XNY

Opened: Friday, June 1, 2012
Closing: TBD

Daina Higgins is a painter and Bryan Bruchman is a photographer. Both were long-time residents of New York City before moving away to other cities -- Daina to Philadelphia, PA, and Bryan to Portland, ME. With the idea in mind that living in NYC can dramatically shape the way a person views other cities, this joint exhibition focuses primarily on works that portray the cities that each called home after leaving NY.

 

Artist Bio: Daina Higgins

Daina Higgins was born and raised in the Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. Her early art experiences were at the Columbus College of Art and Design, where she attended Saturday morning classes for seven consecutive years. During this time she attended Fort Hayes, an arts alternative high school located in downtown Columbus. In 1997 she received the Silas H. Rhodes Merit Scholarship from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She moved to New York, and graduated in 2001 with her BFA. /// Out of a small studio in her Brooklyn apartment, she began making small paintings using a spray paint and stencil technique she dreamt up while looking at Georges Seurat's drawings. In 2003 the Rebecca Ibel Gallery exhibited these paintings. In 2005 Higgins also joined the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, receiving critical acclaim for her 2006 solo exhibition in the New York Times. /// In 2007, Higgins enrolled as an MFA student at Queens College CUNY. During the two years of graduate school, she was included in the Queens International 4, a biennial exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing, and in 2009 she won the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. Higgins also traveled to California to open a two-person show with Liat Yossifor at the University of LaVerne's Harris Art Gallery. /// Numerous publications have documented her paintings, including ArtNews, The New York Sun, The Village Voice, The Columbus Dispatch, and The New York Times. In 2006 Roberta Smith reviewed my exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, ending her review with "[she]…creates a poetic awareness of the passage of light, moving through the world, bouncing off things and making visual experience fleetingly possible." /// In 2010 Higgins moved to Philadelphia, where she bought a house and studio. She recently opened her solo exhibition "New Paintings" at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in January of 2012.

artist website: www.dainahiggins.com

 

Artist Bio: Bryan Bruchman

Bryan Bruchman grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey. In the pre-digital photography world, a job at a one-hour photo shop in a strip mall meant free film and processing, plus the ability to experiment and shoot relentlessly. A high school darkroom and summer courses at a local community college reinforced the fundamentals while he also began getting interested in music and video work. Moving to New York to study Film & TV at NYU, he graduated in 2002 and spent the next few years playing in the band Man In Gray and working freelance jobs in web design, while working part time jobs in a record shop a music venue. A full time job as a web designer in the music industry brought unprecedented opportunities to photograph concerts, which reignited a long-simmering interested in music photography, and led to contributions to publications including Prefix Mag, Brooklyn Vegan, IMPOSE, the Village Voice, and SPIN. After 10 years in NYC, he moved to Portland, Maine, where he worked as a freelance photographer, created the music blog HillyTown, contributed event photography and a monthly music column to Maine Magazine, taught courses in photography and Photoshop at the Maine College of Art, and worked as Events Manager at SPACE Gallery. In September 2011 he returned to Brooklyn, where he continues to work with photography, video, and music, while maintaining close ties to Maine.

artist website: www.bryanbruchman.com

 

List Of Works

Daina Higgins, North Philly
2011, oil on canvas
44 x 60 inches

Daina Higgins, South Philly
2011, oil on canvas
44 x 60 inches

Bryan Bruchman, untitled NYC
2010, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Daina Higgins, Auto Lot
2008, oil on panel
20 x 20 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Action Potential
2008, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Until I Am Bones
2009, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Daina Higgins, Dollar Store Balloons
2011, watercolor on paper, framed
24.5 x 32 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Dusty Disguise
2012, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Curse Roulette
2008, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Two Hearts
2009, digital print
30 x 20 inches

Bryan Bruchman, Hard Pleaser
2008, digital print
30 x 20 inches