Ruttkowski;68 and Rail Curatorial Projects is proud to present the tenth installment of Singing in Unison: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, a multi-venue series of exhibitions that began in 2022.

Singing in Unison, Part 10 presents a selection of paintings by Loren Munk and videos by James Kalm, the dual creations of one artist. Born in 1951, Munk spent three years in the army, before attending the Art Students League on the G.I. Bill, leading to his complete dedication to being an artist. Munk’s cartographic research began during his time working deliveries for the art supply store Utrecht, where he amassed a database of names and addresses of artists and their studios. His diagrammatic thinking in his paintings, which he refers as “conceptual topographies,” has deep roots in immersive studies of art history, art theory, and esoteric philosophies.

While developing his own diagrammatic systems that integrate the process of mapping and making charts, Munk also began writing art reviews and dispatches for the Brooklyn Rail from 2000 to 2012. As his communal spirit flourished, the creation of his alias James Kalm as a filmmaker became the substitution for his writing. Munk then arrived at his pictorial maturity in 2006, with the coalescence of Munk’s hermetic commitment to the studio, and Kalm’s exploration of bountiful participation and documentation of the arts community, into one pictorial synthesis. It was during this critical interval that the new transformation of the two disciplines were concretized in their simultaneity in time and space. For Munk the complexity of the writing permeates in the alchemy of painting, and Kalm’s footage of artist exhibitions and studio visits reveals his filmic production. Both are harmoniously deployed for the purposes of artistic restraint and self-prescribed magnanimity.

Loren Munk is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work over the past several decades has focused on the art world community itself. His efforts manifest in oil paintings that portray neighborhoods, movements in art history and philosophical views of esthetics. In tandem, he publishes video programs on YouTube that document exhibitions in New York City under the pseudonym James Kalm. Munk’s work has been reproduced in various media. The On the Bowery exhibition was based on his painting of the same name.

During spontaneous gallery and museum visits, Munk records what he sees while providing extemporaneous narration to provide the viewer with context. Each video begins with live music which additionally provides an archive of the downtown New York busker scene. Over 18 years, these two channels have amassed nearly 1600 programs, fifty-eight thousand global subscribers, and tens of millions of views. Munk’s channels are frequently included in university curricula.

https://www.lorenmunk.com/

Since May 2022, Rail Curatorial Projects has undertaken an ongoing series of group exhibitions entitled “Singing in Unison: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy” as a collective effort to mobilize the art of joining and social intimacy against self-isolation and social distancing, In these exhibitions, we perceive each artist as the player of a particular instrument, having a unique and distinct sound of their own, producing a significant contribution to the total sound of the symphony.

The series has featured works made by both trained and self-taught artists, by young artists—including children from the legendary Studio in a School—and more established ones. Additionally, there are contributions from artists working during and after incarceration, as well as those who are living with various mental health conditions. Although the culture at large has frequently aimed to assimilate us all into having a similar sound, Rail Curatorial Projects is committed to celebrating each artist’s particular vibrancy, while at the same time providing a context in which they can be in dialogue with one another.

To date, eight iterations of varying sizes have been presented in this series of exhibitions, featuring a total of over 200 artists across seven venues: Art Cake, Below Grand, The Scully Tomasko Foundation, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, TOTAH, Miguel Abreu Gallery, and Industry City. Each version featured Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio’s neon work Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy; cooking performances by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tomas Vu, and their graduate students from Columbia University; space activations, including performances from dancers, poets, and musicians; and each has been dedicated to and included a portrait of one of our recently deceased mentors and friends. The early exhibitions in the series all included several artists, and we have now also begun to feature two artists in conversation: when presented in this more intimate context, the similarities and differences in the artists’ practices highlight alluring and compelling aspects of their thinking and art-making processes.

Founded in October 2000 and currently published 10 times annually, the Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond. The journal features criticism of music, dance, film, and theater; and original fiction and poetry, covers contemporary visual art in particular depth. In order to democratize our art coverage, our Critics Page functions with a rotating editorship, which such luminaries as Robert Storr, Elizabeth Baker, Barbara Rose, Irving Sandler, and Dore Ashton have helmed.

The Rail further fulfills its mission by curating art exhibitions, panel discussions, reading series and film screenings that reflect the complexity and inventiveness of the city’s artistic and cultural landscape.

To learn more, visit brooklynrail.org
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