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The Art Scene: 09.25.14

Friends and colleagues celebrated the life and work of Brian Gaman, an artist who lived in Springs and New York City, at a memorial exhibition held Friday at Art Helix in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Janet Goleas, an East Hampton curator, was one of seven speakers. Mr. Gaman died on July 1 at the age of 65.
Friends and colleagues celebrated the life and work of Brian Gaman, an artist who lived in Springs and New York City, at a memorial exhibition held Friday at Art Helix in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Janet Goleas, an East Hampton curator, was one of seven speakers. Mr. Gaman died on July 1 at the age of 65.
Mark Segal
Local art news
By
Mark Segal

Kabakovs on Film

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will present “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here,” Amei Wallach’s acclaimed documentary about the two celebrated Russian émigré artists who now live on the North Fork, tomorrow at 6 p.m. Ms. Wallach and Ms. Kabakov will answer questions after the screening.

The film was occasioned by the Kabakovs’ return to Moscow in 2008 to install a multi-venue retrospective of their work. The country to which they returned was very different from the one Mr. Kabakov left in 1987, and the film sheds light on what it was like to be an artist under Stalin and Brezhnev. Nicolas Rapold of The New York Times called it “a multifaceted, informative portrait conveying the emotional urgency of the Kabakovs’ work.”

The Kabakovs have exhibited at and been collected by major museums around the world. In 1993 they represented Russia at the 45th Venice Biennale with their installation “The Red Pavilion,” and have completed important public commissions throughout Europe. In 2005, Mr. Kabakov became the first living Russian artist to exhibit at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Ms. Wallach is an art critic, journalist, and curator and the author of “Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away.” She previously co-directed “Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine.”

Ashawagh “Duo”

“Duo,” an exhibition of work by Kirsten Benfield and Jerry Schwabe, will be held at Ashawagh Hall in Springs tomorrow through Sunday. A reception will take place Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m.

Born in New Zealand, Ms. Benfield moved to New York at the age of 26 and now lives in Springs. She works in oil, watercolor, and various forms of printmaking. Much of her work depicts the landscapes and waterways of the East End.

Mr. Schwabe, who lives in East Hampton, is a man of many media — oil, acrylic, watercolor, sculpture, and photography. While human and equine figures are the subjects of his sculptures, his two-dimensional work deals primarily with landscapes, ranging from the serene to the dramatic.

Mixed Media

Dodds & Eder Home in Sag Harbor will launch “The Mixed Media Art Show,” an exhibition of work by 35 East End artists, with an opening reception tomorrow from 3 to 7 p.m.

The show, a fund-raiser for 88.3-FM WPPB, includes painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, stained glass, and collages. On view through Oct. 13, it has been organized by Bonnie Grice of WPPB and the Media Mavens — Annette Hinkle, Brendan O’Reilly, Michael White, Taylor K. Vescey, Michelle Trauring, and Kathryn Menu.

The reception will feature a live performance by Mick Hargreaves at 3 p.m., sponsored by the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, and, at 4, a live broadcast on WPPB. In addition, an “egg” swinging chair will be raffled. Proceeds from the raffle will support the radio station, as will a percentage of any art sales.

Selz to Speak

Gabrielle Selz, author of “Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction,” will be the guest speaker at next Thursday’s Molly Barnes Brown Bag Lunch at the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan.

Ms. Selz, who lives in Southampton, will discuss her book, which deals with her complex relationship with her father, Peter Selz, an important curator and museum director, and growing up with an intimate view of the art world.

According to Susan Eley, writing in The Huffington Post, “Molly Barnes Brown Bag lunches are to New York today what [Gertrude] Stein’s formidable salons must have been like to Paris in the 1920s.”

Reservations for the free talks can be made by calling Ms. Barnes at (212) 888-3588 or (212) 755-1400. The talk will start promptly at noon. Guests have been invited to bring their own lunches, as the hotel kitchen will be closed.

Museum Day Live!

Saturday is Museum Day Live!, a program of Smithsonian magazine through which participating museums across the country offer free admission to anybody presenting a Museum Day Live! ticket. Guild Hall will take part in the event.

Tickets, which provide free admission for two people to all participating museums, are available at smithsonianmag. com/museumday/tickets. Visitors must present their printed tickets or have them accessible on their mobile devices.

 

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