Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 7:00 pm
FREE
I Am Here You Are Not I Love You is a short documentary film accompanying a book in progress of the same name. The project aims to reintroduce the late visual artists Andrew Topolski and Cindy Suffoletto through the eyes and voice of their nephew and godson, the writer Aidan Ryan.
Topolski and Suffoletto left Buffalo for New York City in 1985, carried on the same current as more famous names—like Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo—their friends, neighbors, and sometimes-rivals back in Buffalo. All were members of a celebrated generation of artists who made their mark on Buffalo, but shortly left for SoHo and the burgeoning Brooklyn of the mid-1980s and early '90s seeking greater access to opportunities. Topolski died suddenly in 2008, on the cusp of a radical reinvention of his artistic practice. Suffoletto died—just as unexpectedly—four years later.
A mysterious package arrived in February 2020. From an unknown sender, it contained images of Suffoletto and Topolski in Paris in the early '90s—a little-known chapter in their lives as artists and partners. It set their nephew on a path of exploration, seeking to uncover more of his late aunt's and uncle's lives, starting with the clues they left behind in their art. Ryan’s journey illuminates a critical period in late-twentieth-century art as he follows his aunt's and uncle’s path through the orbits of Longo and Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mary Boone, Richard Serra, Wynn Kramarsky, and many others from avant-garde of Buffalo in the 1970s and the cutthroat competition of SoHo in the megagallery era.
On one level, I Am Here You Are Not I Love You presents a critical reexamination of the artist Andrew Topolski, one of the greatest practitioners of postminimalism and a figure that advocates have long positioned for canonical recognition. In repositioning Topolski’s legacy and vast body of work, the book makes compelling findings—relevant for artists in any medium—about the critical role of timing, networking, and institutional as well as interpersonal support in the making and breaking of artistic careers. At the same time, the project uncovers and presents a significant body of work by Suffoletto, little-shown and never cataloged during her life. Ultimately, Ryan argues that the time is right for both to take up a privileged place among the great artists of their generation.
https://www.aidanryan.com/i-am-here-you-are-not-i-love-you-1
Credits: A film from Carrowduff Studios. Written and directed by Aidan Ryan. Filmed and edited by Mark Anthony Dellas. Supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. Featuring a performance of "Navigator" by Andrew Topolski performed by Don Metz and friends. Featuring interviews with Peter Muscato, Eric Siegeltuch, Don Metz, Scott Propeack, and Aidan Ryan and the voice of Judith Brodie. With special thanks to the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, ASI Inc. of WNY, Mark Dellas, Pat Morris, and the many friends and family of Andrew Topolski and Cindy Suffoletto who continue to support this project.
Bios:
Aidan Ryan is a writer, publisher, and multidisciplinary arts curator from Buffalo, New York. He has published memoir and cultural criticism in Public Books, The Millions, The Adroit Journal, Colorado Review, The White Review, CNN International, Irish America, the NEH's Humanities, and Traffic East, where he is a senior editor. From 2014–2016 he was a regular music critic and columnist for Scotland's The Skinny. He has interviewed and profiled figures including Lloyd Cole, CVRCHES, The Goo Goo Dolls, Karl Ove Knausgaard, theraminist Lydia Kavina, and George Saunders, in a piece anthologized in Conversations with George Saunders (University of Mississippi Press, 2022). Aidan’s fiction and poetry have appeared in The Xavier Review, Slipstream, and other journals and his poems are anthologized in Silo City Reading Series: Ten Years of Poems in Grain Silos, edited by Noah Falck in 2022, and Best New Poets 2019, edited by Cate Marvin. He is also the author of the visual poetry project Organizing Isolation: Half-Lives of Love at Long Distance, from designer and book artist Joel Brenden's Linoleum Press.
Alongside his own writing, Aidan is a cofounder and publisher of Foundlings Press, which has produced books, chapbooks, anthologies, broadsides, and archival works by new and established authors such as Forrest Gander, C.D. Wright, D.A. Powell, Mary Ruefle, Frank Stanford, and many others. At Foundlings, Aidan joined Max Crinnin as co-editor of Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford (2018), a seminal anthology celebrated as a groundbreaking contribution to the study and discussion of Frank Stanford's poetry. He also conceived of and served as managing editor for the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX books, 2017). Through Carrowduff Arts, a multidisciplinary arts advisory and production company, Aidan has curated, presented, and consulted for a wide range of arts programs, performances, and initiatives, including an inaugural “mini-residency” for poets and writers at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. He has been a guest speaker at events at NYU Glucksman Ireland House, Daemen College, Canisius College, SUNY Geneseo, and the 2018 Frank Stanford Festival in Fayetteville Arkansas. He earned a bachelor's from Canisius College and a master's at the University of Edinburgh. I Am Here You Are Not I Love You is his first film project.
Mark Anthony Dellas is a cinematographer, editor, and post production specialist with experience on a variety of short and long-form film and television programs. He started his career serving several years as a digital intermediate engineer at Harbor Picture Company in NYC, where he gained experience in multiple post production platforms. He built and maintained world-class edit, color, finishing, and storage systems on countless projects, including Jim Jarmusch's documentary Gimme Danger and Spike Lee's documentary Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall. For the last seven years, he has worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where his skill set has expanded to include cinematography, gimbal camera operation, and creative editing. He's now worked on over 30 feature films, commercial productions, and independent shorts. He served as an assistant camera on Ken Burns's The American Buffalo, and he served as Cinematographer on First We Bombed New Mexico, an award-winning independent feature documentary about the tragic "down wind" effects of the Trinity Bomb on Native and New Mexican communities throughout New Mexico. Most recently, he spent three years working on an upcoming documentary detailing the life and art of Georgia O'Keeffe. He contributed cinematography, and served as editor with writer-director Paul Wagner. He continues to follow his passion for storytelling from his hometown of Buffalo, NY.
Andrew Topolski (1952–2008) was a Brooklyn-based draftsman, sculptor, and intermedia artist whose work drew on a vast range of references, spanning architecture, music, cartography, the technology of war, and other disciplines. Born in Buffalo, New York in 1952, he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in art from the University at Buffalo and was a member of the “Hallwalls generation,” featured in Hallwalls' first-ever exhibition (UB Gallery 219, January 22–February 2, 1975) alongside co-founder Robert Longo, Joe Panone, and Roger Rapp. Topolski moved to New York City in the mid 1980s with his partner, the artist Cindy Suffoletto, and earned a devoted following for a vast body of work consisting of various mixed media constructions, series of delicate drawings using powdered graphite, and geometrical sculptures that involve numerical progressions and musical notations.
A prolific creator, Topolski’s work featured in solo and group exhibitions in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, and across the U.S., and his pieces are held in the permanent collections of more than 15 major galleries, including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, and the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art, along with Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, the University of Texas, the University of Illinois, the University of North Carolina, and other institutions. In 2001, the National Gallery chose Topolski’s "Overground II" for inclusion in A Century of Drawing, a canonical retrospective of the best works on paper from the twentieth century.
In addition to his studio practice, Topolski taught for many years at Parsons/The New School. Profoundly troubled by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Bush Administration’s response, Topolski stopped creating any work between September 2001 and approximately 2003, during which time he relocated to the rural hamlet of Callicoon, New York. This uncharacteristic period of inactivity preceded a creative explosion of work incorporating new themes and media, which he began to show at the UBS Gallery in New York City and the Burchfield Penney in Buffalo. He died unexpectedly in 2008.
Cindy Suffoletto (1962–2012) was born in Buffalo, New York and studied art at the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart and Buffalo State College. She developed a practice focused on sculpture, mixed media collage, and works on paper. She showed her work in group exhibitions in Western New York at the Upton Gallery at Buffalo State College and at Hallwalls before moving to New York City with her partner, the artist Andrew Topolski, in the mid-1980s.
Suffoletto and Topolski shared a studio on Broadway in Williamsburg from the late '80s to the early '90s. Suffoletto's work from this period, including sculpture and large-scale works on paper, focused on architectural and religious themes, from the design of Gothic cathedrals to the polylinguistic and ecumenical hybridization of the Palaeologan Renaissance. She exhibited this work in group shows at the Rotunda Gallery of the Brooklyn War Memorial and at Galerie Schuppenhauer in Cologne, Germany. Suffoletto retreated from her own active studio practice in the early '90s as she focused on supporting Topolski's career. She cataloged Topolski's work, tracked and managed his sales, handled correspondence with collectors and gallerists, and coordinated outreach to corporate art buying programs. They moved together to Callicoon, New York in 2001, splitting their time between a house in the Catskills and an apartment in Brooklyn.
Suffoletto returned to an active studio practice after Topolski's passing in 2008, focusing on oils and mixed-media work that drew from the themes and materials that surrounded her home in Callicoon. She shared this work with close friends and family, but made no effort to sell or exhibit it. She passed away in 2012 following a brief illness.