Visual AIDS Talk + Tour: Richard Renaldi "Manhattan Sunday” and Visual AIDS Holiday Party

6–7PM Richard Renaldi "Manhattan Sundays" Exhibition Artist Talk
7–8PM Holiday Cheer

Visual AIDS and Artist+ Member Richard Renaldi gave a walkthrough of his exhibition Manhattan Sunday. Renaldi was in conversation with Visual AIDS Programs Director Alex Fialho, discussing his rich photographic practice and the stories behind the images on display. Following the walkthrough, Visual AIDS hosted holiday cocktails and cheer.

Manhattan Sunday is a photographic diary from 2010 to the present. As the name suggests, the pictures were all taken in Manhattan, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, usually after a night out on the town. If hedonism informs these images, from the bare skin and muscled bodies in many of its portraits, to the disco balls and bottles of poppers in its still lifes, it’s a sensuality tempered by reflection. The faces are blissed out, maybe even a bit wan after eight or ten hours of clubbing. Black and white lends a coolness to the scenes, merging day with night, while several long exposures capture the euphoria of the club experience, but also its transience.

Richard Renaldi (b. 1968) was born in Chicago, Illinois, and lives in New York City. He received his BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. Exhibitions of his photographs have been mounted in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Manhattan Sunday has already garnered praise from a variety of sources, including the Guggenheim Foundation, which awarded Renaldi a fellowship in 2015 based on the project, and the Aperture Foundation, which has published the series in book form. Aperture also published Renaldi’s Touching Strangers in 2014, and Figure and Ground in 2006.