SELF EXPOSURE

Francesca Romeo and Shen Wei debut new color photographs from their self-portrait series along with work by Nils Ericson and Zachari Logan in a sexy summer show opening this Thursday at Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

SELF EXPOSURE
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street
New York, NY

June 24 - July 30
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 24, 6-8pm

January Exhibitions

copyright Tim Briner

Tim Briner
Booneville

Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, Suite #506
New York, NY

January 7 - February 27
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 7, 6 - 8pm



Versus
curated by Ruben Natal-San Miguel

Hous Projects
31 Howard Street 2nd Fl
New York, NY

January 7 - March 8
Opening Reception: Thursday January 7, 6 - 10pm

Participating Artists: Brian Ulrich, Alex Leme, Mickalene Thomas, Nadime Rovner, Hank Willis Thomas, Cara Phillips, Amy Elkins, Molly Landreth, Matthew Pillsbury, Kris Graves, Phil Toledano, Elizabeth Fleming, Zoe Strauss, Ruben Natal San-Miguel, Jen Davis, Eric Ogden, Michael Wolf, Gina Levay


copyright Wayne Liu

New Photography:
Selections from the 2008 - 2009 CCNY Darkroom Program

The Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street
New York, NY

January 7 - February 20
Opening Reception: Thursday January 7, 6 - 8pm

Participating Artists: Brett Bell, Lisa Elmaleh, Anthony Hamboussi, Carrie Levy, Wayne Liu, Santiago Mostyn, Mauro Restiffe, Emma Wilcox

culturehall news

It feels like summer is winding down, and I am making one last trip to Michigan before I return to New York for the fall. David Andrew Frey will be launching some new developments to culturehall in September, and we will be fully back in action looking for more exceptional artists to add to the 320 members who have already contributed work.

David and I were excited to learn this week that one of culturehall's members whose work was discovered on the site recently landed a commission through a major corporation to install one of his pieces in an office space in Stockholm. It's great to know that the site is playing a role in helping artists realize substantial opportunities in their careers.

One of my focusses has been to spread to the word about culturehall to international arts blogs and websites and to share our enthusiasm for the information they are contributing to the arts in the ARTIST RESOURCES section of our homepage. We have recently listed some new sites we like including Artcards, Light Journeys, OPENWIDEpdx, Peek, and the newly revamped blog by my friend and colleague, Barry Stone, YES YES YES. Barry has been sharing recent images as well as some wonderful images from his archives.

While David is communicating with artists working in various media, I am primarily concentrating on adding photographers to the site. Two photographers whose work was featured this summer on culturehall were Zack Seckler and Francesca Romeo, with whom I exhibited work at Daniel Cooney Fine Art this past spring. Francesca has recently been shooting some intriguing self-portraits in hotel rooms around the world or sometimes in her East Village apartment, like the one included above. Some of her newest work can be found on her culturehall porfolio: Francesca Romeo/Culturehall.


Theodore, from TRUE LOVE series
copyright Zack Seckler

Phoenix and Agnes

Happy birthday, Phoenix!! Phoenix was born in August last year to my friend, Agnes Dahan, the same night that my beloved dog, Paris, left this earth - living proof that when one amazing and beautiful creature passes, another comes to life.

Clubbing
2008
copyright Agnes Dahan

Phoenix and Agnes are visiting New York from their new home in the West Indies, bringing some much-needed joy to my anxiety-ridden life in the city. Agnes will be contributing a print of her image above to Daniel Cooney's next Emerging Artists Auction which will be available on-line this month.

Craig Prehn

Cowboy, 16 x 23in, pen on paper
Craig Prehn


from Mobile Homes
Craig Prehn

I've been back in New York City now for nearly three weeks, still trying to settle into my life here and to reinvent things just a little. I turned thirty-six two days before Cancers turn into Leos, and have been contemplating the relentless sensitivity and melancholy that makes us what we are: open-hearted or broken-hearted brooders, for better or worse. I almost believe it since I know one when I see one.

I am also making efforts towards putting a twenty-year addiction to cigarettes behind me, which means I am clutching my coffee cup in the morning, sweating, crying, staring into space trying to focus my thoughts, sucking nicotine lozenges, chewing toothpicks, and furtively bumming/buying smokes from strangers on the street when I can't hang in there all the way. Asking everyone I know who might have some wisdom and experience how anyone does this, and some make it sound too easy and some make it sound too hard, but all advice is welcome.

My old friend from Chicago, Craig Prehn, who has succeeded in this area, was visiting this week from his current base in San Francisco. Our earliest memories together consist of printing in the darkroom at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and cooking bbq and fries in the cramped kitchen of Smoke Daddy's on Division Street in the mid-90s. Our art lives have arrived at many junctures, including a photography exhibition at the Butcher Shop Gallery in the summer of 2000, A Great Midwestern at Heaven Gallery, and Best Midwestern at Jen Bekman Gallery in the summer of 2004, also including work by Peter Haakon Thompson, Alec Soth, Justin Newhall, Deborah Stratman and Susan Boecher. In fact, Craig and Pete took me out for sushi for my thirty-first birthday after we installed that show while I was still living in Minnesota and making trips to New York a half a decade ago.

