Please join InContext Tours as we take you through a tour of the VOLTA art fair on Saturday, March 10th, at 11:15am with an exciting selection of galleries’ booths from all over the world.

We will visit 5 different gallery booths and the exhibiting artists. They will share their thoughts about the work exhibited. This is an insider’s opportunity to get a better understanding of the creative process and the inspiration behind the work. The tour will begin with a greeting from one of Volta’s head representatives who will welcome us into one of the most vital art fairs in the world.

The VOLTA fair is one of the only fairs that specializes in showcasing one artist per booth. This enables the galleries to highlight a specific artist’s body of work, akin to a full exhibition or studio visit and allows the galleries to create booths that are more seamless and curated than those in other fairs. This tour will provide you with an understanding of the oeuvre of each artist.

Tickets can be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets here. The tour is $50. The ticket includes free entry into the fair, discussions with select artists and gallerists, and the “do-it-yourself” catalog including the pages for the galleries we will visit. Pages for other galleries are available free of charge at their booths.

The tour will commence from the entry of the fair at 7 West 34 Street between 5th and 6th avenues on the 11th floor at 11:15am. (VIEW MAP http://ny.voltashow.com/Visitor-Information.2767.0.html)

InContext Tours will visit the following:

Rachel Beach, presented by Blackston, NY.

These works begin with something elemental – a basic geometry, a basic construction: a stack, an edge, a mark, the seam where two things meet. These straightforward beginnings set up a logic; a planting of the foot; a link to something primal or factual that can then be pinched and prodded, played against itself to reveal a mystery; something specific yet unknowable, a wrinkle, an itch.

In each case there is a combination of structure and image intended to create a shifting visual experience: to flatten or open up space, to knock our perception off-balance, to present a contingency of meaning. Built around concepts of solid and void, construct and language, progress and extinction, the works merge archeological and architectural influences with spatial and formal investigations. They present a back and forth between what is and isn’t there and ask us to consider how we see and what we believe.

Henrik Eiben, presented by Pablo’s Birthday, NY

Eiben shows a deliberate conjunction of narrative elements with a reduced formal language. Underlying this work is a classical understanding of painting and paintings that is taken to its limits  related in this respect to minimalism, as this process is carried out with the possibilities of a formal aesthetic and the expansion of sculpture and installation into the pictorial space.

Eiben’s works take a stand within this matrix: there is a narrative minimalism at work in them that does not conceive of formal expression as a stand-out feature, and that has the potential, through subtle allusions, to turn the viewer into the knowledgeable discoverer of the works’ own points of reference.

Sheila Gallagher, presented by DODGEgallery, NY.

A hybrid practitioner known for exhibitions of disparate materials, laborious inventive processes, and strong conceptual bookends, Sheila Gallagher’s work displays rigor and delight in material juxtapositions and manipulations. Her latest series of plastic paintings are made with hundreds of melted plastic objects from Gallagher’s life In this series, Gallagher draws upon garden imagery associated with different faith traditions including Bhuddism, Islam and Christianity, to create painterly mash-ups of the scared and the profane. Acting like time capsules, the plastic paintings are, in a sense, material biographies of Gallagher’s life, as well as encapsulation of objects from this particular moment in our culture, endowing the works with a kind of pedestrian historicism. Grounded in the quotidian, yet framed by a wider view of historical events, Gallagher’s work asks us to explore how objects define us and to be awake to their shifting literal, symbolic, and poetic relationships.

Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, presented by Galerie Suvi Lehtinen, Berlin.
Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo’s work seduces viewers using the slick language of advertising and its serial appeals to purchase. Focusing on the presence of commodity fetishism in our collective cultural consciousness, her process deconstructs our insatiable visual appetite by appropriating and altering mass-circulated images from commercial branding, fashion and celebrity culture.

These manic alterations, appropriations and installations of collage, prints, ready-made books and faux-advertisement reveal the structure of commercial allure by obscuring its main characters; models, products, sex and luxury. D’Angelo’s hand is certainly the protagonist in her compulsively worked pieces, and is the vehicle through which her critique of pop-culture machinery is most clearly elucidated.  The artist’s most recent work has heavily featured audience interaction and participation, encouraging viewers to engage in carefully crafted scenarios. D’Angelo ponders the various vices of advertising and popular media, and encourages critical reflection and even reproach.

Adam Sorensen presented by PDX Contemporary Art
The subject of my work is landscape, yet the composition is derived from cultural content rather than visual perception.  Historical painting as well as contemporary aesthetics are mined in order to create an aberrant version of the sublime.  Subjects of grandeur and wilderness are imbued with synthetic color and pattern that is more akin to pop culture then to realism.  This re-imagining and embellishment of the natural world, creates a metaphor of human impact on the places we are both surrounded by, and exist within.

