Thinking Collections | Open Studios | Artists Citywide

 
 

 

Saturday, September 8
3:30-5pm | Chambers Fine Art

Qinmin Liu

Chinese visual artist Qinmin Liu hosts a series of performances QINGNI QINMIN as the second chapter in her ongoing research-based work REAL PLAYER 56. The artist positions herself as a cultural contradiction by mixing autobiographical storytelling, choreographed movements, music, sculpture, and the allure of entertainment. During the performance, the artist and five dancers will articulate personal stories of everyday cultural conflicts through Chinese folk dance, hip-hop choreography, Chinese ethnic costuming, global pop music, and handmade wearable objects.
 
Curated by Xin Wang | Duration : 95 mins
Made possible by the generous support of Chambers Fine Art.
 
Address: 522 W 19th Street (10th & 11th Avenue)
 

Caption:
Qinmin Liu, portrait of the artist, 2018
 

Tuesday, September 11
6-9pm | Bushwick, Brooklyn

Ruby Chishti

Chishti’s new work Far-off is a 9 1/2 foot-long wall sculpture of an intricately ornamented men’s coat which symbolizes the unattainable and morphed perception of paternal love. The work is the materialization of a childhood memory as it holds nostalgia for the yearning of inner stability –a painful element of her reality instilled at an early age through exposure to war and fatality. It touches upon the immortal inner child, whose psychological scars have morphed into haunting adult projections of unreachable fulfillment.
 
Ruby Chishti (b. 1963 in Jhang, Pakistan) is a visual artist who over the last 18 years has produced a series of lyrical-sculptures and installations that touch on themes such as the passage of time, Islamic myths, gender politics, migration, memory, universal theme of love, loss and of simply being human. Her work has been exhibited at the Asia Society Museum, Queens Museum, Aicon Gallery, Vadehra Art Gallery, Art Hong Kong and India Art fair among others.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 114 Troutman St, Bushwick, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Ruby Chishti, Far Off, mixed media, 2018
 

Tuesday, September 11
6-9pm | Bushwick, Brooklyn

Wei Xiaoguang

Mining pop culture, art history, and commercial advertising for his source material, Wei Xiaoguang created Evil Paintings, a series with a photographic clarity and realism that belies their complex layers of visual and conceptual contradictions. Often blending multiple perspectives and scales, while emphasizing surface, texture and the effects of light, Wei’s compositions function as meditations on the interplay of illusion, representation and reality–an interplay that is the very essence of painting itself.
 
Wei (b. 1986, Inner-Mongolia Province, China) received his BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing China, and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His works combine multiple levels of historical and representational painting techniques and have been exhibited in solo shows including Durable Pixels at SLEEPCENTER, New York and Humble at Fresh Window Gallery, New York.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 56 Bogart Street, North of Bushwick, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Wei Xiaoguang, Untitled, oil on canvas, 2017
 

Thursday, September 13
6-8pm | Chelsea, Manhattan

Seulki Ki

As part of her residency in New York, Seoul-based artist, Seulki Ki will present photographs that delve into the concept of space, which expands from her inner world to her surroundings and nearby objects to the invisible metaphysical universe. Ki’s work often challenges the process of perception where experience plays into one’s cognition of the subject matter. Her study of the invisible—i.e. human psyche, conflict and belief—is visualized through various mediums such as photography, installation, and performance, that hold one theme in common: blurring of the subject and object.
 
Seulki Ki (b. 1983 in Korea) received her B.F.A from Seoul Institute of the Arts and Sangmyung University, and her M.F.A from Slade School of Fine Art in London, UK. Ki held solo exhibitions in Korea at DOOSAN Gallery Seoul, space k, and Gallery Chosun. Ki’s works has been exhibited in Korea at Seoul Museum of Art, Gansong Art Museum, and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, as well as Cultural Center at the Korean Embassy in Vietnam and The National Art Center in Japan. Ki is the selected artist for 2015 DOOSAN Art LAB exhibition series.
 
DOOSAN Studios: 548 West 28th St., Suite 231 (10th & 11th Avenue)
 

Caption:
Seulki Ki, Hole 1, archival pigment print, 2017
 

Thursday, September 13
6-8pm | Chelsea, Manhattan

Yoon Hwan Bae

In conjunction with Yoon Hwan Bae’s opening reception at DOOSAN Gallery, viewers get the rare opportunity to visit the studio space designated for DOOSAN’s Residency Artists. Bae and fellow resident artist Seulki Ki will host intimate walk throughs of the works they individually created in New York. Ki’s work will later be presented via an exhibition opening at DOOSAN on October 18th.
 
Yoon Hwan Bae (b. 1983 in Chungju, Korea) received his B.F.A. from Seowon University and M.F.A. from Kyungwon University. Bae unfolds social issues and incidents that he has experienced either directly and indirectly; his practice contains scenes which are metaphorically and humorously reconstructed from images of rumours, spooky stories, folk tales, political issues, TV series, news, the Internet, and spam text messages. He has held solo exhibitions in Korea at Space O’NewWall, Spacemom Museum of Art, Spacemom Museum of Art , Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Gyeongnam Art Museum, Daegu Art Museum, DOOSAN Gallery Seoul and OCI Museum among others.
 
DOOSAN Studios: 548 West 28th St., Suite 231 (10th & 11th Avenue)
 

Caption:
Yoon hwan Bae, Road to the Studio B, single channel video, 2018
 

Friday, September 21
6-9pm | Red Hook, Brooklyn

Kakyoung Lee

Lee is renowned for employing her signature repetitive and meticulous techniques through animations and video installations. She will present Barbed Wire Series, a multi-channel installation juxtaposing a fence from the U.S. Army base in South Korea alongside footage of her children playing cat’s cradles with tangled thread. This footage was captured from her daily surroundings and travels between South Korea and the U.S.
 
Kakyoung Lee (b. 1975, Daegu, Korea) received her BFA/MFA in Printmaking from Hong-Ik University, Seoul and MFA from SUNY Purchase College, NY. Through her identifiable style, she deconstructs and reconstructs hundreds of sequences in a fresh configuration by utilizing a time intensive process of hundreds of prints and hand drawings. These figurative or abstract moving lines and silhouettes of everyday-ness allude to her search for identity in the different geographic and cultural milieus through which she has passed. Lee has exhibited her work at various leading institutions including MASS MOCA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Seoul Arts Center, Korea, and Oqbo, Berlin.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: Ti Art Studios, 183 Lorraine St, Red Hook, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Kakyoung Lee, Barbed Wire Series, moving image multi-channel installation, 2018
 

Friday, September 21
6-9pm | Red Hook, Brooklyn

Farideh Sakhaeifar

Sakhaeifar presents her latest work, Halabja, 1988, an experimental documentary about the chemical attack on the Kurdish people of Halabja, Iraq. To this date, the attack —carried out by Saddam Hussein with the support from his western allies including the U.S. — remains the largest case of using chemical weapons against civilians. This piece is a poetic interpretation created from collective narratives of the attack survivors in collaboration with dancer Isabel Umali.
 
Born in Tehran, Iran and based in Brooklyn, Farideh Sakhaeifar received her MFA from Cornell University and her BFA from Azad Art and Architecture University in Iran. Her work ranges from photography to installation and sculpture and is usually related to her life experiences. Sakhaeifar draws from past forms of ethnic, political, and cultural control in order to reflect upon new forms of expression to highlight human struggle and establish autonomous forms of self-expression. More specifically, her practice seeks to produce a translational understanding of the social and political struggles in which she has been involved either directly or indirectly.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: Cathouse Proper: 524 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (entrance on, Huntington St)
 

Caption:
Farideh Sakhaeifar, Halabja,1988, video, dance, sound, 2018
 

Sunday, September 23
2-5pm | Long Island City, Queens

Chen Dongfan

Beyond a space to create and develop his art practice, Chen Dongfan views his studio as a “garden”, a dynamic space that houses memories with his closest friends and other performances and projects conceived through collective creativity. As a way to memorialize these meaningful gatherings, Dongfan began to document his friends through photographs and live-painting sessions. These intimate portraits will be on view during his studio visit.
 
Chen Dongfan (b.1982, Shandong, China) received his BFA in Experimental Art from the China Academy of Art, Hengzhou. He has been actively participated in various public art projects and created large-scale space paintings in New York, Hangzhou, Turin (Italy), and Athens (Greece). Dongfan’s works have been exhibited at Fou Gallery and square Peg Gallery – New York and Inna Art Space – Hangzhou. He was recently selected by NYCDOT and Chinatown Partnership in July 2018 to implement a 4,800 square foot asphalt mural on Doyers Street: The Song of Dragon and Flowers.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 43-01 21th Street 232B (Queens near MoMA PS1)
 

Caption:
Chen Dongfan, photograph of the artist’s studio, 2018
 

Wednesday, September 26
5:30-7:30pm | Ronin Gallery

Cyoko Tamai

Tamai’s work combines unique techniques, a musical sensibility, and traditional Japanese materials, resulting in ethereal and compelling images. Using a fine-pointed steel pen, Tamai deconstructs and rebuilds: she tears, scratches, and rips incredibly strong Japanese washi paper made by National Living Treasure Sajio Hamada and his wife Setsuko. Breaks and incisions leap beyond the paper’s surface, while choice individual fibers defy gravity, coaxed from the paper to form an ephemeral gauze.
 
Cyoko Tamai (b. 1987, Kochi Prefecture) graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with a BFA in Music and an MFA in Japanese Painting. Tamai’s work has been featured in over a dozen solo and group exhibitions in Japan. She was the 2014 Japan Society Artist-in-Residence and featured in multiple one-woman shows at Ronin Gallery. She is the recipient of several grants from the Sato International Cultural Foundation and the recipient of the Ataka Award. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Muscarelle Museum of Art and the Morikami Museum.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 425 Madison Ave, New York, NY
 

Caption:
Cyoko Tamai, Spatial Fiber IV, washi paper, 2016
 

Wednesday, October 3
6-8pm | The Bronx Museum of the Arts | Artist Walkthrough

Christopher K. Ho

A walk-through with the artist on the opening day of his exhibition dealing with questions of the artist’s place within the margin or majority of the United States and China. An imagined and meandering return to Hong Kong, this solo exhibition by the artist grapples with reverse diasporic aspirations and the shift from being an ethnic minor in the United States to rejoining the Han majority. Comprising of a 35-foot tall banner, artifacts from a defunct family hotel in Hawaii, and signage from the museum, the exhibition inquires what happens when an artist disconnects psychically and ideologically from the margins. Can those in the majority responsibly self-acknowledge and harness their status toward progressive art in the U.S. and elsewhere, and how?
 
Christopher K. Ho (b. Hong Kong, 1974) is a speculative artist based in New York, Hong Kong, and Telluride, Colorado. He is known for a practice that includes object-making, organizing, writing, and teaching. His multi-component projects address privilege, community, and capital, and draw equally from learned material about, and lived encounters with, power and otherness in an unevenly de-colonialized, increasingly networked world. He has exhibited at Storm King Art Center, the Queens Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, Para Site, MASSMoCA, and Socrates Sculpture Park, among other venues. He was included in the Incheon Biennial, the Chinese Biennial Beijing, and the Busan Bienniale, and is currently work on a solo project for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America,Modern Painters, LEAP, Hyperallergic, RanDian, and ArtReview have reviewed his solo shows. He received his BFA and BS from Cornell University and his MPhil from Columbia University.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 1040 Grand Concourse
 

Caption:
Christopher K. Ho, Aloha to the World at the Don Ho Terrace, c. 1982, 2018, photograph from family trip to Hawaii
 

Saturday, October 6
2-5pm | Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Bahar Behbanani

Over the past six years, Bahar Behbahani has archived materials having to do with the conflicting figure Donald Wilber, an American writer and CIA spy who orchestrated the historical coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq. Presenting her research as an interactive installation comprised of her drawings, videos and personal belongings, Behbahani illustrates her complicated connection to Wilber, someone whom she had admired as a Persian garden scholar before learning about his alternate identities. The presentation is centered on an informal discussion that she leads between herself and her visitors.
 
Bahar Behbahani (b. 1973 in Tehran, Iran) has a research-based practice through which she explores various cultural landscapes via painting, videos, installations, and interactive lectures. By reinventing archival materials, she questions the relationship between knowledge, power, and spatial memory. Behbahani’s work was recently featured in the solo exhibition Let the Garden Eram Flourish at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Her work has been featured in the 7th Moscow Biennale, Russia; 11th Shanghai Biennale, China; Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE; and The Tribeca Film Festival, NY; among others.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 213 Taaffe Place, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Bahar Behbahani, Chronicle of the Garden
 

Saturday, October 6
2-5pm | Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Jaishri Abichandani

As a strategy to intervene within existing systems and the creation of new ones, Abichandani has created a series of sculptures that illustrate her search for a sacred space within her intersectional feminist practice.
 
Born in Bombay, India, Jaishri Abichandani immigrated to New York City in 1984. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London and founded the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective in New York and London. Abichandani’s works have been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Queens Museum, Nature Morte & Gallery Chemould, India, and Guangzhou Triennial, China among others. Her curatorial projects include Sultana’s Dream, Exploding the Lotus, Artists in Exile and many others. Her works are included in international collections including the Peabody Essex Museum Collection, Burger Collection, the Asia Art Archive Collection, and the Saatchi Collection.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 286 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Jaishri Abichandani, grief and glory from the series Before Kali, mixed media including foam, epoxy, wire, wood, paint, plastic etc, 2016-17
 

Sunday, October 14
12-6pm | Mana Contemporary

Amina Ahmed

The artist unveils what is hidden and seen all at once. Her gossamer-like drawings made on delicate sheets of dark paper carry the imprint of patterns, journeys and travels still to come. Her works stop the participant in stoic silence – as the blackness envelops the viewer and patterns unravel – quietly becoming visible. The series takes its name from the words Prieta, meaning very dark skin, and pitch meaning “the distance between successive corresponding points or lines”.
 
Presented in collaboration with Lakeeren Gallery with special thanks to the curator Arshiya Lokhandwala.
 
This open studio is held in conjunction with Mana Contemporary’s fall Open Studios, a bi-annual event staging a series of “open studios” featuring over 40 artists as part of Mana’s larger Residency program.
 
No admission fee required. Shuttle service will depart every half hour from Milk Studios (450 West 15th Street, New York, NY 10011) starting at 12:30 and ending 5PM. Returning shuttles from Mana will run every half hour from 2–7:30PM.
 
Address: 888 Newark Avenue Jersey City, Studio 510, 3rd floor
 

Caption:
Amina Ahmed, Memories of the Black Cloth Atop her Dresser, photo document, 2018
 

Wednesday, October 17
7-8pm | Midtown Manhattan

Satya Hinduja

Aiming to create an immersive experience that defines the transformative power of sound, Satya Hinduja founded the site-specific and multi-sensory sound booths, Alchemic Sonic Environments (ASE) — invoking states of deep reflection, receptivity, and exchange. The artist’s work focuses on the auditory sensory processing system and its impacts on human potential, by reframing the collective memories of our communities and potentializing the future of sound as a form of medicine.
 
Satya Hinduja, based in New York and Mumbai, is a composer, artist and performer best known for intertwining Sufi philosophies, Vedantic teachings and western electronic music. Working with frequencies to provoke change in the human psyche with her vast knowledge and experience of music and music theory, she has collaborated with artists, neuroscientists and healing arts practitioners to illustrate that sound is the best tool for communication and health. She has staged her work at the Sages & Scientists Symposium, TEDx, Berklee India Exchange and International Yoga Festival.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Also opens on November 2nd
 
Address: 215 Water Street, Unit #215, Dumbo, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Satya Hinduja, portrait of the artist, 2016, Photo credit: Rohan Shrestha
 

Sunday, November 11
4-7pm | Brooklyn, Pioneer Works

Xin Liu

Xin Liu presents an on-going project on the journey of her wisdom teeth being sent to space and becoming a star at the end of its life. The little tooth will unmask and unmake the alienated technological space programs and reimagine visceral, active, empathic and poetic forms of engagement.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: 159 Pioneer St. Brooklyn, NY 11231
 

Caption:
Xin Liu, Orbit Weaver, 5 min performance in zero gravity and underwater photography
Device: Aluminum, 3D prints from Formlab, magnet, Nylon string, motors and electronics, 2018
 

Monday, October 29
6:30-8:30pm | Upper West side, Columbia University

Vikram Divecha

Vikram Divecha’s engagements with institutions, urban processes and commercial operations leave behind a repository of material at his studio. His strategies of intervention and collaboration are evidenced throughout these various art objects and Divecha takes his visitors through each investigative journey: Gare Saint Lazare station, Paris; an inconspicuous venture at Frieze Art Fair, New York; participation from Manhattan’s Road Marking crew; and his growing interest about how light descends upon objects from Melanesia at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York.
 
Vikram Divecha is a Beirut-born, Mumbai-bred artist, currently based between New York and Dubai. His work addresses time, value and labour. Divecha’s practice has developed around what he calls ‘found processes’—those forces and capacities at work within state, social, economic and industrial spheres. His engagements translate into public art, sculptural installations, video and drawings. Exhibitions include – Co-Lab: Contemporary Art and Savoir-faire, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017), Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play, National Pavilion UAE, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017); Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13, Sharjah (2017); Minor Work, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai (2017).
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Address: Prentis Hall, 632 W 125th St, Studio No 243 & 244
 

Caption:
Vikram Divecha, The relationship between wood and sunlight, wood, available sunlight, Clip-On lamp (400lm, 5W), ink on newsprint paper, corrugated fiberboard, removable tape, painter’s tape, 2018
 

Friday, November 2
7-8pm | Brooklyn, Dumbo

Satya Hinduja

Aiming to create an immersive experience that defines the transformative power of sound, Satya Hinduja founded the site-specific and multi-sensory sound booths, Alchemic Sonic Environments (ASE) — invoking states of deep reflection, receptivity, and exchange. The artist’s work focuses on the auditory sensory processing system and its impacts on human potential, by reframing the collective memories of our communities and potentializing the future of sound as a form of medicine.
 
Satya Hinduja, based in New York and Mumbai, is a composer, artist and performer best known for intertwining Sufi philosophies, Vedantic teachings and western electronic music. Working with frequencies to provoke change in the human psyche with her vast knowledge and experience of music and music theory, she has collaborated with artists, neuroscientists and healing arts practitioners to illustrate that sound is the best tool for communication and health. She has staged her work at the Sages & Scientists Symposium, TEDx, Berklee India Exchange and International Yoga Festival.
 
Comp Entry, space is limited, RSVP is suggested. To Register for this studio-visit, please click here.
 
Also opens on October 17th
 
Address: 215 Water Street, Unit #215, Dumbo, Brooklyn
 

Caption:
Satya Hinduja, portrait of the artist, 2016, Photo credit: Rohan Shrestha