Last weekend my dearest Jen of Morta di Fame fame (who also happens to be my brideslave and co-organizer of Greenpoint Open Studios) launched a new supperclub called ROYGBV. Say that outloud and you’re talking baby blabber. Each letter reps the color of the rainbow and subsequently six people are invited and assigned a color to incorporate into their potlucked dish to share with the group. The dinner was coordinated by invitation and was a nice mix of artists and creative types. There were a handful of photographers, painters, and little ‘ol me.
I was assigned a red appetizer and beets immediately came to mind. Come day of dinner I was so lazy and feared approaching the kitchen. The stove has been neglected for a few weeks now but I’m hoping that’ll change as soon as I move into Angel’s apartment. I thought of an easy way with beets and goat cheese with a sprinkle of salt & pepper. Than I reminded myself that Jen was great and I shouldn’t disappoint her because that would make me a very bad friend so I searched and found this recipe for beat hummus. What a great idea! Minimal ingredients and easy to make, this may not be a traditional replacement of chickpea based hummus but it surely does the trick.
I doubled the recipe to make sure I fed enough but after the first batch I lowered the lemon juice intake as it was coming out too tangy. But it’s enough for you to play around with proportions.
Lemon and garlic make it tangy and savory and it’s pretty damn good dipped in toasted pita bread. All I did was literally cut up pita bread in triangles, dabble it in oil, season with salt & pepper and give it a hefty sprinkle of fresh thyme. So. Good.
Aja says hummus freezes well so it’s a great left over snack if not utilized as appetizer. Enjoy!
I received an email from a friend about photographer Yuki Kokubo who is selling her photographs to help her parents in Japan. Here’s her story:
Since my parents live only about 70 miles from the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima, I have been reading the news constantly to try to determine how my they will be affected by the increased radiation levels. Train lines are down and there is a gasoline shortage in the area ,so they are not able to flee to a safer place at this time. Like everybody else in the area, they are staying indoors with the windows shut. Thankfully, they have basic foods to sustain them for another couple of weeks.
My parents earn their living by making pottery. They earn the majority of their annual income at a craft fair that happens every spring, but it will most certainly be cancelled this year. My father also works for an excavation company part-time but they will not resume operations because of the uncertain risk of radiation exposure. Unfortunately, due to the combination of lack of work and the cancellation of the craft fair, my parents will be facing financial hardship in the coming weeks. Since I am currently in graduate school full-time and don’t have a source of income, I have decided to sell some prints to try to help out them out.
I think this would be a great project for Jen Bekman’s 20×200 to get involved.
Find more info and details about the artist’s efforts here.
Fellow Greenpointer Kat is hosting a fundraiser Japan at Trophy Bar this Saturday. Show your support by donating to the relief, dancing to the tunes of awesome DJs, and purchase raffles for a chance to win prizes from Skimkim, Brooklyn Bodega, and more.
There’s a lovely fellow Greenpoint lady named Ruth who makes these amazing paper dolls. She recently turned a few designs into life size fairytale costumes and showcased them in a fashion show called Frisky Faeries. It took place on Friday and I had the fortune of dressing up in nothing but lingerie, face paint, and wings, acting as a cherub to dress and undress our said frisky faerie. It was pretty embarrassing and slightly traumatic to get down low and dirty considering my rolly polly belly was not prepared for such exposure. But there was fun to be had with copious amounts of wine. Metromix has a great collection of photos.
Check Ruth’s Papertopia site for more inspirational designs.
So in case you haven’t heard, Angel and I started a blog. It’s called…. Angel and Joann. It’s the place I get to go to indulge in my new lifestyle, that of a soon to be domesticated housewife. Pretty insane to think this is all happening, so soon, so unexpectedly. Especially considering how far away I was from ever considering such a potentially heinous way of life. Up until a year ago I never would have guessed I’d be getting married to a beautiful and loving man. It’s nauseating really.
Over at the blog I’ll be sharing my experiences and discoveries as the big fat wedding day approaches in May and it’ll continue from there on to document our so very interesting experiences as a couple. Places we go, things we find, stories to share. Hope you will join in on the conversation.
I didn’t bother asking gallerists for the name of artists for works that remained labelless. It wasn’t worth their time. So here are my uninformative highlights:
Scope was an incestuous shitshow of a party, representing the nittiest & grittiest of what Brooklyn has to offer. This sentiment was particularly heightened by Roberta’s distasteful cafe cum grungy hipster bar complete with overprice yogurt and granola. Not that Scope made efforts to depict Brooklyn in any way, it just naturally veered in that direction as a result of participating galleries as well as the administrative team behind the fair. I’m just saying it could have been a bit more mature, clean, and substantial for a lack of better wording.
There was a generous amount of humor and playfulness found in the works, which you can label as experimental, process art, social discourse, appropriation, or all the above. Here are my highlights:
In this series of sensationally moody photographs artist Sara Greavu hires an actress to collect objects of detritus and careless abandon, remains of a Halloween parade rife with costume props and wigs scattered on the streets. The figure walks aimlessly through the streets, picking up littered remains and making them her own. She poses with zombie like stillness, her gaze slightly off the camera, donning her attire with the detachment and austerity of a fashion magazine spread, making the images all the ridiculous and funny.
Luis Barba’s photocollages have tacky written all over them but it’s entertaining. Combining Renaissance with iconic pop it’s the worst and the best attempt to clash cultures of the past with present.
Paolo de Biasi’s collage paintings hark back to the vintage and modern with an emphasis to scale and perspective. Elements of the bizarre and familiar give the works a shout to pop art without giving too much care for consumerism.
Joshua Hagler’s sculpture is a vortex of blackened figurines spilling out of the wall, inexplicably wrapped in a firehose and floating in the shape of some engorged animal. I immediately think oil spills and states of emergency.
These dwarves by Luo Zhenhong are simply irresistible.
Figures in Lee Materazzi’s photographs are caught up in, stuff.
Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw takes over Scope with a live rendition of Imeday Imeday Ollarday Icklenay, an exhibition cum dinner party recently hosted by Allegra La Viola Gallery. Their lush photographs and performances are poised for the fantastic, demented, and the spectacle. They also made a stint last summer as a fish fry truck.
Jenny Morgan as Jenny Morgan. Her paintings exude realness; its texture, scale, and overexposed skin filling up the picture plane always makes for an overwhelming viewing experience.
Pulse was the first art fair I visited and it was the perfect introduction to a chaotic weekend. The best word to describe it would be, pleasant. Gallerists were extra friendly and so ready & willing to engage in conversation, not to mention there were multiple occasions where the artist was present ready to hand over a business card and nervously defend their techniques. Where I wouldn’t dare approach anyone working a booth at Armory I had absolutely no qualms about asking who was who and how much was what at Pulse. It was very comfortable and dare I say, community prone.
The works veered away from top tiered snooty art and highlighted more color, patterns, collage and good ol’ crafts. It was homey and down to earth and far more accessible than I would have imagined. There were any New York based galleries whose names I didn’t recognize, which only shows you how much I’ve fallen out of the art bandwagon. I need to hop back on, stat.
Here are my highlights:
Isidro Blasco’s three dimensional photo collages combine color, landscape, and interior design to a dreamy surrealistic level.
Another three dimensional photo collage, this time from artist Gregory Euclide. It’s not as playful, more warpy, and dramatically breaks away from the canvas.
Unique linocut prints by Jens Schubert are mystical and beautifully rendered with layers of some 30 individual cuts.
Sticks hanging on for dear life by Sarah Hardesty. That they’re supported by thin week pieces of string creates a softer mood considering their threatening strips of blackened wood. The feather aimlessly hanging suggests death, somberness and perhaps even hope.
The booth at Luis de Jesus was filled with giant blindingly bright abstract paintings by Heather Gwen Martin. The artist seems to take the formalist of practices between form and color and plays with the elements the way a kid manipulates play-doh, reminiscing on real life objects or happenings (clued by their titles) and remaking them with her own context and language. This one, titled sniper looks like a bird shooting out of a human’s eye whilst a gleam of light hits the center of a grasshopper. It’s all what you make of it. I found it touching to find the artist at the booth earnestly and nervously explaining her work to me. I walked away and she tapped me on the shoulder and said “This might be dorky but here’s my business card if you have any questions”. She must be new to the art world. Again, touching.
The strongest work I found at Pulse was a video titled Element by Amy Greenfield. Shot in 1973 by Hilary Harris, the 12 minute video records the artist writhing in a sea of mud (in Long Island). Her naked body is covered from head to toe and her movements are both violent and sensual, uncontrolled and forceful. The camera zooms in and out wildly following her possessed movements with equal fervor and fluidity. Watching the video in the context of contemporary art, specifically within the confines of an art fair makes it distance and unfitting but I’d imagine watching this video during the time of its completion would be revelatory.
David Maisel’s aerial photographs of natural landscapes intervened by greedy human interactions are too convincingly abstract and uncorrelated to anything but formalist intention that in its execution exceeds its conceptual framework. I tried to get an explanation from one of the gallerists and she was too vague for me to comprehend. All I walked away was that the photographs were not digitally manipulated as I assumed and were pictures of natural settings manipulated by interventions.
The title of this painting by David Antonio Cruz, Dorothy Get Off My Chair, offers a narrative submerged and drowning in a sea of unidentifiable garbage. The entanglement can be taken inside a dream, a fantasy, a nightmare, on the floor of a messy apartment post-marital argument, or as a manifestation of a single emotion: frustration, helplessness, desperation. I like how moody and stifled it is.
The artist Greely Myatt charmingly stands in front of his wooden sculpture, part of a series using reclaimed wood and signs. We had a sweet conversation, me googly over his southern accent and manners, clad in worker’s pants and unfitting within this posh environment. It was a welcomed conversation as he discussed his process and career as a teaching artist.
One of my favorite finds at the fair: Series of meditative collage works by Gary Ross Pastrana. There are no figures to be seen, all colors and shapes cut out from various sources. The landscapes created within are hectic and non-linear but there’s a calm to it, perhaps from seeing clearly the process that went to creating each index card. Inspiring me to make my own.
Jordi Alcaraz titled this trippy ripped glass on glass ink drippings as Drawings, manipulating the material that literally frames the work to enter the conversation for creation and viewing.
Anthony Lepore is another artist exploring nature and human invention/intervention. The smooth transition between two cropped images collaged atop or next to one another is a complex and jarring juxtaposition.
Beka Goedde’s works are centered around geometry and space. They are to be viewed silently with austere contemplation. At least that’s how I’m compelled to view them.
Joseph Burwell’s solo booth was my favorite installation at the fair. Titled School of the Viking Spaniard: Reconstruction of the Garage is a humorous reflection of his studio practice, bringing along random found objects collected and a scattering of colorful architectural diagrammatic drawings.
Taking leads from Art Fag City’s trendwatch post on missed connections at the art fairs I found the donkey listing she referred to and thought it heartfelt. I usually avoid convos like this, usually just smile, nod and move on. One time at MoMA a surly older man made some comment about a painting and I continued the friendly talk but regretted so immediately as I couldn’t shake him off of me for the rest of my visit. Annoying.
The donkey installation mentioned in the listing is by Gimhongsok and is accompanied by a sign propped against the wall, instigating suspicions of a live performance. Clearly we were duped as there is no one breathing inside the costume. It’s a funny take on an immigrant’s experience in the American job force and cultural regime, treated like an ass for being wrongfully deemed criminal as illegal immigrants. It’s a sensitive topic that makes my blood boil, this piece provides for a refreshing response on immigrant struggles.
This may be too conclusive and judgmental of a title to review the first (and let’s hope not final) art fair in Brooklyn. It didn’t help at all and I can only blame myself for having attended the fair later in the evening when the crowd was non-existent and gallerists straight up walked out of the building. To think Dumbo topped Williamsburg or Bushwick in representing the Brooklyn Art Scene boggles me a bit and I wonder how that decision came about. I surmise it has something to do with money and Two Trees Management.
It also didn’t help that I decided only to focus on James Kalm and Loren Monk’s curated show titled Brooklyn Art Now, presenting a survey of Brooklyn based artists in all steps of their career. The exhibition was presented in three rooms of a gigantic gallery filled building, most of which I ignored to stay focused on his show. That was a bad move as they provided the only decent art viewing experience with clean presentable spaces.
Walking over to 81 Front Street and 1 Main Street I was mortified by the vast spaces failed to accommodate with the basics: clean standing walls, avoiding the use of patchy cement walls, and even lighting. Studio lamps provided for pathetic attempts to unevenly, sloppily shine light on the works and I was embarrassed that this was how Brooklyn’s signature nitty gritty down home art was presented: poorly.
I’ll stop the negative ranting here and focus on the Brooklyn Art Now exhibition. Here are the highlights:
In the video salon, a series of videos curated by Robert Hooman was screened on a couple platforms: a flatscreen, projection, and old monitor. I caught a video titled Oops by James Beckman, a 10 minute collage of appropriated amateur videos capturing cringeworthy moments where the camera is accidentally plunged into a pool, dropped to the floor, and pecked by an ostrich. The effortlessly smooth transition without a blank screen or awkward silence in store is a result of skilled editing. It represents appropriated art at its best.
Josh Willis’ stormy landscapes are filled with tension and movement between all its formal elements. Thick layers of paint are suffocatingly opaque and I wish to do nothing more than free the painting from itself. via Centotto
Jen Dalton’sNew Years Resolution from Popular Culture series packs her seasoned comicritical punch in more ways that one. The wrap around text representing the age of a tree stub, or that of a single human, or that of an entire human race combined with the ingenious use of said stub is crafty (meaning coy, not etsy). The resolutions read as wisdom for the wise, the wise being the most banal and demented of women needing constant reiterations for “happiness”. I am one of these women.
Eric Doeringer’sBoot Legs series is successfully just that. It reflects an artist’s concern about being an artist in the art world, struggling for recognition, criticizing an off balanced industry, and for viewers like us, the potential to possess what is out of reach. The editions are endless and the artist started off selling them on the streets in Chelsea, chinatown style.
Meg Hitchcock takes text from various sources, whether its Jean-Paul Sartre or the Koran and painstakingly cuts and pastes individual letters into a resulting shape on paper or in the case of her show at Famous Accountants, installed directly on the wall. Talk about patience and perseverance.
Despo Magoni‘s series of drawings wraps around an entire wall from one side to the other, weaving a dark narrative that seems to stems to the deepest innards of the mind. It’s dark, messy, compulsive and slightly angry.
The name Julie Torres rings a bell and I can’t remember where I might have last seen her work or heard her name. Nonetheless this large dripping painting is provocative for its wide freeing strokes and deep color palette, makes me want to add some strokes on top of it for pure gratification purposes.
My favorite piece in the show was Nick Yulman’s Song Cabinet. It’s an interactive sound piece, but with a handmade nerdy gadgetry feel to it. There are four drawers each filled with random trinkets like bottles and picture frames attached to sound making wires. They’re all synced in rhythm so that when you open all four at once you have a beautiful melody of beats. It’s pretty nifty.
The wall label for Kris Scheifele’sCool Contortion reads “acrylic paint, acetate, and fuzzy”. That’s cute. I’m realizing there’s a pattern to the show of paintings being deconstructed, abused, scraped and brushed with fervor. Maybe that’s how Brooklyn paints.
Craig Olson cuts up his canvas and paints on the edges of its world. This direct engagement with physical space and intermingling between viewer’s realm and that of the canvas creates tense vibrations.
That Peter Fox’s painting screams vulgarity while the wall label censors the title as Untitled (Jesus F***g Christ) is funny.
James Kalm called this room the Brooklyn Bad Ass Girls Salon and the juxtaposition between Janet Kurnatowski’s demented sculpture and Tescia Seufferlein‘s sexy gun wielding model photograph makes for a perfectly intimidating, castrating installation. Genius!
Jenny Morgan collaborates with David Marmor in this painting titled Mystic. I’m convinced they should do more of these. They’re beautiful, stoic, and dare I say, more powerful as a duo.
I had the luck of running in to Mr. Kalm, accosting him for a short video interview. Please excuse my dimwitted giggling.
