September 22 - October 15 2017

the form is stone, the dress is rain - May Swenson, The Spine and the Cage (1958) | curated by Rafael Sánchez

KATHLEEN WHITE | ROBERT APPLETON | DIETMAR BUSSE | JORGE CLAR | ELISABETH KLEY | HAPI PHACE | RAFAEL SANCHEZ | GAIL THACKER | CONRAD VENTUR

Opening Reception: Friday, September 22, 6-8 pm. Readings and Performances, TBA

Introduction by Rafael Sánchez

"In her later notebooks, Kathleen White created a number of drawings on musical staves, incorporating dolmen and stone forms in place of musical notes. Previously she had taken to making phonetic, word-like drawings on similar staves which became known (and performed) as sound texts. The introduction of stones within the series in early 2013 was then a departure in direct conversation with the nomadic dolmen she and I had built and stewarded through situations in New York City during the prior five years. Gradually hieroglyphs emerged in the drawings that would eventually blossom into pages of cryptic tablature stories, seemingly about this journey, its trials and its bonds.

The present show’s origins occurred when AMP invited me to consider a project just as I was starting to lift the veil, so to speak, on these cryptograms. I was compelled by the idea of an engagement with sensitive peers and the possibility of bringing the conversation to Provincetown, a place close to Kathleen’s own origins in many respects. Kathleen had said of her works, “they are messages to the future.” They hold a lot in them. Many were made in our bed and perhaps I am too close to them at times. So much happened in that last year especially that still clouds a clear path for me. Kathleen was the point and also my witness. The drawings bring things home. Ultimately, they are universal and need other witnesses to participate in what they may reveal.

Synchronistic events and a mutual interest in ancient forms led to conversations with Hapi Phace and, particularly, to his stone art. The seeds were thus sown for a broader investigation to the origins (myths), the nature of marks, and their role in the creation of human bonds. As colleagues with roots between New York and New England, these nine artists gathered represent a family of peers, each maintaining strong individual studio practices. They are informed as well by shared histories and collaboration. Intimate and often playful connection to materials, methods, and the confluence of art and theatre are likewise held in common. While symbols and forms serve as guides and unifiers, the show proposes an interplay of these narratives as both points of origin and as points of departure.

Readings and theatre program to be announced." - Rafael Sánchez, NYC, May 2017

Robert Appleton

Robert Appleton is a multidisciplinary artist living in New York City. He has created performances and performative installations at various sites throughout the country. Highlights include Iggyvone, a collaborative piece with Linda Post at the Blaffler Art Museum in Houston; Other People's Kids, a 24-hour interactive endurance piece at the Cleveland Performance Art Festival; and Robert's Neuroses, part of the Eventworks festival at ICA Boston. Appleton has presented solo and two-artist exhibitions of his work at Kelli's Chocolate Factory, Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art Gallery, and The Hewitt Gallery of Art at Marymount Manhattan College, all in New York. Select group shows include HP Garcia Gallery, La Mama La Galleria, and Le Jungle Art Gallery in New York, and Spanish Kitchen in Los Angeles. Appleton is currently working on a performative installation piece titled Hedda's Gift, a meditation on Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.

Dietmar Busse

Dietmar Busse is an artist and photographer who lives and works in New York City since 1991. Born and raised on a small farm in Germany, he spent his childhood surrounded by animals and nature. During his youth, he traveled extensively through southern Europe and Morocco. Those formative experiences continue to inform his work. Busse’s photographs have been published by The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Interview, among others. Flower Album, his first monograph, was published by powerHouse books in 2003. In his most recent work, Busse explores a space where he combines portrait photography with drawing and painting. Some of these works have been exhibited in recent group shows at the Leslie-Lohman Museum for Gay and Lesbian Art (New York, 2015), New Art Projects (London, 2016) and INVISIBLEEXPORTS (New York, 2017). The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam selected several of his works for its 2017 exhibition Power Mask. His work is in the permanent collections of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Tucson, Arizona. A second monograph, Songs for birds and the lonely, will be published in Spring 2018.

Jorge Clar

Jorge Clar is a performance artist, poet and blogger. He incorporates his poems and drawings within theatrical tableaux, while his blog is a perennial photo performance project with prose poems. Clar’s poems have been published by Howl Happening! Gallery and Túnica magazine, and have appeared in self-published zines that often accompany his performances. Recent performances include presentations at the Gene Frankel Theatre, Ivy Brown Gallery and Theodore:Art, all located in New York. www.jorgeclar.com

Elisabeth Kley

Elisabeth Kley is a New York artist whose solo exhibitions of ceramics, watercolors, drawings and prints have taken place at Pierre Marie Giraud (Brussels, 2017), CANADA (New York, 2016), GAVLAK (Palm Beach, 2015), 39 Great Jones (New York, 2014), Schema Projects (Brooklyn, 2014), John Tevis Gallery (Paris, 2012), The National Gallery at the Georgian National Museum (Tbilisi, 2011), Le Petit Versailles (New York, 2010) and Momenta Art (Brooklyn, 2007). Her two-artist and group exhibitions include Orgy Park, Regina Rex, CANADA, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Haunch of Venison, and Exit Art in New York; VENUS in Los Angeles; GAVLAK in Los Angeles and Palm Beach; and Season in Seattle. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 1998.

Hapi Phace

Hapi Phace, a downtown New York City performance artist since the early 80s, has made props, masks, jewelry, and set pieces using papier-mâché and other recycled materials for his own performances and fellow artists Ethyl Eichelberger, Tabboo! (Stephen Tashjian), Lawrence Goldhuber, and Ryan Landry, among others. His fascination with art made from recycled and found materials—especially papier-mâche—began in the late 60s, when he was a child living with his family in Caracas, Venezuela. Hapi’s first theatrical commission was for various items used in Ethyl Eichelberger’s Hamlette (PS 122, New York, 1985), including a papier-mâché boulder. His most recent commission was for Lawrence Goldhuber’s Smite (Snug Harbor Cultural Center, New York, 2016), where he fabricated stones for a Cain and Abel murder duet. Those stones sparked a dialogue between Rafael Sánchez and Hapi which continues to expand through this exhibit. Now a resident of Massachusetts, the artist continues to perform in New York.

Rafael Sánchez

Rafael Sánchez was born in Havana, Cuba, 1960. While studying at Rutgers, (1981-84), he was a founding member of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark’s Roseville neighborhood. His solo exhibition, Look Don’t Touch (1985), was the organization’s first, and included using the nearby underpass of NJ Route 280 at Exit 13 as location. Sánchez has created numerous situational—often musical—works for vacant lots, dental clinics, pizzerias, rooftops, lakes, canals, and barges, as well as works for stage and screen. One-person gallery and theater projects include the Jersey City Museum (1991), Teatro de la Cabeza (ELBA, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 1993), A Goat’s Song (X-Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, 1996), The Libation Bearers (Thread Waxing Space, NYC, 1999), and REVOLVER (participant inc, New York, 2004). Projects in partnership with Kathleen White have been presented at Art in General (2010), El Museo del Barrio (2011) and the Museum of Modern Art (2012), all in New York. Sanchez is a Creative Capital recipient (2002). His work can be seen in the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism at The Museum of the City of New York (through October 1, 2017). An exhibition of the Sanchez’ collaborations with Kathleen White is planned for participant inc (New York, Spring 2018).

Gail Thacker

Gail Thacker is a visual artist most known for her unique use of type 665 Polaroid positive/negative film in which her subjects—friends, lovers, the city—become intertwined with the process and chemistry of her photos. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. She has been exhibited at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC), Spain; Elizabeth Dee Gallery and Grey Art Gallery in New York, and others. Her work is included in numerous collections, including the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), CGAC (Spain), The New York Public Library, and The Polaroid Collection (Massachusetts). Publications include The Polaroid Book (Taschen), Mark Dirt (Paper Chase Press), Tabboo! The Art of Stephen Tashjian (Damiani), There Was A Sense of Family; The Friends of Mark Morrisroe (Moderne Kunst Nürnberg) and Frontiers Journal of Women Studies (University of Nebraska Press). Her work is currently on view in the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism at The Museum of the City of New York. An upcoming monograph, Gail Thacker’s Polaroids, will be published by CUNY Press.

Conrad Ventur

Conrad Ventur is an American artist based in New York City. Ventur studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology (BFA, 1999) and fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London (MFA, 2008). Recent solo exhibitions of Ventur’s photographs include IVY at Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York and Pink Seat at Rokeby, London. Screenings of Ventur's moving image work have been hosted by The Andy Warhol Museum, C/O Berlin, MoMA, Museum of the City of New York, Participant Inc. and the Yerba Buena Center. Ventur is a grantee of the Franklin Furnace Fund (2013) and the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation (2017). Ventur’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

Kathleen White

Kathleen White (born in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1960; deceased in New York City, 2014) made drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations throughout her life. Her naturalistic mark making bridges personal narratives with ancient forms. Her father, Jim White, was an artist and educator in Somerset, Massachusetts, and her earliest works arose out of the materials available in his studio. She was a vibrant presence in Boston’s art and performance scene while studying at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in the 80s. Kathleen moved to New York City in 1987, where she worked until her death to cancer in 2014. The AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s had an immediate and lasting impact on her worldview and work. Solo shows include Spirits of Manhattan (apexart, New York, 1997 and Jenn Joy Gallery, San Francisco, 1998), Devotion (participant inc, New York, 2004), and A Rake’s Progress (Momenta Art, Brooklyn, 2014). Group shows include Shy (curated by Nan Goldin, Artists Space, New York, 1999), Heartbreaker (Mary Boone Gallery, New York, 2006), Private Domains (Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art, Boston, 2007); Familiar Feelings. On the Boston Group (CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2009). Projects in partnership with Rafael Sánchez have been presented in New York at Art in General (2010), El Museo del Barrio (2011) and the Museum of Modern Art (2012). An exhibition of her collaborations with Rafael Sánchez is planned for participant inc (New York, Spring, 2018). Exhibitions are forthcoming at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, and at Martos Gallery, New York, both scheduled for November 2017 through January 2018.