Gautam Bhatia Escape to the Good Life (2002) charcoal on paper 17″ x 70.5″
Yes, it is a group show of contemporary Indian artists, but it’s not an Indian art show. Thomas Erben has curated a show in his own gallery of work which would be as much at home in any collection in the West as it already is in India’s most sophisticated public and private precincts. This is very good stuff, represented in at least half a dozen media.
China is already hot. Maybe now it’s India’s turn. I have no idea why we haven’t seen a mainstream media review of this show yet, but that almost certainly won’t happen again.
I’ve put up images here of just two of the works which excited me most. I highly recommend going to the gallery site itself for an animated preview of Sonia Khurana’s extraordinary video.
Sonia Khurana Bird (1999/2000) video, no sound, still from the work
[images from Thomas Erben Gallery]
Author: jameswagner
the Book Fair and the Library
view of the upward reaches of the Library room inside the building of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, including detail of a faux-marble pillar and the ironwork which supports the huge skylight with its gilt-decorated opening mechanisms.
Bill Dobbs got me out of the apartment earlier than usual on Sunday. The incentive was the 17th annual Independent & Small Press Book Fair and, probably no less important, its venue, the century-old building occupied by the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. The Society itself was founded in 1785, the library in 1820, although those 184 years still make it only the second oldest “private” library in New York. That title goes to the New York Society Library, organized in 1754.
It was great fun, and the fact that I left with my wallet only a little lighter than when I entered these wonderful spaces is no measure of the temptations available. It does say something about the event’s attractions for the impecunious reader. I’ll be back next year and I’ll try to bring other small-bookies.
A small, random selection of some sightings:
Susanna Cuyler‘s delightful little books (I bought a few items off her table, including “La Derniere Fleur,” an illustrated very short story of James Thurber, translated by Albert Camus)
A new illustrated New York subway book from Israelowitz Publishing
Many children’s books, but the table which stood out from all the others included “It’s Just a Plant: a children’s story of marijuana,” from justaplant.com
Some great vintage images, postcard size, next to the Paris Review table (I bought the one which shows George Plimpton with some friends at a sidewalk cafe, fifteen saucers stacked in front of him, looking all of fifteen himself)
“The Itinerary of Benjamin Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages,” a twelfth-century journal of the travels of a Spanish rabbi through Europe, Asia and Africa, in a faithful translation from the Hebrew. I took this beautiful book home, but it was only one of at least a dozen on the table of Italica Press which will still tempt me. Oh yes, their address would amuse almost anyone: 595 Main Street, New York, NY. My own puzzlement disappeared when it was explained that New York’s Main Street is on Roosevelt Island
Lucky DeBellevue
Lucky DeBellevue untitled (2004) chenille stems and plastic ball 31″ x 11″ x 82.5″ detail view
The gallery show closed three weeks ago, on the day I visited it and snapped this picture, but the image continues to attract me, both in the memory of it and in my regular glimpses of it as I scroll through my image upload file – reasons enough to re-visit it now and get it out there.
This is a detail of a gorgeous work by Lucky DeBellevue. It was included in a very good show, “When the lights go out…“, mounted by Cohan and Leslie in mid-October. The press release said that his sculptures “. . . resemble many known forms but represent nothing.” I like that.
We’ve both loved his work for years, but the only chenille stems Barry and I have in our apartment are those which compose an Eric Doeringer Lucky DeBellevue “Bootleg.” We do however cherish a small ink drawing by DeBellevue himself.
they’re dying, but they still want sex
The last Impatiens of December?
These little plants never got the environment they deserved. The little rooftop outside our apartment couldn’t even provide the minimal amount of light they need to flourish, and I’m pretty sure that, since they are container plants, they were either too wet or too dry much of the summer.
But they made us very happy with what they were able to do under the circumstances, and even this late in the year we can continue to exchange smiles back and forth through windows which are now closed.
Actually I’m perfectly aware that I’m just romanticizing the hard evidence that these little things want to have sex until they die, but that’s also a very nice thought. Both they and their spunk will be remembered.
I’ve always loved the name.
[only after I wrote the paragraphs above, on this day following World AIDS Day, did I think of how the last weeks of these flowers could appear to be a metaphor for the disease which is now never very far from anyone on the planet; while that was not my purpose, I’m very happy if it reads that way]
bad donut!
