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The exhibit is a survey of artists from Curcio’s over 30-year career that exemplifies the meaning of the title – being dedicated to doing something for a long period of time, especially when done with considerable effort or difficulty. This is not an exhibit of the newest, hottest, what’s trending now, but of artists and their work that will pass the test of time.
The artists Curcio curated into the exhibition reflect a life in art with a person’s relationship to an artist and their art. The exhibit’s as well as the curator’s history begins with Neil Jenney whom Curcio learned of in an Art in America’s Summer 1982 article and has followed Jenney’s career ever since. In 1989 at Ward-Nasse Gallery, Soho NYC, William Graef exhibited with Curcio when he was still making art. That same year an amazing performance artist, Andre Stitt, came to the gallery and began a collaboration that continues to this day. Art making ended in the early 1990s when Curcio became director and curator of Ward-Nasse Gallery exhibiting Chakaia Booker, Amy Hill, Simen Johan, and Gerald Slota in some of their first exhibitions. Along with Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, publisher of Cover Magazine and poet, they began presenting a series of readings. For this exhibit, Curcio and Wright continue their collaboration with a reading of long-haulers and others at the beginning of their long haul, see Event Listing.
By the mid-90s at Curcio Spector Gallery, he exhibited Pamela Lawton while by the end of the gallery, he exhibited Richard Purdy, Mike Miller, and Claire McConaughy at art fairs and unique spaces. Becoming involved with Nurture Art after his gallery closed developing exhibitions, fundraisers, and a fledgling organization with Karen Fitzgerald, Karen Marston, and Catya Plate.
As the 90s ended, Curcio began writing in earnest like the artists/writers Christopher Hart Chambers, Mary Hrbacek, John Mendelsohn, Walter Robinson, and Steve Rockwell, publisher of dArt International. Curcio’s first review of this period was of Clarina Bezzola’s, The Sonder Institute, an exhibition of objects and performance. For this exhibition, Bezzola’s performance happens on the streets surrounding Lichtundfire while her partner in the institute, Miles Pittman, has his desk outside the gallery.
At the beginning of the art fair explosion in early 2000, Curcio was a co-producer and co-founder of the Scope art fairs exhibiting Julie Oakes, Terry Rodgers, Gae Savannah, and TODT. After the “great recession,” he returned to independent curating collaborating with artists/curators D. Dominick Lombardi, Leah Oates, and Priska Juschka of Lichtundfire.
There are the long haulers - Lin Evola, Danielle Frankenthal, Chambliss Giobbi, Edward M. Giordano Jr., Augustus Goertz, John Grande, Joyce Pommer, Pierre St.-Jacques, and Martin Weinstein that Curcio has exhibited over the years.
Then there are artists exhibiting with Curcio for the first time William Carroll, Jonathan Feldschuh, Bodo Korsig, Loren Munk, James Austin Murray, Leemour Pelli, Sebastian Piras, Hideki Takahashi, and LeRone B. Wilson, even though they have known each other for years, even decades.
Long haulers all, but just beginning to exhibit together are O’Delle Abney, Claudine Anrather, Paul Brainard, Bill Claps, Gregory de la Haba, Zavier Ellis, Sam Jackson, KAORUKO, Frodo Mikkelsen, Bobbie Moline-Kramer, Lenora Rosenfield, Sandy Van Iderstine, and Ben Woolfitt.