June 10 - June 30 2016

Bobby Busnach | David Macke | Alice O'Malley | Ethan Shoshan | Gail Thacker | Conrad Ventur | Jamie Casertano | Bobby Miller | David Chick | Shaari Neretin

Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-9 pm, featuring a very special performances by Billy Hough & Susan Goldberg!

Bobby Busnach

Fags, Hags and Wannabees: Scenes of Tribal Grit, Glam & Camp from the 70s

Bobby Busnach was born on September 16, 1955, in Cambridge, MA. Embracing the 1960’s counter-culture, he rebelled, fought with his teachers, smoked pot, tripped on acid, and started to run away from home at the age of 12. By 15, decked out in his A. Smile baggies and 6-inch platforms, the glitter boy lived on the streets of Boston and Cambridge, hustling on Commonwealth Ave. to survive. He “came out” of his closet that year and became a regular at the Other Side, a gay bar frequented by fags, hags, drags, dykes, and wannabees, not to mention pimps, hos, and hustlers, a world also documented by fellow habitué, photographer Nan Goldin. These ‘dregs-of-society’ became Bobby’s family.

In 1973 Bobby and best friend Geraldine moved to New York City, where, influenced by Bowie, Fellini, Warhol, Hurrell, Helmut Newton, and the classic films of old Hollywood, Bobby began documenting the times and family of friends through photography. Carefully staged; much time was spent creating the perfect look with clothing, lighting, and makeup, taking pictures through the night and into the morning to the accompaniment of pounding disco music and Quaaludes.

David Macke

“chthon-ic” 2016

”If we were to see them in their glorified forms we would be tempted to bow down and worship them.” – C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Through photography and video my portraiture explores the classical and contemporary iconography of performing manhood and the wild natures of boys becoming men. Some of our greatest cultural icons transcend standard male gender ideals, despite being outsiders with exaggerated expressions of the masculine. Consider the glorification of Rudolph Valentino (b. 1895), John Wayne (b. 1907), Montgomery Clift (b. 1920), Marlon Brando (b. 1924), Rock Hudson (b. 1925), Andy Warhol (b. 1928), James Dean (b. 1931), Elvis Presley (b. 1935), David Bowie (b. 1947), Billy Idol (b. 1955), Michael Jackson (b. 1958), Brad Pitt (b. 1963), Kurt Cobain (b. 1967), River Phoenix (b. 1970), Leonardo DiCaprio (b. 1974), Tom Hardy (b. 1977), and Justin Bieber (b. 1994) who have gained wide mass sexual appeal. Such men steer society’s notions of masculinity, as well as sexuality, by establishing mythic identities that transcend or adopt ideals of popular normative male posturing. Usually, this is in dialogue with the male and female ideals, under the specter of commercial identity, the self as performance art; i.e., performing the masculine.”

David Macke is Artistic Director, YOUR NAME HERE: Theatrical Productions, yournameherequeer.org; Film director: Jeremy and Big Al. Visual work includes: Riverzine: A Tribute, Whitney Museum of American Art; Video Portrait Exhibitions: ArtSTRAND, AMP Gallery; Queer Portraits Videos; Queerocracy Symposium PhotoFeast. Art books: NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1; LA Art Book Fair, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA; 80WES Gallery, Printed Matter Pop-up Shop, NY; 8 Ball Zine Fair, NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. Artwork: Marginal Press, Tokyo; Art Metropole, Toronto; ARTBOOK@ MoMA PS1; PM@Walker Art Center; Printed Matter.

Alice O'Malley

Lesbian Poetry

Alice O'Malley is a New York photographer whose work is exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, and regularly appears in art, culture, and fashion magazines. Her monograph, Community of Elsewheres, is a photographic archive of a circle of New York artists at the turn of the millennium. It was published in conjunction with a solo exhibition by the same name. She teaches at the International Center of Photography.

Exhibitions have included: MOCA, “Art AIDS America”, Los Angeles, 2015; Art Gallery of Ontario, “Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography” Toronto, 2014; Ryerson Imaging Center, “What it Means To Be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility” Toronto, 2014; Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2014; Ono Contemporanea, Bologna, Italy, Fall 2013; Strange Loop Gallery, “Kenny Kenny 13”, 2013; Andrew Edlin Gallery, “B-Out”, 2012; A.I.R. Gallery, “Illegitimate and Herstorical” 2012; Sue Scott Gallery, “Lush Life”, 2011; PS 1, “Greater New York”, 2010; New York Photo Festival, “Lou Reed’s Pavilion”, 2010; Mulry Fine Art, West Palm Beach, 2010; International Center of Photography Museum Triennial “Dress Codes” NYC, 2009; Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, “Au Feminin” Paris, 2009; agnes b. galerie du jour, “6 Eyes” Paris 2009; CEPA Gallery, “Many Moons” Buffalo, NY, 2009; ICP Museum, “This is Not a Fashion Photograph” NYC, 2009; Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2008; Isis Gallery, London, 2008; Participant, Inc., “Community of Elsewheres” NYC, 2008; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts”, NYC, 2007; Participant, Inc., “Blow Both of Us”, NYC, 2007; ABC No Rio Biennial, “Ides of March”, NYC, 2006; PS 122 Gallery, NYC, 1999.

Ethan Shoshan

Screen Tests for Disappearing into the Ocean

The two pieces featured in this exhibition, “Goodbye” and “Watching the Passing Ship”, are stills from an immersive performance where the artist slowly tries to erase his body into a projected video of an ocean. The video of the ocean was taken in Provincetown, capturing the light reflected off ocean waves, glaring bursts in a luminous expanse of water.

Ethan Shoshan's' performances often use out-of-date technology (super-8mm, vhs, older digital cameras) to highlight the frailty of capturing experience and allude to intimations of mortality. Inspired by celluloid as a tangible material between life and representation through light, he sees performance as a doorway to the unconscious. "When I close my eyes, I can imagine the darkness engulfing me, and begin to understand a place that erases my fears." Over the years with various projects, Ethan has connected with alternative venues and communities that engage and experience his work in ways that have both changed the participants/community and himself beyond the experience of the live performance. Ethan has worked with Visual AIDS, Democracy NOW!, MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Food Not Bombs, and Sylvia’s Place. He also co-ran a free drop-in art workshop with Quito Ziegler at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which started as a way to facilitate and create art projects with the transient LGBTQ youth he volunteered for at Sylvia’s Place emergency shelter. He has exhibited and performed on the streets and at the Kitchen, Aljira, Envoy Enterprises, Commonwealth & Council, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Judson Memorial Church, The Center for Book Arts, La Mama La Galleria, Dixon Place, Le Petit Versailles, and other venues. Previous projects have been reviewed in The New York Times, Art In America, LA Weekly, Huffington Post, BlackBook, The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Washington Post, among numerous other publications.

Gail Thacker

Polaroid Theatre

“These portraits are created with artists who are expressing themselves through their medium- their bodies, their sense of selves. While in flux, a spontaneous state of play occurs as a one-time performance among the artist, myself and the viewer.”

Gail Thacker has for decades used the inherent instability of Polaroid film as an active component in her portraits and cityscapes. By deliberately evading fixing protocols and placing her negatives aside for as long as a year after exposure, she subjects them to a series of random changes and distortions, and the resulting c-prints have a vibrancy and life that could only originate in the ethers of science and chance. The intensity of Thacker’s images also comes from her choice of theatrical and transgressive subjects and her ability to find her vision at the edge of coherent perception.

Thacker’s work has been seen in exhibitions at museums and galleries including Centro Galegode Arte Contemporánea (CGAC), Santiago, Spain and Safety Gallery, the June Bateman Gallery, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Clamp Art and Participant Inc in New York. Her Polaroid work is included in such collections as The Polaroid Collection (Somerville, Massachusetts USA), FotoMuseum (Winterthur, Switzerland), CGAC (Santiago, Spain), the Fisher Collection (Florida, USA) and The New York Public Library and featured in publications such as, The Polaroid Book (Taschen Publication), There was a Sense of Family; The Friends of Mark Morrisroe (Moderne KunstNürnberg), Mark Dirt (Paper Chase Press), TABBOO! The Art of Stephen Tashjian (D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.). Along with articles in such newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Press, The New Yorker, Providence Town Magazine, The Village Voice, and a soon to be released book on her Polaroid art which will include an introduction by Rafael Sánchez, and essays by Eileen Myles, Barbara Hitchcock and Manuel Segade (to be published by The City University of New York Press).

Thacker graduated from The Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts in conjunction with the Tufts University and MIT degree program. In Boston, where along with her peers, friends and collaborators such as Mark Morrisroe, Pat Hearn, Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!) and Jack Pierson, are all considered to be part of a group of artists labeled The Boston School.

In 2005, Thacker took over the helm of the Gene Frankel Theatre, since which her work has documented the memory of the artistic community at the Gene Frankel Theatre. She has worked with artist such as Stephen Tashjian, Holly Woodlawn, Sur Rodney Sur and Arleen Schloss, and Chi Chi Valenti keeping a sense of underground art and performance art alive in New York City.

Conrad Ventur

Atlantis

Collaborators Conrad Ventur and Mario Montez were active between 2010 and 2013. Through various photography and video experiments, Ventur encouraged Montez (Ridiculous Theatrical Company) to return to performance, including the live green screen piece, Atlantis (2011). Montez passed away in September 2013.

“Montez, born René Rivera in Ponce, Puerto Rico, became famous in the ’60s. Referred to as the first “drag queen superstar,” he acted in the films of Andy Warhol and Jack Smith, among others. In 1972 he starred in Agripina é Roma-Manhattan, an unfinished film by artist Hélio Oiticica, and then Montez seemingly vanished into thin air. In fact, he had simply moved to Florida and retreated into private life. Conrad Ventur came into Montez’s life in 2010, when Montez appeared at a symposium in New York. Ventur was interested in the ’60s and had been working on restaging Warhol’s screen tests with those actors who were still alive and willing to work with him. He met Montez, who had done “Screen Test No. 2” with Warhol in 1965, and convinced the former superstar to participate in the project.” – Courtesy of Hyperallergic

Conrad Ventur is a multi-media artist based in New York City. Screenings of Ventur’s work have included The Andy Warhol Museum, C/O Berlin, MoMA, Participant Inc. and the Yerba Buena Center. A volume of Ventur’s videos were recently acquired by The Whitney Museum of American Art. He is also a recent Franklin Furnace Fund grantee. In addition to film/video projects, he chronicles his New York life through photography and publication projects like Useless Magazine.

“Working within the media of photography and video, Conrad Ventur is interested in activating moving image archives, whether finding material online or looking at specific underground film archives and repositioning them in exhibition formats. He often brings together pioneers of living theater with a younger generation of performers in live and recorded environments. Ventur is most known for his re-creation of Andy Warhol’s screen tests using the same central figures from Warhol’s Factory studio.” – Courtesy of Participant Inc.

Jamie Casertano

I've Been Here Before

“Photography, for me, is an ongoing visual exploration of the broad scope of emotion and experience. A determined attempt to get behind and beyond the ubiquitous smiles that greeted me whenever I lifted my camera during the early and formative years of my taking pictures. Most interesting to me are moments that are revealing and give glimpses of one’s inner world. Also, in observing objects, iconography and spaces as clues and metaphors. Understanding that the camera can often serve as a key of sorts to circumstances and settings that might otherwise be inaccessible or overlooked intensifies my desire to photograph them. Curiously I seek images that can be found in both the elusive dark corners and brightly lit stages of personality.

I’ve Been Here Before is a collection of photographs that consider the potent nature of nostalgia, recollection, intuition and the feelings these states of mind produce both pleasant and odious. Furthermore a visual study of forms and symbols that evoke memories, along with their varying implications, and the manner in which they are kept and displayed.”

Jamie Casertano was born on Christmas Day in Brooklyn, New York in 1972. His discovery of photography occurred as a curious child in his father’s basement darkroom. The urge to take photographs soon followed and later led him to study photography.

