Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction: An itinerant exhibition of video, installation, performance and painting in constant evolution
SING SWEET SONGS OF CONVICTION
An Artist Led Itinerant Project
Berlin / Rome / London / New York / Mexico City / San Francisco
Curated by Lisa Wade
Alessia Armeni / Mario Consiglio / Francesca Romana Pinzari
Pernette Scholte / Lisa Wade
+ NY Guest artists: Brian Novatny / Nicole Wittenberg
Sneak Peek:
From midnight, February 26 to midnight, February 27
Performance by Alessia Armeni, “24-Hour Painting”
Opening
February 28, 6 to 9 pm
From February 28 until March 21, 2012
Open Tuesday–Saturday, 12 – 6 pm
Gallery MC
549 West 52nd Street
8th Floor (Between 10th and 11th Avenue)
New York, NY 10019
E or C train to 50th Street and 8th Avenue
212.581.1966
An evolving gesture of conviction sung by emerging artists throughout the world. Hummed harmonies will hypnotize each participating artists’ homeland…a traveling show of troubadours coming soon to your town. Let’s sing sweet songs of conviction, this ambivalence is on its way out they told me.
After its launch April 2012 in Berlin, having had a stop in Rome in May and continuing to London in October, the artist-led itinerant project, Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction, arrives in New York at Gallery MC, from February 28 – March 21, 2012.
Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction is an itinerant exhibition of video, installation and painting composed of five artists from four nations, showing in the cities where each participating artist lives or works. Over the span of a year, starting in April 2012, the show will take to the road: Berlin, London, Mexico City, New York City, San Francisco and Rome, mixing it up in each city and highlighting local talent exhibiting guest artists at each leg of the journey. In New York, namely, Brian Novatny and Nicole Wittenberg.
The core artists initially met in New York as finalists for the Celeste Prize International in December 2010. Across media boundaries, they found an affinity amongst their work and in their fervent dedication to their subject matter, whether investigating the human psyche and the role identity plays in relation to the individual, formulating an existential product constructed of light in specific time and space or reading the pulse of the world in which we live; the digital gaze revisited, economic tumult confronted, and the constructs of war stripped: each artist brings to the table their personal conviction. Over a year later, they have finalized the trajectory of this ambitious and evolving project, finding spaces and cutting edge guest artists in each of their cities.
Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction is composed of Alessia Armeni, Mario Consiglio, Francesca Romana Pinzari, Pernette Scholte and Lisa Wade, which collectively work in performance, installation, painting and video.
Featured guest artist Brian Novatny will be presenting new drawings and paintings, whose meticulously executed works gleaned from old photographs found online are visually as familiar as family photos once removed – viewed through a heavily distorted and psychological gaze. His show “Picture Fishing” at Mulherin & Pollard last year earned comments from Roberta Smith, “…the drawings create a rogue’s gallery of recognizable types, misfits and malcontents. They’re not exactly ugly Americans, but they’re rarely endearing.”
The works of guest artist Nicole Wittenberg are better described as compositions: architecturally minimal, immediate and juicy in their application of paint. But that only describes their surface: they impossibly capture a specific place and time in paint that we thought only polaroid’s were capable of. These paintings are in all effects instamatics. The new work she presents are “subjective images based on Skype conversations. Hinged on the digital distortion of this moment: portraits on the telephone.” Which she describes as, “Speculation about liminal spaces, physical distance and digital portholes.” Wittenberg was recently awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters John Koch award for best young figurative painter.
From midnight, February 26 to midnight, February 27: Sneak Peek Performance, “24-Hour Painting”
During the Sneak Peek performance, spectators can observe an endurance performance by Alessia Armeni. The artist will be constantly present starting at midnight of February 26 until midnight of February 27 in a continuous painting performance investigating time, light and place entitled, “24-Hour Painting.”
February 28: Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction Opening, 6 to 9 pm
For more information, please contact:
Singsweetsongsofconviction@gmail.com,
www.facebook.com/SingSweetSongsOfConviction
www.singsweetsongsofconviction.com
Next Destination: Mexico City! Keep posted for Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction’s arrival, 2013.
Sing Sweet Songs of Conviction:
Sing: Open up that mouth and get the word out at full volume.
Sweet: Don’t forget the value of aesthetics.
Songs: Carefully formulated missives, with a tinge of poetry and a pretty catchy chorus.
Conviction: We are stepping away from the nodding heads of the masses, from the ambivalence of the status quo, from the media cud chewed and spat out ad nauseum. We are blazing a trail of our own construction, taking off societal blinders–speaking from the gut.
