Philadelphia Painters

If you're in New York during July through mid-August, check out "Philadelphia Painters" at the Painting Center. Curated by Matthew Farina, this show features some great painters from Philly, many of whom I know. It's sure to be a good one, so put it on your list of must-see exhibits for the summer.

Philadelphia Painters

curated by Matthew Farina

July 6-August 17, 2010

Opening Reception:

Thursday, July 8, 2010

6-8pm

The Painting Center

547 West 27th Street

NY, NY

Philly invades New York!

Two shows to look for if you're in Chelsea, but there's only a week left for one and two weeks for the other, so if you're in NYC soon, check them out:

Douglas Witmer

Ring The Bells Anew

Show ends March 27th

Blank Space Gallery

511 West 25th Street, Suite 204

Ny, NY 10001

blankspaceart.com

Kevin Finklea

Memories Are Uncertain Friends

Show ends April 3rd

Margaret Thatcher Projects

539 West 23rd Street, ground floor

New York, NY

thatcherprojects.com

The High Line

Spent part of Friday afternoon exploring the newly opened High Line Park in the Meatpacking District of New York. It’s a great example of reclaimed urban space.

The first section between Ganesvoort Street and West 20th is currently open, but if all goes well, the park will extend up to west 30th in 2010.

Find out more about the park here: The High Line

Moore/Witmer

Gordon Moore

One of the artists whose work I really enjoyed seeing during a quick round of art in Chelsea.Untitled, 2007, Latex, ink, pumice on canvas, 90” x 66”
More of his work can be seen on Artnet.


(photo via Douglas Witmer.com)

I also got over to the Painting Center to see Douglas Witmer's show, Field + Stream. The space was small, but the work looked good in it. For me, the color bars floating in a sea of grey washes lent the work something of a sense of place, or a glimpse of memories of some place or time. The tension of color edge to painting edge along with the bold colors sitting in seas of beautiful greys gave these pieces a kind of energy that you might not notice unless you spent some time looking. Also, Witmer allowed the gesso to roam free of brushwork and just flow down the surfaces in some of the pieces. Some of the resulting uncolored edges seemed to disappear and gave some of the works an added illusion of floating, depending on the angle at which the works were viewed.

Chelsea 1.23.09

Terry Winters and Pipilotti Rist

Friday, I hopped on a bus for an 'art day' to be spent in Chelsea and at MoMA. My main reasons for going were the Terry Winters exhibit at Matthew Marks and the Pippolotti Rist piece, Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), at MoMA. Both shows were very much worth the trip. 

The Winters exhibition contained beautiful paintings based on loose grid systems of overlapping 'knots' (the title of the show was Knotted Graphs) that floated in layers of translucent colors. They were a welcome departure from the seemingly impenetrable linear abstractions of recent years. They were two very different shows in concept and execution, but I felt a slight correlation between the Terry Winters paintings and the Rist video piece that has to do with the implied sense of objects and light floating in Winters' painting and the immersion of the viewer experiencing Pour Your Body Out. 

It's a very tenuous connection. I mean, the Pippilotti Rist piece was conceived with the idea of enveloping the audience in a sensuous visual and aural experience, while the Knotted Graphs of Terry Winters only hint at possible movement of light and objects across the painted plane. However, I still felt a sense of lightness fluidity that parallels some of the water scenes and slow-motion action that played out across the walls at MoMA in Pour Your Body Out. 

......

Chelsea

In Chelsea, I didn't have much of an agenda besides seeing the Winters exhibit. Other than that, I wandered in and out of some of the galleries and was happy to find a few nice surprises and artists that were previously unknown to me. In no particular order: 

Shinichi Maruyama at Bruce Silverstein

Bruce Robbins at Marlborough-Chelsea

Teun Hocks at P•P•O•W

Two group shows that I also enjoyed: 

Drawing at Margaret Thatcher Projects and Off The Wall at Lennon Weinberg

......

The real and virtual worlds collide

I happened by the Jim Dine exhibit, Hot Dreams (52 Books), and had started leafing through some of the books hanging from the gallery ceiling when I heard my name called. I looked up to find someone staring back whose face I didn't know. 

I don't know many people who live in New York so the chances of running into them randomly was pretty remote. It turns out the voice belonged to Martin B., aka,  Anaba online. He mentioned that he was familiar with my blog and recognized me from my profile photo. We chatted for a bit about the various shows we'd been seeing, our shared history of living in Philadelphia and going to school here before parting ways after an half-hour. 

......

I did a lot of walking on Friday and learned a very important lesson: if it's cold, always make sure to wear the pair of socks without the thick thread that presses on the two smallest toes...

Watchtower

Watchtower

Huge sign atop what used to be (according to my research, the building was sold a couple of years ago) the headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious organization in Brooklyn Heights.

All's fair

top four: Views of works from the Bridgette Mayer Gallery at Red Dot this past Friday.
bottom: Allen Bently, Bridgette Mayer, me, and Ivan Stojakovic.

This was my first experience attending one of the smaller hotel fairs. The first thing I noticed is that three or more in a room is a crowd, excepting the larger suites. The limitations on what can be shown are apparent-you won't find any of the apartment-sized installations that are standards at the much larger Armory show, which was also took place this weekend, along with 6 or 7 others. Because of time constraints (I had to work both Saturday and Sunday) there was little time to get to see any of the fairs outside of Red Dot and a quick trip up to MoMA.

What I liked about going around Red Dot was the chance to see a lot of painting and other 2D works. Not only that, but you can walk into a room, turn around and literally have your nose two inches from someone's work you've only seen in magazine articles or books. Being able to examine works this close up is a treat. On the other hand, having various works so close together can be disconcerting and a slight detriment to some works that benefit from more space around them.

Then again, as we well know, the fairs aren't about optimal exhibiting and viewing of works, it's about the money and lots of it. From what I understand, prices for exhibitors at Red Dot paid at least $10,000 to be in the fair. That's not even including transportation of works, lighting, and any number of other incidentals. I'm sure the figures for the bigger fairs are much, much higher. That's the price that has to be paid if a gallery wants to get their artists good exposure to a big audience with lots of money to purchase art. Not to mention the possible contacts with curators, museum people, and future collectors. It's a real high-stakes crap-shoot and with today's economic climate, I'm willing to bet that there was a lot of money lost this weekend. Then again, my limited understanding about how money and art interact at fairs could make my guessing way off-base.

Art fairs might seem like big, three-ring circuses at times, but they are a fact of artistic life these days. There's no getting around that if you're affiliated with a gallery, you'll want your gallerist to be doing all they can to get your work out there and art fairs are another tool to do that. All of your success might not hinge on your work appearing in a fair, to think so would be incredibly naive, but they can have an effect on name and work recognition for the artists and galleries. Like the internet, art fairs are another tool in the artist's arsenal.

Red Dot New York!

Bridgette Mayer will be participating in the Red Dot-New York Art Fair at the end of March (March 27-30, 2008) in the Park South Hotel, 122 East 28th Street (between Park and Lexington).

I'll have some new and recent works on display, so if you're in the New York area at the end of the month, stop by. I'm planning on going up, but will probably only be able to hang out for part of one day, possibly Thursday or Friday, Marck 27th or 28th, of that week, depending on my schedule and time.

More info:

RED DOT is open to the public March 27 - 30, 2008 at the Park South Hotel, 122 E. 28th Street between Park and Lexington.

FAIR HOURS

Thursday, March 27, 11am - 8pm
Friday, March 28, 11am - 8pm
Saturday, March 29, 11am - 8pm
Sunday, March 30, 11am - 7pm

Tickets may be purchased at the door, general admission is $12.

TRANSPORTATION

Subway: 6 Train to 28th Street Station at Park Avenue.
Driving: parking garage located directly across the street from the hotel entrance.

MAP

Water in the city

Olafur Eliasson plans to erect giant waterfalls in New York this summer.

Night at the Opera

Metropolitan Starbursts

Those are the chandeliers that hang in the atrium/lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan. E and I had just seen the amazing Placido Domingo sing and were still in a daze from the performance, which was amazing! I went into this whole thing not having ever been to an opera before and didn't really know what to expect. I mean, of course I knew about operas but only in the most cursory way; operas were basically plays whose stories were sung. I wasn't prepared for how good and interesting a well-produced opera could be. For the price of a movie and snacks ($15), we were able to see and hear a living legend perform.

I was fully open to the experience but I have to admit that beforehand, I thought that I'd wind up being bored at some point. That wasn't the case at all. It's impossible to be bored when you're sitting three or four stories up and back from the stage and these ntaural, unamplified voices come soaring up at you and you can hear them as clear as day. Something like that puts most contemporary pop singers to shame, honestly. I nearly forgot that the orchestra was actually there-that's how seamless things went.

It took me a while to get used to glancing at the subtitles on the small screen on the back of the seat in front of me (the opera, Iphigénie en Tauride, was sung in French) and keeping up with the action on the stage during the first half. After intermision I was able to keep up with everything fairly easily. Being at the Met reminded me how great live performances can be.

The source material for Iphigénie en Tauride was based on a tragedy by Euripides titled, Iphigenia at Tauris which reminded me of the source material for three large paintings I did in college as a final project in an independent study painting class in the mid '90's. I don't know why I was interested in it, but I wound up reading the Three Theban plays by Sophocles. I did the paintings in response to the intense emotional drama I found in the plays. The human drama depicted in ancient works like Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus resonates through the years because human nature never changes, no matter how modern and civilized we think we are.