Stamford's Franklin Street Works Launches New Exhibition

From Franklin Street Works: Franklin Street Works, a not-for-profit contemporary art space in downtown Stamford, presents “My Vicious Throbbing Heart: Animating Desire in Abstract Painting.” Curated by Risa Puleo, the exhibition investigates the intersection of abstraction and animism as emphasized by certain formal qualities — goopy, sticky, ooey-gooey or otherwise materially luscious surfaces — in combination with aspects of pattern and repetitions such as flutter, throbbing, palpitation, pulsating, and orgiastic rhythms.

Featuring a diverse selection of queer artists working in abstraction, “My Vicious Throbbing Heart” will be on view May 26 through September 9, 2018. There will be a free, public reception on Saturday, May 26 from 5:00 - 8:00 pm.

In “My Vicious Throbbing Heart,” paintings by Anna Betbeze, Leidy Churchman, Anne Cousineau, Keltie Ferris, Matt Morris, Carrie Moyer, Lisi Raskin, Sigrid Sandstrӧm, Laurel Sparks, Latham Zearfoss & Claire Arctander, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung take the forms of videos, installations of colored fabric and potpourri, a rope and rock assemblage, alchemical experiments on canvas and the gallery floor, and charred and dyed fur. The artists luxuriate in materiality while challenging the medium-specificity of painting.

“I’ve been thinking about abstraction alongside many of the artists in the exhibition for many years, specifically the idea of what ‘queer abstraction’ is and can be,” Puleo says. “While everyone involved in this exhibition is queer, I'm more interested in ‘queer’ as a verb than a noun or identity category, and the possibilities that ‘queering’ as an action present to painting as a medium and abstraction as a genre.”

“This exhibition is an important one for Franklin Street Works as it explores themes around queerness from a new point of view and showcases a different type of materiality than any of our past, LGBTQ+ or gender themed exhibitions,” Terri C Smith, Franklin Street Works creative director, says “Guest curator Risa Puleo savvily examines these intersections of queerness and abstract painting, including its histories, its current schools of thought, and some of the social themes and technologies that influence abstract painting.”

“My Vicious Throbbing Heart” features a week-long artist residency with Anne Cousineau May 17-25. Through material investigations, Cousineau entangles cultural notions of the synthetic and organic to consider somatic and ecological imaginaries. They will make a new work on site at Franklin Street Works and meet with visitors on Wednesday, May 23 and Thursday, May 24. To inquire about bringing a group, email Terri C Smith at terri@franklinstreetworks.org. Priority will be given to LGBTQ+ teenage and undergraduate college groups. Cousineau’s residency is sponsored, in part, by a generous grant from New Canaan Community Foundation.

Image Via Shuttershock