Machines of Loving Grace, a new High Line Channel

CHANNEL

Machines of Loving Grace

October 9, 2018 – January 2, 2019

LOCATION: On the High Line at 14th St.

Daily, beginning at dusk

Machines of Loving Grace is an exhibition in video format featuring three artists who address contemporary and historical technologies and their eerie and shifting relationships with humans.

Nat Castañeda presents Static Background Radiation (2014), one video from a series by the artist based on hybrid fictions that explore the construction of identity as related to gender, belief systems, and technology experienced in the corporate work environment.

Aura Satz presents Between the Bullet and the Hole (2015), a film centered on the elusive and complex effects of war on women’s role in ballistic research and early computing. The film features new and archival high-speed photography, Schlieren photography (showing miniscule changes in liquid flows), electric spark imagery, bullet sound wave imagery, forensic ballistic photography, slide rulers, punch cards, computer diagrams, and a soundtrack by electronic musician Scanner.

Erica Scourti presents Hot Readings (2018), a video in which the artist presents her public YouTube record, consisting of lectures, performances, and interviews. This record is intercut with her own private viewing history and automatically generated subtitles.

Organized by Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.

Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo

Group show at Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago de Chile. Curated by Hernán Rivera Luque. Participating artists: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benítez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodríguez and Margarita Sánchez.

Video work showing @ El Museo

Rotative Repository of Latin American Video Art: Mono Canal @ El Museo del Barrio in NYC

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A gif of the video OctoWorm, showing at El Museo until April 2017. 

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On View January 11 – April 30, 2017
Curated by Hernan Rivera Luque

This exhibition explores the work of Latin American video artists and their different approaches to the single-channel format. The work on display ranges from pieces inspired by documentary or visual anthropology to others that eschew narrative structure for an approach more akin to visual poetry or performance.

The exhibited artists represent the strongest trends in the Latin American video art tradition. Their work fully embrace contemporary production techniques and conceptual approaches. Together they exemplify the multicultural discourse and critical thinking that have always been present in the complex identity of the Latin American countries, with incisive commentary on the historic migrations and political changes of the region as well as on topics such as gender, identity, politics and power.

In an attempt to convey the vitality of contemporary Latin American video art, this exhibition presents the work of established artists alongside the most exciting work from the new generation of video artists.

Participating artists: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benitez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Lionel Cruet, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodriguez and Margarita Sanchez

Repositorio rotativo de video arte latinoamericano mono canal – Edición El Museo del Barrio
Esta exposición explora el trabajo de video artistas latinoamericanos y sus diferentes de aproximación al formato mono canal. El trabajo en exhibición abarca desde piezas inspiradas por lo documental o la antropología visual hasta otras que evitan la estructura narrativa por un enfoque más afín a la poesía visual o el performance.

Los artistas expuestos representan las tendencias más fuertes de la tradición latinoamericana de video arte. Sus obras abarcan plenamente las técnicas de producción y conceptualización contemporáneas. Juntos ejemplifican el discurso multicultural y el pensamiento crítico que siempre han estado presentes en la compleja identidad de los países latinoamericanos, con comentarios sobre las migraciones históricas y los cambios políticos de la región, así como sobre temas de género, identidad, política y poder.

En un intento por transmitir la vitalidad del videoarte latinoamericano contemporáneo, esta exposición presenta la obra de artistas establecidos junto a la obra de nuevas generaciones de video artistas.

Artistas participantes: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benítez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodríguez y Margarita Sánchez.

unoxuno is a series of solo projects for contemporary art at El Museo del Barrio. They focus on a single work or installation by a single artist or collaborative group.

Artist Lecture @ UMD

Artist Lectures at University of Maryland's Honors College Design Cultures & Creativity

"I am a strange loop" @ Sister Gallery Jan. 16th

Opening reception Saturday, January 16th 2015 7-9pm January 16th - February - 14th Sister is very pleased to present “I am a Strange Loop” a collection of short animations (GIFs) by artist Nat Castañeda. Trained as a photographer and fine artist, Castañeda primarily works in collage. Her work also includes digital formats of video and animation, but the emphasis in tactile intimacy with her materials remains an important aspect of all her projects. Common issues in Castañeda’s work are the conflating of iconography and pornography, the questioning of traditional gender binaries, and the role of technology within personal narratives.

"I am a Strange Loop" takes its title from the book with the same name by cognitive science professor and writer, Douglas Hofstradter. Through his concept of "the strange loop" Hofstrader theorizes consciousness as an endless self referential feedback loop. Where the psychological ‘I’ is only a narrative fiction created by the intake of symbolic data that seems to represent it. As a consequence identity becomes reducible to a unique pattern of symbolic activity within the nervous system, and suggests that this pattern of symbolic activity that constitutes subjectivity can be replicated within the brains of others, and perhaps can create consciousness in artificial intelligence.

