PAST PROJECTS

July 4th to September 6th 2022 • Digital iteration launched September 6, 2022

To be away from home and yet find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world — impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. ― Charles Baudelaire

Steve DeFrank and William Pagano are spectators of society and culture from their self-designed enclaves, constructs that began in their adolescence. They are the American post-war counterparts to the denizens of modernity who strolled the streets of 19th century Paris, the flâneurs, most often associated with the work of French poet, essayist, and art critic Charles Baudelaire. DeFrank’s and Pagano’s observations of modern life began in their formative years, predominantly through mass media and pop culture. With eager eyes, they religiously pored over novels, printed matter, film, and television in private nooks they had created in their respective family homes. It was there, through introspection and experimentation, that each established their sophisticated aesthetic and philosophical foundations. They had become social and cultural onlookers, flâneurs by necessity, seeking to decode a privileged heteronormative landscape and skewed morés, a strategy to forge their own safe spaces and pathways forward. Born within each from these complex endeavors is a queer imagination and nuanced visual language unburdened by the strictures of the outside world.

VIEW: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Launched June 1, 2022

Born of a project conceived during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ishii sought to bring art to the people at a time when simply being out of one’s shelter felt overwhelming and risky. Ishii repurposed New York City’s construction sites as exhibition spaces, activating the emerald barriers and viewing windows. Through a complex process by Ishii and anonymous local artists, the collaborations played out in the artist’s studio and on the streets of New York City. The cadre transformed the sites’ diamond-shaped, plexiglass portals into spirited artworks replete with combinations of vibrant aerosol paint flourishes, felt-tip marker calligraphy, random novelty stickers, and iconography from US currency. The presentation of FTM - Green Bill extends to Townsend’s online platform with text and images that explore the project’s art historical connections as well as notions of “public” art and the narrative arc of community identity.

VIEW: FTM - GREEN BILL

Launched March 1, 2022

Through images, an essay by Townsend curator Elizabeth Skalka, and a video recording of a deeply personal conversation between artist and curator, The Sidewalk showcases Baltagi’s concrete-based constructions, a multi-faceted performance based series of work. Included are the four works that comprise The Sidewalk series: Daphne, I’m Spinning, Trip Hazard, and Layers of Resistance. Baltagi contemplates the layers of history embedded in the sidewalk and identifies its role as a nexus between the public and private, therefore spaces that are politically and socially charged. The Sidewalk addresses themes of physical, emotional, economic, and cultural mobility, and directly references disability justice and mobility by way of the American suburban cul-de-sac. With these works, Baltagi has produced a body of work which is utterly human.

VIEW: THE SIDEWALK

Launched February 10, 2022

Fani Zguro’s “Broken Threads” (2007) juxtaposes black and white shots from an Albanian spy movie with the dark tune of a murder ballad by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

Broken Threads is one element of Cut-Up (Episode 1), a multi-part, solo exhibition by Fani Zguro that takes place at once across ten locations — Accademia Albertina Turin, Accademia di Brera Milan, Closing Soon Athens, Erratum Milan, National Historical Museum Tirana, National Library of Albania Tirana, Townsend New York, Tegeler Weg Berlin, Tirana Art Center, and Phroom Platform Milan — and opens worldwide on February 10, 2022.

VIEW: BROKEN THREADS

Launched January 1, 2022

Townsend’s exhibition will resonate with the themes that have animated Sandara’s body of work since their undergraduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art: history, heritage, and identity.

The presentation begins with a text by Elizabeth Skalka, Townsend’s Curator of Special Projects. Skalka thoughtfully outlines the challenges of Sandara’s personal history as the child of Laotian and Vietnam immigrants, a background that has profoundly shaped their identity and world view. Moreover, she necessarily acquaints us with the artist’s autobiographical proclivities and art historical reference points which inform Sandara’s practice.

Townsend’s presentation showcases Sandara’s Origins of Kin and Kang, the artist’s deeply personal stop motion animation, and the 270 Million Project, a series comprised of 270 spirited black and white ink paintings — works that resemble the artist’s music-inspired abstractions. The project refers to the 270 bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War by the United States and is Sandara’s attempt to take action. As with the rest of their paintings, Sandara made each work in the series while listening to music. Selections from the artist’s Lao music playlist are presented alongside images from the 270 Million Project and offer glimpse into the artist’s process — and world. Together, Origins of Kin and Kang and the 270 Million Project create a foundation from which we begin to have insight into Sandara as an artist and person.

The viewer’s final encounter is an intimate and powerful interview-style video with Sandara and Aleena Inthaly, Chief Staff Officer from Legacies of War, an advocacy and education-based organization. Through personal and humanitarian perspectives, Sandara and Inthaly reflect on the persisting effects of the Vietnam War Era bombings in Laos to ensure that the history of the Secret War is never forgotten. Sandara’s commitment to awareness and action is tireless.

VIEW: ORIGINS AND LEGACIES

Launched November 1, 2021

Townsend has collaborated with the artist to reimagine his 2019 exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Townsend’s iteration of BOYSHOW includes a candid interview between Kunakornwong and Irish-born art critic Brian Curtin which adds context to the specificity of the exhibition and also reveals intimate insights into the personal, cultural, religious, and historical conditions which inform the artist’s practice.

In BOYSHOW Parinot Kunakornwong probes questions of perception, categorization, and history through intimate engagements between his body and artefacts, materials and language which mediate its depiction in both the gallery space and the world at large. Through personal engagements with hegemonic taxonomies of racialised bodies, as well the conditioning capacities of Thai propaganda, Catholic Imagery, and Western Pop culture, BOYSHOW lays out an assortment of objects and imageries whereby historical dynamics find themselves embedded in the vulnerabilities of the everyday.

Questions of permanence, perfection, and desire comingle with conditions of temporal precarity, abjection, and the anxieties of meaning. White plaster, yogurt, eggshells, mustard, flesh, screens, neon signs, and educational texts both bring forth and disturb the processes and iconographies of classical art and ancient ritual, as well as the ingenious embracing of materiality key to many immigrant experiences. Throughout BOYSHOW, body, action, material, preparation, and study are presented in relation to social power dynamics, personal strategies of survival, and the spaces in between.

VIEW: BOYSHOW

Launched September 1, 2021

Boy Wives and Female Husbands highlights the queer and non-binary communities that have existed throughout the African continent for centuries. Presented in four parts, the chapters explore modern interpretations of either an historical figure or a community of folks performing gender outside of the binary norms. Guibinga’s Boy Wives and Female Husbands aims to look at the place these communities occupied in traditional African societies in relation to the place queer and non-binary folks occupy today on the continent and across the globe.

VIEW: BOY WIVES AND FEMALE HUSBANDS

Launched June 25, 2021

Townsend is delighted to present You Are You, Too, an online exhibition by artist Lindsay Morris. You Are You, Too brings together images and text from You Are You with portraits from Old Friends and New Bonds. You Are You, Too represents the artist’s deeply personal engagement with gender studies, an inquiry which started with her adolescent son’s reflection on his identity. This exploration began their participation at Camp I Am, a summer camp for gender-creative children and their families that offered a temporary safe haven — a refuge where children could freely express their interpretations of gender alongside their parents and siblings.

You Are You, Too comes while Morris continues to elaborate on the broader You Are You project, subject matter that continues to generate interest most recently with the 15 August 2021 NY Times Magazine cover story, The Kids of Camp I Am, a Decade Later.

