Brian Alfred

BRIAN ALFRED

BRIAN ALFRED HIGH!RISES!AND!DOUBLE!VISION"!IMAGES!OF!NEW!YORK

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

BRIAN!ALFRED"!THE!NEW!YORK!PAINTINGS

By Pac Pobric

It is very vulgar. It must come down.

—Max Beerbohm on the Statue of Liberty It has not come down. Since 1886, the statue has been standing in New York Harbor, and the appetite for her removal seems to have died with Beerbohm, that dandy English contrarian.

Mostly, the monument is admired these days, or at least allowed to live in peace. But Beerbohm has not been her only detractor: The critic Peter Conrad asked in 1984: “Why is she so menacingly gigantic, and if she’s Liberty, why does she frown so illiberally?”

Maybe it’s just the result of some shadow, but she really does appear to be frowning in Brian Alfred’s diptych painting, with her top lip curved downward in seeming displeasure. Am I just bringing my own anxieties to the work? Probably, but the Statue of Liberty—no ma!er its official presentation as a beacon of hope to all who enter New York—has occasionally inspired apprehension. When E.B. White saw the statue around 1949, he couldn’t help but be reminded of the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. “It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was the signpost that proclaimed New York and translated it for all the world. Today Liberty shares that role with Death.” That seems a tad overblown 70 years later, but you can’t blame a man for his feelings.

My analyst says I exaggerate my childhood memories, but I swear, I was brought up underneath the roller coaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.

—Alvy Singer (played by Woody Allen) in Annie Hall

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When I was 16 years old, I was friends with a girl who lived in a house on Manha!an Beach, just yards away from the water on a quiet strip of south Brooklyn. On weekends and most other nights one long, hazy summer, my friends and I would take the Q train down to Sheepshead Bay, walk across the narrow pedestrian bridge, drop our stuff off at her Ocean Avenue home, and meander down to the beach to spend the night drinking and stargazing. When we got bored, we’d take the long walk west along the boardwalk toward the beguiling glow of Coney Island.

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Rem Koolhaas once called Coney Island “the dress rehearsal for Manha!an,” but contrary to the opinion of the great Dutch architect, not a single person we encountered on our boardwalk travels seemed to have been doing a warm-up act for the city. Neither the proud freak-show performers nor the itinerant drunks nor the portly Russian moon bathers on evening strolls appeared to have any ideas or ambitions beyond their immediate visions. Coney Island back then was so caught up in its own bizarre ideas of itself that even if it wanted to, it could never imagine a world beyond. Even Sheepshead Bay, just two miles away, felt like another country.

Things aren’t so different now. In Alfred’s deceptively calm painting of the beach, all those outof-sight misfits with their fanciful dreams are surely milling about in the background, just past the so$ sand barrier to the boardwalk and below the Wonder Wheel, where Coney Island’s outlandish fantasies live.

I never saw a child anywhere on the Bowery, which must have been an indication of something.

—Jack Henry Abbo!

The three uneasily balanced blocks that top off the New Museum on the Bowery (which are the subject of one of Alfred’s paintings) are a lovely li!le metaphor for the ji!ery feeling this part of

the city once produced in visitors, long before the area became another haven (as all parts of New York now are) for wealth and guilty privilege. This used to be skid row. In Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery (1956), a documentary film with some scripted elements, there is only poverty and rampant alcoholism.

No more—and not for a long time. CBGB, just four blocks north and once the cradle of punk rock, has been a luxury menswear shop since 2008. And all the unmitigated misery that used to weigh on this part of town, and that still exists in obscured pockets (the Mission Bowery, the city’s oldest rescue mission and shelter, is only two doors down from the New Museum), is now difficult to see through the darkened windows of good restaurants. People complain about the changes; everyone likes to talk about how much they miss Old New York. But “New York is not a finished or completed city,” the architect and urban planner Le Corbusier wrote. “It gushes up. On my next trip it will be different.” Notice that he didn’t say be!er or worse.

The greater part of New York is as soulless as a department store; but Greenwich Village has recollections like ears filled with muted music and hopes like sightless eyes straining to catch a glimpse of the beatific vision.

