pm. The exhibit runs from June 28 – July 28, 2024. Please join us for the opening.

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Wish You Were Here: The Second Best Time Is Now, the 2024 edition of its annual Postcard Show. Each year, hundreds of artists come together to support A.I.R. by donating a postcard-sized work in any medium. Each original work is sold for $45 and all proceeds go to benefit A.I.R. and its mission to advance the work of women and non-binary artists. This year’s exhibition theme focuses on the climate crisis. The exhibition borrows its title from a Chinese Proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

Climate activists are pursuing transformational change with a clear and urgent message: act now to protect people and save our planet from the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Addressing the environmental crisis requires collaboration, creativity, and positive solutions on the part of citizens working in other fields, including artists.

Artists’ activism has taken many forms, from posters and demonstrations to radical actions and fundraising. Many of the postcards in the exhibition explore the intersection of gender and the environment. As Katherine Wilkinson writes in The New York Times, “Climate change is a collective problem but its burdens—displacement, homelessness, poverty, sexual violence, disease—weigh more heavily on women and girls.”

A.I.R. Gallery 155 Plymouth Street Brooklyn NY 11201

Wed–Sun, 12–6pm

[abwwia]

ART HERstory: A.I.R. Gallery

Barbara Zucker and Susan Williams, two artists and friends, confronted the challenges of finding a dealer and decided to look for other women artists to start a co-op. Feminism at that time had barely penetrated the New York Art scene and a 1970 Whitney Museum protest drew attention to the less than 5 percent female representation. Directed by activist art critic Lucy Lippard, the two, together with Dotty Attie and Mary Grigoriadis, visited 55 studios to select and invite women artists to form a co-op.

At the first meeting on March 17, 1972, in Williams' loft, women artists met, among them were Maude Boltz, Linda Vi Vona, Nancy Spero, Louise Bourgeois, Howardena Pindell, Ree Morton, Harmony Hammond, Cynthia Carlson and Sari Dienes. For the artists themselves, their work and exhibition goals were all about quality. Still, having to deal with feminist politics was in the center, which meant fighting prejudices and fears that the showings would be considered second-rate. After the opening, one man said grudgingly, "Okay you did it; you found 20 good women artists. But that's it." via Wikipedia From the Gallery's page: Since 1972, A.I.R. Gallery has been leading the way in championing women artists, increasing their visibility and the viability of their endeavors. Click here for a quick lesson of A.I.R's long history. here

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Mary Beth Edelson (intro by Lucy R. Lippard) - Seven Cycles: Public Rituals - self-published - 1980

[longlistshort]

The paintings above are from Susan Bee's 2023 exhibition Apocalypses, Fables, and Reveries, at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn.

From the gallery about this exhibition-

The exhibition centers on paintings depicting figures—particularly women—engaged in battle with demons, dragons, and other beasts, inspired by medieval mythology.

Twelfth-century illuminated manuscripts and hagiography serve as Bee’s primary source materials. Seven of these paintings playfully reinterpret imagery of multi-headed monsters taunting religious populaces in apocalyptic scenarios. Others show Saint Martha taming the fearsome dragon the Tarasque, and Saint Margaret praying beside the dead dragon whose belly she managed to escape from after being swallowed whole. In earlier eras, these figures were seen as icons of devotion. But in Bee’s treatment, they transmogrify into prescient myth: their stories presage the end-time fears and social injustices that plague our more secular times.

The medieval-inspired paintings are augmented by canvases offering a different vision of how we might engage with nature and fantastical “others.” These paintings feature witches and birds flying alongside one another across the daytime sky, as well as trees whose limbs culminate in eyes, hands, and other appendages. They imagine landscapes where friends might meet, or where humans and animals might find themselves in unexpected affinity.

As in her past paintings, Bee uses a mixture of linear and eccentric shapes, building up layers of oil and enamel in intensely vivid color. Blending familiar gestures with the unexpected, these works ask us to confront our present while paying homage to the past. The syncretic blend of the remembered and remade turns monumentality on its head.

Her current solo exhibition Susan Bee: Eye of the Storm, Selected Works, 1981-2023 is on view at Provincetown Art Association and Museum until 11/17/2024.

[tilbageidanmark]

Living Hybrids by Phil Langer.

