Chelsea Gallerista

Art Me Up: Learning to collect & critique with the SVA (15 years later)

2026-03-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

Portrait 5 (Stephens) sold for $27K at the Phillips de Pury March 2011 Auction.
All proceeds went to DonorsChoose.org. See what it was up against and my "review" below.

Time for a throwback - 15 years ago I completed a 6-week SVA Contemporary Art Appreciation course. It kickstarted my collecting journey. Has anything changed? You be the judge...

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I've just completed my 6-week SVA Trends in Photography and Contemporary Art : What's Happening Now mini-course. It's an indulgent immersion in the contemporary art world, toasting your eyeballs on everything from priceless modern art icons to the proverbial "my 6 year-old could do that." (Ah, but your 6-year old, my friend, is not named "Warhol").

We got to traipse through the galleries of Chelsea, the Upper East Side and the Lower East Side, plus attend a Phillips de Pury "mid-season" auction preview, and a couple of Armory Arts Week shows.

And yes, some of us were budding collectors...

"The Confess Project": The gang check out artist Margot Lovejoy's confessions on the surreal
"receivers" at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, 29 Orchard St - "The Confess Project

Look, look and look.

That was the one-line instruction from our teacher, Brian Appel. "You will develop a really good eye for what you like, and what's good."

Some of us were budding artists; for this group, the advise was: "send along a jpg of your work, one a week, plant the seed."

Others were established artists, exploring new avenues to share their work, like photo-collagist Jenny Krasner, cosmonaut-loving painter Lyndsea Cochrane and photographer Jada Fabrizio. I loved Jenny's work so much I blogged about it here. Who needs Warhol? Just turn to your SVA classmate!

We learned that a "unique" is almost always preferable to an "edition,"if you can afford it. We even had a "term paper" to submit (at a Community Class? C'mon!) where we had to review "any piece of art we saw during the course."

My submission is reproduced below. Feel free to grade it, remembering that they never built a monument to a critic.

March 2011
Art Review by Lynette Chiang

Portrait 5, (Steven) – Phillips de Pury “Under the Influence”

“This portrait, the fifth in a series, is at once a celebration of the attainment of immortality through fame, and a Memento Mori, with each iteration of the portrait unveiling a step on the subject's inexorable march to death.”

The casual art appreciator could skim the above caption and noddingly accept its worthiness. A second glance reveals it as piece of utter tripe - precisely what TV comedian Steven Colbert (The Colbert Report), probably intended when he wrote it.

If you haven't already seen the satirical skit that accompanies this work, it goes like this: Colbert tries to persuade famous art collector Steve Martin to buy an unremarkable Kinko's portrait, challenging him to declare it “art.”

When Martin demurs, Colbert summons three seminal artists on camera to do their magic.

First up, the “father of minimalism,” Frank Stella, whose work goes for millions on the auction block, glances at the painting and - scripted or otherwise - proclaims it “art.”

Next, street artist and creator of the controversial Obama HOPE poster, Shepherd Fairey, who “repurposes” the piece with spray paint and adds his signature OBEY stencil.

Last, controversial photographer Andreas Serrano, who (disappointingly) doesn't urinate or defecate on it as is his fame, but simply doodles away with a Sharpie - and signs it.

So is this now art?

Colbert poses this question to Martin, who doesn't budge, but concedes that the tricked-up portrait “should now do well” at auction.

It all makes great armchair entertainment, while posing a serious question – what makes something art, and more importantly, art worth buying?

Is it art because someone famous (Stella) says so?
Is it art when repurposed by a pioneer of the repurposing genre (Fairey)?
Is it art because it's brought to you by a controversial artist, famous for using bodily fluids (Serrano)?

According to Stella, “if you look for art, you will find it,” which throws the doors wide open. Stella can make these off-hand statements – he's stupendously rich and included in the “P” volume of World Book Encyclopedia - yes, the Painting chapter, which I confess is the sum total of my formal art education.

Some will be offended by Colbert's buffoonery, others will re-think their overpriced, framed limited editions on their walls and ask, “should I have paid what I did for this?”

The question – and answers – aren't new.

Laughing all the way to the banksy

Street artist Banksy had the final laugh at the art pedagogy with his gilt-framed painting entitled, “I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU MORONS BUY THIS SHIT,” auctioned at Sotheby's for the same amount as an Ivy league college education.

Damien Hirst Inc, trumping struggling anatomy students with his filleted shark in formaldehyde, now instructs his army of assistants to churn out innocuous foil butterflies by the thousands and collects his checks while relaxing in one of his rural estates.

The grand, fleeting works of Christo also come to mind, memorialized only by photos and a paper trail spanning years of background permits and negotiations.

Colbert has been satirizing the art world for quite a while, this being the fifth “Art Me Up” project where he's known for stripping sacred cows bare to the point of dangerously offending someone who's sunk millions into art.

Portrait 5, with it's mixed-media of Colbert's theatrics, Kinko pedigree, the skit, celebs, charity and social commentary – might have just enough going on to be declared a legitimate work of performance art.

Putting a bow on it, all proceeds of the sale will go to DonorsChoose.org, Colbert's favorite charity that promotes literacy in schools. Notably, the prestigious auction house Phillips de Pury, which is gleefully displaying the portrait in its premier chamber, will not charge a buyer's premium on this work. In fact, the debonair chairman Simon de Pury himself even appears in a cringeworthy follow-up skit where Colbert asks if the portrait inspired the same kind erection as de Pury's first Renoir …

At any rate, the cause is so good, the art doesn't have to be.

UPDATE: Portrait 5 sold for $27,000 at the March 8 auction.

Other works of wonder we were exposed to in this "taste of art history without the GPA stress" course...

Terence Koh circumnavigating salt at Mary Boone

Classmate Lev with his own performance piece...

GOING, GOING, GONE BANANAS: Cattelan’s 'Comedian' Takes $6+ Million at Auction

2024-11-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

VIDEO: See it at Sotheby's @chelseagallerista

UPDATE: Comedian just hammered for $5.2m (plus $1m in fees).

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IN EXACTLY 5 minutes time, bidding will open at Sotheby’s New York for a slew of contemporary artworks with low estimates ranging from $50k to $12 million (Yu Nishimura's Pause (2020) and Stuart Davis' Contranuities, respectively).

Falling somewhere in between is disrupter Maurizio Cattelan’s much-hyped Comedian (2019), aka “the duct-taped banana.” It’s the latest contemporary art gambit to dominate your scroll since the shredded Banksy, the AI-robot painter, the NFT cash grab, the $450m Salvatore Mundi…

Originally bodega-priced at $120k, Comedian is estimated to hammer for $1-1.5 million, depending on how many “bites” it gets. The winner receives neither fruit nor roll of duct tape, but instead, a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist. This slip of paper represents little more than an artworld “consensus” that the buyer owns one of 3 genuine “editions.” As long as bananas still grow on trees, ephemeral, conceptual artworks like Comedian can always be "executed." However, execution is the least of what counts here. More about that in a minute...

From grocery aisle to blue-chip gallery

The pre-auction exhibition for Comedian was impressive. Sotheby’s gave the banana the full Mona Lisa treatment, building a dedicated pavilion in an empty, cavernous room. Passing though the arched doorway, you feel like a VIP entering a secret shrine at the Venice Biennale. So ridiculously incongruous is this artwork, it almost begs you to do something involuntary, like bow and kiss it like the Blarney Stone and wish fervently for world peace. To complete the picture, a lone security guard hovers in the corner, ready to crash-tackle aspiring banana-lifters.

VIDEO: A walk around the shrine to Comedian

ChelseaGallerista is pleased to bring you this exclusive, atypical angle, evoking the backside view of the Statue of Liberty...

Viewers leave with a whole new perspective on their humble fruit bowl

I was inches away from snatching it off the wall and executing a Hungry Comedian II

The details that matter when gavel hits the rostrum

BUT maybe "banana-lifting" is tacitly encouraged: at the Art Basel Miami 2019 debut of Comedian, performance artist David Datuna brazenly walked up, peeled it off the wall, ate it and re-named it “Hungry Comedian:”

Snackable art

I personally think this was a pre-arranged stunt, like the self-shredding Banksy at Christies, which moved the price of the somewhat overexposed “girl with heart balloon” from $1m to $25m at auction:

Shredder love

Who thinks Hungry Comedian would have been funner (and probably gotten more ra-ra) if security had stormed in and wrestled Datuna to the ground, much like they did with paint-spattering climate activists under the indifferent gaze of the Mona Lisa?

A climate-fueled storm in a soupcan

Eat, replace, repeat: Comedian is edibly eternal

The first question I get even from my art-cognizant friends, is about the "perishability" of the banana. This suggests conceptual art is still a giant WTF for most. I tell them I liken Comedian to Felix Gonzales Torres’ Portrait of Ross in LA: a pile of candy in a corner representing the weight of his friend slowly wasting away from AIDS. The candy is meant to be eaten, then replaced, suggesting that while his friend may physically pass, his essence remains sweetly alive. Chelsea gallerist Jim Kempner, a comedian in his own right, hilariously lampooned this work (or rather, those who might buy it) in one his Madness of Art webisodes:

"I can get you a picture of a person walking through a forest with a deer, but that's not going to get you anywhere." - Jim Kempner, The Madness of Art

It's also akin to a Sol Lewitt wall drawing that consists of a sheet of instructions and a team of people you can hire to execute them. Than means, for a cool ~$250K - you can go to OfficeWorks, stock up on pencils and rulers, then go back to your wall and have at it. Just that you can't eat it.

Duct tape dissertations: Comedian is food for academic thought

Pontification re this piece is off the charts. I’m fully expecting it to spawn art history PhD theses for years to come, alongside the Bachelors of Beyonce and Masters of Taylor Swift. The artelligenzia compares it to Duchamp’s groundbreaking Fountain, the famous urinal signed and hung on a wall and declared art. Over a century later, Comedian has shifted cocktail party banter from Duchamp's toilet bowl to Cattalan's fruit bowl.

Self-indulgently pontificating for a moment, I think there's an undeniable brilliance in his choice of a banana, duct tape and a wall. Bananas are inherently funny, associated with clowns and slapstick humor. When paired with ephemerality, absurdity, and the cannily deadpan title, Comedian, this assemblage elicited in me a mix of respect and embarrassment. People were speaking in hushed tones, art advisors postured before their clients, and you find yourself forgiving the banana for taking the time you'll never get back apeing it, while half the world is starving... if anything is ripe, it's us - for suckerdom.

And let's not give the duct tape short shrift: that’s a BDSM reference for sure, with the banana as suppository, bound and gagged in submissive restraint, easily prodded, denuded and devoured, to be replaced by another from the fruit bowl. The silvery duct tape itself gleams in the spotlight like it's one giant pastie in a burlesque show.

And look: banana and duct tape form an “X” – is this a new, comedic swastika suggesting X will take over the world and Elon Musk will be our next president?

Sticker Swap: Replace "Dole" with "Cattelan" and watch your investment bear fruit

Let's not forget how the cult of celebrity bolsters conceptual art. Cattelan is a blue chip artist, famous for visual pranks like the hanging horse at Fondazione Prada, an 18k gold toilet you could take a 3 minute dump in at the Guggenheim, an effigy of the Pope struck with a meteor, and more recently, Sunday (2024), a comment on gun violence in the form of gold plated walls riddled with bullets at Gagosian. As with Koons, Lichtenstein, Ruscha, Wool, Stella and other made-its, everything an artist of Cattelan's standing touches automatically turns to gold.

I spotted Cattelan at a couple of recent art events, including the opening of The Highline's latest plinth sculpture, Dinosaur, by Ivan Argote. A little Googling and you'll discover why: Cattelan has a penchant for pigeons, insttalling Turisti (1997) - 2000 faux pigeons and matching birdshit - at the 1997 Venice Biennale. (I'd like to see him spatter Paris Fashion Week with faux birdshit, a la Sasha Baron-Cohen/Bruno and his velcro suit).

Cattelan bonding with Dinosaur. let's fantasize it's a trojan pigeon, with all 2000 model pigeons from his "Turista" sculpture rolled up inside.

The instantly recognizable Cattelan can run but he can't hide

I cheekily proposed to the artist that he do an intervention on the smokestack behind us. (Chelsea neighbor of note Pamela Wolff suggested someone do Rapunzel effigy out the chimney window). Cattelan, sartorially coiffed and shod in impeccable Milan style, good-naturedly sniffed, "I theenk about it," that it's probably difficult to "get permission." More likely, fellow conceptual artist Richard Artschwager beat him to it by installing a "blp" at the top, circa 2012. It's hard to tell from a distance if the blp still remains, or is simply an open window...

The chimney that's begging for a Rapunzel intervention...

The other show where I ran into Cattelan was the cerebral Llyn Foulkes' Untied State of America at the disarmingly-named A Hug from the Art World (the acronym is more sinister). You can see a mutual nod between Sunday, Cattelan's bullet-ridden gold panels at Gagosian, and Foukes' bullet-ridden car door.

One thing I believe (and appreciate) about truly great, blue-chip artists, is both quality and execution of their ideas remain consistent for the high price commanded. This is irrespective of whether I "like" a particular work. So far, Cattelan delivers on all fronts. The one time we can permit them a drop off in quality is when they reach their 80s and 90s - because if you've made it that far, you can churn out what you damn well please.

Comedian 2019: 5 years in the ripening pays off

Back in 2019 when the banana first slipped into the scene at Art Basel Miami Beach, the internet when wild with #cattelanbanana memes. It's interesting to think about how the lead-up to this auction has been carefully nurtured and orchestrated, like a long-range political plan. In fact, I asked ChatGPT about where it's been since then:

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian, the controversial banana duct-taped to a wall, first appeared in December 2019 at Art Basel in Miami Beach, where it sparked significant attention and debate. After its debut, various iterations of the artwork were showcased worldwide.

In 2020, one piece was donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, while another version was sent to the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul in 2023, where it too became part of the ongoing dialogue about the art's impermanence, with students even eating the banana as part of their interaction with it.

In addition to its museum tours, Comedian has been sold and re-sold, reaching a peak of fame and controversy that culminated in the piece being auctioned at Sotheby’s in November 2024...

At the time, I was in Germany for the country's Bauhaus Centenary, where you can commune with your 'Haus heroes by staying in the actual UNESCO-listed Bauhaus school for a bargain $60/night. While running from one Bauhaus exhibition to the next, I created my own tribute to Comedian, doctoring the classic signage on the storied student accommodation building from BAUHAUS to BANANAS (amazing what you can do on an iPhone)...

2019 was the year of Bauhaus turned 100 and the Cattelan banana was born...

Eat, sleep and be creative like Josef and Anni Albers, Bayer, Breuer, Kandinsky and Klee

And in the time it's taken me to draft this post, Comedian just hammered for $5.2m, or $6.2m with Sotheby’s 20% “buyer's premium." Note, Cattelan will not receive a penny of this sale. But his stock - and invites to the most exclusive gatherings will continue to go bananas (which is probably why he's always dressed to impress). I fully expect to see his smiling, unmistakeable face waving from the round portal of Space X or the next hot ticket to ride.

See you all at Art Basel Miami! I’m going out for a banana split. Oh, and I'll proceed immediately to my portfolio to purchase stock in Dole and 3M.

VIDEO: @chelseagallerista tours Comedian at Sothebys

West Chelsea Street Art: alive and ungentrified

2024-08-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

Street/fine artist Anthony Lister puts a creepy face on Billy Marks dive Bar

ASK ANYONE who lives (as opposed to absentee-invests) in artsy West Chelsea and they'll tell you it's becoming "artless." All but the bluest of blue chip galleries are fleeing to (slightly) more affordable zip codes, no thanks to rampant "condo-mania." Three of my favorites - Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Alexander and Bonin and Andrew Edlin, which formed an artsy little men-art a trois on 10th Ave have been swept away by the winds of gentrification.

So it I was thrilled to discover that street artists are alive and doodling, pasting, spraying and "throwing up" (in a good way - I'll explain later) in the nabe, on a tour hosted by "recovering street artist," Patrick Waldo.

Recovering from what, Patrick? A fall from a ladder at 2am while tagging an Absolut billboard?

"I got caught," said the impossibly tall, millennial-apparent Waldo. He's got all the right creds to be leading this tour: a couple of arrests for graffiti-ing (check), stints of community service as punishment (check), and impressively, his signature doodle (most probably) ripped off and t-shirted by the likes of fashion juggernaut Zara (a big fat check, though unfortunately, not the kind that pays the rent).

In a bit of a one-eighty, Patrick is now studying historic preservation at Pratt as well as co-chairing Save Chelsea, a local advocacy group that fights to preserve historic neighborhood sites. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done: Save Chelsea recently lost a spirited battle to save the oldest house in the neighborhood from "glassification" (ie turning into a mass of polished concrete, steel, glass, carrara marble, giant fiddle-leaf figs in urns and Barcelona chairs).

A moment's silence for the oldest house in Chelsea, please.

Now, let's get walking and gawking...

Patrick uses his iPad to show us the extended oeuvre of street artists in Chelsea

Starting at 29th street (and working our way south)

First gawk was at the large, creepy face decorating the Billy Marks dive bar by Australian street artist Anthony Lister, who sells to serious collectors around the world. According to Patrick, far from seeing street art as a scourge, some business owners welcome of a bit of creative bling on their buildings to keep things interesting. Sometime the artist is commissioned, sometimes the commission is merely permission.

"Selling art frees these artists to do what they really want," said Patrick, "like going back onto the street and improving their craft."

The next stop was the instantly recognizable, (to me) balloon-heads of Kenny Scharf painted on a warehouse roller door. Another street artist done good, Scharf sells his canvases for tens of thousands right behind those roller doors.

Another street artist done good: Kenny Scharf adorns the roller door of a gallery

"He hasn't quite reached the same recognition - or prices - as his former roomate Keith Haring - probably because he isn't dead yet," said Patrick, showing us a photo of a technicolor room in Brooklyn the pair created and partied hard in with other artists back in the day.

Throwing up in the street

"Throwing up" or "filling in" is the street art term for painting over and otherwise obscuring another street artists's work. In the example below, Kenny Scharf's balloon heads have been painted over by a big, fat silver "throw up" ... it does have a purple lining, though:

Kenny Scharf obscured by a "throw-up"or "fill in" - when an artist obscures the work of another

Why do artists throw up on other artists? To grab the limelight (or rather, streetlight) of course. "And sometimes they don't even know who they are covering up," shrugged Patrick.

A Wing and a prayer (for the rest of us)

One truly delightful discovery was a delicate glass mosaic bird glued to walls and lamp posts by a female street artist called Wing, aka Whitney Bird. I can honestly say, if it weren't for our eagle-eyed guide, we would have walked right by them. On her website Wing writes, "anchoring delicate glass to various forms of urban deterioration is a manifestation of the tenuous state of relations between humans and the natural world."

Wing aka Whitney Bird makes delicate glass mosaics, mostly of birds

We spotted Wing in several spots, including this wrap-around

More Wing (with mirrored pieces) fluttering outside the Comme de Garcon store on 22nd street

Next stop was a panoramic mural by Andy Golub who's apparently more associated with painting stark naked volunteers in the street. Ironically, as Patrick showed us on his iPad, it is often the volunteer who is arrested, not Golub:

A large mural on 25th St by Andy Golub, also known for using nude volunteers as a canvas

Look up and Read More

Then Patrick told us to look up at a simple message, executed at a dizzying height, right at the top of a building. There was You Go Girl (often abbreviated to YGG) and Read More, a mysterious artist who promotes the idea of reading more.

"Both these are done with a roller while leaning over the top of the building," said Patrick.

Look up: Street artists You Go Girl and Read More use rollers to write their messages along the top of buildings - where cops never look.

Graffiti vs Street

Which brings us to the distinction between graffiti artists and street artists. According to Patrick, graffiti artists sneak out while everyone's asleep and do a hit and run with their spray can or brush. In contrast, street artists often prep their piece in the comfort of their studio, and then venture out to paste it up.

"The graffiti artists consider themselves the read deal compared to street artists," says Patrick, which leads to some of the aforementioned throw ups - that is, painting or spraying over other people's work.

Under the radar

There are some sneaky ways to get your art on the street without attracting the attention of the "vandal squad," ie the police.

"One way is to carry a shopping bag with your stencil cut in the bottom," said Patrick. You kneel down pretending to fish for something in your bag, then psssssht your spray can and off you go - no one is the wiser." This Trump face was possibly executed in this manner:

A lot of "dump Trump" themed art is appearing on the streets

Talking heads and biking butts

The famous David Byrne, a serious New York biking icon, and has cemented himself even further into the NYC street scene via these whimsical bike racks scattered around town. Byrne apparently scribbled his ideas on a napkin while at dinner with the former Dept of Transport Commissioner, Janet Sadik-Khan, who, just like she did with bike lanes, made it happen.

The famous David Byrne designed a series of sculptural bike racks - which have also been tagged and stickered.

Above and below: Patrick shows us some of the other Byrne bike racks

The Stikman's shtick + friends

Stikman is a mysterious little skeletal figure that's often seen on crosswalks. He's been appearing all over the the world for around 20 years, and recently switched to other media, like wood.

Above and below: The Stikman has been putting his little reflective man all over the world for years

The Stikman executes his art in other mediums

Paul Richard is another artist done very well for himself. Collected by the likes of Elton John, Larry Ellison and Christina Aguilera, he still finds time to drip some artful paint on concrete canvases in Chelsea.

"Again, having success enables a street artist to fund some of their more more subversive works - like street art," said Patrick.

A drip paining by Paul Richard.

Possibly the most elaborate work of the tour was a giant mural by the masterful Pixel Pancho looming above the empty, languishing Empire Diner. A closer look at the top of mural reveals a nod to HG Contemporary - perhaps his gallery or sponsor.

"Quite often a paint company, or maybe even the owner of the building will sponsor an artist mural to get more eyeballs on it," said Patrick. "It's a great way to market a property, as well as build the artist's reputation."

Pixel Pancho painted this massive work near 21st St "which can bring eyeballs to a property that's for sale."

The signatures at the top suggest the mural was commissioned by local gallery HG Contemporary.

Love Me, love my wallet

Scribbled on a lamp post, a simple doodle proclaimed "Love Me." The aforementioned fashion juggernaut Urban Outfitters, known as the purveyor of "homeless chic" commissioned artist Curtis Kulig to bless a whole line of Love Me merchandise. Apparently, this didn't go down well with some street art aficionados, perhaps because the artist made a bit of coin. Which brings to mind Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds I die a little..."

Love Me by Curtis King netted the artist a big deal with Urban Outfitters.

Beuys the treehugger

The tour took an ecological turn with the late Joseph Beuys' installation, 7000 Oaks. In 1982, as a participant to the 5-yearly Documenta 7 art event held in Germany, he proposed planting 7000 of oak trees accompanied by a large vertical basalt rock, each approximate 4 feet high. Wikipedia sheds light on Beuys' motivation:

“I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heart wood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet ever since the Druids, who are called after the oak. Druid means oak. They used their oaks to define their holy places.... ” (Joseph Beuys in conversation with Richard Demarco, 1982)

Above and below: Joseph Beuys designed this street installation such that 7000 rocks were "planted" beside 7000 trees all over the world.

Apparently, some people viewed Beuys' work as "parking lot destroyers" and "a motorcyclist died" - presumably colliding into one of the rocks. But gradually they softened - unlike the hunk of basalt.

EKG: putting the pulse back into the city

In contrast to the elaborate murals of Pixel Pancho and Andy Golub, EKG "somewhere between a street artist and graffiti artist" doodles a bright orange heartbeat symbol on doors, garbage bins, walls - generally below eye level.

"Each time you encounter one of his tags, you get a sense that we are all somehow connected through the city. EKG reminds us all that it is our collective energy — the people — that brings life to NYC" says StreetMuseumofArt.org.

A simple EKG tag in which the 50 something artist aims to put the "heart" back into NYC

Invading West Chelsea

And so to one of the most famous street artists of all time, Space-Invader, aka simply Invader. No introduction needed, especially if you're of a certain age ... Invader encourages you to make your own Invader-style mosaic on the FAQ of his website:

Is it possible to own a Space Invader? How do people acquire one of your works?
The most economical solution is to buy tiles and to create your own at home. It is not a very difficult assembly work and it is possible to find similar types of tiles I use.The second solution is to purchase an "invasion kit". It is a ready-to-use limited edition of a Space Invader. They are produced at the studio and sold in the Space Shop. It is at the same time a conceptual and functional object. Finally, for people who wants a unique art piece, they can seek for an Alias, which is the exact replica of the unique work in the street. There is one and only Alias for any past or present works present in the streets. Every Alias comes with a signed certificate of authenticity. Art Collectors should contact Over The Influence for any available pieces. [There aren't any. I, somewhat eagerly, looked - CG]

In fact, I'm fully expecting Home Depot to come out with ready-to-stick tile packs just in time for Christmas:

Look up - you're about to be invaded... green piece by Invader is made from Rubik's cubes.
People have tried to chop bits of it off as souvenirs.

As Patrick shows on his iPad, Invader even strapped a rocket to a piece and sent it into deep space wearing a Go Pro.
The photos shows it made it pretty far.

You can get this close to it if you have a ladder and the gall to souvenir a bit of this work for yourself.

Invader invades the NYC Dept of Sanitation - I passed by this every morning and night on my daily commute.

A few more finds follow:

Big brands are always ripe for streetartification...

City kitty, featuring cats and flowers with eyeballs

A striking blue pagoda by Shin Shin

And while we're at it, check out the Dan Flavin installation in the building over the road (colored fluorescent tubes)

The recovering street artist revealed

Patrick saved the best for last - his own street art contribution. He led us down to 22nd street and 11th Ave in a chill wind that suddenly became arctic. There, to his dismay, he discovered that the poster he'd tagged the night before (just for our tour) had already been ripped half off the wall...

One of Patrick's very own works, mounted the day before, were already vandalized by someone the next day

However, were were in luck: just a few paces back back down the street, he found the rest of his work blowing around on the sidewalk. His art? Scrawling the word "Moustache" above the upper lip of faces in advertising posters.

But just up the road we found it!

He showed us articles where his escapades - and brushes with the "vandalism police" - have been written up in the media circa 2012. Google "moustache man patrick waldo" to read several articles. Here's one and here's another.

Being arrested back in 2010 gives Patrick some serious street cred!

Patrick's signature tag is the word "Moustache" on advertising posters.

There's that moustache

"I became obsessed," he said of his "moustache" phase, which was rapidly mimicked by others and shared on social media around the world. As I mentioned before, at one point it the word appeared on a t-shirt by fashion giant Zara. On calling them out, Patrick received a bunch of legalese absolving the company of any wrongdoing, but they pulled the t-shirt from the shelves anyway - and sent Patrick a few.

"I am now the owner of about a dozen Moustache t-shirts ... in women's sizes," he said.

Fashion juggernaut Zara appears to have stolen his idea and put Moustache on t-shirts.

As the late fall darkness fell like an axe, we decided to simply google the nearby One World, One Voice mural by Brazilian twins Os Gemeos and head for a smashed avocado toast and chai latte at Underline coffee (this is Chelsea, remember).

One the way we spotted a hooded figure embedded in a box on a signpost - invoking a wave of nostalgia. It was reminiscent of the dioramas of my childhood - the microworlds I created in shoeboxes at primary school (you too?). This one was by an artist called Phil, whose name was painted on the figure's pink scarf. Peering into the box revealed a contribution by another street artist - the aforementioned Stikman.

Would Patrick get back his nerve and scribble "Moustache" on the upper lip of the hooded figure?

Nope. As co-president of Save Chelsea, Patrick is now focussed on preserving the canvases under the art: the buildings, walls and streetscapes of historic Chelsea.

Patrick spots a traffic-lamp installation, with a number of contributors.

A shot of this piece on a sunnier day

One World, One Voice mural by Brazilian twins Os Gemeos

You can follow Patrick at: @MoustacheManNYC

Save Chelsea: www.savechelseany.org - neighborhood preservation group led by co-presidents Laurence Frommer and Patrick Waldo

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This story was first published on November 17, 2017

Wait, what did I just watch? The Stinking Dawn of Gelitin at O'Flaherty's

2023-09-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

@ChelseaGallerista gets the cover of her book signed by Gelitin members Wolfgang Gantner and Ali Janka.

I've just sat through 90 minutes of simulated poop-wrestling, ass-painting, golden showering and anal laser-pointing loosely choreographed to a pounding, cacophonous "dada-thrash" soundtrack. Fortunately, it was all on film, with no audience participation or plastic ponchos required ... yet.

I have just subjected myself to the US premier of "Stinking Dawn" (2019), a pre-Covid film by Austrian cult art troupe Gelitin and conceptual artist Liam Gillick. The venue? The brand new east village location of O'Flaherty's, an equally cultish gallery helmed by artist Jamian Juliano-Villani, the thrillingly plainspoken, chain-smoking painter of whatever the hell she wants (check out this interview). Recent shows by O'Flaherty's include sculptures by the late, great Ashley Bicketron and Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton.

The screening was just one of many events the group is performing until March 5, 2023 (which may require plastic poncho, I'm taking one just in case, and my umbrella).

