CRKF
is a network of four independent institutions in
Graz whose
common interest lies in the conveyance of contemporary art within an
international context. CRKF archive: Spring 2017 Summer 2017 Autumn 2017 Winter 2017 Spring 2018 Summer 2018 Autumn 2018 Winter 2018 Spring 2019 Summer 2019 Autumn 2019 Winter 2019 Summer 2020 Autumn 2020 Winter 2020 Spring 2021 Summer 2021 Winter 2021 Spring 2022 Summer 2022 Winter 2022 Spring 2023 Autumn 2023 PRIVACY STATEMENT |
Curtis
Cuffie’s New York City Curtis Cuffie Opening: 5.4.2024, 18:00 Duration: 6.4. – 1.6.2024 Curtis Cuffie’s New York City is an exhibition of photographs on the public art of Curtis Cuffie. Curtis Cuffie was a public figure in the East Village until his death, in 2002, at the age of forty-seven. By the time of his passing, Cuffie had published hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mysterious, improbable artworks on the streets of New York. To do so, he would fish the city’s leftovers and dress it in riotous assemblages made of discarded objects, fabrics, and ordinary things that speak of what we are. Such works had little by way of finish: things came and went, materials were adjusted and altered, and pieces were regularly destroyed by the Department of Sanitation and the police. Little of it survived. Consequently, viewing Cuffie’s sculpture today typically involves a second-hand encounter, filtered through the perspectives of those who photographed it, be they friends or lovers, fellow artists, or unknown passersby. Curtis Cuffie’s New York City presents the art of Curtis Cuffie as it was photographed by Katy Abel, Tom Warren, and Cuffie himself. Comprising some seven hundred photographs from the 1990s, the exhibition is brought to life through a number of analogue slide projectors, presenting three distinct registers of imagery: Abel’s use of vibrant colors, Warren’s stark, almost reportorial black and white pictures, and Cuffie’s own dynamic, abstract, and sometimes shattered photographic compositions. These pictures, emerging and fading from view, generate a palpable sense of movement and transience in keeping with the nature of Cuffie’s art and the city it found itself in. Curtis Cuffie’s New York City is curated by Tom Engels in collaboration with Robert Snowden. CURTIS CUFFIE (1955–2002) was an artist based in New York City’s East Village. Originally from Hartsville, South Carolina, he moved to Brooklyn at the age of fifteen and eventually settled in Manhattan, first near Bryant Park and later around the Bowery where he lived unhoused for long stretches of his life. Artforum, The New York Times, and The Village Voice all profiled and reviewed his work and he held solo exhibitions at Flamingo East, Tribes, and 4th Street Photo Gallery, all in New York. During his lifetime, Cuffie was featured in nearly a dozen group shows across the US at various venues. |
Katy Abel, untitled, ca. 1994–1996. Color photograph. Courtesy of Katy Abel and Galerie Buchholz. |