—Djuna Barnes The prevailing a!itude in New York is indignation. Are you goddamn kidding me? And although I haven’t had this exact experience myself, I’m sure someone has had precisely that thought upon learning that the West 4th Street–Washington Square subway stop is accessible at neither West 4th Street nor Washington Square. The name of the stop is a lie. There is no way around this. But here is a fact about the station: Like seemingly every other subway stop in the city, it leaks like a sieve. Where all this water is coming from is impossible to say, and one of the dumbest mysteries of living in New York is encountering a flooded subway station on a perfectly dry day.

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Alfred’s picture of the stop’s West 3rd Street exit appears to depict exactly such a cool, crisp fall day (there are no leaves on the tree in the background), and still, for no discernable reason, the station stairwell is flooded. The novelist John Steinbeck was right about New York: “Its climate is a scandal.”

This, then, is St. Mary’s Church. Not just concrete and glass, steel and mortar, but a true House of God, an inspired architectural achievement, and a lasting tribute to the dedicated artisans and devoted parishioners and priests whose visions and faith made it possible.

—From a booklet accompanying the dedication of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in 1962 6

On the southern facade of the church that sits on the corner of Second Avenue and East 15th Street in Manha!an, there is a grand mosaic of St. Mary shielding a group of weary Christians with her cloak. The mass of them are huddled in prayer, hands clasped, eyes up in admiration at their protector. In Alfred’s truncated painting of the scene, Mary is mostly le$ out; what we get instead are St. Andrew and St. Epiphanius tucked inside her robe, each saint painted in small, brightly colored blocks of color—a vision not dissimilar from the Orphist paintings of Robert and Sonia Delaunay.

When engineers broke ground on the church in June 1961, they quickly ran into a problem: this small stretch of the city had a weak, marshy foundation, not unlike that beneath Canal Street, not too far downtown. But “because space on Manha!an Island is too precious to spare,” a church historian later wrote, earlier architects had already devised a solution, giving the church fathers a ready-made fix. The answer was to drive long wooden beams into the underlying bedrock and build atop them.

That bedrock, of course, is nowhere to be seen on 15th Street, but you can imagine it just out of view of Alfred’s painting, well below the saints, dug deep into the foundations upon which buildings and faith rest.

“As a commercial building, it has never stood out and has never made sense,” a broker with Helmsley-Spear, the building’s manager, told me, si!ing at a desk on its twenty-ninth floor surrounded by images of the exterior we could not see. “It’s more about being gorgeous to look at.”

—Mark Kingwell on the Empire State Building And it is gorgeous, isn’t it? Day or night—and Alfred has painted the Empire State Building both ways—it glows with the sort of preternatural charm that only a skyscraper with a distinct set of ideals could project. Built in the early days of the Great Depression, the 103-storey structure was completed in a remarkable 13 months, and was intended as a testament to America’s pioneering perseverance, even in prolonged moments of distress. That’s what Andy Warhol liked about the building—its stability and seeming permanence—and what be!er way to emphasize that than to point a camera at it for 485 minutes as it stood perfectly still?

Warhol’s film, Empire (1964), like New York City, is a Rorschach test; it has its own obvious symmetry, but mostly it brings out from you whatever was already inside. Sit down for eight hours and five minutes to watch it, and you’ll inevitably find your mind wandering through its own edited desires, anxieties, and imaginings. Each of those flickering thoughts will betray a fact about the city that Warhol never quite confessed: that New York actually exists only in flashes, and that one day, the lights will go out. Nothing lasts forever. No, the Empire State Building probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. But what H.G. Wells reportedly said when he first saw the city’s skyline is true of all of New York City: “What a ruin it will make!”

With thanks to Kenneth Goldsmith.

Pac Pobric is the Managing Editor at artnet News. From 2017–2018, he was the Editor of the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was previously the Exhibitions Editor at The Art Newspaper.

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Black Flag Rock Center, 2011–2019

Acrylic on canvas 78 x 85 inches 198.1 x 215.9 cm

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LES Housing, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 74 x 90 inches 188 x 228.6 cm

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New Museum, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 84 inches 182.9 x 213.4 cm

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St. Mary’s, 2018–2019 Acrylic on canvas 64 x 72 inches 162.6 x 182.9 cm

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W. 4th St., 2018–2019 Acrylic on canvas 62 x 73 inches 157.5 x 185.4 cm

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High Line, 2010–2019 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 88 inches 182.9 x 223.5 cm

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ESB Night, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 12 x 9 1/2 inches 30.5 x 24.1 cm