The crowd is plied with free beer in preparation for the show

The film is a homage to "To Live and Think Like Pigs" by Gilles Châtelet

Lots of irony is just part of the fun

Lots of genitalia too... I am keeping this picture small

If you've never heard of Gelitin, its name recognition is not helped by Google bringing up Betty Crocker recipes for tuna aspic (it was spelled "Gelatin" pre-2008). However, check out their resume - a jaw-dropping rollcall of blue-chip collaborations with the world's hottest artists, galleries and museums that dates back to 1996. It's as if everyone and anyone wants to be a Gelitin X <insert collaborator name here>.

@ChelseaGallerista with Florian Reither

@ChelseaGalleristaith with Tobias Urban

The 4 artists in grime are Wolfgang Gantner, Florian Reither, Ali Janka and Tobias Urban, all 50-somethings at the time of writing. Wikipedia tells me Gelitin's "sensational art events" are in the tradition of "relational aesthetics," in which the artist is a viewed as "catalyst for creation in society, rather than the artist being placed at the center." (Props to French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud for that thesis).

While loitering with intent before the doors opened I naively asked Wolfgang if he liked Beuys. After a startled pause when he thought I said "boys," I might as well have been asking him if he liked Picasso - Beuys was, of course, a pioneer of performance art nutdom. However, a flip through the new Gelitin coffee table book showcasing the group's projects from 2008 onwards proves they've taken things way beyond JB lounging around in a felt papoose while being circled by a coyote... more on that in a moment.

Back to the film: the online blurb offers the following synopsis:

The film examines the limits of human tolerance in the face of oppression, political crisis and excessive self-delusion. Based on the shooting script by Gillick, Gelatin plays the main characters – four privileged young people who grew up at a time of crisis and move through various stages of development and selfenlightenment towards a final of collapse, conspiracy and broken dreams.

I was not able to correlate much of the above with any of what I saw, but Ali gave this Gelitin-neophyte a bit of a break:

"It's actually quite difficult to paint with your ass," he said, by way of explaining a cave scene where a chain-gang of crouching artists daub zen-like symbols on sheets of paper using a brush inserted in their anuses. "Wouldn't the world be a more peaceful place if everyone had a butt plug to relax them?" Indeed...

Oh, oh, I think that's another testicle...

A lot of styrofoam makes up the sets

The torso people (this and below)

In another scene, laser pointers are inserted into the same orifices and used like lightsabres in a night club. I'll leave it to art history majors to unpack these Freudian and po-mo posturings... other memorable scenes include a phalanx of surreal Mad Hatter-like "faces" which are actually painted torsos with nipples for eyes and belly buttons for mouths; a sweatshop where workers are ordered to make sexy underwear from randomly cut scraps of fabric and pins, people prancing around in stuffed horse costumes and a lot of mud, faux excrement and styrofoam. Oh, and that terrific hardfloor trance style soundtrack, the kind of music only Germanic countries know how to make.

Despite the mayhem there's apparently a teutonic rigor (and I am sure, a ton of weed) underpinning all the whimsical "Jack Handy-style Deep Thoughts" fun and play. Ali told me the film is based on the book about the evils of the market, "To Live and Think Like Pigs" by late philosopher/mathematician Gilles Châtelet. Another intellectual rabbit hole to dive into...

O'Flaherty's is the brainchild of Gallerist Jamian Juliano-Villani, who is thus well qualified to sign the cover of the book. Dang, I forgot to ask her to stub her cigarette out on the cover...

With comic artist Jack Waters and O'Flaherty's principals Jamian Juliano-Villani and Ruby Zarsky

I did purchase the tome: a lavish, hardbound "atlas" that showcases Gelitin projects since 2008. It's all very camp, creative and burlesque with some quite logical ideas that remind me of MSCHF projects, though the latter tend to be more product-based (ie stuff you can buy if you're quick enough).

Some examples: the foursome marooned on an apartment-size rock of an island for a month with supplies and 4 wedding dresses; a urinal that fills a big transparent cushion with pee like to become a nice, warm, communal ottoman; a giant concrete nostril embedded near the Danube that fills when it floods; twisted portraits of the Mona Lisa in plasticine that remind me of Genevieve Figgis in a fist fight with Bacon; a Japanese garden where the rocks are the squirming butts, elbows, knees of live participants...

And this, from Wiki, takes the cake:

One of Gelitin's best known art projects began in March 2000, when the group allegedly removed one of the windows on the 91st floor of the former World Trade Center complex and temporarily installed a narrow balcony, while a helicopter flew around the scene, taking photographs to be later documented in their book The B-Thing. The book was published in 2001 and had even by that time taken on an air of urban legend, with new copies selling for $500 on Amazon.com as of 2016.

That book is now $8000 (yes you read right) on the internet.

As far as straight art-to-hang-on-wall goes, there are some quite intricate plasticine portraits and landscapes with real wallpower - plasticine appears to be Gelitin's favorite medium - that reflect the multi-layered action in the performances. Looking at the upper-echelon galleries involved - Green Naftali, Perrotin, I am sure they are quite unaffordable.

I managed to get all four Gelitin gentiles to sign the cover of my book with a couple of Sharpies I bought over the road. Now there's an idea: my book is now a piece of art for display vs merely ephemera. Naturally, they drew a lot of testicles and penises...

Gelitin is the kind of fertile idea tank we advertising industry folks love to admire and envy: we come up with a lot of similar mashups, but usually have to shelve them with a laugh because we gotta please the client and sell stuff. Gelitin and their ilk only have to capture the imagination of people brave enough to show their stuff - stuff that saves lives by giving perverse art lovers like me a reason to live.

Scroll down for showtimes - and see you in the back row!

A lot of bodies - and body parts - went into making this film.

O'Flaherty's are destined to become know for their canopy

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Gelitin performances at O'Flaherty's
2/16/2023 - 3/5/2023

Opening Performance: Thursday, February 16th, 6pm to 8pm

Afterparty: 9pm - 2am At 113 Ludlow

Additional Performances:
5pm to 7.30pm, Saturday, February 18
6.30pm to 7.30pm, Wednesday, February 22
5pm to 7.30pm, Saturday, February 25
6.30pm to 7.30pm, Wednesday, March 1
5pm to 7.30pm, Saturday, March 4

PLUS - the US premiere of Stinking Dawn, a full-length feature film by Liam Gillick and Gelatin.

Screenings:
5pm to 6.30pm, Sunday, February 19
6pm to 7.30pm, Friday, February 24
5pm to 6.30pm, Sunday, February 26
6pm to 7.30pm, Friday, March 3
5pm to 6.30pm, Sunday, March 5

With special thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria: Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, PERROTIN, MASSIMODECARLO and Robert Ramsauer.

Art Basel Miami (pre-Covid edition): A primer for newbies

2021-11-27T01:30:00.019-08:00

A looker-maybe-collector guide to that great big art happening by the beach

NOTE: As I prepare to attend the first post-Covid 2021 fair next week, this story covers a pre-Covid (2018) edition to give armchair booth-hoppers an insight into the machinations.
Check out what's happening at Art Basel Miami 2021 here

A pre-reading quiz: Is the above painting of...
a. An art collector on discovering they paid too much for a Christopher Wool?
b. How Liu Yiquan felt after someone else bought that $450m Da Vinci?
c. "Russian Roulette" by Eric Yahnker at The Hole, spotted at the Untitled Art Fair?

So much art, so little time ...

She: "WANNA stay at my apartment and do Art Basel Miami"?

Me: "Does a chicken have hard lips?

CALL ME LATE to the party: my first-ever pilgrimage to this seaside artfest with decidedly "Suisse" cachet comes more than 6 years after the birth of this blog. What's my excuse?

First, I live smack dab in the Chelsea gallery district of New York City, so there's art a bagel's throw from my door (this has got to make up for living in the smallest studio in the country).
Second, a full palette of art fairs: Frieze, Armory Show, Untitled, Pulse, NADA, Volta, Scope, ADAA, Collective, WANTED, Independent, Spring Break, Affordable, Art On Paper, Outsider, even Documenta - did I miss anyone? - pass through the city each year, some a whole bike ride away...

Getting right into the art at Untitled

But Art Basel Miami - technically, Miami Beach (for the snowbound, Miami Beach is a tautology) is something else: a big chunk of the abovementioned palette crammed into a single week, with glitzy parties, street happenings and dips in the Hockney-blue ocean to give your feet and eyeballs a break from traipsing the endless labyrinths of canvas-crammed booths.

What's not to love?

Taking it to the streets:
The Betsy Orb, a sculpture that conceals a passageway connecting the Betsy Ross and Carlton hotels.

In fact, the entire city arts up, and opportunism abounds: in one hotel lobby I saw some really sophomoric, 6' tall canvases that channeled Pollock, Basquiat, Richter en masse, each marked $10,000, clearly attempting to cash in on some drunken Asian hedgefunder staggering back from a beachside bashe.

Even the local SIXT car rental office becomes a defacto gallery for Art Miami

The background color: 72 and artsy

Before getting into the art, here are a few still-lifes to set the stage:

Sun, surf and cool ways to get around, like these artsy electric bikes

Cute art deco ambience and even cuter cars

Even fancier cars with cuddly passengers

Arted-up Ubers and cabs. (Cars, cars, cars - this is Florida, OK?)

Lots of rooftop bar action

Lots of great seafood like this affordably sharable platter from Peruvian restaurant Chalan on the Beach

Lots of glitzy parties, most of which we stumbled upon vs had QR codes for...

... which you may get to crash depending on who you know and your ...

NET WORTH!

Planning the booth crawl

"Whaaaaat, you haven't planned your itinerary?" gasped urban-streetscapes artist Valerie Larko, who was exhibiting with Lyons Weir Gallery at the ginormous Art Miami tent. According to Valerie, you need at least 2 weeks to work out what you want to see, as there is immesurably more art than hours in the day.

The first step for an arts blogger, is getting the coveted Art Basel press pass which would admit me to most of the fairs without an arm wrestle. This I achieved using my creds as a bonafide collector, author of this blog, founding blogger at FastCompany and co-editor of a planned, forthcoming tome on the 128 fellow scavenger hunters who completed the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge (Ok Spot Challengers, now we have to stop talking about it and do it).

The "golden ticket" that allows you to enter most of the fairs as Press

Next, find a map that tells you what-where-when - surprisingly tough. For $8, I found a handy PDF at art-collecting.com that listed events by day (it reminded me of the handy artcards.cc "never miss another show" listing), though it lacked information beyond that. Googling "art basel miami google map" pinpoints where the fairs are located, but it's awkward to keep zooming and losing your place on a smartphone.

The best one was the freebie spread in the Miami New Times, which I still had to mark up with the actual names of the art fairs as shown:

New to the fair were free shuttles courtesy of the city, that shunted you up and down the peninsula to the satellite fairs. This enabled you to get from Scope in the south, to Untitled mid-beach, to the somewhat far-flung PULSE up north, to the mothership, Art Basel, at the Convention Center area.

Free, feet-saving shuttles to dodge the parched concrete.

Clustered around the Convention Center were satellite fairs like Design Miami (furniture), Form (sculpture), Ink (independent smaller galleries and publishers) and Aqua (regional galleries with big and upcoming names) - the latter two a treat for their quirky setting in art deco hotels, where exhibitor booths were in quaint hotel rooms clustered around a planted courtyard. Unfortunately, PULSE, which I have attended numerous times in NYC, was just a bit too far north to get to.

Ink and Aqua Art Fairs: Like a "cappadocia" of art treasures

How often do you walk into a hotel room and see an original Warhol, Stella or Motherwell? Only at Ink!

From here, shuttles transport you across the causeway to the "mainland" where more big white tents beckoned - Art Miami, Context, Spectrum, Red Dot, NADA and other quirky fairs, like Fridge, a fair of artsy fridge magnets. A bit further out is the lauded Wynwood urban art enclave. Then, there are all the museums, the Bass, the Perez, the Rubell ..none of which you can't hope to see in a long weekend letalone in addition to the fairs.

Hence, the need to plan very well, as deep in these endless labyrinths of art, the daubing of your dreams could be right around the next aisle...

SCOPE: Paradoxical art rules

First fair off the rank was SCOPE, the nearest to my lodgings. This fair features art that seems to showcase the wonders of modern machining, 3D printing and other post-canvas-and-paper mediums, attracting a lot of millennial collectors with cash. One exhibitor was particularly enterprising, offering samplings of fancy nut snacks - her side business - to whet your appetite for art:

Naked Nut anyone? Then how about the nude photolitho behind me for $2500?

This could be a new genre in headshots for your LinkedIn profile

With a 3D printer you can freeze a motion blur!

There's a lot of "paradoxical art" at art fairs like SCOPE, that is, crashing two "opposites" together. Superhero dwarves, knitting-bombed soldiers... you get the idea. I put Jeff Koons' Puppy and all his giant balloon sculptures in the "paradoxical" bucket.

Superherism meets dwarfism

The hard edge of war softened by a knit one, pearl one...

UNTITLED: More edge, more depth

UNTITLED has more edge than SCOPE (though less than NADA) and had nicest floor layout of all the fairs, organized in spacious diagonal aisles. Visitors were warmed up outside by CHROMA, a freestanding shipping container arted up by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz Diaz. Inside, three rooms bathed the viewer in a single hue of light, red, blue and green. It was like stepping through a Bridget Riley painting and into a Doug Wheeler Infinity room (yes, Kusama is not the only purveyor of those)...

CHROMA by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diaz

Inside CHROMA: rooms of a single, luminous color

Inside the fair, an execution of Gordon Matta-Clark's Garbage Wall had pole position. It's a 6-foot high block of actual garbage compressed and help together with concrete. Artnews wrote a nice explanation of it here.

What kind of trash is on display at Untitled? Expensive crap!

A real crowdpleaser was a slew of what I can only describe as Picasso-meets-crazy-wallpaper presented by Kleindienst gallery. As wallpaper, they reminded me of the riotous backgrounds of Kehinde Wiley.

Eye-popping graphics by Christoph Ruckhäberle for Kleindienst

One exhibit had me oddly captivated: 3 guys sitting around in deckchairs, doing not a lot. Conceptual art being what it is, I couldn't work out if their studied lounging was the performance, and/or if the "store" behind them was actually selling stuff (a bit like Damien Hirst's Pharmacy). I mustered the courage to ask - it was both. I'm embarrassed to say I lost the card, telling me who they were. (Please DM me on insta @chelseagallerista if it's you!).

The group hailed from Puerto Rico, which had been ravaged by 3 hurricanes in the past year. On the wall hung 3 stunning towels printed with the weather pattern of Irma, Jose and Maria. Nearby were a series of postcards for $5, one showing a what you get with a Google image search of "Puerto Rico." The point being, that contrary to the popular sun, sand and pina-colada vacation imagery of their country, there are a lot more serious things they're dealing with over there.

Puerto Rico: more than just a beachy Google Image search showing beaches...

These typhoonic towels were $1500 each.

At that price, they were not designed for towelling yourself off.

As you can seem I'm obsessed with these towels. Irma, Jose and Maria - not necessarily in that order.

UNTITLED: A very comfortable floor layout

Some art was barely there, a la Fred Sandback

BYO tornado to the next BBQ...

A strikingly simple work that would be ideal for kid's parties: helium balloons anchored by blue tape

John Wesley's minimal works at Fredericks and Frieser channeled Homer Simpson pre-take one

Sometimes a cool, mid-century-like composition is all you crave. Nice one by
Julian Prebisch at Galerie Machete

FORM: Sculpture

form, across the road from Art Basel, is a smaller fair dedicated to sculpture of the decidedly decorative kind. The riotously embellished vases and wall reliefs demonstrated brilliant craftmanship, but were a bit "safe" for my taste. The crowdpleaser was a wooden sculpture called KO-TONE Spiral Xylophone from Japanese collaboration alamak!/Invisible Designs Lab. A wooden ball placed it at the top of the structure plinkety-plonked its way to the bottom, triggering a performance of "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring." A gimmick? It was too charming for that, though you wondered who might buy it, given that you couldn't change its tune unless you got handy with a saw.

The Mother Ship: Art Basel Miami

I want this Robert Mangold: a cool $230 million (give or take)

The stylish ambience extends to the cheap seats

And so to the main event. Art Basel has a serious, classy, Credit-Suisse vibe due to the gasp-inducing names of artists lining booth after booth, the ones I knew by heart growing up with the P volume of World Book Encyclopedia hugged to my chest every night. There's substantially less shlock at this fair, and I can only imagine it's the most expensive to exhibit in - so you better have your Basquiats in order. Let's pay a silent homage to some of the greats I spotted:

Albers

Andre

Condo

Corbu, with my matching leggings of his "Modular Man" print

Dubuffet

Ernst

Fontana

Judd

Klein

Leger

Miro

Now of course, apart from all these Old White Guys, there's a ton of new stuff too. One thing I noticed was Lego renaissance, stating with Ai Wei Wie's self portrait (more about the fair's Lego fetish later).

Ai Wei Wei's self portrait (x4) in Lego

Another favorite artist of mine is Sadie Benning, whose "canvases" are actually carved wood cutouts, re-assembled like child's puzzles, and have a thrilling presence. I learned that this technique is related to a retro vinyl upholstering style a la the Naugahyde vinyl-coated fabric company:

Blow Up 1 & 2; Sadie Benning at Suzanne Vielmetter Gallery

Detail of Blow Up 2, Sadie Benning at Suzanne Vielmetter Gallery

As with most of these fairs, some art was just eye candy with a mind-boggling technique, like this portrait of a dilapidated dodgem car embroidered with a zillion glass beads. It channeled Tara Donovan, and was as impressive - and exhausting - to look at:

Winter 1, Avanish Veeraraghavan

Detail of Winter 1. Are you amazed and exhausted? I am!

Think you can't paint or draw? Can you throw your dirty laundry on the floor in an artful manner? This work shows that you can make an artistic statement with anything at hand. All you need is color, texture, energy:

Inspiration for budding artists working in the sorting department at Housing Works

Detail of Ode to Housing Works (not actual title)

DESIGN MIAMI: more than mid-century

Design shows are often a mixed bag, mostly showcasing the ubiquitous mid-century and Shaker classics (will there ever be a day when those are considered tacky?) and yet another variation on how to stylishly park your butt or stow your stuff. Design Miami was somewhat small, with a nod towards some impressive printing technologies. (For cutting-edge design you should check out the ICFF/WANTED design fair which goes to NYC and LA, and Collective, which started out cutting edge, but has gotten decidedly decorative in recent years). Heres's a sample of said seat variations:

You always dreamed of being a toucan's cud...

The Nakashima effect

This will make my studio into a "junior 1-br"

This felt like watching one of those sci-fi movies with a brain in a jar...
Rapid Liquid Printing by Patrick Parrish Gallery

Voila! A rapidly liquid printed shopping bag

AQUA and INK: the "Cappadocia" art fairs

As mentioned earlier, these two fairs are holed up in art deco hotel rooms and have a wonderful, intimate vibe compared to the airport hangar fairs. Visit Aqua for a young, party atmos and youthful art (and modest prices) to match, and Ink for more serious stuff, like Stella and Motherwell editions.

Richard Gorman's MDF cutouts from Irish gallery Stony Road Press

At the intimate Aqua and Ink art fairs you can get up close and personal with the artist or gallerist

Rock Therrien for Galerie LeRoyer

An interesting find at Aqua was a photobook of Andy Warhol's funeral by Christoph von Hohenburg. Can't afford a Warhol? Love celebs? This is the next best thing:

Slow Moving Luminaries: here comes hell and high water

This mesmerizing sculpture deserves a blog post all on its own, in fact, there are several. On a raised platform by the beach, LA artist Lars Jan built a monumental statement about global warming, overdevelopment and all associated ills, in the form five stylized, scale model "high-rises," strikingly illuminated by night. Set in a suspended infinity pool, these enigmatic apparitions slowly descend, disappearing below the surface of the water, only to rise again like sphinxes. It's all done on an asynchronous timer so the overall effect is meditative and disquieting. Watch the video.

