Current Exhibitions

Vital Impetus: Life Signs

UNTITLED Hotel at 3 Freeman Alley, New York, NY

November 10, 2023

Untitled at 3 Freeman Alley and Azure Arts are pleased to launch their debut exhibition Vital Impetus: Life Signs together. An exciting group exhibition of photographic and mixed media works by all NYC-based artists: Alice Garik, Gina Kropf, and jdx, Vital Impetus: Life Signs will be on view in Untitled’s ground floor Gallery, from November 10, 2023 – February 10, 2024.

The exhibition derives its title and curatorial theme from a concept élan vital (vital impetus), a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Rather than simply adhering to a set of mechanistic laws, Bergson contended that life has an inherent drive or impulse towards creativity, growth, and innovation. While his philosophy emphasizes the role of individual experience, i.e. consciousness, and creativity in this process, it also sees the ‘self’ as fundamentally connected to others. The ‘self’, for Bergson, stands in dynamic relation to others. It is not static and unchanging, but rather is evolving constantly through its interactions with others. 

Moving within and between photographic genres, Vital Impetus: Life Signs explores the interconnectedness between the creative self and its dynamic relationship to others. The works featured in this exhibition indicate some of the near infinite ways to communicate who we are and how we seek to connect–or not–with others. 

Once a haven for boundary-pushing artists in the 70s and 80s, (think Scharf, Haring, and Sherman), the Bowery remains the epicenter for vibrant street and fine art alike. At UNTITLED at 3 Freeman Alley and Azure Arts, we pay homage to these trailblazers while nurturing a fresh wave of artistic talent. The Gallery and Freeman Alley serve as a portal connecting visitors to the rich tapestry of New York City: its past, present, and future. The project’s debut exhibition, Vital Impetus: Life Signs, embodies the bonds between people, their neighborhood, their city.

Past Exhibitions

Untethered: An Experience of Free Association

26 Cedar St, East Hampton, NY

August 25 – 27, 2023

Azure Arts is pleased to announce Untethered: An Experience of Free Association, a group exhibition of painting, photographic, sculptural and functional design works by all contemporary NY-based artists: Amanda Wall, Angel Cotray, Ken Van Sickle, jdx, Gina Kropf, Melanie Luna, Forma Rosa Studio, three Picasso lithographs.

The exhibition derives its curatorial theme from Andre Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)

“Unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect [man] is still a newborn babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.”

Vital Impetus

5 Rivington Street, New York, NY

February 23 – April 15, 2023

Azure Arts is pleased to announce Vital Impetus, an exciting group exhibition of photographic and mixed media works by all NYC-based artists: Alice Garik, Gina Kropf, and jdx.

The exhibition derives its title and curatorial theme from a concept élan vital (vital impetus), a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Rather than simply adhering to a set of mechanistic laws, Bergson contended that life has an inherent drive or impulse towards creativity, growth, and innovation. While his philosophy emphasizes the role of individual experience, i.e. consciousness, and creativity in this process, it also sees the ‘self’ as fundamentally connected to others. The ‘self’, for Bergson, stands in dynamic relation to others. It is not static and unchanging, but rather is evolving constantly through its interactions with others. 

Moving within and between photographic genres, Vital Impetus explores this relationship between the creative self and its dynamic relationship to others. The works featured in this exhibition indicate some of the near infinite ways to communicate who one is and how we seek to connect–or not connect–with others.

Esperanza Cortés: Purity of Blood

Artsy Exclusive

November 14 – December 19, 2022

Cortés work, poetically and intricately crafted, imbued with hope and renewal, encourages viewers to reconsider social and historical narratives especially when dealing with the aftermath of Colonialism and raises critical questions about the politics of erasure and exclusion.

Nature Has A Way

Williamsburg, NY

December, 2022

A four-person exhibition including the works of Jaynie Crimmins, Jeanne Heifetz, Nina Picon and Andra Samelson. Ranging from painting and drawing to woven silk textiles to both paper and ceramic sculpture, all artists featured are acutely aware of the environment in which they inhabit.

The work of the artists in this exhibition all engage with the current ability to listen and answer nature’s calling. In exploring the role of artistic expression when arriving at these questions, the scientific means by which we have come to understand much of the natural world are both utilized and expanded on. 

Close Your Eyes and Think of There

Brooklyn Heights, NY

June 16 – July 3, 2022

From oil painting to collage to paper sculpture by Maureen Krinsley & Jaynie Crimmins, Close Your Eyes and Think of There explores the concept of perception and what it means to “see.” What we choose to see, either consciously or subconsciously, is arguably a choice based on experience, memory and innate senses, as well as our current mental and emotional condition that are unique to each individual.

Maureen Fleming: Dances From Home

Nolita, NY

December, 2021

A gallery installation/performance art series by 2021 Guggenheim choreographer/performance artist Maureen Fleming. This unique series featured intimate live studio performances, as well as Fleming’s new and retrospective photography and video spanning her 40 years as an artist working in her Lower East Side studio since 1981.

“…a wonderous choreographic metamorphosis.”

– NY Times

Memory Mapping: Works by Linda Cunningham, Karin Waskiwicz and Lilian Kreutzberger

Chelsea, NY

December, 2018

Linda Cunningham’s mixed media painting and sculpture fashioned from “urban mined” materials is presented in conversation with the 2007-2012 drawing and painting series of Lilian Kreutzberger, as well as with Karin Waskiewicz’s layered and carved painting. In distinctive yet harmonious ways, all artists explore issues of time, transience and memory as they gravitate toward architectural structures of previously existing societies and ever-evolving landscape. Our “memory maps,” born from particular places and characterized by their own architectures and landscapes, must perpetually adapt and transform as those places transform over time.