Karine Laval’s Altered States

Since I have started a second career as a Semi-Professional-Childcare-Amateur, my career as a Semi-Professional-Blog-Artist has really slowed down as many of my four readers can attest, but I decided to neglect my child now to post the invite to Karine Laval’s new show at the Bonnie Benrubi gallery. I did a very interesting interview with Karine several months ago, that is very, very slowly getting transcribed and is going to make it onto The Heavy Light one of these months. In the meantime, check out her show, it’s gonna be well worth it.

Karine Laval: Altered States
April 18 – May 24, 2013
Opening reception April 18, 6 – 8PM
Bonni Benrubi Gallery
41 East 57th Street 13th Floor

For her 4th solo exhibition at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, the Brooklyn-based French artist Karine Laval will present a selection of new photographs as well as a video installation that marks the gallery’s first foray into moving images. The title of the exhibition references different states of transformation such as physical transformation and distortion, altered states of consciousness and perception, mythological metamorphosis, but it also evinces the transformative power of the camera. Laval continues to explore the vagaries of subjective perception and challenges the way we see by combining performance and the mechanics of photography itself (light, perspective, chemistry and optics). She tests the limits of the photographic medium by using water as a distorting lens and choosing a stark color palette – the result of her signature chemical processing of the film – to generate images that oscillate between representation and abstraction and blur the boundary between photography and painting.

A Thin Line Between Love and Hate-Invite

Even though this dark time of year usually makes me feel a bit of

and today’s sh**ty ass weather fills me with

I also feel

because the good people at the UPI gallery (Laura, Sam and Dave), who inspire much

in me, held an open call for this here group show

and after I showed them

they’ve sent me an email of

for this body of work.

The opening is on Valentine’s Day and if the prospect of doing the same thing as the last 15 years fills you with

or the crazy lines expected in restaurants make you feel

then you should come and check out the show. And of course, don’t feel

if you don’t have a date, cause we look forward to seeing you with much
.

United Photo Industries HQ is located at:
111 Front Street, Suite 204
Brooklyn, NY, 11201

IT’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE
THE 2013 EDITION
HATE: February 14 – 26
Artist Reception: Thursday, February 14, 6-9PM

Our two-part photo invitational has returned!

Exploring the twinned themes of Love, Hate, and the rugged terrain between them, photographers are invited to submit individual images exploring either (or both) elements of our exhibition’s emotionally conflicted theme.

On the surface, love – and its flip side, hate – might seem simple subjects to capture. Our daily lives are filled with mundane declarations of love, and mindless acts of hatred. But love and hate run deep. Look beneath the surface and you will often discover them masquerading as each other.

Please join us for the opening of “LOVE” (February 1, 6-9PM) and “HATE” (February 14, 6-9PM) in homage to February’s emotional roller-coaster and celebrate with us the wonderful work of :

Mariette Pathy Allen
Dirk Anschutz
Susan Barnett
Christopher Capozziello
Alejandra Carles-Tolra
James Carroll
Jodi Concecpcion
Stephanie Diani
Alessandro Falco
Akihiro Furuta
Glenna Gordon
Barbara Habenstreit
Alice Hale
Jamil Hellu
Howard Heyman
Cereal Lab
Ma Liang
Marcia Lloyd
Jennifer Loeber
Meg Lyding
Darius Mccallum
Nick Meyer
Peter Miraglia
Godelieve Mols
Keren Moscovitch
Laura Noel
Julie Nymann
Dominica Paige
Michelle Pedone
Alexis Percival
Hana Pesut
Thalassa Raasch
Jamel Shabazz
Ingrid Spangler
Maria Sprowls Cervantes
Sarah Szwajkos
David Taffet
Colin Todd
Rafael Vargas
Brennan Wesley
Vikky Wilkes
Laine Zimmerman

Más Pesos por Stefan Falke!

Good friend and Heavy Light interviewee (?) Stefan Falke is running a Indie-Go-Go campaign to fund his (already) epic project about artists along the Mexican-US border. While he will probably miss his full funding goal, he can use every peso raised (here Indie-Go-Go is different from Kickstarter). The fundraiser is in it’s last days and in my opinion, the project is well worth our support.

Here is an official statement for the project:

New York based photographer Stefan Falke started to work with artists in Tijuana in 2008 in order to document an amazing cultural life in a region that is portrayed by the international media mostly with the sole focus on violent crime.

Falke, who just returned from Tijuana where he was invited to participate in the art festival Tijuana Interzona to present his project LA FRONTERA: Artists along the US Mexican Border, will soon travel along the entire 2000 miles long border and visit cities like Nogales, Juarez, Reynosa and Matamoros. He estimates that he will need at least 3 month on the road to finish the project.

(His work along the border will be shown at the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington DC beginning November 9.)

He is currently raising funds on IndieGogo to cover expenses. (A modest grant has been awarded by a German foundation).

Here is the link to his fundraiser:

http://www.indiegogo.com/LaFronteraArtistsAlongTheUSMexicanBoder

Container Contentment: Upstream Brooklyn

From the Toot-My-Own-Horn-Dept.:

I’m very happy to announce that Upstream Brooklyn is going to be in the DUMBO Arts Festival 2012.

The good people from United Photo Industries (that’s the same folks, who organized the very exciting Photoville extravaganza over the summer) will be giving me a shipping container to show my portrait series of Brooklynites with disabilities.

United Cerebral Palsy of New York City (the great organization I partnered with for this shoot) arranged for transportation for the models, so that they can check out their portraits first hand and mingle with the art crowd in the wheelchair accessible container.

Dear reader, I really hope you can make it to DUMBO this weekend to check out the show, see the prints, meet the models and meet the artist. Also, United Photo Industries announced privately that if they’re not happy with the attendance they will lock the artist in the container and make him winter in Elizabeth, NJ. So, please!

Upstream Brooklyn

Portraits of Brooklynites with Disabilities

Part of United Photo Industries’ foto/pods at the DUMBO Arts Festival 2012

Main Street between Water and Plymouth Streets
DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY

Friday, Sept 28th 2012 6PM to 9PM
Saturday, Sept 29th 2012 10AM to 9PM
Sunday, Sept 30th 2012 11AM to 6PM

Upstream Brooklyn is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

United Photo Industries

Many thanks to

United Cerebral Palsy of New York City

and

Upstream Arts

Riding Fences

If you feel a hankering for some fine photography (and find yourself in New York City), mosey on over to Brooklyn Bridge Park where Photoville is happening this weekend and next. There seems to be a lot of great work on display as well as some interesting talks and panel discussions scheduled. To seal the deal, there is a beer garden. And to put the icing on the cake that is the already sealed deal, some images from my Giddy Up series will be displayed on “The Fence”. “The Fence” by the way will stay up for a couple of months. Yee-Haw!

Me and Caesar-PDN Photo Annual

From the Toot-My-Own-Horn-Dept.: I’m proud to announce that this image from my Dead Indian Pass series made it into the PDN Photography Annual 2012. And just like Julius Caesar, who got images into the PDN Photography Annual 49BC and again into the PDN Photography Annual 47BC, I’ve got a nice set of laurels to put on my head. Well, actually they’ve only send me a jpeg of them, but I’m sure the real wreath is in the mail and you’ll see me sporting it shortly.

Previous post about Dead Indian Pass.

To see the whole series click here.

BBQs and BBBikes-Slideluck

If you truly want to confuse your metabolism (and really, who doesn’t?) then come this Saturday on a calorie burning bike ride to Harlem, pig out on some BBQ, knock back a beer or two, watch a Slideluck Bikeshow about bikecycles (featuring moi), and then partially undo the damage you’ve done by riding home, all the while wishing you were in a cab.

Slideluck Bikeshow

Give Hehr The Money!

Now, I know for a fact that not every reader of this here blog is a starving artist or commercial photographer. No, some of you have regular jobs with employers like a big soulless corporation or New York State. And as I imagine you sitting in your penthouses, country estates and castles, contemplating your next fur coat or stretch limousine, I’m wondering why you don’t hold off on that Beverly Hills mansion and give the $85.000.000 that you saved to Claudia Hehr?

Claudia Hehr, as you might remember, graced the pages of The Heavy Light once before and has another interesting project in the pipeline. This time she wants to photograph the orphans of the Good Hope Center in Tanzania and document the work of Artists for World Peace, which is not Ron Artest‘s new name, but a non-profit that works with above mentioned orphans. And for this she needs your help.

To find out more about the project, see a video interview with Claudia, and donate the $85.000.000 go to

http://www.indiegogo.com/claudiahehr

Pop, Pop…Pop-photo

From the Toot-My-Own-Horn-Dept.: The peak has been scaled: Popular Photography is running a Chinatown Baller along with a little interview in its May issue. The printed version even has the Umlauts over my name (now that’s fancy).

In other news (but still from the Toot-My-Own-Horn-Dept.), Number 3 Magazine just published the Saltfalt portion of my Giddy Up series on it’s website.

A big “thank you” to Miriam, Lindsay, Jae and Lori at Popular Photography and to Mark at Number 3.

Champignons and Full Monty Access

If you’ve been following this here blog, you might have noticed that I’ve been writing semi-compulsively about soccer, and since I can’t come up with a good reason to stop, I want to deliver two additions to recent posts.

© James Kendi

#1: The Grand Street Wanderers finally managed to overcome their playoff choking habit and win the semi-final and final in two thrilling games in one afternoon. Of course you might remember some of these blue clad handsome devils from the Chinatown Ballers project.

We had Chris stonewalling the opposition despite playing with a broken thumb,…

…Tomas organizing the defense by the sheer power of his mighty beard,…

…Matt driving the non-paying fans insane with a sensational header goal,…

…and Gus working his Brazilian magic despite his style being seriously cramped by cramps.

And even though the cup was small and of golden plastic, it sure felt sweet.

#2: This one is concerning the recent F.C. Williamsburg post. While putting the pics together for that post I was desperately looking for an image by Volker Hinz that I’ve seen years ago in a book, but that I could not find in the netting of the inter for the life of me. In a weird piece of serendipity Stern republished it on it’s website this week, and so here it is: Two great football icons chatting in the showers, with shampoo in their hair, and with full view of the Kaiser’s buns and Pele’s ronaldinho. Holy Moly.