2013 / 2014

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What three words do you associate with NURTUREart? Data from a survey carried out in the months of June and July 2013. The bigger the words, the higher their frequency in describing NURTUREart.

Introduction 04

Liz Sweibel: fragments of our own 09

The Psychic Triangle 15

Alina Tenser: Hip Openers 23

One Trace After 31

Jenny Santos: The Thing That’s There But Isn’t 39

To begin, at the beginning 45

#ArtistsBeLike 51

Mary Kate Maher: Braced Position 57

Videorover Season 7 61

Videorover Season 8 67

Multiplicity: City as Subject/Matter 73

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Introductionby Marco Antonini

NURTUREart’s 2013-14 season has been equal parts evaluation of what we have accomplished so far, consolidation of our human and material resources, and tryout period for present and future pro-gram ideas and strategies. After years of escalating success and increasing vis-ibility, we sat down and finally took ad-vantage of a wealth of data: internal and external surveys, and outcome and vis-ibility assessments that have been peri-odically collected since before my tenure with the organization. Our growth and success are now facts and figures that we can not only keep in mind as personal and public accomplishments, but also use to decide what the most positive and wise future course of action will be and what the future of NURTUREart will look like.

A few facts, none really new or unex-pected to us, stood out quite prominent-ly, and are worth highlighting at a time when little non profit organizations and multi-million-dollar budgeted museums are often being lumped together in calls

for public accountability, transparency and ethical treatment of their employ-ees, volunteers, collaborators and audi-ences.

Our signature open calls for artistic and curatorial project proposals (which jointly generate over 70% of NURTUREart’s pro-gramming) are free and open to all who wish to apply. Our Online Registry for Artists and Curators offers an equally free and accessible online platform, fostering artistic discovery, curiosity and research while encouraging cultural operators and art lovers alike to keep their minds open to the new and the unexpected. NUR-TUREart’s remarkably diverse and some-times pleasantly idiosyncratic program of exhibitions, projects, talks and publi-cations is largely shaped and defined by such accessible and transparently man-aged tools, and translates into diverse and inclusive exhibitions.

NURTUREart programs, exhibitions, events and publications are planned with quality and relevance always on the

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radar. This means that a few select exhi-bitions and publications are curated in-house. Artistic and curatorial authorship are not outdated concepts to us and we strive to keep the level of our programs as high as possible, encouraging vision and originality and pointing to interest-ing new directions. To achieve this, we present projects that periodically expand and redefine the scope and reach of our work. This year was a revolutionary one in this sense.

Our 2014 summer program, Multiplicity: City as Subject/Matter presented an in-ternational survey of artworks sharing an interest in the politics and poetic poten-tial of contemporary urban environments and exposing the irresistible pull of the similarities—intercultural meeting points, common problems, goals and dreams—around which people converge. Multi-plicity featured a wide-ranging selection of works exploring culturally and geo-graphically distant urban spaces, was curated in collaboration with a network of advisors based in Belfast, Hong Kong,

New Delhi, New York, Tel Aviv and Ti-rana, and presented as a series of four consecutive exhibitions hosted by NUR-TUREart, Mixed Greens, INVISIBLE-EX-PORTS and Union Docs. Multiplicity was the result of more than one year of work and brought an unprecedented level of international exchange and cooperation to NURTUREart and to all participating venues, resulting in unprecedented criti-cal attention. The exhibition was favor-ably reviewed in the New York Times (a first, for us), Modern Painters, Art F City, the L magazine and many other blogs and publications and will be followed by a dedicated publication.

As foreshadowed by the consistent qual-ity of our exhibition e-books and a few previous experiments with the printed page, the production of books con-ceived as stand-alone critical tools has also been a new focus. This is why we decided to publish Golden Age: Per-spectives on Abstract Painting Today. This book of essays and interviews serves as a critical tool for artists, curators and

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discourse surrounding the contemporary return of abstract painting to the fore-front of artistic practice. Golden Age al-lowed us to further expand our research, practice and commitment outside the gallery, to connect with the artistic com-munity surrounding us, and to steer a public debate on abstraction painfully

of all sorts in a more meaningful and in-formed direction.

All in all, it’s been a great 2013-14 season and, as usual, one of the highlights was sharing the road with the best possible board of trustees in the world, a staff

-sponsible and committed team, and vol-unteers that always surprise and humble us with their generosity and resourceful-ness. As a team, we set up an amazing

the past 4 years and this process has led not only to the success and recognition that NURTUREart has already been con-sistently enjoying, but to new and mani-

your continuing support. As always, we owe it to you, and hope that you will not

the ride as much as we do.

How Do We Use Our Exhibition Budgets?

The allocation of exhibition budgets for

the period January 2011 - December 2013

place in providing artist and curatorial fees.

y--,e-ay

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nseff -

How Do We Use Our Exhibition Budgets?

The allocation of exhibition budgets for

the period January 2011 - December 2013

place in providing artist and curatorial fees.

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How Many? NURTUREart created visibility

and professional opportunities for a total of

206 artists and 20 curators between January

2011 and December 2013. That’s circa 70

artists and 7 curators per exhibition year.

Gender Balance. Artists and curators

involved in NURTUREart exhibitions and

education program activities in the period

January 2011 - December 2013.

How Many? NURTUREart created visibility

and professional opportunities for a total of

206 artists and 20 curators between January

2011 and December 2013. That’s circa 70

artists and 7 curators per exhibition year.

Gender Balance. Artists and curators

involved in NURTUREart exhibitions and

education program activities in the period

January 2011 - December 2013.

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Liz Sweibel, What We Do to Each Other, 2012. Wood, paint, dimensions variable.

Liz Sweibel, What We Do to Each Other, 2012. Wood, paint, dimensions variable.

fragments of our ownLiz Sweibel

September 6 — October 4, 2013

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Sliding Beneath the Surfaceby Maysey Craddock

The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. In those moments I find one of my greatest satisfactions, not that I am thinking of the past, but that it is then that I am living most fully in the present. For the present when backed by the past is a thousand times deeper than the pres-ent when it presses so close that you can feel noth-ing else, when the film on the camera reaches only the eye. But to feel the present sliding over the depths of the past, peace is necessary. The present must be smooth, habitual. For this reason—that it destroys the fullness of life—any break—like that of house moving—causes me extreme distress; it breaks; it shallows; it turns the depth into hard thin splinters.

