Sneak Peek of New Installation at Hamilton Square

What you can’t see won’t hurt you . . .

Release by Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre

Memphis Social

If you are visiting Memphis, Tennessee, from May 10–May 18 , I suggest you check out apexart’s exhibition Memphis Social, which is organized by Tom McGlynn. The exhibition features more than 50 artists: Bullet Space NYC, Lisa Dahl, William Eggleston, Rev. Howard Finster, Joy Garnett, Glen Garver, Richard Kern, Laura Napier, Tim Rollins and K.O.S, Kara L. Rooney, Kara Walker, to name a few. I will be showing a selection of Polaroid photographs of Jersey City and Asbury Park.

One Night, Two Openings!

I am happy to announce the opening reception of Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: Almost Home and Release: Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre at Hamilton Square in downtown Jersey City, May 9, 2013, from 6–8 p.m.

Skvirsky presents 12 color large-format photographs of the Holland Tunnel and its immediate environs. These photographs provide a deadpan record of this oft-maligned neighborhood and speak to the heightened security surrounding public photography in the post–9/11 era.

Release, a joint effort between SILVERMAN and ArtBloc, is a temporary, site-specific installation created by artists Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre. The artwork is a large burst of smoke that is discharged hourly from a pair of empty shipping containers. To create this atmospheric phenomenon, the artists have installed industrial smoke machines inside ArtBloc, a mobile art gallery built from repurposed shipping containers.

These projects, organized by Brendan Carroll, are presented by SILVERMAN, Hamilton Square Condominium Association, and ArtBloc.

For more information about the artists, please go here: Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Roger Sayre, and Charlotte Becket.

Release: Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre

Artist rendering: Release by Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre

SILVERMAN and HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present


Release: Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre

Opening Reception: May 9, 2013, 6—8 pm

Hamilton Square Condominium

232 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07302

201.434.1000

Exhibition Run: May 9—TBA 

Release
Release, a joint effort between SILVERMAN and ArtBloc, is a temporary, site-specific installation created by artists Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre. The artwork is a large burst of smoke that is discharged hourly from a pair of empty shipping containers. To create this atmospheric phenomenon, the artists have installed industrial smoke machines inside ArtBloc, a mobile art gallery built from repurposed shipping containers. Though synthetic, volatile, and strange, Release evokes images of Yellowstone National Park’s geyser Old Faithful, albeit in a bustling urban setting. Furthermore, the shipping containers serve as portents of danger in a post-9/11 world scarred by acts of domestic and foreign terrorism. At its heart, the project’s true aim is to arouse both wonder and suspicion in the passersby. This project, organized by Brendan Carroll, is presented by SILVERMAN, Hamilton Square Condominium Association, and ArtBloc.

About the Artists:
Artist Charlotte Becket creates large-scale kinetic sculptures from common household materials. Pace University, RuSalon, and Kantor/Feuer Gallery have organized solo exhibitions of her work. She has participated in group exhibitions in numerous exhibition spaces, including Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Valentine Gallery, Cleveland Institute of Art, Anna Kustera Gallery, and Leslie Heller Workspace, to name a few. The New York Times, Blouin ArtInfo, ARTnews, and Artforum have reviewed her work. She is the recipient of many awards, including Tony Smith Fund Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and Eastman-Bolton Memorial Prize, among others. Becket earned her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College, New York City, and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. She lives in New York, NY.

Roger Sayre is a conceptual artist who often uses nontraditional materials in his work—photographic paper, plastic utility buckets, vinyl records, dog biscuits, tennis balls. What unites his diverse body of work is the sense of play in which the pieces were conceived and executed. Sayre received his B.F.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1985. He received his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 1992. Sayre cofounded (re)mixed media, an ongoing collaboration with artist David Poppie. Sayre’s work has been featured in Bronx Museum of the Arts, Jersey City Museum, Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, A.M. Richard Fine Art, Allen Priebe Gallery (University of Wisconsin), Regina Gouger Miller Gallery (Carnegie Mellon University), among others. His work has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Pinhole Journal, Flash News, and Pittsburgh Tribune. He lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

Charlotte Becket and Roger Sayre teach art at Pace University in lower Manhattan.


Partners:
SILVERMAN is a New Jersey real estate developer, creatively rebuilding urban areas, supporting the arts, while building neighborhoods.

ArtBloc is a mobile art gallery and performance space built from two repurposed shipping containers – it is a dynamic community venue for art, music, dance and theater.

