Wild Hearts by Monica Ruzansky

On view at Aperture’s Gallery and Bookstore coinciding with the season premiere exhibition Paul Strand in Mexico is Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices and Selections from En Foco’s Permanent Collection, a collaboration with En Foco, curated by Executive Director Miriam Romais. En Foco a non-profit organization that supports contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures—primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African, and Asian heritage, as well as Native peoples of the Americas and Pacific.

Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices explores—via the work of photographers  Chuy Benitez, Dulce Pinzón, and Monica Ruzansky how life and culture are enmeshed.  Selections from En Foco’s Permanent Collection can be found in the adjacent room and includes works by Graciela Iturbide, Mariana Yampolsky, Pedro Meyer, Don Gregorio Antón, Delilah Montoya, Rojelio Reyes Rodriguez, Lisdebertus aka Luis Delgado-Qualtrough, and Dean Dempsey. This selection encompasses the past four decades of work created by Chicano, Mexican-American, and Mexican artists. Inspired by a larger, forthcoming traveling exhibition of the En Foco Permanent Collection, curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, this work highlights a complex photographic history that is largely absent from surveys of the field.

This September 25th, En Foco’s will host their annual Portfolio Review. The event’s reviewers include a diverse range of leading arts professionals including Aperture Book’s editor Lesley A. Martin! Click here for pre-registration information and a full list of reviewers.

Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices
in conjunction with Paul Strand in Mexico
Opening reception: Thursday, September 16, 6:00-8:00 pm
Exhibition on view: September 16-October 21 2010

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York

Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices

Click here for more information about the upcoming Paul Strand in Mexico exhibition

Click here for more information about En Foco’s Programming

Los Angeles-based artist Zoe Crosher and Jan Tumlir spoke at Aperture this past winter following the appearance of Jan Tumlir’s article Femme Fatale: Zoe Crosher’s reconsidered archive of Michelle duBois in Aperture magazine issue 198. Their conversation situated Crosher’s work in relation to its historical precedents in the art of Conceptualism, the Pictures Group, and identity politics, exploring self-invention and role-playing as told through personal photographs and what comes of the great “archival theme” in the digital era. This talk can now be viewed online in its entirety.

In the below edited excerpt of Zoe Crosher in Conversation With Jan Tumlir, Zoe Crosher introduces her body of work The Unraveling of Michelle Dubois which considers the “Fiction of any sort of totality when it comes to photography” and the archive. Crosher describes the importance of installation in the work and her interest in “Collapsing all the different kinds of mediums” and “different kinds of photographs” in her practice. Jan Tumlir tells Crosher that the project addresses the history of how art takes up photography saying that the project presents “This beautiful solution,”  the photograph “does actually become art when it starts disintegrating.”

View the talk in full here:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

A special limited-edition project is now available from Crosher titled The Vanishing of Michelle duBois. An edition of 15, each a unique image, as Crosher has slowed down and mapped out the stages of material disappearance. The image of the Naughty Nurse progressively transforms into a sea of mute whiteness; the information degrades and fades out, leaving only the traces of a fantasy history. Collectors can consider acquiring multiple prints to illustrate the series intent, or choose the individual image most appealing to them.

One Block: Block Party

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Andrea Smith, Director of Communications, Aperture represented us in New Orleans during the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last weekend. She attended on the occasion of the publication of Destroy This Memory, photographs by Richard Misrach, and One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds, photographs by Dave Anderson, books from Aperture that document and reflect on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans’ road to recovery. See images above from the artist’s exhibitions: Anderson’s opening at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Misrach’s opening at the New Orleans Museum of Art, as well as the Block Party on One Block. Read below Andrea’s account of a truly memorable experience.
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© Hank Willis Thomas

All Things Being Equal…, a new exhibition of works by Hank Willis Thomas opens at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, September 2nd and marks the artist’s first solo show in South Africa. Bringing together recent work, the exhibit explores legacies of slavery and colonialism, segregation and apartheid. Previous projects by Thomas include his Unbranded series, currently featured in the Greater New York exhibition on view at MoMA PS1, which re-appropriates advertising targeted at African Americans and his B®anded Series which can currently be seen at the Brooklyn Museum and considers representations of African-American men in popular media. Hank Willis Thomas’ monograph Pitch Blackness, which includes several bodies of work, was published by Aperture in 2008.

Hank Willis Thomas is the co-chair of this year’s first-ever benefit party, hosted by SNAP!, Aperture Young Patrons Program, which will follow the annual 2010 Benefit & Auction dinner.

Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…
September 2-October 4, 2010

Goodman Gallery
176 Sir Lowry Road, Between Lewin and Nelson Streets
Woodstock, Cape Town, 7925, South Africa
+27 (0) 21 462 7573

Click here to purchase Pitch Blackness

See Hank’s tour with Aperture interns here.

Buy a ticket to the Benefit Party!