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Nelly’s Flowers, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 12 x 9 1/2 inches 30.5 x 24.1 cm

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Two Bridges(s), 2019

Acrylic on canvas 10 x 10 inches 25.4 x 25.4 cm

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New Mu(s), 2019 Acrylic on canvas 12 x 9 inches 30.5 x 22.9 cm

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Delancy Condo, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 10 x 10 inches 25.4 x 25.4 cm

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201 McGuinness, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 14 x 12 inches 35.6 x 30.5 cm

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Korea Soho, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 inches 50.8 x 40.6 cm

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Liberty, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 35 x 46 1/2 inches 88.9 x 118.1 cm

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Coney Island, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 inches 76.2 x 101.6 cm

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Sunnyside, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 inches 76.2 x 101.6 cm

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Central Park at Dusk, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 120 inches 182.9 x 304.8 cm

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Bowery, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

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Empire, 2019

Acrylic on canvas 72 x 48 inches 182.9 x 121.9 cm

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Two Bridges, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

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US Open, 2019 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 72 inches 152.4 x 182.9 cm

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BRIAN ALFRED Born in Pi!sburgh, PA Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY EDUCATION

2012 “It’s Already the End of the World,” Frist Center for Visual Art, Nashville, TN 2011 “Co-op,” Giraud Pissarro Ségalot, New York, NY “Rise Above,” Haunch of Venison, London, United Kingdom

1999 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME

2010 “It’s Already the End of the World,” Haunch of Venison, New York, NY

1997 BFA, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

2009 “Majic Window,” Studio La Ci!à, Verona, Italy

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2008 “Millions Now Living Will Never Die!!!,” Haunch of Venison, Berlin, Germany

2019 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2018 “Future Shock,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2017 “Techno Garden,” Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2016 “In Praise of Shadows,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY 2015 “It Takes A Million Years To Become Diamonds So Let’s Just Burn Like Coal Until The Sky Is Black,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY 2014 “New Animations,” Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel “Beauty in Danger,” Salon 94 Video Wall, New York, NY 2013 “Storms and Stress,” Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

2007 “Global Warning,” SCAI The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan 2006 “Surveillance,” Haunch of Venison, Zürich, Switzerland “Space is the Place!,” Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY 2005 “Paper and Pixels,” Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY “Conspiracy?,” Haunch of Venison, London, United Kingdom 2004 “The Future is Now!,” Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ “Overload,” Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY “Fallout,” Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 2003 “New Work,” Sandroni Rey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2002 Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY

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2000 Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY

“Villissima,” Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France “The Everywhere Exotic,” Culturadora, Art Miami New York, New York, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 “Fixed Contained,” Kotaro Nukaga Gallery, Tokyo, Japan “Alex Katz, Brian Alfred, Guy Yanai, Laurel Nakadate, Taro Komiya, Ryunosuke Yasui: Door Into Summer / M’s collection +,” Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo, Japan “Rag & Bone Mural,” Houston Street, New York, NY “Art on Link,” Art on LINK/NYC Kiosks, New York, NY 2018 “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

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2017 “The Frame,” Samsung Art TV, Samsung, USA “Like Oxygen,” Mountain Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2016 “Room with a View,” EDDYSROOM, Brooklyn, NY “Art Film,” Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, FL “Tokyo / London / New York,” Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo, Japan “Audacious: Contemporary Artists Speak Out,” Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO “Genbi Shinkansen,” Echigo Yuzawa, Niigata Prefecture, Japan “In an Illusion Village: Our Form Connected by Media Art,” Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori, Japan “Extended Practice,” Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA “Animated! Explorations into Moving Pictures,” Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 2015 “BLACK | WHITE,” (curated by Brian Alfred), Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY “The Search For The Real,” (curated by Brian Alfred), De Buck Gallery, New York, NY

