Aljira A Center For Contemporary Art presents INTERSTICE AND EMPHASIS, an exhibition exploring the collection of art accumulated over its twenty-seven years of operation. While not officially a collecting institution, inevitably, over time, Aljira has acquired many works by artists, some of whom are very well known. Others areworking artists of varying fame and experience. Guest curator, Carl E. Hazlewood,says, “INTERSTICE AND EMPHASIS considers what visual information may be revealed by emphasizing certain artists of interest and their work, taking them from the interstices of the collection for a focused look at what they are doing now.”

The artists emphasized:

Born in Trinidad, now resident in Newark, Kevin Darmanie uses tropes of the graphic novel to construct social and formal narratives presented as individual works or as installations.

Janet Goldner, of New York, spends much time in Mali. She makes free-standing steel sculptures and wall-bound installations that reference her artistic lineage going back to the welded sculpture of Julio Gonzalez. But the work also displays her social consciousness and her deep continuing interest in African art.

Artist, Grace Graupe Pillard, of New Jersey and New York, has long expanded her interests to include photography and video. Here she shows an over-sized new painting where the political content is underscored and contradicted by the beauty of its color and rendering.

C. Duane Lee, a photographer from Montgomery, Alabama, is showing portraits of urban children. These are selections from a book project entitled, ‘CHANGELINGS: Boys of Montgomery Alabama, Family & Friends’

Freddy Rodriguez, a Dominican-born painter lives in Queens, New York. He is showing new color abstractions.

Fausto Sevila, originally from Cuba, now a resident of Elizabeth, New Jersey, has new multimedia work that explores how visual images, realistic and abstract, can combine for an effect that is powerfully visceral.

Aside from the artists invited to add new work, on view are paintings, drawings, small sculpture, and many graphic productions. The work shown covers a wide scope of styles and techniques. A partial list of the artists would include photographer Alec Soth, painter, Will Barnett, who has a combination intaglio portrait print of his friend, the late, master printmaker, Bob Blackburn, who also has a piece in the exhibition. Carl Ostendarp, Willie Cole, Don Hazlitt, Emma Wilcox, Eikoh Hosoe, are among other names represented in the exhibition.