The Block Gallery is home to the Bronx Museum's celebrated AIM fellowship and artist residency programs. Named in memory of late Bronx Museum executive director, Holly Block, the multipurpose venue features private work space, programming facilities, and exhibition infrastructure to aid the creative and professional advancement of AIM program artists.

On view: September 23 - October 7, 2019

Through collage, sculpture, fabrics & textiles, the Ciprian brothers tap into a well of ancestral knowledge to offer narratives of resilience. Layered within their work are varying forms of resistance — from defiant mass rebellions to oral histories passed on through generations in coded songs, stories and riddles. Bozales, Ladinos, Cimarrones are terms which were used by the Spanish in the “new world” to describe different communities of color at varying degrees of tension with the colonial enterprise. As their forebears, the Ciprian brothers employ an ethic of make-do resourcefulness in pieces that integrate photographs, discarded books, old bedsheets and family lore.

On view: August 21 - September 29, 2019

Pa Comida Perida / Barriga Partia, is an old Dominican aphorism— like those told in pithy two-liners that contain a general truth, like “the early bird gets the worm.” Aphorisms by design are usually regional and language specific, and so difficult to translate. This one loosely translates to “I would Rather a Split Stomach / Than See Food Go Wasted.” In the exhibition, these and other aphorisms, slip between personal story and folklore in works that center migration, oral history & the objects that trace diasporas across lands.

On view: June 11 - September 23, 2019

Curated by Rachel Frank, Kristen Racaniello, and Jacob Rhodes

Featuring:

Alex Sewell, Alison Kudlow, Amanda Konishi, Amanda Nedham, Amy Khoshbin, Anastasiya Tarasenko, Angelica Bergamini, Aparna Sarkar, Brian Willmont, Caroline Wells Chandler, Colin Radcliffe, Connie Zheng, Corinna Ray, Dexter Ciprian, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Eric LoPresti, Erica Magrey, Erika Lynne Hanson, Esther Ruiz, Hilary Doyle, Hilary Irons, Jennifer May Reiland, Joell Baxter, Joiri Minaya, Julia Oldham, Karen Lederer, Katarina Riesing, Kelli Thompson, Keri Oldham, Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Lisa Schilling, Loren Britton, Mark Zubrovich, McKendree Key & Cynthia Alberto, Padma Rajendran, Paul Gagner, Rachel Frank, Rachel Garber Cole, Rachel Schmidhofer, Robin Kang, Rose Nestler, Sahana Ramakrishna, Sarah Alice Moran, Stella Ebner, Stephanie J. Wood, Susan Metrican, Valery Jung Estabrook, Vanessa Albury, Zorawar Sidhu

On view: June 22 - September 7, 2019

Transitional Objects highlights artists who explore human relationships to inanimate material – commodities, tools, personal belongings, clothing, and all of the other nonliving substances that populate our daily lives. Working in sculpture, installation, and video, these artists experiment with unconventional materials, take inspiration from or produce functional objects, and create sculptures that elucidate both the allure and the difficulty of material forms.

In the field of psychology, the phrase ‘transitional objects’ refers to objects adopted by children as a means of soothing their own anxiety, a role played by blankets and stuffed animals but also dolls, pillows, and items of clothing. The transitional object is associated with immaturity, with a need for constant reassurance, and an inability to distinguish between living creatures and inanimate forms. But in its role as a soother of anxiety, as a tool to navigate relations with the outside world, and as an object imbued with significance beyond its own basic functionality, the transitional object foreshadows many of the roles assigned to objects by humans throughout their lives. Focusing on the alluring, disturbing, obsessive, disruptive, and excessive, Transitional Objects encourages viewers to reconsider the social, cultural, and economic significance we ascribe to objects.

opening April 25th, 7-10pm

on view April 25, 2919 — April 30, 2019

I was never very good at art
I shunned the macaroni
pasted in a clumsy heart
I felt myself a phony

I could never get the hang of wood
It’s heavy and I’m weak
nothing in pine was any good
let alone in teak

my paintings sag, their stretcher bars
pulled down by indecision
no publisher wants my memoirs
they say I lack ‘a vision’

the Guggenheim don’t want me
and the Biennale said they’ll pass
I won’t be on the Cannes marquee
I haven’t got the class

but I remember one sweet morn
before her game of bridge
my mother took my work, half torn
and hung it on the fridge.

Organized by Annelies Kamen for Crybaby

Opening September 1, 2018

On view: September 1 - 30, 2018

It was summer some years ago when, across my studio window, I caught a glance of the brown arms of an elderly woman hanging clothes and sheets over her windowsill. I took out my phone and recorded the different fabrics being carried by the wind. It brought to mind images of Abuela in Dominican Republic hanging out sheets to dry in the backyard. I could remember her saying “tiende la ropa que va a llover!” (“hang the clothes before it rains!”), and we would rush to hang clothes on furniture and household objects. Seeing it now in New York City, this mental image seemed to collapse the historical time and geographical distance travelled from the so called third world to the first world. It was dizzying and unsettling.

Around the same time I started collecting hand-me-down artifacts donated to a second-hand shop around the corner from my studio. Similarly, the image of hand-me-down objects seemed to capture for me a quintessential immigrant ethic of make-do resourcefulness. These and other images come together in my recent work as vehicles to contemplate migration, a longing for home and the objects that trace diasporas across lands.

Field Projects, NY
Opening January 11, 2018

On view: January 11th - February 17th, 2018

curated by Sara Maria Salamone & Tyler Lafreniere
with

Caitlin Albritton, Dan Fig, Peter Hamlin, Lydia Pettit, Megan Stroech

Field Projects is pleased to present show #47 : DEEP STRETCH, a group exhibition curated by Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere of Mrs., NY, from our Winter Open Call.

The word stretch has a curious autologicality across its various classes. As a verb, stretch can mean to be elastic or to be stretchy, as a fabric, or something more somatic. Then, as a noun, still more physically solid like a long stretch of road. The act of deep stretching can beneficially affects one’s mind, body and spirit. A deep stretch can start your training to loosen your muscles and end your conditioning, to lengthen them. Rewarding feelings of satisfaction arise as you lean into the burn. Stretching has proven also to slow signs of aging and increase stamina thus directly affecting one’s stress energy levels. A stretch can be meditative as seen in yogic practices; regular deep stretching can generate calm feelings, and improve both physical and mental balance. A stretch can be a lean or a reach, not only physical, but mental or metaphorical.

Curated by Mrs., NY (Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere), Deep Stretch presents six artists working in painting and sculpture. As in the stretches above, familiar scenes and patterns are subtly and slowly forced beyond a point of resistance. A chair suspended, a figure in reflection placed impossibly behind us, a warping tumble into a tile floor. The organic push/pull between the eye and the vision hold us in these works, until tensions succumb.

MULTIVERSE / summer group show
Curated by Tatyana Okshteyn

with Joe Bochynski, Dexter Ciprian, Vita Eruhimovitz, Jack Henry, Everett Kane, Julian Montague

June 2 - July 9, 2017
Opening Reception: June 2, 6pm - 9pm

Through a variety of contemporary artistic practices the artworks highlight the worlds that exist parallel to or in place of our own. Any universe that is creatively possible has equal possibility of actually existing.

pieces on the body on the ground
Bushwick Open Studios 2016
Myrtle Light Studios, Queens, NY

Opening October 1, 2016

Bronx Calling: The Third AiM Biennial, 2015
The Bronx Museum of Art, The Bronx, NY
Opening July 15, 2015
On view July 9 - September 20, 2015

curated by Hatuey Ramos-Fermín and Laura Napier
with

Anna Ablogina, Manal Abu-Shaheen, Keith O. Anderson, Erica Bailey, Bryan Balla, Chloë Bass, Hannes Bend, Rebecca Bird, Sophia Chai, Xinyi Cheng, Felix R. Cid, Dexter Ciprian, Tim Clifford, Adrian Coleman, Corydon Cowansage, Mike Crane, Donald Hải Phú Daedalus , Cat Del Buono, Jamie Diamond, Patricia Domínguez, Glenn Fischer, Nicholas Fraser, Yoav Friedländer, Borinquen Gallo, Ian Gerson, Shanti Grumbine, Ronald Hall, Nicholas Hamilton, Tahir Hemphill, Tracie Hervy, Lucia Hierro, Samantha Holmes, Traci Horgen, Maria Hupfield, Tatiana Istomina, Ariel Jackson, Ian Jones, Tasha Lewis, Anya Liftig, Eleen Lin, Sharon Ma, Daniel Mantilla, Eden Morris, Meredith Nickie, Tammy Nguyen, Julie Nymann, Sarah O Donnell, Dionis Ortiz, Mitch Paster, Armita Raafat, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Friederike Reveman, Carlos Rigau, Gamaliel Rodriguez, Sarah Ellen Rowe, Michael Shultis, Rob Swainston, Erik Shane Swanson, Martyna Szczesna, Rica Takashima, Catherine Telford-Keogh, Denise Treizman, Ryan Turley, Jessica Vaughn, David Gregory Wallace, Lindsey Warren, Margaret Inga Wiatrowski, Didier William, David J. Wilson, Ezra Wube, Christine Wong Yap, and Brian Zegeer.

Generis 01b: Community Association, 2014
Exchange Rates: The Bushwick Expo
The Vazquez, Brooklyn, NY
Opening October 24, 2014
On view October 23 - 26, 2014

Curated by Susan Surface
with

Sean Alexander, Sarah Gilbert, Sarah E. Gilbert, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Nicholas Nyland, Megan Stockton

Bushwick Open Studios 2014
Myrtle Light Studios, Queens, NY

Opening May 31, 2014
On view May 30 - June 1, 2014