Bad Girls of 2012

Gina Beavers Rachel de Joode Dora + Maja Jamie Felton Rebecca Gilbert Denise Kupferschmidt Narcissister Amy Yao

organized by Jamie Sterns

April 14 – May 26, 2012

Opening Reception April 14, 6-9 pm

In 1994 Marcia Tucker, the founder and director of the New Museum, organized an exhibition entitled Bad Girls that included works by more than 60 artists who were creating art that resonated with her ongoing engagement with feminism. “The work that particularly fascinated me and pushed me to rethink a lot of old issues had two characteristics in common,” she wrote.[1] “It was funny, really funny, and it went ‘too far.’” It has been 18 years since that show and now is as good a time as any to reassess what it means to be a “bad girl” in contemporary art today. Bad Girls of 2012 takes a small sample of artists to reflect on how things have changed. The shift that I have noticed most is that female artists are making whatever type of work they want to make without negotiation or burden. They are wholly unapologetic in their art making and do not seek permission to work with any ideas, materials, or subject matter. This includes the inheritance of any past “-ism” within art and cultural history and also the use of any imagery, including feminized objects or the body. Everything is up for grabs, and the results are as complex as their makers.

The intensity of feelings, emotions, and opinions about art, the label feminist, and the ‘all-girl show’ are still heated topics today. This show acknowledges this while serving as a measure of what was and what is to come. Until the day when shows of all women are as normal as shows with all men, this type of show and its variants, will still be necessary. The popular trend to act as though issues of gender, politics, economics, and power within the art world are better left unacknowledged is behavior that is learned in order to not make waves and to keep the status quo. No one wants to be a nag. Frankly, the status quo is dull and needs to be given a good shake from time to time. The selection of artists in this show is but a small sampling of some of the hottest, smartest, most interesting artists out there who are shaking things up and being as bad as they want to be.

- Jamie Sterns

Gina Beavers is a painter living in New York City. She has been included in shows in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago, and has had solo shows at PACS in Brooklyn and recently, at Nudashank in Baltimore. She is a founding member of Art Book Club, as well as a curator, currently organizing a show at Gallery Diet in Miami, which will open in May.

Rachel de Joode, from Amersfoort, The Netherlands, studied time-based arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. She currently lives and works in Berlin. De Joode creates installations, sculptures, photographs, and performances. Her work addresses an object’s ability to transfer and measure what she calls “our humanness.” She is founder and art director of online magazine Meta Magzine and founder and curator of the art auction house de Joode & Kamutzki.

Dora + Maja are a Croatian-born artist duo that currently works and lives in New York and were recently named in Modern Painters’ “100 Artists to Watch”. Their recent solo exhibitions include MemoryFoam at Spring Break Art Show, New York, Universal Appeal at CEO gallery, Malmo, Sweden, and Substitutes for Present Sense at Performing New Europe, Salzburg, Austria. Recent group shows include Synthetic vertigo: 002 Eye Rubs, Elaine, Switzerland, Its hardly softcore, BKS Garage, Denmark, Next Time, White Box, New York, and Gifpumper Project, New York. D+M’s work challenges viewers’ expectations around the intersecting spheres of art and life, and coming from a design background, is influenced by the methodology and psychology behind the creation of products, advertising, and the feasibility of desires.

Jamie Felton, from Virginia Beach, VA, earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is in the process of earning her MFA at Tyler School of Art. She lives and works in Rome.

Rebecca Gilbert received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2011. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Royal College of Art and the Pigeon Wing, both in London, the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn, and in Projection, a traveling video screening curated by Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn. Gilbert lives and works in Brooklyn.

Denise Kupferschmidt, recently named in Modern Painters’ “100 Artists to Watch,” has had solo exhibitions in Chicago, Boston, and New York. Her work has been included in exhibitions in New York at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, Marvelli Gallery, Eleven Rivington, and the Horticultural Society of New York, as well as at Western Exhibitions in Chicago and CAVE in Detroit. In 2010 she was featured as a NADA Emerging Artist in The L Magazine. Kupferschmidt was co-organizer, with Joshua Smith, of “Apartment Show,” a series of roving group shows featuring artists in New York City.

Narcissister is a performance artist who also works in many other media, including collage, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. She has presented work in New York at the New Museum, Deitch Projects, the Kitchen, and Abrons Art Center. Internationally she has presented work at Music Biennale in Zagreb, Croatia; Chicks on Speed’s Girl Monster Festival, in Hamburg, Germany; the Festival of Women, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Warehouse 09, and Bordel Des Arts, in Berlin. She is a featured performer at The Box NYC, and is represented by envoy enterprises in New York.

Amy Yao is an artist based in Phoenix, AZ, and New York City, and a former member of the all-female teen punk band Emily’s Sassy Lime (ESL). Her work was included in Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1. She has mounted solo exhibitions at New Jerseyy in Basel, Switzerland, Green Gallery in Milwaukee, and Jack Hanley Gallery in New York. She received a BFA from the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art.

[1] Press release of Bad Girls, 1994: http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/266