Castañeda’s gifs are animated collages that play with the “strange loop” of cultural identity formation. By reconstructing the hegemonic figures presented (in this case anachronistically) in media and public entertainment, and re-presenting them to the public via Sister’s window space, Castañeda participates in an off kilter recursion that takes place between the broadcaster and recipient of mass image making. Her people are lurid and magical, like characters from an urban fairy tale shot in a porn studio; weird freaks with hot bods and mutated heads jittering endlessly. They are campy and self-indulgent things of pleasure, hypnotically drawing you into their strange loop.

SISTER is a window gallery located at 69 Irving Ave, Brooklyn NY 11237. Opening reception is located at apt 1B at the same address. Open Monday-Sunday 5pm-11pm

http://sistergallery.com/

Dia de los Muertos Gala Event

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Join El Museo del Barrio and the Junior Council  for our annual arts education benefit! This year, we are putting a twist on the long cherished Mexican celebration, using marriage vows as inspiration to celebrate love – gained and lost

El Museo del Barrio + The Junior Council Invite you to celebrate

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS: Till Death Do Us Part

Thursday, October 29th | 8PM – 11PM | Angel Orensanz Foundation,  172 Norfolk St, New York, NY

NINA SKY DJ SET
Video installations by  Nat Castañeda &  an artist intervention by the Fortoul Brothers
featuring specialty cocktails by Tequila Don Julio, champagne by Veuve Clicquot Mexican culinary treats by the famed, Hecho en Dumbo

$150 GENERAL | $120 MEMBER

El Museo del Barrio: CUT N’ MIX: Contemporary Collage

CUT N’ MIX: Contemporary Collage

On view July 22, 2015 – December 13, 2015

1230 5th Ave New York, NY 10029

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This exhibition explores the work of artists experimenting with collage and collage techniques in ways that expand the gestures of cutting paper and mixing various mediums together. It takes as its point of departure some of the concepts from Dick Hebdidge’s series of essays collectively titled Cut N Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, published in 1980. In this text, Hebdidge explored the variations of Caribbean reggae and dancehall and other related styles of music as emblematic markers of Caribbean ideas of nationhood, belonging, and the making of culture.

Hebdidge notes the following about additional versions of a song, a kind of sound collage that is made from the original melody: On the dub, the original tune is still recognizably there, but it is broken up. The rhythm might be slowed down slightly, a few snatches of song might be thrown in and then distorted with echo. (p. 83)

This idea of an original form of working (the paper collage) that has been changed in some way through more radical processes is addressed in various ways in this exhibition. So-called traditional collages are included, in which papers or photographs or prints or magazine images are placed over other layers of paper. In addition, more “extreme” versions of collage are featured, such as layered and burnt linoleum, overlaid cardboard and fabric, gigantic collaged works, and pop-style drawings collaged into digital videos.

The artists included in the exhibition range from established artists who are veterans of collage to new generations of artists experimenting with this malleable medium.

Participating Artists: Elia Alba, Jesse Amado, Blanka Amezkua, Javier Barrera, Maria Berrio, Cecilia Biagini, Michael Paul Britto, José Camacho, Karlos Carcamo, Nat Castañeda, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Matias Cuevas, Rafael Ferrer, Roger Gaitan, Carolina Gomez, Javier Ramirez/NADIE, Carlos Gutierrez Solana, Hector Madera, Glendalys Medina, Alex Nuñez, Catalina Parra, Carlos Rigau, Hernan Rivera Luque, Linda Vallejo, Rafael Vega and Eduardo Velázquez.

More: http://www.elmuseo.org/cut-n-mix/

HIGHWAYS AND REST STOPS: PASSAGES IN CURRENT PRACTICE

Curated by Jacquelyn Strycker and Allison Hewitt Ward

Daniel Allegrucci | Nat Castañeda | Angela Conant | Simone Couto | Alexandra Hammond | Seirin Nagano | Andrew Prieto | JD Raenbeau | Laura Scandrett | Yasmeen Sudairy | Kevin Townsend | Tribble & Mancenido | Richard Walshe

Reception on Thursday, March 12 from 6:00PM – 8:00PM SVA MFA Art Practice proudly presents HIGHWAYS AND REST STOPS: PASSAGES IN CURRENT PRACTICE, an exhibition of works by current students and alumni of the MFA Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts. MFA Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts is an expansive low-residency, interdisciplinary program of study founded on the belief that artists need not be defined by their use of materials or chosen platforms. The program offers experienced artists an opportunity to deepen their studio practice and develop an advanced body of work under the guidance of some of the world’s foremost artists and critics in the heart of New York City’s Chelsea gallery district. We invite you to the exhibition reception this Thursday, March 12th from 6:00PM - 8:00PM at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, which is locatedon the fifteenth floor of 601 West 26th Street, New York, NY. It is free and open to the public.

