Art Into Music
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John Felix Arnold III Karlos Cárcamo Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier Arturo Meade Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere Rashaad Newsome Dread Scott Ward Shelley Bayeté Ross Smith Audra Wolowiec
Art Into Music
Produced and Arranged by Elizabeth Ferrer, Director of Contemporary Art Engineered and mixed by Eric Araujo, Jenny Gerow, and Abby Clark February 16 – April 27, 2014 BRIC Arts | Media House Brooklyn, New York
Art Into Music: Liner Notes the music of the city is free In Audra Wolowiec’s recent project, posters proclaiming this sentiment are stacked in the gallery, to be taken freely by visitors. A gesture not unlike Félix González Torres’s ever-replenishable posters stacked in the gallery space, Wolowiec conceives of her project as a form of participatory art; it is incomplete without the viewer, who will take a sheet printed with this phrase and think about its meaning. And just as this artwork requires audience participation, so does music. The audience is the catalyst that brings music to full life, infuses it with meaning, and preserves it. And in our urban milieu, music is pervasive – it is omnipresent, endlessly diverse, and essentially free. Music is the most accessible of art forms, and the one by which we most commonly gauge the tenor of our culture. For the visual artists featured in this exhibition, music, its platforms, and the communities that surround its varied forms, act as means to fluidly think about culture, identity, history, and society. Many of these artists employ music itself, creating works that merge the auditory with the visual. Their works are not only multi-sensory, but multivalent, offering the possibility of connecting and drawing meaning broadly, on levels that are both emotional and intellectual, personal and collective. Karlos Cárcamo draws upon the material platforms of music to create paintings and sculptures that reference the languages of both high modernism and of popular, urban culture. In Looking for the Perfect Beat II, he erects a sculptural column comprised of 300 perfectly stacked record albums. Planet Rock, the legendary 1983 album by Afrika Bambaataa containing the song, “Looking for the Perfect Beat,” sits at the very top. While paying homage to a seminal moment in hip-hop history, “perfect” in Cárcamo’s title also references minimalist and post-conceptual aesthetics, for example, Donald Judd’s systematically stacked geometric sculptural forms, or Félix González Torres’s meticulous poster stacks. The artist places the reductive tendencies and cool stance of minimalist abstraction in a wholly new context by creating his stack of used record albums; the work is as much about popular culture as it is about refined aesthetics. It is also about the pure love of music. The artist suggests that he can move freely across cultural divides, while rejecting traditional hierarchies of so-called “high” or elite culture, and popular, urban cultural forms. Art Into Music also includes paintings from Cárcamo’s Hard Edge series, inspired by the tags of graffiti writers. He begins the compositions by recreating a tag on the canvas surface, then overlaying colored rectangles reminiscent of 1960s hard-edge abstraction. The rectangles partially obscure the tags, but also create a rhythmic movement in the paintings reminiscent of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. This mode of developing a composition is akin to a DJ’s process of sampling, where a portion of one song is taken and reused in another. “I use many sources as starting points,” says Cárcamo. “My process is to build upon what is already there, what already exists. I think the word ‘sampling’ is the term that conceptually fits best in relation to my working process and how I think.” Arturo Meade also works with the material platforms of music, using old record albums, collaged images, and music itself, to create multi-layered dialogues between the myriad forms that comprise Mexico’s cultural history. Whereas Cárcamo’s aim is to expand notions of modernism within an urban context, Meade uses music to express the complexity of cultural identity. The visual and auditory installation Discos Paisa includes a grid of sixty secondhand record albums that he has collaged with imagery drawn from the entire arc of Mexican history, beginning with the pre-Hispanic era through the mid-20th century. He assigns a playlist of his own authorship to each collaged LP, then uploads the lists to a public website accessed in the gallery space. The playlists — eventually to number 100, with 100 accompanying albums — document an unusually broad range of Mexican music from the stereotypical and expected (salsa, mariachi) to the lesser known (son huasteco, narco corridos). In Meade’s project, music and visual art history work together to connote a multifaceted cultural history of indigenous forms and European or American influence. For Meade, the installation acts as a personal encyclopedia of both Europeanized and popular Mexican culture spanning the pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern eras. Just as Cárcamo’s sculptures defy notions of a singular, hegemonic modernism, Meade’s installation suggests that Mexican culture (and identity) defy categorization or a simple, linear narrative. Abstract forms, for example, are as apparent in the architecture of pre-Hispanic temples as in 20th-century visual art; they are also visible in indigenous textile patterns. Musical forms cross mutate and are reimagined, and at times, remain stubbornly provin-
cial. In giving form to this historic landscape, Meade suggests the critical role of art and music in offering a nuanced sense of cultural identity that is plural and ever morphing. The material platform of music plays a similarly critical role in the work of Bayeté Ross Smith, who has produced a towering boombox sculpture and soundscape to depict a multiplicity of notions about identity, memory, and place. In the varied iterations of his sculptural installation, Got the Power: Brooklyn, he collects songs and stories from members of a community, creates a mixtape, then erects a tower of boomboxes that play this material at regular intervals. Smith’s version at BRIC House, featuring boomboxes of all sizes, shapes, and vintages, is the largest such work he has produced indoors (his largest to date was a fifteen-feet-high outdoor tower at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Minneapolis). Alluding to the historically significant role that boomboxes have played within urban communities and popular culture, Smith invokes the boombox as a symbol of pride, resilience, and autonomy. The authorship of the work is collaborative, dependent on the boomboxes lent or found locally, and on the songs and stories provided by visitors to BRIC House and members of the local Fort Greene community. Got the Power: Brooklyn is also about the power of music — and technology — to sustain communities; music acts as a potent trigger of emotions and memories, and it binds people over place and time. Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere are also inspired by music itself, specifically the diverse ways a single song might be performed. In 2008, Nevarez and Tevere wrote lyrics to be interpreted and performed by three dissimilar bands, The Lovers, Najeeb Sabour, and The Noise Revival Orchestra Experience, at Austin City Hall, a 2008 building whose open design has been hailed by local politicians as emblematic of the city’s “commitment to transparent government.” For Nevarez and Tevere, the varied interpretations of the song, We need a theory to continue., became a way to musically perform democracy within the “architectural container of municipal democracy” represented by the building. As shown in a three-channel video, music becomes a way to explore civic space, collective strategies, dissent, and political theory; what appears as a popular song performed by indy bands becomes a kind of manifesto. Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier, also work within the structure of a musical performance but instead of testing the boundaries of interpretation during a performance, they are interested in exploring the participatory nature of music after an event. Kurosaki and Pelletier see the recorded soundtrack as a document that encourages a relationship to the music that is malleable and personal. “The listener creates their own experience by choosing when and where and by what circumstances they listen to the music. Thus, the listener develops an ownership over the music; it becomes ‘their’ music” says Kurosaki and Pelletier. With Into the Loop, they will present an evening of live performances at BRIC House with Byron Westbrook and Rose Kallal that follow in the lineage created by the experimental music and ‘scores’ of John Cage, the art rock performances of Laurie Anderson, the ambient compositions of Brian Eno, and the guerrilla performance of noise acts such as Lightning Bolt. The two artists will document this unique, time-based, experience through a screen-printed ticket, object memento, and recording of the soundtrack that will be given to each attendee as well as installed in the gallery. Rashaad Newsome likewise collaborated directly with a range of musicians including Stefanos Koroneos, Kevin Jourdan Zion Prodigy, Laurie Anderson, and Maluca Mala, for a series of music videos, Swag Mixtape Volume I, presented in BRIC’s Project Room. For the videos, Newsome created densely baroque collages of imagery, form the backdrop for female performers. He depicts such forms as gold costumes, diamonds and other jewels (from images taken directly from Sotheby’s auction catalogues), and heraldic imagery, to explore questions of wealth and status through the lens of contemporary hip hop culture. In the opening video, Rain has Fallen, Newsome draws from conventions of baroque European portraiture, framing a black woman within a gilded ornamental frame, the kind typically reserved for portraits of wealthy European rulers. But unlike a traditional portrait subject, the subject here moves, violently whipping her hair in a defiantly sexual manner. The performer embodies street culture and her presence — as well as that of the performers in the other videos — act as a critique of male-dominated, status-obsessed hip hop culture. Tellingly, the composers Newsome has worked with create musical backdrops that draw only occasionally from hip hop or rap. The sounds also include baritone voices, violin, and techno beats. For Newsome, hip hop becomes the point
of departure to dismantle both art historical paradigms and contemporary popular culture stereotypes. Dread Scott’s Hardcore series of black-and-white photographs document an earlier cultural movement, the Chicago punk scene of the mid-1980s. Scott himself was a member of the city’s vibrant but small hardcore punk scene in this era, one that centered on dance concerts at small clubs or borrowed spaces, and mostly local bands. He describes the city’s punk scene at that time as a real community. Its members were unified by the marginalization they experienced from mainstream culture and from the increasingly politicized stance they took during a period of military buildup amidst tense relations between the U. S. and Soviet Union. “We were a bunch of misfits from society,” said Scott. “This was Reagan’s America. Punk was about individual kids who wanted to make a different culture. This wasn’t about worshipping rock stars; it was more about a community of people who were rebelling against social convention and against the possibility of a World War III.” His visceral documentary photographs capture dense scrums of bodies immersed in the moment and in an aggressive form of spontaneous dance that mirrors the harshness of the music. These are bodies overtaken by music, moshing and slamming in total abandon. It is worth noting that Scott was an avid participant in this community, not