Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
RESUME
Chantel Foretich is an American artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexioc. Her works are mostly small-scale versions of real, imagined and literary scenes, mechanized and illuminated with various motors and lights.
The shrunken places are charged in some way, built because of their accumulated history, fleeting exchange, idea, offer of respite, or role in violence. Each can be thought of as a constructed relic, almost small enough to imagine inside a human body, sized in the same way that memories recede, but fill the body upon recollection.
Chantel worked in fundraising for many years in NYC, Connecticut, Lousiana and Santa Fe, and the works can resemble stage set maquettes, or, not-quite-to-scale architectural models.
Her work has been shown in libraries, storefronts, empty warehouses and hotel closets as well as galleries and museums.
As a curator, Chantel and Carrie Mackin with Mackin Projects directed the program for QF Gallery in East Hampton, NY, a physical space and mobile project featuring exhibitions by Mickalene Thomas, Nan Goldin and numerous emerging and experimental artists, curators and architects.
Chantel has served as a committee member for the nonprofit CloudTop Comedy Festival since its inception in 2019.
SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Deep in the Heart of Summer
Mechanized, illuminated sculptures inspired by literature, including works referencing fiction by John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carson McCullers, John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, Ralph Ellison and Radclyffe Hall
Satin/Reichman Memorial Art Gallery
Santa Fe Public Library, Santa Fe, NM 2022
TG&Y Paperplate Throw
Street-facing window installation, shrunken version of 1970s Thanksgiving tradition in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. TG&Y employees threw paperplates with prizes written on them from the roof of TG&Y to eager families in the parking lot. Prizes included board games, TV trays, clothes and more.
La Luncheonette restaurant, New York, NY 2004
Nebraska Avenue
Street-facing window installation, shrunken version of street in Tampa, Florida including Alpine Liquor, House of Meats and more.
La Luncheonette Restaurant, New York, NY 2003
Musicboxes & Dioramas
Apocalypso thrift store, New York, NY 2002
Entre Nous
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Gautier, MS 1998
Recollections and Lovers
Outdoor human-scale bird house and daily sunset installation of small, viewer-animated sculptures
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 1997
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Illumination: The Sacred Aspect of Light
Santa Fe, NM 2023
Hacking The Library
Artists, librarians, community members, students and scholars share how they 'hack' the institution itself, discovering and addressing ideological terrains, passing time in existing libraries, or making one's own library.
West Virginia University Library, Morgantown, West Virginia; Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 2023-2025
Throw Them Bones on the Ground
exploring themes of identity and perseverance in light of the current political climate of local and state politics and including artists Catalina Chang, Kalup Linzy and John Murdock
Tempus Projects, Tampa, FL 2023
Rocky Mountain Trieniel
Juror Merry Scully
Museum of Art Fort Collins, Fort Collins, CO 2023
Mediums
Participating artists met with a medium and made work about it. My work was a view into John Cheever’s apartment building in NYC and his daily commute to write in the basement boiler room. Rooms in the building featured miniature versions of paintings that the medium had hanging behind him in his home during zoom sessions.
Calico Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2015
A Necessary Shift
EFA Project Space, New York, NY 2013
Peekskill Project 2012
Warehouse installation of miniature versions of Peekskill businesses including the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, CVS, anti-abortion “clinic” and more
Peekskill, NY 2012
Room without a View
Curated by Trong Gia Nguyen
Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany 2010
Prozess
Curated by Jazz-minh Moore
Interactive installation welcomed viewers to activate music box mechanism and illuminate work based on The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Lyonsweir Gallery, New York, NY 2009
Mixtape
717 Studio, Brooklyn, NY 2009
Bridge Art Fair
Catalina Hotel, Greene Contemporary, Miami, FL 2007
The Encampment
Installation of 90 19th-century-style tents by Thom Sokoloski in empty field at southern tip of Roosevelt Island. The tents represented patients who once lived in the island’s smallpox hospital, the remains of which are nearby. Inside each tent, artists and volunteers arranged artifacts to memorialize patients and other island residents. The tents were illuminated from within, so “The Encampment” was visible from both sides of the East River, a glowing link to the area’s history
Roosevelt Island, NY 2007
Conflux
Shrunken re-creation of businesses surrounding functioning phone booth inside phone booth, just above phone itself, including barber shop, fish shop and more
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 2007
Thirty Second Spot
Video installation of mechanized sculptures
Cuchifritos, New York, NY 2007
Peekskill Project 2006
Window installation referencing Hurricane Katrina
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY 2006
The Studio Visit
Exit Art, New York, NY 2006
Traffic
Exit Art, New York, NY 2005
EA50
HERE Arts Center, New York, NY 2004
Home
Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY 2003
Dreamy
Ziehersmith Gallery, New York, NY 2003
Miss Lower East Side Pageant
Talent: Music boxes
Host: Murray Hill
Slipper Room, New York, NY 2002
Jean Bordeaux Florida Sculpture Show
LeMoyne Art Museum, Tallahassee, FL 2000
The Devil Made Me Do It
Covivant Gallery, Tampa, FL 1999
Featuring Florida '98
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL 1998
Art to Arm the Women of Hattiesburg
The Cha-Cha Palace, Hattiesburg, MS 1993
Hub City Panorama
The Studio / Hattiesburg Public Library
National Endowment for the Arts
Hattiesburg, MS 1992
Hattiesburg: The Other Mississippi
Gallery 203, Hattiesburg, MS 1992
CURATORIAL
HABITATS, Market Art and Design, Bridgehampton, NY 2015
PLOT, artMRKT, Bridgehampton, NY 2014
WEARWITHALL, QF Gallery, East Hampton, NY 2012
AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
SALT Artists Retreat, Monmouth Beach, NJ 2024
Farm Studio, Rajasthan, India, 2024
Indian Mountain Arts Residency, Lakeville, CT, 2015
I-Park International Artist-in-Residence Program, East Haddam, CT, 2013
ArtSlant Showcase, HI TIDE, Aqua Art Miami, Aqua Hotel, Miami, FL 2010
Residency for NYC arts workers, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY 2010
The Tin Shop Residency, Breckenridge, CO, 2007
PRESS
Meier, Allison, "Artists Visit a Spiritual Medium and Make Work About It", Hyperallergic, March 25, 2015
Hodara, Susan, "Hudson-Inspired Art, Popping Up All Over", New York Times, October 19, 2012
Vartanian, Hrag, "Aqua Returns to Miami Beach", Hyperallergic, December 3, 2010
EDUCATION
1997 Master of Fine Arts in Photography
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
1991 Bachelor of Science in Journalism, Minor in Philosophy University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS