Two New Exhibitions Include Photographs by John Coplans

I'm so pleased to let you know that John's work will be included in two upcoming exhibitions: ME at Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York City and Tyger, Tyger: Lynn Chadwick and the Art of Now at The Berman Museum in Pennsylvania.  If you're in New York City this fall, or near Philadelphia, I hope you'll be able to see these two engaging shows. --Amanda John Coplans at Ricco Maresca Gallery ME: Photographic Self Portraits Group Exhibition September 17, 2015--October 24, 2015 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 2015, 6-8pm ME presents a collection of 144 vintage and contemporary self-portraits, featuring works by Pierre Dubreuil, Constantin Brâncuși, Edward Steichen, André Kertész, Berenice Abbott, Weegee, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Francesca Woodman, Vivian Maier, Kaia Miller & Sara Salaway From the press release: "Not only can they bring down the powerful, caught in scandalous intrigue—Anthony Weiner, for one—but there are a number of stories about people who, in effect, fell off the cliff. The original self-lover, Narcissus, was so enthralled by his reflection in the water that he drew too close and drowned.There are also contemporary narcissi, like Xenia Ignatyeva, the 17-year-old Russian girl who lost her balance and tumbled off the side of a railway bridge, and 21-year old Oscar Otero Aguilar, from Mexico, who tried to take a selfie of himself posing with a gun and, well, you can work it out. Making and sending pictures of your lunch, your outfits and giant body parts: your boobs or package all plumped up… The world has gone mad; it’s the moral apocalypse. At least we will have the photographic evidence. Blame the Australians. Google tells us that the first use of “selfie” as a word came from down under a dozen years ago in an Internet forum. Further back, in 1839, we can credit Robert Cornelius for making a daguerreotype of himself, this was apparently one of the first images of any person, let alone a self-portrait. The process, for Mr. Cornelius, was so slow he could uncover the lens, run around to get into the picture and then go back to close it. Nowadays he could probably post it simultaneously.   In many respects, the original selfies were the amazing Photomatics: spontaneous photo booth snapshots in individual metal frames, especially popular between the World Wars. A remarkable collection of 144 of these works will be presented in ME. Photomatics originated from a contraption invented by Anatol Josepho (born Josephewitz in Siberia), who opened the “Photomaton” Studio on Broadway and 51st Street in 1925. "Within 20 years there were more than 30,000 booths in the United States alone, due largely to World War II soldiers exchanging photos with their loved ones,” writes Mark Bloch in From Behind the Curtain: A History of the Photobooth."   —© W.M. Hunt, 2015. For more information, please visit http://www.riccomaresca.com. Top: John Coplans, Back and Hands, 1984, Gelatin Silver Print, 24 x 20 in. Above: John Coplans, Interlocking Fingers No. 12, 1999, Gelatin Silver Print, 24 x 20 in. Ricco Maresca Gallery 529 West 20th Street. 3rd Floor New York, NY 10011 http://www.riccomaresca.com info@riccomaresca.com 212-627-4819 Gallery hours: 11am-6pm Tuesday – Saturday John Coplans at the Berman Museum of Art “Tyger, Tyger: Lynn Chadwick and the Art of Now” September 29-December 22, 2015 Opening Reception: October 17, 4:00-7:00 PM The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania presents an exhibition of works by British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914–2003) juxtaposed with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs made by international contemporary artists, including David Altmejd, Nick Cave, John Coplans, Louise Despont, Anya Kielar, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, and Ruby Sky Stiler. The Berman Museum of Art 601 East Main Street Collegeville, PA 19426 610-409-3500 https://www.ursinus.edu/berman/ From top: John Coplans, Body Parts, No. 6, 2002, Gelatin Silver Print, 34.5 x 47 in. John Coplans, Body Parts, No. 9, 2002, Gelatin Silver Print, 34.5 x 47 in. Copyright © 2015 The John Coplans Trust, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because I thought you would be interested. Our mailing address is: The John Coplans Trust 5 Hanna Lane #5 Beacon, NY 12508

Photographs by Amanda Means on View at Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Amanda Means: Biophilia   Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, New York September 12 - October 28, 2015 Opening Reception for the Artist: Saturday, September 12, 6 – 8PM "I will make the case that to explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents." —E.O. Wilson From the press release: Nina Freudenheim Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of black and white silver gelatin prints by Amanda Means. Featured will be works from her two ongoing bodies of work, "Leaves" and "Abstractions." These camera-less photographs are studies in macrocosm and microcosm, repetition in nature, and the formal qualities of the organic. Means is concerned with the rhythms and forces of nature. “These are the forces that in early spring push a leaf and all of its intricate parts out of a branch, and cause rivulets of melting snow to flow down a rocky streambed,” she states. In both the “Leaves” and “Abstractions,” this organic energy is brought into intimate view. Her celebration of the beauty and infinite subtlety of her subjects is informed by her experience as a skilled master printer, having worked for Robert Mappelthorpe and Berenice Abbott. This experience has imparted a deep understanding of how light sensitive materials can express infinitely nuanced grey tones: delicate, subtle, shifting. The “Leaves” are representations of nature’s forms. The “Abstractions” are human manipulations of nature’s forces. A parallel sensitivity exists within Means’ expression of lines and shapes in both—the lines that demarcate a leaf’s edge are just as clearly articulated as the lines created from an abstract, liquid rivulet. These graphic and compositional qualities grow out of concepts underlying Abstract Expressionism: balance between literal representation and total abstraction. Means sees her process as moving from the inside towards the exterior, similar to how Jackson Pollock described his work as a painter:  “I work inside out, like nature.”    Above: "Silver Nerve 1990" and "Fan Abstraction 80, 2014," Silver Gelatin Prints.

Nina Freudenheim Gallery Hotel Lenox 140 North Street Buffalo, New York 14201 T: 716-882-5777 F: 716-464-9753 ninagallery@aol.com www.ninafreudenheimgallery.com Thursday-Friday 10am-5pm Saturday and Monday by appointment Copyright © 2015 Amanda Means, All rights reserved.

Elizabeth Bryant's Photographs on View at Sturt Haaga Gallery in Descano Gardens

Aeqai Publishes Review of "By This River " and Profile of Michael Solway

http://aeqai.com/main/2015/08/interview-with-michael-solway-director-of-the-carl-solway-gallery/

http://aeqai.com/main/2015/08/summer-pleasures-a-review-of-by-this-river-at-the-weston-gallery/

Shigeko Kubota, Video Sculptor, Dies at 77

See the obituary in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/arts/design/shigeko-kubota-a-creator-of-video-sculptures-dies-at-77.html?_r=0

"By This River", curated by Michael Solway, reviewed by Steven Rosen in Cincinnati City Beat

http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-33140-diving_in.html

Weston exhibit ‘By This River’ makes a splash

BY STEVEN ROSEN · JULY 8TH, 2015 · VISUAL ART

By This River, the new group show curated by Michael Solway at downtown’s Weston Gallery through Aug. 30, is as refreshingly clear in its concept and intent as a sparkling mountain stream. It has the added benefit of offering much excellent work, including several pieces by an artist associated with the 1960s Fluxus movement who is now enjoying a rediscovery, Ben Patterson.

I should first say I have grown perplexed with the intellectual complexity of some group shows in which the relationship of the work to the exhibit’s theme needs long curatorial explanation because it isn’t evident in what we see. It’s the artistic equivalent of writing in code. Yet, at the same time, I’ve grown bored with shows having simpler, broader themes — they often are banal and unchallenging.

By This River strikes just the right balance. It has an active and thoughtful curatorial voice. Its theme is about how we long to live close to bodies of water and the effect that desire has on us — and nature. That has intellectual depth, yet you get it just by looking at it. And you get more of it the longer you spend with individual pieces. 

