The Remix Podcast

Molly Surno is an artist and curator who uses her eclectic background to create dynamic and community-driven cultural programs. Molly walks us through her recent curatorial project with Spotify. In the process, she explains what transcendental screen savers are and what it was like to commission artists for the first video project on a major streaming service. She gives us examples of new models and has theories on why the art world is so slow to change. Why is she in New York and not Los Angeles? Listen to find out!

Molly Surno graduated with an MFA in Visual Art at Columbia University. She blends visual art, film, music, food, and technology to create performances and happenings. We of Me, her large scale sound performance, was exhibited at the Getty Museum in 2017 and as part of BAM's Next Wave in the fall of 2015. She has also been a resident of Recess, Pioneer Works, Steeprock Arts, and Watershed Arts.

In 2008, Surno founded her nomadic performance series Cinema 16, which pairs contemporary musicians with experimental films. Named after the New York-based avant-garde film society in 1947 and inspired by Maya Deren's Greenwich Village exhibition of experimental films, Cinema 16 has shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Kitchen, MoMA/PS1, Museum of Moving Image, among others. Surno has brought thousands of people together to experience avant garde cinema, performance, and music in each of these establishments.

Surno has also curated video artworks for the “Spotlight” (a new format on Spotify) version of the 2017 novel The Minefield Girl. Currently, she is the Art Director for Elsewhere, developing a rotating arts program called Landscape. Surno has worked for the team that created TEDx and as the first Outreach Director for Kickstarter. She now consults on cultural research, curating, and creative programming for brands and organizations such as Kickstarter, Spotify, Neuehouse, Sonos, Clif Bar, MANGO, and WhatShouldWeDo, among others.

www.Mollysurno.com

Magda Sawon talks with The Remix about Postmasters’ history from the East Village to Soho to Chelsea to Tribeca. She is candid about her decision to use Patreon to address the gallery’s sustainability and the urgent need for greater transparency in the art world. We also talk about the value of what a brick-and-mortar gallery brings to the community and the challenges related to being relevant and risk-taking in the current climate. There is also advice on how to make a delicious DIY margarita.

Magda Sawon is a contemporary art gallerist and art world figure who founded and owns New York's Postmasters Gallery (with her husband Tamas Banovich), a gallery for young and established contemporary artists, especially those working in new media. The gallery currently occupies a large space in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. It is considered to be one of the country’s leading experimental galleries.

@postmastersgallery

Larry Ossei-Mensah’s IG handle is @youngglobal and he’s truly on the move. Larry discusses how and why he’s using his MBA to work in the arts and support emerging artists. We discuss his travels outside of his hometown of NYC, his multiple overlapping projects, how he supports community in tangible ways, and how he engages institutions while remaining independent. Relevant advice to artists and curators pushed this podcast well beyond our poorly enforced 30-minute cap!

Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic who uses contemporary art and culture as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions and collaborations with artists at commercial and nonprofit spaces, including: Firelei Báez, Ruby Amanze, Hugo McCloud, Brendan Fernandes and Peter Williams. He has advocated for and written on some of the most dynamic visual artists working today: such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Lorna Simpson and street artist JR. Ossei-Mensah is a co-founder of the 501c3 ARTNOIR. He recently served as the Critic-in Residence at ART OMI and currently serves as a mentor in the New Museum’s incubator program, NEW INC. He recently opened a solo show of Allison Janae Hamilton’s work at MASS MoCA. This summer, Ossei-Mensah will be co-curating a group show in Rome, Italy at Anna Marra Contemporanea featuring Derrick Adams, Firelei Baez, Abigail DeVille, Paul Anthony Smith, Alexandria Smith and William Villalongo.

@youngglobal

@artnoirco

Michael Foley wants to be excited about art again! He turned a bi@!% session into a 10-panelist (!) discussion about what is wrong with the art world and what can be done about it. He talks to us about showing work that can’t be shown elsewhere, how honesty allows for change, how art fairs and the ease of buying work online have changed the business model and “sunk the ship” of many dealers who stick to traditional sales methods. Are artists the best dealers? What do galleries offer in the age of social media? Do we do away with the 50/50 split? Does the definition of a gallery need to change? How do we foster open dialogue? We discuss it all! And we attempt sound effects. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go well.

Michael Foley opened Foley Gallery in the fall of 2004 after fourteen years of working with notable photography galleries including Fraenkel Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery, and Yancey Richardson Gallery. The gallery brings together fine line and obsessive precision in the disciplines of drawing, cut paper, painting, and photography. After eight years in Chelsea, the gallery has relocated to the LES, taking a storefront location on Orchard Street, just south of Delancey.

In 2009, Foley co-founded The Exhibition Lab, a study center for people involved in various aspects of fine art photography. Foley continues his interest in educating by serving on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography where he teaches and lectures on issues in contemporary photography. He has a private coaching practice for artists who would like to improve their work and navigate the art world.

@foleygallery

Patton Hindle is a facilitator and ardent advocate for artists and their projects. She explains the importance of community, the difference between funding through Kickstarter and funding through Drip, and what kind of projects are good for each platform. Patton firmly believes artists should be paid and we should all be patrons. How does she balance all of this while she also runs a gallery? She shares her model for getting it all done.

Patton was appointed Kickstarter’s Director of Arts to help artists and arts organizations realize ambitious projects through the crowd-funding platform. Kickstarter recently launched Drip, a subscription-based platform that allows patrons to invest in ongoing projects, giving artists and creators access longer-term funding. She was previously the Director of Gallery and Institutional Partnerships at ArtSpace and the Director of DODGE Gallery. In addition to working at Kickstarter, Patton is a partner in the contemporary gallery yours mine & ours on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

@pattonhindle

@kickstarter

@yoursmineandoursgallery

Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger is curator at No Longer Empty (NLE) and the Director of the NLE Curatorial Lab. There, she uses art as a creative tool to address social, cultural, and political issues. She talks to The Remix about following her passion for site-specific work, education, community engagement, artists, and curating. She talks about nonprofits--why they exist and how they may evolve. She explains why No Longer Empty is NOT a pop-up and how NLE’s exhibition-making model is changing. She also has fantastic ideas on what cities should do with vacant spaces. Shout out to Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op, one of Rachel’s favorite projects in the recent past.

Rachel is co-founder of 1@111, a series of process-oriented conversations that focus on a single work, text, curatorial premise, or proposition. Independent curatorial projects have focused on the intersection of information, data, and art, and include: Once upon a Time, There Was the End at Center for Book Arts (New York, NY); Data Deluge at Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, TX); and Library Science at Artspace (New Haven, CT). Rachel has served as co-director of Sara Meltzer Gallery and curator at Exit Art, where she organized the final exhibitions Every Exit Is an Entrance: 30 Years of Exit Art and Collective/Performative. Publications include monographs, exhibition catalog essays, and contributions to Unfinished Memories: 30 Years of Exit Art (Steidl, 2016) and Art Galleries International: Post-War to Post-Millennium (Dumont Literatur/Kunst Verlag, 2009). Rachel received her MA in Curatorial Studies in Contemporary Art and Culture from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

@rachelgugelberger

@nolongerempty

Ellie Rines tells the story of transitioning from showing work in an unstaffed window space to her current gallery space at 56 Henry. She talks candidly about the jobs she works to support her gallery, the fact that the gallery is her apartment (not a secret), and the love she has for her gallery community. She’s breaking traditional gallery rules with her choice of gallery staff, the small group of artists she represents, and the unique opportunities she gives to bigger-named artists who are represented elsewhere. We discuss growing up, social media, the danger of art fairs, extreme faith in her artists, and her strategies for making it work. She actually talks numbers! Hallelujah!

Ellie is the Founder and Director of 56 Henry Gallery, named by PAPER Magazine as part of “Chinatown’s New Art Gang,” and touted by Artinfo as a “small space with big ambition.” This isn’t her first small space though—she was previously the director of 55 Gansevoort, a window front and vestibule in the Meatpacking district.

@56henry.nyc

The first batch of a new, 15-episode podcast series hosted by The Remix co-founders Heather Bhandari, Courtney Colman, and Steven Sergiovanni explores the challenges of creating and sustaining a business and career in the visual arts. The Remix is seeking answers to questions that are often asked in private. Topics include the struggling galleries, rising rents, a lack of patrons, a lack of diversity, and how we're all surviving and redefining our definitions of success while still remaining passionate about art.

The Remix is a project-based curatorial team established to exhibit the work of underrepresented artists. Founded in 2017 by three former colleagues from Mixed Greens gallery--Heather Bhandari, Courtney Colman, and Steven Sergiovanni--it strives to create and promote new platforms that foster transparency, community, generosity, and the sharing of resources among artists and arts workers alike. Visit us at TheRemix.nyc to learn more about what we're up to.