BACKDROP

Radiator Gallery is proud to present BACKDROP, a solo exhibition of new works by Virginia Wagner, curated by Nat Roe.

On View: Sept 8 – Oct 1, 2023
Opening Friday, Sept 8, 2023, 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Hours: Fridays 3-6p, Saturdays & Sundays 1-6p, and by appointment
Artist Talk by Virginia Wagner & Musical Performance by Alison Clancy: Sunday Oct 1, 5:30p
Closing and Farewell to Radiator Jackson Ave Party: Saturday Oct 7, 8p 

10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

BACKDROP is anchored by large, freestanding paintings constructed from reclaimed wood. The works function like stage sets, forming a broken panorama. The paintings depict theater architecture and waterways that border New York, invoking the Hudson River Valley School while playing with the genre of scenic painting. 

Over the last decade, Wagner’s work has focused on sites of conflict between human construction and the natural world, including flood zones, abandoned factories, and areas of desertification. BACKDROP deepens this investigation into Wagner’s local ecosystem. In a city contending with rising waters, toxic air, and excessive waste, what role does landscape painting have to play? In an art context saturated by a kaleidoscope of content, what holds center stage?

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OPENING

I AM KINKY CONCRETE

Radiator Gallery is proud to present I AM KINKY CONCRETE, a solo exhibition of new works by artist Julia Standovár, curated by Veronika Molnár.

On View: June 9–June 30, 2023

Opening Friday, June 9, 2023, 6:00pm to 9:00pm

10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

I am Kinky Concrete is the debut exhibition of Brooklyn-based Hungarian artist Júlia Standovár’s Kinky Concrete project. A singular, female-driven universe interweaving photography, sculpture, and text, Kinky Concrete maps out Standovár’s exploration of human relationships, intimacy, and sexuality through the rigid yet fluid material of concrete.

Standovár began crafting a visual language through concrete in 2018 while working on Blue Nipple Hills, a multi-layered book framed around sexual taboos based on the artist’s conversations with her mother, Zsuzsanna Bede, a sexual psychologist. The book featured Standovár’s sketches, photographs, and sculptures inspired by their dialogues. After the book’s publication, the concrete objects took on their own life, and the diverse universe of Kinky Concrete was born.

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Luscious Wasteland

Luscious Wasteland

Radiator Gallery is proud to present Luscious Wasteland, a two-person exhibition of new works by artists Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader.

Curated by Patrick Neal

On View: September 16–October 23, 2022

Opening Friday, September 16, 2022, 6–9 pm

10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader suggest peculiar storylines in their paintings. Hybrid forms with distinct characteristics inhabit mutant landscapes. Both artists draw heavily on the natural world and art history to conjure up their own imagina- tive terrain. They navigate the private enclaves of places like gardens and neighborhoods, placing domesticity in relation to the tumult of global geopolitical events. Observing works up close at Radiator Gallery, viewers might trace paths that begin in the minds of Diamond or Fader, rife with images of personal experiences and journeys, that open onto a larger chaotic world. The small and largescale paintings in Luscious Wasteland may be intimate or riotous in spirit and depict vistas that appear to unfold over seasons, years and epochs.

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Water Walk With Us

Water Walk With Us

Radiator Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition by: Borjana Ventzislavova

Curated by Gregory Volk

On View: June 3rd – July 8th, 2022

Opening June 3rd, 2022 6-9 pm

10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

This is the debut New York solo exhibition for acclaimed Austro-Bulgarian artist Borjana Ventzislavova,whose work spans photographs, objects, films and videos, installations, texts, and performance. Informing the exhibition are two epochal life events separated by thousands of miles and more than twenty-five years: her complex experience as a teenager in Bulgaria as it emerged from decades of Communist rule and her 2017 experience, while on an art residency, of the staggering Canadian Rockies.

Western influences were escalating in early 1990s Bulgaria including the landmark television series Twin Peaks; broadcast on national television, it became a country-wide obsession. With its mysteries and crimes, humor and horror, police investigations and supernatural events, this idiosyncratic television series resonated with the Bulgarian public long accustomed to Communist-era intrigues, and worse. Ventzislavova, very much an urban person, recalls being fascinated by the rugged mountainous setting of Twin Peaks, a mediated view of the remote and near-mythic American West. When she was an artist in residence in 2017 in Banff, she was startled to discover how much the environs resembled Twin Peaks, as if television fiction had become Canadian fact. In both cases, nature was, for her, sublime and unnerving,alluring and menacing. In Banff, bear whistles (grizzlies!) were a must.

With found objects (some from Banff), photographs, texts, objects, and a film, Ventzislavova explores the convergence between adolescence and adulthood, Bulgaria and Banff, humans and nature. In her photographs, a pair of shoes just peeking out from underneath a crimson curtain, silvery rocks in the woods, a woman’s blond tresses seen from behind, and a bear whistle seem fraught with mysterious meaning; they also disconcertingly suggest evidence collected at a crime scene. Ventzislavova’s art proceeds by hints and allusions and repetition is key. Water is important as is the color red, so identified with Communism. Multiple references abound, including Twin Peaks, Boris Buden’s writing on post-Communism, and Leonard Cohen lyrics. The neon Als das Kind Kind war (when the child was a child)references a Peter Handke poem prominently featured in Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire (1988).

In Ventzislavova’s film Wahkohtowin (a Cree term that refers to the interconnectedness of all things) six people jumping rope are immersed in and framed by vast nature that transcends the merely human; the ropes obliquely suggest cycles of regeneration and decay. A woman, far out and high up in the landscape,performs a solitary jingle dance, an important communal ritual for Native women. She is enthralling, a woman connected and in dialogue with all that surrounds her, but also a stark reminder that this wasNative territory for centuries before white settlement, and that it is suffused with hegemonic violence.Throughout, nature is crucial while settings and evocative objects trigger personal memories and complex cultural investigation.

Born in Sofia and based in Vienna, Ventzislavova has exhibited extensively, including recent solo exhibitions at the National Gallery, Sofia; Kunstforum Vienna; Sofia City Gallery; Museum ofContemporary Art Sofia; Salzburger Kunstverein; UniCredit Studio, Sofia; donumenta ART LAB Gleis 1,Regensburg; Museum Angerlehner; Essl Collection; Bildraum7; LLLLLL in Austria, and many group shows, film and media art festivals. Among other residencies, in 2019 she was artist in residence at ISCP in NYC.

Gregory Volk

 

About the Curator:

Gregory Volk is a New York-based art writer, freelance curator, and former Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He writes regularly for Hyperallergic and The Brooklyn Rail, and his articles and reviews have also appeared in many other publications, including Art in America. Among hisnumerous contributions to exhibition catalogues and books are essays on Vito Acconci, in Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body, 1969-1973 (Charta, 2007); and Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir, in Ragna Róbertsdóttir Works 1984-2017 (Distanz Verlag, 2018). His book-length essay on German artistKatharina Grosse appears in the monograph Katharina Grosse (Lund Humphries, 2020), which focuses on the artist’s renowned painting installations. A graduate of Colgate University (B.A) and ColumbiaUniversity (M.A.), Volk has curated numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad.

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OPENENING

Home Room: IRL

Home Room: IRL

Opens November 20th in person at Radiator Gallery 

András Böröcz, KS Brewer, Graciela Cassel, Rachel G. Cole, Donna Cleary, Neil Daigle-Orians, Kahori Kamiya, Joe Nanashe, and Liv Rahel Schwenk.

Curated by Audra Lambert

“Home Room: IRL” Curated by ANTE (Audra Lambert) at Radiator Gallery

On view November 20, 2021 – January 17, 2022

Opening Saturday, November 20th from 6-8 PM

To attend, RSVP – https://bit.ly/3oh5nMt

Vaccination required. Please register and to attend and wear a mask!

“Home Room” at Radiator Gallery, Curated by ANTE

10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

The group exhibition “Home Room: IRL” continues the dialogue around changing opportunities for artists to explore the evolution of their practice in a post-pandemic environment. The exhibition features installation work, performance art, new media, painting, photography, and more, giving expression to the often unfamiliar, hybridized environment that has become the norm post-CoVid in New York City and beyond.

This exhibition is part of a duo of shows on view Nov-Dec 2021, with the other exhibit, “Home Room: Live and In Person,” on view Nov 9-Dec 3, 2021 at 1285 Second Ave in Manhattan.Curated by Audra Lambert of ANTE mag+platform, artists whose works are shown include András Böröcz, KS Brewer, Graciela Cassel, Rachel G. Cole, Donna Cleary, Neil Daigle-Orians, Kahori Kamiya, Joe Nanashe, and Liv Rahel Schwenk.

Radiator Gallery, located at 10-61 Jackson Ave in Long Island City, Queens,counts 8 years of providing local and international emerging and mid-career artists and curators a chance of learning the operations of a multi-disciplinary organization. The gallery presents contemporary art exhibitions, performances, and video programs and is led by artists Tamas Veszi (b. Hungary) and Daniela Kostova (b. Bulgaria), who run the gallery and mount programs engaging  with international exchange. 

Audra Lambert is a curator and founder, ANTE mag: an NYC-based online platform and publication founded in 2014. Lambert’s work as a curator and editor strives to showcase emerging contemporary art in the US and abroad.

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Contact

Curated by Gregory Volk

Online Launch: December 10, 2021
Location: www.whatisnormal2021.com/contact

Dimitar Solakov, Stick (2014-ongoing) (HD video, 3:30min, looped) video still

We are proud to announce the third and final edition of our collaborative project with Structura Gallery, the online exhibition Contact curated by Gregory Volk. The exhibition is now live and can be viewed on our platform www.whatisnormal2021.com.

