Laura Carton

Appropriating corporate strategies to create work in a variety of media, Laura Carton's practice explores the relationship between art, economics and politics. Her work has been exhibited at the House of World Cultures, Berlin, the Queens Museum of Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Numark Gallery, Washington, DC, Real Art Ways, Hartford, the Richard L. Nelson Gallery at UC Davis and Von Lintel Gallery, ApexArt, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Artists Space, Art in General, and White Box in New York. She was awarded a Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant (2007), a Creative Capital Foundation Grant (2006), a NYFA Fellowship in Computer Arts (2001) and was nominated for The Baum: An Emerging American Photographer Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2002). Stripped, a monograph of Carton's photographs published by Nazraeli Press, will be released Summer 2009. Born in Los Angeles, Laura Carton received a B.A. in French Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program (2001-2002). She lives and works in New York.

During her Swing Space residency, she plans to work on her project Investor Relations, which consists of a real-life investment club that buys and sells stocks in adult entertainment. Addressing issues of consumption and exchange, Investor Relations exposes the clandestine pornography holdings of major US companies and the public's broad participation in what is thought to be a marginal industry.

Collaborative Projects

Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed in 1978 after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. Colab was most active for about 10 years and became distinguished by its politically engaged open membership. Colab bypassed alternative spaces and applied directly to funding agencies as a nonprofit organization. Renowned for the New Cinema, Times Square Show, and early support of ABC No Rio, the Colab project MWF Video Club continued into the 21st century. At this point, Colab maintains an archive, works on its memory, and may somehow be seen to regroup…

See Colab in Wikipedia, Colab Archive website, MWF Video Club Collection

At the Swing Space office this winter, Colab members intend to work on the group's history, continuing the transfer of videotapes to digital media, assembling a set of Colab papers for the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, interviewing members, and working towards books and exhibitions. Some public events, like screenings and speakers presentations, will likely be held. In addition, Colab will host a research project on European social centers slated for a late March presentation in Baltimore.

Vidal Centeno

Vidal Centeno is a visual artist living and working in New York City. He primarily focuses on projects that combine, assemblage, installation and various other media. In 2009 Vidal will have an installation on view at Longwood Arts Gallery's new Project Space, in addition to exhibiting in the group show, Preemptive Resistances: Reversed Strategies at the Westport Arts Center in CT. In 2008 he participated in the group show How Soon Is Now at The Bronx Museum as part of AIM 28. Vidal has also exhibited at El Museo Del Barrio's 5th Biennial,The (S) Files 2007, NY, and at Longwood Arts Gallery, Post Platano / Ante Formalism, NY in 2005. At Pratt Institute in NY Vidal studied painting and graphic design from 1978-1982.

Vidal assembles three dimensional constructs using disparate materials such as text, vinyl tubing, plastic toys and fluorescent lighting. These constructs usually take the form of miniature models and recently, larger installations. In these constructs he attempts to render the moment when various contradictory ideas coalesce. It is in this process of manifestation and the resulting tension that sometimes arises when these contradictory ideas and other intangibles coalesce that is of particular interest to him.

At the Swing Space, Vidal will be developing a new light installation for the Longwood Arts Gallery's Project Space,in NY opening in March 2009.

Brendan Fernandes

Born in Kenya of Indian heritage, Brendan Fernandes immigrated to Canada in the 1990s. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. Accolades include: grants from The Ontario and Canada Councils for the Arts including the International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago. He has exhibited internationally, including invitations to participate in The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China (2008) and the Western New York Biennial through The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY (2007). Fernandes has participated in The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency (2008) and Swing Space Residency (2009) programs, Emerge 10 at Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ (2008), and was an Artist in Residence at The School of Visual Arts, NY, in the graduate program for computer arts (2008). In 2009 he will participate in the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum. Currently he is based between Toronto and New York. His work is represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.

Through this residency Brendan Fernandes will fabricate sculptural objects that will represent and signify an "African" sensibility that will explore dualities between the "artifacts" and the "souvenirs".

Marlena Kudlicka

Marlena Kudlicka completed her MA in painting and drawing at Academy of Fine Art in Poznan, Poland. She currently lives and works in New York. Kudlicka's work has been seen in solo shows at Kunstahus Raskoliknow, Dresden 2008; ISCP, New York 2007; Institute in Glasspavilion, Berlin 2007; Location One, New York, 2005; and in group shows at CASYC, Santander, Spain 2008; White Box, New York 2006; Open Day, Art Omi, Omi, NY. She has also participated in residency programs at ISCP, New York 2007/8; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart 2005; Location One, New York 2004/5; Art Omi, Omi, NY 2003.

Marlena Kudlicka uses quotes and elements of the avant-garde and re-evaluates their contemporary relevance. By doing so, she combines 'high' material such as polished metal with 'low' ones such as roofing paper and often connects it with lettering and characteristic typography. Her installations thus combine constructivist elegance with a certain DIY-gesture.

Kudlicka derives her artistic inspiration from the observation of urban topography, its fragments and utilization of fundamentals, such as structural foundations, blind zones and steel constructions that are from mostly ignored situations. She animates architectural remnants, investor's ruins, and construction materials and produces sculptures and site specific work out of these elements that reexamine a given space with its economy of scale.

At the Swing Space through testing the economy of scale/space, Marlena will create a site-specific work which responds to her given studio.

Shana Moulton

Shana Moulton studied at the University of California, Berkeley and attended the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University. She recently attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and studied at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has had solo shows at Bellwether Gallery, and Broadway 1602 in New York, Gimpel Fils in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Uppsala, Sweden and Pianissimo in Milan. Her video work has been screened and exhibited in group shows at Canada Gallery, CRG Gallery, Anna Kustera Gallery, Larissa Goldston Gallery, EFA Gallery, Fordham University, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Hessel Museum; Bard College, Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris; Dark Light Festival, Dublin; Impakt Festival, Utrecht; Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck; Images Festival, Toronto; Fondazione Mudima, Milan; Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam; New Media Festival, Seoul; Version Festival, Chicago and Country Club, Cincinatti. She has performed at Electronic Arts Intermix, Participant Inc, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, the Onion City Film Festival in Chicago. Moulton currently lives and works in Brooklyn and her videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.

During her stay at Swing Space Shana will be developing a new interactive video performance for upcoming shows at the Bluecoat in Liverpool and the Migros Museum in Zurich.

Keren Oxman

Keren Oxman obtained her MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2006) and holds a BA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem (2003). She currently lives and works in New York. Oxman was the recipient of the Clore Fellowship Grant in 2004 and received the Chris Graham Memorial Prize in 2006. Most recently, in 2008 she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cooper Union School of Art.

Oxman creates intricate portraits that move beyond pictorial representations. Her figures seem to have evacuated from a prior world of debased images, bringing together the past with the present, the real with the fabricated and the familiar with the uncanny.

At 100 Church Street, Oxman will continue her investigation into the critical representation of the human figure in painting, exploring contemporary ideas of tribal belonging and identity.

Yumi Roth

Yumi Janairo Roth was born in Eugene, Oregon and raised in Chicago and suburban Washington DC. She currently lives and works in Boulder where she teaches sculpture at the University of Colorado. Yumi has created a diverse body of work that includes discrete objects and site-responsive installations, solo projects as well as collaborations. Many of her recent works explore ideas of moving, modifying direction, or searching for place, while also demonstrating an interest in issues of material and labor. She received a BA in anthropology from Tufts University, a BFA from the School for the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston and an MFA from the State University of New York-New Paltz. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with shows in New York (Bronx River Art Center, Sara Meltzer Gallery), San Francisco (Limn Gallery), Portland (Institute of Contemporary Art), Houston (Lawndale Art Center, DiverseWorks), Boston (New Art Center), Denver (Rule Gallery, Center for Visual Arts), Minneapolis (Soap Factory), Milwaukee (Institute of Visual Arts), Santa Fe (Museum of Fine Arts), Seattle (Consolidated Works), Mexico (Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo, La Galleria Rufino Tamayo), the Philippines (Ayala and Vargas Museums), and the Czech Republic (Galerie Klatovy-Klenova, Institute of Art and Design-Pilsen).

During her residency at Swing Space, Yumi will collect discarded shipping pallets that she finds throughout the neighborhood. She will modify the pallets by inlaying them with mother-of-pearl using motifs gleaned from traditional Filipino furniture design. Subsequently, she will reintroduce into circulation those modified shipping pallets and document their movement.

Ranbir Sidhu

Ranbir Sidhu’s roots go back to the working class immigrant communities of 60s London, where he was born and grew up. His family were originally refugees from the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and his Swing Space project is an attempt to come to terms with the lingering memories of violence which still surround the event.

Ranbir is the author of the plays: True East..., Sangeet, and Conquistadors, and his work has been developed and supported by MCC Theater, LaMama ETC, Disha Theater, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. His fiction appears widely, most recently in the current issue of Fence Magazine, and he is a recipient of a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He is also a past winner of the Pushcart Prize and has been awarded residencies by the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Villa Montalvo.

The Partition Project: In collaboration with the actors Sarita Choudhury and Chris Baskous, we are preparing a text that attempts to come to terms with the continuing echoes of the violence inflicted during the Partition of India and Pakistan. The work was initially imagined as a sort of mash-up of the Jason and Medea story, the story of Partition, and the struggles of an Indian-American woman in the contemporary US business world.

Die Störung

During the 2000s a number of artists claimed the artist as their medium. Working independently or in various collaborative constellations, Die Störung collective has eschewed the individual object in favor of subjectivity as a dynamic arena, ever expanding its psychic, physical and temporal parameters. Using the Magazine as a springboard for work that reaches beyond the visual arts, their work often commingles with other disciplines such as architecture, design, and pornography, engaging directly with the vicissitudes of everyday life to offer subtle moments of transformation. This loose affiliation of artists, each of whom now boasts strong, independent careers, periodically and randomly joins forces to create a variety of projects.

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has extended an invitation to a core group of these artists –Arlen Austin, Keil Borrman, Clayton Deutsch and Jason Boughton– to collectively formulate a scenario for a subjectivity, one that will reflect and articulate the unique nature of their practices, to be titled Störung V.II: theanyspacewecangetaholdof. Organized by Die Störung, in close collaboration with individuals too numerous to list here, the eventual publication/object/piece/work/event will present the long forced march which, each by himself in solitude and against death, makes mammiferous human larvae into human children, masculine or feminine subjects.

During its time at 100 Church, Die Störung will continue development and production work of Störung V.II.

Angie Waller

Angie Waller, a Texan originally, lives and works in New York. She studied video at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her MFA at UCLA (2004). Her work has exhibited internationally, including: The New York Underground Film Festival; The New Museum, New York; The Bronx Museum, New York; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; Milano Film Festival, Italy; The Shanghai Duolon Museum of Art, China. Angie is inspired by a wide range of found materials such as Chinese real estate brochures to Amazon.com customer recommendations to web videos of ballistics testing on armored cars. Her work processes sources such as these into impressionistic collages and cultural interventions that take the form of videos, books, web sites and animations.

During her Swing Space residency at LMCC, Angie will be working on a video project that explores true accounts of psychotic delusions inspired by the Internet.

Jonathan Allen

January-October 2008

Jonathan Allen holds a BA in Visual Arts & Art History from Columbia University. He was born in 1975 in Wisconsin, grew up in Atlanta, and moved to New York at the age of 18. He has exhibited work at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, Artists Space, Exit Art, PS122, the Bronx Museum, Rotunda and Skylight Galleries among others, participated in the Bronx Museum's Artist in the Marketplace program, and is a recipient of grants from the Puffin and George Sugarman Foundations. He lives in Brooklyn.

Allen's work culls images from art history, pop culture and current events and reassembles them in surreal dreamscapes. These dreamscapes are often fragmented & enigmatic, opening a critical window on our current political and environmental condition. His most recent project is a 10 x 28 foot vinyl collage, comprised of used billboards. Titled 'The Things You've Had', this piece is currently on view at Socrates Sculpture Park as part of the group exhibition 'Waste Not, Want Not', through August 3rd, 2008.

In his Swing Space residency Allen will continue his exploration of mixed-media collage, employing used vinyl billboards in works on vinyl, paper and canvas.

Gary Corbin

January-October 2008

Gary Corbin is an actor, playwright, producer, and arts administrator best known for his critically acclaimed one man play, Four One-Legged Men. He was the first Director of Theater & Dance programs at The Maryland State Arts Council and is a recipient of Individual Artist Awards in Playwriting from The Maryland and New York State Councils on the Arts (NYSCA); a Theater Commission from NYSCA; the Gregory Millard Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts; the Performance Art Fund from The Franklin Furnace Foundation administered by Jerome Foundation.

Corbin is a graduate of The University of Maryland (Baltimore County) with a B.A. Degree in Theater/Visual & Performing Arts. Other training includes: The Negro Ensemble Company's Playwriting Program; The National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped, Hollywood's Media Access Office, and The Frank Silvera Writer's Workshop After successful performances at the New York International Fringe Festival, The Greater Newark Black Disabled Arts Festival, in Montreal and upcoming performances in Australia, Gary will use his Swing Space, to continue producing the play and reaching wider audiences by strengthening the project's administration, fund raising, marketing, audience development, and production quality initiatives by cultivating new or existing relationships with individuals and organizations that directly address the issues raised in the play.

Frederick Hayes

January-October 2008

Frederick Hayes is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He spent the early part of his career in San Francisco where he studied at the Art Institute and formulated his practice under the influences of Robert Colescott and Julius Hatofsky. His approach to art making is experimental and process-oriented with an interest in the objective and object. He believes in the notion of representation and representing the object in its most basic form as a way to get at or suggest other ideals.

His mediums of choice are drawing, painting, and video, of which drawing is used as an end product in itself as well as a tool for experimentation. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New Museum, and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY. Exhibitions in San Francisco and elsewhere include SFMOMA, Yuerba Buena Center, San Jose Museum of Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass. Also, Fred was recently a part of a team that designed transit stations for the Municipal Transit Authority new T-Line in San Francisco, Ca.

Fred will use his time in the Swing Space to continue work on a series of facade drawings begun over a year ago that reflect his interest in the art object as both autonomous and narrative. He also has an ongoing interest in videos from the point of view of the Flaneur.

Nina Hein

January-October 2008

Over the last years, Nina Hein has been directing theater and dance productions, and more recently has begun making her own documentary films and video works. Her latest dance/theatre production Antigona Furiosa, based on a play by Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro, was presented at Neuland, Munich, in July 2007. Nina's work was shown at various theatre festivals: Philadelphia Fringe Festival (2006), New York International Fringe Festival (2005), The American Living Room at Here Arts Center (2005, 2004, 2003), Women Center Stage at The Culture Project (2002).

Nina has collaborated with Ana Martinez on numerous video installations. Her video work Poetische Dokumentation was presented at the exhibit Ich esse Licht, curated by Berkan Karpat, at the museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, Germany (2006-7). In her Swing Space Nina will be doing post-production on a documentary film project about Lynn Michaels. Theatre producer Lynn Michaels had a long and intimate history with the New York theatre beginning in the mid-1940s. At her St. Marks Playhouse, she produced numerous groundbreaking and successful Off-Broadway productions. After she organized and facilitated the move of The Negro Ensemble Company into her theatre, she went on to establish the Off-Off Broadway company, The Open Space Theatre Experiment. Many now established artists had their early productions at one of Lynn Michaels's venues. Nina's documentary film will pay a long overdue tribute to Lynn Michaels and her life-long devotion to New York theatre.

Katie Holten

Katie Holten was born in Dublin, Ireland and currently lives in New York. She studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin and Cornell University, New York. In 2003 she represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale.

Katie has been commissioned to make new works for museums, galleries and public spaces worldwide including; Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany (2008); Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York (2008); Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Germany (2007), Fondation d'entreprise Ricard, Paris (2007), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2006); Centro Historico, Mexico City (2006); KBH Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2006); ICA, London (2005); Wiener Secession, Vienna (2005); CREATIVE TIME, New York (2005); Wallspace Gallery, New York (2005); VAN HORN, Dusseldorf (2005, 20071st Prague Biennale (2003); W139, Amsterdam (2003); Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2002); Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam (2000); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (1999).

In her Swing Space, Katie will be developing new work for exhibitions at The Fields Sculpture Park, New York (Into the Trees, opening June 21); Chelsea Art Museum, New York (Nature Interrupted, opening July 3); UBS Art Gallery, New York (IMPLANT, opening August 7); Kunstverein Hildesheim, Germany (Observing Time, Beast and Nature, opening September 6); Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada (Katie Holten, opening September 27) as well as a public art project for the Bronx Museum, Wave Hill and The Arsenal Gallery, New York (Tree Museum for the Grand Concourse, 2009).

Elisa Lendvay

January-October 2008

Elisa Lendvay was born in 1975 in Dallas, Texas. She lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (2006) and her BFA from Bennington College and the University of Texas at Austin (1998). She had a solo exhibit at Moti Hasson Gallery in 2007, and has exhibited at Klaus Von Nichtaggend Gallery, V&A Gallery, OK Harris Gallery among other venues in New York and Texas. She was included in the New American Talent 21 at Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin, Texas in 2006. Awards and residencies include the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Award, Dallas Museum of Art, The DeGolyer Fund Grant, Dallas Museum of Art, The Vermont Studio Center Artists Grant, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Summer Scholarship.

Elisa makes abstract sculpture and painting through an intuitive process to create hybrid forms of natural phenomena and personal vision.