Virginia Woolf“A Sketch of the Past,” 1939-1940

Woolf’s words situate our experience of time in a linear way, but allow for move-ment, perspective and change. If we sit in stillness, our minds and voices quiet, we open ourselves to the richness and nuance of memory. Conversely, upheaval and the friction of hurry blind and deafen us and pull the horizon uncomfortably close. With a quietly penetrating visual language, Liz Sweibel’s work taps into deep currents of shared experience. Her sculptures, drawings and installations mine the interstices. In her exhibition frag-ments of our own, Sweibel invites us to consider the unseen waters flowing be-neath the surface of every moment. Subtly human and mutely resonant, her delicate and oblique constructions invoke the un-spoken, hidden, suppressed and forgot-ten. We enter a conversation imbued with silence and hovering in stillness. Sweibel’s work does not roman-ticize or re-create a lost past, but rather insists on the value of what remains by il-luminating fragmented glimpses into the depths. It amplifies and interprets echoes and the lines connecting them, creating

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a new present within a palimpsest of his-torical accumulation. It delves into the traces of what was to make meaning of what is. Sweibel’s work challenges our notions of visceral and monumental space. Despite its diminutive scale, it has a forceful presence. The formally beautiful, dense compositions of wood, with their rich pigment and subtle pa-tina, hold their own. Materially re-sourceful, Sweibel establishes a dialog between the tactility of rescued materi-als (strips of wood, bits of wire) and the readable surfaces of the architectural environment: an arc of old tile in the floor or an expanse of wall left to speak for itself. Clustered together, gathered in pairs and small groups, Sweibel’s sculptures are arranged with expansion in mind. Negative space is electrified and charged with meaning. In conver-sation with their environment, they are more than what they seem to be. They also call on other voices to join the con-versation—personal and collective, past and present.

Collaborating with an already present visual terrain, Sweibel manipulates ma-terial and space, configuring and recon-figuring them into a personal language that pulls us deep into subtle but strong currents. Like Woolf, Sweibel wants us to slow down, dive in and expand out again. Her work is a new language—deeply pri-vate but viscerally accessible—for forgot-ten or unrecorded landscapes and disap-peared histories.

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Above: Untitled (#16 on wall; from wall out: #8, #3, #5, #4, #1, #23, #24, #6, #2), 2012-2013. Wood, paint, table, dimensions variable.

Opposite Page: Untitled (splinter installation #1), 2013. Wood, paint, dimensions variable.

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The Psychic Triangle

Matthew Jensen

Kelly Lynn Jones

Jenn Kahn

Jeremy Miranda

Caleb Nussear

Joey Weiss

Natalia Zubko

October 11 — November 8, 2013

curated by Jessica Cannon

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The Psychic Triangle by Jessica Cannon

The Psychic Triangle refers to the am-biguous territory between humans, the natural world, and the designed world. Through various forms of design such as object making, resource extraction, and designed systems of power, humans have assumed an outsize role in shaping the natural world while simultaneously awak-ening to a destructive aftermath. The art-ists in The Psychic Triangle are exploring the unfamiliar terrain where distinctions between nature and design dissolve into one another. From this uncertain place their diverse studio practices are mining a new consciousness—one that is defined by the inseparable coupling of power and anxiety. Matthew Jensen, Jeremy Miran-da, and Joey Weiss use surrogate figures to articulate the alien qualities of natu-ral and designed spaces. In The Return, Matthew Jensen depicts a plant growing atop a mossy beige carpet, within a Coast Guard barrack that has been uninhab-ited for over a decade. Its leaves stand at attention beneath a hole in the ceil-ing where water seeps through. Jeremy

Miranda’s painting, Dead of Winter, also imbues plants with figurative qualities. Set in an environment that is formally divided between an outside seascape and a mini-mal modern interior, the plants bask un-der the orange glow of a heat lamp. The plants’ dependence on an artificial sun mirrors the ways that human survival is also wrapped up in designed objects. Al-ternating between night and day, interior and exterior, Joey Weiss’ video Shadow McDonalds offers a poetic creation myth for prosaic spaces. Set against various shadows, the block walls, trimmed shrubs, and mismatched chairs that populate Shadow McDonalds take on a character that transcends both nature and design. Jenn Kahn and Natalia Zubko reconstruct the natural world by using designed objects as sculptural material. Jenn Kahn’s work, Pack of Gray Standing Wolf, features a horizontal arrangement of identical porcelain wolf figurines atop a floor-level plinth. Huddled together in a long line with chests pointed out, these symbols of the wild are in silent confron-tation with the viewer. Through Kahn’s in-

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stallation the wolves reclaim their iconic power while occupying a vulnerable posi-tion at the viewer’s feet. Natalia Zubko’s Cabinet of Little Systems displays small Haeckel-like specimens made of everyday materials. Circles collected from paper hole punches are carefully arranged like fish scales. Q-tips are intricately woven into a semi-circular dome reminiscent of coral. Zubko’s works quietly allude to the ways that discarded human objects are transforming the natural world. Both Caleb Nussear and Kelly Lynn Jones depict sublime skies interrupted by technological objects. In Drones II, Caleb Nussear’s sometimes-blurry mountains channel the history of Romanticism into a virtual landscape surveyed by drones. While the aerial perspective reveals a par-ticular orientation to the landscape, it is unclear if the image is translated from the site itself, or from a digital feed thousands of miles away. Through a process of mark making and erasing, Nussear’s graphite drawing articulates the inherently nebu-lous qualities of drones, which augment the physical presence of humans in the air while surveying and enacting violence against those on the ground. Kelly Lynn Jones’ 1986 is an arrangement of found images of the Challenger launch layered on top of each other in a column. The blue

hues are reminiscent of the New York sky that was present on September 11, 2001. For those who witnessed these events the sky is no longer a thing unto itself but also a backdrop to human experiences. The Psychic Triangle is an evolv-ing territory where the human scale is in constant flux. At a time when natural gas mining is causing small earthquakes and mechanical levees are promoted as a salve for rising tides, humans are caught in a paradox between dominance and vul-nerability. For the artists in this exhibition, this particular consciousness represents both a strange condition and an opportu-nity. In approaching this terrain from vari-ous perspectives, they resist declarations and locate the self amid ideas and forms once thought to be separate.

