untitled (TURN) 2007
This had almost nothing to do with the Manhattan Mini Storage advertising campaign, and almost everything to do with bold and angled lines – and the English bond.
Author: jameswagner
“The Black Market” at Anna Kustera
Ju$t Another Rich Kid & Stuart Semple Teen Dream Chaos 2007 mixed media installation, dimensions variable [large detail of installation]
[further detail]
For those who haven’t yet seen the show on 21st Street Anna Kustera has fortunately extended the run of “The Black Market” until August 3. It’s something about the comodification of everything we think we may still have held simply dear until recently. Yes you may go shopping, and the stuff is attached to a huge range of price tags.
In addition to their rich collaboration shown above there are also individual pieces by Ju$t Another Rich Kid and Stuart Semple, who are jointly responsible for curating the show. Beyond that there’s work by Mattia Biagi, Carlo Zanni, Cory Ingram, Craig Wilson, Adham Faramawy, the (aural) collaboration of London Nu Ravers, Warboy and K-tron of All You Can Eat, as well as something called “The Playground”, described as an unbound collection of hand-made fashion and art prints produced and boxed in a limited edition.
It all looked like tons of fun to me, and when I was there the contents of The Playground’s striking box hadn’t even been revealed yet.
roof garden update
looking cool
After yesterday’s post, I suppose even I might have been able to predict this one.
The (five-year-old) roof garden outside our apartment is a great joy, even in the winter. But it’s so hard to get living things to survive an environment which doesn’t get any direct sun, ever. Some of what you see here are perennials, some annuals, some house plants summering outside for a few months, and some were purchased recently (flowers already open).
“Not Yet Utopic” at Pocket Utopia
Eric Hairabedian Pitcher 2006 C-print 30″ x 24″ [installation view]
Eric Hairabedian Mr. Valentine 2006 C-print 30″ x 24″ [installation view]
Eric Hairabedian Pepe 2007 C-print 8.5″ x 11″ [installation view, including blogger’s reflection]
Tricia Zigmund The Church of the Cross 2007 C-print [no dimensions indicated; installation view]
Dana Gentile Dreamboy 2007 mixed media collage, wooden spool and cigar box 6.5″ x 11″ x 1.5″ [installation view]
It’s almost as much about the space as it is about the photographs, at least that’s what the press release for Pocket Utopia’s “Not Yet Utopic” seems to be saying. If you’ve been to the gallery and seen the show, you know what that’s all about. But you wouldn’t have to agree, since the work in this group show would shine in any environment, even a clean, white space.
The photographers are Dana Gentile, Terry Girard, Kristopher Graves, Eric Hairabedian, Jersey Walz and Tricia Zigmund. I’ve included in the shots above a bit of the ambiance of the evolving construction that currently defines this space and which is almost inseparable from each piece as presented here.
What follows is a bit more of the de-constructing gallery surfaces themselves, by way of a lagniappe:
triangles in the garden
I shot these images while crossing through our courtyard garden on my way to the market late this afternoon.
“No New Tale to Tell ” at new 31 Grand
Is it a riot scene, a political demonstration, a fire drill, an Improv Everywhere mission? No, it’s just the overflow crowd outside the new 31 Grand on Ludlow Street last night, welcoming the gallery in its move from Williamsburg (yeah, 31 Grand) to the Lower East Side.
The show was dominated by the gallery’s own artists, but there were some special guests as well. I think we’ll call it a corker and ignore the title. What follows is just a taste of the 28 works in the show (unofficially, 29 last night, since Carol Riot Kane made a stunning addition to the crowd).
More from Bloggy.
This is the complete list:
Claudine Anrather, Ursula Brookbank, Fanny Bostrom, Alessandra Exposito, Maureen Cavanaugh, Mike Cockrill, Jon Elliott, Rachel Frank, Helen Garber, Lauren Gibbes, Jeph Gurecka, Magalie Guerin, Karen Heagle, Jan Kotik, Jason Clay Lewis, Francesca Lo Russo, Ryan McLennan, Christa Parravani, Anthony Pontius, Tom Sanford, Adam Stennett, Kimi Weart, Barnaby Whitfield and Jeff Wyckoff
Tom Sanford David & Victoria Beckham 2007 oil, acrylic and fake silver on wood, 2 panels 28.5″ x 28.5″ each [installation view]
Barnaby Whitfield The Prestige (Ground Control) 2007 28.5″ x 36″ [installation view]
the artist and Erik Lindman admire Whitfield’s drawing
Karen Heagle Laocoon (Tom DeLonge) 2006 acrylic and ink on paper 51″ x 54″ [installation view]
Lauren Gibbes the Friendly Barbarian 2005 Astroturf, acrylic, ceramic, siolk flowers, diamond dust, dimensions variable [installation view[
Anthony Pontius The Great Rescue 2007 oil on panel [dimensions not provided, but approximately 16″ square]
Sinbad was gay?
Kerwin Matthews, “flesh-and-blood Sinbad”
Why didn’t somebody tell us?
Kerwin Matthews, the actor who played Sinbad in the 1958 film, “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad“, died July 5 in his home in San Francisco. The NYTimes obituary says that his death “was confirmed by his lover of 46 years, Tom Nicoll”.
Yes, the film was aimed at a young audience, but we weren’t too young to fall in love with the beautiful and dashing hairy-chested Sinbad. Who could possibly have imagined that he wasn’t as straight as everyone else (everyone except me, of course, and all the other queers of whose existence I would have no suspicion until years later)?
My favorite part of the short item in this morning’s paper is this sweet memory recalled by his partner:
Except as Sinbad and Gulliver, Mr. Nicoll said, Mr. Mathews was never satisfied with merely playing action roles.
He always wanted to do light comedy, or something more weighty, he said.
Then, in 1963, Mr. Mathews was cast as Johann Strauss Jr. in the Disney television production The Waltz King.
He was most proud to play Strauss, Mr. Nicoll said, and that he had to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. Whether they actually followed him I dont know, but he tried very hard.
More from the San Francisco Chronicle, and one more visual treat, a publicity shot for “The 3 Worlds of Gulliver” (1960):
Matthews as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver
[the first image from play.com, the second from briansdriveintheater]
“She Was Born To Be My Unicorn” at Smith Stewart
Rob Pruitt Under The Cherry Moon 2007 acrylic and oil on panel 36″ x 30″ approx. [installation view, the rectangular shape of the panel distorted here by the camera parallax]
[detail including unicorn sticker]
Dana Carlson What Cats Think About 2006 embroidery, beadwork, applique and paint on peach satin 32″ x 25″
Even if the art weren’t so good – and so much good fun – the titles should probably be a sufficient draw for this group show at the new-ish Smith Stewart gallery on, once again, the Lower East Side. Some of the best, even away from the works themselves, are Jamie Warren’s “Untitled (Naoko/Squid teeth)”, assume vivid astro focus’s “Butch Queen 5 (Le Sport Sac)”, Michele O’Marah’s “Susie’s Rainbow (Valley Girl Prop)”, Marlene McCarthy’s “Annointed: Beeville, Texas”, and Jen DeNike’s “Up, Down, Strange, Charmed, Top, Bottom” and J Penry’s “To Dream of Flying Papillon”.
The other artists are Hrafnhildur Arnardottir, Jim Krewson, Meredith Danluck, Ryan McGinley and Amy Carlson.
The title of the exhibition itself is “She Was Born To Be My Unicorn”, and it was curated by Amy Kellner [in her spare time, writer, photographer, VICE editor, blogger, bon vivant and teenage unicorn].
Barry has an image of Nicole Eisenman‘s piece.
Harriet Quimby
I’d heard about a bit about her before, but when I arrived at page 38 of today’s Newsday and saw that beautiful face turned to the camera the name Harriet Quimby somehow came to life for the first time. It was an illustration for the paper’s regular half-page feature, “IT HAPPENED ON LONG ISLAND”. This morning it carried the headline, “1911: America’s First Licensed Woman Pilot”. The picture shows Quimby seated inside her Moisant monoplane*, probably the one on which she learned to fly.
Her life makes a terrific story, and while it wasn’t to last very long that bright face still winks at us today.
I did a quick Google search to find more images of Quimby and this is the one which really inspired this post:
The shot may be a bit fuzzy but almost a hundred years after her death it shows that the woman who always wore her self-designed plum-colored, satin flying suit (the pant legs converted into a walking skirt) when she was anywhere near a plane, was much more than a pretty face.
Finally, a breathtaking image of Quimby and her 50-horsepower Moisant in flight, to suggest the thrill , the danger and, yes, the sometime beauty and gracefulness of air travel in 1912:
*
It appears that the paper has it wrong, describing the plane as a Bleriot XI; the Moisant was actually designed and built by the Moisant bothers, aviation pioneers along with their sister Matilde at Hempstead on Long Island, Newsday’s backyard.
[the first image is from Newsday, the second from the Library of Congress, the third via Lance]
Jacques Vidal, “making friends + keeping friends”
[detail of Vidal’s collage in the gallery window]
Please indulge me for this additional post on Jacques Louis Vidal’s show at Sunday. The immediate occasion for my uploading some more pictures now was the fact that the artist performed a second time inside the gallery last Saturday with totally new material, and these images partially document what the gallery billed as a workshop, “making friends + keeping friends”.
I think Vidal is an extremely interesting artist, but these pictures have a larger history for me personally: I am very interested in the performing arts as well as the visual arts, but because of the nature of the viewer’s experience most theater (of almost any kind, even the experimental and the outré, which is my passion) is much more problematic, of not impossible, for a blogger who loves to introduce unique images to his visitors. Like a bee to honey, if you tell me that an artist I already admire is doing a show, I’m on it.
I believe there will be a final performance this weekend, probably late Saturday afternoon, but I don’t know anything more right now.
The picture which leads this post at the top is a detail of the latest version (as of Saturday) of Vidal’s continuing window installation.
