Barbara Nitke at University of Rochester

November 21st - December 10th, 2024

Opening Reception
Thursday, November 21st from 7-9pm
The Hartnett Gallery
University of Rochester

Panel Discussion | Barbara Nitke, Lizzie Borden, & Antonia Crane
Thursday, November 21st from 7:30-9pm
The Hartnett Gallery at University of Rochester

Storage APT is thrilled to announce Barbara Nitke in Sex/Labor, an upcoming exhibition at University of Rochester.

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When describing the feminism of Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls (1986)—as defined against her two preceding films Regrouping (1976) and Born in Flames (1983)—the critic So Mayer commented: “Feminism itself has been curtailed, and made newly urgent, by the need to work within capitalism.” Sex/Labor was conceived of in the spirit of Borden’s Working Girls, which traces the everyday activities that occur across a day in the life of sex workers. This exhibition brings together contemporary art that elaborates on Borden’s depiction of sex work as a job taken up to pay rent, put food on the table, and make art.

The artworks featured in Sex/Labor—made by Antonia Crane, Barbara Nitke, Chichi Castillo, Sasha Waters Freyer, Alyssa Wood, Weixin Zhuang, Katina Bitsicas, Lena Chen, Maggie Oates, David Kim, and Emily Broad—represent both the physical and emotional forms of labor that sex work entails. This labor is constituted by: exhaustion, establishing boundaries, moments of joy and play, and kinship with clients and fellow sex workers that extend beyond the nuclear family. This exhibition does not claim to fully capture all the complexities of sex as a form of labor. Rather, it proposes two things. First, that the history of sex work has a clear significance in contemporary visual culture. And second, that the sex workers’ rights movement is an urgent matter of our time that relates to larger complications in the distribution of wealth and labor in late capitalism. In a moment when many of us struggle to buy groceries and pay our bills, the decriminalization of sex work could herald a new era for understanding how we work to live.

–Exhibition Statement by Emily Broad & Bridget Fleming

• Events

  Opening Reception
  Thursday, November 21st from 7-9pm
  The Hartnett Gallery at University of Rochester

  Panel Discussion | Barbara Nitke, Lizzie Borden, & Antonia Crane
  Thursday, November 21st from 7:30-9pm
  The Hartnett Gallery at University of Rochester

• About Barbara Nitke

  Barbara Nitke (b. 1950, Virginia) is a photographer whose focus spans from behind-the-scenes of hardcore porn sets to constructed narratives and portraiture. Nitke’s work is found in collections including the Kinsey Institute, IN; The New Hampshire Institute of Art, NH; Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland; Leather Archives and Museum, IN; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NY; and the Museum of Sex, NY. Nitke has been shown nationally and internationally. Selections of her work are collected in two monographs, Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism (introduction by A. D. Coleman) (2003) and American Ecstasy (introduction by Arthur C. Danto) (2012). Nitke is self taught in photography, having studied literature and philosophy at Baruch College, City University of New York. She has been on the faculty of School of Visual Arts since 1992.

Artist Hours with Nick Hobbs

Storage APT is delighted to announce Artist Hours with Nick Hobbs.

Please make an appointment to meet the artist and view the exhibition from 2-6pm on the following dates:
Wednesday, November 13th
Saturday, November 16th
Friday, November 22nd

Q & A with Nick Hobbs

October 11, 2024

Nick Hobbs (b. 1997) shares with Storage about his studio practice and current interests. Hobbs' solo exhibition Out There Somewhere is on view at Storage APT on The Bowery from October 18th - November 16th, 2024.

Storage: How do you know when the spark of an idea will turn into a finished work?
Nick Hobbs: I usually only know after spending way too much time playing with the idea in my sketchbook. Too often I don’t know until I actually start, only to realize twelve hours in that it’s not going where I thought it would. It’s hard to put my finger on what makes an image work or not, so it’s even harder to make predictions about it.

S: How significant is experimentation in your artistic process?
NH: It might not be obvious looking at the work in the show, but these drawings are the place I landed at the tail end of grad school after two years of frenzied experimentation. I felt like I was having an identity crisis every semester – a few I won’t talk about and I promise you won’t find images of, but I still carry a lot of discoveries from that time with me in these quiet little drawings. Many of the “early” space drawings in this body of work came from making animations with images from space probes.

S: What's happening in your studio right now?
NH: I’m trying to push the boundaries on what kinds of subjects fit into my little universe of images. Right now there’s a ceramic lioness pulled from the background of a Seinfeld screenshot on my drawing board.

S: How does your background or personal experiences influence your art?
NH: Long before I thought of myself as an artist, I was an amateur astronomer. It kept me in a constant awareness of a cosmological context that’s easy to take for granted otherwise. It also taught me patience and instilled a love for dark and quiet. I still work primarily at night, it feels familiar from those years when I’d stay up all night with a telescope.

S: How do you know when a work is complete? What signals you that you are at your stopping point?
NH: Often I’m limited by the wear of the paper. Every pencil stroke wears down the tooth on the surface until eventually it becomes too dull and smooth to receive anymore graphite. I have to plan for that unavoidable deadline, which is good because I might pick at a drawing forever if I could.

Michiko Itatani at City University of New York

Incandescence: The Chandelier in Contemporary Art

September 5th, 2024 - January 4th, 2025

City University of New York
Lehman College Art Gallery, 250 Bedford Park Blvd W, Bronx, NY 10468
Shirley Fiterman Art Center, 81 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10007
Hall of Fame Art Gallery, 2155 University Avenue, Bronx, New York 10453

Three City University of New York (CUNY) art galleries—the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC); the Lehman College Art Gallery and the Hall of Fame Art Gallery at Bronx Community College (BCC)—are co-presenting an exhibition, Incandescence that traces the motif of the chandelier in contemporary art.

An opening reception is held at BMCC’s Shirley Fiterman Art Center, 81 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10007 on September 5 from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will be available for viewing at BMCC through January 4, 2025.

Support for Incandescence: The Chandelier in Contemporary Art at Lehman College Art Gallery has been made possible in part by supporters including the Charina Foundation, Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation, Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation, Keith Haring Foundation, The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Art as a Third Dimension, New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York City Council Members Eric Dinowitz, Oswald Feliz, Kristy Marmorato, and Kevin C. Riley.

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Recent Press in Artforum:
Michiko Itatani’s New York Solo Debut at Storage

March 2024 – By Darren Jones

Michiko Itatani’s exhibition here, “Cosmic Encounters,” presented ten large-scale oil paintings, completed between 2006 and 2023, featuring imagery the Japanese-born and longtime Chicago-based artist is known for, including majestic amphitheaters beneath nighttime skies, and richly decorated interiors of libraries, cathedrals, and concert halls. At the center of these spaces, positioned high up, were rings of luminescent orbs and chandeliers that had similar multicolored disks cascading from them. In most instances, an array of globes were placed around the rooms’ perimeters or encircle star charts laid into the floors. Architectural details—such as arches and Escher-like staircases, rendered with exaggerated perspectives—tempted the viewer to peer more deeply into the many recesses and passageways of these enigmatic scenes. 

At first glance, Itatani’s inscrutable tableaux appeared uninhabited, evoking the unsettling eeriness of being alone in silent, empty arenas that are intended for great audiences and spectacular events. (One wondered, were we meant to be waiting for some revelatory arrival in these settings? Or more of a sinister departure?) Upon closer inspection, the viewer realized that, in three paintings of the artist’s opera-house auditoriums, the tiered boxes were populated by shadowy, humanlike forms. One of these works, “Untitled” painting from Rainmaker 06-C-10(RM-7), 2006, with its towering, bloodred facade and radiating lights, was a stunning combination of celebration and nightmare.

• Events

  Opening Reception
  6-8pm
  Thursday, September 5th

  Shirley Fiterman Art Center
  81 Barclay Street
  New York, NY 10007

• About Michiko Itatani

  Michiko Itatani (b. 1948, Japan) is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is professor emeritus of painting. Itatani has received numerous prestigious awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, two Illinois Arts Council Artist’s Fellowships, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her work is held in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri; Wright Museum in Beloit, Wisconsin; Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania; Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland; American Embassy Permanent Collection in Brasilia, Brazil; Villa-Haiss-Museum in Zell am Harmersback, Germany; Tokoha Museum in Shizuoka, Japan; National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea; the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) in Québec, Canada; Museu D’art Contemporani (MACBA) in Barcelona, Spain; and others.

Michiko Itatani at Virginia Tech

Cosmic Encounters

June 6th - August 30th, 2024

Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech
190 Alumni Mall
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Michiko Itatani's Cosmic Encounters consists of seven large-scale oil paintings, completed from 2016 to 2023, depicting imagined interiors of stately concert halls, observatories, libraries, and cathedrals punctuated with otherworldly light and celestial phenomena. Born in Osaka, Japan, Itatani's embrace of exploration and chance was evident in how she found her place in America — she chose Chicago by placing her finger on a map and has lived and worked there since 1973.

Itatani's imagined architectural spaces, seemingly devoid of human presence, are shrouded in mystery. They display an array of human curiosity, as if these spaces were refuges of civilization. Under the veil of night, the interior floors come alive with a collection of globes, constellation maps, scientific and musical instruments, and other curiosities. These items symbolize humankind’s quest for knowledge and enlightenment, placed under starry skies and peering through the glass ceilings of the exaggerated linear perspectives in Itatani's compositions. These achievements can seem like a ripple in the ocean compared to the scale of the universe, adding to the intrigue of her work.  

The animated characters in these worlds are patterned luminescent orbs; they organize themselves into cascading rings and floating chandeliers or appear as theatre lights, for instance, in the "Cosmic Wanderlust" painting from Encounter 16-B-3, 2016. The radiating orbs can be otherworldly or natural phenomena. In several paintings, a trio of chandeliers with rings of glowing orbs resemble alien craft. In other paintings such as "Shadows of the Mind" painting from Celestial Connection 18-B-5, the hovering yellow orbs mimic fireflies, infiltrating a Gehry-like glasshouse from the forest outside. The lights appear as the only living entities, independent from the fixed interiors. Set against the nighttime scenes, they imply cosmic encounters, the alien visitations we hear about in science fiction stories searching humanity's caverns of knowledge and seeking contact. Each painting's upward view makes the viewer look to the heavens, reinforcing the feeling that these lights are otherworldly.  

Images and text courtesy of Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech. Photo: Brian Holcombe 

• Events

  Opening Reception
  5-7pm
  Thursday, June 6th

  Moss Arts Center Grand Lobby
  190 Alumni Mall
  Blacksburg, VA 24061

  Curatorial Walkthrough
  12pm
  Thursday, June 13th, July 11th, and August 8th

  Moss Arts Center Grand Lobby
  190 Alumni Mall
  Blacksburg, VA 24061

  Closing Reception
  5-7pm
  Thursday, August 29th

  Moss Arts Center Grand Lobby
  190 Alumni Mall
  Blacksburg, VA 24061

• About Michiko Itatani

  Michiko Itatani (b. 1948, Japan) is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is professor emeritus of painting. Itatani has received numerous prestigious awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, two Illinois Arts Council Artist’s Fellowships, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her work is held in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri; Wright Museum in Beloit, Wisconsin; Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania; Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland; American Embassy Permanent Collection in Brasilia, Brazil; Villa-Haiss-Museum in Zell am Harmersback, Germany; Tokoha Museum in Shizuoka, Japan; National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea; the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) in Québec, Canada; Museu D’art Contemporani (MACBA) in Barcelona, Spain; and others.

• About Moss Arts Center

  Located at the crossroads of Virginia Tech and downtown Blacksburg, Virginia, on the corner of Main Street and Alumni Mall, the Moss Arts Center is a thriving community where the arts are a catalyst for engagement, inspiration, and discovery.

  The center operates as both a presenting organization and as a 147,000-square-foot, top-caliber arts center. Since opening in 2013, the center has brought innovative, significant, and diverse programming to the campus and the region.

  The Moss Arts Center is named in tribute to artist and philanthropist Patricia Buckley Moss, who committed $10 million toward construction of the facility on the campus of Virginia Tech.