I helped S.T. VanAirsdale with all of the tech work to launch his new and improved website covering all kinds of matters film-related: The Reeler. Check it out.
September 2006 Archives
For the nerds in the audience, note that I have moved my feeds to Feedburner:
I set up redirects, but I recommend updating them anyway.
Aren't we supposed to be more concerned about security issues these days? I took it off the MTA flyer after I took the photo.
We attended the press preview for ART (212) Wednesday night, and were quite pleased by what we saw. We stayed for the VIP reception, which had a much nicer vibe than such things typically do. It appeared the organizers (it's headed by Helen Allen of Pulse and Affordable Art Fair) were pretty generous with extra passes for galleries' artists, which is always a good thing. It was not your typical sharp-elbowed mean collector crowd I often encounter.
The fair lasts through Sunday, and there is free admission tonight (Friday) from 6-9PM, if you can fit that in along with Cory Arcangel's opening at TEAM. I have a few extra passes for any art bloggers or starving artists or starving art bloggers that would like to e-mail me.
My one complaint about the fair was that the 26th and Lexington Armory, as usual, was too warm inside. Here is a somewhat random selection of highlights. There is also a flickr photoset of my images.
Best new discovery:
Robert Waters's bleach and iodine works at p|m Gallery (Toronto). They fade over time. The ones pictured here were from 2004, and the fading process had slowed, according to the gallery. They provide digital images of the works at the time of purchase, so that some people keep a running record on their wall of the states of a piece. He also has some pieces that use packing tape on walls that are then cut away with an exacto knife to form images.
Most consistent aesthetic: The always reliable Gallery Joe (Philadelphia) had a booth that looked like a curated exhibition, with an emphasis on obssessive / compulsive drawings featuring artists such as Jacob El Hanani, Xylor Jane, and Astrid Bowlby.
Most amusing/annoying person: The man who described himself to every gallerist as representing a "high end art magazine in LA."
Best Bargain: A piece donated by Exit to Aid for AIDS that was for sale in their booth for $300.
Additional things to look for:
Dan Rushton at Moti Hasson.
Emily Noelle Lambert at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art.
Jeremy Boyle's self-playing midi-controlled guitar at Hudson Franklin.
Katsumi Hayakawa at M% (Cleveland).
In all of the excitement of the fall season and our first curating experience, I haven't mentioned the latest sites running on my ArtCat platform:
ArtAsiaPacific is once again sponsoring a set of free talks at the Rubin Museum of Art called Artists on Art. One of the artists in our curated exhibition at Dam, Stuhtrager in October, Jaishri Abichandani, is giving the talk on September 29th.
There is no charge to attend, or to visit the galleries of the museum on Friday nights. In addition to Artists on Art there are theater programs at 7 p.m., Cabaret Cinema at 9:30 p.m. and either a DJ or live music in the K2 Lounge (which has nice drinks).
We saw Hiroshi Sunairi and DJ Spooky during the set earlier in the year. Highly recommended.
SCHEDULE
Friday, September 15th, 2006: Sheela Gowda,7:30p.m. Admission is free. Blurring the line between fine art and craft, Sheela Gowda questions the role of female subjectivity in the volatile mix of religion, nationalism, and violence in contemporary Indian society. Her work is currently on exhibit at Bose Pacia Gallery, New York.
Friday, September 22nd, 2006: Shen Wei, 7:30p.m. Admission is free. Marking the premiere of his new work, Re-, at the Joyce Theater (Sept 26 through Oct 1), Chelsea, choreographer Shen Wei leads a tour of the galleries.
Friday, September 29, 2006: Jaishri Abichandani, 7.30p.m. Multimedia artist and curator whose work explores schisms between sexuality, gender and representation. Jaishri is currently included in the group show Believe at Rush Arts Gallery, New York, and is co-curating the Queens International 2006 at the Queens Museum of Art, opening October 1.
Friday, October 6, 2006:Charwei Tsai, 7.30p.m. Addresses the dialectics of purity and perversion, emptiness and exploitation by meticulously copying out Buddhist mantras on unconventional surfaces such as tofu and plants. Recent exhibitions include the Hydra School Project in Greece and the inaugural Singapore Biennale, through November 12.
Friday, October 13, 2006: Derrick Adams, 7.30p.m. Brooklyn-based performance and mixed-media artist whose works revisit childhood innocence through costumes, play and subliminal erotic and ritualistic undertones. Recent exhibitions include Marvelli Gallery, New York, and Performa05 in 2005 and Momenta Art, New York, in 2006.
Friday, October 20, 2006: Susan Kleinberg, 7.30p.m. Multimedia artist who has presented installations at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and 2001. Susan will discuss her work Fear Not (2001), for which she interviewed figures ranging from Bill Clinton to Gore Vidal about courage, in relation to the Buddhist hand gesture fear not.
Friday, October 27, 2006: David Abir, 7:30p.m. Composer and multimedia artist whose collaborators include Alfredo Jaar and Shirin Neshat. David is currently developing a sound installation recreating the anatomical structure of the human ear. It will premiere at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, in 2007.
EVENT DETAILS: Rubin Museum of Art - 250 W 17 St / 6th and 7th Avenues / 212.620.5000.
I've been reading the comments over on Edward Winkleman's blog post about galleries and diversity, particularly regarding gender.
James and I don't really think about whether the shows we see, or the art we buy, are by women or men generally. Sometimes we realize we have written about only women for a bit on our blogs, and certainly our collection has many women in it. Our records aren't organized enough for us to tell you percentages.
When it came time to curate our first shows at Dam, Stuhltrager, we wanted to make sure we didn't have an all straight white male show. That doesn't describe the people we know and live around, so it didn't really make sense to have a group of artists like that.
I will say we struggled with the idea of thinking about diversity without choosing artists by "category," or expecting a specific person to be some kind of representative of a group. I think setting out with some kind of quota system wouldn't really have been in the spirit of the way we explore the art world and find new things.
Come to the next opening on October 13th, and check out the works. We have a title now:
Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window
The title is inspired by this Morton Feldman lecture.
The lists of artists is: Jaishri Abichandani, Ina Diane Archer, Peter Corrie, Susan C. Dessel, Nicolas Garait, Joy Garnett, and Jacques Louis Vidal.
Susan C. Dessel's installation will still be in the backyard sculpture garden during the run of the "Dangling" show.
I'm surprised that I haven't really seen mentions on art blogs of the new art fair, ART(212), which opens this week. I like the fact that the opening night preview is a benefit for Aid For AIDS and The New York Foundation For The Arts, rather than for something like a big museum's acquisition fund.
The private preview is Wednesday, September 27, 6-9PM. Tickets are $75 each, or $130 for two. After that it's $15/day, or free on Friday from 6-9PM.
Some bloggy friends such as Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Moti Hasson Gallery, Hudson Franklin, Magnan Projects, Mixed Greens, Morgan Lehman, and Priska C. Juschka Fine Art are participating. I know that Robert Koch (San Francisco) will have some Brian Ulrich photos available, for his fans here.
There are also special projects, including an exhibition curated by the Asia Society and El Museo Del Barrio.
My friend Sean Bonner's Metroblogging unit in Bangkok is a good place to get some "person on the street"-style reporting on the military coup in Thailand.
Related: There is already a Wikipedia entry of course.
A very worthy project, with excellent silent art auctions each year, is having its annual benefit tomorrow night at Exit Art:
Groundswell Community Mural Project
10th Anniversary Gala Benefit & Art Auction
Wednesday September 20th, 2006
7-10 pm at
EXIT ART-- 475 Tenth Avenue
at 36th Street in Manhattan
Tickets start at $35. Click on the benefit link above to see the impressive list of artists who have contributed work.
James and I walked around DUMBO and Vinegar Hill today. In addition to seeing some great buildings, we also saw two interesting art shows:
- Point of Purchase at dumbo arts center
- Raul Gutierrez's Images from China's Western Frontiers at Nelson Hancock Gallery
Note: If you have trouble with the flash slideshow above, or prefer something less flash-y, the photo set of Vinegar Hill is here.
I saw this while walking on Bedford Street in Williamsburg yesterday. It is her project for Conflux, described on the website as "the the annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography where international artists, technologists, urban adventurers and the public put investigations of everyday city life into practice on the streets."
You can find out more about the artist and the project on her blog.
A big percentage of NYPD officers live outside of the city. They probably don't know why it matters when they block a crosswalk for 15 minutes to talk to someone on the sidewalk. There was even enough space to back up and not block it when I first walked by.
Does anyone know an up-to-date source on the percentage that live in the city? I see a 1997 estimate of 45%.
James and I are thrilled with the description of Susan C. Dessel's work on Artinfo.com:
Poli See
Speaking of predictions, maybe it was the forecast that gallerists Edward Winkleman and Daniel Papkin recently gave to ArtInfo, or maybe it was the blaring media volume on the pending 9/11 anniversary, but when we joined the crowds in Chelsea, we were expecting to see a number of artists engaging with our charged political climate. And that did, indeed, prove to be the case at a few galleries. And, were happy to report, most of the work that could reasonably be read as carrying political overtones was well-crafted; there was little pat sloganeering going on (although there was some).
But while Chelsea had its fair share of political art, it was indefatigable gallery visitors who hit openings in Brooklyn on Friday who got to see an especially strong work that explicitly evoked the political climate. Susan C. Dessels installation, Our Backyard, A Cautionary Tale, in the sculpture garden at Dam, Stuhltrager, featured a series of white plastic body bags lined up on a patch of grass. To get from the back door of the gallery to the outdoor bar, visitors had to either navigate a narrow path or step over the body bags to reach the far side of the outdoor space. As the opening got crowded, it provided perhaps the most apt metaphor for why we may see more "political" art this fallunder contemporary circumstances, its simply unavoidable.
More information on the exhibition is here.
Related: Opening night photo from James.
Tonight is our Muse Fuse event, presented by NURTUREart at 7PM. Details are here.
The work in the window is
The Memory of Truth, 2003
Ligorano/Reese
Digital print on Duratrans
96 × 113 inches
It is part of a show curated by Marshall Reese titled The Medium is the Message.
They also did the ice sculpture I photographed in April at the same gallery.
The State of Things
Ligorano/Reese
If you're voting in the New York Democratic primary today, and still undecided on Hillary Clinton versus Jonathan Tasini, just choose based on your beliefs:
Gay Marriage
Tasini: for
Clinton: against
PATRIOT Act
Clinton: for
Tasini: against
Iraq War
Clinton: for
Tasini: against
Death Penalty
Clinton: for
Tasini: against
Cluster Bombs
Clinton: for
Tasini: against
I realize he has little chance to defeat her, but a big turnout for Tasini would certainly help put some fear into her plans to win elections by moving ever rightward.
Gay City News has two good articles on Tasini:
- Endorsing him for the Senate
- Why Tasini Matters
From the endorsement:
On a shoestring campaign, Tasini has raised critical questionsmost prominently about this nations disastrous policy in Iraq. Not incidentally, he is also a supporter of same-sex marriage.
Clinton has ducked fair dialogue on where she stands on the most pressing foreign policy question facing the nation. Just because she can get away with it does not make it the right thing to do. Clinton has also bobbed and weaved this year on gay rights. Activists have pressed her on her opposition to gay marriageand come away disappointed that did not even speak out on the dignity of gay families on the Senate floor when Congress debated the ugly Marriage Protection Amendment.
Note that I'm not saying the gay issue overrides all. I think the fact that both of New York's senators voted for the Iraq War, when the overwhelming majority of their constituents were opposed to it (and millions demonstrated on the streets), should be enough reason to get rid of both as soon as possible. The Democratic primary is really our only chance to have a say in this.
Matt Marello, Footprint in World Trade Center Dust, 2006, Digital ink jet print on watercolor paper, 30 × 40 inches
Pierogi 2000 has a 9/11-themed set of exhibitions opening tonight from 7-9. I can't think of a better community with whom to spend this evening.
This hangs above the desks in the office.
From Robert Scheer's column published on May 22, 2001:
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.
I like the confusing perspective of the installation of this exhibition. When one first walks into the gallery, one's depth perception seems off, and what's a painted surface versus a three-dimensional surface is a bit of a mystery. I also found some of the images reminiscent of a Gerhard Richter painting of a meadow.
From the press release:
Several large wall pieces loosely depict postcard versions of coastal California. At first glance, these appear to be large multilayered canvas paintings of beautiful scenes rich with glazes and grounded in painting tradition. In fact, they are standard 4×8 foot plywood and sheetrock layered in drywall mud. This mud is pigmented with commercial tints and applied with a trowel more in the tradition of house building than conventional landscape painting.
Dozens of carefully cast, concrete replicas of river rock and quarry stones ranging in scale from overlooked pebbles to average landscaping rock are carefully placed in piles around the gallery. Some rocks blend with the architecture of the space while others supply substructure for the weighty landscape pieces. It soon becomes clear that there is a uniformity of color and a repeat of the forms not present in nature, an evident indication that they are not rocks but replicas. Their function is multi-faceted: they represent the geological foundation of an exterior landscape, their concrete material represents the foundation of a house, while at the same time they are hand-crafted art objects.
There is a rather obsessive quality to making hand-waxed, crafted rocks to present big piles of them. When we walked into the gallery on Saturday afternoon, Dennis Christie told us "We just sold a pile of rocks!"
Have you noticed that Tasini button over on the right of this page? Here is a reminder of why it's there:
An unexploded bomblet from a cluster bomb marked by the UN in a field near the village of El Maalliye in southern Lebanon. (AP) [source]
Clinton Joins with Republicans to Reject Limits on Cluster Bombs
The Senate on Wednesday rejected a move by Democrats to stop the Pentagon from using cluster bombs near civilian targets and to cut off sales unless purchasers abide by the same rules.On a 70-30 vote, the Senate defeated an amendment to a Pentagon budget bill to block use of the deadly munitions near populated areas. The vote came after the State Department announced last month that it is investigating whether Israel misused American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.
Unexploded cluster bombs anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon after Israel's 34-day war with Hezbollah militants.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have long sought to keep cluster bombs from being used near concentrated areas of civilians. They say that as many as 40 percent of the munitions fail to detonate on impact they can still can explode later leaving innocent civilians and children vulnerable to injury or death long after hostilities have ceased.
Relief organizations and the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center reported finding evidence that Israel used three types of U.S.-made cluster bombs during the war with Hezbollah militants. Israel also manufactures its own cluster munitions.
"For too long, innocent civilians, not enemy combatants, have suffered the majority of casualties from cluster munitions," Leahy said. "The recent experience in Lebanon is only the latest example of the appalling human toll of injury and death. Strict rules of engagement are long overdue."
The AP story doesn't mention that Clinton and Schumer voted with Republicans on the bill. I had to get that information from Tasini's web site. The roll call vote is here.
The New York Democratic Party primary is this Tuesday. Don't forget to vote!
Related: Daniel Millstone at Daily Gotham on cluster bombs in Lebanon.
You can check out ArtCal for the 100+ openings we care about in the next few days, but I wanted to highlight a few things.
First, part one of our first-ever curating opens this Friday at Dam, Stuhltrager:
Susan C. Dessel, Our Backyard, A Cautionary Tale
Dam, Stuhltrager
Williamsburg
38 Marcy Avenue
Opening: Friday, September 8, 7:00PM - 9:00PM
We also want to try to hit Christopher Reiger's show at AG Gallery that night. Based on other things I've seem out of Team Lump fron North Carolina, the Cinders Gallery show, also opening Friday, should be great.
On Thursday night in Chelsea, we may not make it to all, but I definitely want to try to hit:
- Jesse Bercowetz & Matt Bua at Derek Eller
- Ester Partegàs at Foxy Production
- Jen Dalton at Winkleman / Plus Ultra
It looks like you should just hit 27th Street if you can't make it to everything.
If you're in Williamsburg on Thursday night, there is an opening party for The Rider Project at Galapagos art space, 70 North 6th Street, 6-10 pm.
I know I left a huge number of things off (including DCKT, Monya Rowe, and Sixtyseven), but I'm running back to coding now, and recommend just checking out ArtCal to make your own list.
These two photos represent the center points of the two halves of Stuyvesant Park Our late friend Rex Wasserman was in charge of the restoration. He would not be pleased by the ugly dog run in one half of the park. Nice accompaniment to the flag pole, huh?
Related: my flickr set.
Chuleta's Rampage (From the series Who is Wepa Woman?), 2006
Latex on Wall
From the (now closed) Wild Girls show at Exit Art. The lighting was bad, so I did what I could to make these presentable. For those who asked, no I didn't change the JPEGs to black and white.
She is also in a show at Ironworks in the Bronx titled Comics and Sequentials.
James and I will be participating in NURTUREart's MUSE FUSE series on September 13th at 7PM in Wiliamsburg. We'll talk about art blogging, collecting, and anything else that comes up.
From their site:
Muse Fuse is an informal forum for the NURTUREart Registry Artists, Curators and their guests to meet and exchange ideas and information. Each meeting features announcements, an interesting speaker, Q & A, and time to meet one another, network and socialize. Please bring any helpful career information you might know of (upcoming deadlines for grants, exhibition opportunities, studios for rent...anything), show invites you might have to announce and distribute, etc. RSVP's appreciated.
Place: 229 Leonard Street, Williamsburg, L Train to Lorimer Street, walk up Metropolitan Avenue (away from the Manhattan Skyline) 1-2 blocks depending on which stairs you take (front of the train offers closest exit), make a right turn onto Leonard Street, walk three and a half short blocks, its a brick house with glass blocks and bright blue trim between Powers and Grand streets, on the ground floor, the righthand blue door will be open.