Artists: Rebecca Bird (US), Marta Djourina (BG/DE), Adam Frelin (US), Klara Hobza (CZ/DE), Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens (CA), Ragna Róbertsdóttir (IS), Oscar Santillán (EC/NZ), Dimitar Solakov (BG) Leda Vaneva (BG/FI).

In this time of crisis, namely the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change, it is imperative that we reexamine and radically change our fundamental approach to nature. Contact is an international exhibition featuring distinctive and compelling artists, working in diverse mediums, who collaborate with nature in its many different forms, not at all from an anthropocentric perspective but instead with the deep understanding that we, as humans, are part of nature and share the bountiful world with all that is in it.

As Volk explains in his essay,

“Contact is not about sublime, beautiful, and inspiring nature, which I’ve certainly experienced in droves as an ardent backpacker. Instead, it involves distinctive artworks made in conjunction with nature, ones that also challenge the anthropocentric fantasy that we—quite recent additions to a four and a half billion-year-old planet—are somehow separate from and masters of nature.

This fantasy of human exceptionalism is looking not only absurd but also perilous. Extreme weather, rising sea levels, withering droughts, and amok forest fires are wreaking havoc everywhere. In my country (the US), as of this writing. 790,000 people have died of Covid-19, many stridently opposed to vaccinations, masking, and social distancing, many convinced of their superiority and invulnerability to a dangerous virus, although viruses predate our ancient human ancestors on the planet by some 3.5 billion years.

While Contact (and this includes its online format) was conceived and developed during the pandemic, as well as, most obviously, during global warming, it is not about either. None of the works are didactic or issued-oriented. Instead, all involve fruitful and sometimes surprising contact with nature, including lava, water, trees, birds, plants, fungi, singled-celled organisms. and sunlight. In her excellent book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), Jane Bennett has written convincingly of “thing-power”—the agency and vitality of non-human organisms and objects—and has described them as “the vital materialities that flow through and around us.” Contact involves human and artistic interaction with these “vital materialities.”

What is Normal is a three-part collaboration between Radiator Gallery, New York, and Structura Gallery, Sofia. It takes place online while creating a unique curatorial platform for the exchange of ideas, presented in a series of exhibitions with curators Naomi Lev, Boris Kostadinov and Gregory Volk.

This online collaboration was conceived during the Covid pandemic crisis in 2020. Galleries and museums were closed and the future seemed hopeless. Strangely, the world had united in common battle and suffering. It was then that we dared to jump out of the comfort of local life and embark on overseas cooperation. Under normal circumstances Structura and Radiator would not likely have met each other, considering their physical locations. It turned out that isolation opened new doors and provoked conversations for which otherwise there wouldn’t have been time, money, or enough energy. Abnormality gave birth to a different normality and to communication that we would otherwise have missed.

The resulting project, What is Normal, is not only a showcase but also an attempt to re-examine currently popular formats for presenting contemporary art online. We began relying on visual communication highly dominated by words and enabled by Zoom and other “live” Internet formats. The first exhibition in the series, Words and Actions, curated by Naomi Lev, shakes up this new reality by presenting an online discussion among four women art collectives engaging with remote geographies and socio-political issues. It is followed by Boris Kostadinov’s project Between Beasts and Angels, exploring the mechanics of human’s interaction with art, in which the machine is the central instrument, mediator and inspiration. Shifting the discourse back to nature, Gregory Volk curates the last show in the series, Contact. Author Jane Bennett has written of “things” in nature as “the vital materialities that flow through and around us” and ascribed to them “thing-power.” Jettisoning an anthropocentric orientation, the artists in Contact collaborate with such “materialities,” which maintain their own vitality and agency.
All the projects are available on the specially designed website www.whatisnormal2021.com and through the online platforms of Structura and Radiator.

National Culture Fund, Bulgaria: “One-year program to support private professional organizations in the field of arts”

Between Beasts and Angels

Collaborative exercise by Radiator Gallery, New York and Structura Gallery, Sofia
Curated by Boris Kostadinov for Radiator Gallery, New York and Structura Gallery, Sofia

Online Launch: October 12, 2021 1 pm New York time, 7 pm Sofia time
Location: www.whatisnormal2021.com

“….man’s place in the universe is somewhere between the beasts and the angels, but, because of the divine image planted in him, there are no limits to what man can accomplish….”

― Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, The Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486

The title of our project is a quotation from The Oration on the Dignity of Man, by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a conscious gesture that positions it in the Renaissance context. This context at once manipulates and interprets the idea of digital anthropocentrism. The cultural coup of the Renaissance in the 15th and the 16th-century centered on the concepts of man by juxtaposing them with God’s hierarchy. In the 21st century, the meaning of cultural processes is exceedingly similar, yet today, making sense of what is human takes place by comparing it with the ultimate universe of the technological.

In 2020, Gerd Leonhard, the author of Technology vs. Humanity, wrote: “The first Renaissance replaced religious dogma with human curiosity and creativity. The second renaissance will replace technological dogmas such as connectivity, efficiency, speed, optimization and productivity with human relevance, purpose, engagement, relationships and self-realization.”[1]

The questions that Between Beasts and Angels poses go beyond how new technologies function in contemporary art. It is much more important to look deeper into the layers of the heterogeneous digital community — its practices, policies, economies, creative potential, digital ethics and aesthetics, education and what constitutes taste in the approaching new era of our communication with the type and nature of art, and also of course with the dimensions of the activities of the artist and his place, as well as the meaning and form of his public body.

Between Beasts and Angels presents online works of art by 11 remarkable artists. For them, the New Media Age is a natural environment for the development of their ideas and the pursuit of their careers.

It is critical to point out at the outset that the project is based on works of art that exist solely in a digital environment. Put simply, this is art that was started and completed “as a file.” That is why the principle of the mechanical, online arrangement of images and text was eliminated. The project is also not about the routine use of information technologies for the production of art objects — a digital print, 3D object or film — which could eventually live their own material life in a physical exhibition space. The exhibition’s only environment for display and development is the online dimension.

And it is because the project lives entirely in the ecosystems of the digital ocean, looking at it, assimilating it and analyzing it critically suggests empathy, understanding, and of course a technological experience in and curiosity for artificial intelligence and the artistic activities of a huge portion of today’s humankind.

In the last decade, an increasing number of researchers and experts have been comparing the New Media Age with the time of the Renaissance,[2] referring to how similar the practically unlimited possibility for mobility and accessibility of digital works of art are with processes in the 16th century, when painting on canvas enabled the works of Venetian artists, freed from the Church’s ultimate context, to travel and find new publics. Also the personality of the artist acquired a new meaning in society.

On its part, the New Media Age gives very large groups the opportunity to create and showcase their art beyond the limitations imposed by the classic art market or the physical exhibition spaces in the same way as Renaissance artists pushed art away from the dogmas of religious needs and elevated it to an autonomous and independent phenomenon.

Do the times of the Third Industrial Revolution make things look like they were during the Renaissance?

To answer this, we need to tackle something that we’re all have long gotten bored with. Yet however reluctant we may find ourselves to once again write “COVID-19,” we cannot afford to ignore the pandemic: it imposed new social and economic relations, which were cast in political molds and became daily policies. Two years are but a blip in the course of world history, but in this period our world has gone a long, long way. As a result, today we experience online communication as more natural than anything else. We use screens to watch and analyze everything, to practice and consume everything — remote work, music, cinema, literature and sports, shopping and meetings with friends, family gatherings. Screens of all types have made possible what we call “living,” and we use these same screens to submit all our personal data with the sole purpose of continuing to exist.

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has brought everything to an extreme and extraordinary existentiality. Yet is this pathos of experience not an entirely logical part and nothing but an element of a long chain of processes that started some 10 years ago?

There is no point in digressing in naive suppositions and imagining how things would have developed had the coronavirus appeared, for example, in the 1980s. Things would naturally have been utterly different, and of course common sense leads us to think that COVID-19 is just the thunderous ending of a revolution predicted, and indeed started, some 10 years ago.

When Jeremy Rifkin published, in 2011, his The Third Industrial Revolution,[3] we were still somewhat “diffidently” using phrases such as “life on Earth cannot go on without artificial intelligence” or “technologies and the future are synonymous.” Ten years later, we have seen such phrases undergo the fast evolution from semi-conspiratorial theories to mass media clichés. The past decade has made the digital revolution an undisputed fact, and the Western world is now living as a developed post-industrial society that would not stand a chance without the assistance of artificial intelligence.

Indeed, we need to mention these now-established truths from the last decade — they constitute the groundwork for the Between Beasts and Angels project.

The history of art knows that each revolution of the technological or social order naturally changes not only the style of art but also, and this is most important, the nature of art’s intellectual activity and its place in the structure of culture of a society at a specific historical moment.

In the 21st century, the Third Industrial Revolution revealed an unexpected conservatism in the so-called art world which barely existed at the end of the 20th century. We all remember the enthusiasm that artists had for the “new media,” the democratic nature and utopian optimism of the net-art activism and online art communities of the 1990s. It appears that all that ended in the last decade on the 20th century, and was eventually abandoned. Despite the fact that the discussions, in the mid-2000s, of Marisa Olson, Gene McHugh and Artie Vierkant resulted in the rise of the term Post-Internet,[4] the art community was not too keen to welcome what this term stood for.

Starting in 2000 to 2003 and up to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 in 2019, the art world chose to forget its own intentions from the 1990s, and remained in its good old postmodern framework of physical institutions (museums, galleries, biennials, art fairs, foundations). The market was kept alive mostly by physical, tangible artworks, as well as works produced non-digitally and distributed offline.

If, summoning all the cynicism we are capable of, we could point to anything positive in COVID-19 and the resulting fallout, it is that the pandemic brought a striking, total reconsideration of art, its great return and rehabilitation in a digital environment. Today, the international art community adopts and exploits — as if anew and faster than at any past moment — virtual opportunities for creating, consuming and distribution of contemporary art.

Understandably, we would be naive to think that suddenly and right now some universal mania has emerged of reconsidering the aesthetic criteria of the virtual world and its art works. Here, as always, trends were set by economic mechanisms and the market. Unable to travel, lacking access to international exhibitions and confronted with shuttered museums and galleries, the art market could not afford to go bankrupt. It is when the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) came to the rescue. In itself, this cryptocurrency could be seen as a work of art, as it is so unlike anything we’ve seen so far that it even managed to establish a sort of order and a sense of security to the market of digital arts, which has been reeling for years. Here we will not go into the special cases, market paradoxes and speculations that the NFTs brought about, yet each renaissance is of course underpinned by economic forces and has financial dimensions.

As mentioned, in Between Beasts and Angels focuses chiefly on the artwork’s new position, on the artist and the audience during the Third Industrial Revolution. That is what makes these aspects important in the context of NFTs.

Our technological history has taught us that each innovation emerges with a great deal of democratization and openness. In the case of NFTs, it appears that both the art scene and the art market have divided the territory much more equitably.

First, the art world has become much more fluid and multifaceted. The conservative and pretentious system of quality assessment that large institutions had imposed on contemporary art is no longer the sole criterion of who can exhibit art, when and where. Art to be bought, re-sold or put on view in virtual galleries and museums.

Second, many artists have been creating free content for years, ensuring internet traffic to giant social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. They can now receive legally based compensation for their work.

Third, a considerable group of collectors has emerged who had never bought art from a physical gallery or at an art fair. In the same way in which Renaissance art was able to find its new connoisseurs in the rising bourgeoisie, we are today witnessing a seismic shift in how art is consumed.

NFT’s fourth and most important role is that it has introduced the innovative concept that the value of a piece of the visual arts can lie solely in its idea and concept, not in the physical material it is made of. Now this fact — whose revolutionary nature is of renaissance scale and has been self-evident for centuries in the realms of music and literature — is now totally valid also for the visual arts; it has eliminated the entire concept of physicality. In this sense, the 20th century Conceptual Art, which strove to dematerialize the works of art in order to confront the physical nature of the capitalist market, has now been historically refuted in this ambition. Using NFTs, the post-capitalistic 21st century shows us that in order to sell globally, an art product does not need to exist physically.

These four characteristics are sufficient grounds for the start of the assimilation of the new social meaning of the artist through his economic activities, as well as the new place of technological art in how values are ranked — as a product of a unique intellectual activity.

Today the value of online art is very often questioned because of its excessive (indeed unlimited) accessibility by everyone who wants to experience it. It is about time we reconsidered also this hoary idea of “uniqueness.” On the one hand, each digital work of art is in fact “unique” mainly because each device or screen is unique — because of different formats, screen resolutions or rates of data transfer, among a host of characteristics.

On the other hand, and perhaps most important, there are cultural, social and political differences that serve as prisms for looking at art across the world, or even the millions nuances of consumers’ personal sensibility.

Here we should lay stress on the importance of the public who consume digital art. To a large degree, Between Beasts and Angels (and digital arts as a whole) relies on its active interaction with the audience. This is one more piece of renaissance democratization, one that gives the spectator the opportunity to almost become a (real-time) co-creator.

Recently, a wave of somewhat amusing curatorial debates has emerged that analyze the way of looking at virtual exhibitions. Do we have the right, while looking an online exhibition, to pause to check our email or text somebody? It is this that prompted Lev Manovich to pose the question, “Can communication between users become the subject of an aesthetic?”[5]

As mentioned earlier, this is to a large extent a question of online curating, and my humble curatorial opinion is that, yes, as the open interaction of this art is not only technologically conceived but also very often consciously sought, spectators’ interventions are not only expected, but are indeed taken into account prior to the start of the creation of an artwork. The spectator’s interference is quite often an inherent part of the work of art.

To determine the perimeter of our audience, we need to look at this “new digital democratization” also by way of some historical and essentially restrictive concepts of history and theory of art. We mentioned already that the audience needs to be familiar with, informed about and sympathetic to digital realities. As this form of art uses a certain set of instruments of the dialogue with screen and the functions of machine intellect, so its audience, as an active participant in this dialogue, must necessarily be familiar with these instruments, their qualities and capabilities.

We mentioned also the importance of geography, culture, the history, the current societal climate of the specific location where the work is being taken in. Incidentally, we know that this is the central factor for interpreting any work of art, and in any historical context.

For example, Between Beasts and Angels is a project for both the New York-based Radiator Arts and the Structura Gallery in Sofia. The exhibition’s website looks the same no matter where its visitors choose to access it from. But does this mean that the responses and interpretations of visitors in New York and Sofia will be identical? Similarly, will responses be different, for example, in Seoul, Havana, Baghdad or Melbourne?

The answers to these questions are perfectly unequivocal, mainly on account of the different history of the interaction with the digital, the different practices, ways of behaving, knowledgeability, as a product of the different cultural/technological geography.

Let us try to imagine how two remarkable Renaissance works, both created in the same era, would have been evaluated had their locations been switched. For example, let’s suppose that Titian’s Danaë had been shown to the 16-century citizens of Antwerp. What would their reaction have been? And if at the same time Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Peasant Wedding had been displayed in some Venetian palace? How would the local public have viewed it?

In fact, the democratic nature of Renaissance art was never about all-accessibility and mass consumption. That is the reason that the actual technological all-accessibility of the “Digital Renaissance” is not the lingua franca that would make our aesthetic, critical or thought response to contemporary digital art at once easier and uniform, and also popular.

Overall, the works in Between Beasts and Angels make an attempt at starting a discussion based on the mechanisms of this new interaction between the human and the art, engaging in a reciprocation in which the machine is the central instrument, inspirator and mediator.

Boris Kostadinov

Berlin, May, 2021

 

[1] Gerd Leonhard, 2020 Will Bring A New Renaissance: Humanity Over Technology, Forbes, Jan 5, 2020.

[2] Filippo Lorenzin, The Rise of Mobile Art, From the Renaissance to the Digital Anthropocene, Hyperallergic, December 1, 2020.

[3] The Third Industrial Revolution; How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, Palgrave MacMillan, 2011.

[4] Régine Debatty, Interview with Marisa Olson, We Make Money Not Art, (2008) https://we-make-money-not-art.com/how_does_one_become_marisa/.

[5] Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 163–64.

What is Normal

Collaborative exercise by Radiator Gallery, New York and Structura Gallery, Sofia
Curators: Naomi Lev, Boris Kostadinov and Gregory Volk

Online Launch: July 16, 2021 1 pm New York time, 7 pm Sofia time
Location: www.whatisnormal2021.com

What is Normal is a three-part collaboration between Radiator Gallery, New York, and Structura Gallery, Sofia. It takes place online, creating a unique curatorial platform for the exchange of ideas, presented in a series of exhibitions with curators Naomi Lev, Boris Kostadinov and Gregory Volk.

This online collaboration was conceived during the Covid pandemic crisis in 2020. Galleries and museums were closed and the future seemed hopeless. Strangely, the world had united in common battle and suffering. It was then that we dared to jump out of the comfort of local life and embark on overseas cooperation. Under normal circumstances Structura and Radiator would not likely have met each other, considering their physical locations. It turned out that isolation opened new doors and provoked conversations for which otherwise there wouldn’t have been time, money, or enough energy. Abnormality gave birth to a different normality and to communication that we would otherwise have missed.

The resulting project, What is Normal, is not only a showcase but also an attempt to re-examine currently popular formats for presenting contemporary art online. We began relying on visual communication highly dominated by words and enabled by Zoom and other “live” Internet formats. The first exhibition in the series, Words and Actions, curated by Naomi Lev, shakes up this new reality by presenting an online discussion among four female art collectives engaging with remote geographies and socio-political issues. It is followed by Boris Kostadinov’s project Between Beasts and Angels, exploring the mechanics of human’s interaction with art, in which the machine is the central instrument, mediator and inspiration. Shifting the discourse back to nature, Gregory Volk curates the last show in the series, Contact. Author Jane Bennett has written of “things” in nature as “the vital materialities that flow through and around us” and ascribed to them “thing-power.” Jettisoning an anthropocentric orientation, the artists in Contact collaborate with such “materialities,” which maintain their own vitality and agency.

All the projects are available on the specially designed website www.whatisnormal2021.com and through the online platforms of Structura and Radiator.

Words and Actions
Curated by Naomi Lev

Words and actions is a collaboration and documentation of unique projects created by four art collectives. The all-woman collectives were selected in relation to the dialogue they are creating within their community, as well as the dialogue they’ve established for creating a community. Oda Projesi and Nadin Reschke, a Turkey and Berlin based group of artists created “Tongue”, a creative community-based pedagogic project that plays with the role and influences of subjective language; Mujeres de Maiz, based in L.A. leads ceremonies, poetry readings, pop-up shows, and supportive community healing events that allows a space for their members to come together and talk (literally and emotionally); the NY-based Collective_View created home-based exhibitions between its members and collaborators during recent lockdowns, enabling intimacy and bonding in times when human connection and some form of physical presence were needed most; and finally, The 8th of March Group based in Bulgaria, speaks up for a community of women through political art exhibitions, generation after generation, creating a radical space for growth, change, and a deeper manifestation of freedom. Each participating collective in this dynamic and interactive online show will have a special webpage dedicated to their project, highlighting the groups’ alternative radical actions and soothing words that create unlimited interpersonal connections.

