Westbeth Artists Housing announced today an inaugural Art Take-Over to reopen and transform three historic mixed-use spaces within the famed interior courtyard space.
Four original spaces – including the Westbeth Gallery – are hosting innovative exhibitions to activate the spaces with publicly accessible art offerings for the neighborhood. The exhibitions are now open and run through July 14, 2024, allowing visitors from far and wide to experience the unique spaces within Westbeth while enjoying a wide array of art, including large scale sculpture installations, paintings, and drawings.
The unique activation of previously occupied commercial spaces allows famed artists from New York City to exhibit in non-traditional gallery spaces. The unconventional spaces display a range of artistic mediums, while offering visitors a one-of-a-kind setting to experience local art works.
“The Art Take-Over at Westbeth is a great opportunity to put forth our community’s original ethos and mission as a unique bastion and destination for contemporary art to thrive in iconic, unconventional and inspiring spaces,” said Valérie Hallier, Westbeth Artists Resident Council Visual Arts Chair & Westbeth Gallery Director. “The reimagined spaces offer a haven for not only the artistic community but New York City’s local aesthetes and the visiting public alike.”
The various exhibition spaces within the historic building allows visitors an inside look into spaces that have not been open to the public for decades. The three spaces–a former synagogue, a former sculpture studio, and a former child care center–all feature quirky architectural characteristics and elements unique to Westbeth, such as undulating ceilings from the Bell Labs era, exposed industrial elements, and double height ceilings. Westbeth’s inaugural Art Take-Over activates these individual spaces to create an artistic community gathering space for creatives citywide.
Exhibition information:
Ex-Femina
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Co-curated by Valérie Hallier and Noah Trapolino
*Located within Westbeth’s former child care center
Ex-Femina, Latin for “from woman,” encapsulates the profound transformation in the portrayal of femininity and the female gaze within contemporary art. This evolution is not merely a shift in representation but a reclamation of agency, identity, and perspective.
International artists of various genders explore, through mediums including sculpture, painting, photography, collage, drawing, diorama and textile art, facets of womanhood beyond the confines of objectification and passive observation. They depict women as subjects with complex narratives, desires, and emotions. Through figurative and abstract forms, they explore themes of fertility, nature, animality, intimacy, technology, spirituality, consumption and trickery among others.
Ex-Femina inclusively and playfully celebrates the multifaceted nature of the female experience beyond conventional constructs.
Exhibiting artists include: Louisa Armbrust, Aisha T Bell, Amy Butowicz, Martin Campos, Tiffany Cole, Ursula Endlicher, Natasha Gornik, Valérie Hallier, Lily Hyon, Daniel Maidman, Jody MacDonald, Shiri Mordechay, Serena Nickson, Agnès Pezeu, Roxane Revon, Morgan Suter, Elizabeth Tolson, and Noah Trapolino.
There is a crack in everything
Curated by Valérie Hallier
*Located within Westbeth’s former Synagogue space
There is a crack in everything regroups contemporary artists working in installation, sculpture, drawing, painting, photography and video art. The show stages the duality of existence, with some artwork emerging from darkness while others bask in the glow of light. The title, inspired by Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, serves as a metaphor for the inherent imperfections and vulnerabilities within our reality as well as within the previously dormant space the show populates and brings back to life.
The vast space still shows its defects as the artists imprint their own realities and dreamscapes onto its rough edges and surfaces, but there is transformation, instability, there is expectation. We undulate between chaos and order, soft and hard, organic and artificial, light and darkness. Nothing is fine, but you are.
Exhibiting artists include: Santina Amato, Amy Butowicz, CHiKA, Claudia Cortinez, Jean Foos, Tom Fruin, Tessa Grundon, Valérie Hallier, Leslie Kerby & Lianne Arnold, Christina Massey, Joseph Morris, Anne Muntges, Aston Philip, Matthew Schlanger, and Etty Yaniv.
There she lay
Curated by Claire Felonis
*Located within Westbeth’s former sculpture studio
The Westbeth building, originally home to Bell Labs, was partly submerged underwater during Hurricane Sandy. Drenched in history, it serves as the ground of this group exhibition emerging from the depths of collected memory, material investigation, human identity and metamorphosis.
The amalgamation of these six artists’ practices manifests in a dystopian world, which may have never existed at all. There she lay becomes a multidimensional dream-space suspended in time, where false artifacts are unearthed, strange fantasies lurk beneath the surface, and secret languages are whispered under crashing waves.
Exhibiting artists include: Earth Ængel, Vinny Castro, Sasha Fishman, Adrienne Greenblatt, Gitte Maria Möller, and Andreia Santana.
Westbeth
Founded in 1970, Westbeth Artists Housing is a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City. The Richard Meier-designed complex located on West and Bethune Streets in the heart of the West Village has provided 383 units of affordable housing and studio space since it opened 52 years ago. Over the course of its history, Westbeth has been home to a number of influential artists, musicians and performers, and played an important role in supporting and sustaining the creative community in New York and beyond. https://westbeth.org/
Photo credit: David Plakke.
