Luis Lara Malvacías, Untitled Shoes (From Series Channel Sur) 2005 blue plastic shopping bag, buttons 12.5" × 4.75" × 4.25" each
The gallery space itself is perfect, and a perfect fit for the neighborhood. It's a very well-designed small cube cut into the side of an old industrial or warehouse building. It sits on a Williamsburg street which has not yet been rendered suitable for a Starbucks. One concrete step up from the sidewalk, with an industrial gate which can be lowered at night as a modesty shield to indifference or a protective barrier to vandalism, its aesthetics are totally fine.
I have to admit that we stopped at Galería Galou with our friend Dan mostly because we knew it was on the path between some familiar galleries and lunch outside on a beautiful late summer afternoon. But the show we saw last Sunday, "Venezueland", would have been worth a detour, even without the interest of its concept and geographic focus. From the press release:
Venezueland is a virtual space where a new generation of Venezuelan artists merges and engages both in individual investigations and related creative processes. In this fertile, dynamic ground there is a steadfast pondering of memories from a country now immersed in political upheaval, and of the unstoppable flux of information generated in the urban context of New York City.The amusing piece by Luis Lara Malvacías shown in the image above happened to photograph very well. The works by other V-land artists are no less worthy of attention however, even if they may not all be as comfortable in more than one discipline as Malvacías appears to be.
I just got an email announcing that his choreography will be performed at Danspace later this month. Now I'm bummed. Barry and I will be out of the country when "Badman" is performed here.
Dan and Galou