Cuchifritos Online Auction

Begins Tuesday March 18th at 3pm EST
Ends Tuesday March 25, 2008, at 3pm EST

Go to Online Gallery of Artworks!

Bid forms and terms are available here...

Dear Friends,

Thank you to all who donated and purchased work during our recent "Works on Paper" exhibition-benefit. The event was a huge success and we are pleased to provide another opportunity to collect art, at resonable prices, from established artists!

Cuchifritos art gallery/project space is an almost entirely volunteer-based, not-for-profit program of the Artists Alliance Inc., and is dedicated to bridging the gap between contemporary art and local community by presenting cutting edge contemporary work inside a local neighborhood food market.

By bidding you have a chance to make a wonderful work of art your own, and to lend critically needed support for the gallery and the service it provides to artists, curators, and the community as a whole.

All wishing to bid must download a form fill it out and fax or email it to AAI.

AAI Fax Number: 212-254-9619  or  AAI Email Address aai@aai-nyc.org

Thank you in advance for your support!

Paul Clay
Gallery Director, Cuchifritos

List of Atists:

Jonathan Allen, Eric Angles, Nicole Awai, Erica Baum, AJ Bocchino, Laura Carton, Alyssa Casey, Azul Ceballos, Chris Coffin, Stephanie Diamond, Raul Vincent Enriquez, Joy Garnett, Charles Goldman, Patti Hallock, Heather Hart, Peter Kreider, Adria Marquez, Lisa Mordhorst, Edgar Orlaineta, Zoe Sheehan Saldana, Edward Schexnayder, Fran Shalom, Adam Shecter, Jean Shin, Spencer Sweeney, Mary Valverde, James Walsh.

More about Cuchifritos, AAI, and the Lower East Side:

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!

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.