"Diago's work is often a direct criticism of racism in Cuba, exploring the roots and role of slavery in Cuban history and culture...[he] uses found materials — wood, metal, textiles — from Havana neighborhoods near his home and studio."

"From the spanning and intermingling of methods and materials he uses in Now Those Days Are Gone, it is clear Riley not only 'notices,' but prioritizes this seeing and being with. As a result, his work is a determined sharing by all means possible, where to recognize one bird’s identity may be a key to paying attention and then perhaps, each time a pigeon happens by outside of the gallery—which in New York City happens often—a kind of recognition of singularity may occur again."

"Artes de Cuba: From the Island to the World” will spotlight the music, theater, dance, visual arts and film of Cubans and Cuban Americans. The lineup includes singer Omara Portuondo, the popular band Los Van Van, the Malpaso Dance Company and the award-winning Argo Teatro...[t]here will be exhibitions of visual artists Roberto Diago and Emilio Perez, a mini-film fest commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Havana Film Festival and a multimedia installation from the American Museum of Natural History."

"The exhibition is Riley’s follow up to his 2016 Creative Time project, Fly by Night, in which he transformed a flock of 2,000 birds into a nightly light show. The birds took flight from the Baylander, a Vietnam-era decommissioned US Navy ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard at dusk with LED lights strapped to their ankles. (The current show’s title, “Now Those Days Are Gone,” suggests nostalgia for the completed project.)"

"In an exhibition called Now Those Days Are Gone, Riley has put together large-scale photographs from Creative Time-commissioned Fly by Night. The photos showing the dreamy flight patterns of the birds as well as "1,000 individual, hand-painted and embroidered portraits of pigeons from the project, "complete with their name and loft and crew info."

"Riley’s current exhibition at Magnan Metz is a two-parter: A large temporary space across the street from the gallery displays new work, made in the wake of Fly by Night; and in the gallery itself is a mini-retrospective of past pieces and project artifacts, including his original submarine. The show lends aesthetic grounding and context to the performance-style works, and tinges Riley’s rapscallion energy with introspection and melancholy"

Magnan Metz Gallery is proud to host the Orquesta Juvenil de Jazz de Cuba, a youth jazz orchestra from Havana, to give an exhibition performance as part of the esteemed Essentially Ellington Festival.

While the official concert starts at 6:00PM, the children will be having rehearsals throughout the day, and all are welcome to stop by and listen!

WHEN: Wednesday, May 10, 2017
TIME: 6:00 - 8:00PM
REHEARSAL 1: 11:00 - 1:00PM (tentative)
REHEARSAL 2: 2:00 - 4:00PM (tentative)

Aired on February 17, 2017. Interview with Cuban artist Juan Roberto Diago, where he discusses his current show, Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present, at the Cooper Gallery at Harvard University.

"Through May 5 at the Cooper Gallery, “Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present” confronts the Cuban racial narrative, rewriting history to include the slavery and shame the country has tried to forget. This is artist Juan Roberto Diago’s first retrospective, and first exhibit in the United States. Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, the show is on display at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art."

"This exhibition includes 25 artworks of mixed media and installation art that span Juan Roberto Diago’s vibrant career, since the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent."

Slavery is in Cuba’s past, but, as in the United States, its legacy continues. That is the ongoing career theme of mixed-media artist Juan Roberto Diago, who will exhibit 25 pieces in “Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present,” a career retrospective at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art.

"La Galería Ethelbert Cooper de Arte Africano y Afroamericano de la Universidad de Harvard acoge la exposición Diago: Los pasados de este presente afrocubano, que se inaugura el 1 de febrero en esa sede universitaria."

"CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art presents “Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present,” the first serious and systematic look at Cuba’s prominent contemporary artist Juan Roberto Diago and his prolific body of work, remarkable for its number of aesthetic turns in a relatively short period. The exhibition runs February 2 through May 5, 2017."

 

"The exhibition is appearing in a gallery of African and African American art. What is it like to present the work in this context?

JRD: It's very important to show, to as broad a public as possible, that artistic creativity is plural. In the world today, the West is presented as a singular paradigm. That vision of a "unique world" is not true. There are other visions, other knowledge. The vision of the Afro-diasporic culture is more than masks, more than drums, more than big breasts or buttocks. It's more than a skin color. A space like this allows the possibility of expressing ourselves, in our own voice."

In a double interview, artist and curator discuss the show opening tomorrow evening

"Juan Roberto Diago is a leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, which has valiantly denounced the persistence of racism and discrimination in Cuban society. This exhibition of twenty-five mixed-media and installation artworks traces Diago’s vibrant career from the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural loss, but also of resilience and recovery, the kind of history that is required in this Afro-Cuban present."

"Wenyon & Gamble: Out of Place, now on view at the Chelsea gallery, is the first New York showing of “Bibliomancy.” The installation by Wenyon & Gamble (the duo of Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon) debuted in 1998 at the Boston Athenaeum, with the books sourced from that institution’s collections. Although it’s now almost 20 years old, titles such as Europe, Going, Going, Gone! and The Strange Career of Jim Crow are reminders of how history always haunts the present."

Students are given the opportunity to experience Cuban culture firsthand

"...[David Opdyke] has taken scores of vintage postcards and intervened with gouache and ink, altering each image in a way that completely changes its meaning. Most of these cards depict well known buildings, monuments, or historic sites. As propaganda, they are determinedly cheerful, their rosy or sepia tones and earnest vernacular meant to invoke that particular swell of American patriotism that believes in the nation’s perpetual innocence and wide-eyed enthusiasm. Opdyke seizes upon this pictorial language and turns it on its head."

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Duke Riley’s Acorn (2007) will be on view at the New York Historical Society from September 23, 2016 to January 8, 2017. This eight-foot wooden submarine fashioned after the 18^th century Turtle is part of The Battle of Brooklyn, an exhibition commemorating the 240^th anniversary of the largest battle of the American Revolution, and will be shown alongside over 100 objects documenting major political and military figures, the dynamic debates over independence, and the artifacts of combat and British occupation.

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June 18 - September 11
View photographs by the art team Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon. The photos show panoramic scenes of observatories, weather stations, auditoriums and halls of science, including one of NYSCI’s Great Hall. The images are created using a digital camera with a rotating lens.

Free with NYSCI admission.

Duke Riley recently shared a new cover that he designed for Penguin Classics. The redesigned cover for Herman Melville's "Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories" can now be found in bookstores! 

While pigeons aren’t exactly greeted with open arms in New York — often fondly referred to locally as ‘rats of the sky’ — artist Duke Riley has found a way to elevate the common urban fowl via 'Fly by Night', a performance that has brought hundreds to the gates of Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, eager to catch a glimpse of the birds in action.

One of the most stunning parts of Fly by Night was the moment the pigeons took flight from the ship, one by one. As the sky darkened, they swirled around, like swarms of angry fireflies, floating constellations or throngs of shooting stars going around and around. Unfortunately, not all of the pigeons’ LED anklets were lit up, but the spectacle was still something to marvel at. One of my neighbors mentioned,“There’s just something so magical about this.”

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is infested. 2,000 pigeons have come home to roost on a defunct aircraft carrier. This is Fly by Night, the newest project by Creative Time, a socially-engaged arts organization best known for the Tribute in Light, those ghostly beams that punch the sky over Manhattan every year in the week running up to September 11th.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard ushered in a new public artwork, “Fly by Night,” this weekend. Artist Duke Riley turned one of New York’s most loathed creatures into a work of art by attaching LED lights to a flock of trained pigeons’ ankles. He and a crew communicated to the birds with whistles and bag-waving from atop the flight deck of a decommissioned Navy ship, conducting the performance to bleachers full of onlookers.

“It is a collaborative project between me and the pigeons,” Riley told Reuters. “It’s a performance or maybe it’s just a drawing that they are doing in the sky.”

"...the pigeons taught everyone on hand quite a bit about their intelligence, their ability to collaborate with earthbound beings and their beauty when airborne. Despite clouds and chilly temperatures, the birds’ performance was a revelation, a touching unity of human and animal behavior, with sky, water and the city." -Roberta Smith

Through this series of performances, Riley hopes to highlight the historical significance of both the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which was once home to the largest pigeon coop in the U.S., and the city’s rich relationship with the species. “There used to be a pigeon coop on every roof in Manhattan,” he explained. “It’s a tradition that’s been part of New York culture for more than 100 years.”

Crafting a public art project that is literally sky-high, every weekend this spring (from early May through mid-June) Riley will release thousands of pigeons from a decommissioned naval ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He will then orchestrate a series of "performances" as the birds flit and soar en masse above the East River. As the sun sets, the massive flock of trained flyers—each equipped with a leg band sporting a tiny LED light—will create what Riley has likened to a series of undulating constellations gliding through the dusk, before returning to a dozen specially designed pigeon coops built atop the ship's gun-metal gray decks.

