Category: Culture

Paul Piers design

Paul Piers design

The window read “CHANEL” but almost obscuring the merchandise inside was Duke Riley‘s large drawing of a burning Greenpoint shoreline crowned with a huge cloud of smoke. Inside White Box the night of August 17 Riley was introducing his own line of upscale, burnt-look fashion under the brand “Paul Piers”.
The crowd was wonderful, and wonderfully appreciative, I think, of both their own hip and the show’s smooth rips.
Juan Puntes, the show’s co-curator and with Judith Souriau the director of the non-profit space which hosted it, seems to agree with Riley that Chelsea has waited far too long for the arrival of the boutique phase in the timeline of the gallery district phenomenon. Now, with the dramatic and suspicious disappearance of its own most interesting and historic commercial building stock (including warehouses storing tons of old clothes) the Greenpoint neighborhood may have missed it altogether – and hastened the arrival of the successor stage, “luxury highrise condominiums”.
Riley’s art is built on the East River and the historical relics of New York real estate.


history (and fashion) up in smoke

the charred warehouse remains

gathering around the cinders

crowd scene

crowd seeing

the artist checking his own tag

(the drawing)

(the silkscreen envelope)

(the zine, swimsuit edition)

(pages from the swimsuit edition)

I spotted the neat little drawing shown at the top of this post somewhere in the backroom exhibition space or “store” of the Williamsburg gallery Cinders a while back. I snatched it up and immediately looked around for more of this guy’s stuff. I still know little about Logan MacDonald other than the fact that he lives and works in Montreal and is one of the three artists of “Glorious Holes“.
I just found out, as I suspected, that I’m clearly not alone in my enthusiam for either the artist or the gallery.
The silkscreened envelope and the zine each set me back less than the price of a movie ticket, and I suspect most people would be able to cover the cost of the drawing with the cash they carried in their pockets. Art is dear, but everyone can afford to live with it and no one should be able to afford to live without it.

two views of an installation by Robert Moore



a detail and a larger detail of an installation by Pedro Velez



a detail and a large detail of a work by Mariana Saldana

Because this terrific show closes tomorrow, Saturday, at 5 and because I still have to put a meal together tonight, I thought it was more important to get a few images up on the site than to write anything more than an encouragement to go see the current Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space at 15 Nassau, just above Wall Street.
Randall Garrett is the curator and the show, “manic and wasted (fragile flower underfoot),” includes work by Eric Doeringer, Mariana Saldana/Kunstfascion, Robert Moore, Teresa O’Connor, Paul Slocum, Donna Huanca/Rua Minx, Pedro Velez and Jason Villegas.
I may be able to elaborate a bit on my enthusiasm tomorrow.

Dennis Kardon Nature Boy 1999 oil on canvas 57″ x 48″ [installation view]

Yes, it’s another summer show, but “Summer View” at Feigen is actually pretty summery. This wonderfully yucky piece by Dennis Kardon may be just about the most representational of the whole lot (possibly excepting Doug Hall’s large-scale shot of Yellowstone’s “Old Faithful” and and a bunch of acolytes), but the warmth and the sun shows through everywhere – until you get to the back room, where something closer to a zany angst takes over with David Kramer’s group of self-referential works, including two videos, one sculpture and a couple of drawings.
For a look at one of the videos, “Ode to the artist,” see YouTube.


David Kramer [installation view, including large detail of “Gallery Bench” and still from video, “The Horses Mouth”]

Craig Kalpakjian Abberation 0189øc 2006 Inkjet transparency in light box 26.5″ x 25.5″ x 5.25″ [large detail of installation]


Fia Backström [large detail of an installation from the artist’s continuing project, “Blonde Revolution”]

Elizabeth Dee will be hosting the East Coast chapter [see QED for the West] of Drew Heitzler’s provocative and very cool organization of artist materials in a very smart show-and-tell, “Bring the War Home,” for just another few days. Nah, of course it ain’t political; it’s just the air we breathe now.
Holland Cotter writes in the NYTimes today:

It’s called “Bring the War Home” and it’s at Elizabeth Dee Gallery. It is one of the best of the many group exhibitions that have crowded the neighborhood this summer.
Almost all of them were neater, spiffier and more “visual” than this one. But none generated more energy or offered as many options for where new art could go. We could really use those options at a time when the art industry is bankroll-happy, and a lot of new work is enervatingly timid. I like to think of “Bring the War Home,” which closes on Friday, not as the end of an old season but as the start of a new one.

