Cuchifritos Holiday Benefit and Silent Auction!

Image from POS-IT, Yoko Inoue, Curated by Andrea Salerno, 2007

Monday December 17th from 6 to 9pm

Our first ever Holiday Benefit and Silent Auction on behalf of the gallery. Please come support us, and celebrate with us!

The event is being generously hosted at:

Sara Meltzer Gallery, 525-531 West 26th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001

Please RSVP to Paul Clay: paul.clay@aai-nyc.org

(You can also call Paul at 917.238.9324, though email is recommended)

Look for the following artists at our silent auction!

Jonathan Allen, Eric Angles, Soledad Arias, Nicole Awai, Ivin Ballen, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Erica Baum, AJ Bocchino, Ian Burns, Laura Carton, Alyssa Casey, Azul Ceballos, Chris Coffin, Stephanie Diamond, Madeline Djerejian, Raul Vincent Enriquez, Inka Essenhigh, Jon Feinstein, Lilah Freedland, Carla Gannis, Joy Garnett, Kate Gilmore, Max Goldfarb, Charles Goldman, Patti Hallock, Heather Hart, Nicholas Herman, Elana Herzog, Christopher K. Ho, Yoko Inoue, Peter Kreider, Laura Lobdell, Reynard Loki, Adria Marquez, Frank Meuschke, Lisa Mordhorst, Navin Norling, Edgar Orlaineta, Marie Roberts, Zoe Sheehan Saldana, Edward Schexnayder, Fran Shalom, Adam Shecter, Jean Shin, Eve Sussman, Spencer Sweeney, Steed Taylor, Mary Valverde, James Walsh, and Phoebe Washburn.

Cuchifritos is a contemporary art gallery and project space located in the heart of the Essex Street food market. It is a project of the Artists Alliance Inc., a New York City based not-for-profit serving the visual arts. This location, inside the market, helps Cuchifritos create a deeper connection between artists and the general public by showing cutting edge contemporary art within a local community setting. It encourages new artists and the creation of new work. In addition, it fosters the career development of independent curators by soliciting proposals.

"Essex Street Market is not the kind of place you would expect to find an art gallery, but this is precisely the point." - James Westcott, zingmagazine

"In the end, it is the experience of being in Cuchifritos itself ... The diminutive space abuts the southern end of the market, where local pundits convene to gossip and feast. Their strident voices permeate the expected sanctity of the gallery whose doors open onto this modern agora, making clear the vital connection between art and life." - Noah Chasin, Time Out New York

In the last six and a half years, we have shown well over 200 contemporary artists, many of them young and as yet undiscovered, and others of some note.

Past artists exhibited include:
Adam Cvijanovic, Rainer Ganahl, Chitra Ganesh, Ellen Harvey, Eunjung Hwang, Nina Katchadourian, Peter Kreider, Sun K. Kwak, Edgar Orlaineta, Tony Oursler, Shinique Smith, Alex Villar, and Seth Tobocman. Two of the artists exhibited at Cuchifritos, Javier Cambre and Gedi Sibony have subsequently shown in Whitney Biennials.

A list of past curators involved with AAI and/or Cuchifritos includes:
Regine Basha, Koan-Jeff Baysa, Naomi Beckwith, Dean Daderko, Anne Ellegood, Berit Fischer, David Gibson, Rachel Gugelberger, Christopher K. Ho, Mauricio Laffitte-Soler, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, Jose Parla (Ease), Sara Reisman, Andrea Salerno, Mari Spirito, Simone Subal, and Herb Tam.

This last year saw many thought provoking exhibits come to fruition at Cuchifritos.

POS-IT, a multimedia installation by Yoko Inoue, and curated by Andrea Salerno took a fluxus-like approach by blurring the line between the formal concept of the gallery and the boisterous interactivity of the commercial food market.

Up as if Down, with Shara Hughes, Peter Kreider, and Moises Saman, and curated by Mari Spirito was an exhibition dealing with the transformation of the familiar, calling into question our tendency toward complaisance, even when our world is being turned upside down.

This coming year includes such exhibits as A Relationship Left For Dead on the Lower East Side curated by Bill Previdi, based around found documentation of an unknown couple, and "Laterally Evolving Systems" about artists working outside the structures of the contemporary art scene.

Through Cuchifritos art gallery/project space, AAI is pioneering new relationships and understandings in the field of contemporary art and curatorial practice, especially in relation to community and public space.

Your support and encouragement is vital to us, and will allow us to continue presenting new artists and new work, in seven thought provoking exhibits this coming year.

Please come celebrate the holiday season with us, purchase some art, and help us continue the valuable work.

You can DONATE RIGHT NOW on-line at:

http://www.aai-nyc.org/AAI_Info/Donate/index.html

Click the link to the "Network for Good" on-line donation system. You can indicate your contribution is for Cuchifritos in the optional "Designation" slot.

We thank you deeply for your support!

With best regards,

The Benefit Committee:
Paul Clay, Stephanie Diamond, Rachel Gugelberger, Christopher K. Ho, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, Mark Power, and Mari Spirito

ABOUT THE LOWER EAST SIDE

The LES, which stretches on historical maps from Worth Street North to 14th Street and from Broadway to the East River, has been the first home or foothold in the "New World" for a whole host of different peoples. It is multiethnic, with a recent influx of Chinese and Dominicans, and of course its large and long-standing artist population, hailing from many different nations. There are still significant Jewish and German populations mostly composed of older residents, a still thriving Puerto Rican presence, and a slow increase in Korean, Japanese, and other ethnicities. The Lower East Side is under tremendous pressure from gentrification right now, exacerbating the space crisis that all artists and arts institutions across the city are currently experiencing.

ABOUT THE ESSEX MARKET

The Essex Street Market was part of a system of markets begun by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in an effort to "clean up" the push cart vendors in New York City in anticipation of the 1939 World's Fair. It is a long standing center of everyday culture in the Lower East Side and is unique on many fronts: for the products available, the atmosphere of the place, its inherent support for rapidly disappearing craft practices, and its tradition of multi generational handing-down of family business lore. It also supports preservation of the aesthetic of the bodega, with its tradition of daily food purchase and simultaneous exchange of neighborhood, community and cultural information.

ABOUT AAI

Artists Alliance Inc./Alianza de Artistas (AAI) is a not-for-profit organization working in the Lower East Side and dedicated to promoting discussion and awareness of the visual arts, sharing information with the public, interaction with local communities, and providing forums for artists. It is composed of artists from a broad spectrum of national backgrounds, working in a wide variety of different media. AAI runs a host of contemporary art based projects, including studios and galleries.

Cuchifritos is a program of the Artists Alliance, Inc., AAI is a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit corporation. All contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. Please visit our website at www.aai-nyc.org for a copy of our latest Annual Report, and/or visit Guidestar (www.guidestar.org) to view our tax return information. For a copy of our latest audit, please contact the AAI office at aai@aai-nyc.org or visit the New York State Attorney General at www.oag.state.ny.us to find out how you can order copies.

Special thanks to the following vendors for their wonderful contributions: