Nov 16th, 2023 • 4 minute read
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Curations with Allison Chou: A Love Letter to NYC
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Hi there! My name is Allison, and I'm the new CEO of Art in Res. As fall turns to winter here in NYC and jack-o-lanterns give way to paper-cut turkeys, menorahs, and a few premature Christmas trees, the city is buzzing with holiday spirit. On the cusp of a new year, it feels like everyone and their mother is ready to turn over a new page and step forward with fresh energy.
With the optimism the city is serving at the moment, I'm feeling inspired to share some artists and artworks that remind me why it's New York or nowhere. From cityscapes to landscapes to snapshots of New Yorkers moving and shaking through their apparently very busy days, our artists never fail to reflect the vitality of the city in their work.
Whether it's your home or you're just passing through, whether you've hailed a yellow cab on your way downtown or just seen them do so on Friends, whether you've climbed the steps of the Met or if Art in Res is the closest thing you have to the Met - everyone can find inspiration in New York City. Happy browsing!
New York Slice
You can always count on Dan Bina to bring the fun. His work explores the visual culture of desire, individual and collective identities, social media, and craft traditions through a wide range of visual modes of expression, from formal abstraction to realism, surrealist collage, and observational painting. Bina's Patsy's Old School Slice prompts several considerations at once: the feral delight of a perfect pie after a long day; the labor and love and skill that make the food we eat; the iconic legacies of New York's own pizzaiolos. Rain or shine, summer or winter, best day of your life or worst, a New York slice will do the trick.
Yellow Cabs
Ella Yang brings us another piece of New York iconography with her Gowanus Taxis.
In Ella's words: "This taxi depot in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is just a couple of blocks from my studio and I see it whenever I walk there. The storage building hulking over the large garage form massive shapes between the sky and street, and the bustle of yellow taxis seem to anchor everything together. It’s hard to resist painting those vibrant yellows and reds, too!"
I love seeing taxis and buses and trucks sitting idly at depots like this one, as if they're gathering for a lunch break before hitting the streets again. I see a moment of recharge, of welcome respite from the grind that makes the city run.
Transport
I have a personal inclination toward tiny art. Small artworks pique curiosity and draw viewers in close; they minimize noise and introduce a point of focus in a space. Carrie-Ann Bracco's Orange Sunset on Metrocard measures just 3"x2", and it transports the viewer - aptly, via Metrocard - to a place of calm.
Born on Long Island, NY, a graduate of Columbia University (B.A.) and the New York Academy of Art (MFA), and now a Brooklynite, Carrie-Ann Bracco could certainly be considered an authority on New York. Her work mostly explores remote and endangered landscapes all across the world, and this piece feels no different. The mythic seascape is further complicated by the Metrocard medium, which evokes industrialization and commercialization; the subject and format are at odds with and in conversation with one another. A small but mighty piece!
Dusk in the City
Sharilyn Neidhardt - a Brooklynite for two decades running - draws on her training as a photojournalist and as a paintmaker to create images of urban living like Meatpacking, which uses bold graphic lines to silhouette pedestrians on a 14th Street sidewalk during a Manhattan sunset. A study on dimension and focus, Neidhardt captures the juxtaposition of nature's expansiveness and confinements of the urban environment. We see a sliver of an endless sunset enclosed by the noisy architecture of the city - a busy road, apartment buildings and shops, streetlights and the people loitering beneath them.
To me, Meatpacking is a reminder that nature's wonder is ever-present, should we bother to acknowledge and appreciate it. Just past the distracting glow of the stores and restaurants, the setting sun reminds of possibilities beyond the city's limits.
In the Neighborhood
It's not only the subject matter of Jak Ruiz's South Bushwick reform church that conveys a neighborhood feeling - it's the palette, the vibrancy, the lines of the thoroughfare inviting you toward the familiar church. Ruiz includes a simple descriptor of the piece: "This is one of my favorite buildings in the neighborhood of Bushwick." That's what makes a neighborhood, isn't it? A favorite building, or a certain tree you watch bloom in the spring and sleep in the winter. Ruiz's hues make the scene come alive, as if the church and its surroundings are vibrating with sound and color. This painting makes the viewer instantly synesthetic, hearing color and seeing sound, experiencing the neighborhood as if you were on your typical afternoon stroll.
An Ode to New York
New York City is a special place, even to those who have never been here. That's a powerful thing - to capture the imagination of so many. These artists and artworks use iconic New York imagery, medium and format, and colors and brushstrokes to invite us into their own slice of New York. To each their own, in the best sense.
Curated by Allison ChouVirtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer