Grey Market Group Show

 November 14 - 28, 2009
Reception November 14, 7-11 pm
252 West 31st Street at Eighth Ave., Third and Fourth Floors
(Southwest corner of Penn Station)

I have been asked to show some work with these young and energetic artists. Should be a fun night.

Ryan Bartley
Zachary Bruder
Buffington , Trowbridge & Westbrook
Tryn Collins

Ryland Cook

Don Cameron

Leah Dixon
Tom Fruin

Heidi Hahn
Eric Hancock
Conrad Keely
Lazerhappy Studios
Noelle Mason

Jeremy McConnell

Geoffrey Owen Miller
Angel Otero

Grear Patterson
Lauren Seiden
Simon Slater & Matt Tackett
Kristof Wickman

Michael Yinger  

 

and this guy:

 

http://www.myspace.com/gillbumby

http://greymarketart.blogspot.com/

Daniel Buren: Bartolomi

Oct 30th - Dec 23rd
Bartolomi Gallery
510 W 25th St
New York, NY 10001-5502
http://www.bortolamigallery.com/

The show consists of large sculptural works hanging from the wall, or, as the artist conceives it, emerging from the wall. The work is modular, based around the square and the 8.7cm stripe. Large glossy aluminum boxes, bung diagonally, and triangles are spaced out along the gallery walls in sets of like color. Four triangle shapes are hung two above and two below the diamond shape to create a diamond shape out of the wall. But the most grabbing work is in a separate room. One wall is covered in the black glossy aluminum sheets, which act as black mirrors. In the center emerges a large box, like the ones seen in the larger gallery space. However as you stand directly in front of it, everything flattens into its reflective surface. Only from the side do you see the box, and its black and white stripes, emerge from the wall.
I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Buren during the installation and was totally impressed by his continual participation in the installation process.

Carrol Dunham: Gladstone Gallery

October 30 - December 5, 2009

 

Gladstone Gallery
515 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011 USA
Phone: 212-206-9300
http://www.gladstonegallery.com/dunham.asp

 Carrol, or Tip, Dunham has a very colorful show of his cartoon influenced painting at Gladstone Gallery. The mark making in Carrol Dunham's work is what really distinguishes his work. There is a large combination of marks and referential styles bridging the gap between graphic stylization of cartoons and the subtlety of color and texture only possible in painting. He also manages to preserve a freshness to many of his paintings. Which makes me wonder about the span of dates listed on each painting. Some list quite a few months on them, yet are almost watercolor like in their transparency. What he did in those months is a mystery as it doesn't show in the paint application.

Bill Viola: James Cohan Gallery

Bill Viola
James Cohan Gallery
533 West 26th Street New York NY 10001

October 23 - December 19, 2009

This was hands-down the best show I saw last night, and at least in the last couple weeks.  I don't usually like video art, but Long Beach native Bill Viola has managed to contemporize the space and role traditionally filled by painting with video in a manner that is both beautiful and meaningful. In 2006 I was lucky enough to stumble upon his installation at the Church of San Gallo in Venice and found the slow-motion videos of people emerging and re-submerging from a wall of water really powerful. Some of his work from that body were present in the gallery as well as what seem to be other bodies of work. One especially noteworthy piece was a large (three-projecter) black and white projection piece that took advantage of the noise of low-light video recording to create some haunting, close to home yet otherworldly images that emerged and re-submerged into the flickering digital noise.

http://www.jamescohan.com/

Mathew Ritchie: Andrea Rosen Gallery

Mathew Ritchie
 Oct 23rd- Dec 22nd.
Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 W 24th St.

I saw Mathew's show last year at Andrea Rosen and was disappointed as his writing makes me want to like his work. This year he bested even that. I mention this show as an example of a show where the artist has access to the best materials, manufacturing processes, institutional support and, I'm sure, plenty of assistants. Yet it failed to capture my friend, a wonderful art historian, or my interest to look at anything besides the people who were present. Which was impressive enough to have me write this post.

http://www.andrearosengallery.com/exhibitions/2009_10_matthew-ritchie/

Victoria Campillo: {CTS} creative thriftshop

 Victoria Campillo
Run Dates: October 23rd- November 17th 2009

{CTS} creative thriftshop @ Dam Stuhltrager Gallery
38 Marcy Ave. Brooklyn, NY. 11211
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday Noon-6pm

This was an enjoyable show at a surprisingly empty opening in Williamsburg (i.e it was just us). The show consisted of photos of a man's boxers/shorts/dresses with his hands hanging to the sides, as you can see from the image above. Each has an artists name printed in front, at right about the models crotch level.
It was interesting, from a MFA graduates perspective, to see how the names and the style matched up to my own understanding of the artist's practice. What brought the work past a kitchy mining of other artists look was the inclusion of a small spiral bound book that combined a small image with a short blurb about the artist named. I like the research put into each little statement. It made the work an honest investigation into artists, coupled with a bit of humor in the imagery, as a path for the viewer to learn from the artists investigation. It also is a good visual refresher for your art history.

http://www.creativethriftshop.com/

Hugo Crosthwaite: Pierogi

Escape Rates Escaparates
16 October - 15 November 2009
Opening Reception: Friday 16 October 2009 7 - 9 pm

Hugo Crosthwaite is a California trained artist (BA from San Diego State University's School of Art, though lives and works in NYC).  He has a complex mix of photo-realistic yet expressive characters that reside in spaces that are themselves a mix of specific localities (taken from photo-references no doubt), icons, abstraction, and just as often empty fields. It looks like he works with charcoal and/or graphite to model the figures and black acrylic paint to fill in the large zones of dark tones, though on reading his materials it seems he accomplishes it all with charcoal and graphite. I wouldn't be surprised if he painted a powdered charcoal for the blacks, as they are very intense.

The characters seem to be involved in different corporeal actions with one another. A reaccuring motif was of one grown character emerging from the crotch of another. This pseudo-birth, reminded me of Odd Nerdrums use of shock imagery, but also of Jenny Saville's tortured portraiture of women. He claims a major influence to be the Tijuana bibles from his birthplace of Mexico (short, often crude and sexually explicit comics). Sexuality and violence do seem to figure strongly in many of his images, though often the images are just juxtaposed in unsettling combinations.


http://www.pierogi2000.com/index.html

PIEROGI | 177 North 9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 T. 718.599.2144