Come Together: Surviving Sandy Artist Essays

Two artists essays I wrote appear in the online catalog for the phenomenal show, Come Together: Surviving Sandy. 

A big thanks to my former SVA professor, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, for the opportunity to participate in this project.

 

Here they are..... 

 

G.T. Pellizzi | The Red and the Black

 

by Nat Castañeda

In the first iteration of G.T. Pellizzi’s dynamic installation, The Red and the Black (2013), the artist exposed the often-invisible inner workings of the art world. The art world can be separated into three general spheres of influence: 1) the artist’s labor, without which art works themselves couldn’t come to fruition, 2) the art market, which can, when working in the artist’s favor, propel said works beyond their origins and provide the artist with the financial support needed to continue their work, and finally, 3) what we can call the academy, which provides the pedagogy or conversations that permeates both the artist studio and the gallery.

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   G.T. Pellizzi, “The Red and the Black,” 2013. Plywood, oil paint, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Zack Garlitos.

 

Pellizzi’s installation title is taken from the late 19th-century French novel,Le Rouge et le Noir, by Stendhal, where the protagonist must choose between the two dominant seemingly disparate social spheres of his time: the clergy and the army. Cleverly, Pellizzi draws a similar correlation between Stendhal’s proposed dilemma and the choices artists’ face today. Who or what are artists to pledge their allegiance —the market or the academy? To animate this dialogue, Pellizzi erected shiny walls, drenched in a brilliant shade of vermilion, reminiscent of the hue present on traditional Shinto temple torii gates. The walls act as a shell that hides the existing structure of the gallery space, creating a room within a room. After the artist completed the construction of the walls, he offered them up for sale at the going rate per square footage on the Lower East Side real estate market, where the exhibition occurred. The collector determined the slick black marks Pellizzi painted on the wall’s surface that divided each selected and sold plot. They were then required to disclose their identity on a ledger placed openly in the center of the installation. With this final step, the art process, from production to final sale, is played out to completion.

The second iteration of The Red and the Black occurred at Come Together: Surviving Sandy, a show that celebrated the resilience and production of artists. Placed on the third floor of the exhibit, The Red and The Black appeared in a transformed state; the structure was now void. All of the sold pieces were cut away from the frame and what remained was a skeletal outline of the previously complete room. On one side of the transformed structure, we see untreated plywood, and on the other, small slivers of the formerly filled walls. Black carpeting covers the floor of the installation and at the center sits the podium and sales ledger. A small section of cut up pieces of the wall are hung recessed from the frame on the only white space near the installation. In this new context, placed amongst works from other artists, who despite economic and environmental disasters continue to find a way to produce, The Red and the Black, reminds us of what cannot be lost even after a hurricane, and that is the first sphere introduced above; the very will and the tenacity to produce and engage in the labor and discourse of art regardless of the many challenges that arise.

Juan Eduardo Gomez | Mawinzhe

by Nat Castañeda

There is something on the move. It’s a total grey-out; a haze of billowing fog clears to reveal a shapeless form. The form appears to have two wispy arms, and at the end of each arm there are hands that gesture with charismatic force. The form is active and airy, and it weightlessly hums and drifts on the canvas like a jellyfish. Pushing out to the front of the form is an oblong, smoky face. A red, hollowed-out mouth playfully overcomes the face’s surface and the mouth is filled with a set of ten rotating disks for teeth. Do you want to know the craziest thing about the teeth? They double as eyes.

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            Juan Gomez, “Mawinzhe,” 2013. Oil on canvas, 7 x 11′. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Zack Garlitos.

 

Mawinzhe (2013), Colombian born Juan Eduardo Gomez’s whimsical contribution to Surviving Sandy, is a reminder of painting’s potential for exuberance. The 84-by-132-inch oil painting is fleshy and animated, and Gomez’s brush strokes are at once vigorous and carefully placed; the long smooth marks are self-assured and transformative. There is a tension present in the work; it feels like the subject is at odds with itself, each part pulling the work into two separate directions. The work offers a glimpse into an in utero place between the abstract and the figurative, an active space, where the subject is unfixed, vague and suggestive. Mawinzhe is a visualization of what it must feel like to be in the state of becoming, on your way to something else. It presents an unfamiliar form as it’s subject is caught in an act of disappearance; it is an awakening. In the end, the whole of Mawinzhe plays out like an apparition and conjures fellow painters who made with similar off-kilter vision: Bacon, de Kooning, Lassnig, and Dunham, all artists who set scenes and began open-ended wild narratives on canvas, odd, and sometimes dark.

Brooklyn-based Gomez began his career by showing abstractions, but buzzing in the background of his painting practice was what he considered the more personal practice of figuration. He was reluctant at first to show these works, considering them too private for public view. However, the work didn’t stay in the background for long. When a curator selected some of these works for a show, the important relationship between the two seemingly separate creative spaces he occupied came forward in the public representation of his work. Gomez considers both abstraction and figurative work as two critical components to his making. “Having a balance between the two has been my focus. One is just as important as the other. Sometimes figuration allows me to study people’s behavior and mannerisms: there I find a narrative element that interests me,” the artist declares on his website. In Mawinzhe, Gomez has found a space where his interests, abstraction and figuration, coexist with compelling results.

 

To see more, visit: http://cometogethersandy.com/ 

Community Board @ Glasshouse

Group Exhibit

Community Board

Works by MFA in Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts
Class of 2014

JULY 18-21

Opening Reception is Friday, July 18 6-9pm

Artists in the exhibition include: Nat Castañeda, Rachel Chick, Simone Couto, Leah Foster, Kate Harding, Anthony Hawley, Jaewook Lee, Victor Liu, Dana Osburn, Brenda Perry, Andrew Prieto, Henry Sanchez, Rosanna Scimeca, Benjamin Thorpe, Alfredo Travieso, Tribble & Mancenido and Richard Walshe.

Curated by Jovana Stokic

 

A self-led group exhibition that features the varying practices of eighteen artists who came together in the pursuit of higher education, and the desire to show together once again, upon completing their low residency program this summer. 

Members of a Community Board build a culture through the exchange of ideas then structure the best way to disseminate those ideas for wider consideration; culture begins with speculation and is sustained through conversation. Please, come join our multivalent conversation.

Accidental, intentional community?

Could we have known when entering that this would happen? I have many times during my involvement asked myself if it is some kind of social experiment masterminded by a hidden Svengali. I am still not sure. But what I do know, is that community has been created. And that we have all transmitted ideas to one another within this group in an influential way. Our practices range from extending ideas of social practice and the environment, all the way to what seems, on the surface, like formal abstraction. What binds us is a bend toward the speculative and the collaborative coupled with an awareness
that all art is in some way performative. We have learned that individuation comes through community at the very least. This is a digital Black Mountain, and we are some of the first to ascend. - Andrew Prieto, Community Board Member since 2012

As a curator and a professor, I am happy to participate in this project in a minor role, a reduced capacity, to speak sotto voce. My goal is to let the exhibition enfolds as a truly self-governing body: a self-organizational system as a process where some of form of order arises out of local interactions between the components. In order to keep this process spontaneous, it cannot be directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem. I am here only to contribute to this choreography. - Jovana Stokic, curator

Community Board will be on view at Glasshouse from July 18-21 with an opening
reception on Friday, July 18 from 6-9pm. 

Grossman Gallery @ Lafayette College | March - April 2014

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Mapping Meaning

This exhibition draws from the work of artists, scientists and scholars who first met while attending five-day experimental workshops in 2010 and 2012. Inspired by a photograph from 1918 depicting an all-female survey crew, Mapping Meaning workshops provide a forum for women to explore questions of mental, social, and environmental ecology while in a national park or forest.

Mapping Meaning brings together an interdisciplinary group from around the United States and Canada to push against traditional boundaries that come from specialized education. Similar to the workshops, this exhibition takes an experimental approach looking to generate avenues of participation.

Guest curator is Krista Caballero, Associate Director, Digital Cultures and Creativity, Honors College, University of Maryland and Mapping Meaning founder/creative director.

Screening at EAI

Ecstasy | Apocalypse at Visual Arts Gallery

Invisible Dog Opening in Brooklyn

CURRENT PRACTICE

JULY 3 – 18 – EXHIBITION – MFA Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts is pleased to present “Current Practice,” an exhibition of work by members of the Art Practice Class of 2014, curated by Hesse McGraw, the newly appointed Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, the former curator of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the former assistant director of Max Protetch gallery in New York, and the founding curator of Paragraph in Kansas City, Missouri.

Featuring the Artists: Nat Castañeda, Rachel Chick, Simone Couto, Leah Foster, Kate Harding, Anthony Hawley, Jaewook Lee, Victor Liu, Dana Osburn, Brenda Perry, Andrew Prieto, Henry G. Sanchez, Rosanna Scimeca, Benjamin Thorpe, Alfredo Travieso, Tribble & Mancenido and Richard Walshe

Bushwick Open Studios 2013

FASTER FUTURE, EVER AFTER!

Featuring constructions, objects, and video by

NAT CASTAÑEDA / ANTHONY HAWLEY/ ANDREW PRIETO / TRIBBLE & MANCENIDO

JUNE 1-2, 12-7PM, 2013

part of BUSHWICK OPEN STUDIOS 
Location: 2 ST. NICHOLAS AVENUE #36 / CORNER OF JEFFERSON STREET