Brendan Carroll is an artist, writer and curator. He organizes a rotating exhibition program of prominent and up-and-coming artists for SILVERMAN.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: Almost Home

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky “Burke’s Bar”

SILVERMAN AND HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: Almost Home

Opening Reception: May 9, 2013, 6—8 pm
Hamilton Square Condominium
232 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.434.1000

Exhibition Run: May 9, 2013 – August 30, 2013

SILVERMAN AND HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present “Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: Almost Home,” curated by Brendan Carroll. The exhibition presents 12 color large-format photographs of the Holland Tunnel and its immediate environs. These photographs provide a deadpan record of this oft-maligned neighborhood and speak to the heightened security surrounding public photography in the post–9/11 era.

The Holland Tunnel connects lower Manhattan to Jersey City. More than 34 million vehicles use the underwater passageway per year. Due to gridlock, noise, toll expense, and the reek of exhaust fumes, most commuters regard the tunnel with extreme caution, if not anxiety. On the one hand, it’s the last milestone before your destination. On the other hand, it’s an obstacle that must be endured in order to reach New York.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky “Salvation Army Thrift Store”

During rush hour traffic, many drivers measure their progress by the inch—not by the mile. As you sit in gridlock, in what looks to be a no man’s land, it is easy to forget that the city is less than a one mile away.

The view from inside a vehicle offers a bleak picture—discount liquor stores, gas stations, derelict buildings, and low-income public housing projects. The area is not pedestrian-friendly. Most people hope to pass through it as quickly as possible—not stick around. Skvirsky, however, is not most people. Since Spring 2012, she has been documenting the Holland Tunnel, and the area leading up to it, on foot with a large-format camera—the kind of camera used in the nineteenth century. Unlike 35mm cameras, the 4’x5′ view camera requires a tripod. The process is slow, labor-intensive. To get the right shot requires trial and error, mostly error. Skvirsky must choose her subjects (like Burke’s Bar, Salvation Army Thrift Store, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Holland Hotel) wisely.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky “The Holland Hotel”

With her straightforward perspective, which compresses the space, the structures she shoots appear to be as flat as those on Hollywood film sets. Although the photographic equipment Skvirsky uses may not be “modern,” her compositions suggest hard-edged geometric abstraction. She reduces buildings to a series of shapes—squares, circles, triangles.

And yet the hint of humanity always haunts her landscapes. Each photograph features some type of signage—traffic signs, road markings, handwritten cardboard notes, and most ominously, yellow police tape. At first glance, the area appears to be derelict, as building facades crumble and deteriorate. On closer inspection, the photographs reveal tiny glimmers of street life—a solitary pedestrian walking down a sidewalk, a hotel employee painting a doorway, a police officer talking on a cell phone inside a patrol car. Skvirsky’s eye for detail elevates the area to a place worthy of attention, encouraging the viewer to recognize it as an actual neighborhood–a place where people live–not merely as a blighted passageway to somewhere else.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky “Police 1”

To photograph this area is to draw suspicion from the cops, which is natural. Post–9/11, no person using a camera to photograph bridges and tunnels is benign. In 1993, the Federal Bureau of Investigations foiled a terrorist plot to detonate a bomb inside the Holland Tunnel. On several occasions, the police have questioned Skvirsky as she lugs her camera through the streets. In one instance, an officer required her to divulge her social security number and driver’s license. These interactions with law enforcement do not frustrate Skvirsky. On the contrary, they provide her an opportunity to discuss the project with the authorities. In this respect, the artist’s picture-taking begins to resemble a type of performance piece.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky “Dunkin’ Donuts”

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in photography, video and performance. DPM Gallery, Scaramouche Gallery, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Sara Meltzer Gallery, Bronx River Arts Center, and Momenta Art have organized exhibitions of her work, to name a few. New York State Council on the Arts, Film and Electronic Arts, Urban Artist Initiative, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, and Puffin Foundation have awarded her artist grants. Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, The MacDowell Colony, Smack Mellon, and Longwood Arts Project have granted her artist residencies.

In 2011, Laundromat Project commissioned her to create a community based public art project in Jersey City. In 2010, she participated in Sao Paulo’s 29th Biennial There is Always a Cup of Sea for Man to Sail, where she exhibited work from her project, Memories of Development, a multi-part project that investigates the psychological and cultural legacy of Latin America’s “third world” status through performance, video, and photography. She lives with her family in the Hamilton Park section of Jersey City, NJ. Skvirsky earned her Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University in 1996, and she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Literature from Oberlin College in 1991. She and her family live in the Hamilton Park section of Jersey City, NJ.

The exhibition will be on view at Hamilton Square Condominiums through August 30, 2013. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000.

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky: Almost Home is the fourteenth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN.

For additional information, go here: Karina Aguilera Skvirsky.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Tom McGlynn, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.