With sincere gratitude to Dr. David Brody, Professor and Director of the MA History of Decorative Arts Program at Parsons The New School for Design, and Dr. Clive Dilnot, Professor of Design Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design, for generously offering feedback in the development of this exhibition.

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Above: Caleb Nussear, Drones II, 2011. Graphite on chalk paper, 50x52 inches.

Opposite Page: Natalia Zubko, Cabinet of Little Systems (detail), 2009-2011. Plexi-glass cabinet of mixed media sculptures, 15x12x8 inches altogether.

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Above: Jenn Kahn, Pack of Gray Standing Wolf (detail), 2013. Found objects and wood plinth, dimensions variable.

Opposite Page: Jeremy Miranda, Dead of Winter, 2013. Acrylic on panel, 10x8 inches.

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Hip OpenersAlina Tenser

November 15 — December 12, 2013

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Marco Antonini: How do you envision the life of an artwork that you created beyond the studio, in real life or even in someone else’s life?

Alina Tenser: I am rarely attached to work after it has been shown; there is a natural removal that happens. It is not neces-sarily a rejection but I just don’t feel in-volved with it anymore. This specifically happens with the physical sculptures more than the videos. Perhaps there is a more intense involvement with the physical forms while I’m making them as well; I am usually more dissatisfied with them. I am very curious about how other people live with my work; it never oc-curs to me while making it that someone would “live” with it… I hardly ever live with it myself. I only deal with work in the studio, and live with it in a platonic sense when I am not there.

MA: How does this, uhm… platonic re-lationship actually influence the finished piece? Do you spend a lot of time imag-ining and planning your work or do you

mostly make it in the studio?

AT: I spend time imagining and writing about work that I’m working on all the time, but I’m usually more attached to a piece during its early developmental stages. I don’t necessarily know how the finished piece will look, or even what it will be about; it feels like a song that you can’t get out of your head, and maybe you don’t even know the words to, but makes you feel very good every time you sing it.

MA: When did you start working with green screen and chroma keying, and what prompted that decision?

AT: I started working with green screen in late 2011. I was in graduate school at Vir-ginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, which has an incredibly strong sculpture department, and I felt the need to talk about form in a new way. The first video I made was of my hands touching one of my sculptures. The way the viewer experiences the form was

Interviewwith Marco Antonini

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through my fleeting moments of contact. I made several of these hand videos and at the time referred to them as “sculp-tures” because they were so much about form, making, and contact with material. It was actually really great to make these videos while surrounded by a group of astute makers that could think about dimensionality in such depth. Form, making, and contact are still prominent concerns in my videos, but I think more about directing and the choreography of how objects and body cutouts appear in the video. I’ve become more interested in how the body articulates form.

MA: How were your experiments in those directions received in school? Was there any positive or negative feedback that helped you further define the work at that early stage?

AT: For the most part the videos were received with support. I definitely made a couple of crudely keyed out videos, mostly due to my inexperience with lighting and editing, so I got a little bit of hesitation from my peers about where this work might be going and my techni-cal abilities. Corin Hewitt was one of my advisors and he encouraged my initial interest in video being another avenue

for investigating form. Ester Partegas was my thesis advisor and both her and Corin encouraged the autobiographical part of my work. More specifically, my son, Nikolai, was 10-months old when I started grad school and I was trying to figure out my motherhood and my direc-tion as an artist simultaneously. There are a lot of body and reproductive ref-erences that happen in my work and it took me a while to be confident with my own imagery.

MA: What is the difference between making and showing? And between making and making believe?

AT: I try to not be very judgmental when making, letting myself make dumb things and muck around in uncertainty. What I show is edited, not the pieces them-selves but the selection or grouping. A big part of my practice is about what is not shown. I don’t consider it refuse; it is a necessary support system.

MA: Do you consider the props you cre-ate and use in your videos “sculptures”?

AT: They are made like sculptures. Some have utility in mind. I don’t refer to them as props because they are not fake or

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faux in any way. The video is used to as-sist in experiencing their form in what I think is a more enhanced or autonomous way. The sculptures are what carries the video, whereas props usually tend to as-sist a narrative or a scenario.

MA: I see. I think I thought of props be-cause I carried a mental image of your studio sets, with the abandoned, inac-tive objects resembling some sort of tab-leaux… you sent me pictures document-ing some of your studio settings, stills of your green screen “performances” and even studio object arrangements and texture. How do these images fit in your practice and do you envision showing them (if at all)?

AT: That’s a part I am still trying to figure out. I know that the objects, costumes, and set will never be shown with the vid-eos. But I have considered showing them alone at some point. I also really like the video stills, keyed out and not. It is a very difficult logic to arrive at and I like how bizarre these are without the larger con-text. It’s like an “if aliens landed, what would they think” game, but for people.

MA: There is a constant tension between inside and outside in your work, how

does that translate in the different lan-guages of 3D sculpture and video? What are the inherent possibilities and limits of both media?

AT: I like this question. There is constant reciprocity between void and form in the work. In the videos I am sometimes able to have objects have a simultane-ously convex and concave state. Basical-ly, cupped forms that have green screen exteriors and visible interiors start to look like protrusions when translated into vid-eo. It was something I was excited to find out when making the Pong With Herself video, in the spring of 2012, and have been investigating ever since. The way physical depth and dimensionality trans-late to video is endlessly surprising and interesting to me. I would say that’s one of the strongest drives I have in making videos right now.

MA: To what degree are craft and finish important to you, and why? Is your cre-ative process leading you in new direc-tions and/or to further experiment with new ideas and materials these days?

AT: The recent work has more fluidity be-tween object, performance, and video. Some of the sculptures I make start out

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as stand-alone pieces one day and start to resonate better in video the other (and vice versa). Some get made as props or

incidental sculpture, there is a forward-

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-ers’ body: one lets in, the second bounc-

feel the contours of their own form.

MA: What is failure to you? When is an

of failure; sometimes there is a graceful

and honest, I understand it most in sculp-tural terms—clumsy. I believe in paying attention to failure because it is bare and active, it is always in a state of wanting to change.

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One Trace After

Elizabeth Orr

Carlos Reyes

Claudia Weber

Geo Wyeth

January 3 — January 31, 2014

curated by Alison Burstein

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Notes on Traces by Alison Burstein

As a complement to One Trace After, this text rearticulates the exhibition’s central proposition in a different form. Where the exhibition suggests that a visitor’s encounter with an artwork or group of artworks in a gallery always results in a partial impression—limited by the physi-cal and discursive contexts framing it—these pages explore how this condition of incompleteness impacts the project of documenting an exhibition. Recognizing that it is not possible to comprehensively portray the artworks and their relation-ships to one another as they exist in the exhibition, this publication instead brings together a series of traces that take the form of words and images documenting moments from One Trace After’s concep-tion, development, and realization. The contents of the exhibition’s publication (http://issuu.com/nurtureart/docs/onetraceafter_ebook_final2/1) offer insight into these phases of the exhibi-tion’s evolution from the perspectives of its contributors—the curator, the artists, and the writers. To shed light on One Trace After’s conceptual underpinnings, I

have incorporated quotations represent-ing the thinkers and theories that moti-vated my investigation of traces. The artists have selected materials that un-cover aspects of their creative processes by directly or abstractly illustrating the research, ideation, or creation of their works. As reflections on the exhibition in its fully realized form, four unique press releases are included within; composed by me and three invited writers, these texts were released weekly during the ex-hibition’s run. And for the final element, images of the gallery installation and the individual artworks as they first appeared punctuate these pages. Between the publication’s cov-ers, these components are fluidly mixed together: a flip of a page results in a shift in moment, voice, reference, or mode of representation. By compiling the traces without regard for chronology or typol-ogy, the exhibition’s publication prompts the reader to peruse it according to his or her interpretative sense, whether that means following or straying from the given order. In doing so, the reader

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can develop his or her understanding of the exhibition not only through the traces captured on the pages, but also through the connections that he or she

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publication invites visitors to multiply the meanings and narratives associated with One Trace After, turning the document’s incompleteness into an indication of its unfolding future rather than a product of

Geo Wyeth, Den, 2013. Performance.

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Above: Elizabeth Orr, Steak (detail), 2014. Digital video, a/v equipment, wood, wheels, digital prints, dimensions variable.

Opposite Page: Claudia Weber, Take the Day Off (detail), 2013. Archival pigment print, 70 x 44 inches.

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The Thing That’s There But Isn’t

Jenny Santos

February 15 — March 16, 2014

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As Robert Edmond Jones states in his book The Dramatic Imagination, “The loveliest and most poignant of all stage pictures are those that are seen in the mind’s eye”. He continues: “The theater we know occupies itself with cre-ating stage ‘illusion’. What we are now inter-ested in, however, is not illusion, but allusion, and allusion to the most magical beauty”.

So then, we can consider scenic design in theater as a marker, a prop, and signifier of the content that is implied and further projected as a rich visual display within the viewer’s mind. This setting is often a place filled with memory and truth, lies and misconceptions, the formulated and the experienced. In the mind’s eye, rife with nostalgia, perhaps the porch is a setting of relaxation, conversation, and reverie. Opening to the outside world, the porch frames the horizon and the sky. The taste of sweet summer air. Dancing fireflies. A mint julep or evening smoke. Cuddled in an old rocking chair with a book, or swaying on a porch swing. This is a place that embodies leisure and the summer ideal: the ability to take comfort in idly watching the day pass by. An architectural trope, the porch has a rich history and place in our culture. The porch functions as an in-between space. This place,

...by Kim Smith

They Sit Together on the Porch

They sit together on the porch, the darkAlmost fallen, the house behind them dark.Their supper done with, they have washed and driedThe dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.She sits with her hands folded in her lap,At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,And when they speak at last it is to sayWhat each one knows the other knows. They haveOne mind between them, now, that finallyFor all its knowing will not exactly knowWhich one goes first through the dark doorway, biddingGoodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

Wendell Berry

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not entirely private, though still nestled in the safety of home, is the space between the outside world and the domestic interior. It is a place of viewing and a place to be viewed, both a stage and a seating area. While on the porch, you are both a spectator and an actor.

(Enter JENNY SANTOS: the director, creator). SETTING: Art gallery. Enclosed. Trapped. Unnatural. Indoor. Artificial. A simply constructed front porch, presumably an extension of a home, opens up to face a solid, white wall.

As an installation artist, Jenny Santos utilizes context to reimagine the content of such a space. Santos is a builder, both literally and figuratively. She assembles her materials to fabricate metaphor. Her connection with the literal world is one of suggestion and symbol. There is hollowness to this construction that subtly reminds us that it is just that—a construction. In this, it is also a gesture of failure. The obvious inability to recreate what we hold dear about this sacred

space leaves us with only an idea of such an experience. After all, is that not what art is: a modifier for another experience? The Thing That’s There But Isn’t offers a hollow shell of an experience. Based on an idea embedded with memories so rich and vast, this installation diminishes this understanding through the enclosure of the gallery and the stage-like scenic flats. In denying us the full physical experience we associate with the porch, Santos enunciates this lack and asks us to consider our failed ideals. As viewers, perhaps this juxtaposition reminds us of our entrapment: enclosed in the gallery and confined to the city. The urban grit, the claustrophobic surroundings, and the obstructed horizon encroach upon our ability to experience the natural world. We are denied the luxury of space, of gazing out unto an untouched landscape, and the quiet peace that a rural or suburban (or anywhere but here) kind of place can offer. As we perch ourselves on this porch, we are reminded of our place and the physical nature of all that we are missing. We are left on this porch, a place of reminiscence and contemplation, to gaze out at the vast whiteness of the gallery wall and consider all that we have and all that is lacking.

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Jenny Santos, The Thing That’s There But Isn’t, 2014.Mixed media, dimensions variable.