At the Swing Space she will be working on a series of painted sculptures and drawings that consider the fragmented space of the city and the sense of containment with its grid. The notion of place, history and transformation will be emphasized as she is informed by the view and surroundings of her 100 Church St. studio, overlooking the World Trade Center, and federal and office buildings.

Danny Licul

January-October 2008

Danny Licul is a painter living and working in New York. He will be included in Fun and Games (and such) at The Center for Book Arts, (NY) and has been exhibited at Sara Meltzer Gallery (NY), White Box Gallery (NY), Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery (Chicago), The Scope, Bridge and Red Dot Art Fairs and was selected for the MOCA (Chicago) Benefit Auction in 2006. His work is in The Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection at MOMA.

He has been awarded three Area Studio Space Grants by chashama non-profit (NY), two of which he was also selected as proctor for the space. Other awards include a solo exhibition and commission by chashama, the Elias Friedenshon Memorial Art Award and the Yale Summer School of Art Fellowship. Articles featuring his work have appeared in The New York Art World and NYArts Magazine. Licul studied at Pratt University, SUNY Purchase and received his B.F.A. from Queens College, NY in 1999.

At 100 Church Street Danny will be working on a scaled model of a furnished room that he is intimately familiar with, which will be used, along with other referential material, to create a group of paintings.

Kleoni Mannousakis

January-October 2008

Kleoni Manoussakis is a New York based Greek multimedia artist. She completed her M.A. at Tisch School of the Arts at N.Y.U. where she studied Interactive New Media. Her videos have been exhibited in festivals in the US, Europe, Asia and venues such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She currently preparing her third solo show in Athens after spending a semester teaching Video Art at Tisch School of the Arts, at N.Y.U.

In her work she uses elements from many different disciplines, to explore their different relationships and the boundaries of each one. Thus, texture in her work becomes very important. Whether her work is video, collage or installation it is essential to make sure that the work has a hand-made feeling. Her video work uses a lot of close-ups and blurriness to leave an ambiguity that makes the piece almost abstract, and open for viewers to place their own pictures in the frame that she constructs for them. The explorations and notion of physicality are key elements of her work. She is constantly searching for the relationship between eroticism and spirituality as seen through the mundane.

Cowgirls Never Get the Blues is an installation of paintings and video that explores identity and displacement. Whether displacement is due to immigration, sexuality or gender this work humorously feeds from them all. The painting depicts a hunting scene where the roles of hunter and hunted are inverted.

The video is based on the American folk song Oh Susanna. While the lyrics are replaced with the Greek rendition, the melody is the same.

The melody can be recognized, but the visuals do not align with its original context, so the viewer has to be confronted with an awkward feeling that something is a little bit off.

Laura Napier

January-October 2008

Laura Napier was born in California, and lives and works in the Bronx. Her first solo show, Spontaneous Formations, was in the classroom at PS122 Gallery in the spring of 2008. She has also shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, chashama window space, Longwood Art Gallery, and (upcoming) at the Bronx River Art Center. She has written for the art and poetry magazine Article: Art and The Imaginative Promise. She moved to New York to attend the Cooper Union and recently earned an MFA from Bard College. She uses photography, film and video to reveal how objects, architecture, and invisible social codes influence the behavior of people in public places.

During her Swing Space residency, she plans to investigate the public spaces of downtown Manhattan to discover and document public places that cause predictable and reoccuring crowd behaviors. She will also continue her ongoing experiment with pedestrian-influencing behavior, project for a street corner, working with partners on the street to subtly change patterns of pedestrian flow and movement.

Jamie O'Shea

January-October 2008

Jamie O'Shea is an artist as inventor, creating machines that have debatable use-value and unstable lifespans. Trained as a photographer, most of his mechanisms manipulate light and vainly strive for permanence. These machines attempt to automate memory, fame, wakefulness, and other things that are fortunately impossible to automate. Jamie was born in 1980 in upstate New York, having slowly drifted downstream towards New York City, via Bard College, since then. His work has been shown at Exit Art, Eyebeam, and the Museum of Ephemerata, and appeared in Art in America, Rhizome, Rocketboom, Sputnik, and Studio 360, among others. His has participated in the Bemis Center and Eyebeam residencies.

During the Swing Space residency, he will develop a suit that allows its wearer to sleep in a standing position, by bolting rigid supports into sidewalk cracks and subway grating. He and others will then attempt to sleep standing up inconspicuously in public places.