July 17th to July 27th, 2019
Opening: July 17th, 6-8 pm

THE ELIZABETH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
323 WEST 39TH STREET, 3RD FLOOR
NEW YORK, NY 10018

EFA is pleased to present Summerworks, an exhibition featuring Danish artists Moa Alskog, Anne Louise Blicher, Anne-Mette Schultz, and Wilfred Wagner paired with EFA Member artists Alex Gingrow, Paul John, Patte Loper, and Xin Song. The visiting artists are participating in a month long International Partnership residency at EFA created in partnership with Art Hub Copenhagen and Bikuben Foundation. The program focuses on specialty printmaking techniques available at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and professional development resources offered by the EFA Studio Program. The paired artists were selected for their shared formal or thematic interests. Works on view deal with nature and summertime experiences as a source of pleasure and social critique.

Patte Loper and Anne Louise Blicher have created site specific works that subvert classical landscape’s ideals of patriarchy and ownership in favor feminist multitude and ecological balance. Blicher’s work seeks to change the static postcard view of landscape by rendering nature as a sensed landscape, an ecology of dynamic parts in complex interaction with their surroundings. Patte’s wall painting is based on her “Yaddo Protest Garden” series which counters the formalism of rose gardens with references to leftist feminist politics and includes the Zapatists slogan One No, Many Yeses. 

Moa Alskog presents as elegiac video about the wild harebell flower in her native Sweden which speaks of both the fragility and tenacity of life.  Also by Alskog are a pair of mythic drawings of women giving birth, frogs, and frog-humans. These are paired with Xin Song’s cut paper images of women in environments of abundant vegetation. Song uses pornography images as models for her women and invents wild landscapes for them to inhabit.

Anne-Mette Schultz and Alex Gingrow share an interest in language and letterforms. Anne-Mette Schultz is developing a series entitled Nocturnal Language which reflects on letters such as the O’s and B’s seen here. These letters, in her sonic and bodily consideration, become eyes and holes, butts and breasts. Interspersed with these smaller pieces are large text paintings by Alex Gingrow. Her texts are powerful personal responses to experiences of powerlessness, dislocation, and indignation at sexist rhetoric and behavior.

Paul John and Wilfred Wagner collaborated to create a risograph book titled “Portrait / Landscape”. Based on images taken in area surrounding EFA in midtown, the artists used the color mixing and overprinting features of the riso machines to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of the chaos and energy of the city in the summer. Books can be purchased for $20.00.

Moa Alskog is a visual artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds an MA in art and theory and an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (exchange). Recent solo/duo exhibitions include ‘Early Spring’ (with Kah Bee Chow), Organon, Odense, DK, ‘Wet with Dew’ (with Cecilie Skov), DELFI, Malmö, SE, ‘Blåklocka. Blåklocka’, Danske Grafikerenes Hus, Copenhagen, DK as well as group exhibitions at SAK Svenborgs Amts Kunstbygning, Akershus Kunsthal, Art Land and Charlottenborg Kunsthal.

Anne Louise Blicher is a Danish visual artist. She is a graduate from The Florence Academy of Art, Gothenburg and holds a postgraduate degree from The Royal Institute of Art Stockholm (2015). She has exhibited widely including at the Fanø Art Museum (DK) (solo), Johannes Larsen Museum (DK), Danske Grafikeres Hus (DK), Museum of National History (DK), Nevven Gallery (SE), Ljungberg Museum (SE), Gallery Golsa (NO), Mark Rothko Art Centre (LV), and Wiensowski & Harbord, Berlin (DE). She has been an artist in residence worldwide including Women's Studio Workshop (US), Atelier Circulaire (CA), Camac Art Center, (FR), Künstlerhaus Lucas, Ahrenshoop (DE). This autumn as a member of the Kelp Diagram Collective, she will take part in Lofoten International Art Festival in Norway to explore the artistic and cultural value of seaweed.

Born in 1979 in Knoxville, TN, Alex Gingrow has lived and studied in cities as various as Boston, MA, Savannah, GA and the small village of Dorf Tirol, in northern Italy. Her first solo show in New York City was held at Mike Weiss Gallery in September 2012 and was followed by residencies at the Hambidge Center, Fountainhead Residency, VCCA, the Wassaic Project, and ArtGarda in Sirmione, Italy. Gingrow has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and has received critical reviews from publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Modern Painters, and Frieze Magazine. Gingrow currently lives and works between New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Paul John received his MFA in printmaking and his BA in Philosophy. He is the Risograph Studio Manager at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop where he also teaches. In addition to RBPMW he has taught and lectured on printmaking at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and Design, the Queens Museum of Art, IPCNY, Pioneer Works, and at many other institutions and venues. He is the co-founder of Endless Editions, a publishing and curatorial initiative whose mission is to produce and disseminate books and prints by underrepresented and emerging artists, and whose books are in the collections of many major museums. Endless Editions participates in all major artbook fairs and organizes the annual Brooklyn Art Book Fair at McCarren Park Play Center.

Patte Loper was born in Colorado and grew up in Tallahassee, Florida. She currently lives and works in New York City and Boston, MA where she is on the faculty of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions including the Drawing Center (NY, New York), the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA) the Bronx Museum (Bronx, NY), the Licini Museum (Ascoli Piceno, Italy), the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Suyama Space (Seattle, WA), and the Children's Museum of Manhattan (New York, NY). Her work has been reviewed in Flash Art, Artnet, Time Out, Chicago, and the Boston Globe, and is in the collections of the Rene di Rosa Foundation, the Microsoft Corporation, and the Hirshhorn Museum. She has participated in residencies at Yaddo, the Millay Colony, Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and LMCC Swing Space.

Anne-Mette Schultz, born 1983, is a sculptor working in a wide range of materials. She has exhibited at Institut Funder Bakke, DK, Vestjyllands Kunstpavillion, DK, CCC, Copenhagen, Years, Copenhagen, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, and Garret Grimoire, Vienna. Schultz graduated from The Royal Academy in Copenhagen in 2014 holding an MA in Art and Theory and an MFA in Fine Arts. Schultz lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Xin Song was born in Beijing and is a long time resident of New York City. Among her numerous public commissions are her Five Elements for the Garment District’s Broadway Boulevard Plaza, a permanent installation at the Bay Parkway Landmark Station, D Line in Brooklyn, NY and an installation for Grand Central’s 100 Anniversary Celebration. Notable exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Museum of Crete at Rethymnon, Greece, 2018; Venice Biennial, 2017; Noyes Museum of Art of New Jersey 2017; Staten Island Museum, 2016; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2014; National Art Museum of China, 2013; Prow Art Space of the Flatiron Building, 2012; and Paper Art Biennial in Sophia, Bulgaria, 2011. Xin Song has been a guest lecturer at Stony Brook University, University of South Florida, SUNY College at Old Westbury, Hampshire College, Hunter College, and FIT.

Wilfred Wagner (b.1988, DK) is a visual artist and printmaker based in Copenhagen. In 2014 Wilfred Wagner co-founded the publication platform and print studio KLD Repro which is driven by a curiosity towards printed matter and the modalities of production. Wilfred Wagner holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy.

The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) is a 501 (c) (3) public charity. Through its three core programs, EFA Studio Program, EFA Project Space, and the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, EFA is dedicated to providing artists across all disciplines with space, tools and a cooperative forum for the development of individual practice. The EFA Studio Program was founded in 1998 as a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts to provide affordable private studio spaces, facilitate career development, and promote public and critical exposure for our members. We host curated exhibitions featuring studio member artists on the third floor.

EFA Studio Program  323 W. 39 St., 3rd Floor, Manhattan | Hours: Tue – Fri, 11–6 pm | www.studios-efanyc.org
Contact: Deric Carner | 212-563-5855 x224 | deric@efanyc.org