©Photo courtesy of Chris Collie.

Melissa Bianca Amore is an Australian/Italian international curator, art critic and independent scholar based in New York. Her primary area of exploration surrounds the study of phenomenology, the limitations of perceived space and interactive spatial aesthetics. A highly acclaimed critic and essayist, Amore has written for leading publications and authored exhibition catalogues since 2005.  Amore is currently a visiting critic and curator for selected organizations and academic institutions including Parsons School of Design, The New School University, New York; Residency Unlimited, New York and Art Omi Artists Residency, New York.Amore co-founded, alongside William Stover, a non-profit arts organization titled Re-Sited, which re-evaluates the architecture of “site” and the “conceptual space”- its materiality, particularities and relationship to the work of art. Re-Sited examines the spatial intersections between sculpture, architecture and space. The collaborative recently curated Traveling Spaces, a group exhibition that addressed ideas of “site” and “space” and questioned how we travel and move through space. The exhibition featured a series of site interventions and perceptual interruptions, which included works by Caroline Cloutier and Willem Besselink. In 2017, Re-Sited curated Sites of Knowledge at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York. Sites of Knowledge examined spatial semiotics and language as a visual structure of knowledge, and included works by Richard Artschwager, Henri Chopin, Sophie Tottie and Michael Rakowitz. Amore curated a solo exhibition titled ThreeFold, on Australian/American installation artist Natasha Johns-Messenger, at El Museo de Los Sures, in New York. ThreeFold was a large-scale site installation, an optical prism, predominantly made of mirrors and periscopic devices. Amore has also been the curatorial advisor for public art-work commissions both locally and in Australia, and continues today to advise for a private dealer based in New York City, alongside her curatorial projects. 

In 2012, Amore was appointed the Creative Director and Senior Curator for a non-profit arts organization, NotFair, in Melbourne, Australia. NotFair is a curated art fair-launching emerging and undiscovered contemporary artists across the Asia Pacific Region. Amore curated a large-scale exhibition Bal Taschit Thou Shalt Not Destroy, in 2006, at the Jewish Museum of Australia. The exhibition featured over thirty-five artists who examined early scripture including, readings from the Torah, the Talmud and biblical prescriptions about structures of knowledge and the environment.  Amore held the position as Exhibition Manager and Artist Liaison at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Australia for over seven years, where she managed Australia's most important contemporary artists. She received a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Art Criticism and Writing, at SVA, New York in 2014, and a Degree in Philosophy, History of Ideas, and a B.A in Creative Writing (Literature) and Art History (Minor) in 2005, Melbourne Australia, where she graduated with honors and also commenced a bachelor of psychology for two years.

Izabela and Rebecca take on a big spectacle of the Frieze Art Fair 2019 which featured leading

galleries from 26 countries this year. We feature a special selection of

galleries, artists, and focus themes through our lens.

Music was provided by Haunted Horses. Song, “Radar” from their EP album released in November 2018. www.hauntedhorses.nyc

Frieze is a non-profit organization established in 2003 as a spin-off of frieze magazine and now a media company that comprises three publications, frieze magazine based in London, Frieze Masters Magazine and Frieze Week; and four international art fairs, Frieze London,

Frieze LA, Frieze New York and Frieze Masters. Frieze offers a program of

courses and talks at Frieze Academy, as well as Frieze Foundation. Funded by the European Commission’s Culture 2000 programme and Arts Council England, which is in charge of the curated program at the Frieze Art Fair. Frieze.com

Izabela and Rebecca interview Marie-Ève Lafontaine, an independent curator of modern and contemporary art, about her practice between Canada, Germany, Poland and the USA, including her Schinkel Pavillon projects, TRAFO in Stettin in Poland, and her newest venture, “The Streets of Crocodiles.”

Music was provided by Haunted Horses. Song, “Radar” from their EP album released in November 2018. www.hauntedhorses.nyc 

Photo credit: Anna Tomczynska

Marie-Ève Lafontaine, an independent curator of modern and contemporary art, was formerly curator at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin and chief curator at TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Stettin, Poland. Lafontaine has curated solo exhibitions of artists such as Janet Cardiff, Alicja Kwade, Gilad Ratman and Ari Benjamin Meyers, and was involved in Schinkel Pavillon’s recent critically acclaimed Louise Bourgeois show, “The Empty House” in 2018. In addition to her institutional experience, Lafontaine is a regular contributor to online journals and editor of several solo catalogues of contemporary artists.Music was provided by Haunted Horses. Song, “Radar” from their EP album released in November 2018. www.hauntedhorses.nyc

Photo credit: Anna Tomczynska

Comparative analysis of two big exhibits: Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at The Brooklyn Museum, displaying her artwork alongside personal possessions, which had been stored in the Casa Azul, (translated as the "Blue House") her longtime Mexico City home; and Nari Ward: We The People at The New Musuem, which features over thirty sculptures, paintings, videos, and large-scale installations from throughout Ward’s twenty-five-year career, highlighting his status as one of the most important and influential sculptors working today. Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at The Brooklyn MuseumOn view through May 12Curated by Circe Henestrosa this is the first exhibition in the United States to display a collection of Kahlo’s clothing and other personal possessions. They are displayed alongside paintings, drawings, photographs, related historical films and ephemera, as well as works from the Brooklyn museum’s holdings of Mesoamerican art.  The examples of Kahlo’s personal artifacts in the exhibit, which had been stored in the Casa Azul, (translated as the "Blue House") her longtime Mexico City home, are intended to shed a new light on her crafted personal and public appearance and identity, which reflect her cultural heritage and political beliefs, while also addressing her physical disabilities. Friday Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, a suburb south of Mexico City in 1907.  Her work intertwines narratives of Mexican folk customs and Roman Catholic iconography to create works that are defined through her heritage, ethnicity, disability, and her political views. Her work is exemplified by uncompromising honesty, searching through the self-portraiture self-scrutiny and self-reflection. Kahlo was an activist during the Mexican revolutions of the early 1920s. Ministry of Education launched Mexican Muralist Movement and in 1922 Kahlo enrolled in National preparatory School where Diego Rivera was working on his first commission. She joined a Communist party as teenager in 1925 where, along with her husband Rivera, lead the Union of Mexican Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors. Like other artists within Mexico during the era, Kahlo infused her work with “Mexicanidad,” an identification with Mexico’s distinct national history, traditions, culture, and natural environment, but she did so in a much more personal way. Nari Ward: We The People  at The New Musuem On view through May 26 Curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator; Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director and Helga Chrisoffersen, the exhibit features over thirty sculptures, paintings, videos, and large-scale installations from throughout Ward’s twenty-five-year career, highlighting his status as one of the most important and influential sculptors working today. Ward relies on research into specific histories and sites to uncover connections among geographically and culturally disparate communities and to explore the tension between tradition and transformation.   Nari Ward was born in 1963, in St. Andrew, Jamaica and is known for his sculptural installations composed of discarded material found and collected in his neighborhood. Since the early 1990s, Ward has produced his works by accumulating staggering amounts of humble materials and repurposing them in consistently surprising ways. He has repurposed objects such as baby strollers, shopping carts, bottles, doors, television sets, cash registers and shoelaces, among other materials. Ward re-contextualizes these found objects in thought-provoking juxtapositions that create complex, metaphorical meanings to confront social and political issues surrounding race, poverty, and consumer culture. 

Coco Dolle is a French-American artist and curator whose work explores themes of the body, identity and feminism. She is the founder of the "Legacy Fatale" performance art project and the curator of “TRANS-Ville” series at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery. An avant-guard curator within the feminist conversations in New York, Miss Dolle has presented numerous concept exhibitions including at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, The National Arts Club and The Untitled Space, while working with pioneer artists such as Betty Tompkins, Kembra Pfahler, Narcissister and the Guerrilla Girls. Her performance works have been presented widely including at The Queens Museum, Czech Center (NYC), Miami Art Basel,  Deitch Projects and Manchester Art Gallery (UK).

© Photo of Legacy Fatale performance art by Kim Doan Quoc, 2018

Music for this episode is generously provided by Leigh Celent and Castle Black.

Check them out on www.castleblackmusic.com

Coco will host an upcoming performance happening with her troupe Legacy Fatale that includes workshops and immersive performance happening in Rosekill, NY on Saturday, May 25.

You are welcome to bring your tent and camp overnight and enjoy Sunday by the lake.

PANATHENAIA FESTIVAL FB event

PANATHENAIA TICKETS 

Izabela and Rebecca converse with special guest artist, activist, and curator, Katya Grokhovsky, and take an analytical look at the most influential artist of Pop Art, Andy Warhol, in a dialogue with Sarah Lucas, one of the most influential artists in the UK associated with Young British Artist (YBA), in response to their recent retrospectives, From A to B and Back Again curated by Donna De Salvo, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney Museum, and Au Naturel at The New Museum, curated by the New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni, and the curator Margot Norton. Through a feminist gaze, the speakers reflect on these two large retrospectives, the narratives of the works presented in the above institutions, the contemporary meaning of these artists legacies, and selected aspects of the artists' biographies. Katya Grokhovsky is an NYC based artist, curator and a Founding Artistic Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Grokhovsky holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has received support through numerous residencies, fellowships, and awards. Her work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. www.katyagrokhovsky.net The music is provided by Ramona Dochioiu. 

Izabela and Rebecca’s guest for the first episode of I ART NY is Katya Grokhovsky (b.in Ukraine, based in New York), whose extensive art practice encompasses several mediums, including installation, performance, sculpture, video, and painting. In response to the hosts’ questions, the artist addresses issues that inform her art practice, her role and as an activist, as well as her experience as an immigrant artist, all through a feminist lens.

Katya’s work explores ideas about gender and migrant identity construction, alienation, labor, and the self. Through research and autobiographical experience, Katya constructs characters, underscoring study of stereotypes, assumptions, oppression, prejudices, and injustice. 

Katya is an independent curator, educator and a founding director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB). She has received support through numerous residencies, fellowships and awards including MAD - Museum of Art and Design Studios Program, Art and Law Fellowship, BRIC workspace Residency, Studios at MASS MoCA, Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship, ArtSlant 2017 Prize, NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, among others. www.katyagrokhovsky.net