untitled (red petal) 2006

I spotted this ornamental tree in the garden in front of a town house on West 23rd Street yesterday afternoon. I've never before seen these blossoms attached to such a large specimen. The alien red petal found its way there either by chance or an intervention, but that's where it was when I arrived.

Two summers back I passed this guy's lofty perch on 8th Avenue at least ten times a week on my way to and from the Cancer Center, but last year I never saw (or heard) him once. Two days ago I noticed his shriek, after leaving White Colums on Horatio Street, while still almost two blocks away.

The sidewalk vendor below the bodega could hardly have been indifferent to the loss of the parrot's raucus companionship. He may not be as pleased by the bird's return as Barry and I were. The year before last he had told me, when I asked about his colorful neighbor: "damn thing never shuts up!" Still, I'd like to think they had developed some form of comity, especially now that they're back together.

One of the coolest and most progressive non-profit galleries in the city will be holding its annual fund-raising auction and raffle tomorrow evening.

Saturday is Momenta Art appreciation day.

Barry and I would never miss this one. It's a chance to be with a great bunch of people while surrounded, if ever so briefly, by some of the most interesting art to be seen anywhere right now. Then there's the excitement of being able to actually take something home, knowing that this boon is also for the future of the art and artists we love.

Although there are never any duds at a Momenta benefit, this year the offerings are particularly fine. Dues/tickets however are still only $175 (less a 10% discount for artists). There are 110 works and 110 tickets. No one goes home empty-handed, and there's little of the stress which is always a part of a silent-auction format.

For those who can't do without that competition there will be a silent auction, of eight additional select works, preceding the drawing itself.

Even if you can't make it to White Columns, where the works are now on display and where the event is being held, you can still order tickets and arrange for a proxy to make your selection from among the items in the raffle.

See Bloggy for more.

Barry

We met fifteen years ago today. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Tonight at the School for Visual Arts MFA studio event we talked to a student who had changed his mind about "painting" while working in his studio over the last [two?] years. He said that he had earlier dismissed it as irrelevant to his own experience, but now felt really good about the medium and expected it would pull together his whole life, absolutely everything he felt strongly about, and likely for - ever.

His enthusiasm was absolutely serious and totally believable.

Joe Fig doesn't seem to have ever had any doubts about painting. He began as a representational painter himself, but years ago he developed into a "painter" of painters, beginning with the abstraction heroes. Today Fig models the studios of artists he admires regardless of their style - where the magic happens - but what he creates are less models than portraits of the hugely diversiform acts of painting themselves.

The close-ups of some of the seventeen pieces included in the current show at Plus Ultra which I have uploaded below show that Fig still knows how to wield a brush himself. His reduced-scale [all are contained in a plexi box less than twelve inches cubed] reconstructions of artist painting tables are magnificent, but Fig himself doesn't have to yield to anyone in his understanding of color or his handling of paint.

Philip Pearlstein

Barnaby Furnas

gregory Amenoff

Karin Davie

Bill Jensen

four yellow wild strawberry blossoms in the lawn this morning

I started this blog four years ago today. It succeeded more than eight months of emails sent to friends after September 11. It never would have happened and wouldn't continue without the patient wizard.

As American dissenters we hardly have to be reminded that we can't survive on demonstrations alone, especially when a cynical and incompetent regime can freely ignore millions of people taking to the streets (at this point I'm more inclined to demonstrate against the cynicism and incompetence of the Democratic Party and the Fourth Estate).

We will always need the sustenence of good political cabaret: We need the words, we need the song, and we need the laughs, and we need to be reminded of our history if we hope to have a future.

On Monday, May 8 The Civilians will bring the cultural legacy of The Left back to life with:

PATRIOT ACTS: AN AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE a one-night-only celebration in words and music of a great American tradition; proving there's another side to patriotism, the show revives the forgotten progressive history of many icons of American culture.

It's a benefit for this wonderful ensemble. See bloggy for more images and all the details. Check this post for a report on last year's show.

This group knows its stuff. Resistance, the Left and progressive ideals are not American monopolies (in fact it seems that today they are pretty scarce here). An earlier, brilliant production brought its audience inside the 1871 Paris Commune. Its effect was mesmerizing, and sheer political dynamite.

[images from The Civilians; the last two are from a production at the Jolla Playhouse, photograph by Manuel Rotenberg]

Tom Meacham Brian Blade is a Better Kisser Than Me 2006 acrylic on canvas 90" x 60" [installation view]

Every single work in this delicious at Oliver Kamm's 5BE show can be appreciated for its thing-ness as much as its painting-ness. Looking doesn't seem to be enough, but I did manage to keep to my side the hand which was not occupied with the camera.

I don't understand how all the physical stuff came about, unless it had something to do with the particular conceit of the show: Two gallery artists were each asked to choose another artist who would be included in an intimate show of four. Tom Meacham chose Gary Stephan and Cheryl Donegan selected Stephanie Campos.

Everything works. The art is all very fine and the installation is perfect.

See Bloggy for an excellent image of one of Cheryl Donegan's pieces in the show.

Jade Townsend Sound, Survival in "Cause and Effect" 2006 mixed media [view of installation]

Susan Lipper Hollow 2006 video composite [still from installation]

Jeffrey kilmer Skinny as a Skyscraper 2006 mixed media [detail of installation]

Sarah Lasley Evening and Morning 2005 oil on canvas [installation view of two painting pairs]

Yes, there really is art life on today's [greatly-reduced] Lower East Side, as more and more of New York's most interesting galleries and at least one museum pop up or wander into colorful precincts south of Houston and east of Bowery. But the space at 131 Chrystie Street where the equally colorful show, "Leave New York", is currently installed is not quite of usual order. It's a bold exhibition in a temporarily-vacant store arranged by a group of enterprising artists who decided not to wait for the gallerist to show up.

One of the artist/curator/workers, Jason Cole Mager, wrote this statement to set the tone for the enterprise:

Leave New York

Simply meant to elicit the response, “why?”

We as artists hope to answer as best we can, through our individual representations, the role our local landscape and art politics play in our daily lives.

We do not suggest that anyone stay or leave simply because an outside source dictates that one must do so to succeed.

We only hope to encourage others to remind themselves why they have or have not chosen to be here, and if it is necessary to stay.

Disillusioned by the idea that hype and hip have replaced new and progressive, we rekindle our interests in beauty and the lasting.

Dismayed by a society that walks down a street without looking up, we remind you to do so before another building is replaced.

The city is our love/hate affair.

In addition to work by the four artists included above there is good stuff* by Brody Baker, Christopher Baker, Charlie Foos, Steve Green, Harif Guzman, Jeremy Liebman, Jason COle Mager, Melissa Martin, Jon Parker, Anthony J. Pontius, William Powhida, Ted Riederer, Ryan Schneider, Jim Wright and Michael Yinger.

The show continues until May 15, but I hope some fairy godparent will keep the space from turning back into a pumpkin patch.

*
the camera was very unhappy with much of the lighting during the opening reception, so once again I should state that what does not show up here was determined at least in part by factors not related to critical choice

Gustav Klucis Moscow Spartakiada, Swimmer 1928 design for a poster

This morning's NYTimes includes a review by Alan Riding of the Victoria and Albert Museum show, "Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939". When Barry showed me this image he mused sadly on how quickly even the aesthetic promise of the early Soviet era was confounded.

Not to mention the comrades' early rejection of the prudish restraint of the past. Great loins.

*
If we can accept the Wikipedia account, Klucis's fate itself embodies the tragedy of a destroyed ideal.

Klutsis taught, wrote, and produced political art for the Soviet state for the rest of his life. As the political background degraded through the 1920s and 1930s, Klutsis and Kulagina came under increasing pressure to limit their subject matter and techniques. Once joyful, revolutionary and utopian, by 1935 their art was devoted to furthering Stalin's cult of personality.

Despite his active and loyal service to the party, Klutsis was arrested in Moscow on January 17, 1938, as he prepared to leave for the New York World's Fair. [Valentina Kulagina, his longtime collaborator and his wife] agonized for months, then years, over his disappearance. In 1989 it was found that he had been executed three weeks after his arrest.

[image from The Guardian]

untitled (railing) 2006

Difference is always special, even on Park Avenue. No, especially on Park Avenue.

Eric Heist Artist Talk 2005 MDF, paint, blanket, papier-mâché, wire, wig 76" x 66" x 46" [large detail of installation*]

Eric Heist is a wonderful artist working with great skill in mediums traditional and perhaps not so traditional, but if you are conscientious and as interested as he is in the social and political issues which inspire his work you're likely to be a bit distracted at first by the drama of his extraordinary conceptual installations. The current show in Schroeder Romero's new space in Chelsea is no exception.

One year ago Heist had installed a sobering show, "Travel Agents", in the gallery's Williamsburg quarters addressing Western military and economic hegemony. Representations of traditional tourism institutions and tourist destinations were overlayed with direct textual references to U.S. military operations associated with areas which are the traditional focus of luxury or adventure travel.

The current show, "Interfaith Center", deals with the institution with the most powerful influence on individual behavior every where in the world: organized religion - in all of its confessional forms. Once again the "furniture" elements in the gallery will not disappoint, but don't miss the pencil drawings (in the office area) and the gouaches. They're not as scary or as outrageous as the sculptures and collages, but they have an extraordinary and perverse [for their subject] beauty of their own, and they should have staying power at least equal to the institution which stimulated them.

Eric Heist Interfaith Center: Crystal Cathedral interior 2005 gouache on paper 30" x 22"

*
the press release describes this pulpit as the centerpiece of the installation.

At first glance it appears empty, but when the viewer looks behind the base he/she discovers a figure huddled in a blanket. Titled Artist's Talk, the piece comments on artists' unwillingness to articulate contemporary issues directly in their work while often treating artistic practice as a substitute for religion.

[lower image from Eric Heist]

Jeff Wyckoff AIDS altar-piece 1993 36" x 78-90" photosculpture* [installation view]

[opened]

We were in the back room of 31 Grand recently when we spotted Jeff Wyckoff's extraordinary altarpiece, created in 1993.

I could hardly take my eyes off of it.

Thirteen years ago, at the time the piece was completed, the AIDS epidemic might be said to have peaked both in the amount of criminal negligence in the world's response to the crisis and in our general despair of effective treatments. I did not see Wyckoff's sculpture then, but from the perspective of someone who was active in ACT UP at the time and who has lived with the virus for decades, I believe it must be almost as powerful now as it ever was. If this is the case it's certainly about the art, but it's not least due to the fact that for most of those around the world affected by AIDS not much has actually changed.

*
the tinted photo prints are on the kind of paper with a three-dimensional surface used by studios early in the last century to suggest painting

Brian Belott Boom Box #73rd 2003 acrylic on glass 15" x 18" [installation view]

Kevin Zucker Untitled 2006 digital C-print, 32" x 40" [large detail of installation]

Tim Davis Combatant Balls (My Life in Politics) 2004 C-print 20" x 24" [large detail of installation]

Monya Rowe has a beautiful show of still Lifes in a rich range of styles and mediums (although, no surprise when the subject is inanimation, there's no video). The title of the exhibition is "Available (A Still Life Show)".

I chose to upload these three images because they are more presentable as photographs than others I attempted (try to ignore the reflections), but I have to admit they each hold their own in the good company of Richard Callner, Kevin Christy, Dawn Clements, Anoka Faruquee, David Humphrey, Vera Iliatova, Dona Nelson, Kate Shepherd, Lynn Talbot, Wayne Thiebaud, Ben Woodward and "an anonymous contributor".

I've been fascinated by reverse painting on glass since first encountering it on 18th-century furniture decades ago. I'm delighted to know that the technique survives - so very excitingly well in this case. The green pentagram on back of the glass door of my old shelf clock can't begin to compete with a boom box with a worry face.

As for the Zucker, your eyes insist that you're looking at a realist oil study even when you're standing directly in front of it. What's that mean?

Tim Davis is just plain brilliant. He reminds us over and over again that photography really is about painting with light.

Robert Boyd Xanadu [two stills from a three-screen video installation, and below those, a still from a second, single-channel video]

Robert Boyd has been working on his three-part epic video, "Xanadu", for years. We've seen two sections in earlier installations and they are literally, figuratively and emotionally dazzling. The completed work is now handsomely installed at Participant, in the gallery's main space. A second, related work is projected onto the floor of the lower level.

The larger piece uses thousands of image bites which the press release tells us were "culled from hundreds of hours of archival footage including that of Doomsday cults, iconic political figures, and global fundamentalist movements [to construct a] series of MTV-style music videos within a setting reminiscent of a discotheque".

The installation upstairs suggests a dizzy post-modern Cinerama, but without the 1950's optimism. Actually, in the rhythmic way the visual images are woven or composed Boyd's work more closely resembles a highly-kinetic wartime symphony, or maybe an insane tone poem, than any cinema form, conventional or otherwise. The disco sound track adds an oddly sophisticated counterpoint to the doomsday visual line, but you still won't walk out singing.

untitled (wisteria) 2006

POST CARD

Jennifer Toth Fertility 18" x 21" [installation view, showing a bird shape extending above the top edge of the piece]

Jennifer Toth [installation view showing "Commitment Phobic" on the left and "Inner Artist on a String" on the right]

Jennifer Toth Temper Tales Two 20" x 22" [installation view]

Jennifer Toth's paintings should have been running off the walls inside Holland Tunnel's gallery shed. They're that good. It turns out that Barry and I had seen her work several years ago in a show curated by Orly Cogan at Paul Rogers/9W.

POST CARD

Tom Billings Our Founding Fathers 24" x 18"

Holland Tunnel has a remarkable show, "Ménage à Trois", of paintings by Tom Billings, Jacques Roch and Jennifer Toth. It continues through the rest of this week. Unfortunately the gallery seems to have lost its website and I didn't leave the little garden shed on South 3rd Street with any more information about the show or the artists. Worse still, I can't find anything on line about Tom Billings.

Finally, I don't seem to have gotten an image of Jacques Roch's work in this show, but I'll try to make up for it, with the gallery at least, by doing a separate post showing works by Jennifer Toth.

Roz Chast Cremaster Cycle Cartoon T-Shirt t-shirt

Not exactly Matthew Barney's show, but rather "The Matthew Barney Show". It's a group exhibition currently at Jack the Pelican which has been curated by Eric Doeringer. This rich installation is probably more fun than any of the eponymous genuine originals, regardless of how seriously, or unseriously, you take Barney's work. Doeringer has asked some 30 of his colleagues to create or contribute work referencing the Cremaster phenomenon, and the result is a scary delight.

You have to have seen at least some of the Cremaster videos to get the full effect, but even a cult novitiate will understand most of the symbolism in this collection of bootleg send-ups and tributes.

Liz Magic Laser Back to Nature #19 Lambda print

Carolyn Sortor Creamistress 6 DVD

Dan Levenson and Sean Meyer Kremaster video

Dax van Aalten The Mammarymaster Cycle video

POST CARD

Liu Wei It Looks Like a Landscape 2004 digital B/W photography 60" x 24.5" [installation view]

Max Protetch has mounted an extraordinary show of recent Chinese photography. It will be up for another week, but China will be here forever. Don't miss out on seeing the work now. Otherwise it will be that much harder to catch up next time. These artists aren't going to wait for us to decide they're there.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy Double Fantasy II (sex) 2006 mixed media sculpture with cameras, lights, electronics, projected video output, approx. 7' x 11' [large detail of installation]

The show closes in two hours, but the gallery will still have some good images after today, and maybe a piece in the office. Anyway, I'm sure they'll be back again. I'm referring to Jennifer and Kevin McCoy and their Postmasters show, "Directed Dreaming".

From the Press release:

The title of the exhibit refers to practice of willing oneself to dream about specific situations in order to resolve conflicts in one's waking life. The works in Directed Dreaming fuse cinematic, personal, and historical images to become visual records of those conflicts, with the question of resolution left open to the viewer.

The McCoys' sculptures are fragmentary miniature film sets with lights, video cameras, and moving sculptural elements. Camera views are sequenced to create live cinematic events. By exposing the image making apparatus along with the projected results, the work explores both time-based and physical reality.

I thought the smaller works with simpler mechanisms were just as effective as the larger, multicamera, multimedia installations which make use of several rotating sets and soundtracks. Either approach seems essential to the artists' exploration of anxiety, but I have to admit that the the big guys really are spectacular.

POST CARD

Rico Gatson Auction Block 2006 latex paiont on plywood, lights 25" x 48.5" x 24.5" [installation view]

The show is "African Fractals", the artist is Rico Gatson and the gallery is Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Great. The symbols and references are many, but Gatson's art makes them a scary one.

[seen on the platform of the 8th Avenue Canal Street station]

Valerie Tevere UNITED STATES 1996 bluprint posters [large detail of installation]

Pedro Lasch Crumbs: Drawing on a Limited View of New York City's Cultural Wealth 2000 [large detail of installation]

With its current exhibition, "When Artists Say We", Artists Space would almost certainly take the prize for the current show which asks the most from its visitors. There are well over a hundred artists represented, "as colleagues, as collaborators, in collectives, as friends, as critics, as bystanders, and as allies", but it's not always a particularly visual experience. Whoa!

Think art school lecture hall, with some very interesting visual aids. The press release includes this note:

The needs that drive artists together are manifold: a discourse that educates, a horizon that widens, a complexity of knowledge, the ability to fail, or a larger capacity to remember critically and productively within their own field and beyond. But artists are also driven by the need for shelter, protection, and support. Such relationships are grounded in structures and language that are inherently self-critical and rarely reflected upon when art is shown. When Artists Say We takes up this task by trying to present some of the forms such collective exchanges have taken in New York City over the last thirty years.

Because we had to be elsewhere at a certain hour and because of the impressive steam heat pouring into the space while we were there, we didn't stay as long as I might have otherwise. Or were those just excuses? I did see, or read, some very interesting work. The two images shown above can't possibly represent this huge show as a whole, but these are just a few of the pieces which do good double duty as art which works well both conceptually and aesthetically. I'm also realizing only now as I write this that, in spite of the fact that they were each created at least a few years ago, they are both particularly topical today.

The printed statement below the identification label for Tevere's work reads:

These posters were wheat-pasted on buildings, sidewalks, bus stops, and construction scaffoldings in San Diego and Los Angeles during the Republican Convention (San Diego, CA) and Republican election of 1996.

The statement below Lasch's label is more elaborate, but definitely worth a read:

happy shop window on Bleecker Street

[I forgot to document the identity of the beautiful store, but for the story of these little critters themselves, see last year's post]

soldier Lewis, sung by David Adam Moore, has been dying in battle for two thousand years

Until the boy is asked his name David Adam Moore is called simply 'the Hunk' by Brine, our underworld guide in "Hell", an extraordinary new opera continuing this week at Performance Space 122.