Gosh, I hope he’s right.

Speaking of the new, I’m very excited by what seems to be a significant movement everywhere of artists coming together, either in collaboratives or loose communities. Regardless of the reasons for this development, and I think they are very much related to disgust with branding in artistic fashions, shameless excesses of greed and the cynical industry of endless terror, I believe it may save our soul and even help to preserve a role for the exploding numbers of artists should the much-predicted collapse of the art market ever materialize.
This movement sometimes carries artists directly into the world where their work is seen and traded, where they may function as curators, as publishers, even as “distributors” of a new kind of aesthetic commodity no less precious for its easy accessibility and, well . . . real affordability.
The artist’s presence in the growing market of creative images and ideas is itself a very creative one, and I expect it to enrich our relationship to both the art and the artist. It is likely to change “art” forever.

in formal mode

The brilliant downtown team of Kiki & Herb has taken a summer share on Broadway. I’ve been a huge fan for years (of these two, not Broadway), so although I haven’t seen the show which opened last night, I have no doubts that the increasingly really silly “Great White Way” is embarassed this morning – embarassed about the fare being proffered to the tourists in most of its other theaters.
Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman are incredible artists, and still much, much more.
Choire Siccha has a terrific piece written before the show opened and Ben Brantley doesn’t seem to have enough good things to say about what he saw from the aisle last night. NOTE: The NYTimes site also has an audio and slide show, but you really have to be there.

[image from the Paramount where it is uncredited and the web site down]

Jim Lambie Untitled 2006 shirt collar, spray paint, concrete, mirrored pedestal 49″ x 13″ x 13″ [large detai of installation]


Wilhelm Sasnal DEKADY 2005 ink on paper 16.5″ x 11.75″ [installation view]


Sergej Jensen Kriftler 2002 velvet, paint on cotton 59″ x 51.25″ [detail]


Matt Mullican Live Under Hypnosis 2006 mixed media + DVD variable dimensions [large detail of installation]

For the rest of this week those who haven’t over the years been visiting the shows mounted at Anton Kern, one of New York’s least predictable and most idiosyncratic galleries, have a chance to see what they’ve missed. The show still installed in the gallery’s rooms on West 20th Street ended officially July 28, but it will not be struck until next week.
“Implosion” is the Kern’s tenth anniversary show, and while it might seem a cool and very modest tribute to the artists and to the gallery itself, coming as it does in the middle of the New York Summer doldrums, don’t be fooled. The work is first-rate and, typically, it seems to owe almost nothing to the competition in the neighborhood.

Pierre Bismuth One Thing Made from Another; One Thing Used as Another 2006


Pierre Bismuth Collages for Men – Clare 2003 Inkjet print and collage 57.5″ x 46″ framed [installation view ]

It’s not an easy collection, especially for August, but there are genuine rewards in the untitled small group show at Cohan and Leslie for intrepid enthusiasts who haven’t left town for the summer. It’s certainly a beautiful installation, featuring work by Pierre Bismuth, Ryan Gander, T. Kelly Mason and Karl Haendel.
I got Bismuth right away, (almost) without the help of the press release:

Pierre Bismuth (lives in Brussels, born 1963) is best known for videos and objects that subvert the products of contemporary culture. We will show three works from an ongoing series called “Collages For Men” in which Bismuth appropriates images from porn magazines, undermining their lascivious purpose with the addition of cut-out, collaged clothing. We will also show a new sculpture called “One thing made from another, One thing used as another”, consisting of an oversized reproduction of a MoMA poster illustrating Jasper Johns’ ‘Flag’ painting from 1954-55, folded origami-style to mimic a typical Donald Judd “Box” sculpture.

It was the artist at work – or play. But for the viewer/spectator standing above the floor of White Box tonight it was also, weirdly, a bit like watching a graceful caged animal taking its anger and frustration out on the terms of its asylum.
The gallery’s press release for Ryan Humphrey‘s performance/installation explains:

For his play on the theme of Six Feet Under, Ryan Humphrey will use White Box as an indoor freestyle BMX facility where he will regress to his creative years before becoming a fine artist. He will assault the architecture with his bicycle, try new maneuvers, mark up the walls and leave skid marks on the floors thus signaling the demise of the clean white gallery space and the economic system that fuels it. Bring on the death of capital. Bring on Mad Max. Bring on the demise of western civilization and say goodbye to your precious art objects.

For more, including a slide show, see Bloggy.
Humphrey is represented by DCKT.