August 24 - September 5 2018

JAMIE CASERTANO | DAVID MACKE | DEBORAH MARTIN | ARLENE SHULMAN | CHRISTOPHER TURNER

Opening Reception: Friday, August 24, 6-9 pm

Jamie Casertano

Future History

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 Macke

Color Work

"I am often reflecting about how we feel in some sense separate from the natural world while always longing to be part of nature. It’s an existential dilemma, leaving most of us with a loneliness in just being. The photographs speak to that edge, that longing. I consider the forms of people like the forms of nature, often embracing natural environments yet posed and contrived. Never being able to make it ok, but always trying. For me it’s about youth and death and future space."

David Macke is Artistic Director, YOUR NAME HERE: Theatrical Productions; Film director: Jeremy and Big Al. Visual work includes: Riverzine: A Tribute, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Video Portrait Exhibitions: ArtSTRAND, AMP Gallery; Queer Portraits Videos; Queerocracy Symposium PhotoFeast. Art books: NY Art Book Fair, Artbook @ 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.

Most recently David was in the group show, “Divided States of America”, curated by Alison M Gingeras, Robb Leigh Davis and Stuart Comer.

Deborah Martin

The Bath House

In 1950 with the announcement of the construction of a state bathhouse on the "New Beach" at Provincetown, steps were already being taken to prevent the "honky tonk" influence from creeping in via "mobile hawkers" or any "catch penny device". Never the less the bathhouse was constructed and open to the public in 1953.

"Furdu-strand-ir" (wonder strands) was the name given to the beach 953 years ago in the Viking saga while the same stretch was long and widely known as Herring Cove Beach when early Provincetown fishermen landed their catches there to have them hauled over the dunes and into town by horse and cart. In 1865 Henry David Thoreau writes “…three ships containing "one hundred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock" (probably the first Norway rats among the rest), having the land "on the right side" of them, "roved ashore," and found "Or-œfi (trackless deserts)," and "Strand-ir lang-ar ok sand-ar (long narrow beaches and sand-hills)," and "called the shores Furdu-strand-ir (Wonder-Strands), because the sailing by them seemed long." Other names to the stretch of beach where the future bath house was to stand include “New Beach” and “Hell Town”. In the Cape Cod Pilot published in 1937 it was called “Outermost Beach” and in some Navy charts it is indicated as the “Measured Mile Beach”. It has also been noted as the "Beach of Jewels" by artists because of the color of the pebbles found under the water at the beach.

In the recent years leading up to the eventual demolition of the 1950's Bathhouse, Seashore Superintendent George Price was reported to refer to the neglected bathhouse as a "sand-colored Cold War Bunker." In "Building Provincetown", David Dunlap refers to the state - built bath house as a "handsome-enough modernist structure" that could have passed for a "small-town airport terminal."

On the first floor were restrooms, showers, rooms for lifeguards and a shaded eating area. By 2012, the sinks were rusted, pavement cracked, the paint on hand rails were chipped and held together with Duct tape. The second-floor windows were boarded up with grayed plywood, and parts of the building could not be used at all because they were considered unsafe. A concession stand in equal disrepair was located in a separate building next to the bathhouse.

The Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse project started in the fall of 2012 with the demolition of the previous 1950's era concrete bathhouse constructed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and designed by Mario Caputo. The concrete block house design was in response to the 1938 Hurricane and was intended to withstand coastal storms.The current design is also in response to storms, sea level rise and climate change as an adaptation approach.The structures are designed to sustain 150 mph winds, are constructed on pilings to allow storm surge waves to pass underneath, and could be re-located in the future if erosion threatens the facility. The Herring Cove Bath House is handicapped accessible with beach wheelchairs available upon request from local life guards.

The paintings in this exhibit are a tribute to the 1950's era bathhouse and concession stand that withstood the test of time and neglect providing millions of visitors with a restroom, a place to shower and change and perhaps a hotdog, a grilled cheese and a good humor ice cream.

Deborah Martin (b. Boston, 1961) received her BFA and BS Masters of Arts in Teaching, Art Education from The Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. Her artistic work examines the complexities of individual experience particularly in relation to home, isolation and memory. Much of her practice emerges in collaborative conversation with writers and poets, taking form through exhibitions and publications.

Martin's work has been featured in numerous publications including Building Provincetown written by David Dunlap and published by the Provincetown Historical Commission, Provincetown Arts Magazine, The Provincetown Banner, Provincetown Magazine, art ltd., Palm Springs Life Arts + Culture, Palm Springs Life Magazine, Angeleno Magazine, Fabrik, and New American Paintings among others.

Her work has been shown and is included in the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), Provincetown, MA. She is a recipient of the Orlowsky Freed Foundation Grant sponsored in part by PAAM (2011) and a finalist in the shortlist of seventy for the 2018 BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Arlene Shulman

Hidden Exposures

“As an artist, the work I do comes from an urge, a sense of movement toward a goal that is often unknown. I mostly prefer to leave the question of “meaning” to the viewer.

However, I can say that this work is about photography as a kind of voyeurism. Especially with the nude model, photography is a license to stare at the nude body without looking away, for as long as one’s eyes and heart desire.

And yet, with that permission arises the need to shield the subject, to hide the full uncovering of the naked body for protection, for cover, modesty and a defense against shame. Paradoxically, this very hiding may leave the body more exposed.

The naked body, secret and revealed, laid bare and hidden in the same moment, layers of transparency hanging in space and time.”

Arlene Shulman has had the great gift of four, one-woman shows where she had the opportunity to fill four large rooms with her photographic and found object constructions and installations. She is mostly a self-taught artist who is also a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher. She studied photography at The New School and here on Cape Cod. She has been collecting “stuff” for years which she not only transforms into art but which she perceives as already existing art in it’s "stuff” incarnation.

Christopher Turner

Progress

These images are part of a new series that is a collaboration between photographer Christopher Turner, and playwright Alan Olejniczak. Each piece includes a subject dressed in modern corporate attire in dark and sometimes post-apocalyptic settings—evoking themes from classical mythology and literature. They are meant to question our impact on the environment, as well as the emotional implications of modern consumerism. Their intention is to convey stories, reveal truths, and provoke discussion. This series was born post-election as a response to the current political and social climate. 25% of the artists' profits for this series are being given to support local arts and environmental non-profits based on where each image was taken.

Christopher Turner attended New York University where he received a B.A. in Art History and Psychology in '93. He is largely self-taught as a photographer. He has been doing portrait and landscape photography full-time for the past three years and part time for over 12 years.

His landscapes were exhibited at SLATE Art (Berkeley), and his nighttime landscape series is being shown by Poetica Art (San Francisco).

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