The exhibit is up through Oct. 22.
The gallery is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
My Comrade magazine was founded by drag queen Linda Simpson in 1987 during the dark era of the AIDS crisis and served as a symbol of hope and frivolity to the East Village gay scene and beyond. Armed with a tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" agenda, the magazine glorified heroic drag queens and sexy guys in a cut-and-paste mishmash of articles and photo spreads. Lesbians got their due when the flip side became Sister! The sporadic publishing schedule produced a total of 11 issues until 1994. It was revived in 2004 for two more.The exhibit features reproductions and enlargements of My Comrade's black-and-white pages. Notable contributors to the magazine included photographers Jack Pierson and David Armstrong, painter Stephen Tashjian a.k.a. Tabboo!, and drag stars RuPaul and Lady Bunny. The exhibit also features Simpson's color photos of the era from her acclaimed 2021 photo book, "The Drag Explosion," published by Domain.
Grossman arrived in New York in 1976 after receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied alongside friends Chris Frantz and David Byrne of Talking Heads.
His first job was assisting Richard Bernstein, the artist responsible for the covers of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. At Bernstein’s studio in the legendary Chelsea Hotel, Grossman found himself at ground zero in the early days of punk and the downtown scene.
Taking photographs of friends and newfound acquaintances — including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, the Ramones, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the milieu around Andy Warhol's Factory — Grossman became a regular fixture at CBGB, the Mudd Club and other downtown haunts.And a little trivia: His first photo credit was the cover shot for Talking Heads' 1977 single "Psycho Killer."
By the community, for the community, HA/HA will be activated with three exhibition galleries, as well as a library, screening and reading rooms, a chef's kitchen, and an outdoor terrace for special events.
Energized by the creative and disruptive spirit of the 60s, 70s, and 80s on the Lower East Side ... HA/HA expands Howl's programming capabilities and aims to advance Howl Arts' mission to preserve and showcase the legacy of often overlooked underground and experimental cultures of the East Village and downtown neighborhoods.
"We've been fighting against gentrification in the East Village for decades," says Howl executive director Jane Friedman.
Howl's Permanent Collection, to be showcased at HA/HA, comprises over 3,000 objects, including art, rare digital and analog media, performance-art ephemera, and personal archives from the 1960s onward.
The collection documents the origins and growth of local cultural and social movements that have had far-reaching impact — offering a myriad of opportunities for new interpretations of the punk, new-wave, and no-wave movements; performance art; drag; street art; public-access television; nightlife; LGBTQ activism; the AIDS epidemic; and urban gentrification.And the inaugural exhibition opens today (Sept. 19) from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.:
"Icons, Iconoclasts, and Outsiders" presents works by artists, writers, musicians, scenesters, performers, icons, iconoclasts, outsiders and other creators from the 1960s to the present whose life and work energized the underground and are now entering mainstream cultural discourse.Selected works on display include Arturo Vega, Brian Butterick, Richard Hambleton, Helen Oliver Adelson, Marcia Resnick and Scooter LaForge, among many others.
If the letters on Diaz's work look familiar, it's because they are made up of reclaimed New York City Transit Wet Paint Sign characters, and subway system icons."Being a New Yorker and all, it's a kind of ubiquitous alphabet, constrained alphabet, that as commuters we see every day," said Diaz, who makes messages of all sorts with those letters intended to inspire action.
After the tragic death of George Floyd, impassioned citizens in cities around the world rose up together in a call for justice. The streets became the backdrop for our collective mourning, our outrage, and our plea for change. Opportunistic agitators took advantage of peaceful demonstrations and forced many businesses to board up storefronts all over New York. On the Bowery ... the plywood barriers became windows into the hearts of the neighborhood’s artists.
"Bringing Back Bowery: Public Art as Protest" is a re-presentation of public artworks made in solidarity with the protest movement fighting for racial equality and police reform.
Dickson’s history and legacy are rooted in Times Square. She worked and lived there from 1978 to 2008 documenting her daily lived experiences and observations as a young woman. In photos, drawings, and paintings that utilize unconventional industrial and domestic materials as surfaces — including carpet, sandpaper, and black plastic bags—she captured a time and place that was notoriously lawless, squalid, and vibrantly alive.
Drawing from the site’s archive of photos and video clips, Miller recounts stories about Harry’s Bar and CBGB; the seminal 1978 Punk Art show; collaborative work with Bettie Ringma, Curt Hoppe, Alan Moore, and Paul Tschinkel — all residents at 98 Bowery; his year in Amsterdam; and the varied roles he played in the East Village art scene and in the rise of hip-hop culture in the 1980s.
Miller is the curator of the Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk exhibition at the Queens Museum (2016), and for his video interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat in Paul Tschinkel’s Art/new york series. His online store Gallery 98 has reanimated vintage art ephemera.
Linus Coraggio is a central figure in downtown New York’s early period of explosive art experimentation and cross-pollination of cultural ideas. Street artist and New York City native, Coraggio is best known for his abstract metal sculpture.
The current exhibition surveys Coraggio’s entire body of work, including paintings in expressionist and graffiti style, mobiles, furniture, neon, sculpture, mixed-media collage, and both classic and 3-D graffiti. The exhibition will also include recent collaborations with well-known downtown artists, and an installation of his painted and “sculpturalized” car that has become a recognized cultural fixture on the streets of New York City over the last 10 years.