Eye on Wall Street
October 1 – October 30, 2009
Photographs – Arthur Lavine
Video – Bill Dolson
Selected Paintings and Drawings
Historic Federal Hall
26 Wall Street
http://www.SeaportDistrict.org
EXHIBITION: EYE ON WALL STREET
AT HISTORIC FEDERAL HALL 26 WALL STREET
OCTOBER 1 – OCTOBER 30, 2009
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTISTS OCTOBER 8, 6-8 PM
“Eye On Wall Street” will be presented at New York’s historic Federal Hall, located at the intersection of Wall and Broad St., from Oct. 1 – Oct. 30. This exhibit marks the return of contemporary art to Federal Hall for the first time since its re-opening in Fall 2006 after extensive renovation. The exhibit is organized under the auspices of the Seaport District Cultural Association (SDCA), and is curated by Jim Wintner, SDCA co-founder and former director of PhotoGraphic Gallery.
Featured are the Financial District photographs of Arthur Lavine, shot in 1969, and three time-lapse photography videos created specifically for this site by Bill Dolson in 2006. Complementing the photos and videos will be a selection of paintings by a diverse group of contemporary artists who have made the Wall Street District and Lower Manhattan the subject of their work.
Arthur Lavine managed Chase Bank’s in-house photo department for 22 years. Our exhibition title derives from an exhibition of the same name shown at One Chase Manhattan Plaza in 1969. Mr. Lavine has selected 18 photos from that exhibition for this show at Federal Hall.
With the distance of almost 40 years these documentary photos are moments that are simultaneously of their time and contemporary in feel. The enduring architecture and commerce of the Wall Street district remain a constant as we are reminded of some of the great events of another time: anti-war demonstrations and ticker tape parades. Federal Hall is a featured player as a locus for expressions of free speech and demonstrations.
Arthur, now in his eighties, has had a respected career as a photographer and in Spring 2007 was the subject of a seven decade retrospective at San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Art.
Arthur worked next door to Federal Hall throughout his career. He wrote, “Knowing that George Washington was inaugurated on the spot where Federal Hall stands stays with me to this day.”
Bill Dolson has established his reputation as a new media and land artist. He brings these skills to an examination of a very specific landscape described by the intersection of Federal Hall, the office of J.P. Morgan, and the New York Stock Exchange. This is the epicenter of the financial universe. Bill’s work transforms this well known territory into a lyrical natural landscape characterized by the movement in its crowded street, the changing light and skies, and its durable iconic buildings.
Where Arthur’s photos provide us unique moments in time, Bill gives us a view of the same neighborhood over time by joining many moments, compressing the time (a day becomes a few minutes) and ingeniously smoothing the resulting video into a meditation on a well-known urban landscape. His work explores the boundary between photography and video.
The painters (and there are some works on and of paper) – Jake Messing, Randy Smith, Naima Rauam, Mimi Gross, Bret Delaire, Lois Fisher, Ellen Bradshaw, Olive Ayhens, Carl Scorza, Jessica Goodyear, Michael Rollins, Frank Perna, Beatrice Coron, Regina Silvers, Leon Nicholas Kalas, Ile De France, Stephen Aiken, Sonya Sklaroff, Brian Skinner, Ida Marx, Jackie Lima, Don Freeman, Alan Messer – introduce a lively dialog with the photography and video on display. The solidity of photography, the lyricism of video, enters into conversation with the cunning inventiveness of painterly technique, and its ability to offer us a seemingly inexhaustible re-visioning of a landscape we know so well.
SDCA provides a source of support, promotion, and exhibition and performance space for and about the historic Seaport area and its close neighbors, and the art, artists and history that are its pride.
Seaport District Cultural Association
Contact: Jim Wintner
jimwintner [at] photographicnyc.com
Online : http://www.SeaportDistrict.org
212-393-9191
42 Peck Slip 5A
NY NY 10038
