Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Ioana Niculescu-Aron

Ioana Niculescu-Aron, Vertical 26, 2017

Ioana Niculescu-Aron has been impressively prolific for her young years.  Born in Bucharest, Romania in 1994, she has already exhibited internationally in numerous venues. Last year, she had two solo exhibitions in New York: one at the Romanian Cultural Institute in midtown and the other at Artifact Gallery on the Lower East Side. She has completed two undergraduate degrees in fine arts from The National University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy, plus two master's degrees in fine arts from The National University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania and the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR) in  Strasbourg-Mulhouse, France. She is currently living in Regensburg, Germany and working on a series that includes the work contributed to Bosom Bodies: Vertical 26.  

Ioana explains her digitally composed photograph: "This image is part of the project Constellation on the Skin, a project that contains over 30 such pieces  (44,5’ x 16,5’ each) on glass. As the project is still in progress, I’ve decided to present for this unique occasion one of the sketches I have already made.  What I do is draw a graphic 'constellation' from the beauty spots on my chest. The structure is the skin, the color is the pigmentation of it. The beauty is the complexity inside us, drawn in this case  as some 'vectors' of transition: broken lines connecting  two points. The points in question are plastic markings designed to lay down certain directions of interest and to streamline the composition. In this way it is built from the illusion of recomposition without an end, of a permanent search of ourselves."

Ioana Niculescu-Aron with her exhibition Equilibrium at Artifact Gallery, June-July 2016

Mingling the abstract with the experiential, Ioana creates work that speaks to our existential concerns.  In her works for the exhibition Equilibrium, she focused on a colorful, lyricism in abstraction.  Iooana is inspired by the various aspects of our urban environments.  They are, for her, a collage: "The city is an antithetical COLLAGE of thoughts that crowd coexist side by side.  Streets, structures, asphalt, pipes - are composition elements for air and color - are lines of force.  But the city is also the one that can rob you of a healthy, steady breathing.  Inspired by all these, I paint.  The way I do ti is splitting the points of interest into more [than one] canvas."

One of her most challenging works took place in the abandon seaside casino in Constanta, Romania, wherein she videoed its haunting interiors and her personal perceptions, as if in search of her own sense of self  and her humanity within the landscape of contemporary decrepitude. By exploring this magnificent Art Nouveau building (completed in 1910), she seems to record her awareness of time, touch, sight, smell and hearing in terms of its ephemeral qualities -- like the history of this forgotten luxury resort.  Hopefully, she will continue her project at the casino in the future. 

We are so pleased that Ioana accepted our invitation to exhibition with Bosom Bodies and we look forward to hearing more about her project Constellation on the Skin developing in Regensburg this year.

* * *

Please join us for the Finissage/Closing Performance, Panel and Reception for Bosom Bodies on Sunday, October 29, 3 - 5 pm at SIA Gallery, 1 South Division Street, Peekskill, NY 10566.

For more information, please contact the curator Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Bosom Bodies is a

Project

Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Carla Rae Johnson

Carla Rae Johnson, Please Touch Vesuvius, 2000

Carla Rae Johnson is a gifted artist whose accolades include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Westchester Arts Council Design Commission for Cultural Tourism, the Studios Midwest Artist in Residence, and a Pollock-Krasner Grant.  Moreover, she is a much-beloved professor (or to quote her students: "awesome!"), an activist and a leader among artists in the Westchester/Hudson River area (she runs a fabulous salon).  Carla Rae's contribution to Bosom Bodies is part of her Séance Series, entitled Please Touch Vesuvius: Emily Dickinson Meets Marcel Duchamp.

Carla Rae explains: "Begun in 2000, this series proposes hypothetical meetings between creative and historic figures who never met during their life-times. The very first installment of this series is Emily Dickinson Meets Marcel Duchamp. In, The Séance Series the women in the sculptures and drawings pose a feminist challenge to their male counterparts testing courage and creative wits."   

Please Touch Vesuvius: "Asked to design an invitation in 1947, Duchamp submitted a rubber cast of a woman’s breast adhered to black velvet and titled Please Touch  Emily Dickinson, in several of her poems compares her explosive poetic powers (and, perhaps, some smoldering angers) to the natural force and heat of a volcano.  The juxtaposition of breast and volcano creates associations rich in visual/formal relationships, powerful contrasts, and gender role reversals."

Carla Rae Johnson,  Audre Lorde Meets Abraham Lincoln, 2007

Another installation from The Séance Series is a bridge made of rope and wood,  75 x 96 x 48 inches, which conceptualizes Audre Lorde Meets Abraham Lincoln, exhibited at Ceres Gallery in 2007.  The artists wrote: "Lorde and Lincoln play 'bridge.'   This bridge is not a card game, but a physical, symbolic span across an obstacle.  I think Audre Lorde would have confronted Lincoln on issues of race, power, and privilege, so it is Lincoln who must build the bridge. Not a straightforward crossing, this is a difficult, jagged transition; composed of huge steps, twists, inclines, and internal tensions.  At the top of the center of the crossing is a “spirit-level” symbolic of the quest to equalize and create a more level ground. Beneath the bridge sits the 'house.' Emblematic of the existing social structure, 'the master's house,' is the obstacle that must be bridged with understanding and common ground, level ground, so that together Lorde and Lincoln can dismantle its walls and work toward a just future."  Both Please Touch Vesuvius and Audre Lorde Meets Abraham Lincoln speak to Carla Rae's commitment to feminist issues and social justice.

Carla Rae Johnson, from PTSD (Post Trump Series of Drawings), 2017

Carla Rae's latest project is PTSD (Post Trump Series of Drawings), a sassy, savvy book of politically charged comments that features the artist's extraordinary draftsmanship. It is an absolute pleasure to pore over these beautifully limned images besides appreciating her astute appropriations of popular culture (yes, Carla Rae, it feels like Oz and we want to go home to Auntie Em).  Twenty percent (20%) of the sales price ($15) goes to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Come celebrate Carla Rae Johnson's PTSD (Post Trump Series Drawings) at her book party!

Sunday, October 29th

Bruised Apple Bookstore

923 Central Avenue, Peekskill, NY

 1- 4 PM.  

And then come to our Performances, Panel Discussion and Closing Party for Bosom Bodies, 3 - 5 PM, at SIA Gallery, 1 South Division Street, just down the road from the Bruised Apple.

* * *

Bosom Bodies remains open through October 29th.  Please join us this week for a slide lecture on "The History of the Breast in Art" offered by curator Beth S. Gersh-Nesic on Sunday, October 22nd, at 2 PM.   Gallery Hours: Friday,  Saturday, Sunday, 12 noon - 5 PM.

Bosom Bodies is a 

  

Project

Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Toni Quest

Toni Quest, U.S. in Us, 1994

Toni Quest (aka "Screaming Woman") is a Renaissance Woman: artist, entrepreneur,  undergraduate professor, life coach, jewelry designer, host of Energy Stoners ™ Jewelry Design Salons, talk-show host for Talk with TQ (available on YouTube), podcast personality on the internet radio show Seeing Beneath the Surface with Peter Elvidge and Toni Quest, curator, and author.  Best known among her publications are her autobiography Actualized, a Life in Progress and poetry in View of the Middle of the Road, Volume II (PRA Publishing).  She also contributed a photo of her painting U.S. in Us to the book's cover.  And Toni has posted numerous articles on LinkedIn. For Bosom Bodies, Toni painted her self-portrait entitled Giving It All.

Toni Quest, Giving It All, 2017

oil on canvas

Toni explains: "Giving it All is an awkward depiction of a woman who has not experienced a pregnancy. In spite of this, she does feel genuine maternal instincts. So she offers whatever sustenance she can manage to squeeze from her virtually empty breasts. Albeit cumbersome at times,  she generously offers her love  however she can."  And indeed Toni gives her love, her time and her wise counsel generously and unconditionally.  She is Peekskill's "hostess with the mostest" (a sobriquet created for DC socialite Perle Mesta). Moreover, Toni's energy knows no bounds.

Toni Quest with her work U.S. in Us during the exhibition Art Above the Sofa,  NYC

April 28, 2017

Toni teaches "Self-Actualizing Portraiture"© based on her own experience after a debilitating accident in 1994.  "[I] later formally wrote the instructional design for this course while in graduate school in 2008. [The] instructional design focuses on the needs of combat veterans who suffer from the symptoms of PTSD. "  Toni Quest has also taught psychology, sociology, geriatrics, writing and American history at the College of New Rochelle and is a certified Law of Attraction Life Coach, who specializes in artists' careers.

Toni Quest, Self-Portrait, 

on the cover of  Actualized, A Life in Progress (2016)

This Saturday, October 14th, Toni opens the exhibition she curated: Dia de los Muertos, featuring  Sue Zoon, Studio 4, 925 South Street, Peekskill,, October 14-November 17.  Opening hours: 6 - 9 PM.  

Also the next meeting of Energy Stoners ™ Jewelry Design Salon will be held at Studio 4 on October 20th.  Contact Toni for details and to make a reservation: toniquesttv@gmail.com.

I have had the pleasure of being interviewed by Toni on Talk with TQ and Beneath the Surface with Peter Elvidge and Toni Quest.  Hopefully, they will invite me back for more - great fun, great conversation!

* * *

Bosom Bodies remains open through Sunday, October 29th.  Gallery Hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 12 noon - 5 pm.  SIA Gallery, 1 South Division Street, Peekskill, NY 10566.  For more information, please contact the curator, Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, director of the New York Arts Exchange, LLC at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net.

Bosom Bodies is a 

Project

www.nyarts-exchange.com 

Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Barbara Lubliner

Barbara Lubliner, Muscle, 1997

Barbara Lubliner's sculpture Muscle expresses the very heart and soul of Bosom Bodies.  Far from defined by our biceps' muscle strength like men, the breast gives women their greatest powers!  For the female breast is the location of sustenance and sensuality - the ability to nourish as a mother figure and to seduce for sexual pleasure.  Muscle seems to say that every woman is Superwoman each and every day.

Barbara Lubliner, Suckling Tower, 1992

Barbara calls her work "Aspects of the Female Experience."  In her artist's statement, she explains:  "In this work, the female figure is abstracted, altered, and reconstructed to express a complexity of associations. The forms uncover insight into grappling with the complex layers of meaning in our contemporary world and in the shared primal world of generations of women.   I aim to make meaningfully charged expressive figures that invite the viewer to chuckle and to contemplate gender anew."

Barbara Lubliner, Mother and Child, 1996

Barbara's four contributions to Bosom Bodies summarize the quintessential female experiences: physical and mental accomplishment as individuals, motherhood, and nurturer par excellence at home, at work and in the community.  Over the millennia, women have increased their responsibilities by taking on roles outside the immediate family unit.  They often balance numerous identities to meet the expectations of others and themselves, contributing to an ever expanding concept of the female in society  No longer bound to the kitchen and nursery, women envision "having it all" successfully, every step of the way. Barbara seems to narrate our inner feelings as we forge these paths.

 Barbara Lubliner, Sun Ripe Venus, 1992

In  Sun Ripe Venus, we see the pregnant belly hanging heavily like a luscious fruit from its leafy vine. Here the female form recalls the classic recumbent nude, transformed from a traditional sexual object to a sensual ripening force of nature, at peace with herself in all her fecundity.  Eventually, she becomes Mother and Child, protecting her offspring with her nurturing, comforting body.  But eventually, the burdensome chore of mothering, partnering, and all the rest, feels like the Sucking Tower, weighed down with endless needs that require immediate attention.  Here we see numerous breasts hanging down, pulling on the figure's garment as she leans in to withstand the strain. 

Barbara Lubliner, "Muscle Performance," at A Place at the Table, Brooklyn Museum, 2007

However, all is not gloom and doom in Barbara's work,  In her performances with muscle armbands, she injects plenty of humor and optimism with her chant: "It's power. I'ts power. It's power for the flower!  Work it!  Work it! We can do it!"   In 2007 she performed in A Place at the Table, in the Elizabeth Sackler Wing at the Brooklyn Museum. 

Barbara Lubliner, Plastic Bottle Sculpture, 2012

Barbara also joined the recycling/repurposing art movement, as have Ruby Silvious and Wilhelmina Obatola Grant.  In the photo above, she demonstrates creating an octahedron out of 30 plastic bottles in 5 minutes.

We are so fortune to have Barbara Lubliner, a NYC artist, with us to celebrate "bosom power" in Peekskill.  Her work is also featured in Duality: Glimpses of the Other Side at, Islip Art Museum, through October 15th, and most recently,  Hampden Gallery at UMASS Amherst,  Ceres Gallery, NYC, and Carter Burden Gallery, NYC.

* * * 

Bosom Bodies remains on view through Sunday, October 29th.  Please join us on:

Sunday, October 22 for the Curator's Lecture "The History of the Breast in Art," 2 pm.

Sunday, October 29 for our Performance Art, Artists' Panel and Closing Reception, 3 - 5 pm.

SIA Gallery, 1 South Division Street, Peekskill, NY 10566

Gallery Hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 12 noon- 5 pm.

For more information, please contact the curator Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, director of the New York Arts Exchange, nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Bosom Bodies is a 

Project

Bosom Bodies Opens on October 7th at SIA Gallery, Peekskill

Waiting for guests  . . . ,

BB Trisha Wright, second on the left, with her photos,

Trisha's sister,  curator Beth Gersh-Nesic,

and gallery owner/BB artist Nadine Gordon-Taylor

BB artists Barbara Lubliner and Marcy B. Freedman

BB artists Barbara Lubliner and Wilhelmina Obatola Grant

Artist Doris Renza  with BB artist Toni Quest

BB artist Carla Rae Johnson behind Toni

Guests Dusan Nesic and Jim Brennan

Guests Jim Brennan and Emily Miller from Philly!

Guests Khalilah and Lailaa Cunningham

Guest Michele Cunningham with BB artist Nadine Gordon-Taylor

\

Guests Paul Stark and Lawrence Flood

Bosom Bodies' reception: Pink and Bosomy

Bosom Bodies remains open through Sunday, October 29th.
Gallery Hours: 12 noon to 5 pm, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Curator's Lecture on the history of breast in art and tour, Sunday October 22, 2 pm.
Closing: Performance and Panel on Sunday, October 29th, 3 - 5 pm

For more information, please write to Beth at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net 

Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Kathleen Gilje

Kathleen Gilje, Self-Portrait as Bouguereau's The Assault, 2012

Kathleen Gilje has been blessed with the Old Masters' touch.  In her Self-Portrait as Bouguereau's The Assault, she seems to confide that art is not a choice but a calling, inspired by love and relentless forces beyond her control.  Lucky for her that exceptional talent also joined this crowd of cupids (perhaps the little fellow delivering her palette).  Who would not envy her ability to appropriate numerous artists' personalities in paint and pencil with her signature contemporary additions that turn the narrative of the work on its head.  Her term for this magical transformations is "restoration."  She "restores" the work to a meaning that had not been evident before.  Or she makes old art new to us by inserting contemporary cultural artifacts.

Kathleen Gilje, Lady Agnew, Restored, 2009

from 48 Sargent Women, 2007-2008, mixed media on paper

Kathleen Gilje, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, Restored, 2007

from 48 Sargent Women, 2007-8, oil on canvas

Kathleen Gilje, 48 Sargent Women, 2007-2008

at Francis Naumann Fine Art, February-April 2009

Bosom Bodies is proud to exhibit her drawing after her painting of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, which has never been shown in public before.  We thank Kathleen for joining her sisters in art.  In fact, Bosom Bodies is a bit of a reunion with Clarity Haynes, Wilhelmina Obatola Grant, Kathleen Gilje and myself, since we all participated on the panel for "The Feminist Breast" for Clarity's show at Tabla Rasa gallery in 2011.  Please click on our names to see our individual presentations.  Kathleen's presentation will explain 48 Sargent Women to you in her own words.  

John Singer Sargent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

As we see in this exquisite Sargent portrait, Lady Gertrude Agnew projects her elegance and social status through her clothing, furnishings and unmistakable ease ensconced within this splendor.  Art historians tell us that she was recovering from influenza at the time, which may account for her extremely pale skin. Kathleen strips away the iconography of class and wealth to re-present the individual herself.  A bit more healthy in complexion, she also seems confrontational in her frontality.  No longer just a trophy wife, Lady Agnew seems transformed into an intriguing femme fatale, scrutinizing our gaze as she returns the favor in a more empowered, discerning way.  Thus we understand Kathleen's decision to embolden all Sargent's women through her ability to copy this modern master and revise his nineteenth-century conception of the person.  Here, we see Kathleen's desire to remember Lady Agnew as an alluring female presence, rather than a fetching accessory for the household.

Kathleen Gilje, The Fable, Restored, 1989

Kathleen's career began as an art restorer in Naples and grew in that area of expertise while she pursued her own painting.  Then one day, while restoring a work of art for a client, it dawned on her that she could copy it and then add a little something to indicate it was not the original.  It was El Greco's The Fable, 1580.  I invited you to figure out where she "restored" the original image.

