The Remix Podcast The Remix

The Remix welcomes Yulia Topchiy, Natasha Becker, and Paola Gallio, the amazing co-founders of Assembly Room, who staged 12 exhibitions, 16 performances, and monthly curatorial meetups in the gallery’s first year. They share their origin story—an arranged marriage—and how they fill a void for independent women curators. They didn’t think there was a need for another gallery so they created space and a home for independent curators: a commercial gallery with a nonprofit soul. The reasons why they made that choice includes finances as well as freedom, flexibility, and ownership over mission. They walk us through their Open Call platform, the gallery space vs the project space downstairs, what they’re looking for in a proposal, and their interest in mentorship, collaboration, and family. Toward the end of the conversation, their kinship with artist-run spaces becomes clear and there are shout outs to Spring Break, Pioneer Works, Canada gallery, A.I.R. gallery, and others who paved the way for their new model. We end on day jobs and dreams for the future. Picture utopia on a beach.

Assembly Room is an art gallery and space for independent women curators to achieve success through community. We believe in coming together to collaborate, break the rules, defy the status quo, and create compelling art, exhibitions, and experiences.Assembly Room’s three founding curators are: Natasha Becker, Paola Gallio, Yulia Topchiy.

assemblyroom.nyc
@assemblyroomnyc

A native New Yorker, Katherine Gressel began her artistic and curatorial career responding to changes in the city. She dove into curation whole-heartedly when she found it combined many of her interests and now she finds herself a curator/educator/administrator who makes a living as an artist. How did she flip the script? During her conversation with The Remix, Katherine discussed her role at Old Stone House (the sight of the Battle of Brooklyn during the Revolutionary War) where she facilitates site-specific projects to make local history relevant to a contemporary and globally-minded general audience. She talks programming; community work; the challenges of working in a multi-purpose space; funding as an independent curator; how she loves to start every project with a space and a community rather than a specific topic; catalyst vs curator; grad school; and painting commissions. She talks about her deliberate effort to blur the lines between the different facets of her life and make them sustainable as a whole.(Shout out to Natalia Nakazawa in this episode!)*****NOTE: Since this podcast was recorded, Katherine and the Old Stone house received the big NYSCA grant she mentions! Congrats, Katherine and Old Stone House! Check out their website theoldstonehouse.org and @oldstonehousebklyn for their 2020 schedule.*****

Katherine Gressel is a New York‐based curator, artist, and writer focused on site‐specific art.  Since 2016 she has served as the inaugural Contemporary Curator at the Old Stone House & Washington Park (OSH), a nonprofit historic house and community center in Park Slope, Brooklyn. At OSH she has focused on how contemporary artists can help make local and national history relevant, and how OSH's unique space can inspire and incubate emerging artists. Katherine first started organizing exhibitions at OSH in 2009 with her original Brooklyn Utopias series exploring artists' visions for ideal cities. 

In addition to organizing over ten major exhibitions to date at the Old Stone House, Katherine has curated for FIGMENT, No Longer Empty, St. Francis College, and Brooklyn Historical Society, and was the 2016 NARS Foundation emerging curator.  She was selected for the 2015 Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans. Katherine's exhibitions have been recognized by the New York Times, Time Out New York, Hyperallergic, News 12 Brooklyn, and DNAInfo. She has written and presented on public and community art issues for Createquity, Americans for the Arts, and Public Art Dialogue, among others.  Katherine also served as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery from 2010-2014, and has worked and consulted for diverse nonprofits. She earned her BA in art from Yale and MA in arts administration from Columbia. 

 katherinegressel.com theoldstonehouse.org @oldstonehousebklyn @eventpaintingbykatherine

Koan Jeff Baysa takes The Remix from medical school to Mexico, collecting to curating, and commuting between Hawaii and NYC. As a doctor, Koan gave free medical attention to artists and his interest in both worlds quickly merged. Community, diversity, access, and inclusion are his mottos, with a goal of working in the area outside common thinking to inspire people to process geography and culture differently. Get prepared for his love of word play! The conversation turns to tech, medicine, and his work on Medical Avatar, a platform that emphasize visualization and patient engagement. We end on the importance of STEAM, Koan’s intense travel schedule, and where he finds artists. What would he have been if not a doctor or curator? You’ll never guess! 

Kóan Jeff "KJ" Baysa is a physician and curator, born and raised in Hawai‘i, educated in San Francisco and New York, a member of the Association of International Art Critics, and alumnus of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He has participated in medical missions in conflict zones and develops health apps for handheld devices. He segued from a clinical medicine practice in Manhattan to a design and science curatorial practice in Los Angeles that bridges medical culture and social sculpture, with research interests in the neuroscience of memory and olfaction, human sensory perception/misperception, neurodiversity, and the cultural constructs of health and disease. He is Chief Medical Officer, Medical Avatar; Co-founder, Joshua Treenial; Senior Founder, Honolulu Biennial; Director, iBiennale; Curator, Institute for Art and Olfaction; Program Board Advisor, Art Omi; Cultural Advisor, World Council of Peoples for the United Nations; Alumnus, Advisory Committee of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics; Cultural Agent, Curators Network; International Advisor, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza; Advisory Board, Kaus Australis, Rotterdam; Co-Founder, Mosaic NYC. A Ford Foundation grantee surveying contemporary art in Vietnam, he has curated exhibitions in China, Japan, Chile, Croatia, Mexico, Korea, Austria, Canada, Ireland, England, Ukraine, Holland, United Arab Emirates, and throughout the US, with upcoming projects in Iceland, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Finland, and Hawai'i. He is the Pacific Editor for d'Art International, writes catalog essays and reviews, and has lectured at the United Nations, MoMA, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum, National Academy of Sciences, Phillips Collection, Hanoi University of Culture, and the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University. Dr. Baysa divides his time between New York, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjbmd/
@ibiennale
ArtAndOlfaction.com