Naomi Lev (https://www.naomilev.com // @nlvrouge) is an independent art writer and curator based in Brooklyn. Lev is dedicated to supporting artists in their process, and promotes rights for creators and women in the field. In 2016 Lev founded the group Collective_View which is an all female-identified, art professional group. This intimate group meets monthly to discuss their roles as women in the art world and in society at large. During New York’s first lockdown in March of 2020, Lev has launched a YouTube channel titled “7 Minutes with Naomi”, where she meets online with artists and art professionals from around the globe to discuss their current state and look at their works of art. Another project that was launched a couple years ago is “Artistsandwriters4ever.com” – an online platform that connects artists and art-professionals and offers a work-per-work barter between its participants. These are all collaborative initiatives that aim at creating a large supportive community. Lev has previously hosted a series of talks at Independent Curators International (2013-2014); curated a conversation and performative-monologue with Jonathan Meese at the Tel Aviv Museum (2013); and artistically directed a series of talks and panels with Vito Acconci at Bezalel Academy and Beit Berl College (2011). Recently curated shows include: “Headlines” (SPRING/BREAK Art Show, 2018), “With Passion” (NY), “in, side – throughout” (NY), and “Preliminary Study: RSI-T” (NY and MI). An upcoming collaborative curated show at Structura Gallery in Bulgaria and Radiator Gallery in NY will launch in July, 2021. Lev was a contributing editor at Creative Time Reports (2015-2016), and has contributed to international magazines such as ARTFORUM.com, Artcritical.com, TOHU Magazine, and BOMB Magazine, among other publications. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and an MFA from the Art Criticism & Writing program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

What is Normal would not be possible without the active cooperation of Maria Vassileva, Tamas Veszi, and Daniela Kostova.

Coordinator: Gergana Moudova.

National Culture Fund, Bulgaria: “One-year program to support private professional organizations in the field of arts”

HOME ROOM

Performance Program Series on Instagram Live

“Home Room” Curated by Audra Lambert (Editor-in-Chief, ANTE mag)
at Radiator Gallery, 10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106

Group Exhibition on view Spring 2021 featuring participating artists (exact dates TBD)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE    Radiator Gallery, in partnership with ANTE mag, is proud to announce the cohort of artists selected for a 2020 Fall presentation schedule and 2021 Spring group exhibition for the multidisciplinary art program:  Home Room . The term  Home Room  conjures, in a sense, the academic calendar, while “home” and “room” taken individually both allude to the restricted environment we have experienced in the wake of the CoVid-19 shutdown. In this current moment, artists have faced restrictions on how work can be presented and where they are able to produce work, resulting in both innovative solutions in terms of medium and method of working, along with seeking a new sense of connection with cultural producers in the field via remote channels. The juxtaposition of restriction and innovation occurring in the wake of this global pandemic have exposed new opportunities for artists to transcend the existing limits of their daily practice. Performative acts occur Dec 2020 with a group show date  TBD .

Artists selected to present performative acts and exhibit related artworks Spring 2021 include:
Katina Bitsicas, 
András Böröcz,  Ligia Bouton, KS Brewer, Graciela Cassel, Bryan Clavel, Donna Cleary, Shana Crawford, Rachel Garber Cole, Neil Daigle-Orians, Jacki Davis, Michal Gavish, Judy Giera, Kahori Kamiya, e.Ko & Helixx C. Armageddon, Kesha Lagniappe, Barbara Lubliner, Joe Nanashe, Rebecca Poarch, Liv Schwenk, Caito Stewart, and Sato Yamamoto.

The projected December schedule of programming below (all accessible via Instagram Live: @radiatorarts )

December 6th, 2020 4 Presentations from 6:15-8 pm : Graciela Cassel, Sato Yamamoto, Liv Schwenk and Caito Stewart
December 9th2020 4 Presentations from 6:15-8 pm : Katina Bitsicas, Michal Gavish, Neil Daigle-Orians and  András Böröcz

December 13th, 2020 from 6:15-9:30 (2 sessions, 20 minute break between)
3 Presentations for Session 1: Shana Crawford, Jacki Davis and Rebecca Poarch
3 Presentations for Session 2: Kahori Kamiya, Joe Nanashe and Rachel Garber Cole

December 16th, 2020 from 6:15-9:30 (2 sessions, 20 minute break between)
4 Presentations for Session 1: Barbara Lubliner, Judy Giera, Donna Cleary and Ligia Bouton
4 Presentations for Session 2: KS Brewer, e.Ko & Helixx C. Armageddon, Bryan Clavel and Kesha Lagniappe

Radiator Gallery , located at 10-61 Jackson Ave in Long Island City, Queens,counts 8 years of providing local and international emerging and mid-career artists and curators a chance of learning the operations of a multi-disciplinary organization. The gallery presents contemporary art exhibitions, performances, and video programs and is led by artists Tamas Veszi (b. Hungary) and Daniela Kostova (b. Bulgaria), who run the gallery and mount programs engaging with international exchange.

Audra Lambert is a curator and founder,  ANTE mag : an NYC-based online platform and publication founded in 2014. Lambert’s work as a curator and editor strives to showcase emerging contemporary art in the US and abroad.

About Audra Lambert:
Audra Lambert (b. 1987 Mississippi, raised in New Orleans) is an Independent Curator based in New York City since 2005 and Director, Amos Eno Gallery. She is Founder and Editor-in-Chief, ANTE mag and curatorial platform (est. 2014), which helms curatorial programs at The Yard, Williamsburg Bridge. ANTE mag is anchored in a multicultural lens and provides a platform for under the radar, critically engaged artists. Lambert’s curatorial projects include “Intrinsic” at The Yard, Williamsburg Bridge; “Hey, Wow: Works by Oded Halahmy” at the Center for Jewish History; “Re-Orientations”at the Living Gallery, “Other Homes” at Arsenal Gallery and more. She studied in the Master’s Art History program at City College of NY and is will complete her MA., Art History and Visual Culture at Lindenwood University (Spring 2021.)

HOME ROOM: Call for Performative Artist Presentations at Radiator Gallery

Open Call from September 8, 2020, to September 29, 2020, 11:59 PM EST

Radiator Gallery in collaboration with ANTE mag

HOME ROOM welcomes new presentations from members of the art community isolated at home in 2020: a time when artists are divided while aspiring to form new connections remotely. The term “Home Room” conjures the feeling of starting a new school year, while “Home” and “Room” taken individually in the context of the ongoing global pandemic allude to the actuality of our lived environment in 2020, as these terms define the spaces in which we are currently confined to both live and create work. In this current moment, artists have faced restrictions on how work can be presented and where they are able to produce work, resulting in both innovative solutions in terms of medium and method of working and increased connection with cultural producers in the field via remote channels. This juxtaposition of restriction and innovation that have occurred in the wake of this global pandemic has exposed new opportunities for artists to transcend the existing limits of their daily practice. 

Radiator Gallery and ANTE mag seek working artists to submit projects for HOME ROOM in two parts: first, a proposal for a performance that can be presented via Instagram Live, lasting roughly 15-25 minutes, to be performed either at home in a room of the artist’s choosing or onsite with exclusive access to Radiator Gallery in Long Island City*. This performance proposal should relate to either a sense of isolation and/or connection. (*Local artists will be invited to record their works live within the Radiator Gallery space in Long Island City, where they will have exclusive access to space sans audience in line with current CoVid-19 guidelines.). This proposal can be a performance art piece, a lecture, choreographed work, or some other creative presentation to occur via Instagram Live, Fall 2020. 

The second part of this open call asks selected artists to present artifact(s), in dialogue with the aforementioned performative presentation, to be curated in relationship to one another for a Spring 2021 exhibition to occur at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, Queens, NY. ANTE mag will be announcing and promoting this exhibition, highlighting winning artists across social media and in the publication in dedicated articles. Final physical works to be presented in the gallery space will be decided along with the winning artists leading up to the exhibition date, currently TBD but slated for early-mid 2021. The Yard Curator/Amos Eno Gallery Director Audra Lambert will be reviewing the submissions, along with Tamas Veszi and Daniela Kostova of Radiator Gallery.

Submission Fee for Curatorial costs: $15 (Payable via Paypal)

Selected artists will be notified by October 1, with performances slated to occur via Instagram Live with Radiator Arts through Fall 2020 in conversation with Radiator Arts and ANTE mag and final exhibition slated for 2021.

To Apply: Please fill out this form – https://forms.gle/6ARmeEwP6Q5JP2WX6

Here you will submit an artist statement, bio, CV, and 500-word proposal for how the concept you plan to present for a performative work related to the term “Home Room.” This proposal can either creatively re-imagining confinement (working from home,) connection (finding ways to stay connected to peers in virtual ways,) or some combination of the two. Submit the PayPal fee and this information via this Google Form by Sept 21st, 2020 before midnight EST.

Application guidelines:

  • Open to non-student artists only
  • Working artists
  • Artists are responsible for bringing all needed materials/props for their performance to the gallery and back
  • We encourage both local and international multidisciplinary artists to apply
  • Solo artists or collaborative teams welcome (max three people for collaboratives)
  • Access to Instagram on smartphone technology required

Information will be collected via the Google Form; please send any questions to info@radiatorarts.com