Invite: Select Projects NYC May 8 Opening Reception

You are cordially invited to the opening reception gala for the second edition of SELECT Projects NYC!
Presented by SELECT FAIR and IN*TANDEM MAGAZINE.

The event will be featuring three dynamic artists for SELECT’s Frieze Week exhibition: Robert Dupree, Leeza Meksin and Vincent Valerio. The artists will completely transform the main atrium of THE OUT NYC.

The Reception will be held from 7-10pm and will include wine provided by KTCHN Restaurant. Admission is free. Invited press and art patrons will join you to kick off Frieze Week!

DIRECTIONS:
Take any train to 42nd Street then head west to 10th Avenue!

Robert Dupree

“My work focuses on the social and physical restraints put on in cultural and personal relationships. The actions performed in my work are staged, divorcing them from the assumed endurance art. Paul McCarthy stated about performance from the “…1970s where there was a sort of emphasis on concrete performance. Performance as a concrete reality, where you don’t represent getting shot, you actually get shot…” Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, and others have created work that would only be pushed further by daring to kill myself, which would inherently end my ability to continue working-not an option. My actions begin by asking why get shot while pushing the boundaries of truth.

At the core of my work there is reverence of the past, sins and all. My work creates a Sartrean relationship between the viewer as subject and me as object. My audience is getting a personal view into my life. I am not showing them something grandiose, just me. By using my body as a tool I am demonstrating mental and physical limits as well as cataloguing my life. It is a mixture of reality and fiction, like a memoir, these documented truths are swayed by perception-personal embarrassment, guilt, and even strength filters my lens. It is a questioning of past mistakes with a self-deprecating humor.”

Leeza Meksin

Elizaveta (Leeza) Meksin is an interdisciplinary artist, who makes paintings, installations, public art and multiples. Born and raised in Moscow, Russia, Leeza immigrated to the United States in 1989, she graduated from Yale in 2007, where she received her MFA. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

“My artistic practice is made up of diverse activities. I make paintings, multiples, site specific installations, sculptures and videos. I also design costumes and sets for theater and film, and readily participate in performances, collaborations and happenings. All of these different artistic modes and activities are unified in my practice by a choice of material: spandex. My use of spandex explores the behavior and potential of a fabric that revolutionized and queered our experience of clothing while shifting civilization towards a more plastic reality. In my work, spandex is not merely a clothing solution, it is an expressive, elastic, and mutable application. Printed in an infinite variety of patterns, responsive to polymers, paints, and other materials, my use of spandex seeks to explore the intersection of painting, sculpture, architecture, design and fashion.”

Vincent Valerio

Vincent Valerio is an artist and educator from Baltimore, MD. Valerio received his MFA from Towson University where he has also taught sculpture and 2D design as an adjunct professor. Valerio’s work has been shown locally, nationally, and abroad in a variety of exhibitions. Currently Valerio’s work is part of a group exhibition at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore curated by Maiza hixson, which will be traveling to the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in July. Valerio also is the coordinator of the Drew Putzel Creative Art Program at Itineris- a non-profit serving adults with autism, and is the Founding Director of Baltimore’s newest art space, Pinebox Art Center.