June 9 - June 21 2017

BOBBY BUSNACH | JAMIE CASERTANO | DAVID CHICK | MICHAEL CROSSETT | DAVID MACKE | PAT PLACE | JASON RICE | ETHAN SHOSHAN & AELIANA NICOLE | CHARLIE WELCH

Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 6-8 pm

Bobby Busnach

The Repetitive-Ness, The Pop-Ness, The Camp

Throughout the 70’s I photographed my friends as family. Those portraits and group shots reflected the times, as well as our lives. Most of that family of friends have not survived. I am a survivor, and feel an obligation to speak for my friends and for what was important to us, as well as for the many others of my generation who have passed before their time. I am concerned that the truth of what has come before us will be obliterated and forgotten, just as I myself may be forgotten when my time comes. As I move closer to that time I am overwhelmed by the imagery from my life, particularly from the 60’s and 70’s, and from the early days of our fighting in the streets for Gay Rights, Women’s Liberation, or Black Power, all of which directs who I am today and how I still see the world. In my work I utilize sexual politics, gender-fuck, iconic imagery, personal experience, as well as political statement in a way that I hope brings that work into a timelessness, today, yesterday, as well as tomorrow. Marilyn Monroe, to me, is a timeless icon, a perfect example of someone who fought and struggled to achieve the American Dream only to have it snatched from her grasp. I feel that inside all of us is a little bit of that innocence and sensuality, as well as a vulnerability and fear of being alone while surrounded by millions of people. My silk screens, photos, collages, writings, remixes… allow me to make peace with, rather than to run from, my ghosts, and to confront my own great fear of being alone though surrounded by a world of millions of people.

Bobby Busnach was born on September 16, 1955, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Embracing the 1960’s counter-culture, he rebelled, fought with his teachers, smoked pot, tripped on acid, protested in the streets, 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 Comm 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 Bobby became a dj and remixer, and, 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.

After 25 years of ignoring his need to express himself visually, and lacking an outlet for his ‘voice,’ at the age of 50, with only a 9th grade education, Bobby completed his GED, and graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with Honors and Distinction, as well as Departmental Honors in printmaking and photography in May 2010.

This is Bobby’s third show at AMP Gallery.

Jamie Casertano

A Wolf At The Door

This series of photographs, staged in various locations in Provincetown during the winter of 2017, is inspired by the fabled saying A Wolf At The Door and its various implications. The symbolic wolf, an ominous figure, poses a serious threat to one’s sense of security. Winters in this town present a stark beauty entwined with solitude and often undesired scarcity. These photographs visually explore my personal experience contending with living in this dueling landscape and the emotions that arise amongst such conflicting forces.

Jamie Casertano was born in Brooklyn, New York on Christmas Day in 1972. His discovery of photography occurred in his father’s basement darkroom. He did then, and still now, loves the dark. The urge to take photographs soon followed and later led him to study photography. He lives primarily in Provincetown, frequenting New York City where he once lived and began taking photographs. He seeks images in both the elusive dark corners and brightly lit stages of personality. Drawn to a diverse array of subject matter, his photographs vary from quiet to loud aesthetically, veiled to brazen in content and distant to intimate emotionally. The works of artists Diane Arbus, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Peter Hujar, Kembra Pfahler, Yasumasa Morimura and Martin Parr are of great influence, to name a few. Casertano studied photography with Mark Asnin, among others, at the School of Visual Arts in New York. At that time, he was paired with and mentored by noted photographer Bill Jacobson. He has had multiple solo [and group] exhibits at A Gallery Art, the Fine Arts Work Center and currently at AMP Gallery, each in Provincetown. His work has been published in Provincetown Arts Magazine, The Boston Globe, Simon & Schuster and on multiple websites in the U.S., Sweden and London. His photographs are in the collections of the Provincetown Museum and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City.

David Chick

Angel Youth

"As a child, I was always inspired by color and light, escaping through television…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 this special visual language to the viewer, that can tell a story, and allow the viewer entrance into my world. That’s when I feel most effective, by creating pictures that reach out to you, but that also have the ability to pull you in…"

David Chick is a graphic and video artist, illustrator and photographer who has worked as an art director, stylist, and costumer. Chick attended Montserrat College of Art, outside of Boston, as a painter, later furthering his education at Parsons' prestigious Fashion Design program in NYC.

He first began to use photography only as a medium for documenting the things which inspired him. His professional photographic career jump started when he was hired to follow the rock band Aerosmith across America, while he was still in school. He pursued photography seriously at the New England School of Photography, and while in Boston became art director for local magazines such as the Improper Bostonian. With his varied interests and passion for learning he continued his study of painting and photography abroad in Florence, Italy, and later at UCLA, in Los Angeles. His talent for drawing and painting, most recently, allowed him to become the featured artist for the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, creating illustrative works that featured literary giant Tennessee Williams and his circle of friends. Chick washed ashore in Provincetown, during the summer of 2011, and has spent the past six summers here, where he began showing his work.

This year marks the fourth season that he will be exhibiting with AMP Gallery Chick’s work is imbued with a sense of humor and curiosity, and despite his sly sense of irony, he’s never without a personal connection, that he shares with his subjects, most of whom are friends or persons known to him on some level, artists, writers, actors, personal heroes ... the common man. He finds beauty in, and respect for the margins of society.

Originally from Boston, David Chick has made his home in New York City, Los Angeles, and Provincetown.

Michael Crossett

A New Beat

“I grew up in a military family with life always in motion. Living abroad gave me a fascination with different cultures, economic development, change and time. As a mixed media artist, I see myself as an architect making new structures and compositions with elements of the past, familiar places and everyday life marked with the passage of time and the force of change. Whether on public or private view, my work protects the history of yesterday and today and questions are we ready for the change that will occur tomorrow.

My recent work has focused on the neighborhoods of DC. As DC continues to transform, I am drawn to contrast of historic and contemporary architecture and design, commercialism, and the energy that surrounds me. In a way, I am my own architect by creating new structures which juxtapose photography and found images with relevant and most offer commercial symbols and icons. They shouldn’t always go together but do—one of the reasons I love graffiti. If it wasn’t illegal, I’d be doing it all the time.

As a resident of Washington DC, I have also watched the recent changes in administration lead to a new call to arms in the district and beyond. We can’t reset, we must move forward and take responsibility for change. A new beat.”

Michael Crossett is a highly skilled and innovative creative director and brand manager with vast experience in fine art, design, creative direction, advertising integration, marketing collateral, interactive design, social media, business development, brand development, brand strategies, mentoring, and client relations. Leverages multifaceted and extensive industry experience in providing creative vision and concept design across digital and print media.

David Macke

Hitler Black Cigarettes

“Through photography, specifically portraiture, I explore performative masculinity. This ranges widely from the untutored nature of boys to the effeminate and the macho. Most get stuck trying to fit into the macho narrative.

Many of our greatest male icons, however, break out of these normative gender roles while still retaining mass sexual appeal. These men intermingle characteristics considered feminine into a masculinity that is enriched, transformed and transfixing. Such men steer society’s notions of masculinity as well gender norms by performing manhood in new ways, thereby establishing identities that include and yet transcend normative gender roles.

The future is post gender in theory only. Our gender roles are deeply embedded in us individually and communally, reinforced by repetition - in all its forms.”

David Macke was born in 1971, and studied Spanish literature and poetry at the Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain. For the last three years, he has been making photographic and video portraiture of performative masculinity, as well as zines. RiverzineLA: A Tribute is in the collection of Whitney Museum of American Art. David also is a film director and Co-Artistic Director of YOUR NAME HERE, a New York based performing company. The most recent inclusion of his piece, “Le Passage, (in Hitler’s bathtub, hotel Monopol, Poland)” 2016, was in the group show “Divided States of America”, at the LGBT Center New York City, curated by Alison M Gingeras, Stuart Comer, and Robb Leigh Davis. He has recently completed his second short film, BI AL, as director.

For further information: Davidmodel.com and Instagram, @davidmodel

Pat Place

Street & Sidewalk Markings

For 4-5 years I was obsessed with taking pictures of clouds which resulted in a show at 33 Orchard, NYC in 2014, and at AMP Gallery later that same year.

At the same time, I started looking down — at sidewalk and street construction markings—initially I was attracted to the neon colors and the universal symbols of X markings and squares and circles and triangles made by construction workers with a spray can — they looked beautiful to me. As I started photographing those markings, I began noticing all kinds of markings and paint splatterings on the sidewalks and streets of NYC and LA — at almost every step — a new obsession!!! Many of them reminded me of various genres of abstract painting through the ages. To me, conceptually, they are references to ready-mades and appropriation … and graffiti.

“Pat Place has discovered art galleries under the feet of New Yorkers and Los Angelenos. Everyone has seen those brusquely sprayed rectangles, circles, and arrows on streets and sidewalks, fluorescent harbingers of unyielding pavement morphing into a Con Ed trench or of crisscross scaffolding sprouting from a sidewalk seemingly overnight.

Shooting with her iPhone, Place (born 1953) calls out affinities among these survey markings. In one of the more than two dozen diptychs on display, a straight line created when acid-green paint was sprayed over a tautly stretched string is paired with an "X" scratched into a magenta blob, an orb over a horizon reminiscent of an Adolph Gottlieb composition. And it's not only surveyors who unintentionally channel abstract expressionism — hurried painters become anonymous members of the New York School when their swaying, dripping buckets dash off serendipitous Pollocks all over town.

These cropped abstractions — rife with raw color, dynamic shapes, and occasional wisps of trash — deliver a punch much bigger than their roughly eight-by-six-inch dimensions. Some capture multiple layers of paint as crazed as the surface of an old-master canvas; in others, hard-edged geometries abut rich blurs, everything patinated by traffic, both foot and motorized.

Place comes by her insightful appreciation of urban detritus honestly, having been a founding member of the Seventies no-wave band the Contortions before her long tenure as guitarist for the Bush Tetras, of "Too Many Creeps" fame. The exuberant dissonance and agitated beats of that rough 'n' ready downtown era get a fresh read here: Sure, crime rates were crazy high, but rents were super low, and inspiration was everywhere.

You just had to know how to see it.” – R.C. Baker, The Village Voice, November 2016

Pat Place, primarily known for her contributions to music and the New York No Wave scene, graduated from Northern Illinois University, IL with a BFA in Painting & Sculpture. Place moved to New York in 1975 and was a founding member and guitarist of The Contortions and Bush Tetras, whom she continues to tour with. Place has been showing her visual art in New York galleries since 1977.

Place’s work has been included in recent solo and group exhibitions at 33 Orchard, NYC (2016 & 2014), AMP Gallery, Provincetown (2014), AI Earthling Gallery, Woodstock, New York (2013), Harper’s Bookstore, East Hampton, New York (2012), Julie Keyes Art Projects, New York (2011), and ILLE Arts, Amagansett, New York (2012). Her last one-person exhibition of photographs “The End, 1981 ─ Infinity” (2008) was at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects, NY.

Place, who was born in Chicago in 1953, currently resides in New York and continues to work on her art and music.

Jason Rice

The Reflected City

“In the city, I'm alone. The only way I can connect with what I see is to photograph it. I cross the street, ride the subway, and get close to those that interest me. If I appear in a reflection even better because then I’m no longer alone. People slide around me, going their own way and I catch them as they wait to cross the street, enjoy a cigarette or let out a sigh of relief - those precious in-between moments. Later, in my mobile darkroom I manage the colors, and shape the images you see here.”

Jason Rice graduated from The Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Photography, 1991. He has worked in the South of France teaching photography, and spent three years working in the New York City film and television business (circa 1990's) most notably, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, the Joan Rivers show, Can We Shop? and the feature Flirting With Disaster. He is currently working in the book business on the East Coast of the United States, servicing independent bookstores.

Instagram: @jasonecir

Ethan Shoshan & Aeliana Nicole

Cheeto Side of Heaven, video (16 min)

Cheeto Side of Heaven plays with the possibilities of desire poised by the current political atmosphere. Set in the waterless future, this is the story of a girl as she turns to a bag of Cheetos to fulfill her and happens upon transcendence.

Ethan Shoshan is a visual artist, social justice activist, performer, filmmaker, clothing designer, and part of the WRRQ collective. Ethan has connected with alternative venues and communities that experience art in ways that have both changed the participants/community and himself beyond the art. 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, La Mama La Galleria, Dixon Place, Le Petit Versailles, among 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, and numerous other publications. He has shown at AMP for the last 2 years and loves Provincetown.

You can find him sometimes staring up at the sky, more at www.disiterate.com

Aeliana Nicole has been a porn star for over 10yrs. On top of her extensive career in the porn industry, she is the author of #uploadingnaturepoems (Fields Press, 2015), Parasite (Publication Studio 2013), which is also available as an audiobook, they helped compile the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, & GHOSTS (Bent Boy Books, 2009).

She is available for public and private bookings, lectures, panels.

Charlie Welch

You Can't Go Home Again

“For many years my work has addressed the theme of what a home is. Is home is a place of comfort or is comfort something I make and carry with me? Are memories necessarily attached to where they are made? Where am I and my memories kept safe? What do I keep throughout my life? For this project, I’ve decided to tackle these questions more biographically than I have before. I plan to recreate my childhood homes.

I grew up in a family who frequently moved. My childhood was scattered across different cities in various states from Atlantic to Pacific. Living so transiently, I was always the new kid, a stranger, or just strange. I was the strange and shy kid condemned and content to play alone. But like many an awkward child I had two gifts: a well-developed imagination and the talent to create with what limited resources I had near me. I made castles from cereal boxes in my room. I flew toilet paper tube spaceships through the woods. Those memories of my childhood are vivid; but they often beg question like "what town was that bedroom in? What state was that forest in?".

This vagueness of memory is now the limited resources I will work with. I do not have many photographs of the places I lived. I have found some material on the internet. I have some information gathered from my siblings. Mostly I will have to sort through and work from my own memories of each house, apartment, room or street. I will recreate my childhood homes in a cereal box castle style, as I would have when I was a kid, using discarded household materials and packaging. The final product will be photographs of these architectural models.”

Charlie Welch is a photographer living in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in Photography at Otis Art Institute/Parsons School of Design in 1989. After college, he moved to New York in 1989 and assisted many fashion and portrait photographers and then slowly transitioned into visual display for stores like Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman. From 2006 to 2008, he studied at Metáfora International Workshop in Barcelona, Spain, focusing on sculpture, installation and public intervention. Charlie then returned to New York and launched a career as a set designer and prop stylist for advertising and magazines.

All the expertise from Charlie's commercial work come into play in his fine art. Photography is his main medium but he also incorporates sculpture and collage. Constructed environments and playful sets are signatures of his work. Charlie conveys narratives about identity formation, public and private selves, and how we navigate through daily life physically and emotionally.