Beginning in New York City, and continuing presently in Provincetown, his work initially gravitated toward subculture, nightlife, and nonconformity. Drawn to a diverse array of subject matter, his photographs vary aesthetically from quiet to loud, veiled to brazen in content, and distant to intimate emotionally. He’s influenced and inspired by the works of Diane Arbus, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Yasumasa Morimura, and Martin Parr.

Casertano studied photography with Mark Asnin, among others, at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has had two solo exhibitions at the A Gallery in Provincetown, and his photographs are in the collections of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York, and the Provincetown Association and Museum (PAAM). His work has been published by Provincetown Arts Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Simon & Schuster.

Bobby Miller

Cookie Mueller

Bobby Miller is a performance poet, writer, actor and photographer. He is the author of four books of poetry; "Benestrific Blonde", "Mouth of Jane", ”Troubleblonde” and "Rigamarole". He has been published in many magazines and periodicals including Verbal Abuse, Vice Magazine, UHF Magazine and The Village Voice. He is included in The 1995 American Book Award- winning "Aloud: Voices from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe", "Verses That Hurt; Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, and “The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry”, listed on the top ten Poetry National Bestseller List. Mr. Miller’s book, "Fabulous! A Photographic Diary Of Studio 54" 144 black and white photographs with text was published by St. Martin's Press in September 1998, He is also the author “A Downtown State of Mind: NYC 1973 – 1983”, “Wigstock in Black & White: 1985 – 2005”, “Jackie 60 Nights”, “Amina”, “Queer Nation”, “PORTRAITS: Volumes 1 – 3”, ”Ptown Peeps” Volumes 1 , 2 and 3, “Forget Them Not”, ”Fetish and Fairytale Folk”, “Diva’s, Dudes & Dandies”, and “Fabulous! A Photographic Diary of Studio 54: REDUX” with 37 color plates added for the 37th Anniversary of Studio 54. All of his books can be purchased at www.blurb.com/user/store/TroubleBlond.

His is work has been exhibited in NYC, Palm Springs and Provincetown at AMP Gallery, Patty DeLuca Gallery, and Woodman Shimko Gallery. Bobby has been taking photographs since 1974. His first influence was his mother Dorothy C. Miller, a prolific amateur photographer. His first contemporary influences were Christopher Makos, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jimmy De Sana. He studied photography with Lisette Model in 1976 in NYC at The New School during the last year of her life. As a hairdresser and make-up artist he has worked with photographers Lynn Goldsmith, Francesco Scavullo and Robert Mapplethorpe and many others.

As a poet and spoken word artist he has collaborated with recording artist DJ Dmitry of the band Dee-Lite on a recording of “My Life as I Remember It to Be” released in 2015 and can also be heard on Epic Records CD Home Alive with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Joan Jett, and others performing his “Keep Your Mouth Off My Sisters”.

He has performed his original material at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, The Smithsonian Institute, New York University, Westminster College, The Rhode Island School of Design, Bennington College, The American Crafts Museum, The New York Historical Society, The Massachusetts State Poetry Festival, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The CMJ Music Festivals, Jackie 60/Mother/ NYC, ARO.SPACE/Seattle, The Kitchen, LaMama etc., Dixon Place, P.S.122, Fez, and The Downtown Arts Festivals in lower Manhattan. He was also a winner in The National Poetry Slam as a member of The Nuyorican Poets and has performed internationally with poet John Giorno and alone at venues including The Tabernacle, The Battersee Arts Center and The ICA in London and The Glasgow Center for The Arts in Glasgow, Scotland. He has been seen on television on the PBS program City Arts and the BBC/PBS produced program The Clive James Hour. Mr. Miller also curated and hosted Verbal Abuse, a spoken word evening, the first Sunday of each month at Mother Nightclub in New York City.

Mr. Miller is also the recipient of a Jackie 60 Lifetime Achievement Award, four Jackie 60 Awards and a NYC Glammy Award. As an actor he has been seen in Forty Deuce and Theatre Couture's The Bad Weed '73 and The Final Feast of Lucrezia Borgia. He is also the author and star of his one man show Bobby Miller, Bobby Miller with runs during Gay Pride month at Here Arts Center/ NYC 1998, 1999 and a 2000 run in Provincetown Massachusetts at The UU Theater. Mr. Miller makes his home in Provincetown.

David Chick

Holly Woodlawn

David Chick is an artist, and a photographer, and has worked as an art director, stylist and costumer. He is a member of the Motion Pictures Costume Designers Guild.

He has attended Montserrat College of Visual Art, outside of Boston, where he originally studied as a painter, with no particular interest in photography. He then went on to further his studies at the Parsons School of Design in NY, studying in the Fashion Design program. He first began to use photography only as a medium for recording his paintings or to document the things that inspired him.

Upon his return to the Boston area, he pursued photography more seriously and studied at the New England School of Photography, while in Boston, he became an art director for local magazines, such as The Improper Bostonian. With his varied interests and his passion for learning he continued his study of painting abroad, at The Florence Academy of Art, in Florence Italy, and then at UCLA, in Los Angeles.

Originally from Boston, he has made his home in New York City and Los Angeles. Chick washed ashore in Provincetown, during the summer of 2011, and has spent the past five summers here, where he began showing his work in the local galleries. His talent for drawing and painting allowed him to become the featured artist for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival in 2014, creating illustrative works that featured literary giant Tennessee Williams and his circle of writer friends. He began exhibiting at the AMP gallery three summers ago, with his photographs of Warhol Superstar, Holly Woodlawn.

Chick has a thorough enjoyment for life, and a passion for learning and creating, he is inspired by life itself…his questioning of, and perhaps a search for a deeper meaning of…and despite his sly sense of irony and humor, Chick’s work is imbued with a sense of where his curiosity leads him, and not without a personal connection to his subjects, most of which are friends or persons known to him on some level…artists, writers, actors, personal heroes

"As a child, I was always inspired by color and light, escaping through television and watching cartoons and the razzle-dazzle of old Hollywood films. Like Alice in the looking glass, I always felt myself believing so hard in what I was watching that I wanted to fall into the movie, to be a part of the action and to be carried away through the story, and to this day I still do, I want to create, and to make pictures and artworks that speak to the viewer, that tell stories, and to allow the viewer entrance into my very own world, that’s when I feel that I am most effective, by creating a picture that jumps out at you but that also pulls you in..."

Shaari Neretin

Sound Bytes: Mass(ive) Consumption (during PIFF)

This narrative film presents a formal dinner scene, in which guests consume sounds familiar to us from digital media. Watching diners serve, cut, chew, and sip the chirps, screeches, tweeting, and ringing of phones, as well as less identifiable digital sounds, viewers experience the film’s playful exploration of synesthesia, or the translation of one sense experience into another. Do these sounds taste as good as they should, or does the experience seem to shade into distaste for worlds that are increasingly saturated with digitized sounds and their signification - Claudia Castañeda

Shaari Neretin is an artist and psychotherapist based in Boston, originally from New York City (Very. Important. Fact.). Forever a wanderer, Neretin experiences the world as an engaged participant observer. Her work often reflects both being a part of and being separate from the dominant cultures. Currently, she is deep in thought and deed regarding immigrant artists in the United States and their practices of creation and be-longing. This particular artistic and political wandering is based on her own experiences of having grown up the grandchild of Eastern European Jewish survivors of the pogroms and the Holocaust.

Neretin creates in multiple mediums - paint, film, video and writing. Her art has been shown in Basin, Montana at the former Montana Artists Refuge and in juried shows around the greater Boston area including The UForge Gallery in Jamaica Plain, Brickbottom Artists Gallery in Somerville, Fort Point Arts Community venues, Gallery 263 in Cambridge and at the DeCordova Museum in their one-day outdoor art exposition. Neretin was co-Curator of “Colombians: Between Emotion, Nation and Imagination” which opened at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, MA. Her fiction and non-fiction writings have been published in various academic journals including Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge and Journal of Systemic Therapies. Back in a certain day, Neretin studied with Tony Conrad and James Blue at the Center for Media Studies at SUNY Buffalo.