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Michelle Grabner Curates the Whitney Biennial
March 15, 2014
Image from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Michelle Grabner in front of a work by Dona Nelson at the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
Michelle Grabner has been a long-time friend and represented artist here at Gallery 16. In addition to exhibiting frequently as a conceptual artist, she teaches, serves on boards, writes for various publications, and curates. Due to her prolific and intelligent work as an artist, educator and curator, this year she was asked to curate the 4th floor at the Whitney Biennial, and she nailed it. Below are links to some of the overflowing, fantastic praise she has received since the Biennial's preview on March 2nd.
We could not be more excited for her upcoming show this spring, slated to open May 23! Be on the lookout for more details on the blog and out in the social mediasphere in the coming weeks.
Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-michelle-grabner-profile-20140308,0,3658668.column
The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2014/03/17/140317craw_artworld_schjeldahl
New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/arts/design/a-guide-to-the-2014-whitney-museum-biennial.html
Hyper Allergic:
http://hyperallergic.com/112616/whitney-biennial-2014-michelle-grabner-on-the-fourth-floor/
JS Online:
Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-scarborough/a-conversation-with-miche_b_4944674.html
Art News:
Jerry Saltz via Vulture:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/jerry-saltz-on-the-whitney-biennial.html
Futurefarmers: Taking Stock review in ArtForum
February 15, 2014
We're very excited to congratulate the Futurefarmers on their recent review of our last show of 2013, Futurefarmers: Taking Stock, the February issue of ArtForum. Check it out below!
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201402/futurefarmers-45035
Winter Group Show // G16 Holiday Party
January 12, 2014
Ah, holiday season! For most people that phrase brings to mind time spent with family and parties, and things at Gallery 16 are no exception. For our winter show, we are including various artists from the G16 family. Featured in our Winter Group Show this year were the likes of Graham Gillmore, Alex Zecca, Michelle Grabner, Wayne Smith, Rex Ray, Amy Ellingson, Tucker Nichols, Thomas Heinser, Jered Sprecher, and papa bear Griff Williams.
Future Farmers: Taking Stock
November 14, 2013
For our last show of 2013, Gallery 16 is proud to present an excavation of the artist duo Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine. Future Farmers has been producing work and engaging with the public on projects since 1995. This year marks their 20th anniversary, so Taking Stock is a look back on some of the projects they have produced since their beginning. Each project is in itself a deep and profound exercise in engagement with a diverse group of practitioners and various communities. With each project, we see broad discourse on ideas surrounding such issues as food policies, public transportation and rural farming networks, to name a few. While Future Farmers aim to address political, social, economical and philosophical issues with their work, they also manage to package it all with a strong idiosyncratic style. For the show, Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine worked to construct 12 platforms for the concrete objects which represented the ephemeral activities of each project presented.
A multi-part, urban agriculture project developed with the City of San Francisco between 2007-2009. The program began as a utopian proposal in the context of a museum exhibition and has now become a city-supported network of urban farmers that (1) grow, distribute and support home gardens, (2) educate through free workshops, exhibitions and web sites and (3) plant demonstration gardens in highly visible public lands, i.e. garden at city hall. -FF
Lunchbox Laboratory is a collaboration between Future Farmers + the Biological Sciences Team at the National Renewable Energy Lab. Currently scientists are using algae to produce hydrogen and have discovered that it is a viable renewable energy form, in that algae is everywhere and it could also be used to produce biodiesel. One of the main hurdles for the research is to find the most productive strains of algae. Since there are potentially millions of strains, this task is monumental. Lunchbox Laboratory is a prototype for a potentially distributed research tool that would be sent to schools such that young scientists could do primary screening of a collection of algae strains. This would serve as a preliminary screening such that non productive strains would be ruled out and only productive strains would reach labs. This project enables students to participate in big science as well as network with other students nationwide to compare notes. -FF
Extending the architecture and function of the existing seating within the Frank Lloyd Wright- designed museum, a Cobbler's Bench and Shoemaker's Atelier was created to form the nucleus of a series of events questioning the relation ship between the sole and the soul. The atelier is an open interpretation of Simon the Shoemaker's Fifth-century Athens Studio in which Socrates alleg- edly had extensive philosophical discussions with Simon and local youth. The Pedestrian Press is a set of shoes that make up an entire character set. Each shoe has a letter on the toe and a stamp pad embedded in the heel. A roll of paper is rolled out onto the streets of the city and a parade of 22 people wearing the shoes is choreographed by a series of texts read aloud. A special ink made from particulate matter, soot is used to print the letters. For the occasion of the Intervals exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Pedestrian Press made three outings to the New Museum Festival of Ideas, Soul Kitchen in Harlem and a wander around the perimeter of the Guggenheim Museum. -FF
Soil Kitchen is a temporary, windmill-powered architectural intervention and multi-use space where citizens enjoy free soup in exchange for soil samples from their neighborhood. Placed across the street from the Don Quixote monument at 2nd Street and Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia, Soil Kitchen inhabits an abandoned building and places a windmill atop to pay homage to the popular windmill scene in Cervantes', Don Quixote. Rather than being adversarial giants as they were in the novel, the windmill at Soil Kitchen is a functioning symbol of self-reliance and literally breathing new life into a formerly abandoned building. The windmill also serves as a sculptural invitation to imagine a potential green energy future and to participate in the material exchange of soil for soup - literally taking matters into one's own hands. This exchange provides an entry point for further dialogue and action available in the space through workshops, events and informal exchange. Soil Kitchen provides sustenance, re-established value of natural resources through a trade economy, and tools to inform and respond to possible contaminants in the soil.
Soil Kitchen was commissioned by Philadelphia's Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy using a generous grant from the William Penn Foundation. Soil Kitchen coincided with the 2011 Environmental Protection Agency's National Brownfields Conference. Soil Kitchen offered free pH and heavy metal testing and produced a Philadelphia Brownfields Map and Soil Archive. In addition to serving soup and testing soil, the building is a hub for exchange and learning; free workshops including wind turbine construction, urban agriculture, soil remediation, composting, lectures by soil scientists and cooking lessons. -FF
Future Farmers Taking Stock review in ArtForum
November 14, 2013
We're very excited to congratulate the Futurefarmers on their recent review of our last show of 2013, Futurefarmers: Taking Stock, the February issue of ArtForum. Check it out below!
https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201402/futurefarmers-45035