NEWS
Adrianne Rubenstein
@ Galerie Nicolas Robert
4653 Blvd St-Laurent
Montreal, Qc
Opening reception: Thursday May 22, 6-8pm
Curated by: Falcon Founders Marco Boggio Sella and Paololuca Barbieri Marchi
Opening: Tuesday, May 6, 5-9PM
Opening hours: from May 7 to June 1st, 12 to 6 pm,
Music by : GREG PAULUS LIVE BAND
520 8th Ave, New York, NY 10018, 15th Floor
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Justin Adian, Uri Aran, assume vivid astro focus, Paololuca Barbieri Marchi, Sam Barsky, Marco Boggio Sella, Bryson Brodie, Edgar Bryan, Merlin Carpenter, You Ni Chae, Patrick Concklin, Rob Davis, Maia De Estal, Andre Ethier, Jason Fox, Jonah Freeman, Justin John Greene, Heather Guertin, Johanna Hickey, Chris Hood, Marcus Jahmal, Robert Janitz, Bill Komoski, Kosuke Kawahara, Sadie Laska, William Latta, Austin Lee, Justin Lowe, Alastair Mackinven, Charles Mayton, Servane Mary, Alissa McKendrick, Elizabeth Neel, Valerio Nicolai Alessandro Pessoli, Blake Rayne, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, Hollis Robison, Hanneline Rogeberg, Sally Ross, Adrianne Rubenstein, Gibb Slife, Robert Storr, Su Su, Spencer Sweeney Cheyney Thompson, Josh Tonsfeldt, Kon Trubkovich, Marianne Vitale, Michael Wetzel, Viola Yesiltac.
Jake Manning
Born Slippy
April 9 - May 7, 2022
TIF SIGFRIDS NYC
SPACE
MARCH 5 - APRIL 16, 2022, Laurel Gitlen
OPENING MARCH 5, 12 - 8pm
David Byrd, Owen Fu, Ryan McLaughlin, Dianna Molzan, Yu Nishimura, Adrianne Rubenstein, Tara Walters
Shatner almost immediately began to explain the feeling of escaping the Earth’s atmosphere, but waited patiently while Bezos stopped him to grab a bottle of champagne, which he sprayed on the other crew members as well as the assembled guests. “Everybody in the world needs to see it,” Shatner continued. “This comforter of blue that we have around us. We think, Oh, that’s blue sky. And then suddenly you shoot through it, all of a sudden, like you whip off a sheet when you’ve been asleep, and you’re looking into blackness. Into black ugliness.” He began to gesture down and then up, speaking in the trademark cadences that are so fondly familiar to fans of his appearances as Captain James T. Kirk, the commander of the Starship Enterprise, on “Star Trek.” “There is mother and Earth and comfort, and, there . . .” He gestured into the air, squinting toward the sun. “Is—is there death? Is that death? Is that the way death is?” Bezos, a longtime Trekkie who had a cameo role as an extraterrestrial in the 2016 film “Star Trek Beyond,” nodded. “I mean, whatever those other guys are doing,” Shatner added, likely referring to Bezos’s billionaire competitors at SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson). “What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine.” His voice cracked, and Bezos hugged him again. “I hope I never recover from this,” Shatner said.
—Neima Jahromi, The New Yorker Magazine, October 14, 2021
This exhibition brings together seven painters whose work explores real, fictional and imagined spaces: painterly space, psychological space, meditative space, geographic and cosmic space. In turns odd, melancholic, humorous, twee, breezy, sublime, and absurd, the works in the show share an attitude more than any unifying style or subject matter. Painting and its ability to resist legibility, to contain multitudes of conflicting emotions, to craft truths and lies, and to oscillate between medium and image, is one central concern. But more significantly each artist in this exhibition manipulates space in their own idiosyncratic and mysterious ways confounding illusions of depth with marks that rest right on the surface like jam, dismantling depth of field with clunky angles and knowing omissions, and theatrical op-art tactics that read like a formal joke. The paintings in this exhibition open up possibilities to hide things, to describe feelings, to locate desire, to dream, and to consider spaces beyond terrestrial limits.
David Byrd (1926-2013) David Byrd joined the Merchant Marines as a teenager and was later drafted into the Army. A drawing enthusiast, he used his G.I. Bill to study at the Dauphin School of Art in Philadelphia, and then later continued his studies at the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts. In 1958, Byrd took a position as an orderly in the psychiatric ward of a VA Hospital where he cared for patients damaged by their experiences in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. For the next 30 years, Byrd’s paintings and drawings focused on his extraordinary and empathetic observations of those in his care, and their interactions with each other and staff. After Byrd retired in 1988, he settled in the Catskills and worked full-time painting from memory the people and places from his past.
Stylistically, Byrd’s work bears influence from different art historical styles, including Cubism and Magic Realism. A luminous, dream-like haze suffuses detailed renderings of his subjects which combine realistic portrayals with fantasy and insert unsettling psychology into tranquil scenes. Subtle colors and a dry brush and thinned oil technique furthers a forlorn, melancholic tone in his paintings. His first solo exhibition was with Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle in 2012, and he passed away only a few months later in 2013. Posthumous exhibitions include a two-person exhibition at Zieher-Smith & Horton (2015), and solo exhibitions at Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia (2018) and White Columns and Anton Kern Gallery (2019).
Owen Fu (b. 1988 Guilin, China; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) Owen Fu’s paintings are both effortlessly informal and startlingly serious. Often depicting spaces that are dark, or just barely illuminated, they exist somewhere between confessional autobiography and spectacular fantasy, using avatar-like actors to depict desire, absurdist humor, common joy and aching loneliness. Ghosts, lamps, candles and barely-there faces further a sense of searching or worry as they dissolve into awkward homoerotic scenes, agrarian landscapes and diffuse backgrounds. Fu has Bachelor’s degrees in both Philosophy and Art, and an MFA from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena. Recent solo exhibitions include O-Town House, Los Angeles; Balice Hertling, Paris; and Mine Project, Hong Kong
Ryan McLaughlin (b. 1980, Worcester, MA; lives and works in Worcester, MA) Ryan McLaughlin’s paintings are simultaneously poetic and graphic, incorporating fragmented text, bits of signage and singular pictograms. His pictures reveal built-up surfaces in a muted and Morandi-like palette, and errant flecks of color meet between planes, using chance to suggest off-register printing, pixelation and subtle 3D vibrations. Sharing visual strategies with currencies, manuscripts, and logos, McLaughlin’s work points obliquely to systems of visual information and value-making, with his own wry pictorial language. “Space” is also a recurring theme in a sub-series of his pictures. Recent solo exhibitions include the Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta; Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; and Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. McLaughlin will have a solo exhibition at the gallery in Fall 2022.
Dianna Molzan (b. 1972, Tacoma, WA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) Dianna Molzan is most well-known for her paintings that explore the supports and limits of painting as sculptural objects, however, some recent works evince an equally astute interrogation of flat pictorial logic. In recent paintings of doors and mirrors, brightly painted prop-like compositions are also symbolic images of public life and passages. With dramatic, pop color and optical effects, these works also evoke everyday pastimes like grooming and self-contemplation. As Molzan herself notes, “the mirror remains an essential element for transforming our animal selves into something more transcendent.” Recent solo exhibitions include Kaufmann Repetto, New York; the ICA Boston and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is included in numerous public collections including the Hammer Museum, and LACMA, Los Angeles; SFMoMA; the ICA Boston; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Yu Nishimura (b. 1982, Kanagawa, Japan; lives and works in Kanagawa) Yu Nishimura makes paintings which echo the haziness of a fleeting memory. Using traditional painting techniques, the Kanagawa born artist blurs and records landscapes and scenes that are at once recognizable and dreamlike. Layers of faces, roadside views, forests, oceans, cars and animals rise from the muted ether of his landscapes, as if viewed from inside a swiftly passing train. Recent solo exhibitions include Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw; New York, KAYOKOYUKI, Tokyo; and Galerie Crevecoeur, Paris. Nishimura’s work is included in many public collections including: X Museum, Beijing, The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, M Woods Museum, Beijing, and the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa.
Adrianne Rubenstein (b. 1983, Montreal, Canada; lives and works in New York, NY) Adrianne Rubenstein’s vibrantly hued and impressionistic paintings draw equally from memory, cookbook illustrations and art historical referents. Armed with a personal sense of humor bordering on the absurd, her paintings have a frenetic and piled-on quality that resists formulaic and easy approaches to image-making. Free-spirited and confident mark-making, and a personal lexicon of eclectic symbols like hearts, broccoli, mugs, and fruit elicits strangely honest and transcendent moments suspended in paint. Recent solo exhibitions include Broadway Gallery, New York; The Pit, Los Angeles; Deli Gallery, Brooklyn; and Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA.
Tara Walters (b. 1990, Washington D.C., lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) Tara Walters makes large scale paintings using oil-based paints, pure pigment, and saltwater from the Pacific Ocean. Stained, rubbed, and subtly iridescent, Walters’ paintings combine swelling movement and transparency, optical effects that mirror her interest in celestial bodies, prismatic auras, and other sublime and romantic visions. Recent works depict gardens, secret gates (with skeleton keys), hot air balloons, butterflies, and hidden woodland creatures, imagery that is fantastic, magic and symbolic. Walters received a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA; and an MFA from the Art Center College of Art. Her recent solo show, Dropping In (Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles) was included in Jack Bankowsky’s “Top Ten of 2021” for Artforum.
Sunny Side Up
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 27th, 12-6pm
February 27th to March 27th, 2021
Sunny NY is pleased to announce Sunny Side Up, a group exhibition featuring Johnny Abrahams, Kadar Brock, Rick Briggs, Adriana Farmiga, Keltie Ferris, Andrea McGinty, Brian Kokoska, Shawn Kuruneru, Abby Lloyd, Lauren Luloff, Adrianne Rubenstein, Chloe Seibert, Clayton Schiff, Nicole Wittenberg and Margo Wolowiec. This is the gallery’s inaugural exhibition. Sunny NY is an artist run gallery located in the East Village. The gallery originated in the pandemic against the rapidly changing landscape of New York’s artworld. The title playfully highlights the steady optimism of artistic community in the face of adversity. For this exhibition, the gallery has painted the floors yellow. The artists in this show are preoccupied with a range of artistic approaches including process-based abstraction, issues of representation and identity, and material exploration.
Johnny Abrahams, Adriana Farmiga and Shawn Kuruneru use a limited palette to explore the graphic and painterly potential of abstract painting. Kadar Brock and Keltie Ferris create multi-media abstractions with a rich investigation of surface using varied paint handling and uncanny optical effects. Margo Wolowiec and Lauren Luloff make paintings with a distinct relationship to wall tapestries. Luloff creates expressive abstract paintings on fabric. Wolowiec creates subtle, nuanced textile works that reference patterns found in Navajo rugs and Bauhaus weavings.
Rick Briggs is the veteran painter in this exhibition. A fixture of the Williamsburg art scene, Briggs has made experimental, abstract paintings since the 1980s.
Adrianne Rubenstein and Nicole Wittenberg make emotionally charged quasi-representational work.. Rubenstein’s witty paintings of vegetables and flowers are vibrant, topical reflections on the urban environment. Wittenberg makes highly expressive plein-air paintings of figures and landscapes with keen psychological insight.
Brian Kokoska and Clayton Schiff make loosely narrative paintings that reference comic books and illustration. Kokoska’s richly colorful tableaus feature subjects culled from youth culture with androgynous identities.
The three sculptors in the exhibit are Abby Lloyd, Andrea McGinty and Chloe Seibert. Abby Lloyd creates figurative sculptures with enlarged heads, animating them with a mannerist, child-like quality. Andrea McGinty and Chloe Seibert make sculptures out of industrial and everyday materials. McGinty often uses coolers and storage containers and repurposes them alongside artistic interventions. Seibert’s sculptures resemble masks, human faces and animal bodies revealing childhood deviance and pleasure.
Sunny Side Up features emerging and midcareer artists. While the works in this show comprise a range of artistic vocabularies - formally rigorous, expressive and visionary, somber and restrained - all contain a sense of immediacy that responds to this moment.
Sunny NY is an artist run gallery organized by Jason Stopa, Russell Tyler and Hadley Vogel. Please join us in celebrating our first exhibition. The reception will be held on Saturday, February 27th from 12-6pm.
Sunny NY - 155 E. 2nd St. New York, NY 10009
JACKIE GENDEL + ADRIANNE RUBENSTEIN
NOVEMBER 11 – DECEMBER 31, 2020
SOCO Gallery is thrilled to present an exhibition of new work by artists Jackie Gendel and Adrianne Rubenstein. This will be Gendel’s second exhibition with the gallery, and Rubenstein’s first.
The exhibition is planned in conjunction with Tif Sigfrids, a contemporary art gallery based in Athens, Georgia. Works by Gendel and Rubenstein will be on view in both locations in an inaugural partnership of the two galleries. The exhibition includes works on canvas and on paper.
Gendel’s recent work furthers a neo-modernist motif as a means of constructing a fiction between fragmented figure and crowd, women becoming architecture and automatons becoming bodies of unfixed age, time, location and gender. Gendel pushes the viewer to contemplate the relationships between them, highlighting the movement of her often female subjects through abstracted form. In one work featuring a large crowd of overlapping women, muted colors connect the figures, while specific details call attention to their various personas. Seen frequently in composite and profile views, Gendel’s figures challenge the cohesion of self and sociability. They appear caught in a history that may or may not exist. Gendel’s work challenges viewers to come to terms with a scene that may feel at once unfamiliar and yet recognizable.
In a similar manner, Rubenstein’s work also evokes art historical references with its likening to Expressionism. Rubenstein distorts the familiar, painting scenes that challenge one’s understanding of the everyday. Through an intuitive process, Rubenstein repeatedly arrives at imagery that can make a head of Broccoli seem archetypal in its nature. In a recent Artforum review, Barry Schwabsky noted that "the faint resemblance her forms have to their original sources of inspiration may in itself be best testimony to the inner image's staying power, free association means more than resemblance." The paintings, when coupled with their titles, consistently reveal a dry wit that may subvert their almost childish emotional ebullience. Like any good joke, however, there is always a kernel of sincerity buried deep within the layers of every painting.
Jackie Gendel (Houston, TX, B. 1973)
Jackie Gendel received her BA from Washington University, St. Louis in 1996 and her MFA from Yale University in 1998. Since 2000, she has participated in numerous group shows and solo exhibitions including Thomas Erben, New York (2019, 2016), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (2017), Jeff Bailey, New York (2013, 2012, 2010, 2006), Loyal Gallery, Malmö (2012), Moti Hasson, New York (2008), and Mixture Contemporary Art, Houston (2004, 2002). Reviews of her work have appeared in Modern Painters, Artforum, The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Art Papers, and Hyperallergic, among others. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Gendel an Academy Award in 2007. She participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in 2010, and was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in 2005. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Adrianne Rubenstein (Montreal, B. 1983)
Adrianne Rubenstein (b. 1983) received her BFA in 2006 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and in 2011, her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include Deli Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA; and The Journal, New York, NY. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and Rubenstein has also served as curator for numerous shows. Her work has been featured in Artforum and The New York Times. Rubenstein currently works and lives in New York, NY.
Make Me One With Everything
March + April, 2020
Al Freeman
Alex Chaves
Alexandra Lakin
Alicia Gibson
Annelie McKenzie
Annette Wehrhahn
Bella Foster
Brianna Rose Brooks
Brook Hsu
Caley Feeney
Clayton Schiff
David W Cummings
Heidi Jahnke
Hilary Pecis
Howard Fonda
Jake Manning
Joshua Abelow
June Culp
Keke Hunt
Kimia Ferdowsi Kline
Maija Peeples Bright
Marisa Takal
Mira Dancy
Mari Eastman
Nora Jane Slade
Nora Riggs
Jennifer Sullivan
Rachel Eulena Williams
Ryan Johnson
Sophie Larrimore
Heidi Jahnke
September 22 - November 10, 2019
Opening reception: Sunday September 22, 2019
Grifter is pleased to present the work of Heidi Jahnke (1978-2015), opening Sunday, September 22nd from 4-6pm.
The exhibition is comprised of twelve paintings made in New York between 2013 and 2015, each revealing a moment of situational comedy conveyed with self-effacing humor and confidence.
Curled toes traipsing on eggshells, a fiesta of nuts in Steve Buscemi’s teeth, a woman devouring a jellyfish, a glass of champagne sizzling beside a laundry machine. All exemplify Jahnke’s appreciation for moments of disgust, as well as transcendent and awkward joy. Jahnke took pleasure in noticing various entry points to the dark and hilarious nuances that surround us. The pornography of an armpit, a passenger’s rancid foot on the train.
In ‘Staten Island’, 2014 two different colored hands clutch in front of a buoy tethered by golden rope at the stead of a ship, at what might appear to be the end of the world, or simply a night time cruise to Staten Island.
‘Sunburn’, 2014 is a painting of a reddened back dappled with soothing flowers, reminiscent of medicinal cream. In every image there seems to be a chasm and its remedy. Things that go together and come apart that pull at the heartstrings with agonizing purpose.
Jahnke’s cropping and framing convey a portrait of the artist and her concerns. Her compositions depict the essential moment in a larger scene, zeroed in and excised. As viewers, we experience Jahnke’s levity and her specificity. These absurd recollections give meaning to the act of painting and its expressive qualities.
Little Shop of Horrors
September 15th - October 19th
Tif Sigfrids is happy to announce a solo exhibition by Adrianne Rubenstein, entitled Little Shop of Horrors This is the artists first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception will be held on Sunday, September 15thfrom 4-6 PM and the show will remain on view through October 19th.
For Little Shop of Horrors, Rubenstein presents seven new paintings, each revealing a distinct iconographic reference. Out of an intuitive process in which the artist sifts through personal memories and feelings, depictions of flowers, an ice cream cone, bees, broccoli, and a hammer emerge. References to other artists’ work are sometimes filtered into the paintings in what Rubenstein refers to as “love notes”. The depiction of a hammer in Hammer and Nail, for instance, relating to Lee Lozano. In Sorority (flowers for Tetsumi Kudo), she references sculptures by the Japanese surrealist artist, in which morphological plant life is inserted into a domestic setting or the window display of a plant store. Through an expressive style radiantly imbued with intense colors, a hammer can channel heartbreak and a group of tulips can be a reminder of childhood understandings of beauty.
埃德加·布莱恩（Edgar Bryan）
偏执复调布鲁斯Paranoid Counterpoint Blues
July 17 - September 15, 2019
2019年7月11日至8月31日
Grifter is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition, Edgar Bryan’s Paranoid Counterpoint Blues, opening Wednesday July 17th, 6-8pm.
Grifter画廊欣然呈现开幕首展埃德加·布莱恩个展“偏执复调布鲁斯”。画廊将于七月十一日周四晚上6点至8点举办开幕酒会。
In 2001, I made a painting of the books on my coffee table. They were stacked up in a chaotic fashion, some were open and some closed—others, such as paperback novels were used as bookmarks in larger books.
2001年的时候我创作了一幅表现我茶几上书本的画。这些书的堆积方式有一些混乱，有一些是打开的，有一些是合上的；还有一些别的书，比如平装本的小说，则被当做大型书籍的书签使用。
Among the clutter was Charles Ray’s monograph for his ‘95 exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles. It lay open to a photograph where he had wedged himself against a wall, upside down and pinned at the legs by a large wooden plank. This funny picture and others like it have the kind of embarrassing vulnerability that I aspire to in my own work.
这堆乱七八糟的东西中有一份查尔斯·瑞（Charles Ray）为他1995年在洛杉矶当代美术馆做的展览而写的专刊。这本专刊正好翻在一张照片页上。照片中的他把自己头朝下地卡在墙上，腿支撑在木头支架上。这张有趣的照片和别的类似作品中表现的那种尴尬的脆弱感是我自身作品的灵感来源。
Another book on the table, Gödel, Escher, Bach, was a thick volume about mathematical principles in music and art. Not until years later would I read it—not until I had learned to read music pretty decently and play piano kind of poorly.
茶几上的另一本厚厚的书《哥德尔、埃舍尔、巴赫》探讨了音乐和艺术中的数学原理。直到几年之后我才读了这本书，那个时候的我已经可以像样地理解音乐并且可以稍微摆弄一点钢琴。
My new paintings are in part about Gödel, Escher, Bach and the circular logic it describes. They are also portraits of myself as a pianist and a painter, and of course, they are still-life paintings with yet again more books.
我的新作品中的一部分是关于《哥德尔、埃舍尔、巴赫》和书中所描述的环形逻辑。这些新作品是我作为一个钢琴家和画家的自画像，当然也是—又一次—与更多的书有关的静物画。
Edgar Bryan is a painter and bookmaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Recent exhibitions include; Welcome to the Dollhouse at MOCA, Los Angeles; Soft Corners at Telles Fine Arts, Los Angeles; Almost Rad, a public mural for MOCAD Detroit; and Sea Creatures, a solo exhibition at Reyes/Finn in Detroit.
埃德加·布莱恩（Edgar Bryan）是一位居住在加州洛杉矶的画家、著作家。他的近期展览包括洛杉矶美术馆的Welcome to the Dollhouse、洛杉矶Telles Fine Arts画廊的Soft Corners、为底特律当代美术馆制作的名为Almost Rad的公共壁画以及底特律Reyes/Finn画廊举办的个展Sea Creatures。
Grifter is an artist run space located at 75 East Broadway, unit #221
捣蛋鬼是一个由艺术家运作的画廊，我们的地址是75 East Broadway, Unit #221。
GO AWAY ROAD
Alicia Gibson
Brook Hsu
Quintessa Matranga
Jordan Nassar
Maija Peeples-Bright
Clayton Schiff
Alake Shilling
Rachel Eulena Williams
Zadie Xa
March 28–May 4, 2019
Curated by Adrianne Rubenstein
Welcome to the opening reception Thursday March 28, 6–8 pm
Go Away Road is a wrong turn in Northern California that you come upon after being betrayed by your GPS. It’s a dirt road belonging to a house that is faded and rusty, broken vehicles blocking the road and a deer peeking out of the woods. It’s a place people went to embrace the earth, but they changed.
Go Away Road brings together nine artists: Maija Peeples-Bright, Alicia Gibson, Brook Hsu, Quintessa Matranga, Jordan Nassar, Clayton Schiff, Alake Shilling, Rachel Eulena Williams and Zadie Xa, each of whom make a study of nature and the self, emphasizing its cumulative aspects as well as its broken parts.
The works bring about the power of metamorphosis, decomposition, and the immutable. Stars, rocks and waves, scratched upon as if with magic marker, a story told in too much detail, a single orange growing on a tree.
—Adrianne Rubenstein, 2019
A catalogue with essay by Adrianne Rubenstein will be published for the exhibition.
Margot Bergman
Cabin Boy, Auntie Gladyce and Three More
January 19th - March 2nd
Organized by Adrianne Rubenstein
Sigfrids / Howard's is pleased to announce “Cabin Boy, Auntie Gladyce and Three More” an exhibition of paintings by Chicago based artist Margot Bergman created between the years 2002-2012. The show will open with a reception on Saturday, January 19th from 4-6 PM and will remain on view through March 2nd.
Bergman’s paintings from this time period are created on thrift store canvases, her brushwork mixed together with the found imagery creating dreamlike apparitions of the human form. The double authorship invites an easter-egg-like experience for the viewer which feels uncanny and sentimental. One sympathizes with the worthless and forgotten artifact but it acts here as a centrifugal force over which Bergman’s flower grows. Eyes, lips and a silhouette disguise and destroy the preexisting painting. Clearly defined features are body parts and point to the corporeal yet their indication feels slight, like layers of makeup or the masking of a photograph.
Bergman acts in transgression of the original, creating another truer original which is also a container for the past. The paintings remind you of the forbidden aspects of drawing, furtive marks done in secret or where they are not supposed be. In “Cabin Boy” Bergman paints a flat round face in profile using the sunny blue sky to humor the background and foreground simultaneously. One eye with blue shadow over its lid and a perfectly modeled eyebrow float expansively above a dreamy looking domestic cabin encircled by freshly planted trees. Red lips are outlined over a slightly darker green shrub. The portrait is enclosed by two large trees crowning and a patch of sandy road is a shoulder or shirt.
“Lulu”, “Beth Jo” and “Auntie Gladyce” are portraits painted atop other portraits. Little squinched faces peer out from between the eyes of the subjects, a single nose at the center anchoring all the unfolding features. The outer eyes appear to be tired as if from witnessing so much disintegration. In “Untitled (Flower Vase Portrait)” a potted plant has bloomed two shining eyes and a leaf with a smile. Bergman’s paintings are satisfying because they breach the protocol like a tear in the sky. They sit with you like candy stored in cheek, letting light enter their fallibility and making us feel better about our endeavor to categorize the sun and moon.
Margot Bergman (b. 1934) has been an active member of the Chicago art scene since the 1950s. Recent exhibitions include ‘Thank You for Having Me’ at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; ‘Body Doubles’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and ‘Margot Bergman’, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY. Bergman will be the subject of forthcoming exhibitions at the Museum Langmatt in Baden Switzerland and the Folkwang Museum in Essen Germany. A substantial hardcover catalog will be published concordantly with Hatje Cantz.
Adrianne Rubenstein (b. 1983, Montreal) is an artist and curator based in New York City. She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Curatorial projects include ‘Fort Greene’ at Venus, Los Angeles and ‘Geranium’ at Stems Gallery, Brussels. Solo exhibitions include ‘I Love Worms’ at The Pit, Los Angeles, and ‘The Forest Floor’ at Cooper Cole, Toronto. Rubenstein has been the Director at CANADA, New York, since 2014.
With special thanks to Margot Bergman and Corbett vs. Dempsey.
Sigfrids/Howard's
119 North Jackson Street
Athens, GA 30601
Beaded Talisman for Unwell Daughter
Annelie McKenzie
December 15 2018 – February 3, 2019
Opening Reception Saturday December 15, 2018, 6 – 9pm
Fisher Parrish is pleased to present Beaded Talisman for Unwell Daughter, a solo exhibition of new works by Los Angeles based artist Annelie McKenzie, organized by artist and curator Adrianne Rubenstein.
Works - link
A path exists among these works that beckons to the history I actually want to be a part of. The appropriation is utterly appropriate. The tableaux themselves are like vignettes from within a story, and let’s say that book is a bit archaic, and the scenes feel as if you’re discovering them by candlelight. You were sleeping in a dimly lit auditorium, spiderwebs accumulating along the ceiling; there was a brief discussion of female artists.
Beaded Talisman for Unwell Daughter is a painting of a woman jaundiced from illness, her face a donut slathered in custard creme—a detailed prop among frilly blankets. The subject of the work is Anna Alma Tadema, a British artist from a family of artists, born in 1867 and deceased in poverty and obscurity in 1943. Tadema is remembered as a subject from within her more famous father’s paintings, although he died forgotten and penniless too. The basis for McKenzie’s painting is an exquisitely detailed self-portrait, a watercolor which somehow survived, and a cryptic memento—a finite collapsing of past and present.
McKenzie’s work is brazen and brash and addresses its subject obliquely, informatively. She is a detective, but isn’t cool or slick about it. Her works are painted on purses and cocktail pouches, the likes of which may have held lipsticks and tranquilizers. Among sequences of pastoral bliss, not that those are ever quite what they seem, McKenzie addresses paintings so historic that one can recognize them by the heft of their weaponry. Her version of Artemesia Gentileschi’s ‘Jael and Sisera’, painted in pinks on a cream colored clutch, features bodies with marbleized flesh and a chemically hued background of tinted crimson. The sequins feel like a botched version of pointillism, swapping exactitude for a quality of faded and stained lace. Tiny ersatz pearls line the scalloped exterior of the bag, framing the piece while camouflaging its zipper.
The concept of purse as canvas stems from the artist’s observation that men don’t really like purses and so, it’s a witching spell that jokingly tells them to stay away. Gravely but with glee, McKenzie describes a history that has been abbreviated through misappropriation and a general lack of attention. Do you know that meme that says ‘We riot at midnight’ hidden in the body of a text about eyeliner? McKenzie’s paintings are a tribute to a great many such riots, inviting us to experience the joy and fascination of telling one’s story through the channels of the past.
– Adrianne Rubenstein, November 27, 2018
Please join us for the opening reception of Beaded Talisman for Unwell Daughter on Saturday, December 15th, 2018 from 6 – 9pm. Regular gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday 1 – 6pm or by appointment. For further information, please email Zoe Fisher at info@fisherparrish.com.
Annelie McKenzie (b. 1974, Montreal) earned an MFA from California State University, Long Beach, in 2013, and a BFA from the University of Calgary in 1997. She has exhibited at Contemporary Calgary (Canada), CB1 Gallery (LA), Torrance Art Museum (CA), VENUS LA (CA), and other spaces throughout the USA and Canada. McKenzie currently resides in Los Angeles.
Adrianne Rubenstein (b. 1983, Montreal, QC) received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2011. She lives and works in New York. Her curatorial projects include work with Night Gallery and Venus in Los Angeles, Stems Gallery in Brussels, Belgium, Fourteen30 Contemporary in Portland, OR, and Brennan & Griffin, Regina Rex and CANADA in New York, NY. Rubenstein has been the Director at CANADA, New York since 2014.
The Pit is pleased to present Adrianne Rubenstein: I Love Worms. An opening reception will be held on September 9, 2018 from 4-7pm, and the exhibition will be on view through October 21, 2018.
In her second one-person exhibition at The Pit, Adrianne Rubenstein will debut a suite of new paintings, which are some of her largest to date. Working in oil on panel, Rubenstein uses vibrant colors, direct form, and confident brushwork to depict raw memory in paint. Her paintings tell stories from her life, referencing moments from the just past and from long ago. In them, she is just as much a part of the subject matter as whatever it is she is painting, taking steadfast responsibility for her role as narrator. This vulnerability and resistance to neutrality allows Rubenstein to claim nostalgia not as an indulgence but as a powerful lens through which to view her place in and experience of the world.
Rubenstein is equally comfortable referencing art history and art’s current moment as she is her catalogue of personal memories. While works like Abstract Painting are a response to present-day trends in contemporary art and her faceted position within her community as a painter, gallery director, and curator, works such as Ladder with Ribbons—an homage to Ree Morton, whose work has been an influence on Rubenstein—refer to art history and her formation as an artist. In her dreamlike yet vivid compositions, Rubenstein’s explorations of memory and musings on art emerge as markers of a practice rooted in feminism: the personal is political.
Adrianne Rubenstein was born in Montréal, Canada in 1983 and lives in New York, NY. She received a Master of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA in 2011 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada in 2006. One-person exhibitions of her work have been presented at venues such as Reyes Projects, Bloomfield Hills, MI (2017); Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR (2017); White Columns, New York, NY (2016); and David Petersen, Minneapolis, MI (2016). Rubenstein’s paintings have been featured in thematic and two-person exhibitions including Out of Control, curated by Sally and Peter Saul, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY (2018); Permanent Embrace, with Walter Robinson, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Say Yes, curated by Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (2017); Feed the Meter I & II, Ceyson & Benetiere, Luxembourg (2015 & 2017); and Bunnicula, with Jennifer Sullivan, Marvin Gardens, New York, NY (2016). Rubenstein is an active participant in the international community of artist-run spaces and artist-driven curatorial initiatives, and she was awarded the Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2016.
Still Big, curated by Sun You
Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York
September 14 - October 14
Opening reception: Friday, September 14th, 6-9pm
Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present Still Big, curated by Sun You. Still Big is a group exhibition inspired by 17th century Dutch Still-Life paintings. These works broke away from the use of religious subject matter to depict secular objects like flowers, food, and bones in domestic interiors. These paintings explored quotidian reality as well as larger themes of life and mortality.
In Still Big, paintings, photos and sculptures are arranged on or around tables designed by NY-based furniture designers. These contemporary tableaus employ surprising juxtapositions to evoke erotic, gustatory and optical pleasures as well as poignant allusions to human frailty.
Artists:
Priscilla Fusco, Ethan Greenbaum, Kira Nam Greene, Eric Hibit, Myeongsoo Kim, John Newman, Sarah Peters, Chelsey Pettyjohn, Adrianne Rubenstein, Roger White, B. Wurtz, Crys Yin
Designers:
ERICKSON AESTHETICS, Miduny, Moving Mountains, PHAEDO
The Forest Floor
August 10, 2018 - September 8, 2018
COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada
Adrianne Rubenstein
OUT OF CONTROL
curated by Peter + Sally Saul
June 28 – August 10, 2018
Opening: Thursday, June 28th, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
VENUS OVER MANHATTAN
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
FEATURING: Nina Chanel Abney, Polly Apfelbaum, Joe Bradley, Tom Burckhardt, Kathy Butterly, Sarah Carpenter, R. Crumb, Roy De Forest, Carroll Dunham, Eric Fischl, Jason Fox, Tamara Gonzales, Joanne Greenbaum, Mark Greenwold, Silvester Hustito, E’wao Kagoshima, Betsy Kaufman, KAWS, Cary Leibowitz / Candyass, Chris Martin, Gladys Nilsson, Thomas Nozkowski, Jim Nutt, Erik Parker, Elbert Perez, Joyce Robins, Adrianne Rubenstein, David Sandlin, Katia Santibañez, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Dana Schutz, Arlene Shechet, James Siena, Robert Storr, William T. Williams, Karl Wirsum
CHIMERA
Hanna Eshel, Rainen Knecht, Emma Kohlmann, Diana Lozano,
Jillian Mayer, Bridget Mullen, Adrianne Rubenstein and Katie Stout.
March 2 – April 15, 2018
Click to download full press release.
Friends for Puerto Rico is an auction organized with Paddle8 to raise funds towards immediate and long-term hurricane relief in Puerto Rico. Proceeds from this auction will support two efforts: The Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund, which provides aid to communities hit hardest by the storm, and El Serrucho, an emergency grant program established by BetaLocal to support artists and cultural workers inPuerto Rico.
Featuring works by:
Marina Adams, Polly Apfelbaum, Katherine Bernhardt, Michael Berryhill, Dike Blair, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Katherine Bradford, Joe Bradley, Sarah Braman, Nancy Brooks Brody, Carlos Rolón/Dzine, Amy Feldman, Keltie Ferris, Jason Fox, Al Freeman, Amanda Friedman, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Joanne Greenbaum, Marc Hundley, Marcus Jahmal, Xylor Jane, Robert Janitz, Elisabeth Kley, Marcus Jahmal, Jennie Jieun Lee, Jose Lerma, Stuart Lorimer, Joanna Malinowska, JJ Manford, Eddie Martinez, Luke Murphy, Margaux Ogden, Angel Otero, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Adrianne Rubenstein, Tariku Shiferaw, Josh Smith, Peter Sutherland, Rafael Vega, Stanley Whitney, & Wallace Whitney
L'INCONNUE AT ART TORONTO | BOOTH V03 | OCTOBER 27-30, 2017
Brian Kokoska,
Larissa Lockshin,
Alex Morrison,
Athena Papadopoulos
& Adrianne Rubenstein
"Say Yes"
Elaine L. Jacob Gallery
Detroit, MI
April 7 - July 14, 2017
Marina Adams, Ivin Ballen, Yevgeniya Baras, Michael Berryhill, Katherine Bradford, Sara Bright, Susan Carr, Derrick Alexis Coard, Hannah Rose Dumes, EJ Hauser, Mary DeVincentis Herzog, Matt Kleberg, Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Emma Kohlmann, Sadie Laska, Robert Nava, Matt Phillips, Adrianne Rubenstein, Peter Shear, Jason Stopa, Andrew Tarlow, and Rachel Mica Weiss.
SUPPORT WIDE RAINBOW !
Bella Foster "Food of Light" at CANADA, New York, Feb 3 - March 12, 2017
Bruise
Facundo Argañaraz
Peter Bonde
Ry David Bradley
Chris Hood
Alex Ito
Adrainne Rubenstein
November 4 - December 3, 2016
Hybrid Objects at L'i.n.c.o.n.n.u.e. opens October 21, 2016
Bunnicula opens at Marvin Gardens Friday October 14th, 7-9pm
Bricks are Heavy
Elizabeth McIntosh
Thursday, September 8th — October 23re, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday September 8, 6-8pm
OUTSIDE
curated by Matthew Higgs
Saturday, September 3rd — September 25th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday September 3, 6-8pm
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
ETEL ADNAN, AARON BIRNBAUM, PEARL BLAUVELT, ROBERT BORDO, DAVID BYRD, BRIAN CALVIN, JAMES CASTLE, JANE CORRIGAN, ANDREW CRANSTON, VERNE DAWSON, LOUIS M. EILSHEMIUS, EMBAH, TOM FAIRS, ROCCO FAMA, BRUNO DEL FAVERO, JEFF FUNNELL, MAUREEN GALLACE, PAM GLICK, RAY HAMILTON, DANIEL HEIDKAMP, JOHN HILTUNEN, MERLIN JAMES, CHRIS JOHANSON, CHRISTOPHER KNOWLES, NATE LOWMAN, BILL LYNCH, DWIGHT MACKINTOSH, NOEL MCKENNA, MARLON MULLEN, ANNIE PEARLMAN, HELEN RAE, AURIE RAMIREZ, JESSI REAVES, TYSON REEDER, ADRIANNE RUBENSTEIN, SVEN SACHSALBER, WILLIAM SCOTT, SPENCER SWEENEY, DANNY THACH, WILIAM TYLER, MATTHEW WONG, JOSEPH YOAKUM
FORT GREENE
Venus Los Angeles
Saturday, September 17th — October 29th, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday September 17, 6-8pm
August
Harper's Books
August 13 - September 27, 2-16
87 Newtown Lane, East Hampton NY 11937
We Like Explosions
The Pit
August 6th - September 11, 2016
918 Ruberta Ave, Glendale CA 91201
Exhibition A: Limited Edition Print
"Honeybees in Corn Flowers", 2016
Proceeds donated to Materials for the Arts
X - Betty Tompkins, Adrianne Rubenstein, Al Freeman, Mira Schor, Miriam Laufer, Mimi Smith, Anna Rosen, Alicia Gibson, Lauren Faigeles, Susan Bee, Rebecca Watson Horn, Dakotah Savage, Katrina Fimmel, Rebecca Levitan, Leslie Stein, Annette Wehrhahn
July 8 - August 12, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday July 8, 6-8pm
www.lylesandking.com
Adrianne Rubenstein
White Columns, New York
Saturday, June 4th — Saturday, July 16th
www.whitecolumns.org
Frieze New York
May 5-8th, 2016
Organized by Katherine Bernhardt
www.canadanewyork.com
Frog in Fence
Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY
Saturday, April 9th — Sunday, May 8th
www.halseymckay.com
Alicia Gibson
Purgatory Emporium
Saturday, March 26th — Sunday, May 1st
Opening Saturday, March 26th 6:00 — 8:00PM
CANADA
www.canadanewyork.com
A Short Story
Al Freeman, Chris Hood, Monique Mouton, Adrianne Rubenstein
Saturday, February 27th — Saturday, March 26th
Opening Saturday, February 27th 6:00 — 10:00PM
FIELD CONTEMPORARY
17 West Broadway, Vancouver
www.field-contemporary.com