Dawoud Bey
Tirtza Even
Brian Karl
Rainer Ganahl
Nikki S. Lee
Shari Rothfarb Mekonen
Avishai Mekonen
Yoshua Okon
Jaime Permuth
Andrea Robbins
Max Becher
Jessica Shokrian
Chris Verene
Joan Snyder
New American Photography, 10 commissioned photography, video, and multimedia installation projects by 13 artists. Contemporary Joan Snyder: a painting survey, 1969-2005
In The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography ten commissioned
photography, video, and multimedia installation projects by thirteen artists explore
Jewish diversity and challenge conventional ways of representing ethnicity in the
United States today. Works by Dawoud Bey, Tirtza Even and Brian Karl, Rainer Ganahl,
Nikki S. Lee, Shari Rothfarb Mekonen and Avishai Mekonen, Yoshua Okon, Jaime
Permuth, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Jessica Shokrian, and Chris Verene are
included. By collaborating with their subjects through a variety of means, these
artists have pushed the limits of traditional documentary, artistic and aesthetic
approaches to investigate the nature of photographic media and its ability to create
truthful representations.
Dawoud Bey, Nikki S. Lee, Chris Verene, Shari Rothfarb Mekonen and Avishai Mekonen
look at contemporary American Jewishness across racial, ethnic, and geographic
borders. Their works embrace a variety of aesthetic and narrative approaches in
visualizing the experiences of being a Jew of Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern, African
American, Native American, European or mixed heritage. Projects by Rainer Ganahl,
Jessica Shokrian, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher explore what Jewishness is and to
what extent America is “home†to Jews and other immigrant groups. Works by Jaime
Permuth, Yoshua Okon, Tirtza Even and Brian Karl address how individuals with
different cultural and ethnic backgrounds experience or envision Jewishness.
Following its New York showing at The Jewish Museum, the exhibition travels to the
Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles (March 24 through August 27, 2006).
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JOAN SNYDER: A PAINTING SURVEY, 1969-2005
Through October 23, 2005
Over 30 of Joan Snyder’s major works are being presented at The Jewish Museum in New
York in the most comprehensive museum survey of the artist’s paintings to date.
Paintings on view range from the monumental (some as large as six by twelve feet) to
modest in scale. Joan Snyder first achieved recognition in the 1970s, with her
“stroke†paintings. Eventually, she felt the need to move beyond these grid-based
abstractions to create works that were at once more complex and personally resonant.
Joan Snyder is a painter who embraces the formal qualities of abstraction while
imbuing her work with narrative content that is often deeply personal and
politically motivated. In her canvases she combines rich color, dramatic brushwork,
and the sensuous application of a wide range of materials and colors such as velvet,
silk, papier-mâché, straw, and plastic. This mid-career review has been
organized by the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, Massachusetts, where it will
be on view from November 10, 2005 through February 5, 2006.
Image: Rainer Ganahl, Language of Emigration/Lederer Family, 2003 Chromogenic print
The Jewish Museum
Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York, NY