I see Chelsea

It is Thursday night- openings! We went up to Mixed Greens. They had a great group show, Cabin Fever. Here are a couple of my favorite pieces.

Painting by Abraham Storer

Mixed media piece by Megan Foster

Jonathan Ehrenberg's great lo-fi videos



Art Blog Art Blog

After Mixed Greens, we went across the street to Ross Bleckner's Studio. Bleckner is in the Hamptons this summer so he donated his space to his former assistant, Joshua Abelow and author of Art Blog Art Blog. He has been hosting shows in the space (called Art Blog Art Blog) all summer. The show, "Can I Get A Witness" had some interesting pieces but I loved the space.   It was big and white with incredible light/windows/view. How do you make art when the view is so amazing?

I am not sure who made what...

 

Nice drawing but the way it is hung feels gimmicky. 

View from Bleckner's studio

Another view- the High Line from above. I can't stop taking pictures of it...

Midtown

Another High Line shot- I have never seen it from above. I'll stop (for now).

studio update

Honey Don't or Honeydew You?, 24"x 36"- I love painting the plastic!

Acrylic painting on Yupo, 9" x 12"

Whitney: color me happy

I headed uptown to the Whitney on Saturday. I saw the Lyonel Feininger and Cory Archangel shows. Unfortunately, I could only take pictures on the Cory floor so I had to troll the internet for the Feininger images.

Cory Archangel's work is about digital, internet, and video game culture. I would compare him to Warhol, Christian Marclay, and Tim Hawkinson. This is a giant video game piece about bowling and he has programed the game to throw gutter balls.

 I love the robotic display stands which he programmed to dance (a la Hawkinson)

 Big, shiny, colorful--- my favorite. These pieces were very nice. He gives all the coordinates so you could make them yourself in Photoshop.   The questioning of originality of the artist (a la Warhol) is very interesting.

 The rainbow one was speaking to me....

He also did a mash-up (a la Marclay) from YouTube guitar tutorials. I love the DIY spirit of the piece however the musical quality wasn't as elegant as Marclay's mash-ups. I guess that is the difference between YouTube as your source material and movie scores.

 The Lyonel Feininger show was on the 3rd floor. Feininger was an American who moved to Germany in his teens but came back to the US in the late 1930s. He was the painting professor at the Bauhaus. My favorite works were his early Die Brucke paintings. His use of color is fantastic- it looks so fresh. I am not a fan of his analytical cubist phase but I love the lyrical and expressive quality of his first paintings.

Jerry Saltz

click to enlarge

On Thursday, Jerry Saltz gave a lecture on Thursday at SVA. He was great. I felt ready to conquer the art world after he spoke.

Here are the links- Jerry's recent piece for New York Magazine- "Generation Blank"

blogsphere response #1, response #2

You Met!

I just got back from a wonderful morning at the Met. We went early to see the Alexander McQueen show. I snuck one picture in the exhibit. It was amazing. Maximal, textured, theatrical- it had it all. My favorite was the red satin and sequins (of course). Here is a link to some of the objects. Wow!

Alexander McQueen flowing cape.

Anthony Caro on the roof. What a letdown compared to Roxy Paine and the Big Bambu...

More my speed- El Anatsui in the foreground with Anish Kapoor in the background. Shiny.....

Liza Lou "rope".... if you look closely you will see all of the tiny, tiny beads. I love the obsession.

What a great corner! Hans Hoffmann, one of my all-time favorites, with Elsworth Kelly on the back wall.

Here is a discovery- Florine Stettheimer, Catherdals of Fifth Avenue, 1931. I need to use more gold leaf.

 

Malcolm Morley, On Deck, 1966

I am off to the studio to make some work of my own!

Openings

I went to the Chelsea openings last night. Here are some of my highlights.

William Steiger at Margaret Thatcher Projects

Paul Bobko at Alan Klotz Gallery

Frances Barth at Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Toba Khedoori at David Zwirner

Performance artists crashing the opening at David Zwirner

Studio shot

Here are some images of my studio. It is not huge, but I think it will be good.

Highline extension

I love the Highline! Here are my previous posts- one and two. They have opened a new part up to 30th street. It was definitely more crowded in parts, but it is still amazing. I think the Highline might be one of the most photogenic places in nyc. It is difficult not to take a bunch of pictures. I think it is the contrast between nature and the city.

see chelsea part 1

So one of the reasons that I chose SVA for a residency is its location. I am steps away from the Chelsea Market, the High Line (stay tuned) and the galleries. Long-time readers will know that I love all three of these things. I am going to try and see as much art as possible this month. I started off on 20th street at Postmasters Gallery.

The piece above is an urban garden by Natalie Jeremijenko at Postmasters. The piece below is a digital work on canvas by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung.

The installation shot (above) and drawing (below) are by Jason Polan at the Nicolas Robinson Gallery. The artist was in the gallery playing ping pong with someone while I was looking at the show.

Roberta Smith reviewed the show in the NY Times. She says...

Jason Polan is an incessant draftsman and enterprising artist interested in making both his art and himself more available. Through his Web site he can be commissioned to make an hour’s worth of drawings for $125 and will consider requests. One of his several projects is to draw every person in New York. His self-published books include “Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art Book.”
Mr. Polan’s New York solo debut includes “One Month,” a series of 31 drawings, each depicting objects encountered during a single day and drawn from life. The exhibition also includes a Ping-Pong table, available for use, that is drawn all over with four-legged animals (polar bears?) evoking Keith Haring; an imposing life-size rendering of the head of King Kong; and, my favorite, a wall covered with drawings in several sizes of dense, smudgy black circles. 

Finally at Jack Shainman Gallery, I saw a photograph of Sweet Pickles if he was African. Later!

New York City!

I am back in the city! I am doing a painting residency at the School of Visual Arts. We had orientation today and I should move into my studio tomorrow (hopefully). I'll have some studio pictures later in the week.

I took a long walk to one of my favorite places in NYC, Gramercy Park.

Do you see the lone man reading peacefully? Where are all of the other people you might ask? It is a private park with locked gates (ask me how I know). With the bustle and crowds of the city, I can understand the allure of a private park. It might be worth staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel just to visit the park- they have keys.