just an outside observer as is the case in much documentary photography. His photos are an insider’s view, a way to let the community speak for itself. Included with his photographs are fliers and zines collected by Scott during that period. Art Into Music includes three text-based works by Ward Shelley, an artist who combines visual means with data to chart the myriad cultural connections between people, places and ideas. His Arto Lindsay Chart takes the appearance of an ever-mutating organic form, one that amply (if subjectively) reflects the life of the experimental musician known for crossing boundaries, fusing styles, and drawing from an international array of influences. Shelley charts a musical history through handwritten notations including biographical data on Lindsay and information on the musicians, bands, locales, and movements with which he has been associated. With his fluid pathways of information and imagery, Shelley portrays the way cultural ideas develop, mutate, cross pollinate, and take unexpected turns. And by charting the history of one musician, Shelley evokes a broader cultural history, one that encompasses a diverse array of musicians and artists (Brian Eno, John Lurie, and David Byrne, the Brazilian neo-concretist Helio Oiticica), that connects Brazil with the New York downtown scene of the mid and late 1970s, and that expresses cultural history as non-linear, multilayered, and infinitely complicated. A key component of Art Into Music is the playlists submitted by artists in the exhibition, available for listening in a stage-like space in the gallery created by John Felix Arnold III, an artist known for creating visual, aural, and tactile environments. Music is the spark for this exhibition – the music and songs that were formative to these artists as young people, the music they listen to while at work in the studio, and the music that becomes integrated into their art. Music in its infinite variety and mood has a profound, evocative force for everyone; in the case of these artists, it is creative stimulus. Listening to their playlists provides us with another layer of interpretation about the art on view; they also tell a story about the artists behind the work. John Felix Arnold’s project, Gratitude and Transformation(s) is a mixed-media installation made of found materials and raw, energetic imagery, designed to offer a multi-faceted experience. It is part of his overall project, The World of Unstoppable Tomorrow, which encompasses discrete art works, room-size murals, and other large, stage-like installations. Drawing from the visual language of comic book and Manga illustration, Edo period Japanese woodblock prints, and contemporary street art from cities all over the world, Arnold combines figurative imagery with swirling passages of abstraction, creating an immersive, imaginary space to be completed by sound and song, by viewer and performer. “And so the arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.” – Wasily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1914 Elizabeth Ferrer Many thanks to Emily Greenberg, BRIC 2013 curatorial intern, for her assistance with this essay. 3
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John Felix Arnold III
John Felix Arnold III creates installations that incorporate drawing, painting, performance, printmaking, and sound. For Art Into Music, he built an interactive space, Gratitude and Transformation(s), 2014, to be used as a listening station by the public as well as for performances. The work is constructed from found wood and painted in his bold “neo-cave painting” style, as he terms it. As a listening station, the work allows visitors to play the lists of music curated by each of the artists in the exhibition. Arnold’s work has been exhibited at such institutions and galleries as The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Luggage Store, and Shooting Gallery, all in California; Spes-Lab Gallery, Tokyo; and Littlefield, a performance and art space in Brooklyn. He earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in Communication Design and studied Graduate Printmaking at San Francisco Art Institute. felixthethirdrock.com
Rock Box, 2014
We Do this Together, installation shot from Past from the Blast, at Kitsch Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2011
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Karlos Cárcamo is a multidisciplinary artist with interests in art history, urban culture, and modernist abstraction. His work often addresses themes related to music and its influence on art and popular culture, as seen in Looking for the Perfect Beat II, 2014. This stack of three hundred record albums, sculpturally interprets the act of “crate digging” — a hip-hop term for searching a record store for older records to sample — while paying homage to conceptual artists like Donald Judd and Félix González-Torres who explored ideas of the perfect form. In addition, BRIC is showing one of Cárcamo’s languid microphone sculptures and paintings from his Hard Edge series, in which the artist combines layers of colors and graffiti tags in abstract compositions that reference names of early hip hop deejays. The artist has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Hunter College, both in New York. He has exhibited extensively, at the Brooklyn Museum; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; MoMA PS1 and Queens Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Queens, NY; El Museo del Barrio, Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, and Artists Space, all in New York; Jersey City Museum and Aljira Center of Contemporary Art, both in New Jersey; and Museo de Arte de El Salvador. He was awarded a residency at the Lower Eastside Printshop in 2009 and was part of The Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace Program in 2000. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, and The Village Voice, among other publications. Cárcamo is represented by Hionas Gallery, New York.
