Probably not invited.
This Swoon drawing is attached to a wall just outside the commercial galleries on West 22 Street.
UPDATE: I’ve received a comment from Adrian that the work is not that of Swoon, but either Elbowtoe or Armstock. Can anyone confirm which it might be?
Author: jameswagner
Gang Gang Dance, and friends, at Rhizome benefit
Liz Bougatsos
from left, Josh Diamond, guitar, Liz Bougatsos, vocals, Tim DeWitt, drums, Brian DeGraw keyboards
These are two images of Gang Gang Dance performing at the Rhizome benefit last night. It was a great concert program: GGD followed Professor Murder and YACHT. I didn’t bring my own bulky Fotoapparat, and it was almost the end of the evening before I thought to ask Barry if I could use his micro-camera.
We went with Rachel Mason and Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, a guarantee we would have even a bigger blast.
[more links for Rachel and Matthew]
spring shows up beside the back gate
untitled (weeping cherry) 2007
Elisa Lendvay at Moti Hasson
Elisa Lendvay’s dramatically-lighted sculpture, and (parts of) part of the opening-reception crowd [installation view of “untitled (Chalice)” and “Lund (Demystify)”]
[detail of “untitled (Chalice)”]
Elisa Lendvay Field Sky Under 2007 steel, wood, acrylic, wire, chenile stem, papier-maché, acrylic paint 64″ x 48″ x 27.5″ [installation view, with “Overlook Mountain” visible on the wall]
Elisa Lendvay Patinkin 2007 found material, papier-maché, acrylic paint 26″ x 6″ x 6″ [installation view, with small, unidentified work at the base of the plinth]
Elisa Lendvay Odilon 2007 wood, hydrocal, steel, rug, acryic paint 64″ x 12″ x 12″ [large detail of installation, with “Ghost Stick” visible in the corner to the rear]
Elisa Lendvay opened “Fabled Agents“, a show dominated by her sculpture, in the second space at Moti Hasson on the same night Dan Rushton’s painting show, “Lonelier Than God”, opened in the room on the street front. Both exhibitions were the artists’ first solo shows in the gallery.
The two installations oddly complemented each other, even aside from the fact that they shared both a physical and conceptual removal from what is usually called an objective reality, and each approached that role in its own distinctive way. There was also a stimulating contrast in the medium each artist chose to exhibit here, but the pieces absolutely did share completely (and generally to their profit) in some very theatrical gallery lighting.
I love these odd pieces for their sensuality as much as for their cunning. They seem very much alive, and they’ve been sitting inside my head since I saw them at the opening two weeks ago. The show also includes several very beautiful small works on paper, and I’m told she works as a painter as well. Maybe we can see them next time.
Marjorie Schwarz and Ludwig Schwarz at Sunday
Ludwig Schwarz [large detail of “The Four Seasons (Season Premier)” installation of four works, each untitled 2006 oil and enamel on canvas 72″ x 72″]
Marjorie Schwarz Untitled 2006 gouache on linoleum 12″ x 12″ [installation view]
Marjorie Schwarz Untitled 2006 gouache on digital print 8″ x 10″ [installation view]
I think this is a gallery to watch.
What am I saying?
Maybe I mean this is a gallery I’m gonna watch.
So maybe you don’t have to.
Maybe I’ll get back to you on this.
Meanwhile, demonstrating that no one should depend on this site for sufficient notice even of stuff I really like, I’m only now uploading a few images from a double show which closed three days ago at Clayton Sean Horton’s SUNDAY gallery.
The paintings in the main space were by Ludwig Schwarz. Marjorie Schwarz showed drawings and collages in the project room.
SUNDAY is a neat and very welcome little space in the Lower East Side on Eldridge Street and I was excited about it even before learning that Jacques Louis Vidal has been asked to fill the main room in a show opening June 21. Vidal was in the show Barry and I curated last fall at Dam, Stuhltrager.
Rhizome throws a party
drawing by Brian Degraw, artist and Gang Gang Dance member, for an album by TK Webb
Remember these guys? I did I post almost two years ago about a show of internet-based art, hosted by Rhizome, installed in the New Museum’s temporary quarters on 22nd Street. Rhizome is a young community of new media artists, curators, critics and enthusiasts, and they’re hosting a very interesting and almost totally affordable benefit next monday night.
This very special occasion, for which non-members will be asked to put up $35, is actually a concert featuring what the invitation describes as three genre-bending bands: Gang Gang Dance, Professor Murder and YACHT. Here’s more:
Each band integrates a wide range of musical influences and instrumentation to create innovative sounds and style. This line-up of new music will celebrate Rhizomes commitment to emerging forms of art, across sound, video and digital technologies. The evening will be introduced and mc-ed by computer artist Cory Arcangel [Cory Arcangel, folks!], and will also include a silent auction with work by artists, such as Kristin Lucas and Alex Galloway, who work with the Internet.
Full disclosure: Barry and I are on the Honorary Committee, but that just shows we’re even more enthusiastic about this thing than we can possibly let on.
You may head here for all the details on the concert.
[image from thesimplemission]
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy at Cooper Union
Since I’ve already been writing about Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s art for over two years, it’s very difficult to believe these images of his work are taken from his Cooper Union BFA show for a degree just completed only this spring. I can’t imagine what he’s going to be able to do by the time he reaches 30.
The first picture captures one of the last moments of his sweetly weird performance piece, “Free Movement In The Shadow Of The Staircase: Bodiless Rainbowdance”, mounted in the school’s Great Hall on April 5. The others are of some of the many works, drawings, collages, photographs and sculptures, installed in the galleries of the Lublin Center last week. These particular images are of two medium-sized collages and four small sculptures on a shelf. None of them were identified, nor did they really have to be.
more on U.S. databasing, this time of U.S. visitors
now almost anyone can qualify for this screen test
It’s not the first story like this we’ve heard, it’s not the most disturbing, and unfortunately it won’t be the last, but it’s worth a read. It’s an account of one young man’s personal and repeated experience of our nation’s obsession with terror and it comes from a Canadian artist whose work Barry and I both know appreciate and who is with a New York gallery whose programs and directors we both respect and love.
The story was sent to me in response to the first of my two recent posts about the eye and face-scanning databasing program run by our troops in Iraq.
[The writer had written that he did not want it published, but as it turns out not for any reason I would have imagined. I asked him if I might have his permission to publish it anonymously. He answered yes, but added that the reason he would like his name withheld was not the fear of political consequences, but rather, “i don’t really think that artists should enter the dialogue with people who write about art.” I am printing his words here in their entirety and without editing the text I received, except to eliminate information which might identify the author.]
i live in [Canada], and came to NY for the armory a few months ago. i had
brought some watercolours with me that i hadn’t finished in time to ship to
the gallery. i had done this MANY times before when coming to the US. as
you can imagine from my name, i’m just a WASP male, but i have a rather
mujahadeenish beard, grown not for fashion, but years ago, to hide a total
lack of chin. anyway. i had some watercolours tucked into a magazine in my
carry on. i declared them on the customs form. after going through the US
customs on the canadian side, i was asked to go into a secondary screening
room. this has happened to me many times before also, i am always getting
‘randomly’ searched, which i think might have to do with coming from
[a town with a reputation for drug use]. however this time, i
was told that bringing paintings into the country was illegal, i explained
that i had done it many times before with no problem, they told me that was
the fault of the customs agents who were derelict in their duty by allowing
such a transgression of the law . i explained that selling my work is my
only income, and that i wouldn’t do it again etc etc. long story short, i
have gone my entire life without being fingerprinted, i have never broken
the law, gotten a ticket. however after i was told that i would be able to
bring my work to NY, this time, but NEVER again, and if i tried it again, i
would be in real trouble, i was subject to retinal eye scans, i had all of
my thumb and fingerprints scanned, and a biometric photograph of my face
taken. so now i am also one of the canadians in the homeland security file.
unlike people like mahar arar who was sent to syria for torture, or omar
khadar who is languishing in cuba, arrested as a 15 year old for throwing a
grenade at a soldier in iraq, i hopefully won’t be extraodinarily
renditioned, unless they discover a secret scottish-irish mujahadeen. but,
i have a solo show in NY in september, i am less and less inclined to visit
the US. this is my fifth trip in a row where i was randomly singled out.
the first time i was subject to documentation. most of my friends in canada
are of pakistani or indian descent. i grew up with them in toronto. canada
is a multicultural place, save quebec, not a melting pot. and it really
opened my eyes to what my friends must have to deal with. so i thought this
story might be interesting to you. i’m starting to think i might pull a
marlon brando and start sending the other forgotten victims of american
imperialism to my openings for me, the sacheen littlefeathers of my first
nations neighbours . . . .
[image from the Department of Defense {they’re proud of this stuff}, via electroniciraq]
“we’ll need your eyes” [a follow-up]
We’ll just Need to Scan Your Eyes for Our Files
Imad Salman Ichleef, 37, was questioned yesterday by American soldiers about insurgent activity in his neighborhood of Ghazaliya in baghdad. Using a biometric recording device, one of the soldiers scanned Mr. Ichleef’s retinas, collected his fingerprints and photographed his face. The interview was part of a strategy to put Iraqi males into a database. Mr. Ichleef’s family waited patiently so they could get back to their lunch. [the full NYTimes caption to the single photo printed by the paper on April 7]
Because I had been unable to find his image on the NYTimes website or anywhere else, after doing a post about it yesterday I emailed Ashley Gilbertson asking if he could help me find and link to one.
Today I received a generous reply. He began with: “I’m out in the badlands right now so can’t talk.” He attached these four awesome images to an email which was probably sent from Iraq.
Wow.
He wrote that he had no idea which photograph the paper had used [it was the third, and it appeared in black and white].
Thanks, Ash.
A memoir of Gilbertson’s experience in Iraq, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War“, is being published by the University of Chicago Press and is due for release November 1.
[images from Ashley Gilbertson, with my thanks to the NYTimes for its custom]
Ryan Sarah Murphy at Outrageous Look
Ryan Sarah Murphy Untitled (Plots) 2000 wood, 10,000+ clothespins, paint, gesso, glue, each component 34″ x 21″ x 6″
Ryan Sarah Murphy‘s installation was lying in the sun of the east window, just to the right of the door, when I walked into Outrageous Look last Sunday. I checked out the beautiful Gavin Green show in the gallery’s main spaces, and went back to the window. I was captivated.
It’s now inside my head, as if I were still looking at it. I can’t really adequately account for this. It’s a simple pair of found wooden frames enclosing thousands of upright wooden clothespins, everything whitewashed. I see more than one metaphor working here, but in the interest of your own visit I’ll keep them to myself.