Category: Culture

Haydn, still fully-staffed


oops there goes another one

“Well, Julia Friedman Gallery has definitely upped the ante on art openings,” Barry said to me as we walked along 10th Avenue to the second of two sites dedicated to yesterday’s opening of the art of Pablo Helguera.
To be sure.
This was no ordinary gallery reception; First there was the opening performance and then the opening reception. It worked, at least for these two music nuts. I don’t remember what the calendar looked like yesterday, but this was the only Chelsea event we hit before heading downtown for the LMCC open studios reception.
Helguera’s exhibition, “Swan Song,” can be seen in the gallery space on West 22nd Street through may 28th. Last night however, in a loft space in the Starret-Lehigh Building four blocks north, there was also a performance by a 23-member symphony orchestra of work related to the show. The short program included a minimal theatrical element attached to a beautiful composition by the artist himself, “Endingness,” and to the last movement of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony which actually ended the event, somewhat definitively.
On the floor below the musicians was outlined in wide masking tape the renaisance-era ceiling design which is integral to an important work installed in the gallery; As the individual players completed their parts in the Haydn piece, each rose one by one to extinguish a single wax candle supported on a clear lucite base near his or her music stand and then quietly exited the room.
The ensemble was the Mexican-American Orchestra, conducted by Alondra de la Parra. If I may be excused for doing so, I’ll add here that it did no harm to its appreciation of the performance that this largely visual arts-oriented audience was listening to players who were led by the most beautiful conductor I have ever seen.
The works you’ll find in the gallery each relate to the artist’s theory about finitude, and the relationship between history, legacy, culture and language. In the midst of a crowded opening reception I found the most beautiful, and potentially “resonant,” piece to be “Conservatory of Dead Languages.” Resting on the shelves of a lighted vitrine built into a wall of the gallery are dozens of pale variously-colored wax cylinders, each of which documents a dying language.
On the ceiling in the front room is “Acolman.” It is a sculpture in wood and wax repeating the design some of us had first seen earlier in the performance loft. It and the sound recording which is a part of it relate to a local belief that the voices of long-dead monks who sang in a Mexican monastery built almost 400 years ago can still be heard under the ceiling of its chapel.


Pablo Helguera Dead Languages Conservatory (Conservatorio de Lenguas Muertas) 2005 recordings on 30 wax cylinders 43″ x 30″ large detail of installation


Pablo Helguera Acolman (#1: Play) 2005 wood, wax and sound recordings 8′ x 8′ large detail of installation

Jim Drain AIDS-a-delic 2005 mixed media with yarn, fabric and beads 84″ x 60″ x 40″ [I believe Ball Buster is the smaller piece to the rear]


Jim Drain AIDS-a-delic detail


Jim Drain installation view of Sergio (forground) and Big Boy


Jim Drain War Cry 2005 mixed media on paper 21″ x 17″ detail [of a piece which is part of an assembly/installation in the back gallery]

I’m a little late, but not quite never. Barry did a post last Sunday about Jim Drain’s fantastic show, “I Wish I Had A Beak,” at Green Naftali. I just wanted to show some of the images I managed to take home on our visit the afternoon before.
And I want to add that I was totally relieved to hear that the yarn for these complex pieces doesn’t have to be knitted by hand, as Dean Daderko explains in his review, “Magic Mushrooms,” in Gay City News.

Sterling Ruby Kiln #2 2004 Lambda print mounted with Plexiglas and Sintra 22″ x 33″


Sterling Ruby Prime Mover #1 2005 pencil, spraypaint and collage on paper 52.25″ x 57.25″


Sterling Ruby Orange Inanimate Torso 2005 resin, PVC, spraypaint, formica pedestal 28″ x 48″ x 34″


Sterling Ruby Cry 2005 Lambda print mounted with Plexiglas and Sintra 72″ x 46″

Sterling Ruby is back at Foxy Production and once again he’s all over the place in both the solo show as a whole and in the individual works that each refuse to be limited to a single medium themselves. Collage seems to dominate new work in the visual arts everywhere lately, but Ruby’s entire oeuvre can be understood as a single great collage of inventions, and each one of them in turn collages his bold, complex understanding of his world in layers which reveal little but promise much.
I just wish I could take it all home where I might see just how far I could get with it.
Ask Michael or John about the videos.

[images from Foxy Production]

Yesterday Barry wrote about Marguerite Evangeline‘s very strong show, “Shot Through,” at Stefan Stux, but regretted he didn’t have images of the work. I ended up with these on my own camera’s chip, and thought I’d share them.
The works are each titled, Los Lunas, followed by a separate number. They are all from 2005, and they are of stainless steel and gunshot.
UPDATE: Bloggy now has a copy of her statement as a PDF file.

probably-irrelevant-footnote: In the shades of Longfellow’s heroine, Evangeline is from Louisiana. Anyway, her work came to me first, but I’ve always been fascinated with Acadia, Louisiana and her beautiful name.

Frankie Martin “The One Minute Rave” installation view

Frankie Martin‘s “One Minute Rave” was still installed in the rear gallery at Canada when we visited the gallery this past Tuesday. She had created a club in the space of, roughly, a ten foot cube, although Barry and I were the only ravers available that afternoon, two days after the show had closed.
From Tom Moody’s post:

Press a button outside a cloth-draped doorway, enter the room with the black light, strobe, and cardboard cutout DJ, and you have exactly one minute to freak out. Actually you can do it multiple times, but you have to keep sticking your hand outside the doorjamb to hit the switch that activates the music and lights. Some very nice handcrafted work, geometric patterns, psychedelic drawing, and pure kitsch from the era of smart drinks, glow in the dark whistles, and floor shattering bass lines. Which is still going on in many parts of the country, and/or in a state of being perpetually revived, as the ’60s psychedelic thing continues to morph with new technology and new crops of initiates.

We missed the live rave dancers announced for opening night, but we went home with a 45 and this seven-inch album cover drawing:


Frankie Martin going to the rave 2005 “i don’t want to be seen as fragile”

[the sign in the rear of the station wagon reads, “nerd on board”]

Jocelyn Shipley Hand Monster

I have to admit that I’m ethnically a goth, but I just don’t get “goth.” I’m pretty uncomfortable with the kind of grotesquerie represented by the work of Jocelyn Shipley, but I don’t feel comfortable dismissing it, if for no reason other than my unwillingness to be bound by prejudice, even my own. I even hate to think that I’m just being slow in appreciating this work, yet I suspect there’s more there than I’m able to see right now. That suspicion is reinforced by the fact that Shipley has the enthusiastic support of the excellent people at Canada.
So I’ll admit that, for what it may be worth, for me a verdict is still pending, but here are a few shots of work from her recent show, “Pholklore,” at the gallery, in the hope it will help more than one of us to figure it out.
Wow. Even if only for it’s genre, it’s pretty spectacular stuff, id’nit?


Jocelyn Shipley Hungry Man


Jocelyn Shipley Pantygram


Jocelyn Shipley Macaroni Man

All the works are from 2005, the dimensions vary, and the materials are generally found objects treated with paint, latex, or paper mache.

Brian Belott “Books, books, books, books, books, books and books” detail of installation


Brian Belott “Books, books, books, books, books, books and books” detail of detail of installation

We really overstayed our invitation welcome to the three shows at the Chinatown gallery Canada which closed a few days ago. In fact, Barry and I had wandered into the space after they had officially closed the official run of work by Brian Belott, Jocelyn Shipley and Frankie Martin.
On one side of the front gallery Belott showed a large renaissance-revival oak library table overflowing with his handmade books, each of their pages bursting with his infinitely-inventive collages. Belott covers the surface of every page of these found volumes until they can no longer close, but must stand upright in sensual invitation. We poured through dozens of them before we could tear ourselves away and let Whit (Canada’s co-founder) leave for the night.

cash and carry

Are the big collectors now paying in cash?