Art Walks: Bushwick

Posted on Monday, June 9th, 2014

Thank you to those who joined us over the weekend for our Art Walk in Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you couldn’t make it don’t worry, we have the whole thing covered!

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Our walk began at Justin Berry’s studio. Justin collaborated with More Art in 2009 and worked with students from the Clinton Middle School in Chelsea. He asked students: “what would you want to put in a gallery?” He then created a 3D model of an art gallery and collaborated on a curated exhibition of their artwork.

Currently Justin makes things that exist a little in reality and a little in virtual space or the imagination.

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The series in his studio at the moment is a collection of video game photos, screen-capped landscapes, which are then stitched as layers in Photoshop. These odd landscapes are redolent of Hudson River School or Ansel Adams.  Another series he has consists of Book covers he created. He removed characters, leaving only landscapes so that they were open to viewers’ interpretations. Justin explained that these landscapes are like stereoscopic images in that they show time passing.

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The next stop was Justin’s solo show, Lorem Ipsum, which is up through June 15th at Interstate Projects at 66 Knickerbocker Avenue.

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The 56 Bogart building has become a mecca for emerging galleries over the past few years. It is also home to several non-profit organizations including Momenta Art. We visited Momenta Art, a space dedicated to the promotion and scholarship of emerging artists, and saw Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen’s first US solo exhibition titled Space Fiction & the Archives.

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Photographer Meryl Meisler guided us through the history of the neighborhood. Meryl taught public school in Bushwick in the years that followed the infamous ’77 blackout. The image above is from Bushwick’s past as a brewery town.

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We also visited a historic Opera House…now converted into lofts.

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We concluded our day at Meryl’s solo exhibition A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick at Bizarre (12 Jefferson Street). Meisler’s photographs beautifully juxtapose two completely different but concurrent lifestyles within New York City.

BDaily_Meryl (Image: Bushwick Daily)

We hope to see you on our next Art Walks! Full details will be announced soon for our walks in Chinatown/SoHo and Long Island City!