calendario eventi  :: 

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18/3/2009

Two exhibitions

Jersey Art Museum, Jersey City

Industrial Strength
Precisionism and New Jersey

Industrial Strength features the work of several Precision artists, all associated with New Jersey, who were moved by the power of our local landscape. Louis Lozowick (1892-1973), Riva Helfond (1910-2002), Elsie Driggs (1898-1992), Victoria Hutson Huntley (1900-1971) and Jan Matulka (1890-1972), were all inspired by the combination of a number of cultural phenomena, including the rise of American industry, the growing popularity of photography, and the characterization of New York and its vicinity as a site of modernity.
Powerful, angular forms reminiscent of factory smokestacks, train tracks and the lines of skyscrapers bisect the works of this period. The ports of Newark, Hoboken, and the borders of the Hudson were prominently lined with the industrial power of our regional landscape. Local artists were inspired to celebrate the power of this industry in prints that featured factories, train stations, and construction sites, along with urban dwellers in moments of everyday life.

By bringing together the works of these American modernists, our exhibition presents a select examination of the Precisionism movement and its followers. Focusing on the connection to New Jersey, the imagery evokes historical ideas about culture, modernity and American identity of the period. Our post-industrial landscape is marked equally by heavy industry and luxurious and efficient high rises, by ports of commerce and of travel, by highways and waterways. These historic images illustrate the origins of the contemporary landscape, underscoring the connection between industry, landscape, large urban populations and the rise of modern culture.

Industrial Strength: Precisionism and New Jersey is made possible, in part, by the Dedalus Foundation and The Judith Rothschild Foundation.

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Luis Mallo: Open Secrets

Curatorial Statement by Guest Curator, Alejandro Anreus:

I first encountered Luis Mallo's photography in the late 1990s when he was working on a series inspired by Herbert Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization. These photographs juxtaposed fragments of the human body with fragments of machinery and technology, thereby creating a visual meditation between the site of desire and pleasure (the body) and the means of production (machinery). Since then I see him as essentially a philosophical photographer; one whose formal rigor is sustained by substantial ideas. In 2006 he began his series "Open Secrets," which focuses on the storage spaces of museums. These images, which possess an almost neo-classical formality, depict spaces which contain and preserve works of art and objects of value. Mallo chooses to view these spaces as mysterious (the public never has access to them, and only a handful of museum staff does) sites charged with protective qualities, where tradition and memory (through objects) are preserved.

Mallo was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. He and his family left the island for Spain in 1970 and eventually settled in the United States. He studied graphic design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since 1992 he has had 11 solo shows and participated in some 60 group exhibitions. In 1990-91 he received the Oscar B. Cintas Fellowship.


Image: Victoria Hutson Huntley, Freight, 1933 11 x 15 in. Courtesy of Keith Sheridan Gallery

Media inquiry: Rita Salpietro, Communications Manager, tel 201-413-0303 x. 144 or rsalpietro@jerseycitymuseum.org

Opening Reception: March 19th, 2009.

Jersey City Museum
350 Montgomery Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302
Gallery hours
Wednesday thru Friday: 11am to 5pm
Saturday: 12pm to 5pm

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