Category: Book

Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series: Vincent Stracquadanio: strutture d’ombra ?>

Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series: Vincent Stracquadanio: strutture d’ombra

Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series:
Vincent Stracquadanio: strutture d’ombra

The Fordham University Galleries
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023

fordhamuniversitygalleries The Department of Visual Arts at Fordham University is pleased to present the first fall installment of the Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series with Vincent Stracquadanio. The selection of drawings featured in his book, strutture d’ombra (shadow structures), highlights Stracquadanio’s spaces depicting moments of transformation and magic, all of which are marked by rich patterning and dense with visual surprise and reference.

Vincent Stracquadanio: strutture d’ombra is the third publication for Hayden’s Books, a series honoring Hayden Hartnett, a much-loved visual art major. Hayden’s Books focuses on presenting artist projects, research, critical writings, and works in progress.

The Fordham University Galleries are currently closed to the public in response to COVID-19. In the meantime, please visit our gallery website frequently, as our gallery will continue to feature a robust selection of offerings from the different areas of study in the Department of Visual Arts: Architecture, Film/Video, Graphic Design, Painting, and Photography. Stay tuned for more online presentations, discussions, and public dialogues coming this fall as our gallery website functions as a launching platform for a thoughtful engagement with the issues of our times.

Artist Statement: The structures that surround us provide the boundaries that help define and clarify our collective understanding of the world. Their very presence however demarcates the moment of subversion where these structures can be broken down and changed.

The spaces in my work depict moments of transformation and magic. The rich patterning of these spaces is dense with visual surprise and reference. Some spaces are filled with foreboding forms such as dark fire and cloud-like mists that appear to seep through various Sicilian porticos disrupting spatial certainty. Others, archetypal forms like the “Arch” and the “Portal” line technicolor corridors that peer out into a horrific black abyss from a Giallo film. In these spaces, I’ve mined my own relationship to histories of art, family, and self.

These lavish interior spaces collapse and extend using patterning and flatness that eliminates hierarchies between foreground and background, form and formlessness, clarity and confusion. Each picture not only exhibits an interior logic but also presents distinct idiosyncrasies suggesting differentiation in time, event, or architecture. These defined moments are subverted and broken down to begin to illustrate the fluidity of one’s full identity and one’s relationship to histories both individual and shared.

Artist Bio: Vincent Stracquadanio is an artist living and working in New York City. He earned his MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BA in visual arts from Fordham University. He has been exhibited at Good Naked Gallery (NY), New Release (NY), Trestle Gallery (NY), Artspace (CT), among others. He was a nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant and received both the Gamblin Paint Award and James Storey Memorial Visual Arts Award. Stracquadanio has taught at the Yale University Art Gallery and is currently a museum educator at the Jewish Museum and an adjunct professor at Fordham University.

strutture d’ombra Book Link
Vincent Stracquadanio Website

For further information contact Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock.
For the Visual Arts Department Website: click here.
Faculty Spotlight Series: Amie Cunat Drawings ?>

Faculty Spotlight Series: Amie Cunat Drawings

The Department of Visual Arts at Fordham University is pleased to present a new summer installment of the Faculty Spotlight Series with Amie Cunat. This selection of drawings shares Cunat’s explorations, which have informed her recent work on canvas, and offer a play between the horrific and goofy, the earthy and transcendent, the familiar and alien.

Amie Cunat Drawings is the second publication for Hayden’s Books, a series honoring Hayden Hartnett, a much-loved visual art major. Hayden’s Books focuses on presenting artist projects, research, critical writings, and works in progress.

The Fordham University Galleries are currently closed to the public in response to COVID-19. In the meantime, please visit our gallery website frequently, as our gallery will continue to feature a robust selection of offerings from the different areas of study in the Department of Visual Arts: Architecture, Film/Video, Graphic Design, Painting, and Photography. Stay tuned for more online presentations, discussions, and public dialogues coming this fall as our gallery website functions as a launching platform for a thoughtful engagement with the issues of our times.

Artist Statement:
In 2018, Amie Cunat began to explore plant-like imagery within her abstract paintings. Influenced by depictions of nature from Shaker gift drawings, Art Deco, science fiction, and horror movies, Cunat’s work appears loud and flamboyant at first read. Whether they are painted from an observed source or the artist’s memory, their exclamatory presence is supplanted and prolonged through charged hue and inventive form. They offer a play between the horrific and goofy, the earthy and transcendent, the familiar and alien. The selection of drawings shares her explorations, which have informed her recent work on canvas.

Artist Bio:
Amie Cunat (b. 1986, McHenry, IL) is a Japanese American artist, who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Cunat received her MFA from Cornell University, Post-Baccalaureate in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA in Visual Arts and Art History from Fordham University. She has had solo exhibitions at Peep (PA), Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon, Victori +Mo, Knockdown Center, Sunroom Project Space at Wave Hill, Outside (MA), The Cooper Union, among others. Recent group exhibitions include Fur Cup at Underdonk (Brooklyn), The Unusual Suspects at DC Moore Gallery (NY), Surreality at Crush Curatorial (NY), The Unlikely Whole at ArtYard (NJ) and Softer but Louder at Geary Contemporary (NY). In 2019, she was awarded a Regional Economic Development Council Grant by NYSCA in collaboration with Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon. Her work has been reviewed and featured by The New York Times, ARTnews, Artsy, Artnet News, Vogue Italia, ArtMaze Mag, and Two Coats of Paint.

Book Link
Amie Cunat Website

Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series & Book: Anibal Pella-Woo: “Almost 2.0” ?>

Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series & Book: Anibal Pella-Woo: “Almost 2.0”

The Department of Visual Arts at Fordham University is pleased to present the first summer installment of the Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Series: Anibal Pella-Woo: Almost 2.0. As well as being the first offering of the season, this project is the inaugural publication for Hayden’s Books. Hayden’s Books will be producing an ongoing series of publications focusing on artist projects, research, critical writings, and works in progress. This publication series honors Hayden Hartnett, a much-loved visual arts major. Please stay tuned over the weeks to come as members from the Department of Visual Arts adjunct faculty and artists at large share samplings of their production with the Fordham community in our Hayden Hartnett Project Space (online) and in this exciting new book series.

The Fordham University Galleries are open to the general public provided that visitors complete a temperature check and brief screening according to university health protocols (the gallery is accessible for those on campus registered with VitalCheck). Additionally, our gallery website will continue to feature a robust selection of offerings from the different areas of study offered in the Department of Visual Arts: Architecture, Film/Video, Graphic Design, Painting, and Photography. Stay tuned for online presentations, discussions, and public dialogues coming this summer as our gallery website functions as a launching platform for a thoughtful engagement with the issues of our times.

Artist Statement:

2.0: “used post-positively to describe a new and improved version or example of something or someone.”

In 1999, I bought my first digital camera. It produced a 1.92-megapixel image file.

Almost 2.0

Book Link

New book: 2021 Senior Thesis Exhibitions ?>

New book: 2021 Senior Thesis Exhibitions

Hot off the press—the 2021 Senior Thesis Exhibitions book by Amanda Asciutto, Catherine Cain, Ashlinn Casey, Laura Foley, Alejandra Garcia, Mack Hurstell, Bawila Idris, Jesse McBrearty, Elizabeth McLaughlin, Vittoria Orlando, Sofia Riley, Justin Schwartz, and Julia Taylor is now available. Edited by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock with a fantastic cover design by Natalie Norman-Kehe. 142 pages of amazing work by our graduating artists!

2021 Senior Thesis Exhibitions: Small Square, 7×7 in, 18×18 cm, 142 pages is available to preview and purchase here.

New Books—Digital Photography Volumes 2 & 3 Out Now ?>

New Books—Digital Photography Volumes 2 & 3 Out Now

The speed at which one can learn the principles of traditional analog photography during a typical school semester is relatively quick. Things are humming along smoothly by week number seven, with students having a working understanding of camera operations, film processing, and the development of contact sheets and prints. Around week seven, we begin to switch gears from focusing on the technical to concentrating on meaning and communication strategies. The remaining eight weeks are devoted to exploring what one wants to say about the world, how to go about it, and how to read and discuss photographs.

The speed at which one can learn the principles of digital photography is absurdly accelerated compared to traditional photography. Within the first five classes, we are already up and running and understand camera usage and how to employ the computer for image management, adjustment, and output.

Three months ago, these students were pushed into the deep end of the photographic pool of digital photography and asked to swim almost immediately. They rose to the challenge admirably. Their selections for this book represent their speedy technical proficiency; moreover, their images show their intelligence, distinct personalities, and concentrated engagement with the world.

Enough said, enjoy! —Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

Digital Photography Volume 2

Digital Photography Volume 3

IN DER FREMDE | PICTURES FROM HOME. A haunting photobook on Berlin & the search for home by Romeo Alaeff ?>

IN DER FREMDE | PICTURES FROM HOME. A haunting photobook on Berlin & the search for home by Romeo Alaeff

New on the Fordham University Galleries website.

Internationally exhibited artist, Romeo Alaeff, presents a haunting, cinematic photobook on Berlin & the search for “home.” The book features haunting, never-before-seen images of Berlin at night—a city infamous for its nightlife—now presented in a desolate, eerie, and deeply personal light.

Framed by six essays by renowned writers, the photographs are tinged with a deep sense of longing & touch on themes of migration, alienation, and the search for home. Essay contributions by: Yuval Noah Harari, Christian Rattemeyer, Charles Simic, Eva Hoffman, Rory MacLean, Joseph Kertes (+ Romeo Alaeff).

The book will be published by the esteemed Hatje Cantz, “one of the leading publishing houses for art, photography, design, and architecture books with a focus on contemporary art” — a 75 year old publisher with over 800 titles. The book has already received half of its publication funding via a generous grant from Stiftung Kunstfonds.

THE PRE-ORDER KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN – FULLY FUNDED IN 48 HOURS

Immediately labelled by Kickstarter as a “Project We Love”, the campaign reached over 80% of its goal in the first 24 hours and surpassed it within 48 hours (almost to the minute), record time for a photobook. Books and prints will still be available for the duration of the 30 day campaign, while they last. Nocturnal street-photo workshops and night-portrait sessions, as well as postcards sets are also available as rewards. The kickstarter campaign runs from June 9th, 7pm – July 9th, 2020 (Berlin time).

The link to the campaign, which includes a cinematic photobook trailer, is: here. More info about the project can be found on Degrasse Projects and a Press Kit can be downloaded from Google drive here.

Romeo Alaeff

Romeo Alaeff was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1970. He received his BA in Photography from Tulane University in 1993 and his MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. He has exhibited internationally in exhibitions and film festivals and has produced work in a range of media, including photography, film/video, drawing, and writing. In addition, Alaeff has been a guest artist at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, Pratt, Parsons, The University of Georgia and Georgia state University. Alaeff is the author of “I’ll be Dead by the Time You Read This: The Existential Life of Animals” (Penguin/Plume, 2011), a humor/philosophy book of drawings. His stickers also appear in “Stickers: Stuck up Piece of Crap: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art” (Rizzoli, 2010) Alaeff is also the founder and Editor-in-chief of Lines & Marks, an online publication dedicated to the role and practice of drawing across the arts and sciences. He currently lives in Berlin.

“Case Study Tokyo 2020” by the Gabelli School of Business is now Available! ?>

“Case Study Tokyo 2020” by the Gabelli School of Business is now Available!

I am pleased to announce to you the completion of a project that is very dear to me. Clocking in at 438 pages with over 4500 images, Case Study Tokyo 2020 by the Gabelli School of Business is finally here!

Take one part working methodology from the influential 1972 book, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, combine with the megacity of Tokyo, add Fordham University Gabelli students, stir for ten days in Japan and what do you get? You get direct acquisition of knowledge through experience with a small team, realized in a hardback research volume focusing on branding, sensory marketing, architecture, design, photography, and urban planning.

Hearty congratulations to the intrepid researchers: Madison Burkart, Branden Cheung, Kaia Corthell, Alexa Cucchiara, Shauna Fortier, Alexander Gardner, Sekai Kaminski, Fionna Lui, Declan McCabe, Sraboni Paul, Anja Pelkola, Raimundo Sanchez, Amanda Scacalossi, Samantha Schwartz, Joseph Sellmeyer, Polina Yafizova, Kevin Zhang, Yiyun Zheng.
Preview the entirety of the book HERE. As well, you can order in softcover or two different hardcover formats. Enjoy!