Monthly Archives: September 2016

4 posts

Tuesday, September 27th: Howardena Pindell

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Howardena Pindell was born in Philadelphia in 1943, and studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. She has taught at State University of New York, Stony Brook since 1979 and she lives and works in New York city. Pindell has exhibited extensively throughout her career. Notable solo-exhibitions include: Spelman College (1971, Atlanta), A.I.R. Gallery (1973, 1983, New York), Just Above Midtown (1977, New York), Lerner-Heller Gallery (1980, 1981, New York), The Studio Museum in Harlem (1986, New York), the Wadsworth Atheneum (1989, Hartford), Cyrus Gallery (1989, New York), and G.R. N’Namdi Gallery (1992, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2006, Chicago, Detroit, and New York).

Known for her textured, hole-punch canvases, Howardena Pindell has been a unique and important voice in the field of abstract painting since the 1960s. In the 1970s, Pindell began creating layered, rough surfaces out of tiny paper dots cut with a standard hole puncher, which she collaged onto canvases with layers of acrylic, sequins, glitter, and powder, experimenting with color, surface, and texture. In addition to working rigorously as an artist, from 1967-1979, Pindell worked as a curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at the Museum of Modern Art.

Pindell’s work is in the permanent collections of major museums internationally, including: the Brooklyn Museum; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Fogg Museum, Harvard University; the High Museum of Art; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the National Gallery of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art; the Wadsworth Atheneum; the Walker Art Center; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Tuesday, September 20th: Nico Muhly

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Nico Muhly (b.1981) is a composer of operas, chamber and symphonic works, and sacred music whose influences range from American minimalism to the Anglican choral tradition. Described by The Guardian as “one of the most celebrated and sought-after classical composers of the last decade,” he is the youngest composer ever commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and has received additional commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Library of Congress, and Wigmore Hall, among other institutions. In more than 80 works for the concert stage, he has embraced subjects ranging from Renaissance astrology to the ethics of artificial intelligence while collaborating with artists as diverse as Benjamin Millepied, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Joanna Newsom.

Muhly has written two operas: Two Boys (2010), a cautionary tale about identity online, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and co-produced by the English National Opera with a libretto by Craig Lucas and directed by Bartlett Sher; and Dark Sisters (2011), about a community of polygamists in the American southwest, set to a libretto by Stephen Karam and directed by Rebecca Taichman. He is at work on a third opera, Marnie, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for its 2019-20 season and based on the novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name.

His additional works for voice include the song cycles Sentences (2015), written for countertenor Iestyn Davies and based on the life of British computer scientist Alan Turing, and Impossible Things (2009), written for tenor Mark Padmore on a text by Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. His major choral works include Bright Mass with Canons (2005); My Days (2011), a commemoration of Orlando Gibbons, written for Fretwork and the Hilliard Ensemble; and Recordare, Domine (2013), commissioned by Lincoln Center and the Tallis Scholars.

In 2015, Nadia Sirota premiered Muhly’s viola concerto, the first work in a three-part commission for the violist. Other recent orchestral works include Control: Five Landscapes for Orchestra (2015), a celebration of Utah’s natural landscape, written for the Utah Symphony; and Mixed Messages (2015), composed for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Beyond the concert stage, Muhly is a sought-after collaborator across genres. He has worked on multiple occasions with choreographer Benjamin Millepied on scores for New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and the Paris Opera Ballet. Additionally, he collaborated with choreographers Kim Brandstrup and Wayne McGregor on Machina (2012) for the Royal Ballet, and, for choreographer Stephen Petronio, composed I Drink The Air Before Me (2010), an evening-length work featuring a children’s choir. As an arranger, Muhly has paired with Sufjan Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, Antony and the Johnsons, The National, and Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), among others. He has also written for theater and film, contributing scores for the 2013 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, directed by John Tiffany, and for the films Kill Your Darlings; Me, Earl and the Dying Girl; and the Academy Award-winning The Reader.

Muhly is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, co-founded by Icelandic producer-engineer Valgeir Sigurðsson, which was inaugurated with the release of Muhly’s first album, Speaks Volumes (2006). His second album for the label, Mothertongue (2008), included “The Only Tune,” a setting of the traditional murder ballad “Two Sisters,” featuring singer Sam Amidon accompanied by samples of scraping knives and brushed hair.

Born in Vermont and raised in Rhode Island, Muhly studied composition at the Juilliard School with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse, and worked subsequently as an editor and conductor for composer Philip Glass. He currently lives in New York City.

Tuesday, September 13: Anouk Kruithof

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Anouk Kruithof (b. 1981 in the Netherlands) is currently based in New York, Mexico City and Amsterdam.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as: Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MBAL Switzerland; The Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen China; The Center for Photography at Woodstock; Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg; Culture and Arts Center, Daegu Korea; Capitain-Petzel Gallery, Berlin: KIT (Kunst Im Tunnel) Düsseldorf; Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin, Autocenter Berlin; ICP, New York; Capricious Gallery, New York, Higher Pictures Gallery, New York, Museum het Domein Sittard, the Netherlands; Boetzelaer|Nispen Amsterdam, FOAM Amsterdam; The Netherlands Photo Museum, Rotterdam; MARCA Museum Catanzaro, Italy; MAMAC (Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art) Liege, Belgium, among others.

Anouk Kruithof is one of the five nominees of the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs 2016. She received the Meijburg Art Commission in 2015 and won the Charlotte Köhler Prize in the Netherlands in 2014. She has also received the Infinity Award of the International Center for Photography in New York in 2012 and the Jury Grand Prize of Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères in 2011.

Her works have found their way to public collections such as: FOAM, Amsterdam; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Aperture Foundation, New York; and Museum Het Domein Sittard. Kruithof’s artist’s books are part of the public collections of the New York Museum of Modern Art Library, ICP Library, New York Public Library, Pier 24 Library, MBAL Le Locle, Switzerland and the library of The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

On her publishing platform stresspress.biz she presents the nine artist-books she published so far including: The Bungalow published by Onomatopee Eindhoven; Untitled (I’ve taken too many photos / I’ve never taken a photo) self-published (stresspress.biz); Pixel-stress published by RVB-books Paris; A head with wings, published by LBM Saint Paul, USA among others. Kruithof’s tenth artist’s book AUTOMAGIC will appear in August, which is a publishing collaboration between Anouk Kruithof’s publishing platform: stresspress.biz and the Spanish art book publisher Editorial RM. 

Kruithof is also co-creator, director and jury member of the new Anamorphosis Prize, which will award $10,000, no strings attached, to the creator of the best self-published photo-book from the previous year. The prize was launched for the first time in spring 2015.

Tuesday, September 6th: Eddie Peake

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Eddie Peake is an interdisciplinary artist that works in photography, video, performance, painting, sculpture and installation.  Based in London, Peake makes work that explores the lapses, voids, and mistranslations that occur between verbal and non-verbal forms of communication.  Many of Peake’s photographs and performances use the nude or nearly-nude human form.  Peake’s use of the body, dance and performance explores the formal and sculptural properties of the human figure, as well as the figure’s absurd and erotic potential.  In addition to performance and photography, Peake also makes vibrant, often playful paintings and sculptures that equally try to explore the gaps in language through turning simple sayings, words, or exclamations into provocative visual experiences.

Born in London in 1981, Eddie Peake has lived in Jerusalem, Rome and London. Having graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2006, he undertook a residency at the British School at Rome from 2008 to 2009, and in 2013 graduated with a Master’s degree from the Royal Academy Schools, London. Recent performance projects include The David Roberts Art Foundation (2012), The Tanks, Tate Modern in conjunction with the Chisenhale Gallery (2012); The Royal Academy of Arts (2012) Cell Project Space (2012) and Performa 13 (2013). International solo exhibitions include Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2011), Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rome (2012), Southard Reid, London (2012) (with Prem Sahib), Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2013) and White Cube Sao Paulo (2013).