It gives a whole new meaning to the words “performance art.”

About 2,000 homing pigeons will illuminate New York City’s night sky in a project by Brooklyn-based artist Duke Riley.

The birds, each equipped with a remote-controlled leg band LED light attached to their leg, will be released at twilight from coops aboard a former aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The flock will swoop, twirl and glide over the East River for 30 minutes every weekend between May 7 and June 12. The event is described on its website as a “transcendent union of public art and nature.”

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was selected because it once housed the nation’s largest naval fleet of pigeon carriers.

Riley was standing onboard The Baylander, a Vietnam War–era 131-foot aircraft carrier once used to train helicopter pilots that’s now docked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Riley has commandeered the flight deck and built pigeon coops—enough to house over 2,000 birds—and during six successive weekends beginning in early May, he will unleash Fly By Night, a Creative Time–backed production in which, at twilight, those birds will be released into the air above Wallabout Bay. As the sun settles over the city, viewers will come to see that tiny LED lights have been attached to the pigeons, creating a massive, moving, low-flying constellation that then returns back to the boat on Riley’s call after a half hour or so.

Two thousand pigeons will swoop over the East River in a high-flying art project organizers hope will make New Yorkers see the “rats with wings” in a more sympathetic light.

The homing pigeons of “Fly By Night” will perform for a half-hour every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night from May 7 through June 12.

The pigeons, many owned by artist Duke Riley, will be stationed aboard a decommissioned naval vessel docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

They’ll be fitted with small white LED lights that organizers said will allow spectators to see them soar over the Williamsburg Bridge and neighborhoods on the Lower East Side.

For six weekends, beginning on May 5 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, more than 2,000 pigeons will put on an avian-powered light show: Mr. Riley’s valentine to the city, its historic shoreline, its oft-maligned spirit animal and the vanishing world of rooftop pigeon fanciers. 

Artist Duke Riley’s latest performance piece with commissioner Creative Time, ‘Fly by Night,’ will send thousands of pigeons over the East River and Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, illuminating the skies and celebrating a lost New York City tradition.

Pigeons wouldn’t seem to be a draw in New York City. The prospect of thousands of them flying overhead in a concentrated area could strike some as a downright nightmare.

But to the Red Hook, Brooklyn, artist Duke Riley, who has a long history with the birds, they are beautiful. And in May, with the public art group Creative Time, he is bringing a large trained flock to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for “Fly by Night.”

Beginning in May 2016, Creative Time and the Brooklyn Navy Yard will present Fly By Night, artist Duke Riley’s public artwork of unprecedented scale and beauty. Fly By Night will be Riley’s largest project to date.

Friday through Sunday evenings at dusk, a massive flock of pigeons will fly in elegant harmony above the East River, as Riley orchestrates a series of performances occurring regularly throughout late spring. At the call of a whistle, thousands of birds will emerge from their home in a grand, converted historic boat docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The pigeons will circle above the river as the sun sets over Manhattan, and small leg bands, historically used to carry messages, will be replaced with tiny LED lights, illuminating the sky in a transcendent union of public art and nature.

This show coincided with prospects of a rapprochement between Cuba and the United States, and mixed-signals politics played a role in the event itself. When it opened in June, the Cuban-born artist Tania Bruguera was under the equivalent of house arrest in Havana for trying to do a performance piece that invited people to speak freely at an open microphone in Revolution Square. During the Biennial itself, another Cuban-born artist, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, working with a group of her American students, quietly presented Cubans with a similar opportunity to express themselves by writing in notebooks on questions about current events, including whether art could contribute to cross-cultural conversations. The focused and passionate responses of the writers said yes. There was no government interference.

Crone Berlin is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Cuban artist, ROBERTO DIAGO, in Germany. Born in Havana in 1971, the Berlin artist will present a selection of new, diverse media works, which deal with the critical situation of the black minority of Cuba. 

Roberto Diago is among the most important contemporary artists in Cuba. The grandson of the painter Juan Roberto Diago Querol, he was trained at the Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro and cross-media operates in the fields of sculpture, painting, photography and installation. In his works, he expresses a minimalist design. Roberto Diago manufactures subtle references to his biographical roots and the fate of his ancestors, who came as slaves from Africa to Cuba in the early 16th century. Although slavery in Cuba was abolished in 1886 and since the revolution in 1959, officially there is the equality of all classes, the black minority in the country is still experiencing everyday racism. 

