July 31, 2005
Brandon Ballengée at Archibald Arts
Brandon Ballengée Cleared and Stained Clearnose Skate, Rajaegianteria 2003 digital C-print mounted on Plexiglas 60" x 48" [detail of installation] It's only a coincidence that this image and post follows my lizard report, but I like the connection. Brandon...
miniature Manhattan wildlife
Eastern Fence Lizard, Northern fence subspecies I think it was one of his relatives. I don't know when a modest garden of pots on a low Manhattan roof qualifies as a natural wilderness, but I'm thinking that ours must...
July 29, 2005
before Billy Joels, before potato barns, before the Shinecock,
untitled (rose scallops) 2005 . . . there were these communities. I'm very fond of shellfish, and my taste in art and food, especially food preparation, includes a powerful strain of minimalism. I spotted this gorgeous cache of shellfish...
July 28, 2005
Post No Bills at White Columns
Bob and Roberta Smith Left is the New Right 2004 screenprint 30" x 20" [installation view] Mike Paré and Marc Swanson It Will Be The Same (Blacklight Goya) 2004 five-color silkscreen 17" X 26" [installation view] Scott King Gold...
July 27, 2005
Phong Bui at Sarah Bowen
Phong Bui Hybrid Carnival for Exupéry #2 2005 [detail of gallery installation] Phong Bui's site-specific installation takes over almost every inch of Sarah Bowen's gallery space. The press release talks about flight, "exhuberant fantasies of lightness," the painted language...
Aaron Wexler at Jack the Pelican
Aaron Wexler Flowers Through the Weeds 2005 acrylic, ink and paper on panels 96" x 104" [detail] - being another work from the current show at Jack the Pelican Presents. Barry and I had first seen Aaron Wexler's beautiful...
July 26, 2005
Katherine Daniels at the Pool Art Fair
Katherine Daniels Multi-Colored Pendant 2003 wired plastic beads on plastic spool [large detail of installation, with details of two works on paper in the background] I realize this site has been looking pretty grim lately, and that I was...
what to do if stopped for a subway search
not so simple now, even for white guys, but maybe it never was UPDATE: I received a very constructive comment on my last post, "bag the entrance searches, we need exits!", from Matt of the "Flex your Rights Foundation,"...
July 25, 2005
bag the entrance searches, we need exits!
the wrong kind of crowd control It's a good thing it was Penn Station, because virtually none of New York's Transit system stations could be evacuated for either a real or a false alarm. Chief Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg's...
terror
Jean Charles de Menezes The gang of men who accosted and chased a terrified young electrician into the tube where they shot five bullets into his head after he tripped and fell onto the floor of a car filled...
July 24, 2005
displacement: having had more than enough of the headlines
brown-eyed susans in our building's court garden today...
July 21, 2005
darkness settles over the land, this time maybe permanently
the Madtown Liberty Players portray the Fourth Amendment under attack (two years ago) The House voted today to make the "Patriot Act" permanent. In what may be the least patriotic vote ever recorded in that chamber, our representatives effectively...
Bethany Bristow in the gutter
Bethany Bristow, dropped off on the way to the museum I've had this weird reaction to her art since coming across it (in a switch, it was sometime after we had met). Bethany Bristow's messy alien-organic sculptures attracted and...
Danny Lyon on "The Destruction of Lower Manhattan"
No, not that one, it's about the one we ordered. Danny Lyon 327, 329, and 331 Washington Street, between Jay and Harrison Streets It's all gone now. Sixty acres of lower Manhattan's nineteenth-century buildings were demolished during the mid-sixties, including...
July 20, 2005
more on Smolkatown
for picking weeds It probably won't be news to anyone in the new music scene, but this account of vicious New York city police thuggery may be a surprise to many of my readers, even those who have seen...
July 19, 2005
just about as brutal and effective as our campaign in Iraq
a Palestinian man walks next to a section of a wall eight-meters high built by the Israeli government, arbitrarily separating Jerusalem (and some additional annexed lands) from the Palestinian suburb of Abu Dis We will not prevent terrorist acts...
July 17, 2005
a more organic minimalism at DCKT Contemporary
Dan Steinhilber Untitled 2003-2005 duck sauce, plastic 60" x 80" [detail] It's a good thing. The art, for sure, but also it's a good thing that gallery shows which open in late June are often extended through much of...
July 16, 2005
difficult music for difficult times: an appreciation
[of a kind of harmony] and I'm also very fond of red, when it's used well [scene from "Shadowtime"] Brian Ferneyhough Time and Motion Study III 1974 16 mixed voices, percussion, live electronics [detail of the score] I had intended...
July 11, 2005
MTA: stadium treated as emergency, but security gets yawn
leaving it up to the riders Barry has just about covered the issue, with the help of Newsday's estimable Ray Sanchez, but a letter to the editor published in the NYTimes helps to illustrate the scale of the criminal...
July 10, 2005
meet Bubba
Bubba waiting for us on Bedford Street in Williamsburg today I have always been interested in cars. Actually, I'm something of a car nut, in spite of my interests and principles otherwise. Yeah, I know, it's 2005 and we...
IDEC: can the Greeks' moira steer a ship if it's French?
IDEC in New York, two weeks ago I absolutely do not follow yachting news. Well, at least not since I lived in the old, "undeveloped" Newport and enjoyed the regular visits to that sleepy town of hunky crewmen from...
July 9, 2005
Something at Monya Rowe
Aja Albertson If a birth flower falls in a forest, and no one is there to smell it, will it then grow a stone? 2005 silk flowers, faux gems, urethane, glass vase and butterfly approx. 12" x 12" [view...
fractal geometries at Greene Naftali
Ara Peterson Standing Waves 2004 wood, acrylic 45" x 168" x 30" [detail of installation] Ara Peterson is included in a group show at Greene Naftali based loosely on the idea of fractal geometry. Both the concept and its...
July 8, 2005
Spencer Brownstone, Guild & Greyshkul and Deitch stop traffic
the view from the paving stones in the middle of Wooster Street and the prospect from Spencer Brownstone's loading dock moments before It's just a summer show, but it includes a huge list of artists, and it was only...
July 7, 2005
always seductive, it finally is fashionable
In a NYTimes review of the restaurant Loreley published just over a year ago Julia Moskin wrote, "German food can be a hard sell. It is deeply unfashionable . . . . " I copied the quote down. Today...
July 6, 2005
PS1's "Greater New York 2005"
Christian Jankowski 16mm Mystery 2004 35mm film [video still in view of installation] I waited a long time before checking out the "Greater New York 2005" show at PS1, but in taking in much of it on a relatively...
July 5, 2005
first they came for the pornographers . . .
. . . but I wasn't a pornographer* safe enough for him? Patrick Moore has an OPINION piece in today's Newsday, "Bush team uses 'skin game' to attack porn," which sounds an alarm on behalf of principles much greater than...
July 4, 2005
liberty and justice for all
reaction in the public gallery of the Cortes on June 30, as the Spanish parliament extended full rights of marriage to all citizens Some day a people crazy about waving its own flag at home and around the world...
July 3, 2005
holiday on ice
untitled (Garden of Eden melons) 2005 Wishing everybody out there (except for the neo-fascist fundamentalists who would destroy it) a delightful 4th of July!...