VIEW: YOU ARE YOU, TOO

YOU ARE YOU, TOO press release

VIEW PDF: THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE COVER STORY, THE KIDS OF CAMP I AM

Images: Lindsay Morris

Launched March 20, 2021

Townsend is delighted to present Meet Your Neighbor, an online exhibition by artist Lindsay Morris. Townsend has collaborated with Morris to reimagine her 2020 brick-and-mortar exhibition of the same name as a decentralized, interactive presentation. On view at www.townsend-gallery.com from March 20th until May 16th, Meet Your Neighbor is comprised of photography and audio anecdotes, its universal theme centers on the people of our communities, and the realization that we often know very little about them. Morris then expands on this concept to explore the underlying circumstances that have recently shifted the makeup of her small town.

VIEW: MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR

MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR press release

Image: Lindsay Morris, House Six / Untitled, 2020, photographic relief collage of archival pigment prints and applied model landscaping, 20 x 20 inches

Launched January 20, 2021

A Portrait of Legacy is an online exhibition that showcases the practice of London-based artist Hugh Mendes. Perhaps best known for his ongoing series of obituary paintings, especially of artists, Mendes also engages politics and popular culture. Broadly, A Portrait of Legacy is a survey of Mendes’ career beginning with his formative work, Dead Dad (1999), and highlights pivotal developments in the trajectory of his practice. Mendes’ work can be viewed as an act of documenting history, an indexing that is created simultaneous to the establishment of his own legacy.

Hugh Mendes was born in 1955 in the British Military Hospital in Hostert, Germany. Mendes, whose work engages with art history, politics, and popular culture, has exhibited regularly in London and internationally for over two decades. Mendes was graduated at City and Guilds of London Art School with a Master of Arts; he received his Bachelor of Arts with Honors at the Chelsea School of Art, London. Mendes lives and works in London, England.

VIEW: A PORTRAIT OF LEGACY

Image: Hugh Mendes at his London studio

Launched January 2, 2021

A Brief History of Drugs, an online solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Fani Zguro, offers a clear-eyed perspective on legal and illegal drugs and audaciously points to the circumstances, conditions, and management surrounding their use, misuse, and abuse. A Brief History of Drugs is comprised of photography, video, and text by Zguro that peer into this world with unflinching candor.

Fani Zguro was born in 1977 in Tirana, Albania. He lives and works in Berlin. Zguro was graduated at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera in Milan (1998-2007). In 2007 he won the International Onufri Prize assigned by the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana; in 2016 the International Mulliqi Prize of the National Gallery of Kosovo in Pristina and the Best Video-Art award at TIFF Tirana. Zguro was part of the AiR program for 2017 at Q21, Museumsquartier, Vienna. His work has been shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Mediterranée Marseille, Filmoteca Espanola Madrid, Photo Museum Braunschweig, 2nd Tirana Biennale, 3rd Mardin Biennial, 4th Young Artists Biennial of Bucharest, 6th Çanakkale Biennial, 13th Biennale of Cairo, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Belvedere 21 - Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst Vienna, PalaisPopulaire Berlin, the New York Public Library, and Centre Pompidou Paris.

Special thanks to Florian Agalliu, Heldi Pema, Mimi Kolaneci, and Christopher Milne.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DRUGS press release

Image: Fani Zguro, To Share It (Diaries), 2008, c-print, 42 x 30 cm, courtesy the artist.

Launched November 27, 2020

Hidenori Ishii, born 1978 in Yonezawa, Japan, is a Queens-based artist whose work approaches the environmental landscape, especially post-atomic radioactive ecosystems, through a fusion of art historical connections, personal narratives, and socio-political subject matter.

Ishii, who spent his childhood playing in the area near Fukushima, has been using his floral pattern since Grow Till Tall (2013) and The Remains of the Day series (begun in 2013) which directly responded to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown. Also, with signature use of synthetic resin Kuricoat — the green tinted version of the polymer sprayed at the Fukushima Daiichi site in an attempt to prevent dispersion of contamination — the artist constantly explores the subject of reflection and invisibility. Representative works such as the MIRЯOR series stage the fear of invisible radiation and the emotion itself through the transparent surface. In the contrast between organic imagery and artificial material, Ishii envisages a future after environmental and societal trauma. He reveals a hopeful environment where humans and nature coexist and sustain one another.

The special edition series of screenprints secured between layers of plexiglass is a stretch of Ishii‘s art practice and addresses the mood under the looming pandemic. He agitates the dichotomy between concepts of invisibility and reflection as well as separation and protection. It acts as a mark of the tense moment and makes the invisible emotions visible. More importantly, as his practice is tied to how nature survives the tragic incident created by human activity and error, and then revives, the new edition indicates hope after the bio-disaster and the social, political environment shifts. Although the profoundly challenging events of 2020 may have longer and deeper influence than one could imagine, just like the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the brightness in humanity will still prevail, as the flowers.

VIEW: YUME NO SHIMA

Image: Fukushima Daiichi site post meltdown. Kuricoat, the green tinted version, sprayed at the site in attempt to prevent dispersion of contamination.

Launched November 3, 2020

The bubbling beginnings of Sean Nash's vital work with fermentation is presented in "Fostering the Microcosmos," a risograph zine written and designed by the artist. Sean's thought provoking work with fermentation is visual, metaphorical, temporal, experimental, and community engaged. This short zine is an introduction to the artist's thinking, including intersections with science studies, the microbiome, gender identity, and social practice. It is beautifully illustrated with two-color risograph images of his fermentation sculptures and projects throughout. 

VIEW: FOSTERING THE MICROCOSMOS

FOSTERING THE MICROCOSMOS press release

October 3 until November 3, 2020

What is Around the World in 128 Minutes? A sci-fi movie or the unrealized idea of a charlatan scientist? 

Around the World in 128 Minutes might be a prologue to the Gaia Theory; a Colombian author lost in the American outback, but enjoying his conversation with two perfect strangers; various abandoned film sets in Morocco; the Little Prince flying over the solar sculpture; Iceland with its volcanoes and love songs; a Russian Bazaar right in the center of Ankara; or an unidentifiable alpine landscape. Far away you can see the snow-capped Chukotka and Beringia, and finally day turns into night. 

After all, today’s touring adventure is not what it used to be. Let’s look at travel documentation, yesterday and today. Goethe would have needed hours and even days to illustrate some of Ferrara’s landscapes in watercolor. Today, it takes an instant with that thing we carry in our pockets all day long. 

Maybe our travels around the world won’t be as charming as Jules Verne’s, but at least we may find some technology backward countries, and maybe even call it poetry.” 

-Fani Zguro

Special thanks to Florian Agalliu

AROUND THE WORLD IN 128 MINUTES press release

Image: SHINGO YOSHIDA, The End of Day and Beginning of the World, 22 minutes, 4K ProRes 422 HQ, with support of Red Cross Chukotka Russia - Nortoco Northern tourist company Russia - Beringia National Park Russia, 2015 Siberia-Chukotka, Russia. © Shingo Yoshida.

Launched September 1, 2020

Townsend is a new curatorial platform that will showcase the work of a global roster of contemporary artists. Through an ongoing series of virtual and brick-and- mortar presentations, Townsend will highlight these artists and their artworks in various curatorial projects, using a strategy that aims to reduce common barriers to entry regarding the viewing, connoisseurship, and collecting of contemporary art.

For its inaugural project, Inside Out, Townsend has conceived a virtual presentation of limited editions and unique works created in a series. Working across media, the artists Townsend presents are united in their adoption of a robust and sophisticated language of form, line, color, and texture; this in turn becomes a vehicle for an exploration of themes that range from identity politics to climate change. The project offers a powerful introduction to Townsend’s artists, with in-depth information about the artworks and artists available equally to enthusiasts and connoisseurs through its online platform.

TOWNSEND LAUNCH / INSIDE OUT press release

Image: SOPHIA CHAI. Shaft Composition #2, 2020, Archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper mounted on Dibond. © Sophia Chai.