This is our own "Inferno", and it's an almost perfect work by the composer Michael Webster and the poet Eileen Myles, and they are extremely fortunate in their collaborators. Yes, the libretto is brilliant and beautifully drawn by the composer, performed by a very good ensemble of eight conducted by Jonathan Yates, and brilliantly directed by David Chambers, but there are no weak links anywhere among those responsible for costumes, lighting, or video and stage design (I think this is just about the most successful video/stage integration I've ever seen), and I think the attractive cast couldn't have been better.

Barry has more.

Speaking of attractions, I've seen and heard Moore once before, playing the male lead in Gotham Chamber Opera's production of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" four years ago. I can vouch for the fact that the chest is not a prosthetic, and the tattoos and piercings were not done just for this role. The man is magnificent to look at, but his acting skills are tops and his voice is superb. I have no idea why it's still possible for an ordinary mortal to secure a seat only a few feet away from his frightening beauty.

[image by Beth Moore from PS 122]

torn from this morning's NYTimes

But the rest of us know exactly what to do with a stinking privy.

Nicole Cherubini [details of three pots included in installation]

I can't promise to upload a big bunch of pictures for just any gallery which happens to have none on its own site, but this is a very special circumstance. I'm very fond both of Nicole Cherubini's sculpture and the wonderful work always to be found at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, but the happy combination, as seen in last night's opening, is sensational.

Cherubini has re-invented pottery, making it finally (again?) indisputably safe for art. This is very serious sculpture but with a fundamental good humor which, for anyone who experiences its beauty, can be as forward or latent as needed.

I have no list of the individual pieces, so the images I'm showing will have to go undoumented, at least for now. I doubt these strong, glorious pots will mind that one bit.

Here are portraits of three of the nine pots:

Nicole Cherubini G-Pot with Rocks 2006 ceramic, fake gold and silver jewelry, chain, white feathers, luster, white ice, marble, wood, blue foam, targel, approx. 16" x 16" x 41" [installation view]

Nicole Cherubini G-Pot, Black Vanitas 2006 ceramic, fake gold and silver jewelry, chain, luster, enamel, plywood, walnut stain, blue foam and acrylic gel, approx. 16.5" x 12" x 61" [installation view]

Nicole Cherubini G-Pot, Vanitas #3 2006 ceramic, terracotta, luster, yellow and crystal ice, fake gold and silver jewelry, chain, purple rabbit fur, plywood, polyurethane, enamel and red plexi-glass, approx. 33.5 x 21" x 64.5" [installation view]

And finally, three more images of the red pot shown immediately above and at the very top of this post:

Lindsay Brant Bush Wackers 2004 Trader Joe’s bags, papier mâché, egg shells, foam, wire, plastic, glass eyes [installation view, including a detail of Lisa Sanditz's wall mural, Pussy Den]

I've been feeling just a little bit guilty about showing so many [almost]cum shots on this site lately, so I was delighted to finally make it to the excellently outrageous/outrageously excellent show, "Ridykeulous", curated by Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner at Participant. But ouch! It was the last day. My answer to the challenge that represents for my readers, or viewers, was to put up as many images as I could muster, giving them a chance to float into the ether forever.

The show is based on the two women's publication of the same name, making both, in the words of the press release, very much the same "collaborative effort on the part of the two curators to subvert the languages, both theoretical and visual, which are commonly used to define Feminist or Lesbian art."

It sure worked for me!

And how do we get to see more of these wonderful artists?

Nicole Eisenman Ridykeulous Recruitment Center 1993 installation view]

K8 Hardy Fashionfashion Money Look 2006 C-print [installation view]

Carrie Moyer Chromafesto (Sister Resister 1.2) 2003 acrylic on canvas & wheat pasted posters [installation view]

Keith Boadwee Snowmen #2 2006 [instalaltion view]

Paige Gratland Celebrity Lesbian Fist (Eileen Myles) 2006 silicon [installation view]

Ulrike Mueller 9 drawings pencil and spray paint on paper [installation view]

Christian Lemmerz Charles Saatchi’s Dick mixed media [installation view]

Victoria Robinson Ship Went Down 2006 DVD [video still from installation]

Claude Wampler A despondent Pomeranian appears to be detained in underwear 2005 black & white c-print

Laura Parnes Blood and Guts in High School 2005 [video stills from two segments of the piece in the installation]

Sachar Mathias Windows 2006 newspaper [detail of installation]

Willamsburg may have lost some very good galleries in the last two years (most in moves to Chelsea), but fortunately there seem to be just about as many new ones settling in. Because of the rent pressures created by gentrification, these new spaces aren't usually going to be found near the Bedford Street/L train crossroads, but this means they can, or must, be just about as resouceful or scrappy (read, "edgy") as those which have pulled up stakes.

One of the new guys in town is actually just down the road. Outrageous Look is an attractive space in a beautiful, landmarked pale green, cast-iron building on Broadway, Williamsburg's old crossroads, where Sachar Mathias has taken over the sunny window spaces for her update of the Japanese legend describing the wish fulfillment properties of 1000 folded paper cranes. On the third anniversary of the most unnecessary of wars Mathias uses paper* American warplanes, in the words of the press release, "to evoke both the image of war and the wish for peace".

From the gallery:

The planes will be sold for a minimum donation of $25 to the NYCLU Foundation in support of civil liberites litigation. 100% of all proceeds go directly to the foundation.

*
(the NYTimes International and National sections)

Michael Linares Oasis 2006 wood, screws, enamel, plastic, assorted beers 2' x 5' x 5' [installation view]

The beers were gone by the time we arrived yesterday, but we got the idea. It's a beautiful sculpture, even absent any knowledge of its congenial concept. The work is by Michael Linares, one of six exciting artists working in Puerto Rico who are represented in the current show, "The Lovers", at CANADA Gallery.

The rooms on Christie Street are one of our favorite New York destinations, and the gallery is now doing an exchange with San Juan's very impressive* Galeria Commercial. About the time this show ends [the announcement reads this Saturday, although it may be extended] a group of Canada artists will begin a show in the Puerto Rico space.

CANADA explains the New York installation in this excerpt from their press release:

Though not intended, the group of works in The Lovers
resembles an adulterated version of a bar. The sum of
art put together for this exhibition spins a jukebox,
a cooler, a pool table and a hippie bead curtain.

. . . .

Michael Linares' piece, titled Oasis (2006), is a
pedestal stuffed with beer. Strategically located
between other works in the exhibition, it works
simultaneously as gathering and refreshment area. The
seemingly abstract forms contrast with the open-ended
relational formations produced by them.

*
After our return from the Miami fairs last December Barry wrote: "Several galleries impressed with their overall programs. One was Galería Comercial, which is located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It exists somewhere between the non-profit and commercial gallery worlds -- but on purpose unlike some galleries! At NADA, they showed posters and other works by Pedro Vélez, plus a number of other artists working in media ranging from painting to video."

POST CARD

Patrick Grenier Entering Art Exit 2004 paper, flourescent light fixtures, metal channel and vellum 120" x 120" x 12" [installation view]

Patrick Grenier Atmosphere of Influence 2006 enamel, FomeCor, plastic, vinyl and wood with single channel DVD 96" x 120" x 96" [detail of installation]

Patrick Grenier I'd Eat Heart Worm 2005 neon with transformer 24" x 32" [installation view]

Patrick Grenier, and certainly everyone else who makes it to Freeman Alley this month, is enjoying his second solo show at Silo. Grenier remains concerned with the (corrupting) relationship between the artist and the public venue of the art, with a particular interest in architecture.

The exhibition is definitely not the dry exercise the premise might suggest. The second image above is of an installation which includes a videotaped documentation of a "showdown between replicas of newly-canonized structures, such as the Walker Art Center addition in Minneapolis by the Herzog & de Meuron and Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao."