NY Times Theater Reviewl

Photo by Alexander Berg in the NY Times

Erica Fae and Jill Samuel’s wonderful production of Take What Is Yours about Alice Paul, suffragete is playing at the 59E59 Theaters.

Gil Evans in the studio with Miles Davis, circa 1970. Michael Ochs Archives

ON 21 May 2012 at 7 pm at the Highline Ballroom, The Gil Evans Orchestra will perform for the final event of a week of Gil Evans Centennial Celebrations, all honoring the legendary jazz arranger and composer (1912-1988).

A seminal figure in the development of modal and cool jazz, as well as jazz fusion, Evans collaborated extensively with Miles Davis, notably on the trumpeter’s albums Birth of the Cool (1957), Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960). Over the course of his storied career, he also worked with the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, Astrud Gilberto, Jaco Pastorius, Maria Schneider, and a host of other legendary musicians.

Gil Evans lived at Westbeth for many years and with his wife Anita raised their two sons here, Noah and Miles.

Read what DownBeat Magazine has written about Evans and his career here.
HERE

The fabulous Gil Evans Orchestra, led by Miles Evans, Gil’s son, includes several musicians who were long-term members of Gil’s groups:

Saxophones: Chris Hunter, Billy Harper & Alex Foster
Trumpet: Lew Soloff, Jon Faddis & Miles Evans
French Horn: John Clark
Tuba: Howard Johnson & Bob Stewart
Trombone: Tom “Bones” Malone, David Bargeron, Dave Taylor & Conrad Herwig
Guitar: Ryo Kawasaki, Paul Metzke, Gabby Abularach & Oz Noy
Piano & Keyboards: Gil Goldstein
Keyboards: Delmar Brown
Bass: Mark Egan
Drums: Kenwood Dennard

In addition, the show tonight will feature performances by special guests Jimmy Cobb, Airto Moreira, Lenny White, Will Lee, John Simon, Matthew Garrison, and others. Paul Shaffer will act as the master of ceremonies for a program that will includes surprise speakers, vocalists, and music ranging from Hendrix and Jaco to the classics. Come join us for a historic night!

The Highline Ballroom is located at 431 West 16th St, Manhattan
BUY TICKETS HERE

June 1 – Friday FIRST FRIDAYS presents 3SPIRIT.
June 16 – Saturday DOWNTOWN MUSIC MIX
June 30 – Saturday JAZZ CABARET OPEN MIC
July 6 – FIRST FRIDAYS presents BETH GRIFFIN
August 3 – FIRST FRIDAYS presents DYNAMIC DUOS

6TH ANNUAL WESTBETH MUSIC FESTIVAL
Sept 21, 22, and 23. FREE!
An entire weekend of live music. More info soon.

WestFest – site specific dance at Westbeth 2012 produced by Carol Nolte and Kirstin Kapustik comprised 14 innovative dance companies which were invited to choreograph dances for any space in Westbeth. Audiences wound their way through the building following tour guides to discover dance in unfolding space.

Friday May 4, 2012, the PEN/Westbeth Literary Safari was sold out, one of two events in the whole week of PEN activities.

L Magazine

…the single most hippest event ever conceived…

http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2012/05/08/pen-world-voices-2012-stalking-the-exotic-author-at-the-westbeth-literary-safari

Matthew Aaron Goodman Blog

http://penlive.tumblr.com/post/22465298450/matthew-aaron-goodman-a-literary-safari-westbeth

PEN check in table in the Westbeth Gallery. Photo Christina Maile

Ken Golden, Westbeth Gallery director and PEN associate at Westbeth check in table. Photo Roger Braimon.

Crowded hallways as PEN/Westbeth Literary Safari audiences visited apartments where readings were taking place. Photo Roger Braimon.

Westbeth lobby where BOOKMAN sculpture by Barry Sigel, and PEN parade sculpture by PAW welcomed participants. Photo Christina Maile.

Author ETGER KERET at Joan Hall's apartment/studio. Photo Roger Braimon

Author ELIAS KHOURY in Maile-Mohassel apartment/studio. Photo Christina Maile

To celebrate the exhibit THE IMAGE AND THE WORD, there will be a poetry reading by Tamarind Poets – Past and Present – at the Westbeth Gallery on Sunday June 10, 2012 from 3:30pm – 6:30pm

Free

Portrait of the Artist: Lorraine O’Grady
Presented by Performa Institute
Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 6:30 pm

NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Einstein Auditorium, Barney Building
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York

Free event
rsvp@performa-arts.org

Portrait of the Artist: Lorraine O’Grady is the first in a new series of public events presented by the Performa Institute, a platform for the research and educational components of Performa that focuses on exploring the historical context and significance of artists who work across a broad range of disciplines, from the 1960s to the present. The inaugural event will examine the remarkable work and life of artist Lorraine O’Grady in the context of feminism, politics, and art of the 1980s and today. Kellie Jones, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, will present an in-depth look at the aritst followed by a conversation with O’Grady.

In addition to her work as a visual artist, OʼGrady has also made innovative contributions to cultural criticism with her writings, including the now canonical article, Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity. O’Grady’s work is included in La Triennale, “Intense Proximity,” curated by Okwui Enwezor (2012) in Paris, France. O’Grady was featured in 2011 in Rose O’Grady at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, and in the Prospect.2 New Orleans biennial and was selected for the 2010 Whitney Biennial as well as for that year’s Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain. In 2007, she was in the landmark exhibition, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, organized by Connie Butler for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, and was a resident artist at Artpace San Antonio, TX. O’Grady has received numerous awards, most recently an Art Matters grant, and in 2011 was named a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow. Lorraine O’Grady is represented by Alexander Gray Associates, New York.

About Performa
Founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa is the leading organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth-century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Performa launched New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, in 2005, followed by Performa 07 (2007), and Performa 09 (2009). In 2011, Performa presented its fourth biennial, Performa 11 (November 1–21, 2011).

Lorraine O’Grady Related Events
Apr 23, 2012: Performance with Adam Pendleton at Museum of Modern Art, New York
May 9, 2012: Performance with Adam Pendleton, in concert with the Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran installation, Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
May 10, 2012: Conversation with Linda Goode-Bryant, in concurrence with the exhibition Shift, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York

Alexander Gray Associates is a contemporary art gallery based in New York. The gallery has established a profile for high-quality exhibitions focused on mid- career artists who emerged in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Influential in political, social and cultural spheres, these artists are notable for creating work that crosses geographic borders, generational contexts and artistic disciplines.

Alexander Gray Associates
508 West 26 Street #215, New York NY 10001
Telephone: 212 399 2636 Fax: 212 399 2684
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
www.alexandergray.com

Current Exhibition
Lorraine O’Grady: New Worlds: April 11 – May 19, 2012

Upcoming Exhibitions
Luis Camnitzer: September 5 – October 13, 2012
Melvin Edwards: October 24 – December 8, 2012

Upcoming Art Fairs
Frieze New York: May 4 – 7, 2012
Art 43 Basel: June 14 – 17, 2012

By leasing space at the Westbeth complex starting July 1, the Graham company and its school will be able to consolidate activities that have been spread throughout the city, including space for rehearsals, classes, offices, archives and scenery.

The location has been the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s home since 1970. The Cunningham company disbanded on Dec. 31, two and a half years after the death of its founder and namesake.

NEW YORK TIMES Article

MARTHA GRAHAM CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY DANCE

PRIDE ETIQUETTE
Works on Gender, Identity, and Sexuality by Kenneth Sean Golden, Shari Diamond, Paulo Freitas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jonathan Leiter, and Carlos Gutierrez-Solana.

June 24 – July 8, 2012

Westbeth Art Gallery
55 Bethume Street @ Washington Street
New York, NY 10014
Gallery hours: Thursday to Sunday 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

The exhibition PRIDE ETIQUETTE highlights works in a variety of media by Kenneth Sean Golden, and some of his contemporaries, concerned with issues of sexuality, gender and identity.

Kenneth Sean Golden

’Work from his most recent print portfolio: Etiquette are 13” by 19” prints which consist of montage figurative elements, with fingerprints, including his own photos and appropriated images critiquing a physicality of how we present gender. Layering the subject matter, using selective “masking” techniques, both reveal and hide parts of the images while the layered fingerprints explore issues of identity and community. Text is also used and screened back over the image challenging the experience of viewing and reading. The text underscores some of his concerns. These can be mantras, positive affirmations, or just ideas/concepts that he’s exploring. Humor is also a very important element. Much of this work may be viewed at www.KennethSeanGolden.com.

Also included in the exhibition are earlier works by Golden that reference the body. One of his earlier pieces is a six and a half feet in diameter installation of a double wreath made up of prints of hands pinned together. This is his “digital concern” wreath, made of gum bichromates, palladium and cyanotypes from digital negatives. Two two-toned cyanotypes, each 23” X 35,” DNA made me gay, and Freaking Modernism will also be shown. In these works one finds text and more within the whorls of the fingerprints.

Shari Diamond

Photographic artist interested in the narrative, symbolic and poetic possibilities of imagery. Shari’s most recent work utilizes photography and the computer to explore current events see anew and imagine what might be. Also included in the exhibition, is a selection of Diamond’s earlier work exploring sexuality and gender; the effects of AIDS and other illnesses on people in her life; and the shape and weight of intimate relationships.” Her work can be seen online at www.sharidiamond.net.

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Shari currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts 2008 Fellowship in Photography, two Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grants, and was awarded residencies at Blue Mountain Center and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her work has been shown in numerous venues, including PS 122 Gallery, Art Projects International, The Alternative Museum and, most recently, at the Beit Ha’ir Museum in Tel Aviv.

Paulo Freitas

Painter working in oils. A self-taught artist, he started to paint in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at a young age. Freitas has exhibited at Fort Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro and Correio do Rio de Janeiro. His first public showing in New York City is currently at Chashama Gallery. He thinks that painting liberates the magic of color. Paulo was born in Pau Grande, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Carlos Gutierrez-Solana

Presents work from two bodies of work: Reverse Questionnaire and Shattered Dreams. In Reverse Questionnaire Gutierrez-Solana asks questions: “Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?”

Jeffrey Hoone writing in Contact Sheet about Reverse Questionnaire says, “The breadth of human sexuality stretches between distant poles of desire, so our understanding of passion needs to be informed by an elastic perception.” This work reaches to a place that reverses our societal “fortunes,” as it were, by making heterosexuality suspect. The combined image/text panels urge us toward gay and lesbian canons and away from a problematic heterosexuality. “Considering the menace of hunger and overpopulation, can the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?”

The questions come from a questionnaire reproduced in The New York Times but originally published in Working it out: The Newsletter for Gay and Lesbian Employment Issues. Companies in sensitivity training workshops use the questions. Questions often posed to gays and lesbians have simply been turned around to apply to heterosexuals. The images over which the questions are written are from “physique” magazines dating from the ‘40s to the ‘90s. The subliminal message is to conform in a world where the shoe is on the other foot: where gay and lesbian sexuality is the mainstream and heterosexuality is undesirable. The work questions our system, our choices, which we might have been if our society’s sexual expectations had been reversed.

The mixed-media collages titled Shattered Dreams were created between 1984 and 1995 from the detritus (broken glass and male images) from various performances titled “Poetic Visions/Shattered Dreams.” Thematically all refer to the AIDS crisis and the devastating toll it was taking on the gay community in general and Gutierrez-Solana’s own circle of friends in particular. Performances involved actions where the artist walked on sheets of glass covering multiple male images breaking the glass and crushing the male representations while frantically, and repeatedly, drawing the words: Poetic Visions/Shattered Dreams on large, hanging sheets of glass serving as transparent – and thus evanescent, drawing surfaces. These were then violently shattered. The whole effect being one of danger, sorrow, and fury.

Jonathan Leiter

Presents works from his In The Bedroom Series. The works in this series were developed after moving into his first house with his partner Mark. Leiter removed the nursery vinyl decals found on the walls of their new bedroom and added them to printed male gay pornographic images creating a powerful, tongue‐in-cheek dialogue between the innocence of childhood and its loss.

Jonathan was born in Uniontown, PA. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Arts & Design from Rutgers University. He currently lives and works in Staten Island, New York.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

An early work by , on loan from a private collection, will also be on display.

For additional information please contact the Visual Arts Chair at westbethg@gmail.com

A refreshing group exhibition

Roger Braimon, Annette Cords, Paul Fabozzi, Daniel Heyman, William Hudders, Emily Steinberg and Daniel Walth

Opening Reception Saturday 21 April 2012 at 6 pm – 8 pm

DOWNLOAD POSTER HERE

NETWORK poster pdf

Gallery hours: Thurs – Sunday 1- 6 pm
55 Bethune St at Washington St, NYC