July 21 – August 11, 2017
Wednesday – Sunday
12pm – 7pm

Discursive Selves explores the contested meaning of the Self Portrait. This collection of photography and film by eleven contemporary artists reveals nuanced definitions of selfhood that acknowledge the influence of one’s social environment on one’s inner sense of identity. These artists use the camera to navigate between both fluid and fixed perceptions of the Self, and are thus able to present who they are on their own terms.

The Self Portrait plays an essential role in the development and establishment of one’s identity— it informs and is informed, creates and is created, is both concrete and ephemeral. For some, it manifests as an artifact, a material body, or a form of testimony; for others, it is a projection, a speculation, or a performance. Working in a new genre of critical photography, these artists play with the paradox of “public intimacy” to explore the relationship between private life and public persona. Portrayals of the Self range from fictitious characters and imagined scenarios to biological self-studies or familial ties.

Discursive Selves dissects the myriad practices of formulating oneself as both an intimate ritual and a method of responding to one’s outer world. In a rapidly expanding global information society, this exhibition invites a moment of pause for contemplation in contemporary life.

Artists
Farah Al Qasimi
Aneta Bartos
Nicolas Bloise
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
Nona Faustine
Rindon Johnson
Tommy Kha
Pixy Liao
Matthew Morrocco
Bryson Rand
Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Curated by Eric Lawton & Daphne Takahashi

Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune St
New York, NY 10014

This exhibition is made possible through the support of Art + Commerce

Painter Paul Muranyi is a Manhattan based artist who grew up in Westbeth Artists Housing. Both parents were artists his father a Jazz Musician and mother a fine arts painter/teacher. It was a common event in his house hold for him to play catch with Louis Armstrong and borrow his mother’s paints to create artwork and displayed proudly in the apt.
Paul’s interest in his current series reflects his long- time curiosity of dramatic events. Paul’s earlier career as a heavy metal guitar player performing predominantly in the East Village and eventually transitioned to a quest for a more stable life as he joined Westbeth Artist painter Karen Santry in her company the High -Tech Design Loft.
Paul began experimenting with the computer parts and bright phone wires and plastic shapes working on 3-D collages. He began his studies at the School of Visual Arts resulting in his BFA in painting and had his first how with colleague Karen Young in the Westbeth Gallery. He has shown in over 28 galleries in group exhibitions throughout Manhattan and Florida.
Paul’s current show in the Westbeth Hallway Gallery celebrates his third production of small and large oil painting series: Weather Events 3. His choice of only the most dramatic events in weather depict arresting combinations of moody lighting featuring lightening, tornadoes, icebergs, starlight evenings with coincidental sightings of shooting stars, comets or aurora borealis. Paul Muranyi evokes a sense of charged mystery and beauty through his combinations which manipulate an adroitly intuitive balance between realism and abstraction- taking the viewer through the familiar and the unknown.

Opening Reception: May 24th, 6:30 PM- 9:30 PM
Show Dates: May 24 – July 15, 2017
Location:
@halbromm2A
90 West Broadway
corner of Chambers

“I have always tried to make paintings that are beautiful and arresting. Paintings that stop you in your tracks. Whether by the use of color and composition or odd juxtaposition of subject matter.
The idea is to make the viewer do a double-take and then get drawn in and perhaps ask questions.

These new paintings are motivated by the current political climate. As Joe Strummer once said: “If you want to tell the truth, you’ve really got to be specific”.

I AM BEING MORE SPECIFIC!

The total disregard of human rights via the increasingly militarized police force, immigration policies, and environmental prospects our planet faces leads me to realize that in the US and globally, we have a conflict of interest.” – Stephen Hall

Peter Ruta
A renowned painter who focused on views of Lower Manhattan, Ruta painted for nearly seventy years and had lived in Westbeth since its opening in 1970 when he passed away in late 2016. Born in Germany, he fled to Italy to escape Hitler’s rise to power, finally ending up in NYC. In this interview he discusses his time served as an American soldier in WWII and the painting career that followed, as well as memories of raising a family in Westbeth with his wife, Suzanne.

Here is the link to the full tanscript of the Peter Ruta Interview

From 1979 to 2008,
Florent, the all night eatery located in the city’s Meat Packing District was prime stomping crowd for a
surprising mix of A-list celebrities, tourists, families, and club kids.

This wildly entertaining documentary chronicles the history and final days of this outrageous icon.
Continue reading →

October 2016, a month before he died, Westbeth painter Peter Ruta invited Jan Ramirez, curator at the 9/11 Memorial Museum to the studio, to offer a donation to their collection. Ramirez chose the work (o/c 44×56 in) painted from Westbeth roof in 1979 when the West Side Highway hadnt come down and Battery Park City had not yet gone up.

Ramirez praised the work as a painting in which “the Towers loom as both subject in the downtown cityscape, and foil for some dazzling color and afternoon light demonstrations. … It will prove a wonderful teaching piece as well as a visually engaging historical “document.”

One of a series Ruta painted in those years, and showed at Museum of the City of New York in 2004.