Sunday February 28 12:00 – 2:00pm 

Radiator Gallery will host a Junk Food Brunch, where curator Amanda McDonald Crowley will give a walk through of our current exhibition food nostalgia, and talk about the underlying themes of the exhibition. Exhibiting artists Cey Adams, and Katherine Behar will also talk about influences and inspirations in their work in the exhibition.

In addition to serving up delectable and surprising nostalgic packaged foods Amanda, and artist Stefani
Bardin, will be serving deliciously reverse engineered versions of Gatorade and Gummy Bears.

Come expected to have your taste buds tickled by a range of nostalgic taste sensations, and stay for the
conversation. And please feel free to bring along your favorite versions of Junk Food, from around the world.

Food Nostalgia is an exhibition of works exploring food in contemporary America through a lens of fast food iconography and industrial food production. The exhibition runs at Radiator Gallery through March 13.

Amanda McDonald Crowley is a curator and cultural worker who creates new media and contemporary art exhibitions, events, and programs that encourage cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and exchange. One of her key current curatorial research topics explores the intersection of art, food and technology, ArtTechFood.

Cey Adams‘ dismantles contemporary cultural imagery to build multiple layers of color, texture, shadow, and light. From his roots in the NYC graffiti movement and hip hop culture, his artwork draws inspiration from 60’s pop art, sign painting, comic books, and popular culture; he focuses on themes including race and gender relations, pop culture, and community issues.

Katherine Behar‘s videos, performances, and interactive installations explore issues in contemporary digital culture. Disorientalism (whose work is included in the exhibition), is an artistic collaboration between Katherine and Marianne M. Kim, in which the duo study the disorienting effects of technologized labor, junk culture, and consumerism. Disorientalism explores how these forces mediate race, gender, and bodies. In character, the Disorientals expose our hapless submersion in junk culture, and our failed attempts to rationalize it by mistakenly resorting to industriousness and work.

Stefani Bardin explores the influences of corporate culture and industrial food production on our food system and the environment. She works with neuroscientists, biologists and gastroenterologists to ground her research in the scientific world.

Images:

Weekend of Walks, Talks, Screenings and Panel Discussions

We are pleased to announce a weekend of walks, talks, screenings and panel discussions as part of the Chance Ecologies exhibition at Radiator Arts, open through Jan. 22nd, 2016. Events will be held at the gallery as well as in and around the site of Hunter’s Point South, Long Island City, and continue to explore the value of unplanned wild spaces within the urban environment.

Sat. January 16th: 2:30 pm – 4 pm:
Endangered Surfaces Walk to Hunter’s Point South – an experimental walk by Christopher Kennedy and Ellie Irons. Tracing the border of Hunter’s Point South, this participatory walk will explore the remains, edges, and overlaps of the myriad surfaces that covered the land before development began last September.

(Departing from Radiator Arts at 2:30, please dress for cold weather!)

5:30 pm – 6:30 pm:
Screening of “For the Birds” – a series of site-specific video works by Joianne Bittle, followed by a discussion of the selected texts and observations in the field with the artist.

7 pm – 8:30 pm:
Archaeological Panel: “Art, Archaeology and the Curious Activity of Digging Up Nothing” – a public discussion reflecting on the experience and concepts of performing an archeological dig.

Panel speakers: Matthias Neumann, artists of “Dock Street Dig” for Chance Ecologies / Scott Schwartz, archaeologist, CUNY Graduate Center / Megan Hicks, archaeologist, CUNY Graduate Center / Matthew C. Lange, artist / Jeffrey Lee Benjamin, artist and archaeologist, Columbia University

Sun. January 17th: 1 pm – 2:30 pm:
Curators talk and brunch, hosted by Radiator Gallery. The curators of Chance Ecologies (Catherine Grau, Nathan Kensinger, and Stephen Zacks) will give a walk through of the exhibition and engage in a public discussion about the underlying themes of Chance Ecologies.

2:30 pm – 4 pm:
Site and Field: Listening to Hunter’s Point South – an Electromagnetic Field Listening walk by Dylan Gauthier.
(Departing from Radiator Arts at 2:30, please dress for cold weather!)

4 pm – 4:30 pm:
Ceremonial Score – For Grieving the Loss of a Wild Landscape, a participatory performative ritual developed by Allison Danielle Behrstock in collaboration with and facilitated by Catherine Grau.

(Location: please meet at the corner of 2nd Street and 54th Ave. Please dress for cold weather and unsteady terrain – the ritual will take place on the Hunter’s Point South site.)

4:54 pm:
The Rotation of the Earth presents the Sunset – a brief experimental sunset viewing by Dillon de Give. Please feel free to pick up a poster listing the exact times of the sunset for the duration of the Chance Ecologies exhibit at Radiator Arts.
(Location: LIC East River Ferry terminal, Hunter’s Point South.)

SPECIAL EVENT Opening:

SPECIAL EVENT Talk:

February 5 – March 13, 2016

Artists: Cey Adams, Emilie Baltz, Disorientalism (Katherine Behar and Marianne M. Kim), Gonzalo Fuenmajor, Kira Nam Greene, Jonathan Stein

Curator: Amanda McDonald Crowley

Radiator Gallery is pleased to present food nostalgia, an exhibition of paintings, photographs, video, sculpture and installation works by artists Cey Adams (New York), Emilie Baltz (New York), Disorientalism (Katherine Behar and Marianne M. Kim, New York/ Arizona), Gonzalo Fuenmajor (Miami, FL), Kira Nam Greene (New York) and Jonathan Stein (Coral Springs, FL).

“food nostalgia looks at food in contemporary America through a lens of fast food iconography and industrial food production” says curator, Amanda McDonald Crowley. “Participating artists variously draw on popular cultural references, brand recognition, bodies, memory, nostalgia, and playfulness. They ask us to think about our relationship to our colonial pasts, feminist thinking, cultural diversity, and marketing culture. The corporatisation of our food systems is deeply entrenched in our psyche; historical and contemporary trade routes of our food affect our cultural landscape.” As a framework to explore how we cook, eat, and consume, food nostalgia will be a platform to share ideas, and food.

Kira Nam Greene’s paintings and drawings are conceptual self-portraits with collaged images of food and complex patterns that represent the plurality and multiplicity of her identity as an Asian-American woman. For Kira, food acts as a metaphor for the idealization of the female body and the surrogate for desire to consume and control. During a residency in the “bread basket” of America, her Nebraska Suite series is the first time that she consciously used fast food imagery in her work.

Emilie Baltz grew up in Joliet, Illinois in a house without junk food. Her French mother was an incredibly creative and healthy cook, but all around her families were serving up junk food. A little jealous, and a lot intrigued, this experience inspired her Junk Foodie series: her images are both alien and familiar, but mostly fun interpretations of traditional recipes rendered using junk food ingredients.

Jonathan Stein finds his inspiration in grocery stores and fast-food spots. In his Shiny Sparkly Goes Down Easy series Jonathan takes iconic images such as Spam, Ritz crackers and a bucket of KFC to create bling objects where shinier is better and a glitzy surface masks a loaded commentary on fast food consumption.

Cey Adams also draws inspiration from popular iconography and brand recognition. In Cream of Wheat Cey takes the iconographic brand image, reputedly a portrait of African American chef, Frank L White and using collage and design principles, creates a richly textured and subtly rendered black on black painterly abstraction.

Gonzalo Fuenmayor’s Papare series examines ideas of exoticism and the complicit and amnesic relationship between ornamentation and tragedy. Opulent Victorian chandeliers and other elements, reminiscent of a decadent colonial past, proliferate from banana bunches, alluding to a tragic and violent history associated with Banana trade worldwide.

Disorentalism’s Maiden Voyage focuses on race and labor in American food production and promotion. The Disorientals track down the Land O’ Lakes Indian Maiden, who has been reborn as an empowered executive.

Food nostagia takes a critical, yet humorous, look at how junk food and brand cultures impact contemporary food systems and consumption.

PRESS RELEASE

CHECK LIST

ART WORKS:

OPENING RECEPTION:

Hungry Hungarians Book Launch:

Junk Food Brunch: