Keith Schweitzer

In April of 2011, Coney Island invited me to organize a series of large scale murals throughout the amusement park as part of No Longer Empty‘s ongoing mural program.  Beginning with the main entrances to the park and working our way inward, six artists covered more than 4,000 square feet of exterior surfaces with artwork referencing Coney Island‘s legendary iconography and the surrounding beachfront boardwalk’s imagery. I captured the above video during the first phase of the project.

Featured Artists: Ephameron, ND’A, OverUnder, Radical & Veng

In March of 2011, I worked with the MaNY Project and artist duo “How & Nosm” to organize this street facing mural on the exterior roll-down gate of a storefront located on East 14th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

In September, 2010, I curated “Watch This Space” with Manon Slome and Jodie Dinapoli. The site-specific exhibition, which united two indoor spaces with a related series of outdoor murals on construction scaffolding, referenced Dumbo’s intensive ongoing construction in its march to gentrification and it’s storied history as a manufacturing and transportation hub.

In Cal Lane‘s installation, crushed steel from the remains of an automobile explosion has been hand cut – using a blow torch – into a delicate lace pattern. Her transformation of a destroyed motor vehicle into fabric-like drapery mimics Dumbo’s former industrial and current residential purposes; a shift from strong to delicate, from utility to frivolity, from functional to ornamental.

Michel de Broin‘s installation, “Bleed”, positioned an electric hand-drill as a precarious fountain. The construction tool placed upon a fine art pedestal, it’s cord plugged into an electrical outlet, as endless streams of water gushed from five holes in its damaged body. The piece poses unanswerable questions of its creation and destruction. Might the object have been left out accidentally by construction staff before opening the exhibition? Is it really part of the exhibition? (see video HERE)

Through a repeating woven pattern, Jordan Seiler‘s 950 square-foot mural concealed the all-too-familiar rectangular shape of exterior construction scaffolding by shifting perspective with an effective optical illusion. The mural continued through and behind the scaffolding’s front facing wall, forming an additional artwork altogether which could only be viewed from behind within the indoor exhibition spaces.

Lincoln Schatz‘s multimedia installation secretly captured security camera footage of all who visited the exhibition, constantly storing, recalling, and displaying video of it’s unwitting subjects as they became part of the “Cluster”, a nod to the omnipresent surveillance cameras in modern urban society.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda‘s sculptural works levitated solid construction cinderblocks over fragile household lightbulbs. The inclusion of Alexandre Arrechea‘s watercolor and sculptural works make a whimsical comment on the ubiquity of development in Brooklyn and the impossible ease with which buildings seem to be erected.

Artists: Alexandre Arrechea, Michel de Broin, Helen Dennis, Cal Lane, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Lincoln Schatz, Jordan Seiler, Chris Stain.