Artists Space

BILL RICE: FILMS AND FRAGMENTS

Thursday, February 19
7pm
Free, no RSVP required

Please join Allen Frame, Jacob Burckhardt, and Donald Ryan for an evening of screenings and readings that highlight the multifaceted practice of Bill Rice, a painter whose work extended across theater, literature, and film and whose presence was deeply embedded in the East Village cultural scene. While painting remained central to his artistic life, Rice was also an active participant in experimental theater and underground cinema, contributing through writing, performance, and long-standing collaboration.

A male figure sits inside a crowded room with lots of wooden chairs, and large paintings and posters hung on the walls. Light streams in from the windows in the back.
Photo: Stephen Barker. [A male figure sits inside a crowded room with lots of wooden chairs, and large paintings and posters hung on the walls. Light streams in from the windows in the back.]

From the 1970s onward, Rice appeared in and collaborated on films by artists and filmmakers closely associated with the East Village, participating in a milieu shaped by informal networks, shared authorship, and cross-disciplinary exchange. He was also a devoted scholar and researcher of Gertrude Stein, whose literary and theatrical experiments informed his own sensibility across media.

Through a selection of film excerpts, readings, and interviews, the evening foregrounds Rice’s significant contributions to the East Village’s theater, literary, and film communities.

Program includes excerpts and readings from:

The Offenders, directed by Beth B and Scott B
Wild Style (excerpt), directed by Charlie Ahearn
Manhattan Love Suicides, directed by Richard Kern
The Big Blue (excerpt), directed by Andrew Horn
Plates, directed by Gary Goldberg
Situation Room (excerpt), directed by Jim Neu
The Monkey and the Engineer, directed by Jacob Burckhardt
Dark Pocket (excerpt), directed by Jim Neu
Coffee and Cigarettes — Champagne, directed by Jim Jarmusch
Soap (excerpt), directed by Gary Indiana
Document Memory for My Friend Bill Rice, directed by Tom Jarmusch
Doomed Love, directed by Andrew Horn
Making Sounds (excerpt, interview with Bill Rice), directed by Frank Franca
Identity, a Poem by Gertrude Stein, by Lei Chou
Turmoil in the Garden (excerpt, adapted from David Wojnarowicz’s Sounds in the Distance), co-directed by Kirsten Bates and Allen Frame

Allen Frame is an artist, writer, curator, and educator based in New York, where his work is represented by Gitterman Gallery. In 2025, his solo exhibition Amalfi was presented at College of Charleston, and his photographs featured in the exhibition A Naked Chair at Kupper-Modern in Zurich. He received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in 2017/18. He has released four books of photography, including Whereupon (Palermo Publishing, 2023); Innamorato (Meteoro Editions, 2023); Fever, (Matte Editions, 2021); and Detour, (Kehrer, 2001). He has also been the curator of many exhibitions, including Luxe, Calme, Volupte, co-curated with Antonio Sergio Bessa at Candice Madey Gallery, New York, in 2023, and Love and Jump Back, the Photography of Charles Henri Ford, at Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, 2020-21. He teaches photography at Pratt Institute, School of Visual Arts, International Center of Photography, and for Strudelmedialive.com

All the while making underground movies, Jacob Burckhardt has worked at a variety of jobs: Steel Mill laborer, grape harvester, Fuller Brush man, Truck driver, Taxi driver, camera repairman and freelance photographer. As an audio engineer his work in sound ranges from recording audio around the world to mixing sound tracks for independent films at a midtown studio. He now teaches in the Film/Video department at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After making two feature movies in the 1980s, he went back to making shorts where it is possible to preserve a direct relationship between the film and the film maker. He has worked with Bill Rice on several projects, in the first of which Bill had the immortal line, “Is it a porno film?”

Donald Ryan is a gallerist based in New York City.

Artists Space Venue is generously supported by Stephen Cheng, Allan Schwartzman, and David Zwirner.