Opening Tonight! "The Wayland Rudd Collection," A project organized by Yevgeniy Fiks & "The Fire to Say: Comics as Poetry," Organized by Franklin Einspruch.
The Wayland Rudd Collection
A project organized by Yevgeniy Fiks
January 17 – February 15, 2014
Opening: Friday, January 17, 6-8 PM

Wayland Rudd was an American actor who
began performing in the Hedgerow Theater in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania
under the directorship of Jasper Deeter. Rudd first received critical
acclaim for his performance in Eugene O'Neill's "Emperor Jones."
Frustrated over racism in the entertainment industry, Rudd moved to the
Soviet Union in 1932 where he began a successful career in Soviet
Theater and Film including work with the famed Russian Director Vsevolod
Meyerhold. He later received a degree from the Theatrical Art Institute
in Moscow and worked at the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Theater. Rudd
died in Moscow in 1952.
During Wayland Rudd's twenty year-long
career in the Soviet Union, he appeared in numerous films, theatrical
performances, and plays. He was also used as a model for paintings,
drawings, and propaganda posters and, in many respects, defined the
image of the “Negro” for generations of Soviet people. Although only a
small section of the assembled images in The Wayland Rudd Collection are
of Wayland Rudd, the project is given his name to commemorate this
American-Soviet actor's personal story as a case in point of the complex
intersection of 20th century American-Soviet narrative.

Artists in the exhibition: Ivan
Brazhkin, Michael Paul Britto, Suzanne Broughel, Maria Buyondo, Zachary
Fabri, Joy Garnett, Alexey Katalkin, Kara Lynch, Nontsikelelo Mutiti,
Nikolay Oleynikov and Arkadiy Kots Band, Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya
(Gluklya), Jenny Polak, Dread Scott, and Haim Sokol
In conjunction with the exhibit, we are also very pleased to present the panel discussion:
“Moscow to the Rescue: U.S. Racism, European Colonialism and the Soviet Promise”
Wednesday, February 5th at 6:30 pm
Featuring Dr. Raquel Greene, Dr. Jonathan Shandell, and others.
Moderated by Dr. Maxim Matusevich
This exhibition will travel to First
Floor Gallery Harare in Harare, Zimbabwe in Summer of 2014. Also, a book
will be produced as the result of this project.
Yevgeniy Fiks thanks Daria Atlas for her help with research on this project.
Yevgeniy Fiks was
born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in New York since
1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet
dialog in the West, among them: “Ayn Rand in Illustration,” a series of
drawing pairing descriptive text from Atlas Shrugged with
uncannily complimentary Soviet Socialist Realism classic artworks;
“Lenin for Your Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text
“Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global
corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries; “Communist
Party USA,” a series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA,
painted from life in the Party’s national headquarters in New York
City; and “Communist Guide to New York City,” a series of photographs of
buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the
history of the American Communist movement. Fiks’ work has been shown
internationally. This includes exhibitions in the United States at
Winkleman and Postmasters galleries (both in New York) Mass MoCA, and
the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art
and Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in
Mexico City, and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. His work has been
included in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011, 2009, 2007
and 2005), Biennale of Sydney (2008) and Thessaloniki Biennale of
Contemporary Art (2007).
Images above: (top) Maria Buyondo, “Pushkin, Winter Morning,” 2011; (bottom) Soviet postage stamp featuring image of Nelson Mandela (1988).
For more information please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com
__________________________________________________________________________________________

The Fire to Say: Comics as Poetry
Kimball Anderson, Derik A. Badman, Warren Craghead, Julie Delporte, Oliver East, Franklin Einspruch, Jason Overby, Paul K. Tunis. Organized by Franklin Einspruch.
January 17 - February 15, 2014
Opening: January 17, 6 - 8 PM
Kimball Anderson, Derik A. Badman, Warren Craghead, Julie Delporte, Oliver East, Franklin Einspruch, Jason Overby, Paul K. Tunis. Organized by Franklin Einspruch.
January 17 - February 15, 2014
Opening: January 17, 6 - 8 PM

In 2012, Boston-based artist and writer Franklin Einspruch published an anthology of eight such artists entitled “Comics as Poetry.” It includes Kimball
Anderson (Boston), Derik A. Badman (Philadelphia), Warren Craghead
(Charlottesville, VA), Julie Delporte (Montreal), Oliver East (Leeds,
UK), Jason Overby (Portland, OR), Paul K. Tunis (New York), and Einspruch
himself. Acclaimed poet William Corbett contributed a foreword. The
critical response was warm and roundly positive. “Comics as Poetry
collects works that experiment with the forms of comics and poetry,
inviting audiences to investigate spaces, silences and moments between
the observer and the observed,” wrote Tamryn Bennett. Aaron Geiger said,
“I strongly encourage you to support these poet-artists as they tread
lightly to the side of the mainstream.” The Seattle Star called it “truly a lovely book.”
In “The Fire to Say,” organizer
Franklin Einspruch will turn the Curatorial Research Lab of Winkleman
Gallery into a combination of exhibition space and reading room that
will feature recent art by the eight artists and a sampling of their
publications. “Over the last few years there has been an increasing
number of people working in combinations of images and words that don’t
fit neatly into the worlds of art or publishing,” says Einspruch. “This
interstice is immensely interesting, filled with do-it-yourselfers who
admire what goes on in art, comics, and poetry and each of their
histories, but are seeking to carve out their own forms of expression
independently of them.”
Image above: Paul K. Tunis, page from “Leprosy,” from Comics as Poetry, © 2012 Paul K. Tunis and New Modern Press.
For more information, contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com
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