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To begin,at the beginning

Megan Broadmeadow

Mike Calway-Fagen

Pascal-Michel Dubois

Katalin Hausel

Mikael Kennedy

Tommy Kwak

Phuc Le

curated by Sam Perry

March 28 — April 25, 2014

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Artists, like numerous other vocational beings (basketball players, archaeologists, tornado hunters) are often led far from home in search for a more nurturing place for their practice. For many, this inspiration is in New York City: an immigrant town with a quintessentially migratory art world to match. You can see, or vividly imagine, a mass exodus around Christmas time when artists and other creative types go home to their families, with stories and anecdotes on and about “The City”. At that and other times of the year, all of us in the arts sector become storytellers. Modern day bards, as well as central characters in our own literary drama, we carefully craft and fashion our narrative, leaving out the embarrassing bits, embellishing the good ones, decorating the air around the dining table, the fireplace, the stove or porch. The thematic framework of To begin, at the beginning was born from observations by (and on) expatriate writers, particularly those whose stories, characters and plots are steeped in hometown histories and lore. James Joyce, whose entire catalogue is

based in and around the city of Dublin, Ireland, is a perfect example. His writing is unmistakably “Dublin”, from his descriptions of people to the settings they inhabit. Anyhow, Joyce left Ireland before he began to pen these stories, and only once did he make a brief journey back there before his death. For many expatriates, trips back home can be a somewhat abrasive or emotionally and literally explosive experience. Marco Polo, who left his hometown of Venice at the age of seventeen, didn’t arrive back until he was forty-one, only to find the place in the midst of a bloody war with Genoa. He was immediately captured and taken prisoner. After his release and the end of the conflict, it’s a little surprising or perhaps not surprising at all that he decided to never leave Venice again. To many in the U.S.A. the notion of homecoming might evoke the annual tradition of parades and college football games; to others, the Protestant Church and its welcome back ceremonies, held for former members or pastors.

Come Homeby Sam Perry

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The subject of homecoming is bound to inspire a wide range of reactions, producing interpretations as varied as the ideas and inclinations as each individual on Earth, all of us informed by a wealth of different experiences on what “coming home” actually means. This variety of interpretations is reflected in the work of numerous emerging contemporary artists, wherever in the world they may find themselves; the rapturous feelings that homecoming can provoke, manifest themselves to equally diverse creative ends. The exhibition’s participating artists each speak about, amongst many other things, literally or mentally returning home. While Phuc Le works departs from a reunion with both his father and the place in which he grew up, Mike Calway-Fagen articulates on his unavoidable attachment to Tennessee, while Pascal-Michel Dubois revisits abrasive school memories in his native France. Megan Broadmeadow’s St Winifred’s Return is a video work recounting the return of Saint Winifred, a Welsh mythological figure, to a modern version of her hometown in rural Wales. Of the ever-growing collection of Mikael Kennedy’s celebrated Polaroid works, taken whilst travelling, it is the somewhat rare images from his Vermont

homecomings that resound with the most effect. Katalin Hausel’s sculptures abstract her own sense of place, exploring the ways it shapes her identity and self-perception. Geographically ambiguous, the forests surrounding Tommy Kwak’s childhood home instills a universal enquiry into an aesthetic of absence and paradoxically, anticipation for the unknown. Edward W. Said stated that those who create art should be “Unhoused wanderers across language. Eccentric, aloof, nostalgic, deliberately untimely…”1 Yet exilic living, the willing or un-willing to live away from our place of origin, seems a necessity for many artists. In parallel, whether with abrasion or celebration, to return, to come home seems important as it is ritualistic.

1. From Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Har-

vard University Press, 2000.

Alongside The Loneliness of the Middle-Distance Runner, Flux Factory, NYC (2012) and Cities of Ash, g39, Cardiff, UK (2014), To begin, at the beginning forms part of a trilogy of exhibitions that draw upon liter-ary tendencies and observations as a base influence, showing work of emerging art-ists from the US and the UK.

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Above: Mike Calway-Fagen, The Ever Expanding, 2011. Photo on vinyl, 48x108 inches.

Opposite Page: Tommy Kwak, Tree (Hoge Veluwe, The Netherlands,) 2012. C-print, 30x40 inches.

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Project Curate 2013- 2014: Tinia Albert, Cesar Beltre, Ramon Capellan, Kayla Gamble, Angel Montes, Angelica Ortiz, David Ortega, Gesifed Paucar, Destiny Perez, Charisma Rios, Yunior Rivas, Madelyn Santiago. Teacher Partner: De-nise Martinez. Project Curate provides a class of advanced art students from Juan Morel Campos High School an opportunity to experience contemporary curatorial practices by working closely with a professional curator for an entire school year, culminating in an exhibition at NURTUREart Gallery. This year their mentor was Loney Abrams, Co-Director of hotelart.us and ThereTherebiz.biz. Project Curate is part of NURTUREart’s Education Program, dedicated to nurturing and enriching the next generation with its unique arts programs that connect professional artists and curators with students and teachers.

Project Curate 2013- 2014: Tinia Albert, Cesar Beltre, Ramon Capellan, KaylaGamble, Angel Montes, Angelica Ortiz, David Ortega, Gesifed Paucar, Destiny Perez, Charisma Rios, Yunior Rivas, Madelyn Santiago. Teacher Partner: De-nise Martinez. Project Curate provides a class of advanced art students fromJuan Morel Campos High School an opportunity to experience contemporary curatorial practices by working closely with a professional curator for an entireschool year, culminating in an exhibition at NURTUREart Gallery. This yeartheir mentor was Loney Abrams, Co-Director of hotelart.us ands ThereTherebiz.biz. Project Curate is part of NURTUREart’s Education Program, dedicated tonurturing and enriching the next generation with its unique arts programs thatconnect professional artists and curators with students and teachers.

#ArtistsBeLike

Mikkel Carl

Mitchell Charbonneau

Emily Clayton

Andrea Crespo

Justin Kemp

Michael Pybus

Paul Wiersbinski

curated by Project Curate with Loney Abrams

May 2 — May 23, 2014

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#ArtistsBeLike is an exhibition co-curat-ed by 12 individuals born after 1997, af-ter the advent of the internet. The first wave of digital natives are now coming of age and are consuming, producing, and connecting at high speeds. It’s no surprise that market analysts, media the-orists, sociologists, and art professionals alike are paying attention to those who grew up online. When I was asked to participate in Project Curate, I felt as if I was gain-ing access to privileged information, tapping into the mindset of a genera-tion who would soon become the next wave of emerging artists and curators. I began the semester by asking the class whether they knew what curating was. No one seemed to have a clue (one student, thinking about the root of the word, figured it had something to do with curing people of illness). Then I asked if anyone had ever made a Tum-blr or a blog, a playlist or a Soundcloud track, a Facebook photo album, or a Youtube playlist. As I expected, every-one raised their hand. While the act of

curating summons a deep understand-ing of contemporary artists and trends, it also requires the ability to make connec-tions between disparate points. And for those of us who spend a lot of time on the internet, consuming vast amounts of information—editing, rearranging, and redistributing that information comes quite naturally. Whether or not the stu-dents knew much about contemporary art, they did, in a sense, already know how to curate. Throughout the year, I asked the teens to post images and videos of art they found online to our class blog. The result was a mashup of content from widely differing sources—traditional figu-rative painting sat in between branded advertisements, amateur drawings, anime screen grabs, and inspirational sayings. On the internet, there are no white walls, no museum entrances, no barriers be-tween what is art and what is not. To the students, whether something was intend-ed as art was less important than whether something was real or fake, entertaining or boring, worth reblogging or ignoring.

#ArtistsBeLike by Loney Abrams

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After discussing the ways in which online communication affected our relation-ships, avatars constructed our identities, and digital images confronted our no-tions of reality, we put out an open call asking artists to submit work that offered new perspectives to our conversation. Af-ter seeing how open the kids were to dis-cussing just about anything found online, I was surprised by how hesitant they were to accepting non-traditional media as art. As soon as we switched contexts, from blog to gallery, and began discussing the exhibition as an IRL space, the teen-curators started to restructure their selec-tion criteria to reflect a generalized view of what they imagined exhibitions should look like. They had trouble accepting dig-ital images, experimental music videos, web performances, or even found object sculpture as art, and instead leaned to-wards traditional media like paint on can-vas or black and white photography. Relocating from the screen to the gallery was a more difficult contextual shift than I had anticipated, and I started encouraging the kids to use the logic they employed to navigate the web, to select artworks for the exhibition. We stopped talking about what was art and what was not, and instead focused on which pieces initiated the most engaging dialogue in

the classroom. We made maps and flow-charts, using hashtags to summarize con-cepts and tag clouds to group artworks together. The result of our investigations is an exhibition that I believe to not only be the consequences of a class assign-ment, but a visualization of surf logic, and the manifestation of the teenage thought process informed by a life online. The exhibition wasn’t just the end product. It was also the means to creating new content that reflected the student’s habitual desire to produce and share. During the opening, our teenage curators took over NURTUREart’s social media ac-counts and live tweeted the event. They took pictures and used hashtags, relo-cating the exhibition back to the screen. After noting that most of the work we had discussed was in the form of docu-mentation online, we decided to use the installation shots of #ArtistsBeLike as an opportunity for intervention, making our own versions of the exhibition by insert-ing found images into the photos. What started as a discussion of online media materialized into a gallery exhibition, and then ended up right back to where it started: on the internet.

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Andrea Crespo, B.R.O.-Xplode, 2014. Video, TRT 7:47.

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Justin Kemp, Proclaming my love at a scenic overlook on top of a mountain, 2010. Performance documentation (detail), 24x18 inches.

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Braced PositionMaryKate Maher

May 30 — June 5, 2014

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Braced Position investigates formal com-binations in which objects are positioned in coercive relationships with each other. One element supports the other, sug-

-tion. Sculptures reference natural forms:

materials serve as surrogates, describing an underlying relationship of forms. In-laid ovals of out-of-focus space become moments of visual vibration, resisting the

both animating and obscuring the sur-face on which they are placed. Things pretend to be alright, to be acceptable, to blend in. They do their best to accom-modate each other. There is an intimacy

against a type of structural apathy.In the concurring performance,

Forced Posture: extension of the studio body, a large, unwieldy object is moved from one location to another by hand and body alone. This act is similar to the

the studio: propping and pushing, hoist-ing objects that are too heavy to lift by

sheer might. The artist’s body instead -

comes a lever, a pulley, a tripod, allow-

vulnerable, Sisyphean moments usually hidden behind the studio walls.

Mary Kate Maher: Braced Position and the performance Forced Posture: exten-sion of the studio body were presented as special projects in the occasion of Bush-wick Open Studios 2014, between May 30 and June 5, 2014. The performance was held on Sunday, June 1 at noon, and took place between the artist’s studio and NURTUREart Gallery.

Braced Position/Forced Posture

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Videorover: Season 7, screening at UnionDocs.

Season 7

curated by Nicholas O’Brien

Alison Ballard

Rachelle Beaudoin

Bianca Boragi

Javier Bosques

Jonathan Johnson

Tamara Johnson

December 15, 2013 - June 6, 2014

Joy McKinney

Mores McWreath +

Cathy Park Hong

David Politzer

Michael Szpakowski

Sam Winks

Magdalen Wong

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Videorover, NURTUREart’s dedicated vid-eo program, aims at becoming an ever-expanding forum for emerging and under-represented artists working in video. The seventh season of Videorover featured a variety films and video works loosely connected by curator Nicholas O’Brien’s invitation to consider “winter” (as a season and as an expanded notion) as overarching topic. The coldest of the sea-sons, “winter” can actually signify a multi-tude of cultural, social, and historical con-ditions, often requiring moments of solace and self-reflection. The artists presented in this program offer diverse approaches to dealing with the cold and isolation that this contemplative time can bring. While some artists point to the ab-surdity of hyper-consumerism that plagues the holiday season, others point to an un-derlying lonesomeness that comes from the high potential for prolonged cabin fe-ver. Wry humor, coy performance, subtle narrative, geographical juxtaposition, af-fectionate documentation, and evocative sound are pervasive among all selections, used to break through the sheets of ice

that wrap this time of year. O’Brien has put together a program to bring about a hope-ful warmth not just to battle the impending chilliness, but also to light the fire of a col-lective hearth. Videorover: Season 7 was pre-sented as a one night screening event at UnionDocs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well as on rotation in NURTUREart’s main gallery space from December 16-23, 2013.

