Curators Alex Gartenfeld and Norman Rosenthal are preparing to unveil an exhibition in Rome next month, looking at the city of New York through the framework of the capital of the ancient Roman Empire.  Titled Empire State, the show brings 25 New York artists to Rome for a show exploring the creative essence within the two iconic metropolises.  “Instead of just celebrating a city, I hope it’s an exhibition that questions what it is to be an art center today, and what sort of cultural cachet a city wields by having these art institutions. I think a lot of cities, Rome included, are thinking about what it means to be a contemporary art center. That’s where empire becomes this very relevant theme.”  Says Mr. Gartenfeld. (more…)

Black Cake, Installation view at 83 Grand Street, Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York

Black Cake at Team Gallery is a multi-generational group exhibition curated by Alex Gartenfeld, the young critic and curator whose former West Street Gallery project space was a notable new addition to the downtown art scene before it closed last summer. The exhibition takes its point of departure from the Gaelic spring ritual of Beltane (by way of scholar Roberto Calasso’s account in his 1994 book The Ruin of Kasch), during which a cake would be prepared and divided among members of a tribe. One piece would be covered in ash (hence the name “black cake”), and whomever chose this piece would be pushed into the Beltane bonfire, becoming a sacrificial casualty of the fertility holiday. The exhibition presents the diverse aesthetic iterations of “sweetness” and social identity in contemporary art, notions addressed dynamically across a variety of media through the works on view.

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