turnstile I

Elizabeth Josephson

on view: February 11 – March 21, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 13, 2010

Drawing I: Women
February 11 – February 28, 2010
This exhibition in two parts shows a series of drawings the artist Elizabeth Josephson made while teaching at the Rikers Island Correctional Facilities. The first installation, ten portraits of adult women, 4ft. x 5 ft. printed in a medicine buddha ultra marine blue, are an imposing installation on the gray walls of the gallery. They show the women looking straight at the artist: defiant, despondent, but never shy or with feelings of ambiguity about this moment of being drawn and thereby represented to the world at large. Josephson has asked the women to collaborate with her by writing autographical information over their portraits. The results of this collaboration are the ten posters that show Josephson’s raw and powerful portraits of the women and give a confrontational insight into the sitter’s mind. 

Drawing II: Adolescent Boys
March 4 – March 21, 2010
The second part of this exhibition is an installation of nine drawings of adolescent inmates at the Rikers Island facility. In these drawings the artist has captured the myriad of emotions these young men deal with: despair, sadness, anger and frustration - all clearly shown in the boys faces. The drawings are projected onto the gallery walls with overhead projectors, rendering them life-size. This scale transforms the boys portrayed into an imposing yet temporal presence in the space.

about the artist:

Elizabeth Josephson has had solo exhibitions at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island at the Side Show Gallery in Brooklyn and has received laudatory reviews in the Brooklyn Rail and the Hudson Review. She was a professor of art at Fordham University for twenty years, and in 2001 she took up the challenge of teaching at the Rikers Island prison.

acknowledgments:

FiveMyles is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Independence Community Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts,  NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Bloomberg Philanthropy Foundation.