I just learned that the donuts I love to hate are more distasteful than I had thought.
Krispy Kreme* contributed $90,260 to the Republican Party and only $1,842 to the Democratic Party during the 2003-2004 election cycle, according to data assembled by the creators of a new (and very interesting) website, Choose The Blue, designed to help consumers identify the politics of the corporations whose products and services they patronize.
So not only are these donuts bad for their patrons’ health and bad for at least one of the communities in which a plant/store is located, but they subsidize the regime which threatens the nation and the world.
But maybe the relationship is about to come apart. Yesterday’s donut star is also in trouble and even their Republican friends may not be able to bail them out.
The corporation’s earnings are sharply down, the result, according to the NYTimes, of “slipping sales and underperforming franchise operations.”
The disappointing news is the latest in a string of troubles for Krispy Kreme. It is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the aggressive manner in which it accounted for franchises that it bought back and for the prices paid for some of these franchises. Last month, the investigation was upgraded to a formal inquiry.
This year, the company’s stock, which once traded as high as $50, has been in free fall.
But what do I know about this financial esoterica? I admit that my relationship with the un-donut company is on a personal level, and it bagan just after they first opened a New York location. I tasted their incredibly-hyped product and found that I really hated it. For this kind of sugar and fat, if I’m going to support a chain store, I’d rather follow the example of the gentleman in the picture at the bottom of my previous post: He’s licking a cone just purchased at the neat little Ben & Jerry’s shop to the right of the Krispy Kreme. Now there’s a politically-wholesome treat I could support!
* According to Choose The Blue, “Corporate totals are based on donations from PACs, employees, subsidiaries and affiliates for the 2003-2004 election cycle.”
[thanks to Barry for the Choose The Blue site tip]
Krispy Kreme
donut detritus
What is it they say about sausage making? Along lines of the same argument, I think Chelsea’s Krispy Kreme fans should stay clear of their favorite donut haunt on the nights the raw materials are dumped on West 23rd Street. Tons of large bags of flour and sugar are stacked across the sidewalk until workers manage to drag into the machinery at the rear of the shop that which hasn’t already spilled onto the pavement. The piles are scary and the residue isn’t pretty – especially if it’s raining.
I’m sensitive to the intrusiveness of this little manufactory/shop because of its large impact on myself and my neighbors, all of whom, regardless of our taste in donuts, prefer not to live in apartments which are permeated with the sweet smell of yeast and sugar. Many of these same neighbors labor in love for most of the year on a beautiful common garden where the overpowering smell of donuts has regularly displaced the scent of Phlox, Nicotiana and Roses.
But above all I am keenly aware that in a city where most of us travel on foot most of the time, ordinary inconveniences ignored by most pedestrians actually present huge, often dangerous, obstacles for many others. All of us should be able to expect uncluttered sidewalks whether or not we are personally free of any disabilities.
donut dough
“MOMMY, I’M! NOT! AN! ANIMAL!”
Kalup Linzy, still from Ride to Da Club (2002) 5 minute dvd
The title of the show is “MOMMY, I’M! NOT! AN! ANIMAL!” The Sex Pistols? Even after seeing the installation at CAPSULE gallery, I’m not sure how it computes. If there was a press release on the desk, I guess I forgot to pick one up. I’ve decided I can do without the information for now, since even unenlightened by anyone’s notes I think it’s a damned good collection. The curator is the brilliant and very generous artist Andrew Gunther.*
You won’t find much of anything on the gallery’s website, so you’ll have to take these pictures and/or my word for it. Oh, yes, there is this short blurb on re-title.com:
Curated by artist Andrew Guenther, the show explores the idea of influence through semi-autobiographical work — paintings made of tar, a transcendental preparation room, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt made of yarn and sculpey with bobcat eyes, a flag monument in honor of those who have lost their lives in the battle for the environment, letter enigmas, a primal rock and psychedelic ink journeys that pit nature against nurture. Two of the artists in the exhibition are tattoo artists, who mark the world around them through people wearing their work. At the opening, video artist Kalup Linzy will lip synch in drag as Labisha (The Diva), in a hyperbolic homage based on the soap opera of everyday life.
I have to go back, but my fancy was immediately attracted by an incredible Kalup Linzy video from which the still at the top of this post is excerpted, the entire backroom installation by Justin Samson and Muffy Brandt, the two shiny packing tape-like abstractions of Mathew Abbott, and Joseph Ari Aloi‘s fourteen gorgeous, almost compulsive, doodle-like (meant in the very best way) drawings massed on the east wall.
But I’m really, really sorry I missed that performance the opening night.
Justin Samson and Muffy Brandt Astral Projections, Aural Protection, and Transcendental Preparation (2004) in mixed media, found objects, painted wood, detail of installation
*see Perry Rubenstein‘s artist list, and click on Andrew Guenther; or check out the installation images on Brooklyn Fire Proof’s site
group TEAM
Banks Violette, detail installation view of anthem (to future suicide), untitled (disappear) and hate them (single stage), moving from the rear to the front in this image
Ooooo. Another black and white show. But they never seem to be boring. For those who live in a world of color, what could be more abstract (read, “challenging”) than black and white? TEAM [I love the gallery’s motto inside their site description: “Team Gallery, a commerical art gallery dealing in work by emerging artists and the fringe of contemporary culture”] is currently showing, “the ice age,” a show which includes work by Muntean/Rosenblum, Guillaume Pinard and Banks Violette.
All black and white, but not so easily read all over. I like that. The gallery’s largest room is occupied by three large, severe, abstract sculptures, and one exquisite five-panel piece, “sunset (Ithaca),” comprising graphite drawings on paper. All of this is by Violette. While the work of the other artists shown in rooms and on walls which surround that space may offer a touch more of an anchor in what many call “reality,” in the end each of these also ends up spinning its elegant concept into more obscure realms.
There are two beautiful video-based works, by the collaborative Muntean/Rosenblum and by Pinard, occupying the two rooms in the rear. “Never Facts that Tell,” the Viennese collaborative’s digital projection of a great world emptied and reduced to an enormous landfill would be achingly beautiful even without the music which accompanies its hooded figures, excerpts from Vivaldi’s 1726 opera, “Il Farnace.”
The imagery in Pinaud’s projection, “Monk,” essentially a static Flash animation, is also fortunate in its soundtrack, this time almost fully abstracted.
Pinaud’s drawings take over every other wall in the gallery. Although they might be described as cartoons, they remind us that the genre didn’t begin, and won’t end, with Disney or Merrie Melodies. These are some very heavy images; they don’t try for cute and cuddly.
[image from TEAM Gallery]
Kim Fisher
Kim Fisher Corundum (Saphire Gray Scale) (2004) oil on linen 84″ x 68″
Kim Fisher Padparadscha 40 (2004) oil on linen 90″ x 71″
Minimalism, a little ragged on the edges – and sometimes elsewhere. I liked the small show of large paintings by Kim Fisher at John Connelly, much more than I was prepared to. I thought I wanted to resist their appeal, I guess because it seemed too easy, but these abstractions really stick.
All my life I’ve been obsessed with minimalism, beginning well over 50 years ago (even before I jumped at the chance to simplify further the already-pretty-simple face of a gift watch after its disastrous encounter with too much moisture). The only thing which has changed is my ability to live with and eventually totally embrace the imperfection, messiness and glorious complexity of the world whose perceived ugliness drove me to the minimalist camp to begin with. Fisher’s work seems to have survived the same odyssey.
Morgan Fisher
our own moment on the [silent] screen, included here in an installation view of Morgan Fisher’s Silent 1.33:1 (2004) mirrored glass
Just in time for the holiday movie crush, Greene Naftali has installed a show for people who aren’t content with the passive conventions of film buffery. The first solo exhibition of work by Morgan Fisher first brings the viewer onto the screen itself and then invites him or her, now as audience, to think about the norms of the visual devices which allow us to through read a film’s story.
The Angelika just can’t do this sort of thing.
From the gallery’s press release:
Fisher will present an installation of inscribed mirrors as well as a 16mm film titled ( ). The mirrors are in the proportions of motion picture images ranging from those of the silent period to the present, with the name and ratio of each format sand-blasted onto the surface. The film, titled ( ), appropriates black and white and color footage to create a non-narrative sequence of chance juxtapositions.