The First AIM Biennial and 30-Year Anniversary Exhibition at The Bronx Museum

Sunday, June 26th was the Open House for Bronx Calling: The First AIM Biennial at The Bronx Museum of the Arts. The exhibition will be on view from June 26 through September 5, 2011 at The Bronx Museum, Wave Hill, and Randall's Island as part of FLOW.11.

The program which was being celebrated with beer and wine on the airy Bronx Museum's outdoor terrace, AIM (Artist in the Marketplace), was developed three decades ago to help artists at the beginning of their careers to learn about the professional practices of the art world as well as to teach them how to introduce their work to the public.

Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs, who has been working at the Museum for more than seven years, says that they usually get 600 to 800 applications a year from multi-media artists, and from those they choose 72 AIM participants.

"This is not an art school," says Bessa. "It's all about managing yourself, knowing about legal issues...In the past, AIM was an annual show, and this year, we decided to do a biennial to split up the work," says Bessa.

This year the artists were divided into two arbitrary groups of 36 each.

One of the two guest curators of the exhibit, Wayne Northcross, says he enjoys the liberation he feels at not having an over-arching theme for this large-scale exhibit.

Bessa appreciates the diversity and unpredictability of the art.

"This year there was a lot of painting," he says. "You can feel the pulse of the current art movement."

Check out Target Free Days: Target sponsors free Tuesday and Saturday morning admission to Wave Hill.

For more information, please visit: www.bronxmuseum.org.

¡Aquí! Opening Reception at the NoMaa Gallery

Thursday evening, was the opening reception of ¡Aqui! (Here) - an exhibition at NoMAA’s newly inaugurated gallery space in Washington Heights.

¡Aqui! (Here) will take place from September 25th - December 30th and exposes works by local artists depicting their creative experiences within neighborhoods in NYC, as well as celebrate Latino arts and cultures uptown. A panel of jurors selected the fifteen artists exhibiting in the show whose work was curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, special projects coordinator at El Museo del Barrio.

I was able to speak briefly to artist, Hector Canonge, about his piece entitled "Intersections." His multi-media project includes neon signs, a map of NYC with bar codes, a scanner, and a projector and screen.

Joking how much of his art deals with food (a passion we have in common). He explained how the bar codes on the map are the locations of food carts around the city. When you click on a bar code, an interview with the person that handles the food card in that particular location appears on the screen. He continued to say how the people (who are mostly immigrants) that work in these carts are "codified" by the actual owners of these carts - a sort of underground mafia that we never see.

Canonge also has another exhibit called "Epistolar" which talks about his family history. This will be going on until September 29th at Peter Fingesten Gallery, Pace University.