Keith Schweitzer

On April 4, 2012, the gates of the Andrew Freedman Home opened to the public. The Home was once built to be a haven, a paradise, for the rich elderly who had lost their fortunes. Bequeathed by millionaire Andrew Freedman, the Home provided not only food and shelter but all the accoutrements of a rich and civilized life style – white glove dinner service, a grand ball room, a wood-paneled library, billiard room and a social committee who organized concerts, opera performances and the like.

Referencing this quixotic history, This Side of Paradise references the past and reconnect the vision of Andrew Freedman to today’s Bronx and its realities. The exhibition and its extensive public programming onsite and offsite draws together the economic and social history of the Home with the present day realities of the Bronx and its residents.

The selected artists’ work in a site-specific manner and respond to such issues as memory, immigration, storytelling, aging and the creation of fantasy that the original concept of the Home “being poor in style” suggests. This Side of Paradise celebrates human ingenuity, the strength of the human spirit and the resilience needed to fashion beauty, hope and rejoicing.

Curated by Manon Slome & Keith Schweitzer with Lucy Lydon & Charlotte Caldwell

Artists: John Ahearn, Alina & Jeff Bliumis, Mario Chamarro, Mel Chin, Crash, Melanie Crean, Linda Cunningham, Daze, Nicky Enright, Hautey Ramos Fermin, Martine Fougeron, Elizabeth Hamby, Carmen Hernandez, How & Nosm, Art Jones, Lisa Kahane, Justen Ladda, Abigail Lazkoz, Sofia Maldonando, Guido Albi Marini, Esperanza Mayobre, Laura Napier, Cheryl Pope, Bruce Richards, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Gian Maria Tosatti, Federico Uribe

Partnering organizations included: Bronx Museum, Bronx River Art Center, Casita Maria, Hebrew Home at Riverdale, Lehman College Art Gallery, Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos College, The Bronx Children’s Museum, The Bronx Council of the Arts, The Bronx Documentary Center, The POINT, Wave Hill

Just prior to July 4th, 2011, I curated and organized a festive exhibition with Jason Patrick Voegele, Samson Contompasis and Tyler Wriston entitled “Town & Country“. The group show, with 23 participating artists, took place in a penthouse loft space at 320 West 37th Street and was produced collaboratively by the MaNY Project, Republic Worldwide, Brooklyn Art Collective & The MarketPlace Gallery.

Artists include: Scott Michael Ackerman, Doug Auld, Paul Brainard, White Cocoa, Hannah Cole, Annika Conner, Helen Dennis, Eric Diehl, Ira Eduardovna, Tara de la Garza, Charles Koegel, Elizabeth Livingston, Frodo Mikkelsen, OLEK, Sirikul Pattachote, Patrick Porter, Leon Reid IV, Julia Samuels, Tom Sanford, Chris Stain, Veng, Emma Wasielke     (photos by Sean McGurn)

In mid-June, 2010, I organized an outdoor mural with artist Depoe at Allegra LaViola Gallery (179 East Broadway, NYC) as a component of an exhibition titled  “Draw The Line”.  The exhibition opened on June 29th, 2011, and ran until August 6th.

In May 2011, I curated an exhibition on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with RJ Rushmore of Vandalog and Michael Glatzer of the MaNY Project. Entitled “Up Close & Personal”, the exhibit presented small works, in an indoor setting,  by a group of artists who are internationally renowned for painting large works outdoors.

Artists: Aiko, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Don Leicht, Edible Genius, Elbowtoe, Gaia, How & Nosm, Jessica Angel, John Fekner, Know Hope, Logan Hicks, Mike Ballard, OverUnder, R. Robot, Radical, Retna, Skewville, Tristan Eaton, Troy Lovegates aka Other, Veng and White Cocoa

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.

Invited by the organizers of Dumbo Arts Festival, I organized and curated four large outdoor murals throughout the festival grounds in Dumbo, Brooklyn. This outdoor component of No Longer Empty’s “Watch This Space” featured artists Chris Stain, Imminent Disaster, Jordan Seiler and Helen Dennis. The site-specific murals were inspired by Dumbo’s rich industrial history and its hulking architectural elements and were installed on large lengths of wooden scaffolding and construction shedding.

 

 

In late February, 2010, I worked with Tara de la Garza and Felicity Faulkner to organize “The Possibility of a Painting”, an exhibition produced by 2|ONE|TWO |Projects inside of the Hotel Chelsea‘s Gallery Suite. The exhibition explored a transition from representational paintings through to abstract and minimalist paintings via an innovative twist on salon-style artwork presentation.

Artists: Gillian Bostock, Winston Chmielinski, Tara de la Garza, Marissa DeMarco, Felicity Faulkner, Meghan Keane, Ayca Koseogullari, Susan Olmetti, Kenneth Park, Sirikul Pattachote, Kate Shaw, Koji Shimizu, Darren Wardle.

A review of the exhibition, with images of the exhibition can be viewed HERE.

On Friday, January 15, 2010, No Longer Empty re-opened the legendary Tower Records store with a multi-media art exhibition: “Never Can Say Goodbye“.

I organized and managed the exhibition, working with curators Steve Evans (DIA: BEACON), Asher Remy-Toledo & Manon Slome (NLE).

Spotlighting more than twenty artists that work with sound, light, and image, Never Can Say Goodbye recreated a fantasy version of the now defunct Tower Records store with (the fictitious) Never Records by Ted Riederer– an installation complete with record bins, album covers, music posters and a performance stage.

Invader‘s larger-than-life album cover recreations, fabricated entirely from Rubik’s Cubes, brought to mind outdated 8-bit computer pixel art while referencing legendary rock bands that topped the music charts during the former retail giant’s glory days. Works by Meredyth Sparks, simultaneously critique and revere the flat glamour of icons such as David Bowie and half-nude eighties models. Artist Siebren Versteeg presented custom installations that memorialized the mixtapes he made as a teenager and the earliest methods of downloading music online. Ryan Brennan bounced sound through an eight-boom box installation offering an audio tour of Hip Hop.

Concurrent to No Longer Empty’s “Re-Purpose” exhibition, I organized and documented a mural on the roll-down gate at the store-front’s exterior, with artist GAIA, as a continuation of NLE’s ongoing site-specific mural program.

In November of 2009, I worked with curator Tara de la Garza on No Longer Empty’s exhibition entitled “Re-Purpose”.

Mounted in an empty storefront space in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the exhibition examined the notion of repurposing objects, ideas and images.

Tracey Moffatt‘s video collage, Doomed, featured depictions of doom and destruction comprised through the editing of found footage into a highly entertaining and black-humorous take on the collective fear that we have had since biblical times of impending disaster.

Janet Nolan makes sculptures from repeated singular objects recycled from the everyday world, such as the hundreds of broken umbrellas that she installed in the exhibition space.

Corinne Kamiya‘s performative piece dealt with the desire to recreate some of the generosity of her native Hawaiian culture in an effort to cope with the different culture of New York City.

November 11th - 30th, 2009

In October of 2009, I initiated and co-organized a massive 2,000+ person “mission” with Charlie Todd and his legendary organization, ImprovEverywhere. This incredibly humorous collaborative stunt helped to celebrate the grand opening of The Invisible Dog Art Center along with No Longer Emtpy‘s exhibition entitled “Something Out of Nothing”. The resulting online video, which can be seen above this text, has been viewed more than 3,000,000 times.

The Invisible Dog Art Center is located at 51 bergen street, Brooklyn, NY

more photos of the event can be seen at this LINK

In the autumn of 2009, I organized this mural by London-based artist D*FACE across 3 large roll-down gates on the exterior of a vacant building located at 200 Clinton Street in Manhattan. The artwork is part of my ongoing mural project with No Longer Empty and was produced in participation with Jonathan LeVine Gallery, coinciding with D*Face’s solo exhibition “Ludovico Aversion Therapy / All Your Dreams Belong To Us”  September 12 – October 10, 2009

“Reflecting Transformation”
447 W16th Street, NYC
July 30th – September 25th, 2009

Working with the curatorial team for No Longer Empty‘s second exhibition, I managed and directed “Reflecting Transformation”. The exhibit was mounted in a street level indoor space under the just-opened High Line park in Chelsea. Inspired by the re-gentrification of the meat packing area and the renovation of the High Line, Reflecting Transformation was organized to reference this urban regeneration and play on the theme of transformation of space and character. In a minimalist aesthetic, the exhibition also alluded to the healing nature that art can have on a community.

Artists: U-Ram Choe, Cao Fei, Yoko Ono, Stephanie Rothenberg, Alyson Shotz, Sean Slemon, Suzanne Song & Siebren Versteeg.