Karlos Cárcamo
karloscarcamo.com
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Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier are a collaborative duo based in Brooklyn who build multi-layered narrative projects using sculpture, video, music, and performance. Their work explores the tension between the fundamental rhythms of life and the ordered systems that humans design to make sense of these rhythms. For their Art Into Music collaboration they will present an evening that blurs the boundaries of art event, music show, and social experience. The artists will investigave the connections of recording and playback methods through music and sound with artists Byron Westbrook and Rose Kallal. They met in graduate school at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and have been working together since 2006. They have recently exhibited and performed at Vox Populi, PA; Space Gallery, ME; Wave Hill Gardens, NY; Abrons Arts Center, NY; Flux Factory, Queens; Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn; and a 2010 European and Scandic performance tour; among others. They have held residencies through the Lower Manhattan CulturalCouncil, Painting Space 122, and Sculpture Space.
Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier
First Light Last Light (performance still), 2012
Arturo Meade
Nocho en el Savoy, 2013
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Arturo Meade works primarily with discarded or used materials that he finds in the streets of his hometown, Mexico City, and Brooklyn, where he now resides. Art Into Music presents a grid of sixty LPs from his Discos Paisa series, a visual and auditory installation that explores Mexican identity through a collection of found record albums. Meade creates visual pastiches, representing the layered influences within Mexican culture from pre-Columbian to modernist, by intervening with these found records. Through painting and collage, he creates compelling visual clashes, such as the geometric pattern of the Mitla temple in Oaxaca collaged on an album sleeve from Roc-AFella Records, the label founded by rap legend Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. Attesting to the breadth and diversity of music listened to in Mexico, each work from Discos Paisa is accompanied by a playlist of Mexican music that relates thematically to its design. His work has been featured in shows at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York; Instituto Superior de Diseño, Havana, Cuba; and the Waikato Art Museum, New Zealand, among others. arturomeadeworks.blogspot.com
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We need a theory to continue., (production still) by Najeeb Sabour, 2008
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Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere are multidisciplinary artists who investigate contemporary music, public space, and political dissent. Their manifold project We need a theory to continue., 2008 is comprised of original song lyrics, their musical interpretation by three dissimilar Austin-based bands, and a live performance series, culminating in a video work that explores civic space and collective strategies. The performances, set on the monumental concrete stairs of Austin City Hall (not unlike BRIC’s own stoop), can be viewed through the artists’ three-channel video in Art Into Music. Nevarez and Tevere have exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, Creative Time, and Paul Kasmin Gallery, all New York; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; as well as internationally at Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo, Norway; and Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain; among other sites. They have received a Creative Capital Fellowship, an Art Matters grant, a National Endowment of the Arts project grant, and a Franklin Furnance Performance Art fellowship. Both artists were Studio Fellows in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program and artists-in-residence at the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden. In addition to their collaborative practice, Nevarez is a musician, DJ, and lecturer at MIT’s program in Art, Culture, and Technology; Tevere is a Mellon Resident Fellow at the Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY and Associate Professor of Media Culture at College of Staten Island, CUNY.
Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere
nevareztevere.info
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Through collage, performance, sculpture, and video, Rashaad Newsome juxtaposes classical influences with a distinctly urban vernacular, mixing contemporary symbols from the African diaspora with those of the European canon. Five videos comprising Newsome’s SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, a collection of works that animate collage, photography, and digital patterns to hip-hop beats, are on view in BRIC’s Project Room. Newsome earned his BFA from Tulane University in his native New Orleans. He participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Performa 2011, and the 2011 Venice Biennale. Newsome has exhibited at The Drawing Center, MoMA PS1, New Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, all in New York; the New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. His work is included in such public collections as the Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has held residencies through BRIC’s Media Arts Fellowship; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Headlands Center for the Arts, Saualito, California; and the McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, North Carolina; among others. rashaadnewsome.com
Rashaad Newsome
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Devices (video still) from the SWAG Mixtape Vol. I series, 2011
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Dread Scott
Dread Scott works in installation, painting, performance, photography, screen printing, and video to illuminate injustices that have historically been made invisible. Art Into Music features black and white photographs from his Hardcore series, which documents the hardcore/punk music scene in Chicago between 1983 and 1986. Mainly taken from the dance floor, they capture the dynamism and explosive energy of young outcasts and rebels, caught in the blender of Ronald Reagan’s America. Scott received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and participated in The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 1993. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1, both New York; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and the Pori Art Museum, Finland. In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts presented Dread Scott: Welcome to America, and more recently, Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted his performance Dread Scott: Decision in 2012. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum, both New York; and in the Akron Art Museum, Ohio. He received a Creative Capital Foundation grant, a Mid Atlantic/National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship in Photography, a Special Edition Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop, and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been written about in Art in America, ARTnews, The London Guardian, The New York Times, and TIME, among others.
Devon, 1984
Arto Lindsay Chart, ver. 2 (detail), 2005
dreadscott.net
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Ward Shelley is best known for both diagrammatic paintings that document cultural histories and networks of influence as well as for his time-based installations, in which he lives and works for the duration of an exhibition. Art Into Music features Shelley’s paintings that study various aspects of recent music history. Shelley has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, The Drawing Center, Sculpture Center, and Exit Art, all New York. His work is included in such public collections as The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, all New York. He received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painting and Sculpture and has been a fellow of the American Academy in Rome since 2006. Additionally, he has been granted fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Socrates Sculpture Park, among others. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice. He is a lecturer at Parsons The New School for Design, and represented by Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn. wardshelley.com
Ward Shelley
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9. Got the Power: Minnesota, installation shot from Franconia Sculpture Park, Minneapolis, MN, 2011
Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, now based in Brooklyn. Her practice, spanning sculpture, sound, text, and performance, merges the sensory with the conceptual, as evidenced by her contribution to this exhibition, the music of the city is free. For this installation, Wolowiec created posters with the statement “the music of the city is free” hand written in English and Spanish and placed two stacks in the gallery of BRIC House for visitors to take. In addition, she invited collaborators to translate the statement in various other languages spoken in Brooklyn and posted these ephemeral objects in neighborhoods throughout the borough, matching the posters with the dominant languages of each community. Wolowiec earned her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited locally and abroad, including at MoMA Studio and Art in General, both in New York; Proteus Gowanus, REVERSE, and Norte Maar, all Brooklyn; and 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo; among others. Wolowiec has curated for Soapbox Gallery and Arts in Bushwick, both in Brooklyn. She has been awarded residencies at REVERSE, Brooklyn; and The Wassaic Project and chashama, both in New York. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at Parsons The New School for Design and at SUNY Purchase. In June 2012, she was selected as a BRIC “Featured Artist.” audrawolowiec.com 8
Bayeté Ross Smith
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Bayeté Ross Smith is an artist, photographer, and educator based in New York. He brings together ambient sound, music, and oral history to create the first large-scale iteration in New York of his ethnographic project, Got the Power: Brooklyn. Ross Smith conceived of Got the Power in Washington Heights as a public artist through The Laundromat Project, inviting community members to collaborate in making a mixtape that archived personal memories of their neighborhood and a selection of their favorite songs. With each edition of Got the Power, Ross Smith builds a site-specific sculpture of boomboxes from which a curated playlist and stories from the local community reverberates. He earned his BS in Photojournalism from Florida A&M University and his MFA in Photography from California College of the Arts. He has exhibited widely with such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum; Rush Arts Gallery, New York; and with the San Francisco Arts Commission. His collaborative projects Along the Way and Question Bridge: Black Males were included in the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival respectively. Ross Smith has taught at the International Center of Photography; New York University; Parsons The New School for Design; and the California College of the Arts. He is represented by beta pictoris gallery/Maus Contemporary, Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the Associate Program Director for the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI), a violence prevention non-profit organization that partners with Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. bayeterosssmith.com
Audra Wolowiec
the music of the city is free (digital rendering in various languages), 2013
SPECIAL PROJECTS:
Joseph Arthur, Photo by Danny Clinch, 2012
Mural Angela Davis, installation shot in Petrolina, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2009
At BRIC House this spring watch for two special projects that expand on our exploration of the intersection between performing arts and visual art.
Ananda Nahu & Jeremy Thal
Joseph Arthur
Brazilian-based painter and muralist Ananda Nahu and Brooklyn-based French horn player and socially engaged music practitioner Jeremy Thal will collaborate on a project that engages with New York’s diaspora communities. After two-weeks of collecting stories in Brooklyn neighborhoods from Williamsburg to Bed-Stuy, Nahu and Thal will create a mural and sound art installation at BRIC House. They will be in residence from February 24 – March 16, 2014. This project is supported by CEC ArtsLink’s One Big City initiative.