About the Curator: Nicholas O’Brien is a net-based artist, curator, and writer whose research revolves around the exploration of digital self and the relevance of land-scape representation within network cul-ture. His work has appeared international-ly in Mexico, Berlin, London, Dublin, Italy, and throughout the US. He has also been featured in several publications including ARTINFO, Art F City, Sculpture magazine, Dazed Digital, The Creators Project, ilik-ethisart, Frieze d/e, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times. He is currently living in Brooklyn working as a visiting professor and gallery director for the Department of Digital Art at Pratt Institute.

Videorover, Season 7

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David Politzer, still from You Are Listening To Metallica Because, 2010-11. Video, TRT 06:57.

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Joy McKinney, still from Touch Me, 2013. Video, TRT 02:53.

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Magdalen Wong, still from Lite, 2010. Video, TRT 04:22.

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Videorover: Season 8, Part #1 installation view.L to R: Victoria Keddie, Brendan Lee.

Videorover: Season 8, Part #1 installation view.L to R: Victoria Keddie, Brendan Lee.

June 13 - November 21, 2014

Dave Greber

Victoria Keddie

Derek Larson

Brendan Lee

Beatriz Meseguer

Alona Rodeh

Raul Valverde

Adam Douglas Thompson

Season 8

curated by Rachel Steinberg

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The works in the eighth season of Videoro-ver explore the idea of video as installa-tion, highlighting the immersive potential that time based media hold. Through au-dio and visual tools and using the body as a reference point, this exhibition aimed to interrupt our exteroceptive senses. For three weeks in June, Videorover: Season 8 took over NURTUREart’s main gallery space; opening in shifts for a series of three consecutive installations. Each in-stallation featured three of the selected artists, to allow for the works to expand in the space, while still in dialogue with the larger group of works. The first selection opened on June 13, and includes works by Victoria Keddie, Brendan Lee, and Adam Douglas Thompson. Through dissection, reconfig-uration and layering, their works harness the resonant fields of energy in the spaces they represent. This first selection tends to derail our intuitions, shifting between ana-log and digital tools, architectural models, or layered renderings. The transmission of physical and imagined/perceived space within these works is not what it originally

seems, inviting a deeper look. On June 20, the second instal-lation opened, featuring artists Beatriz Meseguer, Alona Rodeh, and Raul Val-verde, whose works are centered on con-ditions of light and absence as a common ground. Architectural in nature, the focus of this group turns to the empty gallery space, where small interventions create chaos in the truancy of human interfer-ence. Here, the unnoticed subtleties of a gallery become the center of our atten-tion. The resulting calm is enveloping, shifting our perspective to the architec-tural. The third and final installation, which premeired on June 27, 2014, in-volved artists Dave Greber, Derek G. Larson, and Sofia Quirno. Relating again to the idea of reconfiguration, this time through humor, these works transformed the gallery into an almost unrelatable space. Deeply rooted in the uncanny, these works borrow from the sensibilities of painterly abstraction to create a space of overwhelming stimulus. Confronting us with a cocktail of comic absurdity and

Videorover, Season 8

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Adam Douglas Thompson, Gallerie Effacement, 2014. Digital video, TRT 07:45.

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mundane but somehow chaotic repeti-tion, we are presented with the more vi-brant potential of video.

On the occasion of the third opening, NURTUREart presented: OTHER AUTHORLarson and his puppet, which narrated a story in front of projected video. The pup-pet wears a white oxford shirt, no pants,

its laptop. The video is of two young men

-ing only white oxford shirts, no pants, high

friends or the same person. The puppet watches and wonders if this was a video

men in the video, or both of them. This project was created while in residence at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee Switzerland.

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Above: Installation view from Videorover: Season 8, Part #3.Dave Graeber (front), Sofia Quirno (back.)

Opposite Page: Videorover: Season 8, Part #2 installation view.L to R: Beatriz Meseguer, Raul Valverde, Alona Rodeh.

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Installation view from Multiplicity (Part 2, Mixed Greens Gallery.) L to R: Alice Schi-vardi, Seher Shah, Irgin Sena, Jan Pfeiffer,

Multiplicity: City as Subject/Matter is an

international survey of artworks sharing

an interest in the politics and poetic po-

tential of contemporary urban environ-

ments, exposing the irresistible pull of

the similarities—intercultural meeting

points, common problems, goals and

dreams—around which people con-

verge. The project was presented in

New York as a series of four consecu-

tive exhibitions hosted by NURTUREart,

Mixed Greens, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS and

Union Docs in the Summer of 2014.

Installation view from Multiplicity (Part 2, yMixed Greens Gallery.) L to R: Alice Schi-vardi, Seher Shah, Irgin Sena, Jan Pfeiffer,

Multiplicity: City as Subject/Matter is annr

ininternational survveyey of f artworks shaharirinng

an interest in the politics and poetic po-

tential of contemporary urban environ-

ments, exposing the irresistible pull off

the similarities—intercultural meeting

points, common problems, goals and

dreams—around which people con-

verge. The project was presented in

New York as a series of four consecu-

tive eexhibitions hosted by NURTUREart,

Mixed Greens, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS ana d

Union Docs in the Summer of 2014.

Multiplicity

Nadim Abbas, Erik Benson, BroLab,

CPak Studio, Endri Dani, John Duncan, Yael Efrati,

Todd Shalom (Elastic City), The Extrapolation Factory,

Vibha Galhotra, Darren Goins, Michael Hanna,

Meg Kelly, Nicholas Keogh, Alban Muja, Aisling O’Beirn,

Alice Schivardi, Seher Shah, Sasa Tkacenko, and Amir Yatziv.

curated by Marco Antonini

in collaboration with: Catalyst Arts, Hila Cohen-Schneiderman,

Khoj International Artists’ Association, Eriola Pira, and Magdalen Wong.

Part 1: NURTUREart. From July 11 to August 25, 2014.

Part 2: Mixed Greens. From July 24 to August 24, 2014.

Part 3: Invisible Exports. From August 1 to August 27, 2014.

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Installation view from Multiplicity (Part 1, NURTUREart Gallery.)L to R: Endri Dani, BroLab, Nicky Keogh, Erik Benson, CPak Studio, Vibha Galhotra.

