turnstile I, II & III

organized by

Elizabeth Josephson

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

Turnstile I (July 16 - August 30, 2009) is the first of three exhibitions at FiveMyles featuring works created by or about inmates at Riker’s Island prison. 
This first show presents paintings by gifted art students at the correctional facility (ages 15 to 18). These paintings include a lively, eclectic range of landscapes, portraits, and figures. The student’s styles are varied, borrowing from contemporary pop cartoon art, classical American folk art paintings, and the more abstract qualities associated with early 20th century American landscape artists. The work displays a wide variety of influences, from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti art to Marsden Hartley-type abstract landscapes.

If the works share a unifying aesthetic, it is Josephson’s encouragement to these young artists to take risks, explore, invent and value the process of making art. She takes pleasure in their canvasses’ painterly and gestural elements, their discovery of color and light.  Josephson has been teaching art at Rikers Island for 8 years. She says that her principle aim is to help develop and cultivate her students’ individual experiences and points of view 

Turnstile II  (November 29 – December 27, 2009) features transparencies of drawings by Elizabeth Josephson of nine adolescent male inmates, projected onto the gallery walls in eight-foot tall beams of light. 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 life-size projections of the portraits onto the gallery walls transform the boys into imposing yet temporal presences in the space.

Turnstile III  (May 6 – June 10, 2010), an installation by the artist Elizabeth Josephson, is a collaboration between Josephson and adult women inmates at Rikers. The work combines the women’s texts from memoir writings and Josephson’s enlarged drawings and paintings of their portraits. The drawings are printed at a scale of 4ft. x 5 ft. in a medicine buddha ultra marine blue, and 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. 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. 

about the artist/organizer:

Elizabeth Josephson received a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1980 and MFA from Hunter College in 1984. Her work has been shown in solo exhibition by Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn, was included in Lilly Wei’s Figuration exhibition at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, and has received laudatory reviews in the Brooklyn Rail and the Hudson Review. Ms. Josephson intends to open an after-prison-program for the arts, and this exhibition showcases the talent and ingenuity of her students.

Turnstile I is in part supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Independence Community Foundation. 

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

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.