featured gallery for December 2000

Lightbox

This Web show contains selections from Lightbox: A Traveling Exhibit.

For Lightbox, Stefanie Nagorka and Sur Rodney (Sur), both Visual AIDS Board Members, have selected two 35mm slides representing each member artist currently registered with the Visual AIDS Archive Project. The Archive Project is open to all professional artists diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and has become a valuable resource for curators, researchers, educators, and students. The over 350 slides selected for the exhibit, displayed in lightboxes, provide an overview of the breadth and depth of the Archive member artists. As more artists join the Archive and members continue to produce new work, Lightbox will grow and change.

The Archive Project was formed in 1994 in response to a growing concern about the dispersal or destruction of the work of visual artists with AIDS. As an archive, the project's aim is to ensure that the cultural legacy of artists with HIV/AIDS is preserved, thereby safeguarding their place within art history and providing a visual record of the AIDS pandemic for future generations. Members of the Archive cross a broad spectrum of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and financial security. They range from established artists to emerging artists to self-taught artists. Visual AIDS provides free photo-documentation of the work of artists with HIV/AIDS, and member artists are provided with slides to enable them to seek gallery representation, grants, and residencies.

Lightbox opens at the Montclair Museum, in Montclair, New Jersey, on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2000. The exhibit then travels to Rutgers University's Robeson Gallery, Newark, New Jersey where it will run from December 18, 2000 to January 28, 2001. There, Lightbox will be displayed with a selection of the artwork represented in the slides.

Lightbox is available for exhibit in a variety of venues. If you are interested in displaying Lightbox and would like more information, please contact Visual AIDS.

Curator

Stefanie Nagorka and Sur Rodney (Sur)

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Stefanie Nagorka is a sculptor working in New York City and living in Montclair, NJ. She shows with Debs & Co. in New York and has had solo exhibitions there as well as at Rutgers University, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, and Information Gallery. She has also been involved in numerous group exhibitions. Her work is in the collections of Yale Art Gallery; Fogg Art Museum; State Museum at Trenton, New Jersey; Contemporary Art Center at Little Rock Arkansas; and the Brooklyn Museum. Stefanie received a BFA and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Stefanie came to Visual AIDS in 1996 to develop a project called Mapping No Boundaries. The project was very well received. That same year, she invited onto the Visual AIDS Board of Directors where she now serves as Secretary. Her involvement in the organization continues to grow and become a significant part of her life. She says of her work with Visual AIDS, "I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Nick Debs and Barbara Hunt, both former Executive Directors, Christopher Hogan, the current Executive Director, and all my fellow board members. Meeting and working with Archive members and becoming more familiar with work of artists in the Archive who are now gone has deepened my commitment to Visual AIDS' unique mission of serving artists who are HIV+ and preserving their artistic legacy." Sur Rodney (Sur) A graduate of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of Art & Design (1976), Sur moved to New York to pursue his interest with intermedia and organizing exhibitions of undiscovered and under-recognized artists. He is most renowned for his pioneering efforts with the East Village art scene as co-director of the Gracie Mansion Gallery (1983-88) with his partner Gracie Mansion. The gallery made its reputation with establishing international profiles for young emerging artists. At the end of 1988, Sur decided to leave the gallery to work with artists who were affected by the AIDS crisis and their estates. His involvement with this crisis led to his working with Visual AIDS and the Archive Project, and began his curatorial collaboration with his life partner Geoffrey Hendricks, also active with the organization. They've co-curated: Arts Communities/AIDS Communities: Realizing the Archive Project for the Cyclorama, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, (1996); A Living Testament of the Blood Fairies for Artist's Space and Printed Matter, New York, NY (1997); and most recently Selected Paintings of the late Alex Greenfield for the Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries of the Department of Visual Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (2000). Sur's knowledge of the visual arts and artists have served him professionally as Program Director of Kenkeleba House and the Wilmer Jennings Gallery, New York, NY (1992-94) and Assistant to the Curator of the New School University Collection, New York, NY (1997-2000).