QUALITY OF LIFE Curated by Allison Galgiani
BOSI Contemporary, New York June 19 - July 19, 2014
Rema Hort Mann Foundation
Writing by: Front Cover: Design:
Vittorio Calabrese, Allison Galgiani, Laura Cottingham Daniel Bejar, Rec-elections (Now more than Ever, #1), 2014 (Detail) BOSI Contemporary
ISBN:
978-1-312-25662-0
Contents 7
FOrEword
Vittorio Calabrese
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INSTALLATION VIEWS
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how to Measure the Quality of Life
Allison Galgiani
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before YOUTUBE, Vimeo and the Internet
Laura Cottingham
EXHIBITED WORKS
31 41 49 65 77
Daniel Bejar Ethan Breckenridge Claudia Cortinez and Carlos Vela-Prado
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Artist Biographies
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CONTRIBUTORS
Aliza Nisenbaum Reka Reisinger
foreword I am extremely proud to present our summer group show, Quality of Life, an exhibition curated by Allison Galgiani. In collaboration with the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the exhibition features the work of five emerging artists. All who are past recipients of the RHMF Grant. The aim with this exhibition is to contribute in promulgating a discussion on the notion of the quality of life through different artistic languages. I believe it is extremely important to stop for a moment and think about the unique role of the arts in making a difference in people’s lives, especially in a frenetic city such as New York. To this end, the exhibition focuses on exploring the use of various artistic practices that investigate human development, intellectually, psychologically, socially, physically, aesthetically and spiritually. I am pleased to collaborate with Allison Galgiani and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in encouraging, supporting and facilitating efforts that employ an ever-wider lens through which the power of the arts may be seen to enhance human well-being. The foundation’s activities reflect the direct support of young emerging artists in an innovative way, proving that funding for the arts can be routinely included in educational and social programs. Vittorio Calabrese
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INSTALLATION VIEWS
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Allison Galgiani
how to Measure the Quality of Life
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“But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The way we define an individual’s quality of life certainly varies between cultures, values, age, and socio-economic status. While the term “Quality of Life” is typically defined as the general well being of individuals and societies, it is especially difficult to quantify. Ecological economist Robert Costanza explains, “while quality of life has long been an explicit or implicit policy goal, adequate definition and measurement have been elusive...” 1 Difficulty to measure such a concept only stands to reason that the concept itself is problematic, as it is almost impossible to produce one single definition of this pursuit to achieve it. Cognizant to the fact that desire to obtain a high quality of life is something universally shared yet often found in a manner of different ways, the artists included in the exhibition Quality of Life each exemplify different elements of the pursuit, the manifestation, and the representation of this ubiquitous concept. The Quality of Life exhibition originated as a means to best represent the way in which the Rema Hort Mann Foundation benefits its artists and cancer patients through its two grant programs. At the root of the Foundation’s mission lies the aspiration to promote a higher quality of life for those that the grants impact. The artists selected for this exhibition—Daniel Bejar, Ethan Breckenridge, Claudia Cortinez + Carlo Vela-Prado, Aliza Nisenbaum, and Reka Reisinger— are all past recipients of the RHMF Emerging Artist Grant. Whether directly or obliquely, the artists reflect, challenge, or illuminate the way in which we measure or choose to define the quality of life.
Costanza, An Integrative Approach to Quality of Life Measurement, Research, and Policy. S.A.P.I.E.N.S., Costanza, R et. al. (2008) 1
While aesthetically different, each artist approaches the exhibition’s theme in his or her own way. Daniel Bejar’s work is informed by his response to the proliferation of media and propagandist messages that consciously and subconsciously permeate our surroundings. In his “Rec-elections” series, Bejar focuses on the tendency of political candidates to rely on clichéd
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and vague terminology in order to secure support, taking advantage of the public’s knee-jerk reaction to nostalgic and idealistic views of the “American Dream.” At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, Aliza Nisembaum’s paintings of undocumented immigrants aim to capture the living spirit of her subjects and the stories of their pursuit of a better life in a new country. In an alternative take on the theme, Ethan Breckenridge’s terrarium-like glass prisms offer a perfect representation of an enclosed space that creates an ideal environment for sustaining plant life. Rife with connotations of survival and those elements that we can or cannot control in our own life, the prisms speak to a desire to create order and semblance to an otherwise chaotic life mechanism. Reka Reisinger’s exploration of America is told through the use of a lifesize cutout of herself, and questions the way in which we experience and remember events in our life. Rather than the artist herself, it is the cutout that inhabits her memories of these journeys. As she traveled, her avatar was the actor in the experiences. Focusing instead on the documentation and capturing the memory, she realized that she was entirely removed from her experience of a time and place. In a related way, the collaborative sculptures and photographs of Claudia Cortinez and Carlo Vela-Prado cause us to question the way in which we experience and document our shared histories. Their sculptures are almost entirely fabricated, aged, and photographed to act as a proxy for the real; it is then left up to the viewer to decide which parts of the work are authentic and which are illusory. Both Reisinger, and Cortinez/Vela-Prado seek to illuminate the way in which the stories of success, failure, and experience are documented and forged, demonstrating how time and distance from a moment causes the memory or actual events to shift and possibly even fade. While they each approach their practice and create entirely differently, the self-awareness that each artist shows is part of the reason that they work so seamlessly as a collection. Their constant mindfulness and exploration into themselves and the lives of the various spheres and worlds around them yields work that exceptionally and knowledgeably effects how they
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view their world and their place in it. Each artist manifests an aspect of the human desire to obtain this satisfaction and “success” in life, yet they also illustrate that there is no mark or measure to know when it is completely achieved. Fueled by various experiences, cultural influences, and by the mediums they choose, the artists include the viewer in this journey, as they continue to pursue this unquantifiable end. Rema Hort Mann was completely committed to living her life to the fullest. Never wanting to waste a minute of what she had been given, she filled her days and nights with friends and family, traveling, and helping others. When she was given her diagnosis of stomach cancer, she continued to live her life as before. This was her way to get the most, the best—the quality—out of her life. Rema’s family and friends decided that the best way to remember her was to try to improve the quality of life for others. The Foundation was created to fund a way for an individual, whether an artist or cancer patient, to find their quality of life through pursuing their art, or being able to see family and friends while undergoing treatment. The Foundation’s Quality of Life Grant—for which the exhibition is named— connects patients with their families and loved ones by sponsoring travel, hotel, and other means of familial support. The Emerging Artist Grant was created to ensure that promising emerging artists would be able to focus on their work rather than worry about money. The Foundation’s goal is to allow those that it impacts to be able to surpass an urgent economic need, therefore allowing for a better quality of life. With this spirit, the artists in the show demonstrate the various perspectives from which to measure or evaluate the quality of life. Artists relay their ideas and sentiments in a way that is impossible to capture through words alone. Each work epitomizes the manner in which the artists share facets of their own lives and the lives of others, offering sage insight into this evaluation of what quality of life means and how it is achieved. The Rema Hort Mann Foundation was inspired from this desire to hear these stories and the unique and diverse ways in which these artists seek to pursue their own happiness, and developing the best quality of life they can.
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Laura Cottingham
before YOUTUBE, Vimeo and the Internet
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In the downtown art scene in New York during the 1990s that I knew, a lot of people were working through the unfinished business leftover from the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Nationalism: the issues that collectively came to be referred to as Identity Politics. There was a significant amount of crossover between political activism and art production on my scene. Art and politics often march hand in hand, even if to different drummers. My friends were involved in grass roots, agitprop, street activism with groups like The Lesbian Avengers, Act-Up, Dyke TV and The Women’s Action Coalition. Like art making, direct-action political work is emphatic do-it-yourselfism, a form of personal expression. We did political organizing to raise consciousness, change public opinion, accelerate social progress and improve the legal system. It was a badge of honor to get arrested for civil disobedience. Whenever I see people in a group demonstrating for individual freedom I feel an emotional intensity similar to what I feel when I am affected by great art. It’s awesome. Once, in Manhattan, I witnessed a yellow taxi strike that involved hundreds of medallion cabs parked in silent immobility up and down an avenue on the east side. It was so beautiful I cried. My interest in the intersection between aesthetics and politics brought me to New York City in 1981 as a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program. It seemed to me that a central contradiction in Europeancentric aesthetics is the persistent deployment of women as muse, mother and nude in the iconography of art and the equally systemic refusal to encourage, support or recognize women as artists. I wanted to transpose feminism into the Critical Method developed in the Frankfurt School Aesthetics. The premise of the Feminist Art Movement that occurred in industrialized global centers during the 1970s and ran coterminous with the political movements for women’s rights matched my own critique of art history. I wanted to do something with this material. I began actively researching the artists and ideas associated with the Feminist Art Movement in the early 1990s. In the beginning it was my idea to curate an exhibition. I met with curators at The Whitney Museum
