All posts tagged: Robyn Hasty

Weldon Arts Gallery Presents: Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster in Collaboration with Alex Pergament “Dark Corners, Savage Secrets” (Brooklyn, NYC)

Robyn Hasty

DARK CORNERS, SAVAGE SECRETS

Referred to as perverse, neurotic, or bestial, our sexuality is often inhibited by fear and judgment. In “Dark Corners, Savage Secrets,” Robyn Hasty, in collaboration with Alex Pergament, reveals the most intimate moments of her sexual relationships, openly tearing apart these inhibitions in an interactive exhibition of photography, sculpture, and performance. Questioning the le- gitimacy of our socially-dictated taboos about sex, Hasty invites her audience to reveal their hesitations about sexual candor and transcend them.

Tucked away within a found wood installation, suitcases open to reveal nude photos taken clandestinely in the MoMA’s painting galleries, collodion tintypes suggest scenes of sexual dominance and vulnerability, and a nook with a slide projector allows the viewer to advance through an explicit slideshow of Hasty having sex with her partner. Opening night, the large-scale anthropo- morphized headdresses shown in her tintypes come to life atop semi-nude women chained to the gallery walls.

By offering up these intimate moments to the public eye,

Hasty defies our entrenched taboos about sexual transparency. Whether her work debases the moments of intimacy it records or whether this exhibition reveals a fundamentally

human connection is left to the judgment of the viewer. Will we choose to reinforce these taboos or to resist them?

Robyn Hasty, a.k.a. Imminent Disaster, has rafted the Mississippi River with the Miss Rockaway Armada, crossed the Adriatic Sea on a junk boat to attend the 2009 Venice Biennale, designed and built the sets for Jeff Stark’s “Sweet Cheat,” designed murals with the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, and collaborated with Swoon. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally. She has been featured on NPR for “Homeland,” a project which led her across 15,000 miles of the United States taking wet-plate collodion portraits. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine,The Wall Street Journal, Juxtapoz, and The Village Voice. In 2013, she will be a resident at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Weldon Arts is a contemporary gallery in Bushwick promoting the work of emerging and street artists, and cre- ating a dialogue with the public about the relationship between art, culture and community. For more information, visit www.weldonarts.net.

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15, 6–9pm
Exhibition Dates: December 15, 2012–January 12, 2013
Location: 181R Irving Ave., Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Hours: Friday and Saturday 12-6pm, and by appointment.
Directions: L to Dekalb Ave.; M to Knickerbocker Ave.; gallery is located between Stockholm St. and Stanhope St.

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Fun Friday 01.13.12

 

1. “Lost and Found” Tonight in Brooklyn
2. “On the River…”, Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster Open Today
3. SuperTwins Skewville in San Francisco Employing “Playground Tactics”
4. “Hybrid Thinking” at Jonathan Levine Saturday
5. Muhammad Ali Hits 70, and the Show Begins Saturday
6. Klughaus Gallery, Jesse Edwards show “Dialogue of the Streets”
7. Le Salon d’Art, Fumero and Joseph Meloy , “90 Stanton Street Art Show”
8. Jesse Edwards by Tom Gould (VIDEO)
9. Kophns One: Kophenjoy by The Site Unscene (VIDEO)
10. Ben Eine Off Canvas by Studio Stare (VIDEO)

“Lost and Found” Tonight in Brooklyn

“Lost & Found” opens today at Mighty Tanaka Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn with the participation of Adam Void, Alice Mizrachi, Curtis Readel, ELLE & John Breiner:

Avoid with friends in the wild. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“On the River…”, Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster Open Today

Her first New York solo show “On The River…” is actually the joining of two strong and handsome rivers into one. Her Street Art work finds a sister in this new wet-plate photograph collection at the cozy Kesting/Ray Gallery in Manhattan.

Robyn Hasty. New Orleans 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To read our interview with Robyn click here

For further information regarding this show click here

SuperTwins Skewville in San Francisco Employing “Playground Tactics”

The Queens natives and New York wiseguys are re-wiring an entire band from their imagined musical teen heartthrob youth – the one where Droo was adding more gel to his perfect hair and punishing his Fender onstage and Ad was getting high in the mop closet. White Walls in San Francisco takes the risk of letting the Street Art duo put on a show this time, and you can expect more “Playground Tactics” Saturday.

