ART IN CONTEXT

AIB MFA Photography Inaugural Exhibit

February 21st, 2012 Comments Off

AIB MFA in Photography Inaugural Exhibition
Wednesday, February 22 – Saturday, March 10, 2012
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 22, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Also featured: Dave Hyams, Cotton Miller, Matthew Miller, Dave Molar, Lindsay Rogers and Nikki Segarra.

PRC lecture VICKY GOLDBERG

February 21st, 2012 Comments Off

Vicki Goldberg: American Women Photographers
Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 6:30 pm
BU Sargent College, Room 101
635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
No charge for members of BU community and students of PRC member institutions >>
Click here to register online >>

Nan Goldin, Nan one month after being battered, 1984.

[PRC press release] Vicki Goldberg, one of the leading voices in the field of photography criticism, will discuss how and why American women photographers, most prominently Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin, came to the attention of the photography world in the late 1970s and early 1980s after lurking on the fringes for a long time. She will also examine the way the principle concerns of that first crop of important women artists, including the entire appropriation movement, have persisted to the present day and continue to influence photographers.

“One of photography’s most revered and beloved critics, Goldberg examines both the history of photography and our current state of affairs with curiosity, wit, and cutting insight.” – Photo Eye

Vicki Goldberg has published six books and written introductions to more than twenty monographs and catalogues as well as writing about photography for the New York Times for thirteen years. Her books, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives and Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography, were each named one of the best books of the year by the American Library Association; the anthology she edited, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present, was cited in The Wall Street Journal in 2006 as one of the five best of all books on photography. She has received numerous awards for writing, including the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, the Royal Society’s Dudley Johnston Award, and the Long Chen Cup (China). She lectures internationally and writes on photography for various magazines.

John Goodman @ Howard Yezerski

February 21st, 2012 Comments Off

JOHN GOODMAN: ECHO | Curated by Bonnell Robinson

Howard Yezerski Gallery | Boston, MA

Until March 13, 2012

Bonnell Robinson at Howard Yezerski Gallery, February 2012

John Goodman and Howard Yezerski, February 2012

[Press release] Howard Yezerski Gallery is pleased to present Echo, a solo exhibition of Boston- based photographer John Goodman. The exhibition is selected from photographs representing more than three decades of Goodman’s work and is curated by Bonnell Robinson.

Along with selections from his acclaimed book on boxing, The Times Square Gym, and his well known portfolios of Havana and the Boston Ballet, there are images never before exhibited from travels in Cuba, Italy and the USA. A constant in all Goodman’s work is his connection to people and his ability to photograph them during the moments when they are most revealed. He captures the boxer lost in thought, the ballet dancer preparing for her moment onstage, a gospel singer in song, the couple who have playfully shed their clothes on a summer day to pose for his camera.

Goodman’s world is one in which oppositions become dualities-one can’t exist without the other. We see it in his choice of subject matter:
“I am drawn to the body and its contradictions. I explore the contest between light and dark, male and female, grit and tenderness youth and age, power and grace.”

Goodman’s characteristic syntax and atmosphere draw us inside events we might ordinarily overlook. Blur, grain, softened edges are protagonists in Goodman’s work suggesting the very act of perception. Nothing can be captured with entire clarity because life itself escapes the confines of the frame. Like the photographer, the subjects of Goodman’s world are in constant motion: people sing, dance, fight, gamble, and cut loose. And the moment passes. Even lovers on a beach, enjoying an intimate stillness, disappear by the final image. The bittersweet qualities of Goodman’s work build towards his own kind of summation in this exhibition about life–and these photographs are Goodman’s tribute to living it fully.

John Goodman’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. Goodman studied with the photographer Minor White in the 1970′s and is now on the faculty of the Art Institute of Boston.

AiC at MassArt’s Verdant + Edifice Amiss

February 21st, 2012 Comments Off

Participating artists: David Henderson, Lead Pencil Studio , Esther Stocker, Binh Danh, Paula Hayes, Tim Knowles, Workingman Collective.

Visiting guest artist TARA SELLIOS

February 14th, 2012 Comments Off

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

February 15th | 1pm

“I strive to create images that elegantly articulate the totality of existence, focusing heavily on the broad themes of life and death, with further emphasis placed on ideas of fragility, impermanence and carnality. Death has always possessed a significant presence within the history of art, ranging from the various Christian based work that dominated art’s early years to the work of the Dutch still life painters. Manifesting melancholic themes with beauty and precision, as these artists did, results in an image that is seductive, forcing the viewer to look, despite its apparent grotesque and morbid nature. Through these images, I aspire to make apparent the restlessness of a life that is knowingly so temporary and vulnerable.” - Tara Sellios

Less than two years since graduating from The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Sellios has been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, landed her first solo exhibition in Boston, won a curator prize at the Griffin Museum of Photography, was named one of New England’s “Seven Emerging Photographers” by Art New England magazine, and captured an international Flash Forward award from The Magenta Foundation in 2011.

The Boston Globe hailed Lessons of Impermanence, her first solo exhibition staged in the Suffolk University Art Gallery through Jan. 11, 2012, as “hair-raising (photos) prodding at the intersection between sumptuous and gruesome.”

“Sellios strides right into the territories between nourishment and violence,” acclaimed the Globe review, “between how we anthropomorphize animals and how we use them. But her main fascination is the realm that mingles attraction and repulsion, and how art uses beauty to anoint violence, make it more palatable, and raise it to mythic realms.” (excerpt form LU’s blog post- read more)

Sze Tsung LEONG lecture @ MassArt

February 13th, 2012 Comments Off

Tower Auditorium | Tuesday, February 14 | 2pm

Sze Tsung LEONG (American and British, born Mexico City 1970) is an artist based in New York. His work includes the series Cities, a detailed depiction of urban formations throughout the globe, from medieval towns to recent constructions, that together form a picture of the world at this particular moment in time at the beginning of the twenty-first century; Horizons, an international collection of images of natural terrains and urban landscapes that considers the relationships between far and near, foreign and familiar; and History Images, which examines the erasure of history and the reshaping of society through the built environment.

AiC visits MFA Boston & MassArt Galleries

February 8th, 2012 Comments Off

AiC visits Museum of Fine Arts Boston and MassArt:

Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Silver, Salt, and Sunlight | Early Photography in Britain and France

Until August 19, 2012
Gallery 169

Gustav Le Gray, Normandy, ca. 1856-59

Histories of Now: Six Artists from Cairo

Until March 17, 2012
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Moataz Nasr, Merge and Emerge (still), 2011

Ellsworth Kelly | Wood Sculpture

Until March 4, 2012
Foster Gallery, 158

Ellsworth Kelly, CurveXXI, 1978-80

Art of the Americas Wing

Until December 31, 2016
Art of the Americas Wing

MFA Boston, view from the atrium, 2010

Degas and the Nude

Closed February 5, 2012
Gund Gallery, LG31

Edgar Degas, The Tub, 1886

Bakalar Gallery at Massachusetts College of Art + Design

Verdant

Until March 10, 2012
Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery

Binh Danh, Found Portrait, Woman 25, 2006

Paula Heyes, Excerpts of Story of Planet Thear

Larch[4]InstV@72.jpg Tim Knowles, The How, Borrowdale, Cumbria
27/06/2005

Workingman Collective, Swing, 2011

Isaac Julien films @ ICA

January 25th, 2012 Comments Off

Films by Isaac Julien | ICA, Boston

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Isaac Julien: Ten Thousand Waves, this selection of Julien’s earlier films includes 2001 Turner Prize–winners The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999) and Vagabondia (2000), as well as the acclaimed poetic documentary, Looking for Langston (1989). Julien’s films relate experiences of black and gay identity by uniting elements of visual and performing arts to create powerful narratives. Screening times.