Release Date: Apr 04, 2013

Program is a New Collaboration between Times Square Arts and The Clocktower Gallery

(NEW YORK) —Times Square Arts, the public arts program of the Times Square Alliance, is collaborating with the Clocktower Gallery, the legendary alternative art space, on After Hours, a new series that will bring experimental, multimedia programming to select distinctive venues around Times Square on a monthly basis this spring. The first After Hours will take place on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 and will feature a video by Marco Brambilla projected onto a swimming pool into the Room Mate Grace Hotel lobby. The program is curated by Alanna Heiss, Clocktower Gallery Director, and Joe Ahearn, Clocktower Gallery Curator of Performance and Installation, with the support of the Clocktower Gallery curatorial, production, and radio team.

Times Square’s high profile and iconic status informs the public image of New York City. Its billboards and Broadway performances are societal benchmarks – setting, and breaking, the norms of popular culture. So too has the public art in Times Square, dating back at least to the 1980 landmark exhibition Times Square Show, a collection of experimental music, performance, and video work organized by the artist group Collaborative Projects, Inc.

Sherry Dobbin, Director of Public Art for the Times Square Alliance, says: “After Hours is the newest iteration of this kind of creative, underground, culture-shaping event to come to the Crossroads of the World. By converting our neighborhood’s spaces into mini-galleries and show places, we are   reaffirming Times Square’s position in the artistic vanguard.”

The first After Hours on April 10 will take place at the Room Mate Grace Hotel (125 W. 45th Street) from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. and will feature an immersive installation by Marco Brambilla, a New York-based video collage and installation artist known for his elaborate recontextualizations of popular and found imagery. His new site-specific installation, titled Materialize/De-materialize, is a video work projected on the surface of the of the lobby swimming pool. Brambilla focuses on the transitional aspect of the Times Square location, through which millions of people from around the globe pass every year.

Brambilla uses video samples from the “Transporter room” effect from the original Star Trek television series, where the characters were “De-materialized” then teleported through space and “Re-materialized” at their destination. Groupings of hundreds of characters are introduced using this effect, each edited into a motion loop where they are never fully revealed, and always appear on the verge of departure or arrival, trapped in a perpetual state of transition. To produce this work, Brambilla sampled each instance where this effect appears in the 27 episodes of the original Star Trek television series (1966-69), then removed each character from the original background, leaving only the outline of the person appearing and disappearing in a shimmering curtain of floating sparkle. The characters appear grouped into discrete rings on a black field; they gradually grow in size and multiply endlessly before dissipating back into the black field. Characters seem to migrate from ring to ring randomly forever trapped in this constantly regenerating moment of flux.

Brambilla’s installation will be complemented by an organ composition and performance by Cammisa Buerhaus.
Each program will be included in an artist film, and be released on the Clocktower Gallery’s website, ARTonAIR.org. Attendees will receive a limited edition postcard artwork at each event.

Entry to After Hours is by invitation only. Hyperallergic, the media partner for the program, is distributing a limited amount of tickets. Sign up to receive invitations to upcoming After Hours here: www.timessquarenyc.org/AfterHours.
All events end in time for guests to attend the Midnight Moment, the nightly digital art gallery on the electronic billboards of Times Square from 11.57 to midnight. Midnight Moment is a monthly presentation of the Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts.

Media Partner



PRESS TICKETS: There are a limited number of press tickets available. Please contact Daniela Stigh, Rubenstein Communications, at 212-843-8269 or dstigh@rubenstein.com, if you are interested in attending.
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Times Square Arts, the public arts program of the Times Square Alliance, presents leading contemporary art and performances in multiple forms and media to more than 400,000 daily visitors to New York City’s Times Square, making it one of the highest profile public arts programs in the United States. Since its inception, Times Square Arts has featured works by a diverse group of more than five dozen prominent and emerging artists. Working in partnership with cultural institutions and festivals, the program is further supported by Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund, which works to spur and support cultural innovation in New York City’s creative sector. Visit www.TimesSquareNYC.org/arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter: @TSqArts

The Clocktower Gallery & ARTonAIR.org
Founded in 1972, the Clocktower Gallery is a legendary alternative art space for exhibitions, performances, long-term and site-specific installations and artist residencies, dedicated to producing experimental, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational projects. The Gallery’s radio station, ARTonAIR.org, is a free and searchable online cultural audio archive with over 5,000 hours of non-commercial music, audio art, spoken word, cultural news, history and dialogue, and new media innovation. Together, the gallery and radio function as a laboratory for experimentation, working closely and collaboratively with artists to develop, realize and present innovative and challenging work in all media and disseminate it to communities both locally and around the world. www.ARTonAIR.org
Hyperallergic
Hyperallergic is an award-winning art blogazine that serves as a forum for serious, playful and radical thinking about art in the world today. The leading site for art-related ideas, opinions, reviews, and news, Hyperallergic is the meeting place for art lovers from around the world. Hyperallergic.com

About the Artists

Marco Brambilla was born in Milan, Italy. He lives and works in New York City. Brambilla's renowned video installations have garnered international acclaim from publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine. The New Yorker praised his work as "absorbing and delicate enough to restore one's faith in the medium."  Mr. Brambilla has been exhibited worldwide, including the Seoul Biennial, the New Museum in New York, Kunsthalle in Bern, SFMOMA, and Venice Film Festival (2011) and the Sundance Film Festival (2012). In May 2011, Brambilla's first major retrospective opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. His work is part of the permanent collections at the Guggenheim New York, San Francisco Museum of Art and Arco Foundation in Madrid. He has been awarded both the Tiffany Foundation and Colbert Foundation awards for his video installation works.

Cammisa Buerhaus works in New York City as a sculptor and transmission artist. Her sonic, sculptural inventions machinate the production of sound, exploring the effect upon and the relation to our body experience. She says, “By manipulating sound through transmission technology, I create and control information, draw new boundaries, and highlight the importance of the realized, autonomous individual in a world without national identity.”

About the Organizers

Tim Tompkins has been the President of the Times Square Alliance since 2002. The Alliance is a business improvement district that works to improve and promote Times Square – cultivating the creativity, energy, and edge that have made the area an icon of entertainment, culture, and urban life for over a century. Prior to the Alliance, he was the Founder and Director of Partnerships for Parks, which works to support New York City’s neighborhood parks and which won an Innovations in Government Award from the JFK School of Government at Harvard for its work to restore the Bronx River.
Sherry Dobbin is the Director of Public Art for Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance. She has over 20 years of experience across performance, visual arts, public realm, where she has worked as producer, administrator, consultant and curator.

Alanna Heiss is the founding Director of the Clocktower Gallery, and founder and former Director of MoMA PS1. She is a leader of the early 1970’s alternative spaces movement in New York City, and has organized over 700 exhibitions at the Clocktower, PS1 and in art spaces around the world.

Joe Ahearn, Clocktower Curator of Performance and Installation, is a leading voice in the national network of underground music spaces. He is resident curator at the Silent Barn, a renowned communal music space, and the Managing Director of Showpaper, a non-profit, bi-weekly arts and music newsprint.
Beatrice Johnson is Managing Director and Associate Curator at the Clocktower Gallery. She curated the solo exhibition Papo Colo: Assorted Times in Singular Spaces, and runs operations at the Clocktower. She is a former dancer, and was Curatorial Assistant at PS1.

Media Contacts:
Gia Storms, Times Square Alliance
212.452.5205 | 917.626.6757 | gstorms@TimesSquareNYC.org
Daniela Stigh, Rubenstein Communications
212.843.8269 | dstigh@rubenstein.com