APRIL SHOW : PAOLA CITTERIO

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Picture Farm Gallery is proud to announce the upcoming exhibition of Paola Citterio, a member of our community and neighborhood, and an artist whose work we are privileged to present.

The show opens April 8 with a reception form 6 to 9 PM and will be on view until the 8th of May.


 

“It struck me, what quality went to form a (WO)Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when (WO)man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

– John Keats

There are times when I have to push, prod and pummel my way through life. Then, there are others when I let life lead me. My work develops in much the same way. I often have no idea where it’s going when I begin. The joy, for me, lies in the uncertainty; in embracing that void. The raw materials are all here: my yarns and the lost objects found by family and friends in this city I love. So, too, are the tools: the rigorously hand-made male tools, also kindly provided by the city. It is the process that is the true revelation. I use a needle felt technique. Which translates into hours of constant jabbing, pushing, probing, puncturing. This repetition, the relentless rhythm of it, creates a momentum. A momentum that not only gives birth to the piece itself but that also transports me.

I am Italian. I grew up in a home and a country with clearly defined, traditional male/female roles. My father supported us as a metal worker. My mother ‘kept house.’ She cooked. She cleaned. She knit. My mother was an obsessive knitter.  Always with a delicious, flaky crostata nearby. (A crostata, by the way, is an Italian tart filled with home-made fruit jams.)

These ‘old world’ origins are as much a part of my art as the crostata I still make for my family in Bed Stuy. As for the work? The metal tools, the soft, warm wool fibers and of course, the process… They are all about a ‘new world.’ A world in which as a woman and an artist, I believe we must push past those traditional assumptions, penetrate myths and provoke questions. Yes, this creates uncertainty and doubt. But doubt keeps the door open. Not just in life but in art. My only wish tonight is that everyone who sees these pieces hanging on a wall might also have the pleasure of tasting my home-made crostata. Maybe next time…


 

PAOLA CITTERIO was born in 1964 in a small village close to Milan, Italy.  She received her Bachelor of Art degree in Scenografy from Nuovo Accademia di Belle Arti, NABA, in Mailan 1986. For the next fifteen years she would work as a set designer for theater, film and commercial productions. 

In 2001, Paola moved to New York City and found artistic inspiration in her family life, creating pieces that blend the traditional craftwork she learned from the women in her childhood home (knitting, sewing, felting and baking) with found objects from the city streets around her. 
There is always an element of surprise in Paola’s work, as she likes her audience to engage with her pieces and discover them inside and out. 

“La trama non compare perche’ l’efffetto voluto e’ di stupore, ma lento molto lento e’ lo scorrere del tempo necessario alla sua risoluzione.” 


And besides…the last time we had Paola at Picture Farm was one of the best nights of the gallery’s life.

Yuri Shimojo Sumi & Shu : Picture Farm Gallery Film

Picture Farm’s Toddy Stewart has a particular affinity for other people’s creative process. Having helped to establish and curate Picture Farm Gallery, he has sought to make as many films as possible about the artists to whom we open our exhibition space.

Yuri Shimojo is a longtime Williamsburg resident, living for years only a block away from the Picture Farm Brooklyn space.

Yuri Shimojo was born 1966 in Tokyo. She is the last descendant of her samurai lineage. In her youth she practiced the Japanese traditional arts of the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and Kabuki and Noh theatrical dance performance. She lived and worked in NY and Hawaii between 1988 to 2014 and currently lives in Kyoto. – YuriShimojo.com

For the past three years she has made it her annual tradition to paint a mural of the matching Chinese astrological sign in our foyer.

In 2016, PF Gallery hosted a solo show of her work, a series of painting made in the traditional, or semi-traditional in Yuri’s case, Sumi & Shu technique.

Over the course of the days that it took to paint the year’s mural update and hang the show, Yuri and Toddy found time to shoot a little documentary about her thought process. The ten minute film,”Sumi & Shu : In Conversation with Yuri Shimojo,” shot in just a couple hours while Yuri worked in her journal with American inks, pulls insight from a two hour long conversation Toddy recorded. The transcript from the full interview would then fill out the catalogue that Yuri, Toddy and PF assistant producer Emily Lalande would design for the show.

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The Picture Farm Gallery Mural

For three years, Yuri has painted a mural in the PF Brooklyn space foyer depicting her translation of the year’s Chinese Astrological sign. Year of the Horse, Ram and Monkey (so far.)

Toddy Stewart and Jamie Lansdowne have documented Yuri each time.

You can read the full interview transcript here.

YURI SHIMOJO SHOW RECAP

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The show opening for Yuri’s Sumi & Shu exhibition was so much fun. It was a busy night and great party with local artists, lovely neighborhood lurkers and art lovers of all stripes showed up to have fun.

Picture Farm’s Jamie Lansdowne and Toddy Stewart produced a projection piece momento for the event, documenting three years of Yuri’s mural installation in the gallery foyer:

Photos courtesy of State Of Wonder

 

2016 WINTER SHOW : YURI SHIMOJO

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Picture Farm Gallery is looking forward to presenting to the public Yuri Shimojo and Sumi And Shu, a collection of paintings  spanning 2000-2015.

Currently working out of Kyoto, Ms. Shimojo still maintains a base in Williamsburg, the neighborhood in which she has lived for the last two decades. As an integral part of the expat artist and street art community, she returns to Brooklyn specifically for this show and to refresh Picture Farm’s front foyer mural for the new year.

“A Tokyo-born last-samurai-bohemian, Yuri Shimojo has been expressing her life through painting, journaling and dancing since her childhood. Yuri’s works often depict the ethereal , serene, sensual , exquisite yet grotesque, ominous and even whimsical. Hopping between urban and tropical jungles, Brooklyn and hideaway in Hawaii, these two extremes balances her yin and yang inspiring her creativity. In addition to her art practice,Yuri is drawn to the world of indigenous cultures, which has led her studying universal shamanism as a certified healing practitioner and intuitive animal communicator.”

Read more about her journey and see more of her work at YuriShimojo.com

The exhibition will open on Friday January 29th, form 6-10pm and will run from the 30th of January until February 29th.

“Yuri has been expressing her life through painting, journaling and dancing since she was 3 years old. Her upbringing in Tokyo was a very unconventional one – learning Japanese traditional arts and experiencing foreign culture through traveling abroad. These two elements, so drastically different, have influenced her work throughout her entire life.

Now, living the nomadic bohemian lifestyle, she explores the planet from the heart of metropolis to the outposts of the world wherever being guided by her own intuition while hopping between her base pad Brooklyn studio, Tokyo apt and her tropical jungle hideaway in Hawaii. This life balances her creative & spiritual yin and yang’. Besides her artistic endeavor, she is drawn to the world of indigenous cultures and has led her studying universal shamanism as a Reiki master. She is also a member of the art collective Barnstormers.

Yuri Shimojo has published several books in Japan, including: “Makkana Mangetsu~Crimson Full Moon”(1995), which showcase her earlier illustration works;”Vagabonds” (2001), a picture journal from her trip in Central America and Mexico. “Chiisana Rakugaki~Tiny Scribble” (1997), an autobiography of her unique childhood, which has just republished in 2007.”Art In Brooklyn, 2008

We look forward to seeing you at the opening.

HOLIDAY POP UP EVENT : OROBORO HOSTS A WINTER SALE

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The Picture Farm Community Space is excited for Oroboro to host local fashion standouts Lauren Manoogian, Erin Considine, Dieppa Restrepo, Keetja and Electric Feathers for a trunk show, sample sale winter designer extravaganza.

December 5th & 6th, 11 AM to 7 PM at PF Gallery.

WINTER EXHIBITION : MONIA LIPPI & BRADEN KING

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Picture Farm Gallery announces a winter exhibition featuring photographic work from Braden King and Monia Lippi on the Southwestern United States Desert.

The images from Braden King’s series “Not Stopping” follow his travels through the hidden throughways of the American Southwest. His moving vantage point, peering along the creviced seams of the National Highway System, captures the darkly stark places we inhabit in between here and there.

 

Monia Lippi’s series “At 36000 Feet” is an ongoing project of aerial photographs of the Southwestern United States desert landscapes. Images of ancient geological formations and modern human traces, where abstract beauty of immense spaces, crossed by salty valleys, lines and points, and new high-technology forms, seem part of a futuristic place in a contrasting, mysterious time.

 

The show opens with a public reception on Saturday November 14th at Picture Farm Gallery in concert with a third voice of the American experience, a one-night screening of JR’s “Ellis” in the gallery space.

 

King & Lippi’s work will be on show through January 2016.

 

Special thanks to Alex Zafiris for curatorial support.
NOVEMBER FILM SCREENING : JR’s ELLIS

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Picture Farm Gallery is proud to present ELLIS a film by the iconic street artist JR, the evening of November 14th 2015.

ELLIS awakens our collective memory, taking you back to the early years of Ellis Island through the experience of one immigrant.

Set in the abandoned Ellis Island Hospital complex and using JR’s UNFRAMED art installations, ELLIS tells the forgotten story of the immigrants who built America. It is the story of the ghosts of our countries past, the individuals who fled poverty, discrimination, and dictatorships, for a chance at a new life and eerily foreshadows the plight of those who currently seek the same opportunities and safety in this country and other parts of the world.

The short narrative film stars Academy Award Winner Robert De Niro, is written by Academy Award Winner Eric Roth, and is directed by the artist JR.”

 

The screening will coincide with the opening reception for Monia Lippi & Braden King’s photographic exhibition “At 36,000 Feet/ Not Stopping.

AUTUMN POP UP #2 : ANNA HARRAH 4 CORNERS

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Anna Harrah’s oil on paper work makes one conjure the distinct possibility that Kazimir Malevich and Albert Einstein had a love child who currently practices Tantric paintings.

Picture Farm Gallery is pleased to announce the opening reception for her 4 Corners  exhibition this Saturday, October 24th from 5 – 9pm.

“4 Corners is a figuration of time referencing undefined geometry terms and using the cube as a subject. Point, line, plane and set all define the parameters of inquiry.

‘Time does not move linearly, and from the four corners and literal paths that we take, we can often travel in time, experiencing things once past and altogether existing on the same plane in our sensory understandings.’

The body of work is an execution and exploration of color combination and surface tension, drawn from all things experienced, seen and forgotten. It’s a way to move through and on.”  – Anna Harrah

HOURS!

Saturday, October 24th
Reception 5pm – 9pm.

Sunday, October 25th
Gallery Hours 12 – 6pm.

Oct. 26 – Nov. 6th.
By Appointment.

 

 

Autumn Pop Up #1 : James Victore : October 17&18
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PF Gallery announces JAMES VICTORE EXHIBITION-IST, a one-weekend pop up exhibition representing the best of of the last 20 years of James Victore’s creative energy. The show includes one-of-a-kind ceramics, limited edition prints and posters and original hand painted surf and skateboards.

 

A long-time Williamsburg fixture, James has endured a long, storied and generous output of design ideas and groundbreaking conceptual think-throughs. His work has been exhibited twice at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is represented in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including the Louvre in Paris and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A monograph of his work titled, “Victore or, Who Died and Made You Boss?” was published by Abrams. He lives, loves and works with his wife and partner, Laura Victore in Brooklyn.”

 

“The best exhibition since Matisse”— The New York Times

 

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NIGHT OF NOIR AT THE WYTHE HOTEL

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PF Director Smriti Keshari presents “Night Of Noir” at the Wythe Hotel Cinema. Teaming up with Picture Farm Gallery and London-based film criticism journal Little White Lies, Smriti and PF Producer Arianne Culley are offering a weekly series of rare Noir films from around the world, followed by a discussion with expert critics about the creative and political context within which the film was made, bringing a deeper understanding of each film by focusing on direction techniques, sound, composition and camera movement.

Surprise guest speakers will be announced in the weeks before each engagement.

Please RSVP for this very special event!