June 2005 Archive

The space monkey that ate Maria

A couple of shows I enjoyed today that are worth a First Friday visit if you haven’t seen them yet are manga mouseketeer- inspired Dalek and Swiss import Criss Cross. Add them to Roberta’s First Friday choices (see post) and you’ll have more than enough good stuff to see (image right, “Untitled” by Dalek, acrylic paint on wood, 30 x 30 inches).dalekNew York artist Dalek, in “Buried Hatchets” at 222gallery borrows the superflat look and Mickey Mouse ears of Takashi Murakami’s Mr. DOB, creating edgy “Space Monkeys” with rapacious grins. This particular series is full of stylish but wonderful ceruleans, ... More » »

Lost meeting, lost shmeeting

Email from Zoe Strauss I just had to write to fully agree with you, Roberta. What the hell is that installation? Mediate this! (see previous post) (Quaker Oats box image complements of Strauss, who speaks in photographs). –Photographer Zoe Strauss recently won a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.strauss, zoe

Mediating the Meeting

[Ed. note: we got an email from Paolo Bartolli of spurse explaining a little about their project "The Lost Meeting." Here's Bartolli's note and my follow up to him. Bartolli is referring to my review of "The Lost Meeting" in this post.] Letter from Paolo BartolliDear Roberta, After reading your review of the project, it was clear to me that your time spent trying to understand our Installation in the course of an hour was virtually impossible and not doing your experience of it any justice.spurseOn a fundamental level, this project is about mediation of the world, specifically in the ... More » »

Report from China

Post by Gil Kerlinkerlin, gil[Editor's note: Artist Gil Kerlin, co-owner of Gallery Joe, recently returned from China where he taught English and maybe learned a little Chinese. Here's a report from his experiences there.]Quzhou is a small city in Zhejiang Province six hours west of Shanghai. I arrived there on March 1, 2005 to take up my duties as an English teacher at Middle School Number 3. I taught 22 classes a week with 50 or more students in each class. My students had studied English for 5 years and had a good working knowledge of the language although they ... More » »

I brake for clay

On my way to see “Silver Garden,” at the PMA, the wonderful photography show I told you about here, I stopped in my tracks in the crafts corridor right outside the Julien Levy ramp. What’s up now is a sample of some really amazing work from the Contemporary Crafts Collection, including, and here’s the news, work by ceramic artists represented by the new Hurong Lou Gallery in Old City.I had just spent time at Hurong Lou with the gallerist and his assistant, the artist Blazo Kovacevic, and they brought me up to speed after a fashion on the fine art ... More » »

Life found on 57th Street!

Post by Brent Burket, artblog New York correspondent And now, a little sympathy for the filthy rich. I’m pretty sure that the only people who go to the galleries in the 57th Street area are critics, art students, a couple artists, and people who carry their money around in trucks. That’s a shame because some of the best art in town is up there. Two recent shows are good examples of that. Disturbing the Peace at Mary Boone The Hilary Harkness show at Mary Boone‘s 5th Avenue gallery is the doll house birthing/killing floor we’ve come to expect from her. ... More » »

Weekly update – Suh, cerealart, freeform

My review of the Do-Ho Suh exhibit at PAFA and the FWM is in today’s paper. Here. I love Suh’s work for its embrace of community and for what I see as ambiguity expressed about the relationship of the one and the many. Suh comes out of Korea and a Buddhist tradition, and the works can be read in that context but I think his depth comes from the openness with which his pieces can be read by a Western eye. My take on “Paratrooper II” at PAFA, the piece made in collaboration with the FWM, is that it’s about ... More » »

Darth invader of Bird Park

After receiving an email alert from Ron Klein, I stopped by Bird Park to look at his newest black inflatable, “Doing.” What I saw was the Darth Vader of balloondom, bobbing and weaving in the wind. klein, ronI was happy to see a new piece of outdoor art in the little pocket park that Gallery Joe owner Becky Kerlin had put on hiatus for a while. (Klein’s gallery is Pentimenti. Here’s my post on his last show there). “Doing’s” dark presence–a sort of pumped up, double-headed bishop with a scrunched cravat or obi in between–had a seriousness that the light, ... More » »

Paper trail to contemporary

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts has just opened a major drawing show filled with wit and vision (left, local comic book artist Charles Burns‘ front cover drawing for ‘Black Hole,’ issue #7).burns, charlesIt’s part of the good news of some of the things going on at PAFA. The show is “Light, Line and Color,” 237 works on paper from PAFA’s collection, some of which are brand new, some of which have never been seen, and some of which have not seen for a generation. It’s in the new Fisher Brooks Gallery on the first floor of the new Hamilton ... More » »

Kramlich redux

We were just speaking of the Kramlich Collection of video art (see post on NY Times story) and yesterday I got a note from Dan Byers of the Fab Workshop and Museum. The Fab is showing works from the Kramlich collection, right now — as we speak. “Single Screen Selections of Rare Film and Audio from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection” will run in two parts, between now and November, 2005. Here’s the link to the Fab page on the show. Part One, June 18-Aug. 21, features works from the 60s and 70s by artists who are better known ... More » »