August 2 - August 21 2019

BOBBY BUSNACH | KATRINA DEL MAR | JACKIE LIPTON | BOBBY MILLER | PAT PLACE | SUARA WELITOFF

Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 6-9 pm

Bobby Busnach

Stranger in an Alt-World II

"Throughout the 70’s I photographed my friends as family. Those portraits and group shots reflected the times, as well as our lives. Most of that family of friends have not survived. I am a survivor, and feel an obligation to speak for my friends and for what was important to us, as well as for the many others of my generation who have passed before their time. I am concerned that the truth of what has come before us will be obliterated and forgotten, just as I myself may be forgotten when my time comes. As I move closer to that time I am overwhelmed by the imagery from my life, particularly from the 60’s and 70’s, and from the early days of our fighting in the streets for Gay Rights, Women’s Liberation, or Black Power, all of which directs who I am today and how I still see the world. In my work I utilize sexual politics, gender-fuck, transformation, iconic imagery, personal experience, as well as political statement in a way that I hope brings that work into a timelessness, today, yesterday, as well as tomorrow. Marilyn Monroe, to me, is a timeless icon, a perfect example of someone who fought and struggled to achieve the American Dream only to have it snatched from her grasp. I feel that inside all of us is a little bit of that innocence and sensuality, as well as a vulnerability and fear of being alone while surrounded by millions of people. My silk screens, photos, collages, writings, remixes… allow me to make peace with, rather than to run from, my ghosts, and to confront my own great fear of being alone though surrounded by a world of millions of people."

Bobby Busnach has shown his work in numerous galleries, including the Leslie-Lohman Museum in NYC this past January. A selection of Bobby’s 70’s photos (packed away in a suitcase for 30 years) are currently featured in a layout in the spring/summer edition of Hunter Fashion Magazine issue 32. And, in the works, is a book out of the U.K. also of Bobby’s 70’s photos of his family of friends.

Katrina del Mar

Photographs

Katrina del Mar is a New York-based photographer, video artist, writer, and award-winning film director. Best known for her decades-long work in video and photography, chronicling the reality and illusion of her Lower East Side friends and lovers as punk heroines; within her girl gang movie world. Del Mar’s critically acclaimed “Girl Gang Trilogy” of films has thrived internationally, playing venues such as the Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France; the MoMA Dome 2 in Rockaway Beach and at many film festivals, art venues, universities and cinema houses. “Gang Girls 2000” was compared favorably to Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” and got a four-and-a-half-star review in Film Threat. “Surf Gang” won a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Video, among other awards. In 2013 Katrina successfully ran a Kickstarter crowdfund campaign for “delMarvelous” an ongoing short serial documentary web series. Katrina completed her MFA at Bard College in 2017 and received the 2018 Kathy Acker Award for Film.

Jackie Lipton

CourRAGE | paintings

Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world. - James Baldwin – Nobody knows my name: What it means to be an American

It is something to know we exist - Samuel Beckett—Waiting for Godot

"I shut my eyes in order to see. I’m here, now.

My paintings give you permission. They are a simple or complicated language. Color poems, poetry by color. Trying to speak to you.

I paint to talk about things, to tell the things that matter. It’s my way of being in deep with you, it’s a heart to heart. I said that."

Jackie Lipton has an active career spanning decades. She has received grants and awards for painting and drawing, from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, granted three times, and from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation's special funds. She received a NYFA boot camp award, and earlier a NYFAI collaborative arts award, among others. Her fellowships and residencies include the MacDowell Colony, the Cummington Community of the Arts (no longer there), and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; in Iceland, she was awarded a grant at a small residency program from the Gallery Boreas, of a studio and apartment in Reykjavik.

Selected exhibitions include ARC at the Whitney Museum, the Art Resources Center of the Whitney Museum’s Gallery, the Aldrich Museum, Condeso/Lawler Gallery, WARM Gallery, the Art Resources Transfer Gallery, Gale/Martin Gallery, Gallery Boreas, Corinne Robbins Gallery, Life on Mars Gallery and Westbeth Gallery in NYC; the Schoolhouse Gallery and AMP Gallery in Provincetown, Mass. She is currently showing work at AMP Gallery in May and early August 2019. Lipton works in her studio in Chelsea and lives in Westbeth Artist Housing in NYC.

Bobby Miller

A Collection

Bobby Miller, born in Washington DC in 1952, is a performance poet, writer, actor and photographer. He has been taking photographs since 1974. His first influence was his mother Dorothy C. Miller, a prolific amateur photographer. His first contemporary influences were Christopher Makos, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jimmy De Sana. Miller studied photography at The New School with Lisette Model.

As a hair and make-up artist he worked with photographers Robert Mapplethorpe, Lynn Goldsmith, Diane Turbeville, and Christopher Makos among others. He is the author of 25 books of photography and poetry. His work has been shown at AMP Gallery in Provincetown, Woody Shimko Gallery in Palm Springs and most recently The Howl Gallery in NYC.

As a poet and spoken word artist he has collaborated with recording artist DJ Dmitry of the band Dee-Lite on a recording of “My Life as I Remember It to Be” released in 2015 and can also be heard on Epic Records CD Home Alive with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Joan Jett, and others performing his “Keep Your Mouth Off My Sisters”.

He has performed his original material at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian Institute, New York University, Westminster College, The Rhode Island School of Design, Bennington College, The American Crafts Museum, The New York Historical Society, The Massachusetts State Poetry Festival, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The CMJ Music Festivals, Jackie 60/Mother/ NYC, ARO.SPACE/Seattle, The Kitchen, LaMama etc., Dixon Place, P.S.122, Fez, and The Downtown Arts Festivals in lower Manhattan. He was also a winner in The National Poetry Slam as a member of The Nuyorican Poets and has performed internationally with poet John Giorno and alone at venues including The Tabernacle, The Battersee Arts Center, The ICA in London and The Glasgow Center for The Arts in Glasgow, Scotland.

Mr. Miller is also the recipient of a Jackie 60 Lifetime Achievement Award, four Jackie 60 Awards and a NYC Glammy Award.

Pat Place

Streetmarkings

Pat Place’s body of work is comprised of groupings from a personal archive of thousands of iPhone photographs of the sky. The colored lines and forms of both the clouds and sky are used in the same manner as expressionist brushstrokes, creating flow and movement within the grid-like patterns of the work. In a sense, there is a thoughtful meeting of both design and natural anti-design. Themes of impermanence and time within the pieces are made visible, while the compositions echo the sky’s constant change. When entering a space filled with Place's Skies, the walls seem to become lucent leaving you inside/out in elemental world of air and possibility.

While Place was looking up at the skies she was also noticing markings on the streets and sidewalks of NYC and LA -and started what is now a large archive of “Streetmarking” photos. These are evocative of her various periods in abstract art and included many universally known and iconic symbols. She couples the images in small groups to make interesting and contrasting compositions.

Pat Place, primarily known for her contributions to music and the New York No Wave scene, graduated from Northern Illinois University, IL with a BFA in Painting & Sculpture. Place moved to New York in 1975 and was a founding member and guitarist of The Contortions and Bush Tetras, whom she continues to tour with. Place has been showing her visual art in New York galleries since 1977.

Place’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions at AI Earthling Gallery, Woodstock, New York (2013), Harper’s Bookstore, East Hampton, New York (2012), Julie Keyes Art Projects, New York (2011), and ILLE Arts, Amagansett, New York (2012). Her last one-person exhibition of photographs “The End, 1981 - Infinity” (2008) was at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects, NY.

Place, who was born in Chicago in 1953, currently resides in New York and continues to work on her art and music.

Suara Welitoff

"Too Hot to Fly" and "Chance the On Off" | videos, 2018

Suara Welitoff makes videos, photographs, and sound. In her work, she explores time, gesture, language, and memory.

Since 1998, her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings throughout the U.S. and Europe. One-person exhibitions include Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston; Anthony Greaney, Somerville; 186 Carpenter, Providence; Document, Chicago; James Harris Gallery, Seattle; Le Rete Projects, Milan; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has participated in group exhibitions with Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt; Regina Rex at Bunker259, Brooklyn; Marburger Kunstverein, Marburg; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; Strozzina CCC, Florence; Performa 05 at Participant Inc, New York; NGBK, Berlin; Threadwaxing Space, New York; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.