Hugo Bastidas, Bahar Behbahani, Noa Charuvi & Paul Anthony Smith: The 50 West Artist-in-Construction Residency Exhibition

Time Equities Inc Art-in-Buildings and Metropolitan College of New York are pleased to announce The 50 West Artist in Construction Residency Exhibition featuring new works by Hugo Bastidas, Bahar Behbahani, Noa Charuvi, and Paul Anthony Smith. An investigation into the construction of 50 West, a luxury residential 64 story tower rising in the neighborhood, the exhibition will take place at Metropolitan College of New York, at 60 West Street, New York, from September 21st to December 15th, 2016.

Beginning in May 2014, the 50 West Artist-in-Construction Residency has hosted four artists: Hugo Bastidas, Bahar Behbahani, Noa Charuvi, and Paul Anthony Smith. The residency, sponsored by real estate developer Time Equities Inc., was designed to integrate the art-making process into the fabric of 50 West, from the very beginning of its construction.

Art-in-Buildings invited these artists to consider and respond to the development of 50 West. The building, designed by Helmut Jann, will be a spectacular addition to the skyline when finished however, rather than simply anticipating completion, 50 West was interested in the construction process: the seemingly impossible ballet of workers and machinery that is usually hidden behind construction fences. 50 West gave each artist a hard hat and access to the site so that they could witness the work being done and bring that experience to the studio. The works on view here are the results of the observations made on the 50 West construction site and they were executed in the Artist-in-Construction studios located at 40 Rector Street, one block away from the construction site.

Time Equities Inc.’s Art-in-Buildings program organized the residency. Art-in-Buildings is an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.

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Hugo Bastidas (b. Quito, Ecuador 1956 – lives and works in New York), received a B.F.A. from Rutgers University in Newark, NJ and M.F.A. from Hunter College in New York. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship as well as a Pollock Krasner Grant. Bastidas has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and is represented in the collections of numerous museums worldwide. He was recently elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts.

Bahar Behbahani‘s (b. Tehran, Iran – Lives and works in New York) recent exhibitions include solo show Garden Coup at Thomas Erben Gallery and upcoming solo show Let the Garden Eram Flourish at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College in 2017. Her work has been featured in the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE; The Prologue Exhibition for the 2016 Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii; Queens Museum, New York; The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan; MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Mirmara Museum, Croatia; The Tribeca Film Festival, New York; as well as the Asia Art Biennial, Bangladesh, among others. Behbahani was awarded an Art Omi International Artists Residency by The Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2013 and the Art and Culture Network Program Grant from the Open Society Institute, Budapest in 2011.

Noa Charuvi (b. Jerusalem, Israel – Lives and works in New York) holds an MFA Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA Fine Arts from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. Charuvi participated in Art Omi International Artists Residency, the AIM program at the Bronx Museum, Yaddo artist colony at Saratoga Springs, Triangle Arts Workshop in Brooklyn, Lower East Side Rotating Studio Program and the Keyholder Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop. Her work is exhibited internationally, in venues such as Wave Hill Center, the Bronx Museum and Haifa Museum of Art. She is currently part of the studio program at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in Manhattan.

Paul Anthony Smith (b. St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica 1988 – Lives and works in New York) received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. Recent exhibitions include Disguise at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and upcoming solo show Blurred Lines at Brand New Gallery in Milan. Smith’s work has been included in several group and museum exhibitions, including Reality of my Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC, Concealed at the Studio Museum Harlem. Notable collections include the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Pilara Foundation Collection (Pier 24 Photography), and the 21c Museum.