The idea for By This River, which features six artists, goes back to 2006 when Solway had his own gallery (with wife Angela Jones) in Los Angeles and discussed rivers with Patterson, who was born in Pittsburgh. (Solway is now the director of Carl Solway Gallery, which his father founded.)

Los Angeles is a great place to think about urban rivers, because the trickling, concrete-sided Los Angeles River is both a civic joke and the goal of dreamers seeking restoration. If only they had more water. 

Patterson provided this show with five pieces, several of which date at least in part to 2006, and one is much older. Two in particular stand out. His “Los Angeles River Concrete Poem,” which is large enough and in enough sections to be considered a sculptural installation, is both witty and poignant. Five wooden support barriers each support a cast-concrete slab through which a channel of water trickles (and then is recycled from pumps and hoses in overhanging cups). 

There are three large inflatable palm trees between these wooden barriers, recalling Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” and you smile at Patterson’s parodying of this city’s alleged river.

Except it’s deeper than that.

Each of the separate sections Patterson has created corresponds to a section of the river itself — Sepulveda Basin/Balboa, Downtown, Estuary and more. And accompanying each are clipboards with laminated digital photographs showing material Patterson found at the river, presumably from the corresponding section. There are lovely plants and flowers, but also litter and garish graffiti. 

On each concrete slab itself, Patterson has inscribed words whose appeal is not necessarily in their meaning but rather in the way they look or sound when spoken aloud. These are examples of “concrete poetry,” a form that sees the artistic possibilities in words as pure objects. 

Besides the gentle “concrete” pun, there is a message here to the viewer: Look at things in a new way; see the possibilities in everything, including the Los Angeles River. As a notice by the clipboards tells us: “Poetry is where you find it: Search for sources here.” 

Another of Patterson’s works, “Pond,” is primarily a set design for performance (he gave a very short one there on opening night). But it works as Minimalism, too — an art movement that didn’t really exist when Patterson first devised “Pond” in 1962. 

Blue tape delineates a 72-by-72-inch grid on the Weston’s upper-level floor; several mechanical toy frogs populate the individual squares. Step back from it a little and you can feel the presence of an actual pond.

By dint of his status, Patterson is By This River’s lead artist. But my favorite works are by Jacci Den Hartog, a Los Angeles-based artist who has shown at Solway Jones. She creates magical illusions of dimensionality in her drawings and watercolors and especially in her wall-attached sculptures of flowing, cascading water. 

The two sculptural pieces are the most impressive — they are, of course, three-dimensional in actuality, but they seem so forcefully full-bodied, so forward-moving, that you can almost feel their spray. In 2008’s “Coming Down” and 2008-2009’s “Day Hike,” she has used acrylic paint on polymerized clay to conjure stretches of running water. 

Jutting from the gallery walls (but attached at crucial, subtle points to bear the load), they remind of Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke sculptures, but also invoke nature as much as Contemporary-art comparables. 

Of the two Den Hartog pieces, I prefer “Day Hike,” as it is like a piece of blue river with no obvious beginning or end. It just comes out of the wall and goes back into it, presumably to renew itself.

Also noteworthy are San Francisco artist Jim Campbell’s two transfixing, low-res video artworks, “Divide” and “Untitled (Birds),” and Pasadena-based Steve Roden’s puckish “touch strings seep sleep pluck,” a 2015 two-channel video work in which guitar strings appear stretched across old photographs of the Ohio River. A visible hand pulls at them to create sounds. It’s a form of river music very different from a steam calliope. 

Roden’s other pieces didn’t move me as much, and the UV-coated prints of New Haven-based marine photographer Gregory Thorp’s “Ohio River Series” look slick.

How much time should you spend with By This River? You can spend long enough to watch salt crystalize, which is what happens in New York artist Dove Bradshaw’s “Negative Ions II,” a new iteration of a time-based piece she first showed in Copenhagen in 1996. 

Here, 1,070 pounds of salt — from a mine on Avery Island, La. — form a Hershey’s Kiss-shaped pile on the floor of the gallery’s lower entryway. Suspended above it is a funnel that slowly drips water down onto its peak. 

Over time, this process allows for a crystalized core, thus changing the physical properties of this half-ton mass in a slow, insistent way, like water carves out rock and hillsides to form canyons and river valleys.

By This River allows all sorts of opportunities to think about our relationship to water, while also providing art to spend time admiring.

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BY THIS RIVER continues through Aug. 30 at Weston Art Gallery inside the Aronoff Center for the Arts downtown. More info:westonartgallery.com.

By This River Exhibition Curated by Michael Solway for the Weston Art Gallery

is pleased to announce By This River an exhibition presented by By This River    Curated by Michael Solway   Dove Bradshaw  Jim Campbell Jacci Den Hartog Ben Patterson Steve Roden Gregory Thorp  A group exhibition exploring the sensorial, geographical, historical, and ephemeral dispersal of water from rivers to oceans.  The Weston Art Gallery The Aronoff Center for the Arts 650 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, OH June 19 – August 30, 2015 Opening reception  Friday, June 19, 6:00 – 9:00 pm  Special Fluxus Performance  with Ben Patterson, 7:00 pm    Gallery Talk with Michael Solway  Thursday, June 25, 7:00 pm Exhibition Sponsors   Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, Helen and Brian Heekin, Barbara and Gates Moss  Exhibition Co-Sponsor  Elizabeth Stone The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts presents By This River, a group exhibition curated by Michael Solway, Director of the Carl Solway Gallery (Cincinnati, OH). Featuring  Dove Bradshaw (New York, NY), Jim Campbell (San Francisco, CA), Jacci Den Hartog (Los Angeles, CA), Ben Patterson (Wiesbaden, Germany), Steve Roden (Pasadena, CA), and Gregory Thorp (New Haven, CT).  By This River had its thematic origins in 2006, when curator Michael Solway lived near the Los Angeles River. The concept comes from an ongoing conversation between Solway—born in Cincinnati by the Ohio River—and Fluxus pioneer Ben Patterson who was born in Pittsburgh where three rivers meet, now living in Wiesbaden, Germany, by the Rhine River. They discussed the instinct we have to return to or relocate to live near major bodies of water such as rivers and oceans. The concept has deep-rooted spiritual and literary origins of course, tracing the social, political, oral histories of freedom, discovery, and exploration.  By This River brings together recent works in photography, painting, sculpture, works on paper, video, sound, and a series of interactive constructions. The combination of these six very different artists’ works placed throughout the Weston Art Gallery’s upper and lower galleries juxtaposes as a visual and audible chorus celebrating the exhibition’s theme about the fluidity, beauty, grace, and force of water. Dove Bradshaw, born in New York in 1949, pioneered the use of Indeterminacy (a process of using chance to create artworks) by enlisting the unpredictable effects of time, weather, erosion, and indoor and outdoor atmospheric conditions on natural, chemical, and manufactured materials. She has created chemical paintings that change with the atmosphere—indoor erosion sculptures of salt and outdoor stone sculptures that weather. Bradshaw is represented in the permanent collections of many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); MOMA (New York); the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); and the Marble Palace/Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg. The Contingency Series, Bradshaw’s first significant body of two-dimensional work (1984-2011), began by using materials reactive to the environment, instead of paint. By This River will include a salt sculpture and recent paintings from this extended series.  Jim Campbell, born in Chicago in 1956, lives in San Francisco, CA. He received degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT in 1978. He transitioned from filmmaking to interactive video installations in the mid-1980s. Campbell’s custom electronic sculptures and installations have made him a leading figure in the use of computer technology as an art form. His work is part of numerous public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); MOMA (New York); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the fall of 2010, Campbell's work, Scattered Light, was installed in the Madison Square Park Conservancy in Manhattan making it his largest and most extensive public art piece to date.  Jacci Den Hartog, born in Iowa in 1960, lives in Los Angeles, CA. Currently she is Program Director of Sculpture/New Genres and Professor at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Awards and honors include: John F. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artists Grant; Art Matters, Inc., Artists Grant; Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant; City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship Award; Purchase Award, Alberta DuPont Bonsal Foundation for the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; and California Community Foundation, Mid-Career Artist Grant. Exhibitions include: Nantes Museum, Nantes, France; San Francisco Art Institute; Kansas City Art Institute; Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Suburban (Chicago); and commissioned public art at Angels Knoll Plaza, Los Angeles.  Ben Patterson was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1934 and lives in Wiesbaden, Germany, by the Rhine River. Patterson is an American musician, artist, and one of the founders of the Fluxus movement. He moved to Cologne, Germany, in 1960 where he became active in the radical contemporary music scene, performing in festivals in Cologne, Paris, Venice, and elsewhere. During this pre-Fluxus period, he created and performed some of his early seminal works: Paper Piece, Lemons, and Variations for Double Bass. Late in 1961, Patterson moved to Paris, where he collaborated with Robert Filliou (Puzzle poems) and published his Methods and Processes. He was in Wiesbaden with George Maciunas to organize the historic 1962 Fluxus International Festival and continued to be a major presence at Fluxus events until the early 1970s, when he retired to pursue ordinary life in New York City. Although he remained outside the art world for more than 17 years, he resurfaced for such events as the 20th Anniversary Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden in 1982. In 1988, Patterson came out of retirement with his exhibition titled Ordinary Life at the Emily Harvey Gallery, NY. In 1992, he returned to Germany to establish a headquarters from where he works and travels. Ben Patterson’s work has been featured in many recent Fluxus exhibitions and performances throughout Europe, Russia, Asia, and the Americas. In 1996, Patterson inaugurated the Public Entrance to his Museum for the Subconscious at Mt. 13th Month in Namibia, Africa. The traveling retrospective exhibition, Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us, was organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, in 2012.  Steve Roden born in Los Angeles in 1962 and living in Pasadena, CA, is an American sound and visual artist who pioneered the lowercase style of music; where quiet, usually unheard, sounds are amplified to form complex and rich soundscapes. His discography includes Forms of Paper, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Public Library. Roden’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Fellows of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); the San Francisco State University, Fine Arts Gallery (San Francisco); the Las Vegas Art Museum (Las Vegas); the Mercosur Biennial (Porto Allegre, Brazil); the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (both Downtown and La Jolla); the Serpentine Gallery (London); the Drawing Room (London); the Sculpture Center (New York); the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); the UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); MOCA Miami, FL; and the Drawing Center (New York). Steve Roden received the 2011 Artist Grant of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a California Community Foundation Getty Fellowship Grant.  Gregory Thorp was born in Rhode Island in 1948 and lives in New Haven, CT, and Ashland, MA. Since the early 1970s, Thorp has been photographing his obsessions: train stations (Union Terminal in Cincinnati, OH), corn fields, cemetery markers, yellow school buses, and places of interest that combine music-related histories. For nearly forty years he has captured the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, working as a photographer for the Ohio River Company, and, more recently, other barge companies hired to move coal up and down stretches of the river. , LPA (Cincinnati), and numerous private collections.  Further information:  Dennis Harrington, Director, The Weston Art Gallery  (513) 977-4166 | dharrington@cincinnatiarts.org  Image: Gregory Thorp – Ohio River, 2015/1978 The Weston Art Gallery The Aronoff Center for the Arts 650 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, OH  45202-2517 Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 am - 5:30 pm Sunday  noon - 5:00 pm Open late on Procter & Gamble Hall performance evenings Admission is free and open to the public. Since 1995, the Weston Art Gallery's mission has been to present and support the visual arts of the Tri-state region through exhibitions and special programs. Its objectives are to foster an awareness and appreciation of the visual arts among area residents and to support the development of professional and emerging artists of the region.  www.westonartgallery.com WestonArtGallery@CincinnatiArts.ORG