100 Nights (Calling Back)

Chinatown Soup is excited to present 100 Nights (Calling Back), an exhibition that addresses intergenerational disruption as a catalyst for community resilience in response to current events. Recalling the 100 nights that shaped the Punk Movement at London’s Roxy Club in the 1970s and rooted in the inspirational work of The Clash (“The Only Band That Matters”), this show links seminal artists from the 1980s Lower East Side to a new generation of artists echoing their work today.

Organized by artist, architect, and farmer Michael McDonough in cooperation with gallerist Gracie Mansion, Soup Gallery will feature an exhibition of reinterpreted posters based on the famous Pennie Smith “too-blurry-to-use” image that became The Clash’s iconic London Calling album cover. The cover itself has a wonderfully rich history that ranges from Elvis’s first album cover to a reinterpretation by Banksy.

The exhibition will coincide with a weekend of live music performance from November 13 - 14th. It will also feature a pop-up kitchen with proceeds funding neighborhood food security initiatives Canal Cafeteria and Heart of Dinner.

Beyond November, this project is intended to launch an arts activist template for replication in 100 communities across the country, “calling back” to another era of crisis and civic engagement when, for 100 nights, PURE PUNK played non-stop IN PUBLIC!

Meet the artists

CHARLIE AHEARN directed the classic hip-hop film Wild Style in 1982 and exhibited his silkscreen paintings at PPOW Gallery in New York and at Beyond The Streets in LA and NYC. He is currently featured in the Writing The Future exhibition at Boston MFA and The Elements Of Style exhibition in Chengdu, China. Ahearn still resides in New York City.

JUDY GLANTZMAN is represented by the Betty Cunningham Gallery since 2004 and is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman, and New York Foundation awards. She exhibited with Civilian Warfare and Gracie Mansion Galleries in the raw East Village, New York during the 1980’s. She recalls of that time, “We had the privilege of freedom to play. That ended with AIDS and Reagan.”

RODNEY ALAN GREENBLAT has been making brightly colored, whimsical artwork for over 40 years. He got his start in the 1980’s NY East Village art scene, and his large, toy-like painted constructions were featured in the 1985 Whitney Biennial. During the 1990’s he designed the characters and setting for the hit Sony Playstation game series Parappa the Rapper. Rodney lives in Catskill, NY, and his work is represented by BCB ART in Hudson.

JEFFREY HARGRAVE’s practice encompasses Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, and Video that addresses his ongoing exploration of and a coming-to-terms with his Identity as an African American Homosexual Man in Society.

STEPHEN LACK is a NY-based artist & filmmaker living in New York State and exhibiting internationally. One of the seminal artists of the 1980’s NY East Village Scene as part of the original stable of the Gracie Mansion Gallery, he was referred to as ‘The Boticelli of Sleaze’ in a 1977 review of his work in The Montreal Star and is a recent receiver of the Acker Award. He is in many major collections worldwide, both private and public. His early films, Montreal Main and The Rubber Gun debuted at the Whitney Museum and MoMA New Director series, respectively, the latter film being nominated for Best Script at Canada’s first Genie Awards. His work in David Cronenberg’s Scanners and Dead Ringers embeds him as a cultural icon, as well as his award winning work with Jon Jost on All the Vermeers in NY for American Playhouse (PBS). Deep in his Heart he is and always will be underground.

MICHAEL McDONOUGH is an architect, organic farmer, artist, and writer. He created 100 Nights: Calling Back as an homage to The Clash's London Calling and the band's political activism. The show—which links generations of artists from the 1980s East Village art movement to today—can be understood in the spirit of the Situationist International movement in mid-to-late 1960s France, particularly in the notion of “a game of events.” By suggesting connections between and among post-Punk music and performance, local farms, depleted public food resources, and art, his intent is to challenge prevailing categorical realities and suggest new possibilities. This show is intended to appear over 100 nights in locations yet to be determined, these unified by a sense of aiding and building communities through generational disruption.

DAVID WEST is an American born, Paris-based artist and reprobate, who takes the position that art is the dissonant & constant beating heart of society, a reflection of the beauty and malaise that inspires it. The unconscious meets superconsciousness and plenty of mistakes. These days he mostly works in pastel and on velvet paintings from his perch high above Château Rouge.

JESSICA RUBIN is a figurative artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is focused on capturing moments of connection and exploring self image. She depicts her subjects in private spaces filled with objects and patterns that indicate a sense of personality for the subject. Rubin has exhibited her work in NYC and Brooklyn at galleries such as La MaMa Galleria, The Living Gallery, One Art Space, and more. You can find her work in the All SHE Makes online directory for women artists and featured on the Sandcastle Collective website.

DAVID SANDLIN moved to the Lower East Side in 1980 when the Punk Movement was well underway. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1956, he was primed by the Troubles toward political activism and punk's anti-authoritarian ethos and was soon plastering downtown with his hand-silkscreened posters protesting Ronald Reagan's GOP. Since then, he has shown his paintings, prints, comics, and illustrations around the world and received a number of awards and grants, including from the Guggenheim Foundation and many others.

RUIZ STEPHINSON is a Franco-British art duo composed of Coralie Ruiz (FR) and Anthony Stephinson (UK). They work primarily with sculptural forms, dematerialising them, and dissect models of hospitality. Intrinsic to their practice, they created Goswell Road (Artist-Run Space and Publishing House) - a micro-scene and a living, evolving work.

MARGUERITE VAN COOK came to New York with her punk band The Innocents after touring with The Clash. She stayed, opened gallery Ground Zero, and curated numerous events and shows. Her work as an artist and filmmaker has placed her in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard. She is a co-author of Seven Miles a Second with James Romberger and David Wojnarowicz, a graphic memoir of Wojnarowicz’s life and death, which is in its third edition in America. Van Cook has a role as herself in the upcoming documentary feature The Brezinski Project.

BECCA VAN K is a mixed media fiber artist based in Catskill, NY. She translates her deepest passions into vibrant colors & pattern combinations with various handcraft and fiber art methods. Torn between city nightlife and the woods of the Catskill Mountains, she’d only leave New York if there were techno clubs in the desert. The happiness of her viewers is at the center of her practice.

HWARIM LEE is an illustrator based in NYC. She loves animals, tea, and music. She thinks punk means total freedom and expression.