Craig's "Cowboy" drawing above will be available in Daniel Cooney's next Emerging Artists Auction, and you can find a lot more cool work on his website: Craig Prehn. Besides his recent series of drawings, An American Western, which reference photographic snapshots and depict the sense of independence, severity and stark beauty of the American West; I am also a fan of his Mobile Homes. These simple snapshots of the exteriors of these colorful vehicles bring to mind the everyday Americana that seduced Photo-Realist painters in the 1970s - some of the only artwork I love as much as I love photography.

On that note, there are some fascinating observations about the art-historical context of the Photo-Realists and their influence on photographers in an essay called "Keeping It Real: Photorealism" by Philip Gefter in the recently released collection of his critical writings, Photography After Frank.

It is worth noting that Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, pioneers of color photography in the early 1970s, borrowed, consciously or not, from the Photo-Realists. Their photographic interpretation of the American vernacular - gas stations, diners, parking lots - is foretold in Photo-Realist paintings that preceded their pictures. (page 42)

"Not only do these artists have great technical skill, but they are the great depicters of pure Americana," says Barrett White, a former contemporary specialist at Christie's who is now the director of the New York branch of Haunch of Venison gallery. "This is not a gimmicky art but in fact a very important movement. It is the conclusion of Pop art in the same way that Color-Field painting is the conclusion of Abstract Expressionism." (pages 42-43)

If I were to win the lottery and to become an art collector, besides adding more work by artist friends to what I have traded with them over the years, I could imagine myself living with Photo-Realist paintings and not much else, except maybe some books and sunlight and a sexy hairless sphinx like the one I just cat-sat in Cobble Hill. It's a nice fantasy, in any case.

In the meantime, I am happy to report that I scraped up just enough funds through some much-needed labor last week and can finally take my film from my trip to Texas to the lab for processing tomorrow, so please keep your fingers crossed for me on all fronts.


The Butcher Shop exhibition postcard, 2000: Ian Adams, Aaron Brewer, Liza Queen, David Smith, Craig Prehn, Dara Greenwald, Tema Stauffer, Katherine Syroboyarsky, Sheila Manson, Suzy Poling, Tom Colley, Joeff Davis


Craig Prehn
Brooklyn, NY
August 2009

Last Week

Tema Stauffer at Daniel Cooney Fine Art


Francesca Romeo at Daniel Cooney Fine Art

Our show at Daniel Cooney has been extended one more week and now closes on Saturday April 25th. Showing next at the gallery is an exhibition of drawings by Jason Francavilla, Rubens Ghenov and Michael Whittle from April 30th and May 30th, followed by an exciting summer salon of work by photographers Juliana Beasley, Felix Cid, Bradley Peters and Rebecca Sittler Schrock, opening June 25th.

The New Yorker

Photography critic, Vince Aletti, rocked our worlds with a review of our show at Daniel Cooney in this week's GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN in The New Yorker. Here's what he wrote:

FRANCESCA ROMEO / TEMA STAUFFER

These two young photographers approach portraiture from very different angles, but because their pictures are similarly fraught, complex, and compelling they complement each other nicely. Romeo, whose subjects are mostly friends and lovers on New York’s bohemian fringe, combines intimacy and theatricality in pictures that make the most of available light, dark shadows, and tattooed flesh. Stauffer photographs strangers—young men she meets on the street of Binghamton, New York, who appear at once rebellious and vulnerable. This volatile combination is kicked up a notch by erotic tension, but Stauffer is tender rather than confrontational, and her work looks beyond the boys’ cool affect to something warmer. Through April 18. (Cooney, 511 W. 25th St. 212-255-8158.)


Thank you, Vince!

Emerging Photographers Auction at Daniel Cooney

Untitled (Man With Axe Under Apple Tree)
Sara Code Kroll
2007


Lau Fau San, Hong Kong: Three Stray Dogs
Jane Tam
2008


Back, Self-Portrait
Mickey Kerr
2003


Two Swimmers
Palmer Davis
2006

Daniel Cooney has recently opened bidding for his third Emerging Photographers Auction. Among the many wonderful photographers whose work is available are Sara Code Kroll, Palmer Davis, Jason Falchook, Mickey Kerr, Brian Lesteberg, Ellen Rennard and Jane Tam.

Bidding is open thru March 26th, 2009.

Women in Photography

Francesca Romeo and I are featured this month on Women in Photography's site: Francesca and Tema / WIP

Thanks again to co-curators, Cara Phillips and Amy Elkins, for their ongoing efforts to encourage dialogue about work by women photographers in the contemporary art world.