Get your tickets and join us!

We will be visiting the Artists

Shingo Francis, Kristen Jensen, MaryKate Maher and Kristof Wickman

We will meet at 2:00pm at the Wyckoff Starr, 30 Wyckoff Ave Brooklyn, NY 11226, (between Troutmann & Starr Streets) – just one block from the Jefferson St, Brooklyn Subway stop (L Train).

Our tour will conclude at 5pm with a drink reception held in the non-profit gallery NURTUREart‘s brand-spanking new space at 56 Bogart Street - also the home to many other exciting new Bushwick galleries!

Tickets for the tour cost $75 and may be purchased on Brown Paper Tickets
Please email us at incontexttours@gmail.com to inquire about our reduced rate for artists, students and for groups.

This is a walking tour, so please wear comfortable shoes. Tours are rain or shine.

InContext Tours brings you into each artist’s studio, where they will talk about their work and why they make it. You will have the opportunity to see new art works being created and also finished pieces. This is an insider’s opportunity to get a better understanding of the creative process and the inspiration behind the work, with different contemporary artists working in diverse manner.

We welcome people of all levels of art knowledge and interest!

Shingo Francis received his bachelor’s degree in 1992 from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. Francis was awarded the Fumio Nanjo Award in 2003. He has had several solo exhibitions at Hino Gallery, Tokyo and Galerie Paris, Yokohama, while participating in multiple projects and group exhibitions including ArtXDance at the Art Forum Azamino, Yokohama. In 2008, Francis was selected as a Solo Project artist by Tsutomu Mizusawa for ARCO08 in Madrid, Spain, and was an artist in residence at both Art Omi, NY and Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA. In 2010, Francis’s exhibitions included a three-person show at the ISE Cultural Foundation, NY; Elements of Nature at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; and his first exhibition at the Seonhwa Art Foundation in Seoul, Korea.  He was an artist in residence for LMCC’s Swing Space program at Governors Island, and installed a site-specific art project for Casa Del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica. In 2011, Francis executed a site-specific installation for a satellite project to the Yokohama Trienale in Yokohama, Japan along with a solo exhibition at Galerie Paris, Yokohama, and an installation at the Residence of the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo. Francis is currently preparing for a group exhibition “The UnseenRelationship: Form and Abstraction” at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Japan opening in January 2012.

Kristen Jensen (b. 1976) is an artist living and working in New York City. She received her BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College in Combined Media. Jensen’s projects are media specific often requiring her to learn new artistic skill sets to realize each new idea, such as ceramic mold-making and furniture making. Her projects explore an area of art that has been termed Romantic Conceptualism including her relationships with friends, collaborators, and mental/physical disorders. Her work chronicles and counters difficult emotional subjects with obsessive and exhaustive series of sculpture, photography, and recently painting. Her work has been included in Pop Up Portrait show curated by Austin Thomas at Scot Cohen, NY; Anomalous Urges curated by Courtney Tramposh at Vaudville Park, Brooklyn; Haute Romantics (with Cian McConn), curated by Paddy Johnson at Verge Gallery, CA; and Magicality at Platform Gallery, Seattle. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo project at Twin Kittens Gallery, Atlanta.

MaryKate Maher received her MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2004). She has also studied at the Glasgow School of Art, UK (1999) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2008). Maher is a 2011 NYFA sculpture fellow, past resident of the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center and upcoming resident at Yaddo. Maher’s work has been exhibited at the Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; NurtureArt, NY and Kunstwerk Carlshutte, Germany.

Kristof Wickman is a sculptor and recent graduate of the Hunter MFA program. He currently has a solo show on view at the Brooklyn Museum and has participated in many group shows in the US and abroad, including A Person of Color/ A Mostly Orange Exhibition, curated by Jose Lerma and Other Spaces, curated by Jayne Drost. He is a cofounder of the OODA Group collective and is a Macdowell Colony fellow and recipient of a Vermont Studio Center fellowship.

We will meet at 2:30pm at the Green Fig Cafe, 462 36th St (between 4th Ave & 5th Ave), just one block from the 36 St, Brooklyn Subway stop (D, N, R). Our tour will conclude  at  5pm with a drink reception at a unique famous neighborhood landmark.

Tickets for the tour cost $75 and may be purchased on Brown Paper Tickets.

Please email us at incontexttours@gmail.com to inquire about our reduced rate for artists, students and for groups.

This is a walking tour, so please wear comfortable shoes. Tours are rain or shine.

Artists in this tour include:

Nils Folke Anderson’s work has been exhibited at Robert Miller Gallery, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Foundation, The Whitney Art Party, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and Phillips de Pury, where in 2009 he created a major installation coinciding with the opening of the New York City’s High Line Park. He will be completing his first permanent public sculpture in 2012, in Ilford, UK. Anderson’s work has been reviewed in many publications, including the New York Times, New Yorker, Artnet, ArtPress, ARTnews, and The Economist’s culture blog, More Intelligent Life. The work of Nils Folke Anderson is in numerous public and private collections, including UBS, NASA, the BakerIE, the Dikeou Collection, and the Pigozzi.

Blithe Riley is an artist working with video, performance and installation. Her work has been shown at such venues as Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and P.S.1 MoMA in New York City, and Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Riley was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009 and received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. She also works collaboratively with artist Mary Coble, and their work together is represented by Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, DC.Collection.

Nyeema Morgan, born 1977 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a New York based visual artist. She received her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in 2007 and her B.F.A. from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2000. Morgan has been a selected participant in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (ME), Abrons Art Center (NY) and Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art. She has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including Pigeon Wing Gallery (UK), Romer Young Gallery (CA), Art in General (NY), The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (NY), Abrons Art Center (NY), Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art (NJ), Koh-I-Noor (Sweden) and in forthcoming exhibitions at South Hill Park Bracknell Gallery (UK) and Art Space (CT).

Steve Robinson was born in 1968 in Philadelphia, grew up in Billings, Montana, attended Cornell University and the Yale School of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Sara Meltzer Gallery, The Silver Shed, White Columns, and Henry Urbach Architecture in New York, Lew Allen Projects in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and other venues in the U.S and abroad. He is completing the Ryoan-Ji project in 2011. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times,  Artinfo and Papermag online, Pasatiempo, national and international publications. His work is included in numerous private collections.

To see much more, view our web album on Facebook HERE.

Aaron Glickman from SocialMiami.com joined us. Read his review of the Tour!

A creative journey with a little reward!

On Sunday, September 25th, we are revisiting the creative neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, due to popular demand.  Our tour will take you to the studios of Everest Hall, Zoe Pettijohn Schade, Diana Puntar, and Yadir Quintana, where you’ll get an insider’s view of current works in progress and have dialog with the artists directly.

We will meet at 2pm The Habitat,  988 Manhattan Avenue, just a few blocks from the Greenpoint Avenue G train stop.  At 5pm, we will finish the tour with drinks at Milk and Roses 1110 Manhattan Ave, btwn Dupont & Clay Streets, where they will offer us a complimentary glass of prosecco!

Tickets for the tour cost $75 and can be purchased from Brown Paper Tickets. Buy tickets for InContext’s Greenpoint Artists’ Studio Tour here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/193678

Please email us at incontexttours@gmail.com to inquire about our reduced rate for artists and for groups. This is a walking tour, so please wear comfortable shoes. Tours are rain or shine.
We welcome people of all levels of art knowledge and interest!

Artists in this tour include:

Everest Hall was born 1974 in New York.  Hall studied painting at Yale University School of Art (MFA 1998), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1996), and the Walnut Hill School for the Arts.  Additionally, Hall has held residencies at Skidmore College and the Cooper Union.  Hall’s work has been shown extensively throughout the USA, Asia, and Europe.  Solo exhibitions include Bellwether Gallery, New York; Dunham Place Salon; New York; Acuna-Hansen Gallery; Los Angeles; and Red Dot, New York.  Hall’s work has also been included in various group exhibitions including DCKT, New York; Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Galleria Glance, Turin, Italy; Richard Gray Gallery, New York and Chicago; John Connelly Presents, New York; and Kidd Yellin, New York.  Hall’s work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Art Review, Flash Art, Time Out New York, Details, and Domino.

Zoe Pettijohn Schade graduated from the Cooper Union in 1995. She has since shown in New York at Kenny Schacter Contemporary, Washington DC at the Arts Club of Washington, Austin, Texas, at the Jones Center for Contemporary Art. International exhibits include group shows in Mexico City, Berlin, and London. She currently is in a group exhibition at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art in San Francisco, and has a large work featured in “Double Vision” at Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA in September. She also has a two person show planned for next year at David Berman Gallery in Austin.

Diana Puntar recieved an MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1996. Her work has been shown extensively in New York at galleries including Luhring Augustine, Participant, Inc., Oliver Kamm and White Box. In 2007 she exhibited a solo installation at Ps1/MoMA. Puntar has also shown her work throughout the United States including solo exhibitions at Rowland Contemporary in Chicago and Small A Projects in Portland Oregon. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Flash Art, Modern Painters and Time Out. Puntar has received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts and Change, Inc. and has been an artist in residence at Art OMI, Yaddo, The Millay Colony and  The McColl Center. Currently Puntar has work in a group show at 433 PAS Gallery in NY and is preparing for a collaborative installation at Participant Inc. with fellow sculptor Sheila Pepe. The show will be in February 2012.

Yadir Quintana studied at Yale University, School of Art, New Haven, CT (MFA 1998) and at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD (BFA 1996).  Quintana’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at various venues including Laroche/Joncas, Montreal, QC; Standpipe Gallery, New York, NY; Museum 52, New York, NY; On Stellar Rays, New York, NY; and The Bronx River Art Center, New York, NY.  Exhibitions have been well received and written about in various online and print media including The New York Times, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine.  Quintana has been commissioned for a series of silver portraits for Pritzker Prize winning architect Christian de Pontzamparc’s upcoming One 57 building in New York, NY.

Click here to Purchase Tickets!

We will meet at 2 pm at The Pulp & The Bean Café at 809 Franklin Ave, (between Lincoln Pl & Eastern Pkwy) Brooklyn, one block from the Franklin Avenue 2/3/4/5 stop on the train and finish with post-tour drinks at hidden gem Bar Olivino, (899 Fulton Street, between Clinton Ave & Vanderbilt Ave), which will be featuring drink specials and complimentary snacks for our group, at around 5:00pm.

Several of the artists have studios in The Monti Building, the oldest brewery building in Brooklyn.  This efficient building has radiant heat, the electricity is generated by the solar paneled roof and also has a working apiary producing honey. The Monti was restored and renovated by Big Sue, LLC, green architects, who also live in the building.

Tickets for the tour cost $75 and can be purchased from Brown Paper Tickets.  Buy tickets for InContext’s Crown Heights, Brooklyn Artists’ Studio Tour  Please email us at incontexttours@gmail.com to inquire about our reduced rate for artists and for groups. This is a walking tour, so please wear comfortable shoes.  Tours are rain or shine.

InContext Tours brings you into each artist’s studio, where they will talk about their work and why they make it. You will have the opportunity to see new art works being created and also finished pieces. This is an insider’s opportunity to get a better understanding of the creative process and the inspiration behind the work, with different artists working in diverse manner.

George Boorujy is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo shows at P.P.O.W. Gallery and Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. He is a current NYFA fellow in painting, and a former fellow of the Smack Mellon residency program. He is represented by P.P.O.W Gallery, New York, NY.  George Boorujy’s new project, New York Pelagic, is an exploration of our connection to, and impact on, the ocean and its wildlife. Information on this project can be seen at www.nypelagic.com

A native of Bangor, Maine, Selena Kimball earned her BFA in sculpture from The Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Hunter College. Recently her large-scale wall installations have been exhibited at the Portland Museum of Art and the University of North Texas. She will be in a two-person show this summer at Wolfstaedter Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany. Kimball has been awarded residency fellowships at the MacDowell colony, Blue Mountain Center, and Millay Colony of Art. Her published work can be seen in the collage novel “The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz”, which she produced together with Agnieszka Taborska (Gdansk 2004, New York 2007, Midmarch Arts Press; Paris 2007, Édition Interférences). Their new collage novel “The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks” will be published next year.

Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Northridge received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.  His work has been included in such exhibitions as “Out of Site: Fictional Architectural Spaces” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, “Open House: Working in Brooklyn” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, “Material Matters” at the Johnson Museum (Cornell University), and “The 183^rd Annual” at the National Academy Museum.  His solo efforts include shows at Gorney Bravin + Lee (NYC) and Western Exhibitions (Chicago). He has received fellowships from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Aaron Wexler received his M.FA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; B.F.A from Tyler School of Art, Phila, PA.  Aaron has had numerous solo exhibitions including Josee Bienvenu Gallery, NY and One In The Other Gallery, London, UK.  Selected group exhibitions include Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Oliver Kamm Gallery, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, PS122, Art in General and the 181st. Annual Invitation Exhibition at The National Academy Museum, New York. His work is currently part of the on going exhibition Abstract America at The Saatchi Gallery where is work has been acquired to the Saatchi collection (catalog Rizolli).  His work is also part of the West Collection and numerous private collections.  Aaron has lectured about his work at The Drawing Center, Parsons/New School University, Pratt and Penn State University in Fall 2011.

…. and don’t forget to become a fan of InContext Tours.