Kathleen Gilje, Susanna and the Elders, Restored, 1998

after Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610

Kathleen has also invented the former lives of artworks through painting an "original" and covering it with an identical copy of the version we know so well.  Here, we offer a glimpse of Kathleen Gilje's Susanna and the Elders with the artist's describe of her entire installation.   

* * * 

Bosom Bodies: An Exhibition in Honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month opens on Saturday, October 7th, from 3 - 6 pm, at SIA Gallery, 1 South Division Street, Peekskill, NY 10566.  Gallery Hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday, noon - 5 pm.  The Closing and Performances are on Sunday, October 29th, 3 - 5 pm.   The Curator's lecture on "The History of the Breast in Art" and tour of the show is on Sunday, October 22nd, at 2 pm.  

Bosom Bodies is a New York Arts Exchange project.  For more information, please contact the curator Beth Gersh-Nesic, at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Curator's Notes: Spotlight on Grace Graupe-Pillard

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Grace Pulled Along by Lamentation, 2014

(based on Niccolo dell'Arca, The Lamentation (detail). с 1485-90. 

Terracotta, lifesize. Sta. Maria della Vita, Bologna)

Grace Graupe-Pillard is fierce!  A feminist with a cause, her work courageously addresses pressing political and personal issues that need our collective attention. Any exhibition about the female body must have a Grace Graupe-Pillard, whose work was featured in The Female Gaze at Cheim & Read  in 2016.  Relentlessly training her sights on human rights, social injustice, political misconduct, and the power of art in history, we find a facet of her relationship to art and life depicted in Grace Pulled Along by Lamentation, from her prolific series Grace Delving into Art.  Here, she is both captive and deliberate interloper, or as she puts it:  "I travel the world to explore historical works of art - and my presence often changes the 'meaning' of these historical masterpieces."  

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Women in Cloisters, 2013

For our Bosom Bodies exhibition, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness, we chose her medieval self-portrait in  Women in Cloisters, 2013, a riff on "The Boppard Gallery" of  The Cloisters, Fort Tryon, Washington Heights, NYC (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Situated between two unknown saints' busts, Grace lifts her arms into the ancient pose for prayer, orans, or, perhaps, ecstasy.  Both meanings body forth her exuberant intentionality.  Art is her canvas and her body redirects the gaze to an editorialized re-presentation.  This is not "Grace Underfire."  This is "Grace on Fire"  -- Grace Graupe-Pillard unfiltered and unfettered by self-doubt, the realization of feminist agency promulgated by our foremothers in the 1970s. 

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Grace in Clover Leaf Gown (James), 2014

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Jeff Koons 3 Ball 50-50 in Tank and Grace, 2013

What can we glean from Grace deconstructing or disrupting the original artist's gazes?   Does she question their purpose through her feminist eyes?   Does she intercede to expose latent misogyny?  Sometimes.  However, most often we see her robust nude body taunting the artwork itself.  She is in dialogue with a fictional figure or a fictional representation of a real object (the installation's real objects) as we see in the modeling of Charles James extravagant creation on view during the exhibition Charles James: Beyond Fashion in 2014 and Jeff Koon's well-known Three Ball 50-50 Tank, 1985.  However, all this playfulness pales in comparison to her more explosive ammunition.   

 of 

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Changes of Life - Nancy, 1994

Grace Graupe-Pillard, Crouching Grace as Blonde, 2014

Changes of Life and Crouching Grace as Blonde take aim at our reception of the body: the former is about breast reconstruction after a mastectomy and the latter attacks  ageism and cultural clichés, such as "Do Blondes have more fun?" (a Clairol compaign from the 1960s).  A visit to Grace's website opens the door to much more of her fight, directed at the subjugation of women in the Middle East, the current U.S. administration, warfare, the Holocaust, her relationship with her mother, and body image.  All received her highly charged critique in various media (painting, photographs, videos, installations, and prints) that demand long periods of concentration. For Grace is a pistol, a force to be reckoned with as an artist determined to fix the world with her provocative creations. 

To find out more about Grace Graupe-Pilllard's prolific body of work, please visit her website on NeoImages:

***

Bosom Bodies: An Exhibition in Honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a New York Arts Exchange project, curated by Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, director and owner of NYAE, www.nyarts-exchange.com.  For more information, please contact Beth at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

B