Marina PINSKY: (projected 18th / 19 votes) 303 Gallery February 22 – March 31, 2018 http://www.303gallery.com/gallery-exhibitions/marina-pinsky/press-release 303 Gallery is pleased to present our first exhibition of new works by Marina Pinsky. The Moscow-born, Berlin and Brussels-based artist examines the modes in which we read images as material, spatial, and ideological models of the world. Moving between photographic and sculptural works, Pinsky utilizes oblique symbols to invoke potent invisible histories. Comprised of analog black-and-white photographs and a constellation of newly developed sculptures, the exhibition proposes a consideration of the origins of New York in its pre-urban settlement. An interpretive sculptural model of the Wyckoff House is hand-made in unglazed ceramic. This house, the oldest in New York, was built in 1638 and occupied by Pieter Wyckoff. It is located in what is now the Canarsie area of Brooklyn, situated on land that the Dutch West India Company purchased from the local Lenape tribe to form part of the New Nederland colony in 1636. Pinsky’s model is pulled together with ratchet straps so that the structure becomes a whole only by the force of tension, creating a type of physicality borne of allegory. The exhibition's photographs are drawings of pine trees, taken from early American colonial flags first appearing in the 1600s in New England. These small images are created without negatives using direct positive black-and- white paper, and appear as mirror images of the traditional analog enlargements facing them. Besides its colonial origin, this pine tree insignia was adopted in 1913 as the symbol of the New York Armory Show. Together with the tagline "The New Spirit," it re-introduced the pine tree as a symbolic reminder of American rebellion, and established New York at the vanguard of contemporary art. Magnifying this conflation of iconography, Pinsky's excursive photographs allow for a more deliberate consideration of the icon and its various histories. Between the photographic works stand sculptures of delicately rendered vines and leaves of pumpkins, cucumbers, and string beans. They are supported by industrial “frames” based on plant assembly kits used for model railroad construction. Reverse engineered back to life size, the plants become representations twice removed. Another group of sculptures make use of granite slabs, formerly used in factory production as cutting surfaces for other, softer stones. Covered with marks and incisions, they appear to display an unknown ancient language, but actually evoke traces of modern industrial processes. The works present layered dialogues about image/object replication that hover between socio-historic and natural signifiers past and present. Recent exhibitions including Marina Pinsky's work have been held at the Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Kunstverein, Düsseldorf; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 13th Biennale de Lyon; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. The artist received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012, and BFA from SMFA Boston in 2008. Marina Pinsky's Leaves, Vines and Trees By Aaron Bogart: FRIEZE.COM, 22 March, 2018 https://frieze.com/article/marina-pinskys-leaves-vines-and-trees At 303 Gallery, New York, the artist demonstrates how easily we give meaning to the mundane, and how easily we can give it away. In the 17th century, when New York was part of New Netherland, Manhattan’s fertile fields and marshy inlets were a Dutch colony. This early moment of American history is at the heart of Marina Pinsky’s first solo exhibition in New York, which employs both photography and sculpture to examine the ways that symbols are framed, reused and reinterpreted over time. Pinsky is known for her conceptually strong photographic work, which she continues here with eight framed direct positive photographs, titled Snow Mask 1–8 (all 2017). Each unique print features a simply painted pine tree on paper, foregrounded by live string-bean vines, which snake up armatures such as one might see in a vegetable patch and lend the images an appearance of depth. Some photographs are crisp and clear, while others are ghostly and inscrutable: for these latter works, Pinsky placed images of snowy landscapes, printed on acetate, before the camera’s lens. The pine appears again in two larger, silver gelatin prints, Pine Tree Flag 1 and Pine Tree Flag 2 (both 2017), which depict hand-painted paper trees arranged behind grids of climbing vines. The conifers refer to a number of flags from colonial New England, flown during the Revolutionary War with the added motto ‘An Appeal to Heaven’. In 1913, the International Exhibition of Modern Art – the first large-scale show of modern art in the US – also adopted the pine tree for its logo along with the slogan ‘The New Spirit’, hoping it would act as a reminder of American rebellion and establish New York at the vanguard of contemporary art. Pinsky’s photographs not only highlight how a latent symbol might return to the forefront of our historical imagination, but also how easily it can embed itself within our visual vocabulary. The leaf and vine motif continues in three sculptures bounded by thick white frames reminiscent of hydroponics tubes. Produced from epoxy, high-density polyethylene, paint and plastic, and placed on small concrete columns roughly the height of a raised planter bed or a mattress frame, the sculptures are based on toy model assembly kits. The life-sized leaves of Pinsky’s Cucumber Assembly Kit (2018) resemble the kind of foliage found in a typical New York garden, though their off-white lacquer blanches them of colour, as if they have tumbled from an overexposed photograph. Like Pinsky’s paper trees, the leaves – redolent of the ubiquitous New York City Parks and Recreation logo – are playfully reimagined, inviting us to pluck them from their vines or gather them for a comfy bed. Wyckoff House Model (2018) is Pinsky’s own miniature version of the oldest surviving Dutch saltbox home in the US, built in Brooklyn in 1638. The model – made of unglazed ceramic, polystyrene and painted wood – has no roof and distended walls, which open up its corners and expose its interior layout. Grey nylon ratchet straps crudely belt the sculpture, literally and figuratively holding together a fragile fragment of the past. Ratchet straps also bind Trigger Trace 3 (2018), one of three sculptures fashioned from polyurethane foam and pale pink and yellow Plasti-Dip adhesive, sandwiched between granite slabs, whose globular forms are meant to mirror the negative space of handgun triggers. Scratches in the granite resemble an ancient and mysterious language but are actually traces from their recent use as industrial cutting stones. Like the photographs, the sculptures require repeated viewing: these are not the historical artefacts they initially appear to be but manufactured objects of the modern machine age. Pinsky demonstrates how easily, and how often, we give meaning to the mundane, and how easily we can take that meaning away. Marina Pinsky runs at 303 Gallery, New York, until 31 March. Lissa RIVERA: Beautiful Boy. (16th projected/ 8 votes total.) Clampart, June/July, 2017 Lissa Rivera’s “Beautiful Boy” portraits revel in gender as a repertoire.—Stephen Vider, social and cultural historian On the subway one evening, Lissa Rivera’s new friend BJ shared that throughout college he had almost exclusively worn women’s clothing. However, after taking a professional job, he felt much less free to explore gender. Lissa, having struggled through her own fraught relationship with the demands of proscribed femininity, suggested to BJ that perhaps photographs might help create a space for him to explore his identity outside isolation. Lissa writes: “Taking the first pictures was an emotional experience. I connected with my friend’s vulnerability. I wanted to make sure that the images were not a compromise for either of us, and we engaged in many discussions.” Eventually, Lissa and BJ found themselves falling in love. Now romantic partners, the two are collaborators who have sought to “perform and reshape gender individually and as a couple,” writes Stephen Vider. Rivera relishes the visual pleasure an intimate muse can inspire, as so many male artists have experienced historically. “Beautiful Boy” investigates a visual language of femininity that is deeply embedded in the DNA of our cultural perceptions. Drawing from Lissa and BJ’s shared interests, the earliest photographs mine the history of 20th- century film, photography, and painting. However, as the project evolved, the images began to flood over boundaries of scripts and sets, and reveal individual experiences of gender, desire, and cultural taboo. Lissa Rivera is based in Brooklyn. Her work has received multiple grants and honors and has been exhibited internationally. She grew up near Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak, where as a child she was exposed to the treasures at the Eastman Museum. After receiving an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Rivera worked professionally in collections, including the Museum of the City of New York, where she became fascinated with the social history of photography and the evolution of identity in relationship to photographic technologies. Rivera was chosen as a “Woman to Watch” for the biennial exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Selected honors include the Griffin Museum’s Peter Urban Legacy Award; Feature Shoot’s Emerging Photography Award; Photographic Resource Center Exposure 2016; Danforth Museum Purchase Prize; Filter Photo Festival’s People’s Choice Award; and the 2017 D&AD Next Photographer Shortlist. She is now Associate Curator at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. photographer lissa rivera’s enchanting portraits of her gender-fluid boyfriend 'Beautiful Boy' began as a subway confession between two friends.