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of American Art in New York and at The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. But they didn’t want to do it. So I decided to make a video, as a kind of portable exhibition. Video was also a popular medium for feminist artists so it made sense. This was before Kickstarter, YouTube, Vimeo and the Internet. Because so few of the artists enjoyed commercial or institutional support, I had to locate the material and fundraise word of mouth. Early seventies video tape was fugitive and chemically unstable: some of the media I was working to preserve was literally melting on the back shelves of studios. One of the biggest challenges was getting the old media to read because early video formats were no longer in usage and, anyway, the original signals were unstable at the best of time. By Hollywood or even anybody’s standards, except for the works shot in film, most of the stuff “looked like %#*@()*.” In the 1990s, there was still no Final Cut Pro or Laptop editing: we had to rent a studio to edit. In addition to renting the Avid or Media100 platform, you had to rent an in-house editor too. I could never tolerate these technicians: they didn’t know anything AT ALL about the material but couldn’t stop telling me what to do. I remember being in the editing suite, trying to get some old footage to register, to get the image and sound to clarify. One of the technicians was frustrated and couldn’t understand why I was spending hours (and hundreds of dollars) fiddling with some really technically lousy black and white videotape. She told me the footage was useless, not worth preserving, not good for anything, impossible. To which I responded, trying to suppress my contempt for her ignorance: “That’s LEE KRASNER. We’re using the footage!!” It took a few more hours before we could stabilize the signals but I got my Lee Krasner: she opens the piece, talking about the sexism against her in the art world. This is the person who created Jackson Pollock! I wanted a feature-length piece, which required independent computer storage (we didn’t have storage on the commercial platforms). I needed enough gigabytes to store the materials as I accumulated them (usually directly from the artists or video-makers themselves). In circa 1995,
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gigabytes had to be purchased in towers, like 3 gigs per fifteen-inch high. Each tower weighed like three or five pounds. To hold ninety-minutes required two 3-gig towers, at a cost of over $10,000. I remember carrying the towers around like a pair of Holy Grails. Today, of course, you can buy 6 gigs for less than $20 on a flash drive that hangs from your key ring. I was honored to be one of two recipients of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award the first year it was administered, in 1996. It is impossible to underestimate how important this award was to making Not For Sale: Feminism and Art in the USA during the 1970s happen. It paid for the actual first twenty minutes of the piece. Other funders and supports came after because I had something real to show them. Not For Sale premiered two years later at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and is still in distribution today. Somebody always has to be the one to go first, break the ice, be the difference, make it happen. In art and in life.
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EXHIBITED WORKS
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Daniel Bejar “To me, the access to basic human and civil rights, such as education, information, freedom of religion, right to property, freedom of expression, healthcare, employment and equality before the law form the basis of an ideal quality of life. As our quality of life is directly affected by the structures of power we negotiate, my work explores the narratives of this power, revealing its presence found in history, place, and identity in the aim of contributing to a society that will some day realize this ideal quality of life.�
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Rec-elections (Now More Than Ever., #1) 2014 archival pigment print on dibond 24 x 54 in
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Rec-elections (A Breath of Fresh Air) 2014 archival pigment print on dibond 21 x 28 in
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Rec-elections (We’ve been misled too often. Demand Truth.) 2014 archival pigment print on dibond 13.5 x 22 in
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Promised Land (Brooklyn, NY, #1) 2013 site specific intervention, archival pigment print 24 x 36 in
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Ethan Breckenridge “As with space, we are not content to comprehend time only as infinite. For many people the pressing question is ‘How am I going to get through the next hour?’ The more structured time is, the less difficult is this problem... The ‘next hour’ is very well programed. This programing, or structuring, is what people try to achieve, and when they are unable to do it themselves, they look to others to structure time for them.” -Thomas Anthony Harris, “How We Use Time,” from I’m Ok You’re OK, 1967
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too soon (peace lily medium) 2011 glass, carpet, potted plant 24.5 x 24.5 x 26.4 in
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too soon (silver queen) 2011 glass, plexy, carpet, potted plant 14.5 x 14.5 x 20.5 in
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seeing and noticing 2011
glass, two-way mirror, potted plants 35 x 50 x 105 3/4 in
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Claudia Cortinez + Carlos Vela-Prado “All objects hold multiple histories, observing them outside of their function is to re-imagine their potential to tell stories of how we live, what is important to us, how we see ourselves. Part social observation part fictional narrative, the effect of these traces civilization leaves behind is one of self reflection...Life expands to new territories beautifully and painfully and can not be contained.�
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Claudia Cortinez aNA KAKENGA 2013
framed archival pigment print on matte rag paper 60 x 96 in
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UNTITLED (marker) 2013
cast foam from extruded garbage can 18 x 18 x 4 in
UNTITLED (CHORD) 2013 cast concrete, graphite 26 in diameter
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UNTITLED (bEACON) 2013
cast glass, mdf, venetian plaster, oxidized copper, twine detail of sculpture cast from embedded light fixture on Governors island Variable Dimensions
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UNTITLED (cannon) 2013
aluminum, oxide, resin. Cast from a found bouncing ball 20 in diameter
UNTITLED (SUSPENSION) 2013 56
archival pigment print on aluminum 8 x 10 in
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UNTITLED (cove) 2013
archival pigment print on aluminum, oak frame 24 x 33 in
UNTITLED (navel) 2013
archival pigment print on aluminun, oak frame 24 x 33 in
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UNTITLED (PETROGLYPH) 2013
archival pigment print on aluminum, oak frame 24 x 33 in
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UNTITLED (rib) 2013
foam and plaster cast from bicycle wheels 32 x 24 in
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Aliza Nisenbaum “The encounter that painting allows me to have- one that is particularly attentive, and the conversations that arise from these encounters- challenges my own notions regarding the quality of life we share. I choose to spend time with my models, in a non-instrumental way; the people I’m painting at the moment are undocumented immigrants, they exchange their hours of leisure for the time I spend with them in symbolic realm of labor through art. Looking with intention and attention becomes a transformative act for both of us.�
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Atanacio Ostrich Leather boots 2012 oil on linen 32 x 24 in
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Cesli, Virginia and Sofia 2013 oil on linen 40 x 30 in
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Reading list 2013 oil on linen 30 x 24 in
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untitled 2011 oil on linen 64 x 57 in
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yessi, Angeles and Jessica 2013 oil on linen 42 x 30 in
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Reka Reisinger “Making photographs allows me to interpret my existence in the context of the world around me. The camera gives me temporary purpose in situations I might otherwise have no place in and allows me to experience the physicality of my surroundings in an intimate way.�
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elevation 2009
archival pigment print 30 x 40 in
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mirage 2007
archival pigment print 30 x 40 in
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times square 2002
archival pigment print 30 x 40 in
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yosemite 2003
archival pigment print 30 x 40 in
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Artist biographies Daniel Bejar Daniel Bejar (b. 1976, Bronx, NY, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Bejar is currently an Artist-in-Residence at The Center For Photography at Woodstock, NY, and was recently an Artist-in-Residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program. Bejar has also participated in residencies at SOMA, Mexico City D.F., Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL and the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum of Art, NY. In 2013 Bejar was a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Visual Arts Grant, and in 2012 was selected as A Blade of Grass Artist Fellow. Bejar’s work has been exhibited internationally and was recently selected by Luis Camintzer to be included in the 5x5 Castelló 13 International Contemporary Art Prize in Castelló, Spain. Additional exhibition venues include El Museo Del Barrio, NY; SITE Santa Fe, NM; Georgia State University, GA; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. In 2014 Bejar’s work will be included in the Crossing Brooklyn exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, NY. Bejar is a 2007 MFA sculpture recipient from the State University of New York, New Paltz, and received his BFA from the Ringling College of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL.
Ethan Breckenridge Ethan Breckenridge (b. 1977 Madison, WI) received his MFA from Columbia University and his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He has shown both nationally and internationally, including a recent solo exhibition at the University of California at San Diego, and the Derek Eller Gallery in New York City, and group exhibitions in London, Rome, Lisbon, Los Angeles, and New York. Breckenridge was a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Recipient in 2010, and currently lives and works in New York City.
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Claudia Kaatziza Cortinez + Carlos Emanuelle Vela-Prado Claudia Kaatziza Cortinez (b. 1985, Carlisle, Pennsylvania) and Carlos Emanuelle Vela-Prado (b. 1984, Guatemala City, Guatemala) are a New York based duo whose work relates the trace of objects and locations to a human presence. Using a constellation of interrelating images and protagonists, they explore spaces marked by histories both personal and imagined. Clear North Sky; Dark Skin; Average Weathered Wood is a body of work made on Governors Island through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council focused on the residue from island landscapes. Using native forms and materials, Vela-Prado and Cortinez imagine a place that is suspended in isolation yet in tandem with our time. They began to collect and mimic native objects to reconsider their life and purpose, how they have become part of this foreign landscape. The sculptures later became portraits that communicate a desire for touch, transformation through time, and a society. The photographs provide a window into their existence, offering a relationship to the viewer as something we are familiar with, but can’t place.
Aliza Nisenbaum Aliza Nisenbaum (b. 1977, Mexico City, Mexico) after initiating her studies at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, she earned her MFA and BFA degrees from the Art Institute of Chicago with a Trustee Merit Scholarship in Painting. She has taught in the Fine Arts and Art History departments at the School of Visual Arts, The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, SVA, and Columbia University among others. Her work has been shown internationally, with solo shows at Julius Caesar Gallery and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago. In spring of 2011 her work entered the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Collection. In the fall of 2011 her work was chosen to participate in the XV Contemporary Painting Biennial for the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico. In 2013 her work was shown at the Susanne Hilberry Gallery and in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin and in a group show at Princeton University and at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia at the Venice Biennale. She received a Rema Hort Mann Foundation New York Emerging Artist Grant in 2013. In Spring of 2014 she will have a solo show at LULU project space in Mexico City and was chosen by its curator, Chris Sharp, to write on her work in the March/April 2014 issue of Art Review magazine under the section “Future Greats.” She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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Reka Reisinger Reka Reisinger (b. 1981, Budapest, Hungary) attended Bard College and received her MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter, Exit Art, Art + Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers amongst others. Reisinger’s photographs are featured in publications such as Art Review and the Humble Arts Foundation’s Collectors Guide to Emerging Photography. In 2012 she was a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Reka lives and works in New York City and Hungary.
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COntributors Vittorio Calabrese Vittorio Calabrese is a Director at BOSI Contemporary, as well as a curator and an art consultant. Originally from Milan, Italy, he attended Bocconi Business School, where he earned both his Bachelor in Art Administration and his Master of Science in International Management. In 2012 he received his Masters in Modern and Contemporary Art and the History of the Art Market from Christie’s Education in New York. He currently lives in New York City.
Allison Galgiani Allison Galgiani is the director of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, as well as a writer and independent curator, and the arts and culture editor for Bushwick Daily. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, she attended the University of Arizona, where she earned degrees in both Art History and Psychology. In 2012 she received her Masters in Modern and Contemporary Art and the History of the Art Market, from Christie’s Education in New York. She currently lives in Brooklyn.
Laura Cottingham Laura Cottingham (b. 1959) is an artist, art critic and curator. She was one of the first two recipients of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 1996, one year after the Foundation was founded. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Europe and in New York City, and her best-known videos are Not For Sale (1998) and The Anita Pallenberg Story (2000). She curated NowHere, for the Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark (1996) and Vraiment Feminisme et art, for Le Magasin in Grenoble, France (1997). Laura currently lives and works in New York City.
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BoSI Contemporary specializes in Contemporary and Post-War art as well as primary and secondary market work. It focuses on creating a space that will nurture a creative discourse between different facets of art and contemporary culture. International in scope, the gallery exhibits and communicates the work of both emerging and established artists, selected for their unique aesthetic language and fascinating vision. Our objective is to present an ambitious annual program that comprises at least six exhibitions, accompanied by publications and catalogues, an annual museum-quality exhibition devoted to a historic or established artist, as well as partnerships which reinforce the influence of art on contemporary culture. Our central concern is to showcase, through our roster of artists as well as exhibitions, how international artists relate to one another at the root of their discipline through visual narratives amid various mediums and techniques. The gallery’s approximate 2,000 sq. ft. location at 48 Orchard Street (between Grand and Hester) in the heart of Lower East Side allows the gallery to be a dynamic space for artists as well as a venue for contemporary culture within our community.
Published by BOSI Contemporary on the occasion of the exhibition Quality of Life on view from June 19 to July 19, 2014
BOSI CONTEMPORARY
BOSI Contemporary 48 Orchard Street New York, NY 10002 www.bosicontemporary.com
Copyright © 2014 BOSI Contemporary. All rights reserved. Text Copyright © 2014 BOSI Contemporary. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders prior to publication. The publisher apologizes for any errors and omissions and welcomes corrections for future issues of this publications.