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Above: Jan Pfeiffer, Beyond Control, 2014. Wood, paint, cardboard, spotlight, video.Opposite page: John Duncan, image from the

77

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Aisling O’Beirn, And Other Storys, 2006 - 2014. L to R: Derry Diamond, Storys ex-cerpt, Tower of Silence, NY Nicknames. Mixed media.

79

Darren Goins, Workout A (Dance), 2013. Digital video with sound, TRT 5:09 min.

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Installation view from Multiplicity (Part 3, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS Gallery.)L to R: Nadim Abbas, John Duncan, Yael Efrati.Installation view from Multiplicity (Part 3, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS Gallery.)yL to R: Nadim Abbas, John Duncan, Yael Efrati.

81

Cities unite by bringing people together; sometimes they divide for exactly the same reason. They are both abstract ideas and physical places, strategically sited to coincide with natural resources or created to materialize pure theory. A city is a place for individualism and exchange, solitude and communal living. Its name can engender ideals, both successful and failed, rising to represent something beyond its own history and present/future tensions and aspirations, a total larger than the sum of its parts.

Cities contain multitudes that, as powerful and creative collective

of every urban community. This force induces daily struggles and concerns, dreams as solid as concrete pillars, yet soft as grey matter: resources as

ideas and images, personal concerns and local struggles that, although unique, will necessarily inform each other, presenting macroscopic similarities. Cities are structured around largely internalized foundational ideals, inviting (or inciting) contrasting notions of what sharing, protection, tolerance, competition, access, visibility, circulation, expansion,

This multitude of possible readings adds up to a global urban vocabulary straddling geographical and political boundaries. In this sense, Multiplicity strives to present images and ideas as different and distinctive as the urban contexts that originally inspired them, embodying the internal contradictions and boundless potential of small and large, young and old, meticulously planned and chaotically sprawling cities worldwide.

Cities unite by bringing people together; sometimes they dividefor exactly the same reason. They are both abstract ideas and physicalplaces, strategically sited to coincide with natural resources or created tomaterializze e pupure ttheheorory.y AA ccitity isis a plalacee fforor individualism and exchange,solitude and communnal lil ving. Its nan me can engender ideals, bothsuccessful and ffailed,, rissinng toto reppreses ntnt something beyond its ownhistory and present/futurer tensions andd aspirations, a total larger thanthe sum of its parts.

Cities contain multitudes that, as powerful and creative collective

of every urban community. This force induces daily struggles and concerns, dreams as solid as concrete pillars, yet soft as grey matter: resources as

ideas and images, personal concerns and local struggles that, althoughunique, will necessarily inform each other, prp esenting macroscopicsimilarities.

Cities are structured around largely internalized foundational ideals,inviting (or inciting) contrasting notions of what sharing, protection, tolerance, competition, access, visibility, circulation, expansion,

This multitude of possible readings adds up to a global urban vocabularystradddling geographical and political boundaries. In this sense, Multiplicitystrives to present images andd ideas as different and distinctive as theurban contexts that originally inspired them, embodying the internalcontradictions and boundless potential of small and large, young andold, meticulously planned and chaotically sprawling cities worldwide.

82

Irgin Sena, It started started started somehow (zoo), 2013.HD video, sound, dimensions variable, TRT 16.15 min.

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Gigi Scaria, photo documentation of Someone left a horse on the shore, 2007.Digital print on archival paper, dimensions variable.

84

NURTUREart’s gallery attendance has been liter-

considers data relative to attendance of our exhi-

bitions, special events, Videorover, Muse Fuse and

education program gallery events between 2011

and 2013. The percentage increase in the three year

span has been

85

Book Design: Marco Antonini and Ido Michaeli. Editing/Copyediting: NUR-TUREart Non Profit Inc. Images on pages 72, 74/75, 78, 80 by Etienne Frossard. Images on pages 22, 28 and 29: Andre Ramirez. All other Images, courtesy the artists and/or NURTUREart.

Heartfelt THANKS to our volunteers:Douglas Campos, Virginia Cimino, Sarah Hart Corpron, Julia Foxworth, Jacqueline Kuper, Tzu-Huan Lin, Ido Michaeli, Julie Moon, Clayton Skidmore, Alissa Valeri.

NURTUREart Non-Profit, Inc is a 501(c)3 New York State licensed federally tax-exempt charitable organization founded in 1997 by George J. Robinson. NURTUREart receives support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, including member item funding from City Council Members Ste-phen Levin and Antonio Reynoso, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York State Council on the Arts. NURTUREart is also supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council of Northern Ire-land, Harold and Colene Brown Foun-dation, Con Edison, Czech Center New York, Edelman, the Francis Greenburger Charitable Fund of the Jewish Commu-nal Fund, the Golden Rule Foundation, Greenwich Collection Ltd., the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Milton and Sal-ly Avery Arts Foundation, the Walentas Family Foundation, and the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation. We receive in-kind support from Lagunitas, Societe Perrier, Tekserve, and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. NURTUREart is grateful for sig-nificant past support from the Liebovitz Foundation and the Greenwall Founda-

tion, and to the many generous individu-als and businesses whose contributions have supported us throughout our histo-ry. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the artists who have contributed works of art to past benefits—our continued suc-cess would be impossible without your generosity.

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Staff:

Marco Antonini, Executive Director and CuratorLouise Barry, Development DirectorCody Rae Knue, Education CoordinatorMolly O’Brien, Education DirectorRachel Steinberg, Assistant Director

2013/14 Board of Trustees:

Karen Marston, PresidentCarol Salmanson, Vice PresidentLarry MasceraHeather BhandariDeborah BrownKatherine ChapmanIan CofreLiz DimmitAsya GeisbergChristopher K. HoElliot LableRenwick PaigeBenjamin Tischer

Inner Circle:

Brooklyn Fire ProofAlma Egger and Orlando DiazAnn and Lee Fensterstock Francis J. GreenburgerMarianne and Ted HovivianDeborah Brown and Eric PloumisSergio Muñoz Sarmiento

Advisory Board:Catherine Hannah Behrend, Bill Carroll, Christine Dobush, Ann Fensterstock, Su-san Hamburger, David Harper, Jennie Lamensdorf, Julie McKim, Sarah Monte-leone, Fraser Mooney, Lee Pacchia, Alex-ander Palmer, Alexander Rahul, Sara Re-isman, Richard Stewart, Katarina Wong.