Chelsea Art Gallery Opening –Manhatta: City of Ambition
New York City has seen a wave of challenges and deviances in the past two years due to COVID-19, going, for instance, from a crowded Guggenheim to crowded hospitals. The city of congregators tackled the challenges with innovations and solutions like developing alfresco dining extensions for restaurants to keep them open, changing the previous atmosphere of many street blocks for decades to come.
Innovations and challenges have always been valuable for New York as we idolize and dream of cinema E.B White and the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea (at 100 11th Avenue) celebrates just that with the exhibit “Manhatta: City of Ambition,” which open now until March 26, 2022.
http://www.artnet.fr/galeries/michael-rosenfeld-gallery/manhatta-city-of-ambition/
Shown in the right is Red Groom’s Flatiron Building
Finishing a highly successful showing at Art Basal Miami Beach 2021, the gallery took the exhibition inspired by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s documentary film Manhatta, 1920-21, to Manhattan to jubilate the accomplishments of New York City with New Yorkers themselves. The documentary streams continuously on a loop in the gallery surrounded by a mix of mediums from sculptural works, paintings, and collages of over 31 different artists.
Manhatta is arhythmic montage of documentary vignetters in a non-narrative silent structure that make up an 11-minute film. As the first avant-garde film to have been made in America, its impression of the urban community among the city’s achievements in architectural and industrial innovations shine perfectly during its centennial celebration and surrounded by similar motifs of artwork in the exhibition. Lows and highs in society are captured within these other artworks through various scintillating visions of the urban life of Manhattan mostly in popular artistic movements of the twentieth century styles of cubism, midcentury modernism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, and geometric abstraction.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CW5i6noFF9x/
https://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/exhibitions
Raymond Jonson (1891-1992) City Lights 1933
Norman Lewis’ work of Commuters, 1954, is on display in the exhibition recognizing the gallery’s value of highlighting the achievements of artists who have historically been marginalized in the mainstream art world intentionally or passively because of race. An American painter, of African American and Bermudian descent, and lifelong resident of Harlem, he focused on capturing through his signature calligraphic line and abstract expressionism, the grueling reality of much of Black urban life and the community’s struggles.
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/beauford-delaney-washington-square-1
Beauford Delaney (1901-1979) Washington Square 1948
Known for playing a huge role in the development of modernism in the U.S., as well as being another artist historically marginalized due to gender, Irene Rice Pereira’s works showcased Glass Construction, 1942, using a textured glass light box composition effectively conveys the luminescent grid layout of a city at dusk.
Other dignitary artists featured include George Tooker’s (1920-2022) Fountain (1949-50), Beauford Delaney’s (1901-1979) Washington Square (1949), Howard Cook’s (1901-1980) The Bridge No. 1 (c.1951), Red Groom’s (b.1937) Flatiron Building (b.1937), Raymond Jonson’s (1891-1992) City Lights (1933) and City Ultimate (1936), Edmund Lewandowski’s (1914-1998) Industry (1942), Aaron Douglas’ (1899-1979) mural study, Charles White’s (1915-1978) Untitled (Mural Study, Camp Wo-Chi-Ca) (1945), and Harry Bertoia’s (1915-1978) Untitled (1956).
New York will never lose its bustling, jammed up against one another, self, because of its solid foundation in arts, business, and history of adapting to crises. Celebrate with the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea. The achievement that New York is going nowhere, but just getting better and better.
Article by Caroline Milo, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Alexa Dyer, Graphic Design Intern, PhotoBook Magazine