Skewville “Playground Tactics” (image courtesy of the gallery)

For further information regarding this show click here

“Hybrid Thinking” at Jonathan Levine Saturday

“There’s a growing creative movement that we’ve dubbed Hybridism: a blend of both street art and fine art – a hybrid – as the raw meets the refined,” as the 2009 group show at Brooklyn’s Mighty Tanaka observed while giving evidence of what was happening on the streets and in galleries in the Brooklyn show “Hybridism”. Of course, Daniel Feral’s diagram points to 2008 as the beginning of “Hybridism”.

Similarly a year ago at Hold-Up Gallery in LA there was the “Hi-Graff” show that excitingly merged many Graff and Street Art movements as we observed at the time, “Those Cold War years are being chopped away brick by brick like the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, and a new language borrowing vocabulary from graffiti, street art, fine art, advertising, and pop/punk/hiphop/skater/cholo/tattoo culture continues to emerge in ways we never thought of before.”

Now in 2012 Manhattan’s Wooster Collective continues the conversation to reveal “Hybrid Thinking”, their collection of an international roster (South Africa, Germany, Spain, Amsterdam, Beijing) of names that have been successful in the galleries and streets, illustrating what you have been seeing alive and expanding for the last decade. In the curators’ words: “Hybrid Thinking refers to the current zeitgeist of our time: disparate cultures coming together to create something completely new.”

This roster includes Dal, Herakut, Hyuro, Roa, Sit and Vinz.

ROA in Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here

Muhammad Ali Hits 70, and the Show Begins Saturday

An culturally interesting thematic show honoring the fighter Muhammad Ali called “Ali The Greatest”opens tomorrow at Evolve Gallery in Sacramento, CA. With new stuff from Joe Iurato and David Flores among others, the show is expected to travel to Vegas and New York and celebrates the 70th birthday of the man.

Joe Iurato. “Muhammad Ali: Almost Showtime” (photo © Joe Iurato)

For further information regarding this show click here

Also happening this weekend

At the Klughaus Gallery, Jesse Edwards show “Dialogue of the Streets” Click here for more details.

At Le Salon d’Art, Fumero and Joseph Meloy , “90 Stanton Street Art Show” is open to the general public. Click here for more details.

Jesse Edwards video by Tom Gould

Kophns One: Kophenjoy by The Site Unscene

 

Ben Eine Off Canvas by Studio Stare

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Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster: Journey Across The Heartland

About a year ago you may remember the Kickstarter banner we ran on BSA to raise money for New York Street Artist Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster to travel across the US capturing portraits with a very old photographic process for a project called “Homeland”.  The campaign was successful, and despite an episode where her car “Cecelia” completely broke down and needed a new engine, Robyn set out to find another side of the country, seen through a new set of eyes. The first portrait result we saw was the image she put in BSA’s show last August in LA, but tonight you have the opportunity to see her first real exhibition of this work at Kesting/Ray Gallery in Manhattan. In addition she’ll be showing new cut paper  works that many will be familiar with from her work on the street as Imminent Disaster in the late 00s.

Robyn Hasty (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Over the course of 15,000 miles with her wet plate collodion camera and her chemicals in hand, Robyn set out on a road trip across the country to take photographs of people living outside the established urban settings and gridwork that forms much of the US. These simple and complex works are “magical alchemy”, according to Hasty.

“Every time I took a picture it just surprised me how it looks when it comes up. The camera doesn’t see like your eye sees. So every time you see what the camera sees – it’s a discovery.”

The new portraits bring to mind the work of the late master photojournalist from Hoboken, New Jersey Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). Ms. Lange documented with her arresting images the plight of the migrant workers during the great depression for the Farm Security Administration from 1935 to 1939. Now amidst our great recession, her wet plate collodian tintype produce beautiful portraits of her subjects that seem strangely akin to those subjects of that time – captured in their surroundings as they live today.

Robyn Hasty. New Orleans (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ms. Hasty took a few moments from hanging the show to talk about the new work with Brooklyn Street Art.

Brooklyn Street Art: What did you think you were going to discover
Robyn Hasty:
I guess I was hoping to find relationships between a community that I’ve been working with in New York, and across the country in various ways, to see how that community kind of extended beyond those boundaries and was formulating into a movement. It is a national movement creating an alternative way of living that is different from the capitalist system.

Brooklyn Street Art: In a way you kind of envisioned, or saw in a some way, what happened at Zuccoti Park but in different parts of the country?
Robyn Hasty:
I think the thing that was significant about Occupy Wall Street was that it started in New York and within weeks it had spread to most other cities in the country. That seems to indicate that there is actually an unrest and a unity between people who feel that they want radical change and I think I do see a lot of commonalities with the different people I met. An overlap in ideologies; they may not agree in ideologies and there may not be an established ideology that is stated, that has been formalized.

Robyn Hasty. Brooklyn, NY (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You encountered people you didn’t know. Was it difficult for them to say yes to posing? How did you approach them?
Robyn Hasty:
Most people were receptive to it. I just introduced myself and sometimes I would chat for a while and then eventually I’d show them the wet plates I’d already taken and ask them if they wanted to be involved in the project and have their portrait taken. Usually they said yes.  There were a few cases where they said no.

 

Robyn Hasty. St. Louis, MO (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: What sort of inspiration do you get from these people?
Robyn Hasty:
I feel like I choose the portraits that I take because I feel a connection to my subjects, like as a cohort. I respect what they are doing. I am inspired by what they are doing, and I feel like there is kind of an overlap between what we’re trying to do in our lives.  Based on that relationship, it is the reason why I’m taking the portrait and what I’m trying to convey in the portrait to other people.

Brooklyn Street Art: What was it like traveling across the country? Was it ever lonely?
Robyn Hasty:
I rarely felt lonely. I think I had a very positive experience because I realized how large the country is, how beautiful it is, how many opportunities there are to build and to re-envision it. I think I saw that from traveling across it.

Robyn’s large scale, cut paper portraits for which she is mostly known with her work on the streets are part of this show as well.

Robyn Hasty. Self Portrait (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robyn Hasty. Detail (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robyn Hasty (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robyn Hasty (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robyn Hasty (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

The original banner we ran on BSA for the Kickstarter fundraiser. (left)

For more information and complete details about tonight’s show “On the River…” opening at Kesting/Ray Gallery, click here.

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Kesting/Ray Gallery Presents: Imminent Disaster “On The River…” (Manhattan, NY)

Imminent Disaster

Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster “The Wind Kicks Up on the Flag-Ship” 2011. Wet plate collodion tintype. 8″ x 10″ (Image © courtesy of the gallery)

KESTING/RAY is pleased to present On the River: Stories from the heart of glorious abandon, where you cannot see what lies beyond the next bend, the first New York solo exhibition for Brooklyn-based artist Imminent Disaster. Known primarily for her large-scale street art works, the artist unveils a new body of work based on recent river journeys through the heartland of hard times. The installation functions as a cabinet of curiosities, featuring cut-paper, salvaged wood and screenprinted works alongside new, painstakingly-produced wet-plate photgraphs. The exhibition opens on January 12th and runs through February 5th. A reception will be held on Thursday, January 12th, 7–9pm at KESTING/RAY (formerly CHRISTINA RAY), located at 30 Grand Street, New York.

On the River… is an intimate portrait of contemporary life during the great recession, as seen through a lens of antiquity, that propels the viewer into a future in which the politics of Occupy Wall Street are but a distant memory.  On the River… is also a story about the river as muse, as inspiration for abandoning careful planning to spontaneous action. As the artist explains, “by allowing the river’s current to take me along without knowing where it might lead, I covered 15,000 miles of travel across the United States in 2011, taking portraits with a wet plate collodion camera and building a fleet of floating sculptures with the Miss Rockaway Armada in Philadelphia. On the River… attempts to span the distance between maker and object, object and audience – the way the river connects two shores.”