Brooklyn singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur from such bands as Fistful of Mercy and RNDM incorporates painting into his live music performances on stage. His biomorphic figures rendered in quick dramatic strokes draw from the tradition of artists who have extended street art into a studio practice, most notably Jean-Michel Basquiat (aka SAMO) and Keith Haring. Arthur is known for paintings that he produces during his live concerts. His work has been shown in the Galerie La Manufacture, Marseille, France; Galerie Chappe, Paris; Casa Las Ranas, La Cieneguita, Mexico; and Able Fine Art, New York. Arthur will perform in the BRIC House Ballroom on March 29, 2014.
Ananda Nahu is a visual artist based in Bahia, Brazil who creates murals that draw upon a broad array of sources—socialist propaganda banners and posters, album covers, African culture, calligraphic forms, and Brazilian fabrics. She often portrays the female figure, but also creates her own abstract compositions dense with color and pattern. Her stencils are based on her photographs or on photographs made by renowned Latin American photographers, and include images of such figures as Angela Davis, Nina Simone, and Diana Ross. She received a BA from the Federal University of Bahia in 2008. Jeremy Thal, Co-Founder & Artistic Director of Found Sound Nation, is a horn player, composer, and educator. With fellow co-founder Chris Marianetti, Thal co-designed Found Sound Nation’s approach to socially-engaged music creation, and has co-led FSN projects in the United States as well as in Haiti, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Indonesia, Italy, and Switzerland. As a horn player, he has recorded and toured with Jeff Mangum and The National, and leads his own band, Briars of North America.
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Works in the Exhibition
Artists’ Playlists
All works are courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted. Karlos Cárcamo Looking for the Perfect Beat II, 2014 300 LP albums 42 x 18 x 18 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hionas Gallery, New York Rock Box, 2014 Microphone stands, mic, cables, spraypaint, mirror, sticker, linoleum, and wood pedestal 81 x 24 x 25 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hionas Gallery, New York
Rashaad Newsome Rain Has Fallen, SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, 2011 Single-channel video with sound 3:45 min. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York Devices, SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, 2011 Single-channel video with sound 3:30 min. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York
Hard-Edge #141, 2014 Latex and spray enamel on canvas over wood panel 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hionas Gallery, New York
Grand Duchess of Gainsville, SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, 2011 Single-channel video with sound 2:45 min. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York
Hard-Edge #142, 2014 Latex and spray enamel on canvas over wood panel 68 × 48 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hionas Gallery, New York
Dance of the Succubus, SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, 2011 Single-channel video with sound 4:04 min. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York
Hard-Edge #143, 2014 Latex and spray enamel on canvas over wood panel 68 × 48 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hionas Gallery, New York
Painting Opponents Red, SWAG Mixtape Vol. I, 2011 Single-channel video with sound 3:14 min. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York
John Felix Arnold III Gratitude and Transformation(s), 2014 Site-specific mixed-media installation Dimensions variable
Dread Scott All gelatin silver print All 10 ½ × 10 ½ in. unless otherwise noted
Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier Kit (Mystography), 2014 Multimedia Dimensions variable Rock, 2014 (edition of 7) Silk screen on lathe-cut polycarbonate record 10 in. diameter Untitled, 2014 (edition of 3) Collaboration with Byron Westbrook Silk screen on lathe-cut polycarbonate record 10 in. diameter Untitled, 2014 (edition of 3) Collaboration with Rose Kallal Silk screen on lathe-cut polycarbonate record 10 in. diameter Arturo Meade Discos Paisa, 2013 60 LP albums Dimensions variable Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere We need a theory to continue., 2008 Three-channel video installation and lyric sheet 15:00 min., Standard definition
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Cause, 1984 Eric W. on Floor, 1984 Cause for Alarm, 1984 Hardcore #5, 1984 Negative Approach, 1984 Jason & Eric, 1984 Hardcore #6, 1984 Joe Hardcore, 1984 Devon, 1984 Steve & John, 1984 Eric W., 1984 Stage Dive 1, 1984 Hardcore #8, 1984 Stage Dive #2, 1985 Hardcore 9, 1985 Eric, 1985 Gary, Martin & Ian, 1985 Eric Ecstatic, 1984 Pigment print 10 ½ × 10 ½ in. Stage Dive #3, 1984 Pigment print 10 ½ × 10 ½ in. Halo, 1984 Gelatin silver print 7 × 13 ¼ in.
Ward Shelley Arto Lindsay Chart, ver. 2, 2005 Oil paint and toner on frosted mylar 26 ½ x 45 in. Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi, Brooklyn Frank Zappa Chart, ver. 1, 2008 Oil and toner on frosted mylar 32 x 64 ½ in. Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi, Brooklyn Rock Genres, ver. 2, 2007 Oil and toner on frosted mylar 23 x 34 ½ in. Private collection, New York Bayeté Ross Smith Got the Power: Brooklyn, 2014 Mixed-media 132 x 96 x 24 in. Audra Wolowiec the music of the city is free, 2013 Medium-weight, white paper, off-set printed, black and white 18 × 24 in. each Edition of 6,000
John Felix Arnold III: J Dilla / Reckless Driving; Kanye West / All of the Lights; Ol’ Dirty Bastard / The Stomp; DJ Shadow / Blood on the Motorway; Audra Wolowiec: Maryanne Amacher / The Music Rooms; Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakimoto / Moon; Ward Shelley: Bobby Darin / Try to Remember; The Mothers of Invention (Frank Zappa) / How Could I Be Such a Fool?; Chet Baker / Round About Midnight; Grand National / Talk Amongst Yourselves; Lloyd Cole / Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?; Peggy Lee / Is That All There Is; Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach / God Give Me Strength; XTC / Wrapped In Grey; Rashaad Newsome: Rich Gang / Tapout; Snoop Dogg (feat. Kid Cudi); That Tree; Bush Tetras / Boom in the Night; Radiohead / Kid A; Diddy - Dirty Money / Last Train to Paris (feat. Rick Ross); Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings / Learned the Hard; A$AP Rocky / Goldie; Jay Z / Holy Grail (feat. Justin Timberlake); Ian Isiah / The Love Champion; Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere: Rolando Alarcon / Coplas del Pajarito; Barbara Dane / Kent State Massacre; Hazel Dickens / Black Lung; John Lee Hooker / I Gotta Go to Vietnam; Victor Jara / Plegaria a un Labrado; Phils Ohs / Draft Dodger Rag (I Ain’t Marching Anymore 1965); Violeta Parra / Gracia a la Vida; Paul Revere and the Raiders / Indian Reservation; Pete Seeger / Waist Deep in the Big Muddy; Gil Scott-Heron / Whitey on the Moon; Toots & the Maytals / Give Peace a Chance; Arturo Meade: Andre Williams / Stuck in the Middle; Seu Jorge, Almaz / Cala Boca, Menino; Caetano Veloso / Zera e Reza; Abdullah Ibrahim / Imam; Dr. Lonnie Smith / Mellow Mood; Perez Prado / Norma la de Guadalajara; La Sonora Santanera / Luces en Nueva York; Jeff Kurosaki and Tara Pelletier: Dinosaur Jr. / Forget the Swan; Dinosaur Jr. / Alone; Bauhaus / All We Ever Wanted Was Everything; Blouse / Into Black; Pavement / Embassy Row; Prince / Purple Rain; Carole King / I Feel the Earth Move; Siouxie and the Banshees / Dazzle; Meneguar / Bury a Flower; Karlos Cárcamo: Run DMC / Rock Box; Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force / Planet Rock; Eric B & Rakim / Eric B is President; James Brown / Funky Drummer; Jelly Bean / The Mexican; Incredible Bongo Band / Apache; Public Enemy / Bring the Noise; Dr. Dre / Nuthin’ but a G Thang (feat. Snoop Dogg); Man Parrish / Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop); Bayeté Ross Smith: Prince / Adore; Aaliyah / One In a Million; Bill Withers / Lovely Day; The Fugees / Ready or Not; The Roots / The Lesson Pt. 1; Ice Cube / It Was a Good Day; Pusha T / Nosetalgia (feat. Kendrick Lamar); Wu Tang Clan / C.R.E.A.M.; Outkast / Liberation; Kanye West / Runaway; Little Dragon / Blinking Pigs; Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Soft Shock; Roy Ayers / Everybody Loves the Sunshine; Michael Jackson / Stranger in Moscow; The Roots / The Hypnotic; Donny Hathaway / Yesterday; Dread Scott: The Clash / Clampdown; Husker Du / Somewhere; Naked Raygun / I Lie; Crass / Where Next Columbus; Fear / Let’s Have a War; Articles of Faith / Bad Attitude; Millions of Dead Cops / I Remember; Minor Threat / Out of Step; Stiff Little Fingers / Suspect Device; The Damned / New Rose; Misfits / Astro Zombies.
About BRIC BRIC, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, has been the driving cultural force behind a number of Brooklyn’s most renowned and beloved arts and media programs. All of BRIC’s programs are anchored by the organization’s commitment to artistic excellence, programmatic breadth, diverse cultural representation and genuine accessibility.
Director of Contemporary Art Elizabeth Ferrer
BRIC presents live music and performing arts, contemporary art, and community media programs. The organization places special emphasis upon providing opportunities and platforms for Brooklyn artists and media makers to create and present new works.
Gallery Manager Eric Araujo
In 2013, BRIC inaugurated a new era of service to the borough when it opens BRIC House, a 40,000 square-foot arts and media facility located in the cultural hub of Downtown Brooklyn. BRIC House includes a flexible state-of-the-art performance space, a major contemporary art gallery, artist workspace, and multiple television and media production studios. Designed by Brooklyn-based architect Thomas Leeser, BRIC House aims to be a true home for artists and audiences — a place where emerging and established artists create work that deepens their practice and engage with the diverse communities of Brooklyn. BRIC House opened in October 2013.
Acknowledgements
Marketing Manager Abigail Clark
Curatorial Assistant Jennifer Gerow Director of Contemporary Art Education Hawley Hussey Education Coordinator Linda Mboya Director of Development Jilian Gersten Director of Marketing Colleen Ross
BRIC’s contemporary art programs benefit from generous public funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; New York State Assembly Members Inez D. Barron, James F. Brennan, Karim Camara, Joan L. Millman, Félix Ortiz, and Annette Robinson; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and New York City Council Members Mathieu Eugene, Vincent J. Gentile, Letitia James, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, Darlene Mealy, Dominic M. Recchia, Jr., Albert Vann, Jimmy Van Bramer, and Jumaane Williams.
Graphic Designer Matthew de Leon
Additional support is provided by Astoria Federal Savings; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; Barclays/Nets Community Alliance; Bay and Paul Foundations; Bloomingdale’s Fund of the Macy’s Foundation; Con Edison; Laurence W. Levine Foundation; Pierogi, Brooklyn; and numerous individual supporters.
President of BRIC Leslie G. Schultz
Interns Erin Carroll Leslie Cummings Julia Honore Lee Margo Cohen Ristorucci Katherine Wilson
Our gratitude to everyone who lent boomboxes for Bayete Ross Smith’s Got the Power: Brooklyn: Lisa-Renee Brown, Fritz Celestin, Janet & Stanley Garstka, Jen Garstka, Jamal Hampton, Alice Handy, Laura Krapacher, Marco Kathuria, Marjorie Liburd, Michael Liburd, Mattijs Limberger, Bob and Carroll Middlemiss, Harry Poster, Tom Schloegel, Leslie G. Schultz, Karen Stevenson, and Jackie Weisberg. Bayeté Ross Smith’s Got the Power: Brooklyn includes a mixtape made possible thanks to the contributions of many friends. Special thanks to Vee, Amy, Jack, Siddy D., Danny, Brandon, Cornelia, Jasmine, Halle, Ciara, Kate, Melvin, Daniel, Jonathan, Randy, Natalie, Lacy, Ebony, Nicole, Drue, Katie, Michelle, Stef, Elizabeth, Kate, Roni, Rob, Russell, Margaret, and David for providing the songs and stories that made this mixtape come alive. Songs on the Got the Power: Brooklyn mixtape include: Big Daddy Kane / Set It Off; Strate / Set It Off; Public Enemy / Fight the Power; Talking Heads / Take Me to the River; Brandon Ross / (Until) Lagos Whispered; Dulcinea Detwah / Cool Kid; Danny Brown / Pac Blood; Frank Ocean / Swim Good; Bruno Mars / Gorilla; Harriet Tubman Dbl Trio (Brandon Ross, J.T. Lewis, Melvin Gibbs) – feat. DJ Logic, DJ; Singe & Ron Miles / Ritual Rubbin’; Jimi Hendrix / House Burning; Toots & the Maytals / Pressure Drop; Lou Reed / Street Hassle; Aretha Franklin / Over The Rainbow; Paul Simon / 50 Ways to Lose Your Lover; By Your Side / Sade; Eric B. and Rakim / I Ain’t No Joke; Talib Kweli / 5am in Brooklyn; Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh / The Show; Aventura / Obsesion; Katy Perry / Eye of the Tiger; Otis Redding / I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Lou Reed / Perfect Day; Kacey Musgraves / Follow Your Arrow; Fred Hammond / You Are The Living Word; Nas / The Don; Biggie Smalls / Unbelievable; Shirley Temple / Animal Crackers; Luther Vandross / Dance With Father My Again. A big thanks to djFRiTZo
Executive Vice President Betsy Smulyan
Special thanks to generous supporters Bob Buckholz & Lizanne Fontaine and Leslie & Clifford Cohen.
BRIC 647 Fulton Street (at Rockwell Place) Brooklyn, NY 11217 718.683.5600 BRICartsmedia.org
@BRICartsmedia #BRIChouse #ArtIntoMusic Cover: Arturo Meade, Para todo mal, 2013 Back cover: Dread Scott, Steve & John, 1984
Courtesy of Marco Kathuria, Photo by Abigail B. Clark 11