Recent: "Auto-Exposure" a group show
featuring Andrea Arrubla, Fallon Cecil, Rindon Johnson and Kalup Linzy
Click here to read a review by Sean J Patrick Carney
Open Projects is pleased to present Auto-Exposure at ALPHA artspace.
Opening reception Friday May 12, 6-8pm.
On view 2-4pm on 5/13, 5/21, 5/28 (closing) and by appointments.
292 E 3rd St #1B, New York, NY 10009
Within imaging techno lingo, “auto-exposure” refers to a camera mode that automatically sets the appropriate amount of light that hits the film or sensor plane. A second reading of this term would signify an action by the artist that self-reveals an identity or fact previously concealed, unknown or unseen. The exhibition Auto-Exposure highlights works by artists that have turned the camera to themselves or their stand-ins, thus using performance as the medium, while their narrative/action is the raw material. The exhibition examines the long-standing conversation and inter-play between performance and the photographic- and moving-image. These works stand in contrast to performance meant for the live audience. The presence of the camera does not only serve the utilitarian role of record-making, but also its lens is the omnipresent gaze that fuels the performance.
Andrea Arrubla is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, NY. Her artwork revolves around issues of personal histories, institutional critique, and language through accessible mediums that confront professionalized methods of art making. Arrubla was the Student Liaison of the Bruce High Quality Foundation University (‘14-’16) where she focused on genuine and inclusive community building in the arts. Her first solo exhibition took place at New Release Gallery; New York. She has exhibited work in group exhibitions at Essex Flowers and various educational institutions across the United States. Arrubla has been featured in print in OSMOS Magazine, The Third Rail, and Packet Biweekly and has read her poetry at Signal Gallery, Printed Matter and Molasses Books.
Fallon Cecil explores memory and emotional terrain in multimedia works, probing authority, authorship, intimacy and abject. Early works were primarily performances including, her most contentious piece, Love Letter (2012), where she gave pseudo- affectionate, handwritten letters to anyone that agreed to let her visit their homes. After graduating with a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, Fallon started an art collective dedicated to cross-disciplinary artistic collaborations. After moving to Brooklyn NY, Fallon sought to make work that could negotiate her art background with her traditional blue-collar upbringing. Memories of selling Fireworks on roadside sites and gas stations with her father, prompted Fireworks (2015), an in-gallery firework stand, where original works of art from dozens of New York artists were sold (unseen) in sealed fountain containers. Focusing now on the memory of her mother’s work as a small-town portrait photographer, the Image/Memory (2016) series uses the familiar tropes of photography, e.g. sterile blank environments and studio lighting, as a means to violate our sense of cleanliness and trespass on the common representations of the body.
Rindon Johnson is a Brooklyn based artist. Moving between Virtual Reality and sculpture, Johnson has exhibited and read widely in Europe and the US. Johnson has a BFA in photography and urban planning from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Johnson is an MFA Candidate in Sculpture at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts. Johnson is the author of "Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People" from Inpatient Press and the forthcoming VR book, "Meet in the Corner" from Publishing House. Johnson writes for the Brooklyn Rail sometimes. Johnson runs Imperial Matters with Sophia Le Fraga.
Kalup Linzy. In a multidisciplinary practice that includes videos, performances and music, Kalup Linzy creates satirical narratives inspired by television soap operas, telenovelas and Hollywood melodramas. Bringing an irreverent approach to stereotypes of race, gender and sexuality, Linzy performs, most often in drag, in a series of memorable recurring roles. The artist serves as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and actor—and, in a distinctive strategy, also voices and overdubs the dialogue of multiple characters. At once comic, raunchy and poignant, Linzy's unique narrative videos fuse dramatic intensity with melodramatic irony. His works are in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Linzy lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
