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”

Radiator Gallery invites you to the eighth conversation of our LIVE series.                    

  
 Wednesday, June 30th from 4PM to 5PM EDT.

 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Adele Eisenstein

 Dear Friends,

 Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series highlighting artists from our current show
 
 and generating ongoing meaningful and relevant dialogue with our guests. 
 
 This Tuesday, June 30th, we will be hosting the second part of the conversation between the artist and

 educator Jenny Marketou and independent curator Adele Eisenstein.

 
 After four months of lockdown, Jenny Marketou will be speaking from the gallery space, revisiting her work
 
 Ever Growing through my City, that takes on new meaning in this time of social and cultural unrest. 
 
 They will continue the conversation begun previously, focusing on protocols and infrastructures of interdependence, 
 
 care and knowledge production, and how the ideas and principles behind them extend beyond the physical to the
  
 virtual space in Marketou’s art practice. We hope you can join us to put your questions into action.

 
 This event occurs in anticipation of the reopening of Radiator Gallery on July 15, and the Interdependency
 
 Now exhibition. Starting that day, the gallery will work by appointment only, for a limited number of visitors.

About the exhibition  Interdependency now:

 Artists: Eirini Linardaki, Jenny Marketou,
 Vincent Parisot, Peter Soriano

 Fanzines and editions: Julien Gardair, Tattfoo Tan
 Interpretive participation by Maria Dimanshtein

 Curated by Eirini Linardaki and Jenny Marketou

Planning the exhibition Interdependency Now, the co-curators and participating artists Eirini Linardaki and Jenny Marketou examined ideas of interdependency, participation, and collaboration in relation to art and social practice. How could they create sustainable relations among the exhibition’s artists and curators, and, most importantly, with an audience drawn from the many diverse communities that co-exist in New York City’s five boroughs? 
 
Interdependency suggests learning from and taking care of one another and acknowledging the ways in which we need support. No one stands alone. In contrast to dependency, interdependency connects us to each other in powerful ways, helping us to overcome differences and embrace new perspectives. As the philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler argues, social interdependency is a great leveler; it naturally leads to greater equality and emancipation.
 
Interdependency Now aims to use contemporary art to make evident the ways in which we are all interdependent. The exhibition, which runs from February 21 at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City, features the works of four artists working collaboratively: Eirini Linardaki, Vincent Parisot, Jenny Marketou, and Peter Soriano.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the seventh conversation of our LIVE series.           
           
 Wednesday, June 24th from 4PM to 5PM EDT.
 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Rachel Eliza Griffiths

 Dear Friends,
Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series that started by highlighting artists from our current show talking about the notion of interdependency.  We are continuing to engage through these live conversations beyond the scope of the exhibition.  Wednesday, June ^24th, we will be hosting an interview between RadiatorArts founder Tamas Veszi and Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

 Her new book of poetry and photographs titled “Seeing The Body” is an interdisciplinary meditation of text and imagery. Transformative moments that could define some of our creative decisions in specific works or for a whole series. 

 Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and multi-media artist. Her most recent book, a collection of
  poetry and photography, is Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton 2020).
  She is the recipient of fellowships including Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Cave Canem 
  Foundation, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and Yaddo. 
  Her visual and literary work has appeared widely, including The New Yorker, the Paris Review,
  Tin House, The Progressive, The New York Times, and many others.
  Griffiths lives in New York City.

More about Interdependency Now.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the sixth conversation of our LIVE series.                      
 Wednesday, June 17th from 4PM to 5PM EDT.
 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Adele Eisenstein

 Dear Friends,
 Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live 

Series highlighting artists from our current show. This Wednesday, June 17^th, we will be hosting a conversation between the artist and educator Jenny Marketou and independent curator Adele Eisenstein.
 
 In this conversation, we will look at Jenny Marketou’s artistic practice, which has employed principles of interdependency in many projects and frameworks. We will focus on some of the concepts behind Interdependency Now, its origins, and how the ideas and principles behind interdependency extend beyond to the wider world. We will also check in to see what has happened since this show was closed due to Covid-19, what happens now, and where we go from here.

 For more information on Marketou’s project here:  https://cargocollective.com/evergrowing
 
 About Jenny Marketou:
 Jenny Marketou is a Greek-born interdisciplinary artist, art educator, and cultural producer, based between NYC and Athens. She has taught at Cooper Union (NY), CalArts, and in 2020 at The New School (NY). Her work has been internationally published and shown at Documenta14,
 Sao Paulo Biennial, Manifesta, Reina Sofia Madrid, Athens Biennial, Museum Tinguely Basel,
 ZKM Karlsruhe, New Museum NY, among others.
 
 Adele Eisenstein is an independent curator, writer, editor, translator, in contemporary art, film, architecture, with a background in psychology and film studies, especially focused on social issues and human rights. Between New York-Budapest and other places on Earth. 

More about Interdependency Now.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the fourth conversation of our LIVE series.     
                 
 Wednesday, May 27th from 4PM to 5PM EDT.
 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Tattfoo Tan Instagram

  Dear Friends,
Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series highlighting artists from our current show. 
This Wednesday, May 27, we will be hosting a conversation between the artist and curator Eirini Linardaki and artist Tattfoo Tan.
 
About Tattfoo Tan:
Throughout my art practice, I employed the process of Learn, Practice, Teach. The result of the process is a syllabus book. This is the fourth book that I wrote. This book should be used as an exercise book, write your name on the front page and keep answering the prompt in the book, they appear in rounded corner boxes. Keep researching words or topics that you are intrigued with. The book itself flows from duality to nonduality.

Eirini Linardaki was born in Athens and studied in Limerick L.I.T., Ireland, Berlin, and Marseille. She lived in France for more than twenty years. She is now developing projects within the city and questioning the relationship between public policy and art.

More about Interdependency Now.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the fourth conversation of our LIVE series.    
                  
 Wednesday, May 2oth from 4PM to 5PM EDT.
 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Julien Gardair Instagram

  Dear Friends,

  Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series highlighting artists from our current show. 
  This Wednesday, May 20, we will be hosting a conversation between the artist and curator Eirini Linardaki and artist
  Julien Gardair.
 
  Julien Gardair will talk about his ongoing series Surprise included in the Interdependency show and how the subscription model can empower artists and build lasting relationships. Born and raised in France, Julien Gardair is based in Brooklyn since 2007. He develops a proteiform practice varying from cut out, drawings, and paintings to public art and immersive site-specific video installations. He builds contradictory spaces where a diversity of cultures and histories meet to stimulate new interpretations. When our situation permits, next time you go down to the beach, stop by the 18th Avenue and Kings Highway stations on the F line, and enjoy a moment on one of the sculptural benches he recently finished for the MTA Arts & Design program.

Eirini Linardaki was born in Athens and studied in Limerick L.I.T., Ireland, Berlin, and Marseille. She lived in France for more than twenty years. She is now developing projects within the city and questioning the relationship between public policy and art.

More about Interdependency Now.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the second conversation of our LIVE series.    
                  
 Wednesday, May 13th from 4PM to 5PM EDT.
 Add to your calendar 

 Join us via  RadiatorArts Instagram,  and Vincent Parisot Instagram

  Dear Friends,

  Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series highlighting artists from our current show. 
  This Wednesday, May 13, we will be hosting a conversation between Radiator’s founder, Tamas Veszi
  and the artist Vincent Parisot.

  Vincent is a visual artist working between Greece and France, currently located in Heraklion on the island of Crete with his family. Vincent Parisot was born nearby Paris and studied in Quimper in Bretagne and Limerick L.I.T. Ireland. He lived in Crete since 2010. He is now developing projects in situ, in public space and at the same time develops a practice of drawing.

More about Interdependency Now.

Radiator Gallery invites you to the first conversation of our LIVE series.    
                  
Wednesday, May 6th from 4PM EDT.
Add it to your Calendar 

Join us via  RariatorArts Instagram,  and PeterSorianoStuido Instagram

Dear Friends,

Interdependency Now – One on One is an Instagram Live Series highlighting artists from our current show. 
The second conversation will be an interview between Radiator’s founder Tamas Veszi and artist Peter Soriano.

Peter Soriano is an artist born in Manila, Philippines in 1959 and since 1981 has been living in New York. He is a sculptor who began in 2012 to work exclusively on large scaled wall drawings composed of acrylic and spray paint, as well as related drawings on paper. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at Galerie Bernhard Bishoff in Bern Switzerland and in France by Galerie Jean Fournier, who represents him. 

More about Interdependency Now.

Watch the full video here.

Closing event of the exhibition Try to Hold Your Gaze Steady

We are delighted to invite you to our final gathering on Friday evening at the Radiator Gallery.
The artists of the exhibition will activate the space with noise, movement and language in its blended forms.
Come, dance and Try to hold your gaze steady while reality falls apart and comes back together, or maybe not.

Friday: 05/03/19 6-10PM

6-6:30PM
Curatorial walk through with Viola Lukacs

7:30PM
Performance on site: Skin Depth–Yitian Yan
Guitar solo: Chi Wang
Poetry reading: Lan Xu
Live music: Dollies ii
Minimalist electronics sound and light set: Thomas Dexter
Performative reading: Zsuzsanna Varga-Szegedi

Try to Hold Your Gaze Steady is a group exhibition where the digital image undergoes irregular fluctuations in physical motion. Such an encounter negates the disembodied nature of digital technology and initiates an important rupture within the established fields of visual perception and representation.

The logic of the digital photograph is one of historical continuity and discontinuity. The digital image tears apart the net of semiotic codes, modes of display, and patterns of spectatorship in modern visual culture–and, at the same time, weaves this net even stronger. The digital image annihilates photography while solidifying, glorifying and immortalizing the photographic – claims Lev Manovich in his early writing Photography after Photography.

The exhibition examines this conflict in recent and remastered works by Thomas Dexter, Harm van den Dorpel, Zsuzsanna Szegedi and Lan Xu. The artists in this investigatory show treat the digital image as material, and its qualities and properties as one, extant question that may be concerned with perception, representation and the conservation of the digital image. Each artist has a radically different mode of interaction with the medium.

Artist and performer Thomas Dexter’s work has been featured at the Guggenheim and PS1/MOMA. This time he creates a series of videos with a miniature “POV” action-sports camera attached to the end of a consumer cordless power drill. The gradual acceleration of the camera movement turns landscapes into contemplative mandalas that unveil the often invisible transmission between figuration and abstraction. As viewers struggle and fail to maintain spatial hierarchies, the process reveals the limitations of human perception.

Berlin based artist Harm van den Dorpel is known for his “left gallery” project that uses blockchain to open new possibilities for the production and distribution of digital art. The present video work Three Sleepwalkers applies his typical blend of manipulated and reconfigured visual elements taken from a number of sources to critically explore quotidien life and meme culture.

Zsuzsanna Szegedi-Varga imagines new subjectivities and post-human bodies in a series of photographic works where the Iphone’s camera becomes an expanded brush. Through gesturally outpacing the camera’s panoramic “image-stitching” algorithm, these works playfully collapse distinctions between subject and milieu, drawing attention to the fluidity of identities.

Artist and DJ Lan Xu translates semiotic codes and grids taken from digital culture into a performative installation. Handcrafted objects, textural neon tubes link with New Age “deep image” poetry boosted with dance. This is the celebration of the possibilities to immerse in a collective experience beyond physical space and time.

Artists: Thomas Dexter, Harm van den Dorpel, Zsuzsanna Szegedi-Varga, Lan Xu

Curator: Viola Lukács

IMAGES

June 7th – August 11th, 2019

Opening Reception: June 7th, 2019 6 pm – 9 pm

Curated by Tansy Xiao

Artists: Suzanne Anker, Kathy High, Pablo Garcia Lopez, Anh Thuy Nguyen, Eva Petric

Radiator Gallery is thrilled to announce The Cured, a group show featuring 5 artists whose works delineate the coherent relationship between social politics and the ethics of biological studies situated in a postmodern context, in the hope of raising the questions on the dynamic and ambiguous nature of being human.

As classic philosophy fades away, said Heidegger, cybernetics becomes a philosophy for the twentieth century. Heidegger claimed that, full-ˇblown technicism dissolves even objectivity, turning beings into “standing reserve” in the service of the will to power. Its application on biology is apparent: medical systems were established in order to control. From the notorious lobotomy to your everyday orthodontic braces, state-ˇfunded medical researches have turned into either propaganda or profitable commodities. The entire society expects to be cured, corrected, and optimized.

In fact, the ethical concerns in biological researches have always been controversial: to which extend do we allow technology to rewrite nature, in order to create and to meet new criteria of living, and how far can we go. Back in the days, the racial policy of Nazi Germany developed a set of policies and laws based on a specific racist doctrine asserting the superiority of the Aryan race, which claimed scientific legitimacy. With the new acquisition of power of genetic modification today, by suggesting that one set of genes is superior to another, we’re still skating on thin ice.

As Eva Petric placed the tissues of a real human heart under a crystal dome, the artist reminds us that a heart can survive alone in a container of oxygen. But is the functioning of vital organs really a life? The debates on the necessity of euthanasia have been brought to the public attention more than ever before. Pablo Garcia Lopez on the other hand combined microscopic images of brain cells with fragments from Goya’s bleak and haunting Black Paintings that were associated with PTSD, illustrating the weaponization of modern day neuroscience. By magnifying the images of stem cells, Suzanne Anker centers the consideration of the ethics of research involving the development, use, and destruction of human embryos. However our own species is not the only one that has been impacted by the biological studies. Kathy High created delicate glass globes in the shape of white blood cells, hosting the ashes of transgenic lab rats to ritualize their contribution to science in a sympathetic way. Last but not least, an installation that includes two shoulder pads with the texture of flesh and blood, suggesting a trapped body in the size of the artist’s own-ˇ-ˇAnh Thuy Nguyen visualizes the political nature of a body and narrates the dilemma between a preassigned identity and a chosen one.

Opening night performance Smile, Please by Winnie Yoe, an artificial intelligence device that provides the prevention and correction of socially under-ˇqualified smiles.

**A large percentage of sales from selected artworks will be donated to local charities including The Fibromuscular Dysplasia Society of America & The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing.

Check out a video from the opening reception here. 

ARTISTS BIOS      CHECKLIST          PRESS RELEASE

ARTWORK

OPENING RECEPTION