The Art of Captivity

The Center Gallery at Fordham University and Susan Eley Fine Art in New York City are pleased to present a two-part group exhibition this fall on the theme of captivity.

"The Art of Captivity," Part One
Curated by Leonard Cassuto.
Artists: Paul Karasik, Fernando Molero, Alyssa Pheobus, Anne Sherwood Pundyk,
Peter Scott, Kara Walker, and Karen Yama.

The Center Gallery at Fordham University, Lincoln Center
113 West 60th Street
New York, NY 10023

September 22 – October 28, 2010
Opening reception October 5, 2010, 5:00 to 6:30 pm
Followed by artists panel discussion, 6:30 to 8:00 pm

Gallery hours: Monday – Sunday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
For information please call: (212) 636-7461
http://captivityproject.wordpress.com/

"The Art of Captivity,"Part Two:
Curated by Susan Eley
Artists: Barbara Bashlow, Susan Crile, Ayakoh Furukawa, Kentaro Hiramatsu,
Jessica M. Kaufman, Kim Luttrell, Fernando Molero, Carolyn Monastra,
Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Heather Boose Weiss, and Elizabeth White

Susan Eley Fine Art
46 West 90th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10024

October 26 to December 3, 2010
Opening reception October 26, 2010, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
With panel discussion date to be announced

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Thursday, 11:00 am - 5:00 pm, and by appointment
For information please call: (917) 952-7641

Description of "The Art of Captivity," Part One: Center Gallery at Fordham University, Lincoln Center

The Center Gallery at Fordham University, Lincoln Center, is pleased to present “The Art of Captivity,” an exhibition of work by seven contemporary artists chosen by Professor Leonard Cassuto for their diverse and compelling approaches to this theme. Using a range of media, the works depict a variety of struggles set on different stages: physical, psychological, cognitive, sexual, racial, and political.

Kara Walker’s silhouetted images underscore issues of gender and American slavery as they pictorially narrate scenes from the antebellum South. Graphic novelist Paul Karasik uses the comic format associated with superheroes to sidestep preconceived ideas about those living within the constraints of autism. Alyssa Pheobus’s densely worked drawings employ an embroidery-like, labor-intensive technique to spell out lyrics from popular love songs; her work brings together representations of sexuality and subjugation. Described as “in-scapes” by the artist, Fernando Molero’s small, intricately composed oil paintings carefully calibrate the degree to which our sense of self is delineated by early childhood experiences.

Alluding to post-9/11 antiterrorist responses, installation artist Peter Scott’s work addresses the constraints of fear. The faces of governmental detainees become part of the wallpaper in a traditional American domestic interior installed and documented by Scott. Our own self-conception risks diminishment and limitation if we allow it to be defined by others; photographer, Karen Yama “photo-paints” portraits of celebrity wives playing the parts proscribed for them. Finally, death is the ultimate captor, and illness conjures its finality. Drawing upon her recent experience with cancer, painter Anne Sherwood Pundyk translates ontological ideas about illness and stigma into paint. She follows the sensations of the body as they are paired with moments of recognition, memory, and understanding.

Common to all forms of captivity are the roles of captor and captive. Questions of responsibility, implications of guilt, and evidence of denial all emerge from this exhibition. A collective understanding of the artists’ interpretations of captivity encourages self-examination and underscores the possibility of finding moments of freedom amidst any condition of restraint.

This exhibition dovetails with Professor Cassuto’s classes “The Art of Captivity” and “Captivity and Conflict,” offered through the English Department at Fordham University. His students respond to different depictions of captivity in poetry, fiction, and memoir by writers such as Art Spiegelman, Sylvia Plath, and Oliver Sacks. The readings come together with analysis of both fine and popular visual art to create a rich interdisciplinary inquiry. Selected writings from students inspired by the exhibition will be available to those visiting exhibition. A catalogue of the exhibition featuring essays by Leonard Cassuto, Susan Eley and Anne Sherwood Pundyk, and Casey Ruble will be available online and in print.

Biographies

Curator Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University, where he teaches American literature. His most recent book is Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, which was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity Awards and named one of the Ten Best Books of 2008 in the crime and mystery category by the Los Angeles Times. He also serves as general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the American Novel. Cassuto is an award-winning journalist as well, writing about subjects ranging from science to sports. This is his first curated exhibition.
www.lcassuto.com

Based in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, Paul Karasik is the coauthor of The Ride Together, which combines traditional and graphic narration. He is also the cocreator of the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Astor’s City of Glass, and a recipient of the 2009 Eisner award for a collection of Hank Fletcher’s comics, I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Nickelodeon magazines.

Fernando Molero studied at the University of Barcelona and has taught art at the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Art, Barcelona. Molero lived in Brooklyn for a decade before returning to Spain last year. Molero’s work has been featured in Barcelona at Artur Ramon Contemporani, Galeria Tertre, and Casa Golferichs, as well as in New York at Studio Facchetti.

Alyssa Pheobus divides her time between New York and Lahore, Pakistan. She had solo shows at Bellwether and Tracy Williams, Ltd. in New York in 2009 and at Holster Projects in London, UK in 2010.

Based in New York City, Anne Sherwood Pundyk has recently shown at Susan Eley Fine Art in New York, Art Miami 2009, The Philoctetes Center in New York, and Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. She also writes about contemporary art.

Casey Ruble is a painter, freelance critic, and artist in residence at Fordham University, where she teaches painting and drawing and serves as coordinator of the galleries. She is represented by Foley Gallery in New York and has been exhibited both nationally and abroad.

Peter Scott is an artist, writer, and curator, and director of the non-profit gallery carriage trade. Some of the venues he’s exhibited at in the U.S. and Europe are Apex Art, Momenta Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum Fodor, Holland, SMAAK, Belgium, Riverside Studios, London, and White Columns. He is the recipient of two NYFA grants. His writing has appeared most recently in Art Monthly, artnet, and the Architect's Newspaper.

Based in New York City, Kara Walker has had solo exhibitions in major art museums worldwide, including a traveling retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007. She was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1997. Her work is in over 40 public art collections.

After living in New York City, Berlin and Chicago, Karen Yama now resides in New Jersey. She has recently had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL and at the Galerie Daad in Berlin. Selected group exhibitions include the Erna Hecey Gallery in Brussels, Belgium and Momenta Art in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently showing at Niels Borch Jensen, Berlin.

Description of "The Art of Captivity," Part Two: Susan Eley Fine Art

Susan Eley Fine Art is delighted to present "The Art of Captivity," Part Two, sister exhibition to Fordham Universityʼs Part I. The exhibition at SEFA—on view from October 26-December 3—features 18 paintings and photographs by 11 artists. Gallery Reception, October 26, 6-8 pm, will be followed by a panel discussion on captivity (date to be announced). The exhibition at Fordham, curated by Leonard Cassuto
with programming by Anne Sherwood Pundyk, is on view at The Center Gallery, September 22-October 28.

The SEFA exhibition will explore ideas of captivity that range from the horror of Segregation, the Holocaust and the war in Iraq, to subtler more abstract interpretations of psychological or spiritual imprisonment that spring from personal events and experiences, as well as from societal or cultural mores and expectations.

Featured artists include Kim Luttrell, whose print of Holocaust victims shows arms tattooed with identifying numbers. Photographer Jessica M. Kaufman is represented by two works from her “Panopticon” series of stark black and white photographs of concentration camp sites, taken today. Susan Crile's works on paper from her Abu Ghraib series show US military policemen in unspeakable acts of violation and abuse of the prisoners. Ayakoh Furukawaʼs intricate pencil drawings of Burmese long-necked women express expectations of how women should look, dress and present themselves within the confines of male dominated societies in the Third World and the West.

Barbara Bashlow's large painting from her “Girl” series called All Tied Up, shows a pre-pubescent girl tied in ropes in an empty room and subject to the unremitting gaze of unseen onlookers. Fernando Molero will be represented by a self-portrait of a boyish Fernando behind a curtain of light. He is adorable, yet strangely poignant as he contemplates the man he will become and how memories of this fleeting childhood will haunt and entrap him. In Anne Sherwood Pundyk's small watercolor, Persephone, the goddess peers out in terror as Hades grips her shoulder. Kentaro Hiramatsuʼs paintings of a tightly wound, urban landscape reflect how we are entangled in and captive to the environments in which we choose to live.

On the lighter side, photographers Carolyn Monastra and Heather Boose Weiss explore notions of captivity through dress up and role play in theatrical settings. Elizabeth Whiteʼs intriguing photo manipulated images of packaged food demonstrate how the West is enslaved by a collective belief that what we shop for, consume and collect somehow defines us.

Biographies

Susan Eisner Eley was born in New York. In 2006 she founded Susan Eley Fine Art as a
salon-style contemporary art gallery. She is a former freelance editor/writer, who has
written extensively on art and dance for national and regional publications. She has
worked in public relations/education at the Morgan Library & Museum, and interned at the Mayor's Art Commission, NY, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. Eley has a BA in Art History, Brown University, and an MA in Arts Administration, NYU. Eley is also a former professional dancer with the Feld Ballet.

Barbara Bashlow resides in New York. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Allen Sheppard Gallery and Synchronicity Space, NY. Her work is in the corporate collections of Pfizer and Millennium Partners and she was a finalist for the Alexander Rusch Award. Bashlow holds a certificate in painting and drawing from the New York Studio School.

Susan Crile, a painter, was raised in Cleveland and lives in New York City. She has has had solo exhibitions both Nationally and Internationally, including Il Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Italy, Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, Itlay, The National Council for Culture, Art and Letters, Kuwait City, Kuwait, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C and the St. Louis Museum of Art, MO. Her paintings are in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum among others. She has received two NEA grants, a Residency grant at the American Academy in Rome, and a Rockefeller Residency at Bellagio, Italy. Crile is a professor of Art at Hunter College, CUNY.

Ayakoh Furukawa was born in Osaka, Japan and lives in New York. Exhibition venues include the Japan Society, Jersey City Museum, Ise Cultural Foundation, Tenri Cultural Foundation, Shanghai Art Fair, Marlborough Chelsea, Mehr Gallery and Art Touch Collection. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Ise Cultural Foundation. Furukawa holds a BFA and an MFA from Hunter College.

Kentaro Hiramatsu was born in Japan and lives and works in New York City. He has
had exhibitions at Susan Eley Fine Art, Asago Art Museum, Urawa Art Museum, the Ise
Cultural Foundation, Capsule Gallery, City Without Walls and other galleries.

Jessica M. Kaufman was born in Philadelphia and lives in New York. Her photographs
have been featured at Susan Eley Fine Art, Michael Mazzeo Gallery, the Sasha Wolf
Gallery, The Camera Club, NY, the Griffin Museum of Photography, MA, and the Lishui
Photography Festival, China. Her work is in the collections of The Jewish Museum, NY,
the Getty Research Institute, CA, Texas Tech University, the Southeast Museum of
Photography, FL, and China’s Lishui Photography Museum. Kaufman received a BA in
Art, Yale University and an MFA in photography, the Massachusetts College of Art.

Kim Luttrell was born in Henderson, KY and lives in New York. Luttrell’s work is in collections in the US, Europe, South America and Asia. She was a recipient of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant & Art Fellowship Grant, a featured artist at the House & Garden Showhouse at the Havemeyer Mansion, NJ, and is in the permanent archives of the Library and Research Center of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of the Ringling School of Fine Art and Design.

Fernando Molero was born in Granada, Spain, lived in Brooklyn for a decade and has recently returned home to Barcelona. Molero's oil paintings have been featured in Barcelona at Artur Ramon Contemporani, Galeria Tertre and Casa Golferichs, as well as in New York at Studio Facchetti and Susan Eley Fine Art. Molero studied at the University of Barcelona and taught art in that city at the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Art.

Carolyn Monastra was born in Cleveland, OH, and lives in Brooklyn. Her photographs have been featured in group and solo shows at Susan Eley Fine Art, Julie Saul, Capsule and Exit Art in NY, as well as at Miami Art Basel with Ambrosino Gallery, the Tokyo Art Fair and Palm Beach Contemporary Art Fair. Monastra's work is in the Margulies Collection, Miami. She holds an MFA in photography, Yale University.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk resides in New York City and has recently shown at Susan Eley Fine Art and the Philoctetes Center, NY, at Art Miami and at Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA. Pundyk is also a freelance art critic and curator, who has contributed to The Brooklyn Rail and other publications and maintains a blog about contemporary art. Pundyk holds an MFA in painting from RISD.

Heather Boose Weiss lives in Los Angeles. Her photographs have been featured in various solo and group shows at Susan Eley Fine Art. She has also exhibited at Gray and Gove Gallery, at the School of Visual Arts, NY and Hagedorn Foundation, Atlanta, as well as at a recent Photography Festival in Pingyao, China. Weiss holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY.

Elizabeth White lives in New York. Her work includes photography, video, installation and social practices. Recently she has had exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London and the Center for Endless Progress, Berlin, in addition to exhibitions in NY, Dublin, Leipzig, Japan and New Zealand. She has received an Aaron Siskind Fellowship and the support of the Hattie Strong Foundation and was featured as a new talent by ArtInfo.com. White holds an MFA from the School of Visual

Image in title box: Kara Walker, Testimony, 5 of 5, 2005, Photogravure, 22.5" x 31" - sheet size, 6.5" x 8.75 image size. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins &; Co.