2014 “BLACK | WHITE,” (curated by Brian Alfred), LaMontagne Gallery, Boston, MA “Art Film,” Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong “100 Works for 100 Years: A Centennial Celebration,” Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ “Mercury Retrograde: Animated Realities,” Lafaye!e Art Galleries, Lafaye!e College, Easton, PA “Film Cologne,” Art Cologne, Cologne, Germany 2013 “Uncanny Congruencies,” Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA “Art Film,” Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, FL “Mercury Retrograde: Animated Realities,” Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, NY “Epic Fail,” Storefront Ten Eyck, Brooklyn, NY 2012 “exURBAN SCREENS,” Frankston Arts Centre/Cube 37, Melbourne, Australia 15th Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo, Japan “Sourced,” Steven Vail Fine Arts, Des Moines, IA 2011 “Beyond,” SCAI The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan “Videosphere: A New Generation,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY “Animations,” The Big Screen Project, Big Screen Plaza, New York, NY “Printer’s Proof,” Bertrand Delacroix Gallery, New York, NY 2010 “12th International Cairo Biennale,” Cairo, Egypt “The Big Screen Project,” Big Screen Plaza, New York, NY “Me, Undoubtedly. 1309 Faces,” Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany

“Aichi Triennale,” Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan “Surface Tension,” South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN “onedotzero,” The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY “New Art For A New Century: Contemporary Acquisitions 2000 – 2010,” Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA 2009 “Mercury Retrograde: Animated Realities,” Big Medium Gallery, Austin, TX “The Figure and Dr. Freud,” Haunch of Venison, New York, NY

2005 “Produced at Eyebeam,” Eyebeam, New York, NY “Surface,” Lucas Schoormans Gallery, New York, NY “ART!+*><WORK,” Ignivomous, New York, NY 2004 “Metropolis,” National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia “Art and Architecture 1900 – 2000,” Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy “Inaugural Show,” Sandroni Rey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Trouble in Paradise,” Van Brunt Gallery, New York, NY “Happy Ending,” Kingfisher Projects, Queens, NY

2008 “Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art,” Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH “Ru Ru Ru Landscape: How I see the World Around Me,” Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka, Japan “Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks,” Den Frie Udstilling, Copenhagen, Denmark

2003 “Toxic,” Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY “Digital Showcase,” Austin Museum of Digital Art, Austin, TX

2007 “The Shapes of Space,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY “System Error: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning,” Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy “Art Fair Tokyo,” Tokyo, Japan “Art Film,” Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland

SOUND & VISION PODCAST

2006 “The 59th Minute, Times Square Panasonic Astrovision Screen,” Creative Time, New York, NY “American Academy of Arts and Le!ers Invitational Exhibition,” American Academy of Arts and Le!ers, New York, NY “Radar: Selections from the Kent and Vicki Logan Collection,” Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO “New Code,” Studio La Ci!à, Verona, Italy “Signal Channel: Contemporary Video Art,” Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE

1999 “Group Show,” Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY “MFA Thesis Exhibition,” Yale School of Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Brian Alfred is the host of the podcast of conversations with contemporary artists about the creative process. Selected artists include Tom Sachs, Svenja Deininger, Chloe Wise, Fred Tomaselli, Sarah Cain, Inka Essenhigh, Sean Landers, Daniel Heidkamp, Shara Hughes, amongst others. www.soundandvisionpodcast.com AWARDS 2018 College of Art & Architecture Faculty Research Grant, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 2016 College of Art & Architecture Faculty Research Grant, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

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2015 Institute for the Arts and Humanities Individual Faculty Grant, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Jerome Foundation Grant, St. Paul, MN

SELECT COLLECTIONS Albright-Knox Art Gallery, BuďŹ&#x20AC;alo, NY Cleveland Clinic Art Program, Lyndhurst, OH

2013 Carriage House Arts Residency, East Islip, NY Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY

2011 Excellence Award, Japan Media Arts Festival 2008 Pennsylvania State University Alumni Achievement Award

Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

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2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, New York, NY American Academy of Arts and Le!ers Purchase Award, New York, NY Pennsylvania State University Alumni Award, University Park, PA

New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, AZ

2005 New York Foundation of the Arts Inspiration Award, New York, NY 2003 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY 1999 Phelps Berdan Memorial Award, Yale University, New Haven, CT Skowhegan Match Scholarship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME 1997 Edwin W. Zoller Scholarship, Penn State School of Visual Arts, University Park, PA

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachuse!s at Amherst, Amherst, MA Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Corporate Art Collection, Des Moines, IA Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

BRIAN ALFRED

HIGH RISES AND DOUBLE VISION: IMAGES OF NEW YORK 5 September – 5 October 2019 Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2019 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2019 Pac Pobric Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-16-8 Cover: Central Park at Dusk, (detail), 2019 The artist would like to thank Yoshika, Naoki, his family and friends, his artist community, all involved in his Sound & Vision Podcast and the team at Miles McEnery Gallery.