In January 1986, The Kitchen moved from Soho to 512 West 19th Street and presented its inaugural event called NEW ICE NIGHTS, described as “two evenings of performance and media: a fire sale to accelerate the current thaw.” Three and a half decades later, The Kitchen is pleased to present ICE AND FIRE, a benefit exhibition featuring artworks by artists from throughout the organization’s community in New York and beyond. Organized by artists and Kitchen board members Wade Guyton and Jacqueline Humphries with The Kitchen’s curatorial team, the exhibition is installed on all floors of the organization’s three-story building on 19th Street in Chelsea. Funds raised through this benefit will go toward a planned renovation of these spaces on the occasion of The Kitchen’s 50th anniversary, ensuring that the organization will remain a platform for artists in the historic and beloved building it has called home since 1986.
The Kitchen’s 19th Street space has been open to the public by appointment only since March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and will remain this way in preparation for the renovation project, which will begin later this year. Given the current state of the building, and in line with The Kitchen’s commitment to experimental program formats, ICE AND FIRE takes speculative shape as an exhibition that is available for viewing largely through reproductions seen online on this website and in a forthcoming exhibition catalogue.
ICE AND FIRE includes more than fifty artists who have enduring relationships with The Kitchen, featuring many who first exhibited or performed soon after the organization’s founding in 1971—including Nan Goldin, Barbara Kruger, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Senga Nengudi—as well as others who contributed to the program within the past decade, such as Cory Arcangel, Ed Atkins, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Sam Falls, Simone Leigh, Zoe Leonard, and Danh Vō. The exhibition unfolds in three parts between October 2020 and March 2021, with additional works rotating into the spaces during each phase. The Exclusive Print Partner for the exhibition is Absolut Art. Over the course of the exhibition, Absolut Art will produce three benefit prints to raise funds for The Kitchen's renovations, the first of which will be made by Lawrence Weiner. This partnership underscores the commitment that Absolut Art and The Kitchen share to making a diverse range of artworks accessible to a broad public.
This website is an evolving record that presents images of the included artworks and installation views; it has been updated with new images during each of the exhibition’s three parts. Alongside this documentation, the website features newly created artworks by artists Roe Ethridge and Tony Oursler, who have documented the exhibition in photographs and videos. The commissioned works by Ethridge and Oursler have been added to the website during the final phase of the installation, allowing viewers to see the exhibition through the artists’ lenses as they respond to the artworks on display and their relationships to the spaces around them. Capturing this unique, transitional moment in The Kitchen’s history, the images make normally unseen spaces of the institution viewable to the public (in some cases for the first time) and record the building in its current state, before renovation begins. Similarly, the website employs an algorithmic sorting method and displays metadata for installation images in order to reveal typically hidden digital information and add layers to the viewing experience.
ICE AND FIRE engages directly with the physical features and historical traces within The Kitchen’s building. The structure at 512 West 19th Street was constructed as an ice house during the 1920s, and in later decades became a film production studio and, in the 1970s and after, a functioning studio for artists such as Robert Whitman. Over this time and through these various uses, the building was transformed from a cavernous empty volume to a multi-floor structure populated by large and small spaces—which themselves have been continually re-adapted over the years to serve new purposes, from theater and dressing room to gallery and offices. Mirroring The Kitchen’s multi-faceted programs, curators and artists have designated the spaces to serve shifting functions as TV studio, theater, gallery, lecture hall, concert venue, club, poetry stage, conference room, activist meeting place, dance theater, media lab, choreography studio, and so much more. In fact, the makeshift cubicles of The Kitchen’s current administrative offices on our third floor are located today in what was initially a theater, and on the west wall of that space you can still see the outline of a window where ships used to load ice into the building.
Calling attention to this mercurial history, ICE AND FIRE is installed throughout these areas, repurposing them anew to display artwork and administrative fixtures in immediate juxtaposition. Pieces by artists are situated amid the technical and administrative equipment—such as theater lights and patch cords, photocopier and printers, and office and packaging supplies—that make possible the presentation of art while typically remaining hidden from public view. This approach to the installation makes palpable the different experiences—and living legacy—embedded in this singular building that is adored by artists for both its grandeur and its idiosyncrasies. At the same time, the exhibition’s configuration underscores how artists and staff alike have continuously navigated the obstacles presented by these converted rooms. While making tangible The Kitchen’s cherished cultural history in these spaces, the seemingly provisional nature of the installation also makes clear how precarious the institution’s future is in this building—and demonstrates that repairs to the spaces are sorely needed to enable artists to create the kinds of work they want to make today. The transformation of the surrounding Chelsea neighborhood amplifies the urgency of this project for The Kitchen, with new construction threatening to crowd out one of the city’s oldest non-profit arts organizations.
ICE AND FIRE is curated and organized by artists (and Kitchen board members) Wade Guyton and Jacqueline Humphries with The Kitchen’s curatorial team of Tim Griffin, Elizabeth Wiet, Matthew Lyons, Lumi Tan, and Alison Burstein. The ICE AND FIRE exhibition website is designed by Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries, Jon Lucas, and Eric Wrenn.
For more information about the exhibition or for a list of currently available works, please contact Lauren Cronk at lauren@thekitchen.org.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Ai Weiwei, Ei Arakawa, Cory Arcangel, John Armleder, Ed Atkins, Tauba Auerbach, Kevin Beasley & Ralph Lemon, Robert Bordo, Carol Bove, Cecily Brown, Tony Cokes, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Trisha Donnelly, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Peter Fischli, Cy Gavin, Nan Goldin, Mark Grotjahn, Wade Guyton, Peter Halley, Rachel Harrison, Mary Heilmann, Charline von Heyl, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jacqueline Humphries, Alex Israel, Michael Krebber, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Simone Leigh, Zoe Leonard, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rodney McMillian, Senga Nengudi, Albert Oehlen, Ken Okiishi, Tony Oursler, Virginia Overton, Laura Owens, Mai-Thu Perret, Stephen Prina, Matthew Ritchie, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Haim Steinbach, Emily Sundblad and T. J. Wilcox, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rosemarie Trockel, Danh Vō, Mary Weatherford, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson, Christopher Wool, Anicka Yi
Gallery and Foundation Partners: 303 Gallery, 47 Canal, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Bortolami Gallery, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Massimo de Carlo, James Cohan, Sadie Coles HQ, Paula Cooper Gallery, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Bridget Donahue, Thomas Erben Gallery, Gagosian, Gladstone Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, Greene Naftali, Hauser & Wirth, Hannah Hoffman, kurimanzutto, Simon Lee Gallery, Lévy Gorvy, Lisson Gallery, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Matthew Marks, Metro Pictures, Carolina Nitsch, Friedrich Petzel, Galerie Francesca Pia, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Sprüth Magers, White Cube, David Zwirner
Framing Sponsors: Minagawa Art Lines and City Frame
Exclusive Print Partner:
