Carlos Roque, detail, Processed Normal Without Frames 2004, fifteen drawings, permanent ink and color pencils on paper
UPDATED AND CORRECTED INFORMATION IN THE TEXT BELOW
Great show! Joymore is the kind of gallery you hope to find in Williamsburg (or anywhere else on the planet you may be at the moment) but it’s still a big surprise when you do. Typically the principal lives in the space, and is totally committed to the artists whose work is being shared with you. You probably haven’t seen the work anywhere else – yet.
Inside the gallery, where we found a stunning group show of five artists, we spoke to Melissa Schubeck, who brought Joymore from Chicago. A quick check on line reveals that she’s pretty familiar with alternative space and alternative artists. In an email she sent today I learned further that Joymore began as a gallery space there in 2000, and that the name was also attached to a number of public art projects she curated. In the last year she was joined by a partner, John Henley.
In Williamsburg, where she will be on her own again, she plans to continue the project space in addition to curating public art projects in alternative environments. It looks like great fun!
Chicago’s loss is our gain for sure.
Actually I already knew some of the work of Andrew Jeffrey Wright. One year ago Barry and I had gone home with two small drawings from a show at Champion Fine Arts curated by Reed Anderson. Even within the smaller dimensions of Joymore’s rooms he still manages to show two very different kinds of work on Grand Street. Excellent stuff.
Carlos Roque happened to be sitting in the back room working while we were there last Sunday, so I was able to tell him how fine I thought his wall of mostly black and white drawings were.
Pedro Velez’s photographs and drawings would probably confound almost anyone on a first visit, but the mind really wants to know more. Gotta go back.
Josh Kline is responsible for a large digital, faux-heroic glacial landscape which covers the wall facing the entrance.
Oh yes, there’s also an outside sculpture space, a wonderfully luxurious appendage in a space this small. It had been raining the day we visited, and in spite of the abstraction of its form Devon Costello’s “Glacier” looked very good with a shallow pool on its base.
[image from Joymore]
Author: jameswagner
photographers’ ‘Flash Mob’ subway ride
REMINDER: Don’t miss being a part of the photographers’ ‘Flash Mob’ subway ride protest against the MTA proposal to ban all cameras from the entire transit system. The organizers’ plan is to meet tomorrow, Saturday, at 1 o’clock in the awesome Main Concourse inside Grand Central Terminal. Don’t forget your metro card and your camera. Bring a sign with a creative message, even a small one.
The magnificent Concourse is worth a picture even without the addition of hundreds of concerned young camera fanatics, and if the MTA has its way, this will be one of your last chances to record its spendors.
still no evidence of a Kerik nanny
But at least they’re finally looking around. The NYTimes may hope to redeem itself for sitting out the Bernard Kerik story in its first weeks. The paper’s news and editorial departments had totally ignored the developing stories about Kerik’s shady background until after he withdrew his name from consideration as Homeland Security secretary.
Maybe they’re trying to get up to speed now by cutting to the quick. This morning the Times devotes 40 column inches to the questions surrounding the mysterious nanny whose immigration and tax status was used as the reason for Kerik’s withdrawal.
Included among those questions is the fundamental one I posed early this past Sunday, whether in fact there ever was a nanny in the first place.
Last night, Mr. Kerik was told that skeptics in city government circles were questioning the very existence of the nanny, and he was pressed to provide any kind of evidence to document that she was real. But after taking time to consider the request, Mr. Kerik again decided to remain silent on the subject.
Why do I care so much about this story? It starts with the embarassment I feel for my city that Giuliani and Kerik have at least until recently been successful in conspiring with the opportunists in Washington to ensure that two locally-notorious goons came to represent or embody 9/11 and New York. The fire of my outrage about the choice of Kerik was stoked by the uninhibited enthusiasm for the nomination expressed by New York’s Democratic politicians Hillary Clinton and Charles Shumer – and the irresponsible, uncritical reporting of my hometown’s largest paper.
The lights are going out, the doors are all closing; where will we look for truth, honesty and integrity now?
the Barnes Foundation for all
galleries of the Barnes Foundation
In a compact, tightly-argued piece in this morning’s NYTimes Roberta Smith puts the brouhaha over the disposition of the collection of the Barnes Foundation into a clear perspective.
Once more we are reminded that no one really owns art, that all collectors are temporary custodians. And the greater the art, the less any one person, especially a dead one, can control its destiny.
In the end, art belongs to the people it inspires, the people who use it to understand themselves and the world better – and the people who use it to create more art, and the possibility of more inspiration.
I feel compelled to add here that my respects come from someone who really loves old hinges but hasn’t been to Merion, Pennsylvania.
[image from new-york-art.com]
stop the insanity of the Jets stadium
the immediate, threatened neighborhood
As incredible as it may seem to idealistic small-d democrats who, however discouraged by national or state politics, may still think we have a say in what happens to our own city, we do not.
A corporate football stadium is about to be dropped into the middle of Manhattan by interests which are completely dismissive of democratic process. Everything has been decided inside corporate board rooms, the mayor’s office and the darker lobbies in Albany. The ordinary people of this city and of the neighborhood it will impact and destroy, the people who will pay – in every conceivable way – for this boondoggle and environmental disaster have been told they have absolutely no say in it. Like so much that impacts New York City even the City Council is powerless to stop it, in spite of the overwhelming numbers of the members who oppose it.
But there may still be a chance to lay down in front of this heavily-bankrolled steamroller if the press can be encouraged to take notice of the strength of the opposition.
Come to the only public hearing scheduled about the Jets stadium, this Thursday afternoon at the Javits Center. The hearing begins at 4:00 at 35th St. and 11th Ave., but it’s suggested that people arrive at 3:00 to sign in, meet their neighbors and get a good seat.
The communtiy organization which has been fighting this thing from the beginning, the Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance, promises, “We’ll have volunteers at the Javits Center showing everyone where to go; all you need to do is show up, sign in, and speak out against the stadium, or cheer loudly for your neighbors who do.”
[image of the neighborhood obtained from Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance]
Karl Rove gives it to us
Ward Sutton KARL ROVE SUMS IT UP FOR LIBERALS 2004 syndicated cartoon detail
See the entire 16-box Ward Sutton cartoon on The Village Voice site. My personal favorite/horror has got to be, “WE USED 9/11 AND NEW YORK CITY LIKE A CHEAP WHORE.”
[image from The Village Voice]
Thomas Allen
Thomas Allen Lure chromogenic print 20″ x 24″
Thomas Allen Swell 2004 chromogenic print 20″ x 24″
Books and the images they inspire, captured and re-configured here a second time. Thomas Allen has a very smart, and very elegant, show at the very fine new Foley Gallery on West 27th Street. He makes the oddest assortment of books sing, visually, in a way we may not have heard since childhood.
While you’re there, make sure you look around in the other two small-ish spaces, where there are still more treasures to be seen. You probably haven’t seen these artists anywhere else – yet.
[images from the Foley Gallery]
as Autumn leaves
untitled (140 Cadman Plaza West, December 6, 2004) 2004
Lombard-Freid Fine Arts
Jordan Wolfson Infinite Melancholy 2003 video, 4 minute loop, still image of installation projection
The title’s a handful. Lombard-Freid‘s “The Festival of Dreams (part 1): Songs of Innocence & Experience” is a small group (four artists) show, but there’s a promise of more to come. Based on the quality of the work there now, I’ll be anticipating part 2.
The Kenneth Anger film stills are as beautiful as you might expect (actually, more beautiful than I expected), but the paintings by Cornelius Quabeck are a delight, and the Jordan Wolfson video in the back is awesome (you need to hear the piano), regardless of your connection to Christopher Reeve.
Cornelius Qualbeck Phunga (Camo) 2004 charcoal and spraypaint on canvas 90.5″ x 60″
the Bernard Kerik complex and the missing nanny
but what kind of complex?
Anyone who is familiar with the basics of his career knows that Bernard Kerik’s nanny story is a red herring, but is there any evidence that there even was a nanny, or at least a nanny whose immigration status would have been problematic for Kerik?
I think not, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.
[ugly image of an ugly sign citing an ugly man for an ugly career, found on the New York City Department of Corrections site; the illustration is from an archived story on the re-naming of the Manhattan Detention Complex, just three months after September 11, while Kerik was still Police Commissioner]