Photos: HYCIDE Launch Party at Rush Arts Gallery

The team behind HYCIDE Magazine, an urban photography and arts journal, on Saturday celebrated the release of its fifth issue with a launch party at Rush Arts Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. 

Many of the issue's featured artists are Brooklyn-based, including Fletcher Williams, III, Marilyn Nance, Kenya Robinson, Derrick Adams, Ayana V. Jackson, Terence Nance, Russell Frederick, Hanif Abdur-Rahim, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Radcliffe Roye, Tim Okamura, Ruby O. Amanze and YK Hong.

Issue #5 of HYCIDE focused on artists who subvert conventional ideas about race, class, identity and pop culture, including Numa Perrier’s unsettling depictions of female sexuality and motherhood and Hebru Brantley, who recently sold his expressionist, graffiti-inspired painting, “Everyone’s Scared,’’ to Jay-Z for $20,000.

Cultural Critic Greg Tate penned an essay on Afro-Futurism where he examines an artistic legacy that dismantled the Futurism movement of Nazi Germany and recasted it as cosmic revolution.

HYCIDE Contributing Editor Michael A. Gonzales wrote a piece about the life and art of Romare Bearden, and writer Asha Saint-Hilaire composed an essay on Andy Warhol’s silent commentary of mass media and the Birmingham riots.

“This magazine is a record for the future, capturing who we are in this moment and giving light to artistic voices that might not otherwise be heard except in places like HYCIDE," said Danny Simmons, founder and director of Rush Arts Gallery.