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  • Most Miami art week events are drawn to glitz and glam, vying to compete for a mention in the press or passed as gossip around town as the hottest soirée happening during its short life in Miami. The majority of art fairs push old and new artist names to the public while attempting to cash in revenues from lucrative collectors. They all play a part within the same hob-snob social games commonly celebrated in art communities across the board. It’s just more intensified during this time of year.

    Luckily, the RFC ( Rubell Family Collection) opened it’s doors to the public with a refreshing solo exhibition of Purvis Young’s messy Zulu inspired, folk art and new acquisitions. Over one-hundred works were displayed, created over Young’s lifespan, shedding light on “universal themes.”

    Although Young is a prominently dominating name in the art world and his personal affairs disclosed to the public, there is still a sense of privacy or even distance that exists between his work and the public. This space became more apparent to me as I walked through the exhibition. Because the RFC exhibition space is vast and fixed in white walls, Young’s smaller works became shushed from the viewer’s direct gaze, but it was precisely his genius overcast brushstrokes what gesticulated the viewer to step in and absorb the extended, languid arrangements. Similarly to his reflective persona, his gestures seem pensive, drenched in the desire to understand humanity’s fate, twisted by war, suffering, isolation, and enlightenment embedded in clouds of pale powdered hues and busy assortments of patterns. They became recognizable figures and symbols, once the viewer spatially acquainted themselves to the work(s).

    There are moments I think Young craved validation and belonging in society, but his mission to record the flux of news into his body of work from the outskirts seems more important in the end.

    Sections of the lower gallery were indexed with recurring themes ( ex: horses, eyes, pregnant women ) in Young’s work to help navigate the way for the onlookers. Otherwise it could have been confusing with the busy crowd’s movement. One of the untitled horse paintings resonated with me. It was a lovely amber color, deepened with smudges of mustard, fore-fronted by a relaxed group of horses, with long necks and heads shifted at various angles, as though searching for food or perhaps seeking other horses like themselves.

    I’d like to see Young’s work celebrated as innovative for his choice of materials and the way he marked the material’s surface with the stroke of his hand, rather than categorizing him as an outsider or self-taught artist. Institutions may not realize that this discredits an artist to a certain extent. An artist such as Young was born a creator, and didn’t necessarily have to train at art school nor learn techniques to qualify as a professional prodigy. The art world needs to eliminate divisive categories such as “outsider” to establish a sense of equality between artists, their works and abilities. The Rubells do a magnificent job of scouting artists based on talent, supporting their work, paving their way to financial success and most importantly pointing out indubitably that an artist such as Young was ahead of his time, and proved to be an artist to pivot the direction of painting in the 21st century.

    Written by-

    Beláxis Buil

    Edited by-

    Abel Folgar

    A young visitor standing in front of Purvis Young’s paintings during the RFC opening, Purvis Young and New Acquisitions, December 4th, 2018
    ( Miami Art week)

    Preview(opens in a new tab)

  • Since 1998, the Animation Show of Shows has selected the best animated shorts from around the world. According to founder and curator Ron Diamond, the 15 films chosen for the 20th annual edition “really illuminate human strengths and foibles, and the bonds that unite us across cultures and generations.” Though these films and their animators come from various backgrounds and countries, the themes represented are truly relatable across the board.

    Ranging from 70 seconds to 15 minutes, the works range from darkly funny to deeply moving, representing an impressive array of visual styles and moods. Running a little over an hour and a half, the entire program is a treat from start to finish.

    Some highlights include:

    Grands Canons, from French multimedia artist Alain Biet, is a dizzying visual presentation of thousands of hand-dawn everyday objects, presented at various speeds and in myriad permutations, accompanied by jaunty, propulsive music. Clearly a labor of love, it ultimately becomes mesmerizing.

    Barry

    Barry, from filmmaker and Cal Arts animation student Anchi Shen, is a humorous, simply drawn story about a goat with a Harvard degree applying for an oncologist position at a hospital. He’s first relegated to custodial work until he saves the day in the OR. Though his fellow physicians cheer him on, he’s fired from the staff because “Goats are never doctors.” A clever take on stereotyping.

    The visually intriguing Love Me, Fear Me from Romanian filmmaker Veronica Solomon (now living in Berlin) features an ever-morphing clay figure who performs various styles of choreography; first as a comic blue male, then a sultry red female, followed by an aggressive, blade-handed grey character and an ominous white robed figure, each accompanied by appropriate music. Finally a multi-colored, writhing mass of clay transforms into a simple human. The theme: Role-playing and the different personas some of us adapt in order to please others.

    Shorter than two minutes, the fast-paced, absurdist satire Business Meeting, from Brazilian animator Guy Charnaux, features minimal, childlike black and white figures. The setting: “Wall Street, 4 pm.” As the boss asks each employee the same question, their answers — and the characters themselves — become more and more bizarre, until it all comes full circle: “Great! This meeting is over.” For anybody who’s ever suffered through a redundant, BS-filled work meeting, this is both hilarious and satisfying.

    Flower_Found

    Flower Found! from Dutch animator Jorn Leeuwerink is a deceptively sweet looking animation about a mouse who finds and quickly loses a lovely flower in the woods. Various creatures join the disconsolate mouse to find the stolen bloom, finally settling on a chicken whose comb looks flowerlike. The gang does what they think is right, despite the mouse’s protestations. A disturbing visualization of blind righteousness and the danger of mob mentality.

    A profound and moving work, Carlotta’s Face illustrates the first-person narration of a German woman who has prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, including her own. Created by neuroscientist and filmmaker Valentin Riedl and animator Frédéric Schuld, the film is a beautifully-drawn depiction of a tragic story that ends quite wonderfully.

    Age_Of_Sail

    Age of Sail from American animator John Kahrs is a gorgeous, realistic-looking film about an old-school seafarer (voiced by Ian McShane) in a sailboat who rescues a young girl who’s fallen overboard a passing ocean liner. Dramatic and action-filled, Age of Sail is part of Google’s Spotlight Series, and also available in a VR version which must be amazing.

    My_Moon

    Eusong Lee’s My Moon is an eerily beautiful, poetic story of a female figure (Earth) who is in love with a darkly romantic male (Moon), but is swept off her feet (literally) by a glowing orb-headed alpha male (Sun). The love triangle, which is accompanied by what sounds like classic movie dialogue, eventually resolves itself.

    Weekends by Canadian filmmaker (and Pixar story artist) Trevor Jimenez is a painterly, fantastically detailed depiction of a boy shuffled back and forth between his divorced parents in 1980s Toronto. His quiet life with mom in the suburbs contrasts sharply with dad’s bachelor pad in the city (the music veers from Satie to Dire Straits). Overwhelmed by his contrasting double-life, the boy has many graphic, unsettling nightmares. Gradually the seasons change and things settle down.

    For more information on the full program, click here.

    The 20th Annual Animation Show of Shows opens at the Quad Cinema in NYC on Friday, December 28.

    Marina Zogbi

  • It was social critic Edward W. Said who termed Orientalism as the post-colonial tendency to personify the “Arab and Eastern cultures as exotic, distorted, uncivilized and at times dangerous.” It is through this faulty lens that the Eastern and Arab cultures continue struggling to legitimize their position in social structures of acceptance and understandings from the West and Eurocentric cultures.

    Regretfully, although one would like to assume the art world as tolerant of “others” in its reich; evidence proves otherwise, displaying very little or vague opportunities for artists residing in the East ( dominantly Arab ) to exhibit their work on US soils. This year, in 2018, marked the first-ever solo exhibition of a self-taught Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine (1931–1998), at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery.

    Back in Algeria the struggle to be seen outside the Orientalist perspective continues with a swath of renegade artists and curators: searching for ways to break the stereotype artforms and infrastructures by conducting new alternative run spaces and bridging communications with foreigners. These quads not only present the art of local contemporary artists but rather invite international voices to coexist in a place that offers a compound exchange of ideas, open forum, and cultural exchange with Algerian artists working on the edge of their medium. One of those spaces, BOX24, now in its ten-year anniversary is lead by its founding visionary leader, Walid Aidoud.

    Aidoud opened BOX24 as the first collective run space free of rigid structures or business-oriented mindsets like most galleries. BOX24 offers the artist(s) an ” independent art space in the country and a response to the Ministry of Culture’s monopoly on the art scene.” Just like many artists facing severe discrimination in the U.S., it seems bleaker to the Algerian artists, as the younger generation belts n frustration “there’s huge money in culture, but it’s not the artists who are getting it.”

    Universally, it all sounds familiar but with Aidoud advocating the way for the new wave of Algerian artists, opportunities to participate at the Pan-African Festival, the Algerian Biennale and a few other lucrative exhibitions in surrounding countries surface. For the Algerian artists, it is a modern phenomenon to deconstruct the inappropriate depiction of Arab and Eastern culture, re-imagine the politics of identity, while presenting new modes and methods in their practice. Dispelling “Western scholarship” and “inextricable ties to imperialist societies” is at the foot of debate among the Algerian artist’s desire to thrive.

    In addition to Aidoud’s repertoire of work as a designer, curator, and artist at BOX24 (as well as his participation in exhibitions abroad), every year Algerian artists are selected by Aidoud to participate in the innovative, human rights action ARTiFairiti: in the town Tifariti in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Africa. This year’s program invited a fresh crew of Algerian artists working in photography, film, music, and performance.

    Aidoud curated a blanc night reception, celebrating the evening’s reaction based performances by inviting participants to illuminate columns via cellphones and flashlights. Projected images and videos embellished the Vernacular architecture with works by artists: Haythem Ameur, Arslane Bestaoui, Abdo Shannon, Bouchama Mohamed  Kamel, Lyes Karbouai, while Myriam Niboucha and Hyat Rahmani performed a corporeal installation of poetics, theatrics and fire installation. Between the diversity of people, cultures, lights, wild colors, sounds, and dance, Aidoud orchestrated a mosaic assemblagé of identities and history at the intersection of time.

    As BOX24 closes its existing location, to reopen in 2019, a favorable juncture of circumstances appears in the horizon for Aidoud, a direction far higher than expected for BOX24 and Algeria’s artists.

    Written by

    Beláxis Buil

    Edited by Abel Folgar

    IMG_4037

  • Hot off a national tour and an acclaimed performance at Hulaween, Toubab Krewe will perform a special, intimate engagement Friday, November 30th to benefit arts education in New York City. The concert, Music For Progress, will take place at NYC’s famed Rockwood Music Hall and proceeds will go to Art For Progress, a local 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization committed to bringing arts education to NYC’s public schools in underserved communities. In a city that boasts world-class music and art programming every hour of every day, many public schools throughout the five boroughs lack the budget, funding and personnel for robust programs to empower young artists and musicians. Through the work of Art for Progress, even the most disenfranchised have an opportunity to learn and engage with music!

    With a strong track record in partnering with mission-based cultural organizations, Toubab Krewe is thrilled to be working with AFP to share a message of global community and empowerment.

    Special VIP donor tickets with be offered, which will include a private viewing platform, a signed vinyl copy of the band’s recent album ‘Stylo,’ as well as a box of fruit and vegetable seeds which the band released in conjunction with the album to promote sustainability, and other surprise merch gifts!

    Support will be provided by Bad Faces, a local power quintet as deeply rooted in traditional roots music as they are reaching for stratospheric heights in their improvisational explorations. The group has amassed a strong local following on the heels of successful shows at Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn Night Bazaar and more. The band is excited to unveil a new group lineup, and to perform a triumphant return concert following a hiatus earlier this year.

    Hitting the decks to close the night is DJ / producer Gatto, who has been an integral character in NYC’s underground house music scene for nearly 20 years. You can find Gatto spinning at fashion shows, top night clubs, and beyond, while his eclectic music productions are dropping on European and U.S. record labels.

    Music For Progress will take place Friday, November 30th at Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 2 at 196 Allen St. in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Tickets are available now.

    MFP

  • WALKING ON WATER_KEY_IMAGE

    Walking on Water

    Now in its 9th edition, DOC NYC—America’s largest documentary film festival—runs from November 8 through 15. More than 300 films and events are included in a variety of categories, including American Perspectives, Behind the Scenes, Fight the Power, International Perspectives, Portraits, Jock Docs, Modern Family, Science Nonfiction, Sonic Cinema, and True Love. In most cases, filmmakers (and often their subjects) will be on hand to answer questions, post-screening. Awards will be given in several sections, including an overall Audience Award.

    The gamut of films this year includes epic portrait Beyond the Bolex, Alyssa Bolsey’s doc about her great-grandfather, the groundbreaking movie camera inventor Jacques Bolsey; Afterward, in which Jerusalem-born director and  trauma expert Ofra Bloch visits victims and victimizers in Germany, Israel and Palestine; Lindsey Cordero & Armando Croda’s timely I’m Leaving Now, about an undocumented worker in Brooklyn facing a difficult crossroads; and We Are Not Done Yet, a short directed by Sareen Hairabedian and produced by actor Jeffrey Wright, about U.S. veterans combating their traumatic military histories through art, poetry and performance.

    A few more highlights:

    Dennis and Lois
    A doc by Chris Cassidy that will resonate with music fans, Dennis and Lois is a portrait of a 60-something couple who have been music superfans for over 40 years. The Brooklyn-based duo, together since 1975, live in a house stuffed with band memorabilia and collectibles. Fixtures at NYC rock clubs, they still go to gigs, sometimes traveling long distances, though Lois’s health problems make it increasingly difficult. Musicians of various ages and stages, including members of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Mekons, Doves, The Hold Steady, Vaccines and many others, testify to the duo’s steadfast devotion.

    D&L_Selling_Merch

    For years, starting with the Ramones, Dennis and Lois sold t-shirts and other merchandise at live shows; they also housed musicians who came through town, earning the moniker “Sofa to the Stars.” They formed especially close bonds with bands from Manchester, England, including Stone Roses, Joy Division/New Order and especially Happy Mondays, who immortalized the couple in a song. These days, Lois notes, “The bands support us more than we support them.” The film is an affectionate look at a couple who never saw reason to give up the thing that brings them the most joy.

    Screening: Wed, Nov. 14, at 3 pm (IFC Center, 323 6th Ave.); Thu., Nov. 15 at 9:45 pm (SVA Theatre, 333 W. 23rd St.). In person: director and film subjects.

    Behind the Curve
    An impressively, sometimes maddeningly, non-judgmental doc about the growing cult of people who believe the earth is flat, Daniel J. Clark’s Behind the Curve is utterly fascinating. It’s also deeply unsettling, as several of the film’s subjects—including flat earth movement leaders and would-be couple Mark Sargent and Patricia Steere—are articulate and relatively normal-seeming, making their claims all the more astounding. Though a few dogged individuals are shown attempting to prove the earth’s flatness through scientific experiments, most believers seem fine with disparate, provocative “clues” on YouTube that are like catnip to paranoid types.

    04_BehindTheCurve_MarkEclipse

    This should all be amusing—and a little sad—but the movement’s hostility and condescension toward the scientific community smacks of the attitude so popular the days among some on the far right, whether it be denial of evolution, climate change or actual news events. To believe in a flat earth is to also believe that NASA is an evil mastermind and our entire educational system co-conspirators, exciting stuff for conspiracy theorists. (Unsurprisingly, there are rifts within the movement, resulting in conspiracy theories about the conspiracists.)  Behind the Curve features a psychologist and a few pained-looking astrophysicists who come to the conclusion that it’s probably better to engage these people in conversation rather than dismiss them outright. They may have a point, but I’d guess that most of these folks would rather stick to their insane world views than face facts.

    Screening: Sat, Nov. 10 at 8 pm (Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 W. 23rd St.). In person: Daniel J. Clark

    Walking on Water
    Andrey Paounov’s doc about environmental artist Christo and his 2016 installation in northern Italy, The Floating Piers, has no narration or interviews. Rather, it follows Christo—a mercurial and charismatic individual—from initial drawings in his studio through execution and close of the project, the entire thing fraught with the inevitable setbacks bedeviling a work of such monumental proportions. The 16-day, site-specific installation, designed by Christo and his late wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude, consisted of 70,000 square meters of yellow fabric covering a modular floating dock of polyethylene cubes that created a walkable surface on Lake Iseo between Sulzano, Monte Isola and the island of San Paolo.

    walking_on_water_color_still2

    Paounov’s remarkable access to Christo and his close associates (especially his nephew and Operations Director Vladimir Yavachev), both alone and in meetings with Italian planners and officials, captures the frustration, perseverance and joy in pulling off such a feat. Aside from the challenges of building the work according to Christo’s precise specifications, bad weather and bureaucratic wrinkles add suspense to the opening day build-up. And the film doesn’t stop there; Christo and his crew must then contend with the overwhelming results of the project’s massive popularity.

    Screening: Sat., Nov. 10 at 1:15 pm (SVA Theatre, 333 W. 23rd St.). In person: Andrey Paounov and Christo.

    For complete festival screening and event information: www.docnyc.net

    —Marina Zogbi