Imminent Disaster, whose given name is Robyn Hasty, has come to prominence through her work as a street artist. Her large-scale cut paper portraits can be found on cities throughout the world and she has collaborated with public-space artists including most notably Swoon, the Swimming Cities artists, Gaia, Chris Stain and Maya Hayuk. Within the past two years, Hasty has developed this body of photography that will be exhibited for the first time – along with cut-paper and print-based works, marking an important moment in her artistic development.

Hasty’s approach to craftsmanship in photography remains as meticulous as in her drawings and prints. The wet-plate colloidon process, first introduced in the 1850s, was “a very inconvenient form which required the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field.” With the eye of a traveler seeking to understand the intertwined nuances of place and personality, Hasty captures incredible detail in her work. Although a young artist herself, Hasty’s imagery is suffused with compassion for living through and overcoming crisis, pointing to a maturity beyond her years. The artist’s own drive to connect with this often fragile emotional atmosphere is underscored by her process, which necessitated the construction and carriage of her darkroom throughout her travels.

Hasty states in a recent interview with NPR, “If you actually sit out there…you realize that – functioning or not –the economic world is affecting everybody. And I guess [it is] the will of the individual, even in certain circumstances that are very extreme, to still have this energetic, active, creative energy.”

Robyn Hasty, a.k.a. Imminent Disaster, (b. 1985, West Palm Beach, FL) is driven by the urge to achieve fluidity between aesthetic practice and life. Her approach spans sculpture, printmaking, photography and writing; she also works as a street artist under the name Imminent Disaster. Hasty’s often site-specific work adapts to changing environments inspired by remote travel and adventure. She has rafted the Mississippi River with the Miss Rockaway Armada; crossed the Adriatic Sea on a junk boat to attend the 2009 Venice Biennale; designed and built the sets for Jeff Stark’s renowned “Sweet Cheat” performance sited in an abandoned warehouse; and designed two murals with the Philadelphia Mural Arts program. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally at the Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands), Addict Galerie (Paris) and Urban Angel Gallery (London). In 2011 she built floating sculptures on the Schuylkill River as part of a grant awarded by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, designed and built a house in Ghana, and was featured on NPR for her project “Homeland” which led her across 15,000 miles of the United States taking wet-plate collodion portraits. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Juxtapoz, The Wall Street Journal and The Village Voice.

KESTING / RAY is an innovative gallery and creative catalyst in New York whose mission is to discover and advance the most important contemporary artists transforming concepts of space and identity. For more information, visit www.kestingray.com.

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 12, 7–9pm
Exhibition Dates: January 12–February 05, 2012
Location: 30 Grand Street, Ground Floor . Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6pm
Directions: A/C/E to Canal Street or 1 to Canal Street; gallery is located between Thompson Street and 6th Avenue

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Robyn Hasty On The Road Exploring the “Homeland”

Robyn Hasty (AKA street artist Imminent Disaster) has hit the road in pursuit of her Homeland project, a photographic journey through the margins of the Great Recession United States.

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Austin, TX (photo © Robyn Hasty)

In these images from Austin, Texas and New Orleans, she begins her portraiture series with what we hope will be many dispatches from the road between now and June, when she expects to complete this exploration of places and people.  When looking at these images, it is helpful to recognize that they are not from an app on an Iphone – the wet-plate process was invented around 1850 and begins with bromide, iodide or chloride salts dissolved in collodian – and gets more complicated from there.  The laborious process requires a thoughtful approach to the subject, and the results can be stunning, mythic, or even heroic in character and atmosphere in Hasty’s  hands.

This cross country “Homeland” trip is financed by donations to her Kickstarter project. While she has reached an initial goal in the first phase, the needs will most likely be double what was originally estimated. Please continue to donate to Robyn’s kick-starter campaign at this link – she still has about 12 days to go before it expires.

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Austin, TX  (photo © Robyn Hasty)

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New Orleans (photo © Robyn Hasty)

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Robyn Hasty. New Orleans (photo © Robyn Hasty)

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“Rusty” (photo © Robyn Hasty)

Please click on the link below to donate:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1222154967/homeland-a-wet-plate-collodion-photo-essay/posts/61807?ref=email&show_token=003d03d23ab5e949

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