Curtis Cuffie

Curtis Cuffie

ISBN 10: 1953691153 / ISBN 13: 9781953691156

Verlag: Blank Forms Editions, US, 2023

Beschreibung

Curtis Cuffie (1955-2002) was an artist who lived and worked in and around the East Village from the mid-1980s until his untimely death in the early 2000s. He moved to New York from Hartsville, South Carolina, as a teenager and lived unhoused for long stretches of his adult life. Cuffie found local notoriety for the way he adorned the streets of downtown New York, collecting what the city provided, often sifting trash to stage on-the-spot sculptures along the Bowery and Cooper Square. His arrangements took the form of impossibly balanced towers, delicate shrines, and unwieldy processions up to thirty-feet in length installed along the walls, fences, and sidewalks of the Lower East Side. Nearly without fail they were removed by the police, inclement weather, the department of sanitation, or the grounds team at Cooper Union, which would later employ him. An enduring presence in the East Village, Cuffie staged sprawling tableaux outside the Village Voice offices that were admired by students and venerable artists alike. He was profiled by scene reporters, political writers, and folk-art journalists, all the while exhibiting in the neighborhood's famed alternative art spaces. While few of his sculptures remain today, a trove of photographs from the 1990s taken by Cuffie and his companion Katy Abel preserve the work he made in the city. This photobook, the first publication about Cuffie, seeks to honor the artist by collecting the efforts of two of his partners: Carol Thompson, who lived with Cuffie from 1996 to 2001 and archived a great number of his 35mm photographs, and Abel, a Cooper Square resident who took hundreds of snapshots of his art. Curtis Cuffie is designed by Julie Peeters, edited by Scott Portnoy and Robert Snowden with Ciarán Finlayson, and additionally includes writing by the artist, Finlayson, and critic Alan Moore, and images taken by Tom Warren and Margaret Morton. CURTIS CUFFIE (1955-2002) was an artist based in New York City's East Village. Originally from Hartsville, South Carolina, he moved to Brooklyn at fifteen and eventually settled in Manhattan, first near Bryant Park and later around the Bowery. Homeless for long stretches of time, Cuffie became well-known in the 1990s for the sculptures he made using found materials, which he installed in public spaces downtown. Artforum, the New York Times, and the Village Voice all profiled and reviewed his work. and he held solo exhibitions at Flamingo East, Tribes, and 4th Street Photo Gallery, all in the Lower East Side. In his lifetime, Cuffie was featured in nearly a dozen group shows across the US at venues including Exit Art, American Primitive, and the Jamaica Art Center in New York, and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Most recently his work was included in "Souls Grown Diaspora," curated by Sam Gordon, at Apexart in 2020 and "Greater New York" at MoMA PS1 in 2021-22, both in New York. New York City's East Village. Originally from Hartsville, South.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers LU-9781953691156

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Curtis Cuffie
• Verlag: Blank Forms Editions, US
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 1953691153
• ISBN-13: 9781953691156
• Einband: Paperback
• Zustand: New
• Gewicht: 816 Gramm

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

The first book on the art-world legend who installed his ephemeral sculptures on the streets of New York's East Village

Curtis Cuffie (1955-2002) was an artist from Harstville, South Carolina, who found local notoriety in the 1990s for the thrilling and surprising way he adorned the streets of New York's East Village. His on-the-spot sculptures were woven into fences, hung from walls and sprawled along the Bowery and Cooper Square.
Making use of whatever he could find to fashion works that were imaginative and real, Cuffie took the street for all it could provide: materials, an audience, a rhythm and a sense of the strange unexpectedness of public life. He was unhoused for stretches of his life, and his sculptures were viewed near to his outdoor quarters. Cuffie's art was often removed by city sanitation, but new work would spring up soon after. Though little of his art survives today, a trove of photographs documenting it keeps him in the present.
This publication, the first on Cuffie, seeks to honor the artist and rectify his omission by going backward to recover that which has been left behind. It places Cuffie's own photographs and those of his companion Katy Abel alongside pictures that photographers Margaret Morton and Tom Warren took of Cuffie and his art on the streets.