ABC No Rio April 29 - May 27, 2010 Opening: Thursday, April 29 at 7:00pm
ABC No Rio will honor downtown artist Valerie Caris Blitz with an exhibition of her last works. Caris Blitz died at the age of 52 on July 28, 2009, after a long illness. She was well known for her performance art and appearances in more than 40 films during the 1980s, most notably Ari Roussimoff’s Shadows of the City.
Valerie’s diagnosis of HIV in 1989 did not stop her will to create art; instead her work became more conceptual. Her pieces “Queen Sex Positive” and “Vestment” were part of the Sur Rodney Sur show Blood Fairies, an exhibition of works by a dozen artists with HIV. She also joined Visual AIDS, becoming one of only a dozen women in the group’s registry of HIV positive artists. Although influenced by “all the disciplines of the 20th-century avantgarde,” she returned to her first love, abstract-expressionist painting, in the last decade of her life.
ABC No Rio 156 Rivington Street (b. Clinton and Suffolk Street) Hrs: Wednesday-Thursday 4:00-7:00pm & Sundays 1:00-3:00pm www.abcnorio.org
Valerie Caris Blitz - Selected Works
ABC No Rio
April 29 - May 27, 2010
Opening: Thursday, April 29 at 7:00pm
ABC No Rio will honor downtown artist Valerie Caris Blitz with an exhibition of her last works. Caris Blitz died at the age of 52 on July 28, 2009, after a long illness. She was well known for her performance art and appearances in more than 40 films during the 1980s, most notably Ari Roussimoff’s Shadows of the City.
Valerie’s diagnosis of HIV in 1989 did not stop her will to create art; instead her work became more conceptual. Her pieces “Queen Sex Positive” and “Vestment” were part of the Sur Rodney Sur show Blood Fairies, an exhibition of works by a dozen artists with HIV.
She also joined Visual AIDS, becoming one of only a dozen women in the group’s registry of HIV positive artists. Although influenced by “all the disciplines of the 20th-century avantgarde,” she returned to her first love, abstract-expressionist painting, in the last decade of her life.
ABC No Rio
156 Rivington Street
(b. Clinton and Suffolk Street)
Hrs: Wednesday-Thursday 4:00-7:00pm & Sundays 1:00-3:00pm
www.abcnorio.org