Theater for the New City
Crystal Field, Executive Director
presents

For Immediate Release

at the TNC Gallery

Tommy Mintz
Cheap Shots
Dec. 16, 2009 - Jan 23, 2010, Opening Reception, Wed. Dec 16, 5:30-8pm

Curated by Will Corwin

The TNC gallery is pleased to present "Cheap Shots" a solo exhibition by photographer Tommy Mintz. Mintz's work was most recently seen at the Michael Steinberg Gallery and The Gordon Parks Gallery in the show "The Young and the Restless," this past spring and summer. He has also shown at the Flushing Town Hall, Pickled Art Centre in Beijing and Gallerythe in Brooklyn. He will be featured in an upcoming show "Suspension of Disbelief," this February at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea, and in an exhibition at the Kenneth Chapman Gallery at Iona College next fall. Mintz is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MFA from Queens College. He teaches photography at Queens College and Kingsborough College in New York City.

"Cheap Shots," is an installation that comments on the proliferation of imagery as well as the commodification of art. The project references the Postermat on 8th Street and 6th avenue in New York that Mintz frequented in his childhood. Posters were available for small sums of money and were hung according to a matrix- they could be retrieved from bins bearing the matching numbers and letters. Mintz has recreated this set-up, but has replaced the images with his own photographs. Mintz's own work is situated at the cross-section of the blithe snapshots of the intrepid photographers of the 40's and 50's such as Weegee and Frank and the alienation of contemporary artists such as Sternfeld and Crewdson, which he acheives through slight digital manipulation of color and shadow.
The long-gone Postermat's glossy images of Bob Marley, Jane Fonda and Albert Einstein have been replaced with snapshots of passersby in Times Square and candid shots of Mintz's students at Queens College. The banal sacredness of the celebrity photo has been substituted by the much more profound and wary gaze of random individuals caught off guard or momentary asked to pose by a roving photographer. The prints are priced at $5 and printed on kids' paper purchased at IKEA, with the intention of garanteeing that almost every visitor to the installation will walk away with one of Mintz's pictures.

If you would like to hear an interview with Tommy Mintz on Art International Radio, go to artonair.org

 

The TNC Gallery is a new venue for emerging and Community artists located in one of the great theater and performance complexes on the Lower East Side. For more information please call (917) 355-7826 or email tnccurator@yahoo.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 4-10pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1-7pm. The TNC Gallery is located in the front and main lobbies of the Theater for the New City, 155 1st Ave, New York, NY 10003-2906.