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contemporary art
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.: Submission guidelines for artists
Sam Ekwurtzel
On the Beach
THROUGH Thursday, August 11, 2013
About the Exhibition:
On the Beach presents a number of objects whose properties are based on coastal engineering forms, vessel design, and aids to navigation. Many of the works are composed of timbers that Ekwurtzel has shaped using a home-made sawmill and a multitude of crude jigs. Native white pine, brownstone, raingear, cast iron, and concrete make up a landscape of forms which identify with the aesthetics of minimalism and manual labor, recuperating the importance of the physicality of the art object.
About the Artist:
Sam Ekwurtzel lives and works in New London, CT. Recent exhibitions include It's When It's Gone That You Really Notice It, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY; Kinds of Light, Second Guest Projects, New York, NY; The Passenger Position, Reference Gallery, Richmond, VA; Homo Duplex, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; and A Failed Entertainment, Land of Tomorrow, Louisville KY. Experiences working as a fisherman or arborist have led Ekwurtzel away from the fine arts, only to draw him back into sculpture via boat building or timber framing.
Tadashi Moriyama
Planetalgia
THROUGH Thursday, July 4, 2013
About the Exhibition:
Planetalgia is an accumulation of paintings, sculptures, performance, and animation, inspired by concepts from the book Lunartix by Seigou Matsuoka. Matsuoka coins the term “Planetary Nostalgia” as a sweet and bitter sentiment. Loosely translated, he writes, “Since we cannot escape from the earth, we feel despair for our fate and leave our destination on the unreachable but intimate moon, and yearn for it endlessly." This notion shapes the visual and conceptual language of the exhibition.
About the Artist:
Tadashi Moriyama was born and raised in Japan, moving to the United States in 2001 at the age of 21. He received his BA in 2003 from the Tyler School of Art and his MFA in 2006 from the University of Pennsylvania. Moriyama's work has exhibited internationally and across the United States. Recent solo and group shows include Johansson Projects, San Francisco; Jonathan Ferrara, NewOrleans; Artiscope, Belgium; Artprojx cinema Volta art fair, New York.
Moriyama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, using a variety of media, miniature drawing, sculpture and animation to create a form of unique narrative. He draws extensively on his own experience as a metropolitan resident, a Tokyo-raised New Yorker.
William Villalongo
Fierce!
THROUGH Thursday, JuNE 9, 2013
About the Exhibition:
The term “Fierce!” in American vernacular language has a double meaning, which speaks to feminine beauty as a representation of strength and authority. Beauty and power are fused together to express an attitude that is antithetical to the common notions of both ideas. This exhibition brings together a selection of Villalongo's recent works subverting themes found in Primitivism, a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples. Through Villalongo's velvety, looking-glass paintings and drawings, the artist questions an exotic gaze directed toward "otherness" by inverting the genre of Modern Abstract painting. A clan of lake dwelling maidens pull models of Western art radically out of context, reconsidering standards of Western beauty and the possible intersections of art and survival.
About the Artist:
William Villalongo lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in 1975 in Hollywood, FL and raised in the town of Bridgeton, NJ. Villalongo is the recipient of the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor's Grant. His work is included in several notable collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Princeton University Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in the Art In America, The New Yorker and the New York Times. Villalongo is currently represented by the Susan Inglett Gallery in New York, and PEVETO Fine Art in Houston.
Adam Niklewicz
The Charter Oak
and Walking Around a Tree
[watch the video]
The Charter Oak water mural is located at 215 Pearl Street in downtown Hartford, on the exterior wall of the long vacant deconsecrated synagogue. The mural, while barely visible when the wall is dry, blossoms into full detail when water saturates the piece. Niklewicz’s water-activated mural depicts the enduring symbol of Connecticut’s revolutionary spirit. The iconic image, which appears and disappears from view, is based on Charles DeWolf Brownell’s painting of 1857 in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Local artist J.D. Richey assisted Niklewicz in realizing his vision for The Charter Oak.
The Charter Oak was officially unveiled at a reception on Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 5:30PM. After a brief reception, all were invited back to Real Art Ways for Creative Cocktail Hour. After the initial reception, the mural was "watered" every day at 3PM until the beginning of November.
Walking Around a Tree is a companion piece to the water mural. The projection, which animates a young tree that revolves 360 degrees, was displayed at night, high on the exterior of the AT&T building adjacent to the synagogue.
The Walking Around a Tree projection debuted the evening of Saturday, September 22, 2012. Viewers were welcomed to begin the adventure at Real Art Ways by participating in our Real Ride, which stopped by the AT&T building for the premier of the piece.
Artist Statement
Public art should embrace the existing environment and work to enrich reality. The blank slates (almost screens) of the two downtown buildings invite visuals that give counterbalance (nature) and meaning (historical context). The image of the Charter Oak speaks to both. The projection of the new tree speaks to the continuum.
About Adam Niklewicz
Adam Niklewicz arrived in the United States in the 1980’s, seeking refuge from martial law in Poland. Much of Niklewicz’s work is informed by the dislocation he feels as a Polish-born American.
While he has developed a body of work that is varied in material and formal terms, it is unified in its lyricism and sense of loss, and in its obsession with the impossible project of reconciling past and present.
Collaboration and Support
The Capital City Canvas public art projects The Charter Oak and Walking Around a Tree are co-organized by Real Art Ways, the City of Hartford and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art with support from the Greater Hartford Arts Council. The initiative is funded by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development - Office of the Arts and the City of Hartford with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. In-kind support for the project is generously provided by 215 Pearl LLC, AT&T Connecticut, TheaterWorks, The Metropolitan District, and the U.S. Army, U.S. Naval, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps recruiting offices in Hartford.
Step Up 2013
A series of up to six solo exhibitions, open to emerging artists living in New York, New Jersey, and New England.
STEP UP is a series of six solo exhibitions open to emerging artists living in New York, New Jersey or New England.
The STEP UP exhibition series seeks to provide emerging artists in our region an exhibition and publication opportunity at a critical moment in their careers. While artists are permitted to propose the exhibition of existing work, the jury places special emphasis on proposals that call for the creation of new work.
The jury selects work based on: the quality of the artist's work, the innovation evidenced by the submitted work and proposal, the potential impact of the exhibition on the artist's career and the economic and physical feasibility of the proposed exhibition.
Jurors:
- Sharon Butler, Artist, Writer, and Publisher of Two Coats of Paint, represented by Pocket Utopia, New York, NY
- Carl E. Hazlewood, Curator, Writer, Artist and co-founder of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ
- Denise Markonish, Curator at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA
STEP UP 2013 is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sandy and Howard Fromson, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, the Nimoy Foundation, the National Performance Network's Visual Artists Network, Lincoln Financial Group, Travelers and Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign.
