“Curtis Cuffie’s New York Metropolis” is an exhibition of pictures on the general public artwork of Curtis Cuffie.

Curtis Cuffie was a public determine within the East Village till his dying, in 2002, on the age of forty-seven. By the point of his passing, Cuffie had revealed a whole bunch, maybe hundreds, of mysterious, unbelievable artworks on the streets of New York. To take action, he would fish the town’s leftovers and costume it in riotous assemblages product of discarded objects, materials, and atypical issues that talk of what we’re. Such works had little by means of end: issues got here and went, supplies have been adjusted and altered, and items have been commonly destroyed by the Division of Sanitation and the police. Little of it survived. Consequently, viewing Cuffie’s sculpture at present usually entails a second-hand encounter, filtered by way of the views of those that photographed it, be they mates or lovers, fellow artists, or unknown passersby.

“Curtis Cuffie’s New York Metropolis” presents the artwork of Curtis Cuffie because it was photographed by Katy Abel, Tom Warren, and Cuffie himself. Comprising some seven hundred pictures from the Nineties, the exhibition is dropped at life by way of a variety of analogue slide projectors, presenting three distinct registers of images: Abel’s use of vibrant colours, Warren’s stark, nearly reportorial black and white footage, and Cuffie’s personal dynamic, summary, and typically shattered photographic compositions. These footage, rising and fading from view, generate a palpable sense of motion and transience in step with the character of Cuffie’s artwork and the town it discovered itself in.

Curated by
Tom Engels in collaboration with Robert Snowden

at Grazer Kunstverein
till June 1, 2024