Download the Press Release Here.

Opening Reception:

Co-Prosperity Catskill

391 Main Street, Catskill, NY

Sunday, June 11th, 6:00pm - 9:00pm

(June 11th - July 24th, 2023) Public Media Institute and Co-Prosperity Catskill is excited to present a solo exhibition of photographs from Chicago-based artist and recent US Latinx Art Forum Award recipient: Diana Solís. The exhibition will also be on-view during Upstate Art Weekend and NADA fair.

This exhibit presents iconic images by Diana Solís (b. 1956) who began photographing as a teen while growing up in a predominantly Mexican community of Chicago called Pilsen. Working as a photojournalist in the 1980s-90s, Solís also documented the queer and Mexican communities they inhabited. They paused in 1990 and returned to photography in 2020 and since then they have been reflecting the people and the places that have shaped them. The exhibit includes historic photographs, new digital work, as well as ephemera and articles. 

Read more about Diana Solís on her website: dianasolis.com

For inquiries, please contact us at dianasolis.com

To see more work by Diana Solís, visit the Leslie Lohman Museum:  Images on Which to Build: 1970s-1990s, curated by Ariel Goldberg, on view in NYC through July 30.

About the Artist: Diana Solis (b 1956, Mexico) is a Chicago-based visual artist, photographer, and educator who has documented queer Latinx activism and daily life for almost 5 decades. She studied studio and experimental photography and worked as a photojournalist for 25 years, occasionally halted by recurring breast cancer. She photographed poets including Sandra Cisneros, many consecutive years of Chicago and Mexico Pride marches, IV Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe, early years at Latino Youth, marches and demonstrations, Chicago women’s rugby and women’s marathons, women’s bars, feminist gatherings, Chicano theater, and her neighborhood of Pilsen. She has been a teaching artist, a painter and illustrator and photographer for over 40 years and currently resides in Pilsen.

Performance Night: “Necessary Excess” // June 11th 6-9PM @ Co-Prosperity Catskill

Join us on Sunday, June 11th for an evening of queer/fem performance across a variety of platforms. Sparked by a wooden stage built by artist Edie Fake, installed at the Co-Prosperity Catskill gallery for the next year, Necessary Excess brings together five artists from the Hudson Valley, Chicago and New York City.

Ticket Master presents: CATSKILLCOPS unfurls harsh noise wallpaper with just a tapeless cassette recorder, shaped by decades spent in underground music scenes and art worlds in Colorado Springs, Chicago and Brooklyn. Upstate duo The Laurens offers a dance experience created for Fake’s stage, born of years of collaboration in Brooklyn and beyond in a variety of experimental movement fields. Responding to The Laurens’ dance, André Azevedo projects onto the ceiling above the stage in a live feed improvisational piece in addition to sharing his own solo video work. And returning to the Hudson Valley from Chicago, Ále Campos AKA Celeste brings electric, drag-informed performance art to our Catskill stage.

Download the Press Release Here.

Opening Reception:

Co-Prosperity Catskill

391 Main Street, Catskill, NY

Friday, March 31st, 6:30pm - 8:30pm

(March 31st - June 2nd, 2023) Public Media Institute and Co-Prosperity Catskill are thrilled to announce that Reckless Rolodex, a group exhibition that originated at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois Chicago, will be exhibited at our gallery in Catskill, New York! 

Curated by Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson, and Caroline Picard, Reckless Rolodex presents the work of ten contemporary artists to highlight the lasting, though largely overlooked, influence of Chicago performance artist, writer, and filmmaker Lawrence Steger, unearthing an artistic predecessor too-easily marginalized by his early death in 1999.

The originating exhibition on view January-March 2023 was named as a “Must-See” in ArtForum, listed on New-City’sTop 5 list, and featured in the Chicago Reader and Art Papers.

“The exhibition imparts urgency and impresses intimacy upon Steger’s legacy and honors the artistic communities that continued in his absence. There is a type of magic that occurs when one is dislocated in time and place. It is in these moments that one can join something bigger than the self. This magic is what “Rolodex” offers viewers.” - The Chicago Reader

 Exhibiting Artists

Susan Anderson, Lilli Carré, Edie Fake, Max Guy, Young Joon Kwak, Devin T. Mays, John Neff, Betsy Odom, Derrick Woods-Morrow, and Cherrie Yu.

About the Exhibition

Reckless Rolodex (March 31 - June 2) highlights the lasting, though largely overlooked, influence of Lawrence Steger, described by the Chicago Tribune as “one of the most important, and most influential, performance artists in Chicago during the late 1980s and 90s.” Lawrence Steger explored desire and sexuality in performance until his early death in 1999 due to AIDS-related complications. Rather than eulogize the artist’s life, Reckless Rolodex underlines Steger’s legacy through works by contemporary artists responding to his work and research practice. A skilled director, writer and performer, Steger relied on the disciplines of theater and a community of collaborative artists to realize his intricately constructed performances, reflecting his deep knowledge of a wide range of sources, from pop culture and film to the writing of Jean Genet and the Fluxus-style works of Yoko Ono. Mercurial, mordant, stylish, and comical, he presented himself refracted through historical figures such as Ludwig II, the nineteenth-century “Mad King” of Bavaria, or imaginary personas like nocturnal figures that populate cabaret dreams and nightmares.

Rather than eulogize the artist’s life, Reckless Rolodex underlines Steger’s legacy with a constellation of works by contemporary artists in response to his performances and research practices, engaging theatricality and transecting media and emotional registers to undermine the notion of a static self. Artist Edie Fake has designed a stage, central to the exhibition, for the presentation of performances, lectures, and conversations. Other works include an exploding cast of a mirror ball by Young Joon Kwak; paper masks by Max Guy; a gestural installation by Devin T. Mays; kitchen knives fabricated from graphite by Betsy Odom; a mattress sculpture by Derrick Woods-Morrow; an oversized ceramic door chain by Lilli Carré; a deconstructed archive wall painting by John Neff; a video work by Cherrie Yu exploring dance, labor, and mimicry; and Susan Anderson’s portrait of Steger. Exhibition essays by Joao Florencio  and Matthew Goulish will be available in free publications.

Exhibition materials can be found in plain text and in audio recordings here.

Following the closure of Reckless Rolodex in June, Co-Prosperity Catskill’s subsequent exhibitions by artists Nicole Marroquin, Diana Solis, and Jen Delos Reyes will each incorporate the stage Edie Fake produced for Reckless Rolodex, illustrating how a conversation inspired by Lawrence Steger continues to unfold today.

Support
Reckless Rolodex originated at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois Chicago January 13 to March 18, 2023 with support  from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; and the School of Art & Art History, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.