We dropped ourselves off inside the Drawing Center’s “Playpen” Wednesday evening, where we bumped into some old playmates and made some new ones. We had a great time and left only after promising ourselves we’d be back another day – with others.
There are a dozen artists represented in the show, and fully half of the environments they have created are designed to be altered – by creative visitors or the artists themselves – so no return visit will be quite the same.
It’s a perfect summer show, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to shut down any heavy aesthetic sensors or sophisticated brain cells to enjoy it. They will all be rewarded. Besides, The Drawing Center has AC, so there’s nothing to keep you away.
The artists included in the show (and, in one case, beyond) are David Brody, Voebe de Gruyter, Charles Goldman, Alina Viola Grumiller, Valerie Hegarty, Geoff Lupo, Edward Monovich, neuro Tranmitter, Red76, Gedi Sibony, Austin Thomas and Alex Villar.
Just a hint of what we saw on Wednesday:
Valerie Hegarty’s shedding bedroom, or at least much of it
Austin Thomas’s art classroom, with Shoshana Dentz, Joan Linder and Charles Goldman
Gedi Sibony’s assemblage (detail)
Edward Monovich’s images with purposed graffitti process well under way
Charles Goldman’s corner (detail, and subject to continuous alteration)
Charles Goldman’s installation was especially tempting that night. Even though I was already balancing a camera and a conversation I was compelled to move one of his drawings (his “dingers”) from the table to the magnetic board on the wall. Below is an image of the table (the blur represents a kid who really got into the creative process) and then one of Barry, just after he announced, “these are too lined up; it’s bugging me.”
Author: jameswagner
“The Forbiden Pictures,” still forbidden
live “dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests” outside powerHouse Books (the few “corpulent Weimar German types” to be seen last night were inside by the snacks and bubbly, but since they were there, they were obviously on the side of the republic)
Three years ago Larry Fink completed the film shoot, and the pictures were scheduled to run in the NYTimes Magazine in the Fall of 2001 as an arty fashion spread with a bit of frisson. There they would probably have attracted a modest amount of attention.
Then the world seemed to stop. September 11 may not have changed everything, but it certainly frightened the Times, and, as it turns out, apparently every other periodical market in both the U.S. and Europe.
The tableaux vivant produced in the summer of 2001, with their voluptuous, polychrome sculptural presence, have become forbidden pictures.
Fink has been unable to persuade any magazine to print these remarkable photographs. powerHouse Books is now publishing them and they are currently visible at their gallery on Charlton Street, where they will remain through the last day of the Republican Convention, September 2. The Gallery calls them, “a provocative political commentary” and “a satirical look at Americas current leaders.”
The artist tells us a little more.
It was simple! I was shooting fashion, perhaps a compromise for me, but a trivial, jovial, stylish, learning theater. Why not use its public accessibility for subversion, satire, association, and education? An idea! One of my favorite periods in twentieth-century art was Weimar Germany, with Beckmann, Dix, and Grosz all melting down convention in an impassioned visionary way. Grosz was especially political, but all of the were hyper-aware of the decadence, the despair, the hysteria, and the lies. I suggested to The New York Times Magazine (whose rear end is sometimes gifted with fashion spreads) an idea to replicate the period but loosen it, update it, and tell it anew. There were fashion equivalents and certainlymoral and historical ones.
Oh the glee! They said yes. I suggested that rather than the corpulent Weimar German types, why not use our current fraudulent leaders, George W.and his cabinet. Oh the glee! They said yes. Political satire and critical acuity are something rarely if ever done in fashion. Yet another coup.
We searched for the cast of dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests. We searched for the look-alikes of our own Mr. G. W. and his consortium. We found it all and went to work. Five paintings chosen from the period and three days shooting them, interpreting them, and creating aesthetic clarity and political bedlam.
The pictures were shot on 7/19/01 and were hypothetically scheduled to run in The Times in the fall. 9/11 gave birth to doom. The tragic inevitable moment, the rupture of providence, the rape of the external soul of America. And its aftermath. [excerpt from the Artist’s Statement]
These are the pictures. But don’t expect credits for the fashion.
UFPJ, going up 8th Avenue to the park
the press conference across from Madison Sqare Garden ended, some participants still linger [NY1’s Michael Scotto in front, Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU in the center, and from UFPJ, Bill Dobbs, back to camera, tall on the far left and Leslie Cagan, partly obscured, fingers spread, on the right]
Beginning last June United For Peace and justice (UFPJ) started planning a New York City march and rally for August 29, the eve of the Republican Convention. They still have no permit.
In fact, no police or park permits have been granted to any of the organizations planning protests related to the Convention, although some applications were made up to a year ago.
UFPJ has filed an application for a permit to walk up 8th Avenue from 23rd Street, past the site of the Convention, Madison Square Garden, and end up with a gathering in Central Park. The NYPD and the NY Parks Department wants them to go to Queens for their rally or, alternatively to bake in the wasteland of the West Side Highway, four long blocks left of the Convention site.
Today a number of groups planning protests related to the Convention joined UFPJ in a press conference across the street from Madison Square Garden, to describe their frustrations with city agencies and to demand that Mayor Bloomberg protect their right of dissent.
We should all be concerned with what the experience of these groups says about the agenda of the Bloomberg administration, bending over backwards to see that the convention of a radical right-wing political party goes as smoothly as possible, while doing absolutely nothing to ensure the peaceful assembly of those who wish to voice objection. Should this surprise us at a time when the Republican party controls the mechanisms of all three branches of the federal government as well as Albany and our own City Hall? Now even dissent must be eliminated or at least rendered invisible.
Even beyond the big issue, the city’s behavior is appalling for what will be its impact on the basic safety of both New Yorkers and visitors in the last days of what will surely be a long summer. We should be asking how are the best interests of anyone being served when no group knows how to plan for August 29, neither a police department (already being stretched to the limit by real or imagined security concerns) nor a crowd whose size some now expect may easily end up as a seven-figure number. The city is playing a dangerous game, and we are the pawns.
Virtually every other great city of the world (and I won’t even use the customary patronizing qualifiers, “western” or “industrial”) can accomodate enormous peaceful protest without confining participants in pens or moving them far beyond the periphery of protest targets. But in the land we call “of the free” we only imagine we can exercise such liberty, and it’s some measure of just how unfree we are that few understand that they are are so bound.
The right to dissent and the right to protest are meaningless if the dissent and protest are neither heard nor seen.
On August 29 we gotta pass by the Convention site, and we gotta have the Park.
maximally minimal Tony Smith
Tony Smith The Elevens Are Up (1963) steel, painted black, two units, each 96″ x 24″ x 96″ and overall 96″ x 96″ x 96″
This stuff thrilled me in the 60’s, even before Kubrick, and it still does.
At Matthew Marks, in the space upstairs on 24th Street, there’s a minimal installation of minimal Smith. It’ll be there for two more weeks.
Tony Feher makes me smile
CORRECTION: I was wrong in my original posting; Tony Feher’s show continues until Friday, July 2. Also, I’ve just added descriptions of the two works shown below which were not identified earlier
I was wrong. Tony Feher’s really wonderful show at D’Amelo Terras didn’t close on Saturday; It was always scheduled to be up through Friday, July 2. So, while I can still throw images of some of my favorites out into webland, those of you who can get to the neighborhood can go see the beauties for yourselves.
This stuff is magic, and not just because it makes absolutely everyone smile, a lovely art of which we can never have enough.
Tony Feher Untitled (2004) nine stacks: forty-six glass jars and lids; dimensions vary with installation – approx. 33″ x 27″ x 17″
Tony Feher Believe in the Way Things Are (2004) wire hangers, plastic straws, plastic wrap, candy wrappers, magnets, string; dimensions vary with installation – approx. 48″ x 75″
Tony Feher Mountain Home (2004) 140 green plastic fruit containers; approx. 26 3/4″ x 30 1/2″ x 20″
of gardens and the High Line
I was in the garden most of the afternoon. No, not the wonderful wild tundra of the High Line represented above, in a picture taken Saturday afternoon, but the 12′ x 16′ roof which lies outside our apartment.
New Yorkers have many gardens, and almost all of them are communal property. Chelsea however has no real public park, so Barry and I consider ourselves fortunate indeed. We have both the luxuriant garden court of our building, and the far smaller, and far less light-gifted, accidental Eden immediately outside our own walls.
I would describe the exposure outside our second-floor, north and east-facing windows as very deep shade. That’s the environment many of us remember from our childhood as the one which accounted for the cement-hard, packed ground lying under the largest shade tree in the neighborhood. Even the ferns and the Lilies-of-the-Valley couldn’t make it there.
I’ve been defeated repeatedly in my attempts at bringing a woodland environment to the perimeters of our urban shelter, but, partly thanks to a little past experience with limited resources, the undaunted Linda Yang and the Chelsea Garden Center, I haven’t given up yet.
Pictures will follow, as soon as the latest plantings establish themselves. I’m convinced that’s going to happen, or I wouldn’t already feel exhilarated by this afternoon’s work in “the garden.”
The High Line? Looking at these pictures, it’s hard not to ask that it be kept exactly as it is. New Yorkers should all be able to run through a meadow, even if much of the horizon is composed of second-story windows.
Sommer in the city
Eliezar Sonnenschein Emet (2003) acrylic on wood, 15.25″ x 26.75″
Barry and I began the evening on Thursday [see the two posts below] with a stop at the opening of the invitational exhibition, “Sommer Show,” at Lehman Maupin on this side of the East River.
We have eagerly visited the booth of this Israeli gallery, Sommer Contemporary Art, every year at the Armory Show, so we were very happy for the director, Irit Mayer-Sommer, when we saw the brilliance of what I believe is her first show in New York.
I thought Eliezer Sonnenschein’s acrylic panels on wood were magnificent gems, but I’m certain that someone(s) with deeper pockets than mine will soon be carrying the three home. Sigh. They can’t really be seen in something like the reproduction used above.
I also think a lot of Yehudit Sasportas’s large ink marker drawings. Sharon Ya’ari’s large black and white photgraphs of spaces vacated by the strange people they serve, inspired by minimalism, minimally presented, would stand out in any company. Rona Yefman’s direct but sensitive color and black and white portraits are not easily forgotten.
All of it the work of excellent Israeli artists, this art would stand up in the crowd anywhere in our connected world, and its substance makes it especially clear that it wasn’t created in a bell jar.
This beautifully-mounted show is extraordinarily welcome at this time in a city which really wants to believe in something other than the current, pervasive wave of fear and hatred incited by the small minds and empty hearts of the artless.
[image from Lehmann Maupin Gallery]
More on the Smack Mellon Studios
A number of the workspaces tempted us during our visit to Smack Mellon’s Open Studios Thursday evening, in adition to that of Valerie Hegarty. We were especially intrigued by the work of Shin il Kim, Andrea Loefke and Austin Thomas.
We’d seen the amazing videos of Kim at Axel Raben’s Paper Chase show last April, and Austin Thomas’s constructing presence is difficult to avoid anywhere in New York these days. (But, damn, I still haven’t seen the neat folding outfit she created for that fantastic Ford El Camino of hers!). Finally, while I think this was the first time I’d seen any of the elements of Loefke’s delightful, exploding world, I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Valerie Hegarty creates worlds
Valerie Hegerty Renovation (2002) paper, cardboard, paste, paint, 8′ x 14′ x 14′
As soon as I walked into Valerie Hegarty’s studio I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
My reaction may have been rather singular, because even I was not surprised that some visitors to her part of Smack Mellon’s Open Studios weekend decided her workspace was an empty room not quite swept up yet. This was one of the confidences she shared with Barry and I last night.
But I was immediately at home, or rather immediately taken back to a previous home. At the same time I had the impression that the two successive, long-term creative passions of my life had somehow been reconciled: the recovery of a domestic architectural and social past, and an immersion in the visual art of our time.
Hegarty builds new, lovingly-assembled, homely environments, out of paper, paste and paint, which uncanily evoke the decaying remnants of, well, old, neglected, homely environments.
The real stuff has a power over me because it appears to be both untouched and touched very much, even too much. There’s wear, lots of wear, and it looks fantastic, very purposeful and above all very human. Hegerty’s imaginary recreation of such (ephemera?) is obviously stimulated by a great love of and serious commitment to the spell of such (almost) spent human environments. The product of her art raises to a level just this side of the sublime what once could only be part of the real world.
I crept about the studio half holding my breath, but then, when we both introduced ourselves to the artist, we were soon even more intrigued than before. I’m afraid we ended up monopolizing her attentions unfairly.
I told her about my fascination with the unselfconscious physical dignity of old buildings and with their previous lives. My interest began when I moved to grad school in Rhode Island, and it quickly became something of an obsession. Feeding such a passion was easier in the period I was there, 1964-1985, since I was able to crawl into abandoned townhouses, mills, churches, warehouses, shops and farms still undisturbed by modern remodeling, “restoration” or arson. I was like entering long-abandoned Egyptian tombs.
In those days architectural artifacts were regularly tossed as trash, even in neighborhoods already being “discovered.” During that time my partner and I were able to save one modest eighteenth-century house from disaster. Disguised in filfth and layers of paint, wallpaper, flooring and siding, sweat and imagination eventually made it look like it had only been heavily worn during its 250-year life. And then we each abandoned it, ultimately to owners who would love it but never know the joys of our own discoveries along the way.
Hegerty’s creative response to that environment came much later, and from a very different direction. Also a New Englander, she grew up in Massachusetts, but her own parents’ home, faux-colonial, could only sadly reference the integrity of its sturdy, hoary neighbors. Plastic ornament stood in for the kind of artifacts I saw thrown to the trash pickups.
But wonderful art followed.
One of the treats we were able to walk away with on Thursday was the revelation that she has been working with playfull storyboards to (perhaps) move, into the dimension of film, an aesthetic which even now is hardly limited in the way it provides enjoyment. Her art works as both realism and abstraction, both painting and sculpture. I stopped for a moment to imagine a delightful projection of flesh and blood people appearing in, disappearing into and altering her remarkable synthetic environments. More magic.
The Open Studios continues tomorrow, from noon to 6pm.
If you miss it, you have another chance to see her work very soon. Hegerty is one of twelve artists selected to create site-specific environments in the show, “Playpen,” opening at the Drawing Center on Wednesday. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, especially as the list of artists also includes Charles Goldman, Austin Thomas and Gedi Sibony.
[image, of an instalation not in the studio of course, from Smack Mellon]
pansies in the park
untitled (Madison Park pansies)