News You Can Use

I hope you're all feeling recharged from the blue moon and long holiday weekend.  We're now entering the big art season, so there's lots of notices to share.  I thought I'd collate some highlights here:

First up is Observatory/Morbid Anatomy maven Joanna Ebenstein's art show and month-long curatorial residency at Viktor Wynd Fine Art and Last Tuesday Society in London:

"Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses: Visions of Death Made Beautiful in Italy" Exhibition Opening Party, This Thursday, September 6

This Thursday, if you are in London or environs, please join Morbid Anatomy and The Last Tuesday Society for a free and gin-drenched opening party for my new exhibition "Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses: Visions of Death Made Beautiful in Italy"! Full details follow. Hope very much to see you there!

"Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses: Visions of Death Made Beautiful in Italy" Exhibition Opening Party
Date: Thursday September 6
Time: 6:00-8:00 PM
Location: The Last Tuesday Society
Address: ***Offsite at 11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
Admission: FREE
Produced by Morbid Anatomy
Click here to download Invitation

This Thursday, September 6, if you find yourself in London town, please join us for an opening party for an exhibition of photographs by Joanna Ebenstein of the Morbid Anatomy Blog, The Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory with waxworks by Eleanor Crook and Sigrid Sarda.

In her many projects, ranging from photography to curation to writing, New York based Joanna Ebenstein utilizes a combination of art and scholarship to tease out the ways in which the pre-rational roots of modernity are sublimated into ostensibly "purely rational" cultural activities such as science and medicine.Much of her work uses this approach to investigate historical moments or artifacts where art and science, death and beauty, spectacle and edification, faith and empiricism meet in ways that trouble contemporary categorical expectations.In the exhibition "Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses" Ebenstein turns this approach to an examination of the uncanny and powerfully resonant representations of the dead, martyred, and anatomized body in Italy, monuments to humankind's quest to eternally preserve the corporeal body and defeat death in arenas sacred and profane.The artifacts she finds in both the churches, charnel houeses and anatomical museums of Italy complicate our ideas of the proper roles of--and divisions between--science and religion, death and beauty; art and science; eros and thanatos; sacred and profane; body and soul.

In this exhibition, you will be introduced to tantalizing visions of death made beautiful, uncanny monuments to the human dream of life eternal. You will meet "Blessed Ismelda Lambertini," an adolescent who fell into a fatal swoon of overwhelming joy at the moment of her first communion with Jesus Christ, now commemorated in a chillingly beautiful wax effigy in a Bolognese church; The Slashed Beauty, swooning with a grace at once spiritual and worldly as she makes a solemn offering of her immaculate viscera; Saint Vittoria, with slashed neck and golden ringlets, her waxen form reliquary to her own powerful bones; and the magnificent and troubling Anatomical Venuses, rapturously ecstatic life-sized wax women reclining voluptuously on silk and velvet cushions, asleep in their crystal coffins, awaiting animation by inquisitive hands eager to dissect them into their dozens of demountable, exactingly anatomically correct, wax parts.

You can find out more about the show here, and view more images by clicking here.

And here is information about all of the other lectures and events she has planned.  Lucky Londoners!

Next up is the extension of the award-winning, critically acclaimed The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children, a one-man show by Matthew Trumbull, and directed by gorgeous genuis Matthew Freeman.  They had the honor of being selected to be part of the Fringe Festival's Encore series, which spotlights the very creme de la creme of the entire festival.  They're in a different location this time around, at SoHo Playhouse.  Definitely see it if you haven't already, and see it again if you have!  Here are the details, as grabbed off of Freeman's blog:

The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children is a part of the Encore Series starting 9/8

Thanks to all who came out (at odd times and in full force) to see The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children. The play received tremendous reviews, played to sold out houses, and received an Award for Overall Excellence in Solo Performance. As the director and co-producer, I couldn't be more happy with the results thus far. As a friend of Matt Trumbull's, I'm just thrilled that so many are coming to appreciate this versatile, charming, warm and utterly unique performer and writer.

There's more good news. The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children's run continues. We're a part of the Encore Series, which runs at the Soho Playhouse during the month of September. We're in the Huron Club, downstairs, which features a bar. If you've seen the show, you'll know easy access to a drink afterwards might appeal.

There are five performances

Saturday 9/8 at 8PM
Sunday 9/16 at 3PM
Sunday 9/23 at 5PM
Wednedsay 9/26 at 8PM
Saturday 9/29 at 8PM

As we sold out our final show at 4:15 in the afternoon, I fully expect 8pm shows and matinees will be full. So getting tickets early? A great idea. 

Thirdly, comics wunderkind Theo Ellsworth is coming to Brooklyn's phenomenal Bergen Street Comics for the book release party of his new book, The Understanding Monster (Book One), published by Secret Acres!  September 13th, 8pm:

We are thrilled to invite you to join us as we celebrate the latest release from the insanely talented Theo Ellsworth, “The Understanding Monster.”  - the first hardcover, full color, over–sized book brought to you by Secret Acres.

The Understanding Monster

Release Party & Signing

Bergen Street Comics

470 Bergen Street

BKLN, NY

Between Flatbush & 5th Avenues

Theo will signing. The gentlemen from Secret Acres will be on hand. And bubbles will be served.

HURRAH!

Comments

[Artist in LA LA Land]

Wow. Lots of great news here. I'm intrigued by the first "Raptures" show of making death beautiful. Morbid and stunning. Wish I were in London for it. Hope you had a great long weekend too.