BRONX SCENE
Bronx River Art Center will present Tableau exhibit
Bronx River Art Center (BRAC),
1087 E. Tremont Avenue iswill present
Tableau, a four person exhibition
of works that reveal identity through a
range of perspectives spanning socioeconomics
and culture, community
and family, and individual memento.
BRAC welcomes back former BRAC
gallery director, Chad Staybrook, as
the guest curator.
Tableau is the last in a series of exhibits
that are taking place during the
art center’s inaugural year in its restored
building, after an eight-year hiatus
for its renovation. Collectively titled
Waypoints: Platforms for Renewal,
this series of exhibitions are designed
to bring forward core questions for the
Bronx River Art Center by accessing
its past trajectory. The intent is to situate
the organization’s relationship to
place-making and community building
into a model for the future that refl
ects upon its development over three
decades.
Additional curators in the series
include: BRAC’s current executive director,
Gail Nathan and past gallery
director, Betti-Sue Hertz.independent
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$40 BONUS PACKAGE
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Bonus package subject to change without notice.
BRONX TIMES R 58 EPORTER, APRIL 5-11, 2019 BTR
Elisabeth Smolarz, Ntianu, 3:30:00 New York, 52x42, archival pigment print, 2016.
Courtesy of Bronx River Art Center
curators Karine Duteil and Nadej Hocini
(KnN Landscape Design) and Jim
Wintner co-curated with Nathan on
two of the shows.
Alexa Hoyer’s photo series documents
the imaginative storefront displays
of state run-stores in Havana,
Cuba. The title Montaje al Aire (Air
Montage) refers to a unique technique
of window dressing in which goods and
materials are suspended from the ceiling
using fi shing line, wire or string.
Invented out of necessity due to the
scarcity of resources imposed by the
U.S. blockade, Montaje al Aire tells a
story of creativity in the face of adversity.
Amanda Browder’s impressive catalog
of work has most notably taken
the form of large-scale fabric draped
building pieces. The works require
collective community efforts including
partnerships with institutions and
building owners, calls to local residents
for fabric donations, and public
sewing days with volunteers. Future
Phenomenon, created in collaboration
with the Greenpoint Brooklyn community
in 2010, is Browder’s fi rst such
work. In Tableau it is repurposed as an
intentionally arranged fl oor piece that
acts as documentation of artist-led
community organizing and the fruits
such efforts bear.
Chloë Bass’s Obligation To Others
Holds Me In My Place borrows from
the visual language of family home
movies and photo albums to capture
both the profound and everyday nature
of interracial families. Though ultimately
manifesting as a four-channel
fi lm documenting American mixedrace
families through typical familial
celebrations, Tableau presents the
project’s current form with video essay
and found-image and text works
depicting fi ctitious family moments.
These works are part of an unfolding,
multiform family album which serve
as notes for Bass’s future fi lm, questioning
of the linear narrative of racial
progress and identifying gaps in
the American archive.
Elisabeth Smolarz’s Encyclopedia
of Things began with an impossible,
yet worthy goal: a collective portrait of
the human condition depicted through
objects-held-dear, one person at a time.
For this series of photographs, Smolarz
collaborates with individuals in
their home environments. Each participant
selects personal objects which
are portals to memories both precious
and meaningful, and then arranged
for the camera in a temporary installation.
The installations of participants’
most treasured objects embody their
sense of self and identity and tell the
story of each individual. The fi nal result
is series of intricate non-concrete
portraits consisting of a prevalent vocabulary
made out of ubiquitous objects
that echo the universality of the
human condition.
For more information call (718) 589-
5819, ext 11.