Friday, August 24, 2012

Our Director: Nancy Barton



Nancy Barton is an artist, writer and educator with interests in collaborative and experimental art models, psychoanalytic theory, and opera; Her work has been shown at many venues including MoMA, American Fine Arts, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Her writing has been included in RealLife Magazine, Work and The Image, ed Griselda Pollock, ArtUS, and is forthcoming in Lacanian Ink. She has chaired the department of Art at New York University, and the Photography Department at Otis College of Art.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Jonathan Wang



WELCOME TO ALASKA (video still), 2011


Jonathan Wang is an interdisciplinary artist currently based nowhere. His work revolves around popular photographic/video practices, spectacle, and socio-spatial imaginaries. Jonathan was also the founder and director of FOTO Project Space, a non-profit artist-run photography space in Cape Town, South Africa that serves as a flexible platform for disadvantaged township-based artists.

PULL (video still), 2010
THE HINTERLANDS (video still), 2012

Monday, August 20, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Carrie Pollack

Knit, 2009, Pigment Print on Linen



Carrie Pollack describes her work as an investigation between the notions of permanence and impermanence, as well as uncertainty and contradiction. She deliberately intends her work to function “more as conversations than as statements”. Her imagery can often appear both familiar and unknown, spanning both abstraction and representation. She thinks of the process of making of her work as the evidence of momentary fragments in a constant state of transformation. These fragmented moments possessed a mysterious complexity, revealing a different way of looking at the world around us, becoming visual metaphors, parts of a language. She uses her work to contemplate the complexity of the human experience.

Poster 1, Pigment Print on Linen


Carrie Pollack (b. 1973, New York, NY; lives Brooklyn, NY) works at the nexus between painting, photography, and digital media. Pollack has exhibited her work throughout the United States, as well as in Germany, Belgium, and Mexico. In January 2012, Pollack mounted her first solo exhibition Witness at Minus Space, a New York gallery specializing in reductive abstract art on the international level, where she is currently represented. She has been previously awarded residencies at Yaddo, Jentel, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, an MA from New York University, and a BFA from Alfred University.

Soft Sky, 2012, Pigmented Print on Canvas


You can view more about Carrie here:

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Marisa Mandler

Machine Drawings, Bleach compounds on paper. 2011


Marisa Mandler is a multidisciplinary artist working across the mediums of drawing, sculptural installation, sound and writing. Through mark making, transcription and recording, everyday events and actions become documented gestures which speak to a larger narrative about the impossible human desire for control and perfection. Culling from a multitude of imagery and reference material, Mandler finds associative meaning and draws comparisons between the personal quotidian and a larger collective experience. Repetitive processes of investigation reveal the peripheral, conceptual and emotional underpinnings of Mandler’s subject matter. It is through these revelations that the significance of this “negative space” becomes apparent.

Today:153 Sheets, Re-pulped magazines. 2008
Today:153 Sheets, Detail.

Mandler was born is Los Angeles, CA. USA in 1980 and currently works between Los Angeles and Berlin, Germany. She received a Bachelor of Science in painting from New York University in 2002 and a Master of Fine Arts from University of Southern California in 2008. She shows with Wohnmaschine Galerie in Berlin, Germany and has exhibited in numerous group shows in both Europe and North America. She has participated in various residencies, most recently the Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing in 2010 and Kunsttraject in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2009. In 2009 and 2010 Mandler was awarded with the Willard Grant in Berlin, Germany. Her work can be seen in the public collection of the Kupferstichkabinett at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.

February 26, 2009, Pen on paper. 2009

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Alex McQuilkin


Alex McQuilkin is a Brooklyn based artist whose work revolves around the nature of stories, both fiction and nonfiction, and the faith that we, knowing or unknowingly, place in them. Her videos investigate dominant modes of how stories are relayed: from fairytales, myths and oral history, to visual art, literature and cinema, to sources that present themselves as historical fact. Pairing iconic film imagery with home video and voice-over narration with emotionally charged film scores, her video works explore the transmission of power-driven belief systems and their representation in popular culture.

Joan of Arc, video still, 2007, two-channel video installation

In her more recent shift to drawing and sculpture, McQuilkin continues this investigation through her use of materials that reveal an inherent tension between the strength of belief systems and of their material surfaces.

McQuilkin is a professor of art at New York University. Recent exhibitions include the KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Museo Reina Sofia, Centre Pompidou and MoMA PS1.

For a full biography, images and videos, please see: www.alexmcquilkin.com


Untitled (Forever), 2008, collage on paper

Untitled (Escape Route), Mixed media (hair, saliva, string), Installation View, 2008-2011







Monday, August 13, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: James Woodward

Waiting for Claire, 2012 


James Woodward is a New York-based artist working primarily in video and sculpture. Born and raised in Oakland, California, he's currently pursuing his MFA in Studio Art at NYU Steinhardt where he also teaches Digital Photography.  Selected exhibitions and screenings include the Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Queens Museum, New York; The Museum of New Art, Detroit; White Box, New York; The Maysles Institute, New York, Benrimon Contemporary, New York and Camel Art Space, Brooklyn.  His work has also been screened at the NADA Art Fair, Miami and can currently be seen in a group exhibition at the Place Gallery, Portland.  He uses individual and cultural refuse and is interested in regression, elegiac fetish, the subconscious and authority of language.

Still from Anthem, 2011

Claire, 2012

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Damien Davis

From Nippon, With Love: Kids Stuff (Illustrator Study), 2012



Damien Davis is a American artist, based in New York City.

Born in Crowley, Louisiana, at a young age his family moved to Marlboro, Massachusetts before ultimately settling in Phoenix, Arizona. It is because of these dramatic geographical shifts that his work is deeply rooted on ideas of race, culture, and representation. His work in digital print, drawing and sculpture is concerned in deconstructing cultural codes and iconography present in modern culture.

Outlet, 2010


Damien received his BFA from New York University, New York, And is currently a candidate in to receive his MA in Visual Arts Administration. Past exhibitions he has participated in include: Luxury, Takasago International Corporation, New York, 2012; Brucennial, New York, 2012; and Peace by Piece Old Japan Bank, Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan, 2005

To see more of Damien’s work, be sure to visit his blog.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Paco Marcial



Si je suis un prototype   Sculpture. Resin, metal, epoxy automotive coating, leather, wood, oil can, variable dimensions, 2010

Paco Marcial studied painting at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and passed through the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, Netherlands. Paco won the National Painting Award through his work with Taller Documantación Visual collective.

Paco later moved to Japan where he worked for curator F. Nanjo. It was in Japan that he met the artist Jason Rhoades and began a friendship that led him to coordinate his studio in Los Angeles. After traveling the world he finally realized that he was a Sculptor.

Tu es Petrus  Painting. Watercolor / oil / graphite on paper and canvas, 7 x 5 in. 2008


In 2008 he founded the Scuderia Marchal in Modena Italy, over the mythical Preda Ringadora in front of the Palazzo Comunale. That same year, Paco relocated to Berlin, and then moved to New York City. Since then the Scuderia Marchal has sought to consolidate among the Champions.

Exhibitions Paco has participated in include:

2012 Crimes of the Future, Noth Side Art Festival Brooklyn, NY. 2010 Short - Term Deviation, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts at the Project Space, NYC. 2006 The Chowchillas in Collaboration with Jason Rhoades, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, MX. 2005 Transcontinental Nomadenoase, Galerie Nomadenoase at Art Basel Miami Beach (Courtesy of Gabriele Senn Galerie, Vienne). The path of Moons and Planets, The Crazy Space at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica CA. 2004 The Grocery List, Art 2102 at The Mountain Bar, Los Angeles CA. 2003 Yield, Echo Park
Film Center, Los Angeles CA. 2000 Pasaje Iturbide, Museum of Mexico City, MX. Salón Octubre Gran Premio Omni Life, Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Artist-in-Residence: Nadja Marcin

//KIDS//, video-still, Blu-ray, 13.34 min, New York 2012


Nadja Verena Marcin is a German performance artist, based in New York City. Internationally recognized as one of today’s premiere New Genre artists, she focuses on human behavior, elemental emotions, and psychological responses linked to role-playing through video, performance and photography.

Love's Surrogates, live performance, 23.48 min, Elizabeth Foundation, New York 2010

Marcin received her MFA from Columbia University, New York. Her creations are exhibited in museums, art spaces/galleries and distinguished collections worldwide. Her work has been selected for grants, global biennials and film festivals, including: "KIDS", ZKM- Center for Art and Media, 2012; DAAD, New York, 2011;"German Photography Now", Jinsun Gallery, Seoul, 2011; “Qui Vive?” Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow MOMA, 2010; ARTWORKinternational, Inc. Grant, 2010; Salon/Screening, ICA Philadelphia, 2010; Uncontrollable Flesh, Berkley Art Museum, 2010; Short-Term Deviation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, 2010; Kaunas Biennale, National Museum, 2009; Videonale 11 & 10, Kunstmuseum, Bonn, 2007/ 2005; Mediations Biennale, Poznan, 2008; Models of Self-Reflection, AZKM, Muenster, 2008; FIFA-Festival pour Film sur L’Art, Montreal, 2008; EJECT-Ex teresa arte actual, Mexico City; Fulbright Award, 2007; and Jumpnights, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2007.

As in sciencefiction, video-still, Blu-ray, 6.34 min, Berlin 2007


For more information, please visit the artist's homepage.

Singing in the rain, video-still, Blu-ray, 4.22 min, Los Angeles 2008

Monday, August 6, 2012

About Us...



The Prattsville Art Center is an Artists’ Residency and Workshop Project in the rural mountaintop community of Prattsville, New York. In the summer of 2011, flooding from Hurricane Irene devastated Prattsville; half of Main Street was literally washed away, and the population dropped from 700 to 400. Many townspeople lost everything, and the local population is now struggling to rebuild. Artists participating in the Prattsville Residency are asked to divide their time between their private studio work, and using their energies to help the town to recover; lending their creative vision and energy to developing a program of artists’ workshops for local youth and rehabilitating a studio building, which also houses the teaching and gallery space for the workshops. Exhibitions will be organized and publicized collectively by the artists, the workshop participants, and the town.