Forever & Today, Inc. announces the newly commissioned installation SD Studio Dynamics 57UMSTRA1 “Strata #1,” Unmounted, 5×7, 2010, a first-time collaboration between New York artists Heather Rowe and Kevin Zucker. An artists’ talk about the project will take place on Wednesday, April 7, to attend, please [email protected]

As part of Forever & Today’s curatorial mission to commission new work by cutting-edge contemporary artists and provide an opportunity to realize a challenging new project, this collaboration expands the artists’ recognized practices and engages a diverse public within the context of New York’s Lower East Side/Chinatown.

SD Studio Dynamics 57UMSTRA1 “Strata #1,” Unmounted, 5×7 takes its name from a black-and-white starburst effect studio backdrop incorporated into a site-specific series of three freestanding wooden shelving structures. Serving as the primary focus of the installation, the shelving apparatus is replete with angled panels, cut-glass mirrored panes, and fragmented sheer black scrim that absorb, reflect, and refract a series of theatrical lighting effects replicating the studio backdrop.

Additionally, elements from the original 1927 Loew’s Canal Theater’s archival architectural renderings are incorporated into the installation. Situated directly across the street from Forever & Today, Inc., the elaborate Spanish Baroque façade of this once grand movie palace, shuttered since the late-1970s, merely hints at its original interior grandeur.

Rowe and Zucker’s installation may be seen as a fantasy reconstruction (based on publicly available information) of the presently closed and inaccessible theater that simultaneously references its history and current status as a storage space. The dramatic lighting, predominantly black-and-white palette, and sense of fragmentation, reinforces the artists’ aesthetic homage to early film and to the ways in which architecture and movies are experienced.

These cinematic effects are deployed back on themselves in a self-reflexive manner, creating a melodramatic situation whose subject becomes the mechanisms of its own presentation. This reflects both artists’ longstanding interest in the operations of special effects and the tension between pictorial illusion and physical space. Rowe’s sculpture often combines references from films with architectural details and Zucker’s work has explored, primarily through painting, imagery related to the archiving, storage, and display of curated material, frequently including visual resources from research projects.

Heather Rowe (b. 1970, New Haven, CT) lives and works in New York City and received her MFA in 2001 from Columbia University, School of the Arts. Rowe recently presented new site-specific commissions for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana (2010) and UMMA/University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2010), and her upcoming solo projects include The Public Art Fund, New York (2010). In 2008, her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial. Other select group exhibitions include: La Calmeleterie, Nazelles-Négron, France (2009); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2009); Art in General, New York (2007); Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York (2007); White Columns, New York (2006); and Artists Space, New York (2005). Rowe is represented by and has presented one-person exhibitions at Galerie Zink, Munich/Berlin (2009) and D’Amelio Terras, New York (2006, 2007). She has taught and served as a visiting critic, and her work has been written about in numerous international publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Art Monthly, ArtNews, ArtReview, Flash Art, Frieze, Modern Painters, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time.

Kevin Zucker (b. 1976, New York, NY) is a New York-based artist who received his MFA in 2002 from Columbia University, School of the Arts. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Moore Space, Miami (2007), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2005), Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn (2004), and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2002), amongst others. Zucker has had solo exhibitions at Greenberg Van Doren (2007) (where he is represented in New York), Mary Boone Gallery (2002, 2003), and LFL Gallery (2001) in New York; Arario, Beijing (2008), Paolo Curti & Co., Milan (2004), and Jablonka Luehn and Linn, Cologne (2003, 2004) (where he is represented in Europe). His most recent project in New York was a two-person show at Eleven Rivington (2009). He has also published his writing and organized shows for New York’s Mary Boone Gallery (2007) and Guild & Greyshkul (2004), and has taught extensively. Zucker’s work is in public and private collections worldwide and has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews, Art On Paper, Flash Art, I-D, Modern Painters, Parachute, The Art Newspaper, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, W and many others.

Forever & Today, Inc. is a year-old non-profit that is a sponsored organization of the New York Foundation for the Arts. Currently inhabiting a 100 square foot storefront on the cusp between New York’s Lower East Side and Chinatown, Forever & Today is a mere thumbprint on the ever-expanding demographic of contemporary art that offers a unique set of circumstances for artists to create new work and engage the public.

SD Studio Dynamics 57UMSTRA1 “Strata #1,” Unmounted, 5×7 is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.