Corruption is universal, of course, but the fact that a Cuban artist is not only tolerated but celebrated for signaling its presence at home — “Upperworld” was included in the prestigious Havana Biennial earlier this year — might surprise viewers with different assumptions about artistic freedom on the island. The goal of independent Havana curator Cristina Vives was to elicit just that sort of surprise at the variety of contemporary artistic responses to Cuban reality when she organized exhibit that opened this week at the IDB Cultural Center, called “Q & A: with Seven Contemporary Cuban Artists.”

“That was my challenge as a curator,” Vives says. “For me and for the artists around me, what are some of the main issues that I think have to be faced? Not the regular [themes] that every tourist perceives when they see Cuba. Let’s go deep. So I went to young [artists]. Why? Because they have nothing to lose….And the very good background they have, of studies in Cuba, of living in Cuba, knowing the reality, but from a new and fresh perspective. Very critical, but very positive.”

A new generation of artists from the island makes its first visit to Washington, D.C.

The Inter-American Development Bank’s Art Gallery will host the exhibition Q&A with Seven Contemporary Cuban Artists from December 10, 2015 through March 10, 2016 in Washington, D.C.

The exhibition, featuring some of Cuba’s most acclaimed young artists, will showcase a selection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and installations that center on two fundamental questions: ‘how do others see us?’ and ‘how do we see ourselves?’ – questions the artists ask themselves when discussing their country and their work.

The show includes pieces by Alexandre Arrechea, Alejandro Campins, Javier Castro, Humberto Díaz, Fidel García, Alejandro González, and Lorena Gutiérrez. Besides the exhibition at the IDB, from Dec. 7 to Dec. 11 the artists and the show’s curator, Cristina Vives, will take part in a series of events organized by other local organizations such as American University’s Katzen Arts Center and the Brookings Institution.

The father of universal architectural icons such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis or the Dancing House in Prague, arrived in Havana on a yacht designed by himself, with family and friends. After a short taxi ride to the Plaza de San Francisco, stopped at Cafe del Oriente and held talks with his host in Havana, Eusebio Leal, and architects and specialists from the Office of the Historian of the City, in addition to choosing a " almendrón "for a ride. In a meeting with artists and intellectuals at the headquarters of the UNEAC, outlined on the website of the institution, recalled having met and shared a decade with members of Buena Vista Social Club becomes more and recognized his fascination with colonial and contemporary architecture Caribbean, as well as authentic Cuban music. After expressing his desire to contribute to the work of conservation and renewal of Havana, he said "a building can have feelings. When we see or use these buildings respond to such feelings and our spirit is encouraged. They help us to be better people."

As Art Basel in Miami Beach opens to VIPs today, a nearby city looms large on collectors’ minds: Havana. This is the first edition of the fair since diplomatic ties between the US and Cuba were restored in July, and since the US relaxed its trade embargo on Cuba last December, but art enthusiasts are already flocking to the Caribbean island.

“There were always serious collectors who went to Cuba with museum groups, but now you are getting a second group—Chelsea collectors,” says Alberto Magnan, the Cuban-born co-founder of Magnan Metz Gallery in New York. “I’m having trouble getting hotel rooms.”

Cuban artists inhabit an unusual milieu. They enjoy a high level of education and submit to a rigorous apprenticeship which allows them to draw and paint effortlessly; they have the good fortune to be part of a society that values creative endeavour; and they are encouraged to pursue high ideals and political engagement.

On the other hand, they must accept economic hardship and be prepared to use their creativity to get around shortages in artists’ materials. Studio space is in short supply, too, so many artists work at home — which gives an added dimension to studio visits.

The artists featured here were all born in the 1970s, with the exception of Roberto Fabelo (born 1951). They are children of the revolution, non-participants in the struggle who are now well placed to benefit from the opening up of their country and the spotlight currently shining on Cuban art.

Renowned emerging artist Sofia Maldonado is set to generate and lead a group of local Puerto Rican artists in revitalizing the city of Caguas, Puerto Rico with their public art. The initiative, Cromática, Caguas a Color, will transform several unused buildings throughout the city while serving as a model for artistic revitalization and community engagement. Maldonado, alongside Omar Torres Calvo, Guillermo Rodríguez, Javier & Jaime Suárez, Quintín Rivera-Toro will work with local university students on the interactive exhibit that opens on August 15^th and runs for five consecutive Saturdays.  

Cromática serves as a pilot project for rehabilitating unused spaces through art and community efforts. The initiative came from Maldonado’s commitment to Puerto Rico. She recently returned to her homeland after several years in New York City at a time when around 50,000 people a year leave Puerto Rico. She felt the need to return not only to bring forth an evolved aesthetic and sensibility but also to contribute to her country. “I came back to Puerto Rico a Crear Pais [to build my country], to support the arts and the local economy. In its simplest form, this project activates unused spaces through the use of color, abstraction, art, and community engagement. Each intervention respects the building that hosts it. At the same time this project is much more than an art piece to me. It’s a way to contribute to Puerto Rico in however small way I can.”

This year marked the sixth edition of the Biennial. Once offered as a third-world counter to capitalist art, this year’s effort celebrates a mix of global voices both critiquing and embracing consumer culture. Contemporary work by international artists dotted the city: Blue cubist structures shared space with an installed sand beach and cabañas along the city’s seaside promenade, and a giant ball of saran wrap lurked in the courtyard of the national museum.

 Cuba has always punched above its weight in fine arts. Back when it was a world-class vacation destination, it spread its music and dance traditions abroad. After the 1959 revolution, its artists served as a connection to the US when most other forms of contact were limited.

Although many see abstraction as a new trend in his work, the truth is that Diago has been working on it for years. The first “evidence” dates from 1995, a couple of pieces with which he took part in the Juan Francisco Elso National Annual Contest of Contemporary Painting, exhibited in the Havana National Museum of Fine Arts.Paisaje 1 and Paisaje 2 (Landscape 1 and 2), both from the same year, were solved in a similar way as to composition: horizontal format, structure in bands, and a palette tending to ocher colors. Landscape 2 won the Third Prize.

Ever since President Obama’s historic announcement in early December 2014, calling for the restoration of diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana, eyes have turned toward Cuba, waiting to see what changes the new dynamic will bring to the island nation. Set against this backdrop, the 12th Havana Biennial, which opened May 22 and will close June 22, has this month hosted an international influx of artists, galleries, and collectors, many of whom, heady with Cold War–era romanticism and dreams of Hemingway’s El Floridita, have been eager to get a toehold in a country before it transforms, for better or worse. And yet, as many insiders close to the Castro regime will secretly acknowledge, the biennial, like much of the events unfolding in Cuba today, is part of a carefully orchestrated ongoing program by the government to project—and perhaps rehabilitate—the country’s image upon the international stage.

Normally the only ice you'd expect to find in Havana would be in a mojito.

HAVANA — With the recent political thaw between Cuba and the United States, changes are already lapping the shores of this island nation and may soon be pounding the great sea wall, the Malecón, that stands between Havana, the open water, and a big-spending, big-building, culturally big-footing neighbor to the north.

Everyone knows that major shifts are inevitable once capitalism begins to flood the socialist zone. And a sense of mingled excitement and apprehension is in the air at the 12th Havana Biennial, a diffuse, gradually unfolding, monthlong series of art exhibitions that have been injected into the tissue of this majestic heirloom of a city, adding contemporary warmth to its gorgeously crumbling bones.

The work of the Collective Mangle (Diego Fernando Álvarez and María Paula Álvarez) is based on wood. Both artists have an education as carpenters and the good knowledge and practice of this trade has allowed them to take this work to its limits. Though the modification of tools and the exploration of other possibilities of working with wood, they have managed to create unexpected forms, which they present like a flexible and malleable element, which is similar to materials like plastic, metal or textiles.

Based on a True Story: Duke Riley and Frohawk Two Feathers
the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati through March 22, 2015.

At a time when news channels are not beholden to accuracy, having video evidence of murder on camera still isn’t enough to charge perpetrators with a crime, and more people prefer to get their “news” from satire sources such as the Onion or Stephen Colbert, broad historical truths with implied heroes and villains seems like quite a precarious subject to tackle these days.  Truth is funny that way:  it is a constantly moving target.

But if truth could ever be summarized in a sound bite, you wouldn’t know it from the sprawling, visually dense exhibition “Based on a True Story: Duke Riley and Frohawk Two Feathers,” on view at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati through March 22, 2015.

The Gallery is please to present works by Alexandre Arrechea, Ameila Biewald, Roberto Diago, Ewerdt Hilgemann, Miler Lagos, Glenda León, Sofia Maldonado, Mangle, David Opdyke, Duke Riley, Ariana Page Russell, & Anne Spalter.

Press and general inquiries please contact sarah@magnanmetz.com.

For complimentary admission please click the link below.

Alexandre Arrechea, who was born in Cuba, worked as part of the well-known collaborative Los Carpinteros before embarking on a solo career in 2003. Now, he navigates between living in Spain and exhibiting in biennials from Venice to Taipei and in museums from New York to Honolulu. “The Map and The Fact,” his recent show at Magnan Metz Gallery in Chelsea, closed last month. Last year, in addition to several gallery exhibitions, he installed “No Limits,” a collection of 10 steel models of New York skyscrapers, along the Park Avenue Mall. Though recognizable, these icons came with a twist, reconfigured into unexpected new forms—a flag on a pole, a striking serpent, a pentagon, spinning tops, and an ouroboros (the snake eating its own tail). It took me a while to understand this subversive imagery. Why turn the Seagram building into an up-jutting fire hose? Why tilt a Courthouse tower to resemble a traffic barrier? As Lowery Stokes Sims explains, Arrechea “destabilizes these power symbols, thus preventing them from successfully assuming whatever political philosophy that might seek to co-opt them.” Earlier this year, No Limits, a film exploring power and architecture and featuring Arrechea’s Park Avenue works, was shown at the Rome Independent Film Festival....

In celebrating Carnegie Hall's UBUNTU: Music and Arts of South Africa festival, The Studio Museum in Harlem is partnering with The Bag Factory Artists Studios in Johannesburg to present a weekend-long, artist-exchange program aimed at inciting a cross-cultural conversation. This special project will feature a public dialogue moderated by Tumelo Mosaka where artists Firelei Baez (NY), Jarrett Erasmus (SA), Sean Slemon (SA), and Xaviera Simmons (NY) will explore and discuss their practice in relation to Ubuntu philosophy, which emphasizes the importance of community and highlights the important role played by late Nelson Mandela in reconciling South Africa's political history with its goals of integration and inclusion. Additionally, our Education Department will present a special workshop entitled Mandela Monoprints in which families are invited to celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela through printmaking and personalizing drawstring backpacks with a Mandela portrait and unique, colorful designs.

PLAY, an exhibition of sculpture, photography, film and performance, is taking place at the NIROX Sculpture Park in the Cradle. The exhibition explores the notion of play as an art form. The aspiration is to present an exhibition that investigates the frivolity of play in conjunction iwth the reception of the mediums on exhibition.

Alexandre Arrechea: Helmsley

Opening: Sunday, October 12, 1:30 - 4 PM
 

Helmsley by Alexandre Arrechea comes from "No Limits", a public art exhibition. The series of steel sculptures were on view in Summer 2013 along the Park Avenue Median in New York City. Arrechea playfully reinterprets buildings that defined the city and Park Avenue and each piece in that exhibition was based loosely on a New York architectural landmark: in this case, the Helmsley Building on Park Avenue and East 45th Street.

Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea and architect Galia Solomonoff meet with Beyond the Supersquare exhibition co-curator Holly Block for a lively discussion on art and architecture.

Curated by Dominique Fontaine, you'll find a concentration of this exhibition's projects along Spadina Avenue between College Street and Queen Street West and along Queen Street West between University Avenue and Spadina Avenue.

Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything will create a framework for artistic experimentation presented in a dynamic, engaging, surprising and fun way. Altering our basic assumptions about what we see, feel, and understand about our worlds and ourselves, the exhibition will invite audiences to re-think the social and sensorial possibilities of public spaces. The emphasis will be on artistic productions that make us reconsider the meanings of play and participation. The works will be unconventional and symbolic of their particular aesthetic. Projects will reflect poetically on the social and political issues affecting our present realities and possible futures.

— Dominique Fontaine

The temporary sculptures along the Park Avenue Mall are one of our favorite public art initiatives in New York City. The curated pieces, done by one featured artist at a time, always seem to be in a dialogue with the city around them. In the lower part of Park Avenue, north of Grand Central Terminal, the works form a distinct contrast with the corporate business culture that pervades the architecture. Further north, they serve to spice up the storied legacy of Park Avenue apartments.

On Saturday August 1st, Ewerdt Hilgemann, Moments in a Stream will be complete, stretching from 52nd to 67th Street. We’ve been hanging out with Hilgemann and his team while they install the sculptures between 10pm and 6am, as required by city regulation.

Unsettled Landscapes

SITE Santa Fe Introduces 

A new biennial exhibition series that explores contemporary art from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego  
July 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015 
Opening Festivities July 17-19

SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas is a six­-year commitment to a series of linked exhibitions with a focus on contemporary art and cultural production of the Americas. The exhibitions will take place in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and will be organized by a different team of curators, from locations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Through SITElines, SITE will establish a new programming hub called SITEcenter to generate connectivity between and during the exhibitions.

Vanishing Points

4 - 30 July 2014
Open every day from 12:00 - 18:00

Curated by: John Angel Rodriguez

What is a vanishing point?

It is the converging union of lines that fade into the infinite. It may also be the concept that we inherited from the practice of making projective drawings.

Inspired by the dystopian prognostication and dark metaphors in John D'Agata's book About a Mountain, this exhibition digressively explores metaphysical tropes of human existence, disaster, time, and our ongoing existential crisis. Ninety miles north of Las Vegas lies Yucca Mountain, a proposed storage site for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. Stymied by Kafkaesque debacles, the project ultimately obsolesced. D'Agata presents a bleak and disambiguate survey of our relationship to mortality through cultural desensitization, and the orthodoxy of irrationality as the panacea for our scientific and corporate ills. As in the crux of D'Agata's book, the works in this exhibition utilize utopian, cultural and historical reference points, with each piece weaving a complex narrative whilst simultaneously acting as nodes to a larger discourse.

In May 2014 Norway will celebrate the 200-year anniversary of its constitution, a time of great festivity around the country. Punkt Ø will join the celebrations by exhibiting archival maps from around the time of the signing of the Moss Convention – the de facto peace treaty that formed the basis for the union between Sweden and Norway.  The historical maps will be complemented by a more comprehensive presentation of contemporary art featuring work by artists who work with cartography and maps either directly or in a more subtle manner, resulting in an exhibition that is political, poetic, conceptual and highly visual, revealing issues related to power and power structures and geopolitics seen from the perspective of a world in constant change.

The Wassaic Artist Residency exists to provide a genuine and intimate context for art making. We hope to strengthen local community by increasing social and cultural capital through inspiration, promotion and creation of contemporary visual and performing art.

Opening reception: Friday, June 6, 7-10pm

Bushwick, Brooklyn — Outlet Fine Art (253 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn) is pleased to present “suggestion, that is the dream: Arshile Gorky and a selection of contemporary drawings,” June 6-29, 2014.

Public Art Installation: “No Limits” by Alexandre Arrechea

PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST ANNOUNCES

ALEXANDRE ARRECHEA: NO LIMITS

A PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION OF THE

DOLLAR BANK THREE RIVERS ARTS FESTIVAL

10 Days of Free Music and Art | June 6 – 15, 2014

Pittsburgh, PA—The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust presents the monumental sculptural installation No Limits by Cuban-born artist Alexandre Arrechea as part of the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival public art program. Four nearly 20-foot-tall sculptures—originally part of a series installed along New York City’s Park Avenue—will be displayed throughout downtown Pittsburgh’s Gateway Center from June 6–September 7, 2014.

Primera exposición individual en España de Glenda León (La Habana, 1976), artista cubana afincada en Madrid desde 2011. La autora participó en la 55º edición de la Bienal de Venecia en el Pabellón de Cuba y el próximo año tiene programada una muestra individual en el Centro de Creación Contemporánea del Matadero de Madrid. La exposición incluye la première del vídeo “Canalización” dentro del marco del  LOOP Festival y engloba un ideario poético para el que utiliza desde el dibujo al videoarte, incluyendo la instalación y los objetos.

Deck hand, beach boy or famous artist? Who can tell the difference these days? Tattoos were once reserved for Nyhavn’s hard-core sailors. Now, however, sports stars, pop idols and TV hosts have revolutionized our bodily forms of expression and made ink drawings on the body cool for everyone. This summer’s large-scale exhibition, Tattoo, takes a close look at a visual phenomenon that is a prominent feature of contemporary life. It presents the history of tattoos: from the world’s first tattoo shop at no. 17 Nyhavn to “Ink Hans” and “Tattoo Ole”, renowned among mariners and royalty across the world, concluding with today’s artists who reveal our darkest secrets in drawings all over the human body.