Art, Access & Decay: New York 1975 – 1985

Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 / 8-11PM

Exhibition Dates:
April 2 – April 30, 2011

Curated by Peter Frank & Lisa Kahane

Participating artists include John Ahearn, Liza Bear, Andrea Callard, Thom Corn, CRASH, Jody Culkin, DAZE, Jane Dickson (with Charlie Ahearn), Stefan Eins, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Mike Glier, Robert Goldman, Ilona Granet, Keith Haring, Julie Harrison (with Robert Kleyn), Jenny Holzer, GH Hovagimyan, Becky Howland, Lisa Kahane, Christof Kohlhofer, KOOR, Joe Lewis, Michael McClard, Ann Messner, Richard Miller, Joseph Nechvatal, Tom Otterness, Cara Perlman, Virge Piersol, Walter Robinson, Judy Ross, Christy Rupp, Teri Slotkin, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong

Subliminal Projects Gallery is pleased to present Art, Access & Decay: New York 1975-1985, a group exhibition on view April 2 through April 30, 2011. A reception for the artists will be held Saturday, April 2, from 8 -11 p.m.

Art, Access & Decay: New York 1975-1985, examines a new art movement that emerged in New York at this time, uninfluenced by commercial or academic input. This new movement wanted to avoid the elite confines set by the art market, and made little compromise. These artists wanted to produce artwork nobody had seen before but everybody could understand. They presented this artwork on the streets, in makeshift storefronts, and on public access television to ensure that it was widely available, as broadly cast and as affordable as possible.

Art, Access & Decay draws mostly from three overlapping phenomena: an artists’ collective called Collaborative Projects, or CoLab; Fashion Moda, a cultural center situated in the South Bronx, (then one of the most devastated neighborhoods in the country); and a corner of Manhattan, the East Village, that emerged as an alternative to SoHo’s increasingly upscale art scene. These phenomena emerged around 1980, but the spirit that engendered them was rampant by the mid-1970s. Do-it-yourself and guerrilla approaches to exhibitions and performances proliferated. The streets, whether in the financial district, Chinatown, Harlem or Times Square, were as legitimate an arena for art making and exhibiting as anywhere else. This mindset stuck well into the 1980s, as high art and commercial music began appropriating the look and energy of graffiti and hand-drawn posters, Xeroxed flyers and eccentric installations. The appropriation, however, merely skimmed the surface of the look and verve of this new artistic expression.

By the early 1980s, uptown and downtown audiences, the art market and art theorists alike, all began embracing street art. The embrace was mutual, but not automatic. The artists of New York’s new vernacular craved the acceptance of the art world and the public at large, but not at the expense of their street sensibility.

Shown as part of Art, Access & Decay: New York 1975-1985

Echo Park Film Center 1200 N Alvarado St. @ Sunset Blvd. http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/

Tickets $5 at the door

ARTIST’S FILM & TELEVISION: New York 1975-1985 @ Echo Park Film Center
7:30pm Sunday, April 3, 2011
(Run time approx. 1′ 40″)

Stealing (1977, Ann Messner) 3’33”
This action took place in view of surveillance cameras and was simultaneously broadcast real time on a store monitor in the vicinity. Summer End Sale C&A, Koln, Germany

Subordinate Acts (1981, Julie Harrison) 5′
Vignettes of intrigue, audio and narration. With Robert Kleyn, Ilona Granet, Pamela Harling and friends.

Earthglow (1983, Liza Bear) 8′
A city dweller attempting to write a poem about a desert trip is distracted by a recent argument. A Billie Holiday blues song disrupts the strains of César Franck’s Violin Sonata. Earthglow is a film about the writing state of mind; past and present perceptions are reconciled in the act of writing. Electronic engineering by Bruce Tovsky.

Potato Wolf Sampler (1979-1983 Collaborative Projects) 18’46”
“Potato Wolf” was a live weekly public access cable television show produced by Collaborative Projects, or Colab, a New York City artists’ group formed in 1978 to determine new venues for showing and creating work. Throughout its first ten years of activity, Colab was distinguished from other contemporary New York artists’ groups by its regular open meetings, open membership and collaborative productions of art shows, magazines, media production, performance, theater and film shows. During this period over 100 video shows were generated by the Colab membership in these group productions.

All Color News Sampler (1978, Collaborative Projects) 17′
A remarkable collection of clips from the feature news program for cable TV. This is the early political and socially oriented work by artists now well-known as sculptors and filmmakers. Includes John Ahearn, Tom Otterness (Subways, Golden Gloves Boxing and Rats in Chinatown); Scott and Beth B (NYPD Arson and Explosions Squad vs. FALN); Charlie Ahearn (Bums Under the Brooklyn Bridge). Also includes Virge Piersol and Alan Moore (Bombing of JP Morgan) and Michael McClard.

X Magazine Benefit (1978, Alan Moore and Coleen Fitzgibbon) 11’34”
Punk rock performances by DNA, James Chance and the Contortions and Boris Police Band in NYC in the late 1970′s. Shot in black and white super 8 and edited on video, the film captures the gritty look and sound of the music scene during that era.

Cave Girls (1982, Kiki Smith and Ellen Cooper) 31′
A tape by collaborating women artists who develop a pre-thought fantasy of a prehistoric culture. Rife with home-made exoticism, this well received piece verges on the grand themes of female identity. Kiki Smith and Ellen Cooper conceived this post-feminist work and dancer Cara Brownell produced Cave Girls. It includes music by the Bush Tetras and Y Pants.

The Slits (1980, Liza Bear) 3’56”
Ari Up, Viv Albertine, Palm Olive and Don Letts in “They’re Fucking On Your Head”, an excerpt from a rehearsal tape of The Slits aired in January 1980 on Communications Update, a weekly artists’ public access tv series produced by Center for New Art Activities.
…………………

UNDERGROUND USA (1980, Eric Mitchell) @ Echo Park Film Center
7:30pm, 9:30pm Sunday, April 17, 2011
(Run time 85′)
Patti Astor will appear in person.

UNDERGROUND USA, written and directed by Eric Mitchell, stars Patti Astor as a fading superstar of the 60s, Rene Ricard as her protective best friend and Mitchell as a male hustler, with cameos by Cookie Mueller, Taylor Mead and Duncan Smith. First released in 16mm, Underground ran for six months at the St Mark’s Cinema, was screened at MoMA and broadcast on Channel 13 PBS and BBC’s Channel 4.

David Ehrestein, writing in BOMB magazine, Spring 1980:
New Wave filmmakers like Mitchell have emerged to challenge both commercial movie making and the avant-garde. Shown in rock clubs and lofts, these loose, free form Super-8mm narratives quickly gained a loyal cult following for their witty explorations of hip urban life and times. In a style combining amateur enthusiasm with sophisticated visual know-how and a sharp sense of social and political observation, these films are the diametric opposite of the staid formalism of the ’’experimental’’ establishment.