[samanthamalay]

Wish You Were Here: The Second Best Time is Now A.I.R. Gallery's 2024 Annual Postcard Show and Fundraiser

Wish You Were Here: The Second Best Time Is Now 2024 Annual Postcard Show

June 28 – July 28, 2024

A.I.R. Gallery Lobby 155 Plymouth Street Brooklyn, NY 11201

For Wish You Were Here: The Second Best Time Is Now, the 2024 iteration of A.I.R. Gallery’s annual postcard show, artists were invited to submit postcard-sized works in any medium exploring the theme of the climate crisis. Each original work will be sold for $45 and all proceeds benefit A.I.R. Gallery programs.

My collage joined hundreds of others last week. To learn more, please click here.

Image: 'The second best time is now. Meet me on Hope Island.' collage by Samantha Malay: vintage postcard detail View Near Kinzel Springs, Tennessee, J. Gould lithograph fragment Petroica Erythrogaster, Japanese postage stamp

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Celebrating Black Queer Icons:

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (formerly known/credited as Reian Gossett)is a trans woman that actively identifies as queer, and is best known for her work in trans activism and economic justice. Tourmaline was born July 20, 1983, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Tourmaline's mother was a feminist and union organizer, her father a self defense instructor and anti-imprisonment advocate. Growing up in this atmosphere allowed Tourmaline to explore her identity and encouraged her to fight in what she believes in. Tourmaline has earned a BA in Comparative Ethnic Studies, from Colombia University. During her time at Colombia U, Tourmaline taught creative writing courses to inmates at Riker's Island Correctional Institute, through a school program known as Island Academy. Tourmaline has worked with many groups and organizations in her pursuit of justice. She served as the Membership Coordinator for Queers For Economic Justice, Director of Membership at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and as a Featured Speaker for GLAAD. Tourmaline also works as a historian and archivist for drag queens and trans people associated with the 1969 Stonewall Inn Uprising. She started doing this after noticing how little trans material was being archived, saying that what little did get archived was done so accidentally. In 2010 Tourmaline began her work in film by gathering oral histories from queer New Yorkers for Kagendo Murungi's Taking Freedom Home. In 2016 Tourmaline directed her first film The Personal Things, which featured trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. For the film Tourmaline was awarded the 2017 Queer Art Prize. Tourmaline served as the Assistant Director to Dee Rees on the Golden Globe nominated historical drama, Mudbound. Tourmaline has co produced two projects with fellow filmmaker and activist Sasha Wortzel. The first was STAR People Are Beautiful, about the work of Sylvia Rivera and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The second was Happy Birthday, Marsha, about Marsha P Johnson. Happy Birthday, Marsha had all trans roles played by trans actors. Tourmaline's work is featured or archived in several major museums and galleries. In 2017 her work was featured in New Museum's exhibit Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. In 2020 the Museum of Modern Art acquired Tourmaline's 2019 film Salacia, a project about Mary Jones. In 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired two of Tourmaline's works for display in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. Tourmaline is also the sibling of:

Che Gossett

Che Gossett is a nonbinary, trans femme writer and archivist. Gossett specializes in queer/trans studies, aesthetic theory, abolitionist thought and black study. Gossett received a Doctorate in Women's and Gender Studies, from Rutgers University, in 2021. They have also received a BA in African American Studies from Morehouse college, a MAT in Social Studios from Brown University, and a MA in History from the University of Pennsylvania. Gossett has held a fellowship at Yale, and currently holds fellowships at Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Gossett's writing has been published in a number of anthologies and they have lectured and performed at several museums and galleries of note, including the Museum of Modern Art and A.I.R. Gallery. Gossett is currently working on finishing a political biography of queer Japanese-American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya.

I originally intended to do separate profiles for Che Gossett Tourmaline, but could not find sufficient information about Che Gossett, beyond their credentials and current academic activity. That means that this will be the last of these write ups for a bit. I plan on picking it back up in October for the US's LGBT History Month and UK's Black History month. With time to plan ahead and research more I hope to diversify my list geographically and improve formatting. I plan on starting to include cis icons as well, like Rustin Bayard. If you come across this or any other of these posts Ive made this month I would love feedback and suggestions for figures you would like to see covered.

[thoughtportal]

The purge of material, including works on paper, was organized by her son, Nick Edelson. Some who came to take items criticized the disposal.

Edelson rose to prominence in the 1970s as one of the early voices in the feminist art movement. She is most known for her collaged works, which reimagine famed tableaux to narrate women’s history. For instance, her piece Some Living American Women Artists (1972) appropriates Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1494–98) to include the faces of Faith Ringgold, Agnes Martin, Yoko Ono, and Alice Neel, and others as the apostles; Georgia O’Keeffe’s face covers that of Jesus.

Dealer Jordan Barse, who runs Theta Gallery, biked by and took a poster from Edelson’s 1977 show at A.I.R. gallery, “Memorials to the 9,000,000 Women Burned as Witches in the Christian Era.” Artist Keely Angel picked up handwritten notes, and said, “They smell like mouse poop. I’m glad someone got these before they did,” gesturing to the men pushing papers into trash bags.

A neighbor told one person who picked up some cut-out pieces, “Those could be worth a fortune. Don’t put it on eBay! Look into her work, and you’ll be into it.” {read}

[lboogie1906]

Howardena Pindell (born April 4, 1943) is a painter and mixed media artist. Her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation. She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, “video drawings,” and “process art.”

She demonstrated promise in figurative art classes at the Philadelphia College of Art, the Fleisher Art Memorial, and the Tyler School of Art. She received her BFA from Boston University and her MFA from Yale University. She holds honorary doctorates from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Parsons The New School for Design.

She co-founded the A.I.R. Gallery, which was the first artist-directed gallery for women artists in the US. There were twenty artist cofounders. She suggested naming the gallery the “Eyre Gallery” after the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The artists decided to name the gallery “A.I.R. Gallery” instead, which stands for “Artists in Residence.” The gallery allowed women artists to curate their exhibitions, allowing them the freedom to take risks with their work in ways that commercial galleries would not. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[skowhegan]

Amy Ritter (A '16)

Welcome to Li’l Wolf A.I.R. Gallery 155 Plymouth street, Brooklyn, NY March 18–April 16, 2023

[k00293611]

Artist Research - Mary Beth Edelson

Thursday 30th of January 2025

Mary Beth Edelson, born 1933, is an American artist who has been a very powerful and influential force in feminist groups and actions since the 1960s.

She majored in art at DePauw University and received her MA at New York University. Her first lecture was held in 1968 at the Herron Art Museum on the lack of opportunities for female artists. She organised the first National Conference for Women in the Visual Arts in Washington D.C., her home at the time.

She was heavily involved in performance and participatory art, holding private ritual performances from which she took the photographic prints and manipulated their surfaces with various materials. After settling in New York in 1995, she excelled creating some of her best known works, like “Proposals for Memorials to 9,000,000 women burned as witches in the Christian Era” (1977) at A.I.R Gallery. A.I.R Gallery then invited her to join them, where she excelled to become a founding member of the Heresies Collective. At feminist art events she always brought her camera, taking shots of the activities, the attentendees & headshots of the artists. These became her resources for the series 5 collages posters from the 1970s that began with “Some Livinh American Women Artists/Last Supper” (1971-1972). Themes found in wall collages; ancient goddesses, Sheela-Na-Gig, Baudo, Medusa, Venus, Snakes, Movie Stars, Stereotypes, Beauty, Mythology, humour & a celebration of her feminist collages. Her work ranges from the small - detailed wall collages to room encompassing installations. 1990s, she was looking at the stereotypes of women arising from film & popular culture manipulating images of Marilyn Monroe etc. using silkscreen process combined & fabric.

Throughout her life her activist work extended through her artistic production & vis versa. Edelsons prolific career saw her create drawings, paintings, collages, sculptures, performances, photographs, installations, interactive works & group performances, alongside her commitment to activist causes & to her fellow artists.

“These photographic images were defining images - not who I am but who we are”

~ Mary Beth Edelson

Below are the websites I used to source this information:

[abwwia]

Louise Kramer (Dec 5, 1923 – Apr 7, 2020) was an American artist who was known for working in a wide range of media, from printmaking to drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installation. via Wikipedia

She was one of the founding members of the New York all-women cooperative, A.I.R. Gallery, in 1972.

artwork: Untitled, from the A. I. R. Print Portfolio, 1976, photolithograph on paper, sheet and image: 30 x 22 1⁄4 in. (76.2 x 56.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts

[longlistshort]

Ann Schaumburger, “Silver Moon in Darkened Sky House”, 2023, Flashe on wood

The three exhibitions currently on view at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn all focus on homes in unique ways. In the first gallery, Ann Schaumburger’s paintings of houses for New Work continue her exploration of color.

From the gallery-

For over fifty years, Schaumburger has used the house as a basic structure—a scaffold—for exploring how colors interact with one another. Schaumburger builds her houses with blocks of four pigments, using stencil brushes and tape to fill each house with modular forms. Influenced by the theories of Josef Albers, Schaumburger’s approach to color is meticulous yet playful. Different colors dazzle and dance when placed in proximity, creating a sense of surprise.

The paintings in this new body of work depart from Schaumburger’s earlier explorations in one key detail: the houses are now mounted on wheels. This choice was inspired by Schaumburger’s reading of the biography of Henry David Thoreau, whose family had attached wheels to their domicile, allowing them to transport the house across different sites in Concord, Massachusetts. “The idea of taking a solid house, attached to the ground, and letting it roll away,” Schaumburger says, “seems both comical and deeply suggestive of our times.”

Schaumburger has described her color choices as an attempt to “solve an aesthetic problem.” Yet the work is not entirely abstract. Titles like Forest House Under Summer Sky and Moonscape Moving House gesture toward the fact that certain color relationships become evocative of different seasons, places, and times of day. All of the paintings in the exhibition feature a crescent or small globe in the upper left or right quadrant. Sometimes, this globe is rendered in metallic gold or bronze, recalling the sun. Other times, it is a lunar silver. The round shape of the globe mirrors the house’s circular wheels. Just as the earth rotates around the sun, the wheels rotate around their own axles, allowing the house to move.

The wheeled house becomes a spirited metaphor for Schaumburger’s practice. Dynamic rather than stationary, it embodies the liveliness and energy of Schaumburger’s color choices, as well as the open-ended nature of her process.

Roberta Dorsett’s photos for Sleepwalking explore isolation and uneasiness in her family’s suburban home. (pictured below)

From the gallery-

Dorsett’s Sleepwalking is a series of photographs examining isolation in the suburbs and how a sense of danger often accompanies seemingly idyllic environments. The work depicts three women, Dorsett’s aunt, her cousin, and Dorsett herself, occupying the shared space of a suburban home in Connecticut. Tension arises from the camera’s interaction with the women. The camera acts as an intrusive person, an interloper, and a voyeur as it captures the women in moments of discomfort and vulnerability.

In Dorsett’s previous work, she took on the role of family historian, photographing moments of in-betweenness that result in candid and uncontrived images. Her obsession with taking photographs of her family is driven by their lack of extant family albums or other visual documentation. Because of the family’s socioeconomic status, photography was considered a luxury and only done for special occasions. Moreover, Dorsett’s mother had to leave behind her family’s photographic history when she immigrated from Jamaica to the United States.

Dorsett initially intended Sleepwalking to be a straightforward documentation of her aunt and cousin’s experience as first-time Black homeowners. But she found herself drawn into the project’s narrative and began photographing her family in a more constructed and story-driven way, drawing inspiration from slasher and horror films. Dorsett captures the visceral thrills of these types of films by continuing to utilize her family to explore the concepts of voyeurism and anxiety. The single-family home, once a symbol of milestone achievement, now becomes a surreal site of both safety and terror. As she stood behind and in front of the camera, registering the uneasiness and distress of these three women inside their home, Dorsett dreamed up a distorted reality and asked herself, “Am I awake or sleepwalking?”

Finally, Denisse Griselda Reyes multimedia installation for Did you have a hard time finding me?  explores home and identity using a combination of original artwork and family archives.

From the gallery-

Featuring short films and familial ephemera alongside a new body of paintings, this exhibition humorously meditates on questions of self-formation, reparative representation, and archival preservation, inviting us to dwell in the absurdity these ambitions unintentionally generate. This is Reyes’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Presenting what Reyes has called a “maximalist constellation of memory,” the exhibition juxtaposes materials from their family archives with paintings and multimedia projections within an installation space that recalls, yet does not perfectly reproduce, the domestic interiors of Reyes’s family. Anchoring this exhibition is a short film that ties together two threads. First, the border crossings of Reyes’s grandmother Anita that were necessitated by the peril of the Salvadoran Civil War, and this history’s impact on Reyes’s mother. Second, the queer dating life of Reyes’s indignant and savvy alter-ego, Griselda. Part-narrator, part-drag-persona, part-survival-strategy, Griselda offers Reyes a means to dictate the terms of their own representation against the expectations that constrict queer Latinx artists in the United States. Still, Griselda is also beholden to identitarian demands. Reyes allows their avatar to straddle the line of spectacle, flirting with failure, acknowledging that self-formation might be an impossible endeavor. By juxtaposing Griselda’s exploits with the narrative of their grandmother, Reyes interrogates whether familial, social, and historical processes have the final word on what generates a self.

Reyes has produced Griselda as a mediating figure—one who negotiates their own identity between femininity and non-binary gender, and who personifies the absurdity of any singular narrative of origin. In its plenitude and play, the exhibition exceeds the ostensible facticity of the familial and historical archive. Featuring new paintings that hazily recreate family photographs, a vitrine full of childhood teeth that parodies genres of museal presentation, screens that toggle between home videos and the simulation of archival footage, and striking blue-green walls that recall the past domestic spaces of Reyes’s family in El Salvador, the exhibition transforms processes of preservation into acts of mythmaking. The exhibition is less a recreation of the artist’s family’s domiciles than a space of critical reflection and ambiguity. Guests are invited to join in this meditation—and may find their own notions of selfhood implicated as a result.

These exhibitions close 5/19/24.

[polishwomenartists-sztukakobiet]

Anna Orbaczewska, 'Pieta', 2022

COURTESY A.I.R. GALLERY, NEW YORK

[whatsonmedia]

Unveiling the Canvas: A Global Art Odyssey in Late 2023

Dive into the world of art with David Hockney's vivid sketches at the National Portrait Gallery, Los Angeles' Rosemary Mayer retrospective, Tokyo's dynamic Art Week 2023, and Francis Alÿs's diverse body of work at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Join us on a visual journey, exploring the captivating exhibitions that define the late 2023 art scene. David Hockney: Drawing from Life” and “Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023 When: 2 Nov 2023 – 21 Jan 2024 (Hockney) | Where: National Portrait Gallery Experience the resurgence of David Hockney’s exceptional exhibition, “Drawing from Life,” alongside the annual Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize. From simple sketches to large-scale paintings, Hockney captures the personalities of his subjects. The National Portrait Gallery offers a captivating blend of Hockney’s artistry and contemporary portrait photography. For more information: https://www.npg.org.uk Rosemary Mayer: Noon Has No Shadows When: 12 Nov – 23 Dec Where: Hannah Hoffman and Marc Selwyn, Los Angeles Rosemary Mayer’s inaugural Los Angeles exhibition, “Noon Has No Shadows,” spans two galleries in the city. Selwyn features works from the late ’70s and early ’80s, while Hoffman presents a non-linear display of pieces created between the ’70s and ’90s. Mayer, a pivotal figure in conceptual, fiber, and feminist art, transitioned from conceptual engagement to sculptural practices exploring draping and material manipulation. A founding member of New York’s A.I.R. feminist collective, Mayer’s posthumous recognition includes major exhibitions and a book of correspondence with poet Bernadette Mayer, reflecting their feminist, humorous, and politically thoughtful approach. Art Week Tokyo 2023 When: 2 – 5 Nov Where: Okura Shukokan Museum of Fine Arts, and more. Immerse yourself in Tokyo’s vibrant contemporary art scene at Art Week Tokyo 2023. From November 2 to 5, this event, curated by Japan Contemporary Art Platform with Art Basel, links 50 art spaces through a free shuttle bus. Don’t miss the “AWT BAR” for artist-inspired cocktails and dishes by emerging chefs. Beyond exhibits, enjoy children’s tours, educational sessions, symposiums, and online talks with global curators. The diverse venues, including Okura Shukokan Museum of Fine Arts, promise an unforgettable art experience. ‘2023 Wolfgang Hahn Prize: Francis Alÿs’ When: Nov. 18, 2023—Apr. 7, 2024 Where: Museum Ludwig, Heinrich-Böll-Platz, 50667 Köln, Germany Join us for the opening reception and award ceremony on Friday, Nov. 17, at 6:30 pm, as we honor the remarkable artist Francis Alÿs with the 2023 Wolfgang Hahn Prize. His diverse body of work, spanning painting, drawing, installations, video, photography, and performances, will be showcased in the exhibition curated by Yilmaz Dziewior. From Nov. 18, 2023, to Apr. 7, 2024, explore Alÿs’s artistry at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, as he examines complex social realities through simple artistic gestures, addressing issues like migration, demarcations, and the consequences of globalization. For mere> https://www.museum-ludwig.de Read the full article