RAVEN CHACON – A WORM’S EYE VIEW FROM A BIRD’S BEAK

Posted on 2024-04-01

A 2023 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and the first Native American artist to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2022, Chacon works through sound, video, scores, performance and sculpture to address Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice. The show brings together groundbreaking works from the last 25 years with a newly commissioned sound and video installation, novel iterations of pioneering works, and a major public art mural on SI’s building. The exhibition spans diverse geographic contexts: Sápmi (the Sámi homeland traversed by the present-day nation states of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia) and Lenapehoking, or New York, in Turtle Island. Both locations share Indigenous histories and presents that colonialism has attempted to eradicate for centuries. Yet they are also sites where resilience, or, in the words of cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor, survivance, continues to thrive.

Exhibition runs through to April 14th, 2024

Swiss Institute
38 St Marks Pl
New York
NY 10003

www.swissinstitute.net

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BODIES OF WORK: KATINKA HERBERT

Posted on 2024-04-01

This exhibition explores the commodification of athletic bodies. Bringing two projects into dialogue, Katinka Herbert delves into the lives of Mexican wrestlers and Cuban athletes. In doing so, her images capture the dilemma of physical performance: a tense relationship between economic necessity and the human form.

While some athletes experience their bodies as vehicles of financial stability and international travel, many grapple with unpredictable incomes, visa barriers, and the looming threat of career-ending injuries. As such, ‘Bodies of Work’ is a study of precarious labor. Here, lives that are ordinarily defined by movement are frozen in the photographic frame. Their muscles resonate with tension and potential; their poses strain under personal and political weight.

‘Slam’ This project offers unprecedented access to the stars of the Mexican wrestling scene. Notoriously secretive about their true identities, it follows these hyper-masculine stars from the drama of the ring to the intimacy of their own homes. Eight years in the making, Slam is a story of trust. In documenting each costumed character, the project unmasks their private lives and alter-egos. Because concealed behind each disguise, many legends of Lucha Libre are a mess. Their foreheads are covered in scar tissue, their lives are marked by self-harm. This series brings a dignified lens to the characters hidden behind a uniquely Mexican ritual of performance, spectacle and machismo.

Opposite – VILLANO IV & V, L’Opera, Mexico City 2007

Exhibition runs through to April 20th, 2024

Harvey Milk Photography Center
50 Scott St.
San Francisco
CA 94117

www.harveymilkphotocenter.org

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HELLEN VAN MEENE – THE DISSOLVE

Posted on 2024-03-25

One of the most influential international photographers of her generation, Hellen van Meene is known for her intimate color portraits of adolescent girls and young women inspired by traditions of classical painting.

Van Meene’s subjects are often caught in dreamlike states or otherworldly situations. In one, a bride stands calmly as the train of her wedding dress ignites in a semi-circle of flames. In another, a sitter cradles a fish like a baby, and in another, butterflies carefully position themselves on the subject’s face, neck, and chest. One young woman immersed in a body of water is surrounded by flowers while fully dressed, recalling Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Van Meene’s subjects appear detached and unflummoxed about their unusual situations, absorbing the ambiguity of being at the brink of adulthood, while caught in the liminal space between childhood and womanhood.

Opposite – Untitled #534, 2021

Exhibition runs through to March 30th, 2024

Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 West 22nd Avenue
New York
NY 10011

www.yanceyrichardson.com

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IN THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED

Posted on 2024-03-25

Our understanding of the U.S. presidency is largely shaped by images. Photographs of political campaigns, international engagements, historic legislation, and national tragedy, accompany more intimate family scenes and humanizing portraits, each contributing to the global perception of the American presidency for generations to come.

Featuring the work of the official White House photographers Shealah Craighead, Eric Draper, Michael Evans, Sharon Farmer, David Hume Kennerly, Bob McNeely, Yoichi Okamoto, Adam Schultz, Pete Souza, David Valdez and staff photographer Joyce Boghosian, this group has shaped our vision of the presidency for the last 6 decades.

Opposite – President George W. Bush talks with President of Mexico Vicente Fox during an Oval Office telephone conversation, May 14, 2002

Exhibition runs through to March 30th, 2024

Griffin Museum of Photography
67 Shore Road
Winchester
MA 01890

griffinmuseum.org

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CAROLYN DRAKE – GLORIFY YOURSELF

Posted on 2024-03-25

The series takes its title from the book Glorify Yourself, a “beauty and charm guide” for women, popular in the U.S. during the 1940s and 1950s. The guide included chapter titles such as “Inviting Lips” and “Sitting Technique,” offering advice for its female readers on how to increase their allure to men. With pages of the book ‘s instructions plastered on one wall of the gallery, Drake’s darkly comedic self-portraits intersect with the misogynistic material that inspired them.

Opposite – Self-Portrait with Gene Tierney (Inviting Lips), 2023

Exhibition runs through to March 30th, 2024

Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 West 22nd Avenue
New York
NY 10011

www.yanceyrichardson.com

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LANDSCAPES OF TRANSCENDENCE

Posted on 2024-03-18

Since time immemorial artists have depicted their environs through a myriad of lenses: a realistic approach, recording as objectively as possible what is perceived; to an imaginative approach, using a real scene as a catalyst for the artist’s intuitive expression of place.

In Landscapes of Transcendence, SEFA explores the latter, more subjective interpretations of place in a two-part exhibition at our Hudson Gallery, showcasing a variety of styles and techniques.

Part II, entitled Scenes of Ethereality, features photographs that evoke surrealism and fantasy. Experienced together, these renderings depict lush flora and fauna; hyperreal and otherworldly urban narratives; and impossible architecture, defying laws of gravity and physics. The artists featured in this exhibition are Heather Boose Weiss, Carolyn Monastra and Leah Oates.

Everything is visually recognizable, yet these creators elevate their aesthetics to fulfill their fantasies. The three artists have worked with SFEA for many years, and this exhibition is the introduction of the photographic medium to our Hudson space.

Opposite – Carolyn Monastra, Land Of The Lost (2009)

Exhibition runs through to March 24th, 2024

Susan Eley Fine Art
433 Warren Street
Hudson
NY 12534

susaneleyfineart.com

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