Final Day: Photo Mart Revisited

Don’t miss the final day of:

Photo-Mart Revisited
An exhibition by the Essex Street Market vendors and LES Community

Opening Party: Sunday, June 2 from 12-6pm
Exhibition Dates: June 1 – June 16, 2013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12-6pm
Location: 120 Essex Street (inside Essex Street Market)

The Essex Street Market is a cultural staple of the Lower East Side. The diversity of the vendors allows visitors to experience the market and community’s evolution—a balance between old and new, past and present all coming together in one place. Since its founding in 2001, Cuchifritos Gallery & Project Space has brought contemporary art to the market in order to facilitate a vibrant dialogue between artists, the surrounding market and the larger LES community, these being central subjects in many of our exhibitions. Such shows have addressed the market’s history, blurred the line between market space and gallery space, and even invited vendors to curate!

Our original goal in establishing an art gallery in the Market was to provoke interaction and debate between the multi-cultural community of the LES and the artists living and working there. While our mission has remained intact, we also feel it is necessary to bring artists and community members together in dialogue about the area’s redevelopment. The Lower East Side, as with many NYC neighborhoods, is ever evolving. The Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) redevelopment will change the face of the neighborhood as well as the market itself. With this, we would like to take Cuchifritos back to its roots and our very first exhibition, Photo-Mart, handing the role of “artist” over to the market vendors to see the market/neighborhood through their eyes. Concurrently, we will exhibit ideas from community members for the SPURA sites as collected in our recent Ground Floor project from the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY. Visitors to the gallery will also be invited to contribute their own ideas and participate in discussions on the subject.

Main page image by Porto Rico Importing Co; Exhibition page image by Brooklyn Taco

Cuchifritos is FREE to the public and handicap accessible. Located inside Essex Street Market at the south end nearest Delancey.

Cuchifritos Gallery & Project Space is a program of Artists Alliance Inc, a 501c3 not for profit organization located on the Lower East Side of New York City within the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center. Cuchifritos is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This program is made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the following for their generous support: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York City Economic Development Corporation and individual supporters of Artists Alliance Inc. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers, without whom this program would not be possible.