Sept 18 - Oct 31 NEW YORK STORIES
Drawings by Seth Tobocman and photographs by Brian Weil

Exhibition
New York Stories presented the work of artists Seth Tobocman and Brian Weil. Both artists provided an insider’s perspective on distinct New York communities and moments which their works and their activism helped to define. In conjunction with the exhibition, there was a series of public programs - video screenings, literature and poetry readings, multi-media and musical performances - which told other New York stories from very personal perspectives. In all of these, New York City was cast as a central character.
New York Stories featured original drawings by Seth Tobocman, from his graphic novel, War in the Neighborhood, in which he documents the strife he has witnessed on the Lower East Side, centering around Tompkins Square Park. Tobocman is a comic artist who, with Peter Kuper, founded the seminal political, all-comics magazine World War III Illustrated in 1980. Tobocman has also done freelance illustrations for the New York Times and published You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive. Living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he has been an important voice in the community, through his comics and activism brought issues of squatters’ rights, police brutality, domestic violence, and gentrification to the attention of a broader public.
The documentary photographs of Brian Weil reflect his intense involvement with social issues and communities at the “fringes” of society as well. The large scale black and white photographs provide intimate perspectives on individuals and communities. Weil established close relationships with his subjects before photographing them, capturing sensitive portraits of each of his subjects. Like Tobocman, Weil was an active presence in the communities he depicted in his artwork. Among the series of photographs featured in the exhibition were the Sex Series (1978-1980), the Midget Boxers and Wrestlers Series (1980-1982), the Hasidic Jews Series (1982-1984) and the AIDS photographs (1985-1991). In the period from 1985 to his death in 1996, Weil worked with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, ACT UP, AIDS Brigade, and served as the Director of the Bronx-Harlem Needle Exchange and later was the founding Executive Director of the CitiWide Harm Reduction: Brian Weil Needle Exchange in the South Bronx. This activism particularly informed and personalized his photographic recordings of the complex consequences of the AIDS crisis, his largest body of work.
Film, video, performance and literary events were organized in conjunction with New York Stories. Three video screenings featured work about New York created by emerging and established video artists. Seth Tobocman presented War in the Neighborhood, a live multi-media event which was inspired by his work in this exhibition. For Anton van Dalen’s performance, Avenue A Cut Out Theatre, the artist used images taken from his artwork to describe his experience living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. An evening reading series included authors Linda Yablonsky, Lynne Tillman, writers from the Asian American Writers Workshop and poets from Hanging Loose Press. Mike Ballou from 4 Walls curated a multi-media evening, Noddy Couch, where he screened his own films while music was played by David Sher, Paul Sher and Brian Dewan, this evening also included readings by Ross Klavan. A musical event by Nora York, Big City, featuring original songs about New York.

Nov 14 - Jan 2 THE CHOICE

Curator/Artists
Ida Applebroog: Jane Higgins, Saeri Kiritani, Lisa Petsu Lagunes
Nicole Eisenman: Alison Kelly, Maria E. Piñeres, Suzanne Wright
Robert Gober: Jonathon Hexner
Antony Gormley: Ignassi Aballi, John Patrick Clayman
Gottfried Helnwein: Iris Andraschek, Danielle Kraay
Damien Hirst: Rachel Howard
Ronald Jones: Eric Schnell
Frank Moore: Aaron Cobbett, Michael Combs
Cindy Sherman: Charles Clough, Susan Jennings, David Krueger, Gail Le Boff
Laurie Simmons: Helen Rousakis, Pedro Barbeito
Kiki Smith: Joey Kötting
Sam Taylor-Wood: Georgie Hopton
Nari Ward: Brett Cook Dizney, Chris Sollars

Exhibition
The Choice, was an exhibition that identified unknown and emerging artists through the viewpoint of leading contemporary artists. We invited an international group of artists to engage their own curatorial ideas. In the role of curator, these artists had been asked to present the work of artists they have followed or whose work has affected them in a personal way. In keeping with Exit Art’s mission to bring the work of emerging artists to a broader audience, they were asked that the artists they chose had not had major exposure.
Each of the participating artists/curators was chosen for their different perspectives on contemporary art. Through juxtaposing each of the curator’s selections within the context of a larger exhibition, new readings of relationships, influences, parallels and differences among a diverse group of artists was suggested. The Choice created a web of opposing and complimentary visions, revealing a more inclusive and open reading of recent developments in contemporary art.
The Choice was the first project in what we planned to be the future direction of Exit Art’s programming - collaborative, multi-media, multi-disciplinary, transcultural explorations of contemporary culture. This new curatorial initiative explored the politics of choice, for who gets to choose ultimately leads to the recognition of the language of culture at that moment, articulating tendencies in contemporary thought and establishing critical priorities. We began this curatorial project with artists as a way to acknowledge their invaluable contribution to the curatorial process, for artists have always been a primary source of information about younger and emerging artists.
Exit Art has a long history of serving as a resource for artists, providing support, exposure and context for these artists and encouraging them to work in new ways. We wanted to establish this new curatorial venture by opening up Exit Art to a group of established artists, providing them with the same kinds of opportunities for curatorial experimentation.

Jan 16 - Apr 3 PARADISE 8

Curators and their participating artists

Pip Day: Luis Felipe Ortega & Daniel Guzman, Helen Mirra, Francis Alys, Bruce Ferguson, James Walsh, Stephanie Theodore, Mara Jayne Miller, Karin Schneider, Dave Herman, Gilbert Vicario, Barbara Clausen

Dominique Nahas: Emily Cantrell, Vanessa Conté, Tracy Heneberger, Jeff Miller
Ripley & Jackson, jj pine, John Powers, Ellen Sayers, Raven Schlossberg, Stephen J. Shanabrook

Odili Donald Odita: Bili Bidjocka, Monika Brandmeier, Manuel Camargo, Rolo Castillo, Dan Devine, Vivienne Koorland, Pam Lins, Charles Long, Paul D. Miller / DJ Spooky, Jesus Polanco , Txuspo Poyo, Peter Rostovsky, Lisa Ruyter, Fatimah Tuggar, Dirk Westphal, Toshihiro Yashiro, Mimi Young

Kenny Schachter: Bonnie Seeman, Edwin Vera, Jun Iseyama, Jacob Williams, Alfredo Martinez, Rob Pruitt, Ricci Albenda, Spencer Finch, Jonathan Horowitz, Marco Brambilla, Thuy Pham, Amy Gatrell, Liz Bougatsos/actress, Hiroshi Suniari, Ilona Rich, Robert Chambers, John LeKay, Devon Dikeou , Brendan Cass, Julien Laverdiere , Gus Romero, Antek Walczak, Daniel McDonald, Michael Gitter, Lisa Ruyter, Darrell Maupin, John Kelsey, B Team, Graham Gillmore, Lawrence Seward, Ruth Root, Dan Asher, Carroll Leggett, Joan Linder, Richard Kern , Michael Lavine, Charlie Finch, Curtis Cuffie, Mark Seliger, Fat Witch Bakery

Ingrid Schaffner: John Defazio, Sam Easterson, Angelo Filomeno , Michel Gerard , Harold Graves, Shlomo Harush , Ben Kinmont , Howard McCalebb , Olu Oguibe , William Pope L. , Sol Sax , Gloria Williams

Franklin Sirmans: Laylah Ali, Edgar Arceneaux, Kira Lynn Harrris, Romuald Hazoume, Margherita Manzelli, Dario Robleto, Gunther Selichar

Henry Urbach: Lindsay Brant, Type A

Martha Wilson: Martha Burgess, Ilona Granet, Max Klein / , Jacquelyn Schiffman, Alice Wu, William Pope. L

Exhibition
Paradise 8 was the second project in an experimental program of new curatorial initiatives. For this project, Exit Art invited eight New York based independent curators to work collectively, exposing the role of curator in contemporary culture. The curators had been meeting since September and incorporated their ideas in a collectively curated project that took place over three months beginning January 16.
Eight curators had come together for three months to explore and present a series of hypotheses, of works-in-progress. The eight initially distinct zones within the space had shifted, melded and mutated over the course of the three months. The goal was not to realize a ‘finished product’ within the space; Paradise 8 attempted to uproot the notion of the ‘definitive’ exhibition and replace stasis with kinesis. Here paradise was invoked as a hypothetical space in which to explore various ways of investigating and presenting art and culture.
Curators’ statements about their 8 initially distinct zones:
FAUCET, Pip Day
I use the word faucet as a sort of metaphor for systems at play in the city, for urban structures of circulation. Some invisible, some revealed…
The faucet is the tool, the point of departure for interaction between these realms and systems. It is the point of contact between interior and exterior. It provides evidence of that communication. The very presence of the faucet implies the individual or private and the social or public: it requires an act, a human hand to activate the gathering, sifting and discharge of substances: from the faucet comes the water, into the sink, stopped – then released by the plug, out the drain.
The form FAUCET takes will be a ‘lab’ of sorts, a structure which reflects the potential for flux within itself. FAUCET will be an essay, a book, a slide carousel, a video, an installation, a photo, a scrap of paper, a story my brother, the bio-chemist, will write. Artists, writers, computer programmers, mathematicians and curators will be invited to contribute to FAUCET, sometimes as works ‘added’ to the show, sometimes as notes or essays. The continual and varied influx of information will create an ongoing, developing archive, an archive of the present, of an idea in formation, complete with addenda and errata. I will hold office hours twice a week to talk, to review proposals, to record results from the ‘lab’, and to make notes about the formation of FAUCET. I think of the physical space as a sort of ‘well’ – where people gather to exchange gossip, news, etc., and to draw water…
Walking the Line, Dominique Nahas
If life can be considered a journey, metaphorically, then “walking the line” might indicate a careful sentient balancing act between certainty and uncertainty, between chaos and disorder, consciousness and its opposite. By walking the line we arrive at the non point that shows us the direction to that place that rests between the bi-polarities of the known and the unknown. There we come across the not-known. But not by looking for it.
It will come looking for us.
The theme for my project in Paradise 8 is about freedom and its limitations. Or, to use, Wallace Stevens’ words: “The imperfect is our Paradise.” My project for Paradise 8 is about nothing less than walking the line (curatorially speaking) in order to allow me to see it. If everything is allowed to work itself right the result will be surprisingly penetrating and pack a hard punch.
I have chosen four installation artists who use homespun, everyday materials to create an interpenetrating webbed space that walks the line between ennui and mystery, between seriousness and the carnivalesque, between the profound and the silly. I have chosen these artists because they create works with intelligence, wit and concision.
It is the line, or more accurately, the lines that form the grid, the web and the labyrinth that will be deployed by these artists. Working together to form a vast network of interpenetrating and colonizing visual segments or notations these artists will challenge themselves to become involved in an infinite alleatory permutation of interchangeable elements, within a decentered structure or limitless series of events. In other words they will play. In so doing, I wanted them to challenge my assumptions (as well as their own) about the relational aspects between play-work, finished-unfinished, beautiful-ugly, craft-art.
Permanent Resident, Odili Donald Odita
America is the land of plenty where we, in many ways, can gorge and indulge in the accumulation of stuff to fill in for that something we find missing. For my part, I want to depict the idea of the house (home) as a space of private contemplation and consumerism within the ideal of the American ‘Paradise’. On another level, I want to better understand the desire involved in acquiring identity and place within a setting of the familiar.
Baker’s Dozen Café, Kenny Schachter
The café project is intended to blur some of the distinctions between art, artists, exhibition spaces and restaurants. Food and beverages will be served in the context of a group show (of group shows), with all of the t-shirts, posters, mugs, dishes, silverware, furniture, and food presented as art works. Contributions will be sought from a few people not engaged in the practice of “fine art” on a regular, professional basis. There will be an active schedule of social events such as music, performances, and fashion shows throughout the duration of the exhibit.
Submission, Ingrid Schaffner
To relax my grip and refresh my vision, I submit a recently past project. When Paradise 8 opens, my exhibition Deep Storage will have just closed after touring for over a year. An investigation of images and metaphors of storage and archiving in contemporary art, the topic was vast; Deep Storage was gratifyingly large and inclusive. And yet, I still find myself wanting to linger in those themes, which appear so vital within today’s art. Thus, I propose a storage-like situation (basically shelving) and submit that my co-curators help fill it by submitting to me the names of artists suggested by the themes of Deep Storage. In turn, I will invite the artists to submit a wrapped work or object in response to any one of the curatorial sites within Paradise 8. Over the course of the 3-month exhibition, the packages will gradually be unwrapped and installed throughout the space, thereby directly impacting on the process that we, as curators, are collectively submitting to through Paradise 8. Storage is also available to my colleagues to use as a rotation space within the installation as our projects evolve.
Deception, Franklin Sirmans
“It is the desperate moment when we discover this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing.”
--Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972
The sub-theme of Deception will address formal and conceptual concerns of visuality with paintings, drawings, photographs and sound. This contribution to the exhibition seeks to explore the inherent dichotomies implicit within generalized associations of “paradise”, as a sort of utopic domain. As intimacy plays such an important part in relationships of deception, several works will address this facet through the depiction of societal relations, symbolic signifiers, and formal issues of scale.
Walls of Light, Henry Urbach
Walls of light have preoccupied modern architecture since early experiments with neon and electrical signs at the beginning of the century. With contemporary technologies of image digitization, advertising, and computer visualization, luminous phenomena become every more present at all spatial scales. For Paradise 8, I am interested in presenting new works that transform the gallery wall into a site for the display of luminous information. Works such as “Night/Lights” by Lindsay Brant will interrupt the smooth, apparently neutral wall plane by invoking its hollow interior as a source of electrical projection.
Ideal, Martha Wilson
I am captivated by the notion of an ideal art world – Paradise. In such a world, the hierarchical distinctions that now exist among the various disciplines and media of painting, printmaking, books, fashion, performance, sculpture, ceramics, furniture, architecture, design, video, music, dance, website and CD-ROM design, drawing, photography – would disappear. (Maybe this will be the result of postmodern thought anyway, with its leveling of difference between “high” and “low” art.) So I am doing my part by selecting three artists who are working in the disciplines considered in the lower reaches of the food chain – with the idea that their excellent practice will do its part in creating art on a single plane with painting and sculpture.

May 1 - July 2 THE STROKE
An overview of contemporary painting
curated by nine painters

Curators: and the Artists they have chosen

Ross Bleckner: Andy Warhol, Moira Dryer, Uta Barth, Diti Almog, Tom Sachs, Adam Fuss, Andrew Masullo, Bill Jacobson, Keith Mayerson, Philip Taaffe, Eric Freeman, Peter Cain

Carroll Dunham: Alan Turner

Ellen Gallagher: Pedro Bell, David Fludd, Alicia Henry

Kerry James Marshall: Helen Mirra, Amy Sillman, Gelsey Verna, Emily Cheng

Suzanne McClelland: Ruby Palmer, Hulda Stefansdottir, Hiroe Niimi, Fred Holland, Shoshana Dentz, Katurah Hutcheson

Elizabeth Murray: Joe Amrhein, John Benton, Luisa Chase, Steve DeFrank, Hermine Ford, Joanne Greenbaum, Mary Obering, James Siena, Jessica Weiss, Jack Whitten

Lari Pittman: Renée Petropoulos

David Reed: Elizabeth Cooper, Pam Fraser, Nicholas Krushenick, Carl Ostendarp, Monique Prieto

Shahzia Sikhander: Sebastiaan Bremer, David McGee, Julie Mehretu

Exhibition
The Stroke was the third exhibition in a yearlong experimental program of new curatorial initiatives at Exit Art. This exhibition presented a multi-faceted view of painting today, as seen by some of its most respected practitioners.

Exit Art invited the painters listed above, each representing a different perspective of contemporary painting, to engage their own curatorial ideas. In the role of curator, these painters had been asked to present the work of artists whose work has touched them in a personal way; they may have been young artists whom they wanted to support, or more established artists, perhaps one of their peers.
Each curator had one wall at Exit Art as his or her curatorial space. They could choose to explore one artist in depth, a group of artists, hang the work salon style, choose one large piece, etc. Each of the curator’s selections was shown within the context of a larger exhibition, so that new readings of relationships, influences and differences among a diverse group of artists may have been suggested.