Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
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Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
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Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.

On June 3rd, 2016, J.R. and her band Feminist Conference got the ball rolling at the Boston Center for the Arts Gala with a stage full of raucous. The unsuspecting crowd of movers and shakers of the Boston arts scene faced a barrage of discomfort and amazement as J.R. Urestsky crooned sappy 80’s ballads at full blast, eventually stripping off the majority of her floral print outfit to reveal red briefs and bare legs.

Feminist Conference performing at the BCA Ball | Photo by Michael Blanchard Photography

The response was a mixed bag of surprise and uncomfortable wonderment. Uretsky notes, “I like to set up all of my performances to be failures…where the ego or whatever you want to call it, the Leo in me, feels really bad about the fact that I worked my ass off for that performance and no one wanted to listen to me sing, you know, karaoke in my underwear. Like, why? This tension makes embarrassment function as the root of the performances, the almost disaster, the performer falling to pieces in front of you, that’s where the work really hits – for me anyway. ”

Much of J.R.’s work centralizes around what she calls “expressive confessions”, powerful performances that weave a messy ensemble of narrative arcs such as heartbreak, loneliness, and grief. “The characters that emerge through these performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific, forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant,” says Uretsky. “In short, I make ‘feelings porn’. Like pornography, pleasure is the main pursuit of my work. I want to make work that is entertaining, that feels good and that provides space for people—for me—to emote.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Despite her emotionally charged subject matter (endearingly referred to as “sad bro art”), Uretsky creates an absurdist dreamworld of feelings through bright colors and character expressions frozen in time. Hailed in by the not-so-threatening nature of these gloriously fluorescent puppets, J.R. creates a sense of intrigue, while also suspending viewers in a space of discomfort. “I am sort of always feeling sort of weird about bodies and I think that manifests in the sculptures…the gestures are sort of folding in on themselves a little bit…they are bright and still kind of noisy. To me, they feel like they are not noisy on purpose. I think they look that way just because they do, not because they have a big personality”.

Uretsky utilizes performance, sculpture, music and puppetry to expose the messiness of human emotion that decentralizes the polite nature of our expected social selves; a composite and affective production that visualizes the internal struggle to be human, to be alive. Her puppets and sculptures are often constructed to be worn, so that their life is found in collaboration with body movement and sound. Her current exhibition “What I Found Out there” resides at the Boston University College of Fine Arts at the Annex. Leaning into scholar Sarah Ahmed’s writing on queer grief, Uretsky has constructed a series of visual art that integrates video, audio, and puppetry to examine pain and melancholia. With new music by Feminist Conference and intricately constructed puppets made of new and found small objects, Uretsky explores how the process of grief and mourning alter the body.

Still from J.R. Uresky’s video “Bromance”

J.R. currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island and spends most of her time laying on the floor with Scott the Cat while watching Star Trek Next Generation and feeling feelings. After dropping out of bible school for Christian Education at BIOLA University in Los Angeles, she received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practice and an MFA in Sculpture and Video from the University of Connecticut.  As a self-proclaimed masculine-of-center dyke, Uretsky spends a lot of time contemplating larger conversations about masculinity, visibility, queerness, and feminism. “I am trying to figure out if the layering of familiar objects, sounds, and environments mixed with the abstract and monstrous nature of my work can illustrate the emotional experience of other. What if everyone experienced what it felt like to be other? To be queer? Would we then feel less alone?”

J.R. Uretsky is a multi-media artist  living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work is currently on exhibition at Boston University College of Fine Arts through December 11th. Be sure to follow J.R. on Twitter. 

Top photo courtesy the artist

The post ART/Crush: J.R. Uretsky appeared first on Take Magazine.

Art that takes you in and out of linear time. Music, photography, film, and video that create “incandescent, synesthetic quality” content. This is what viewers can expect from What Time This Feels, a multimedia installation in Providence, RI. Suara Welitoff, a Cambridge-based artist who works with found footage, original pieces, and filters to create photographs and videos, curated the show in collaboration with independent curator Micah Salkind, and 186 Carpenter curator and gallerist, Jori Ketten.

Take had the chance to chat with Salkind, one of the collaborators of What Time This Feels, to learn more about his and Welitoff’s work. Salkind is a curator and scholar working and living in Providence, RI:

Tell me about where What Time This Feels started:

It makes the most sense to start with saying that Suara is my aunt – she’s my mother’s sister. I’ve been exposed to her work since I was a young kid and she was making still photographs and playing experimental music, and when I moved out to New England, we became much closer. I would take the train up to Cambridge and we’d hang out. I’ve just been fascinated by her process as a visual artist and the way she treats the objects on which she works and the way that she relates to the media she’s interpreting and messing with.

I don’t know when we started having this serious conversation about what it would be like to put a show together, but I said to Suara that I had a relationship with Jori Ketten who is the curator (and gallerist) at 186 Carpenter – 186 is a really amazing low-profit, kind of community space, that Jori runs and curates. Jori was like, ‘yeah your aunt’s work is really right up my alley, I’d really love to see what you guys put together.’ Suara has never shown in Rhode Island – and she hasn’t really done this kind of show at a space like 186 Carpenter. So it was a really exciting opportunity for me to say, okay – let’s look at all the stuff that you’re currently in process with, and we’ll pull things together that tell a coherent story.

One of the things that I told her that I was always interested in was the way that she deals with time in her practice. Suara will work on something for months, leave it for years, and then come back to it suddenly out of nowhere and it’ll make total sense. So yeah! We’ve put together a show of about 10 different pieces. There’ll be several video pieces and several still images, some of which are pulled from video work and some of which are their own objects.

What’s been one of the best parts about working on the show together?

I think it’s deepened my understanding of where Suara is coming from as a maker. It’s been really fabulous to find this deeper connection through not only her work, but through this sense of empathy that she brings through her practice as an artist, which is something that really resonates with me as a curator.

What are your future projects? What can we expect to see from either of you?

I hope to continue working with Suara as she develops her practice as an installation artist, but I am also working on an academic monograph on Chicago house music. Suara continues to hone her process in collaboration with her Boston gallerists at Barbara Krakow and other non-profit galleries in Berlin and New York.

Suara Welitoff | Photo courtesy of Micah Salkind

What Time This Feels is a multi-media installation by Suara Welitoff. The exhibition opens October 30th through December 10th, with an opening reception on November 5th at 5:00pm.
186 Carpenter Street, Providence RI. 

The post What Time This Feels: Art that Challenges the Linear Progression of Time appeared first on Take Magazine.

Providence’s Raina Belleau comes to us by way of Minnesota and one can see a mid-western influence in her work, especially in the treatment of the faux-taxidermy elements which figure prominently. While they may be positioned at odd angles or made up critters altogether, there’s a sense of Native American spirituality with the respect paid to them, and nature in general, represented in her work.

The Oracle, 2016 | 60 x 24 x 42 Acrylic paint, apoxie sculpt, bandage, chair, door mat, electrical components, extension cord, faux fur, jeans, LEDs, mirror, paper mache, plaster and spray paint

We watch miniature bugs crawling through a tiny campsite in her video Everlasting, there’s The Oracle sculpture, a human-polar bear hybrid with two left feet, and she’s also shown us a shaggy faux fur piece called Companion with fleshy bits that could be creating or consuming marshmallow-shaped objects – a most interesting pet indeed. All of these odd pieces carry a sense of fun, but her work seriously reckons with ideas to our relationship with our natural environment. There’s always something a bit decrepit that’s happened, mushrooms show up in a few of her installations.

Still from Everlasting, 2014 | Duration: 2:54 Video, color, sound

Ian Alden Russell, the self-described curator/strategist/educator, points out that Raina’s status as an emerging artist may be evolving towards the next step, “They’re someone who is already having shows, transitioning from self-started projects, to where opportunities are manifesting themselves…”

We’re looking forward to her collaboration with Caleb Churchill, entitled Fantasia Colorado, for Satellite Art Show, coming up at Miami Art Week with GRIN contemporary gallery and congratulate her on her recent Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) fellowship grant for 2017.

Top image Companion, 2014 | 38 x 12 x 18 Faux fur, recycled insulation, polymer clay, foam, cast resin, dog collars, acrylic paint, music stand

All images by Caleb Churchill

The post Raina Belleau – A Modern Menagerie? appeared first on Take Magazine.