Friday, March 14, 2025 at 7:30 pm
Hallwalls & Talking Leaves...Books present
Curated & Presented In Person by Vera Dika
“Our three-part series [an exhibition in lower Manhattan and two film programs at the Roxy Theatre] began as a gallery show at SARA'S at Dunkunsthalle at 64 Fulton Street, and then as a film series at the Roxy Cinema, featuring works of Pictures Generation artists who worked across mediums, and across boundaries of high art and popular culture.
“Robert Longo, Charlie Clough, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Dwyer, and Michael Zwack, members of the famed Pictures Generation, began their careers at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, New York in the mid-1970. They met the West Coast artist Jack Goldstein, first at Hallwalls, and then again in New York City. In the summer of 1977, Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman moved to 85 South Street in New York. Here is where Cindy Sherman created most of her early Untitled (Film Stills), and where Robert Longo's Men in the Cities series were photographed on the roof, and subsequently drawn. Sherman soon moved to 64 Fulton Street with Nancy Dwyer. In 1981 Gretchen Bender arrived in New York City and settled into the South Street loft.”
EAST AND WEST COAST MEET IN DOWNTOWN NYC: THE SHORT FILMS
“A central passion of the Pictures Generation artists was ‘The Movies’ (and the Media), that is, they wanted to make art about movies, to critique popular culture, and even to make their own movies. Their passion initially took them to short films and video works, and then even into mainstream narrative filmmaking.
"The shorts program features early film and video productions by Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Glenda Hydler, Robert Longo, Gretchen Bender, and Sandy Tait. These works engage popular culture, and gender issues, but always with a keen eye to the material and history of their medium, be it 16mm film, analog video, MTV music video, or [genres of] narrative film [such as film noir/sci-fi and horror]."
The curator of this program, Vera Dika, will be present to introduce it and to sign copies of her 2023 book, The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls: Traces of the Body, Gender, & History, which has just been reissued this year in paperback.