The sculptures in full flight

The video playing on the lower deck shows the stylized building engulfed by the sea

The machinery underneath shows how it all works

Meanwhile, raging below was the invite-only party.

A rowdy, wristband-only party raged below, bankrolled by Audemars Piguet, the classy watchmaker that commissioned the work. Now and then partygoers would stumble across the screen to be momentarily silhouetted, drink in hand, oblivious to the climate change doom depicted thereon. I have no doubt this interaction was designed as part of the work. My friend and I sat watching in a couple of empty deckchairs outside the velvet rope. We were eventually offered delectable little snacks by the starched waiters, who must have taken pity on we of the cheap seats outside. Fortune favors the not-so-bold...

Intermission: Checking out the BASS

Miami Mountain by Ugo Rondanine

A quick hop across the road and you're at the Bass, a newly expanded contemporary art museum. On show was a room full of lounging clowns, startlingly realistic. Once we worked out they weren't real we could relax. It was a very unsettling piece called Good Evening Beautiful Blue by Ugo Rondinone, who was also responsible for Miami Mountain, the day-glo rockpile outside.

Plenty of audience participation allowed in Rondinone's creepy clown exhibit.

A giant nose ring channeled Anish Kapoor's "Bean" in Chicago

Art Miami, Context, Red Dot and Spectrum: for all collectors (and apartments) great and small

Best bang for buck: Art Miami

Detail of Flash Eye - Peter Combe for Andrea Schwartz Gallery
One of the many "pixelation" works at the fairs

Flash Eye, Peter Combe for Andrea Schwartz Gallery

Cross the river and you're in the realm of art for the rest of us. Make no mistake: Art Miami has all the big names too, but huge helpings of everything else. It's almost as if all the fairs were put in a blender, whizzed together and a single fair poured out - that's Art Miami. This theme is continued at a decidedly lower price point in 3 fairs connected to it via a walkway, namely Context, Red Dot and Spectrum.

What's with the Legos?

Every year you notice a trend that pops up in many booths. Sometimes it's lenticular prints, sometimes its infinity mirrors, eternally it's riffs on Damien Hirst's Spot paintings. This year it seemed to be pixelation, specifically with Legos:

Matt Donovon's Green Honeycomb

Ladybugs, Matt Donovan

Hirst's pill popping prices

Being a Spot Challenger, I'm always interested to hear how earth Damien Hirst maintains a respectable rage for his oeuvre. Paul Stolper Gallery, hailing from the UK, had lugged a ER room's worth of Hirst's giant meds sculptures.

So how much do they sell for?

"$4000 for the cheapest item - a single Valium, Viagra or Levoxyl." (The last one familiar to those with thyroid issues including Hashimoto's).

So who buys these pills?

"Everyone.Young people in their 20's put it on lay-away."

Wow! Back when I was poring over the P Volume, I wish I'd had the foresight and pocket money to lay away a Lichtenstein...

At $4000 a pop, the real thing is cheaper, even without insurance.

Context and Red Dot: wheeling and dealing 'til the price is right

If Art Basel Miami is like MOMA with a cash register, these two fairs are more the bratwurst stand at a county fair. (Note: not hotdog, but slightly classier - bratwurst). Walking the aisles of art stacked up against boxes in some cases, I almost expected to come face to face with a set of laughing clowns in the next booth. Many were manned by the artist themselves, others, I learned, were wholesalers who supply many of the starchier galleries in neighboring fairs.

And in fact, one in particular, Great Dane Auctions, supplied many, many of the others.

Artist Felton Weller had his own, affordable take on Bridget Riley, Gene Davis who starred in the other fairs.

Can't afford Warhol? You can afford Yoshikazu Kajikawa's tactile take

"He's one of the biggest wholesalers in the country, " said a small affable man surrounded by a hotchpotch of prints, including some of his own personal artworks. "At at the end of the day he knows people like me are going to write him a check to supply our customers."

At the next booth I was offered a pen. "You see this pen?" A burly gentlemen flicked the pen around and shone the LED directly into my eyeball. "This is for you to write me a check for that Warhol."

In another booth, I spotted what the dealer claimed to be an original Lichtenstein oil. It was not his usual style, and because of that, I liked it immediately (which goes to show I'll never make money selling art).

The lonely Lichtenstein at Red Dot/Context, $50K

"I'll give it to you for $50,000," he said. "It's the real deal."

"How do you know?" I asked. He shrugged.

Earlier in the day, I'd seen a doodle of two pyramids in Art Miami asking $250,000k. So... how does that square with the mysterious oil?

Pyramids (Study), A doodle by Roy Lichtenstein, $250K

"The doodle for $250K is the bargain," said John Graves, a dealer I once bought a modest Corbu print from, when I told him about the two Lichtensteins I'd encountered. He told me that the oil had been "kicking around for years" and "everyone knew about it" and "no way to know if it's authentic."

... and money

Remembering Milton Glaser, ever searching for the miraculous

2021-09-15T06:16:00.001-07:00

"Picasso wanted everything, Morandi wanted nothing. I'm somewhere between the two." Milton Glaser (left) with distinguished designer Ralph Caplan.

Milton Glaser, Designer of ‘I ♥ NY’ is dead at 91.

With the typically minimal cushioning reserved for obituarial headlines, the New York Times announced that yet another titan of our creative class has passed. I was fortunate to meet the magnificent Milton in the later years of his life, when he launched his last book one evening at the School of Visual Arts here in Chelsea, NYC.

+++

WHEN I spotted a tweet "Milton Glaser talk at the SVA, first-come first-served" I immediately set my alarm to arrive an hour ahead and cancelled all appointments. "There'll be stampede for this!" I tweeted out to whoever might care. There was no way I was going to miss a personal appearance by America's greatest graphic designer.

Glaser's kinetic sculpture that adorns the SVA awning on 23rd Street. "The sculpture rotates every hour on the hour while displaying a commentary about the nature of time. For example, "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."

The act of making things that move the mind is our deepest aspiration regarding miracles - Milton Glaser, In Search of the Miraculous

Born in 1929, the inventor of the slogan I ♥ NY studied under the great Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, founded New York magazine, is distinguished by one-man shows at both MOMA and the Georges Pompidou Center, received a lifetime achievement award from the Cooper Union, founded Push Pin Studios with celebrated designer Seymour Chwast ... and gave Bob Dylan a psychedelic up-do:

Milton Glaser's seminal book on graphic design, published by Overlook Press

I was first in line, yet there were no signs, or sashed host gesturing "This way to Milton Glaser, this way to Computer Animation Student Show..."

So like a good sheep, I allowed myself to be ushered into the SVA main theater and smugly planted myself in the very front row seat. The lights went down, the show went up: student animation videos. Aha! A nice precursor to the event, after all, Glaser has taught the young and the restless for years at this esteemed college.

The program for the theater I wasn't meant to be sitting in.

After 30 minutes, I noticed there no mention of Glaser on my program. I got up and exited the theater, and had to ask around before I found the theater "with the author?" said the young man - populated by exactly 6 people. By this time I was 45 minutes late.

Glaser sat on the stage with the founder of iconic and now-folded ID Magazine, Ralph Caplan, who wrote the foreword to Miraculous. I smiled stupidly at the pair as if to say, "I made it!" Glaser responded with an expression that could only be described as, "Yeeeeeeeeeeesssssss?"

A young Asian gal in the front row was struggling in a soft voice to make a statement/question like, "There doesn't seem to be as many styles in your new book?"

"Style? What do you mean by style?"

"Style?" said Glaser, with the patience of a monk. "`What do you mean by style? There's no such thing as style. It's about what is appropriate."

Another pause, and a question about design vs advertising by a young gentleman. Glaser did a lot of advertising work, but found it "less satisfying" due to the often-infuriating restrictions placed on creativity.

Our sparse questions were suddenly punctuated by the sound of loud sawing - a gentleman in a yellow coat was snoring loudly in the front row. Later, I discovered it was the book's publisher, a delightful gentleman called Peter.

Common sense tells us that tomatoes must be moved. The creative impulse tells us that so do people. Milton's Glaser's gift is to satisfy both.

- Ralph Caplan, in his forward to "In Search of the Miraculous"

Feeling obliged to contribute something, I asked why much interactive design today - specifically the "latest, hottest, startup websites" were clean, communicative, but samey, as someone on ycombinator/Hacker News noted here. That is, it's the same package of fonts, rounded corners, Wordpressy layouts and upbeat copywriting. Conversely, there's a magic in Glaser's work that wakes up remote parts of my brain. Some of my favorite pages from the book, Milton Glaser Graphic Design:

A font called "Baby Fat"

Dust jacket for Spanish writer Cela

A cylindrical font

Illustration for a story about a man with his head on one side, for the seminal Audience magazine

Glaser responded that design today is driven wholly and solely by marketing. Or as he says in Miraculous - "Failure and ambiguity are difficult ideas to sell to a client who simply wants to move more cans of tomatoes."

When a couple of us tried to debate the point, he stopped us in our tracks.

"My dear, what we are doing here is just one small part - look at what's happening in Europe, there are far more important things at stake."

And with that, the talk ended.

More people kept popping up from the stairwell albeit dressed in pinstripes - the catering staff. And like unwavering soldiers, they proceeded to inundate the six of us plus the official event party - including personnel from Mobile Libris and Overlook Press - with painstakingly prepared canapes, getting all misty-eyed over the details.

"Can we offer you a parmesan tuille with fresh field greens?"

"A miniature bahn-mi with pulled pork? De-lish ..."

I went out to buy two of Glaser's books and had to literally grab him by the ankles as he strode calmly through the lobby and out of the building. "Be cool, be cool," he said as I dragged him back inside and excitedly posed for the camera clutching my personal, signed library of the great man's oeuvre.

Be cool, be cool ...

Being a relentless backstory hound, I asked the Milton Glaser Studio what on earth happened with the attendance. His recent talks a couple of months earlier had apparently attracted standing-room-only crowds of 300-400. Glaser's studio offered that it had been a hasty, last-minute arrangement and that no-one in particular was to blame. Since Glaser is a stickler for following through ("Milton is no fan of cancellations,") the show went on. This alone is one of the greatest lessons in being great:

When you show up, you beat everyone who didn't.

Portrait + Pattern = Shakespeare mashup. From In Search of the Miraculous.

And what of the latest book, In Search of the Miraculous or One Thing Leads To Another? It's a slim volume that leads the reader by the eyeballs on a "this plus this led to that" exploration of the past five years of Glaser's work. We see how a swatch, doodle or surface texture ends in a rug or book cover or poster or the Rubin Museum bar. New ideas are often rooted in something from the past - a classical form, a pinstripe, a font, perhaps even a conversation or someone you knew, as in the case of a book jacket for his Kundalini yoga teacher, who taught him about "the relationship of art and energy."

Glaser classic stencil font + pattern + number 4 = a project for an English marketing company.

The book has few words, as if Glaser is inviting you to let your brain join the dots. The work featured does have a somewhat subdued, studied and painterly quality (although I wonder if that's partially due to the paperstock its printed on) harking back to another Glaser book, Drawing is Thinking.

"I don't get it, myself, I just publish it," said the Peter, of Drawing, which features hundreds of pages of renderings and not a single word. A minor miracle is that nothing in these books looks like just another Wordpress website.

A poster very much at home in the waiting room of Glaser's opthalmologist

The distinguished Ralph Caplan salutes Glaser impeccably in his foreword:

"Common sense tells us that tomatoes must be moved. The creative impulse tells is that so do people. Milton's Glaser's gift is to satisfy both."

Milton Glaser at the Visual Arts Center - a few snapshots from this show among ChelseaGallerista's Facebook photos

Glaser signs my copy of "Graphic Design"

[VIDEO] Yayoi Kusama's Festival of "no life" (until you get to the door)

2021-06-01T20:15:00.003-07:00

Watch the video

"Sometimes I think Yayoi Kusama might be the greatest artist to come out of the 1960s and one of the few, thanks in part to her long life, still making work that feels of the moment. Other times I think she’s a bit of a charlatan who produces more Kusama paintings than the world needs and stoops to conquer with mirrored “Infinity” rooms that attract hordes of selfie-seekers oblivious to her efforts on canvas." Roberta Smith

I had to open with this pithy POV re the World's Most Expensive Living Female Artist (as of last week; this week it might be Jenny Saville) - by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith. She's not the only one who vacillates...

"Kusama is like Lion King," yawned a friend. "So much hype." I admit to concurring, especially after witnessing first hand what some diehard purists would consider sacrilege: the iconic Phillip Johnson Glasshouse bedecked with Kusama's signature measles:

That's Mies and Kusama lounging together

You know you want to watch me line up, right?

But neighborly curiosity won the day. On the second last day of the show, I confess I stood, I shuffled, hopped from one leg to the other for almost 3 hours in 20-degree brain-freeze for a glimpse of Kusama's latest bling-o-rama: "Festival of Life," aka "Infinity rooms," courtesy of local megagallerist, David Zwirner.

Doing my best Kusama impression

"You get barely 3 minutes in each room," warned a friend who had endured the line the previous day. "Take food, charge up your Kindle, download War and Peace..."

My initial attempt to gain press access was politely turned down, despite my recent accreditation as an Art Basel blogger, and even more compellingly, pulling my "neighbor" card.

"Our press slots are all full," wrote a Zwirner gallerina via email, "but you're welcome to line up and freeze your tits off with the rest of the plebs," she didn't add. So I set the alarm, bundled up with 3 winter layers, my yak boots, a flask of hot chai, and headed down the street at 8am to join the throng.

The longest line in Chelsea - make that Manhattan, since I filmed this crazy job fair in 2008

And what a throng it was: second only in length to this job fair just after the 2008 recession (check out my video), it snaked all the way around to Underline Coffee, or almost 3 New York City blocks. Some people seemed very prepared to wait 4 hours they were never going to get back. I met a group of young doctors who'd staked out their spot in the line, their colleagues arriving at a more humane hour with carbs, coffee, hand warmers and other extreme (for Manhattan metrosexuals) survival tools.

Survival food: carbs and coffee in sub-zero temperatures.

Hand warmers - even more essential than hot chai. Trust an ER doctor to know!

I wondered aloud about the strategy behind the line, reasoning with the security police that Zwirner could have easily charged $20 if you wanted to skip the line, or make it free only if you had a lot of life to burn...

"That would be great, but that's not what the boss wants," said the guard imaginatively.

As the line crept forward I fantasized about the armloads of desperation dosh you could reap from this captive audience. Hot samosas, hot coffee, flaming torches, even little stools to sit on. Speaking of which, about 30 mins from the hallowed door, an enterprising outfit called #linedudes had chalked precisely the info we all needed on the pavement:

Just 30 mins of frostbite to go

Finally, after more than 3 hours of getting to know every brick and crevice of 19th Street, we reached the first door. Here you could duck into the no-line gallery exhibiting Kusama's riotous paintings - captivating in their technicolor abstraction. They call to mind a prolific, exuberant child artist going nuts with unlimited paint and paper. Which isn't too far off the mark, given that Kusama reportedly lives a child-like fantasy existence, shuffling between the mental institution where she resides and her studio a couple of blocks away, each and every day. You can get the compelling inside story on her difficult, dedicated life as a struggling artist in a new film by Magnolia pictures.

Kusama's paintings, once ignored, now sell for millions.

But paintings aren't why people are burning 2-3 hours of no life... it's the famous Infinity Rooms that are pulling the crowds. And after a seemingly infinite wait, a blast of warm air finally enabled us to start thawing out and enter Kusamaland.

A very Japanese thing, these booties.

We were issued Tyvek booties, which echo the mandatory indoor slippers when entering a house in Japan, and just as well, given the designer dog poop on Chelsea sidewalks. And so began our 3 minutes in each Infinity room...

A hush came over the first room as we as we prowled among the silver orbs and mirrors - a bit like the old "house of mirrors" at fun houses. The seams between the mirrors irked me - did the installers consider thinking of a way to make it look continuous? But hey, they never built a monument to a critic.

The next room resembled a disco on steroids, where you could marvel and lots of images of you and your iPhone poking through a hole with a hallucinogenic backdrop. Several color changes gave one a feeling of drowning in gift wrap. Check out the video for the full Pantone experience.

Finally, the red dalmatian room immersed you in Kusama's signature motif - red spots. Somehow, this room suggested that having a dreaded skin condition was actually something to celebrate. It might be a good therapy room for teens with acne. Large alien flowers painted like the background completed the optical illusion. About this time, my phone buzzed. It was a Zwirner gallerina, letting me know a spot had opened up for a press pass. Only 3 hours too late!

So, was it worth the wait? Sure. I made new friends and reminded myself why I love art: per Twyla Tharp, "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

Watch the video: CheleaGallerista braves the line
Kusama at David Zwirner

Kusama INFINITY: The life and art of Yayoi Kusama (movie)

My first artgasm: The P volume of World Book Encyclopedia

2021-03-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

Were you a Britannica kid, or a World Book kid?

Who didn't love "Return of the Hunters" by Peter Breughel the Elder (lower right)?

I was definitely a WBK. With its glossy paper, very readable text and lots of images, World Book Encyclopedia was my school outside of school. Now and then I'd open a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica in the school library, but quickly close it; its dense, scholarly text on bible-thin paper, law-book leathery binding and scant illustrations seemed to be talking to a different kid - one who was a lot smarter and didn't need coloredpictures.

This is the World Book volume I pulled off the shelf most often - the P volume:

I can safely say my obsession with art comes from the PAINTING section in this volume, pages 26 to 77. I'd flip back and forth through this section for hours, poring over the images, reveling in the captions. Years later, on visiting MOMA, there they were, these iconic paintings hanging larger-than-life before me. Amazing!

Recently, I felt a wave of nostalgia to see my long-donated P volume again. I went online trying to wrestle it from eBay sellers insisting on selling the whole set. I was eventually able to buy this musty copy for $10.

On arrival, it needed a good sponge bath and quarantine in a plastic bag with bicarbonate of soda to try and remove the mildewy smell from years of neglect:

The musty smell remains. But I sat down with a tingle of excitement and nostalgia as I turned to page 26.

The first painting that ever captured my attention was Return of the Hunters by Peter Breughel the Elder. I even bought a $10 poster of this image as a kid, and hung it on my bedroom wall. It was popular - I know several people who told me that had that very same poster hanging somewhere in their childhood home. The panoramic perspective is captivating, jettisoning the viewer from their suburban nowhere to somewhere far off and blanketed with snow - snow I'd never seen growing up in suburban Sydney.

Next page: Chagall. What kid didn't stare at this trippy shot of a man floating to kiss his beloved as she ran in explicably towards the window? I could feel the air under my feet as I followed his feet, mentally floating myself up and over, wondering how my neck could bend at 270 degrees, and how she could run towards the window with those tiny, tiny feet...

Birthday by March Chagall

Flipping past the more solemn, classical works, I spent a lot of time gazing at the Picassos. In Mandolin and Guitar, I wanted to go behind the shape-shifting instruments to see more of the sea, and feel the warmth of those terracotta tiles under my bare feet. Seated Bather made me want to stick my hand through the spaces between those orbs of stone-like flesh. Staring at the spaces in Picasso's abstractions felt like I was Alice peering through Looking Glass - like most kids, I loved to fantasize about portholes, wormholes, trick mirrors and secret swiveling doors you could step through into an alternate universe.

Mandolin and Guitar, Seated Bather and Woman Weeping by Pablo Picasso

The caption of Albert's Son in an Andrew Wyeth painting had me obsessing about "Modern Egg Tempera" - my juvenile mind fixating the crumbling yolk of my breakfast boiled egg being spread on a palette with paint.

Albert's Son by Andrew Wyeth

While I was drawn to modern art, the shiny reflection on the nose of this Rembrandt fascinated me: how did he do that? I touched the page over and over, trying to feel the skin of his nose coming through the page.

Detail of Man with a Magnifying Glass by Rembrandt

Despite being a budding modernist, I was drawn to frescos and illuminated manuscripts, particularly this Giotto:

The descent from the Cross by Giotto

... and the groundbreaking perspective of this Fra Angelico:

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

El Greco disturbed me, especially when I scared myself silly reading Revelations in the Bible and associated it with this image:

The Burial of Count Orgaz by El Greco

Raft of the Medusa also haunted me; I had recurrent dreams of flying over this doomed raft suspended by a giant raptor and with the aid of ropes and unseen hands, whisking all the occupants to safety.

The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault

In Seurat's pointillist masterpiece I imagined the figures fashioned from spray-on stone:

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte bu Georges Seurat

Henri Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy was my all-time favorite. Utterly mesmerized by the toes of the sleeping man (woman?), the warped guitar and strangely 3-D stripes on the gypsey's uniform, I'd read the accompanying text over and over and over, wanting to climb into that scene - but with no idea what I'd do if I got there:

Rousseau had one of the most unique styles in the history of art. He painted dreamlike, mysterious scenes that resemble surrealistic paintings of the 1920's. The Sleeping Gypsy illustrates the remarkable individuality of his style. In this painting, Rousseau created a sense of haunting mystery by placing the sleeping figure and the lion in a dreamlike landscape.

(Aside: Rousseau was actually considered a schmuck by critics, only to be hailed a genius much later - thanks to his pal Picasso, who recognized his talent).

The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau

For a high school art class exercise I reproduced, stroke for stroke, Kandinsky's Little Pleasures No. 174. The point of the exercise was to "get into the head and hand" of the artist, much like writing in longhand whole pages from Hemingway. I never felt my writing or painting improved using those techniques, but I did start to hallucinate that I was falling headlong into the Kandinsky and swimming amongst his "little pleasures."

Little Pleasures No. 174 by Wassily Kandinsky.

Duchamp I never really cared for, but Stuart Davis I adored, probably because the style of "The Barber Shop" resembled cartoons on TV:

The Barber Shop by Stuart Davis

And Dali - what kid wasn't freaked out by the Surrealists: Dali, Magritte, Miro with their weird doorways, drippy clocks and dark shadows:

Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediately Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphoses by Salvador Dali; Landscape by Joan Miro

As if to challenge my pre-teen brain, a Grant Wood appears beside Kooning's Woman, I. The two could not be farther apart. I saw little merit in De Kooning's Woman I, which seemed not that much different from a finger painting by a kid two grades below me. To this day, I'm still not a fan of de Kooning, but I admire his auction estimates.

American Gothic by Grant Wood; Woman I, by Willem de Kooning

Edward Hopper's Night Owls is another crowdpleaser, and my first glimpse of that far off place called New York. I had a dark, lonely view of New York for many years after seeing this painting.

Night Owls by Larry Rivers

I found Larry Rivers' Forty Feet of Fashion totally baffling: The figures fall into a "shaped canvas" and remind me of the dioramas I made at school in shoeboxes:

Forty Feet of Fashion by Larry Rivers

And finally, the minimalist guru himself, Frank Stella, with Jasper's Dilemma. This pair of paintings channeled the color and black and white TVs scattered around my parent's house.

Jasper's Dilemma by Frank Stella

I could go on and on. But now, when I flip ahead in this volume, I see there are a ton of other topics right up my alley: PLANET, PLANT, PHOTOGRAPHY, PERU and, wait for it ... PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES - circa 1977:

PLANET

PLANT

PHOTOGRAPHY

POTUS

What can I say? My P Volume, musty and yellowing, was ten dollars and a hundred colorful memories. So don't toss out your musty set of encyclopedias so fast. Between swiping and Googling on your smartphone, I urge you to sit down with a random volume and start turning pages. You never know where it will transport you in 30 years time...

On not getting hammered: My first auction experience at Philips de Pury

Chris Verene: unvarnished moments in family history

2017-10-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

My Cousin Heidi In Her Renaissance Fair Dress, 2006

[VIDEO] ChelseaGallerista meets Chris Verene at Postmasters Gallery, 2010

All photos from ChrisVerene.com except where noted

IF you live in a Manhattan studio, one thing you can't collect too much of is books - especially the giant, panoramic, coffee table kind (unless you plan to use them as a coffee table). But I do own a handful: one fifth Milton Glaser, one fifth a Picasso catalog from the Paris leg of my Damien Hirst Spot Challenge, one fifth Jan Kempenaers' Spomenik (because you just have to). And two-fifths American documentary photographer, Chris Verene.

Chris signing my treasured copies of "Chris Verene" (2000) and "Family" (2010), beautifully produced by Twin Palms Publishers. Photo by a friendly bystander.

I met Chris at his show at Postmasters Gallery on the auspicious date of 10/10/10. I already owned two of his books: Chris Verene (2000) and Family (2010). On opening the covers, you are catapulted to the very front doorsteps, rusting cars and blow up swimming pools of his extended family in Galesburg, Illinois.

Travis's House, 2006.

Stepping through a rickety back door with flywire flapping, you are shuffled through living rooms, bedrooms, passageways, kitchens and out into the backyard where his siblings, relatives and friends are lounging, playing, eating, staring into space, getting married, getting divorced, and largely toughing it out in an economically declining town in the deep Midwest.

Chris' work echoes the that of fellow documenter of life, Michael Moore, in particular, his filmic portrait of economically depressed Flint, Michigan.

"With all the reality TV going on, where things get twisted, there's a need for documenting real life," says Verene, who teaches his craft to students.

The extended family extended.

Aunt Doris And Grandma Eleanor In The Garden, 1992. The two women were teachers at a local one-room school, where first graders sat up front, followed by second graders behind them, all the way back to the 6th graders. The older students were meant to help the younger students."

A friend remarked, isn't this stuff depressing? Moreover, is it ingenuous of us city slickers to gaze upon these images as "art" while nibbling sushi and sipping chateau cardboard in a gallery when clearly, Verene's subjects are barely making ends (not) meet? I'm reminded of the big Urban Outfitters store o 6th ave where you can on the signature "homeless chic" aesthetic for size.

Voyeuristic or otherwise, Chris's images serve a more instructive purpose, bridging the the gap between the haves and the have nots so we can better know and appreciate our fellow citizens living far from "coastal" privilege.

Nico And Mercedes, 2012

Farm Cats, 2012. "How many cats can you see? There are at least 4."

Chris recently spoke at the SVA to students of the Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography. I sat there amidst a smattering of students earning credit and some fans like myself who own his books. Ironically, he doesn't shoot his "serious" work with a digital camera - he uses a Hasselblad medium format film camera then scans the images into Photoshop only for adding captions: "No cheating."

Verene addressing SVA students in New York, December, 2016.

Many of Chris' images communicate an unshakeable bond between subjects, the will to survive and simple joy of being alive and knowing what matters to you. We can learn a lot about connection, resource and gratitude from these precious moments with Chris' family.

Steve and the hubcaps, 1993.

Max is a bachelor, 2004

Sabbath, 2004

Travis made pigs in blankets, 2008

Chris Verene website

FRIEZE 2014: Real art, homage or riff-off? See all three at Randall's

2014-06-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

A fast ride up to the bridge to Randall's Island, host to the giant Frieze tent

Like a stream of visiting circuses, full of color and wonder, New York's art fairs - Scope, Pulse, Frieze, NADA, and a bunch of outliers - share one frustrating thing in common: they tend to converge on the same long weekend. This makes it tough for the average art nut like me to do them all justice, even with press passes and a fast folding bike.

But this year I decided to gal-up and pay the pricey $46 to attend Frieze New York, a "first tier" art fair, according to my art dealer friend. Now, there are plenty of highbrow rants about this much vaunted art spectacle, dramatically sited "offshore" on Randall's Island. So what follows is a lowbrow account of what caught my eye in both good and bad ways.

A tent fit for an octomom's wedding!

I had my first flat tire in ages, stalling my grand entrance. You NEVER find glass on the road when biking in Tokyo.

Getting there: It's an easy spin on a bike up 1st Ave, with a very civilized bridge leading to a giant air-conditioned tent with very fancy pop-up bathrooms - I'm talking ornate handles and turned wood and Hollywood-lit mirrors. Not to mention some decent eats, including a $15 all-you-can-eat grain bowl for hipsters, from hot new lower east side vegan place, The Fat Radish.

As to the art: this year, only a handful of the offerings blew me away. It was not like wandering with mouth agape in the modern art wing of TEFAF or the Armory Show or any time the Big Three auction houses are open to the rubbernecking 99%.

Visual puns, mundane metaphors, riff-offs, irony and many efforts I shall cynically bucket as "Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should" seemed to be the theme. Like this ...

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should." An apt title for this "work."

In case you can't be bothered zooming, this is a wall-mounted table pierced by forks gently swaying in the breeze of an electric fan. Was it a eulogy to the buffet line on the Titanic? Or to the packed Manhattan restaurants that people had to suddenly flee, mid-forkful, when Hurricane Sandy hit? Maybe its sole function was to raise the hackles of the "my 6-year old with my electric drill could do that" faction. Here's another - a bronze sausage man - that makes you wonder why we need it:

A Koons/Oscar Meyer mashup?

James, an artist friend, offered this very generous assessment:

Both are great examples of the opposite ends of the market......one artist who has a factory and machines and a few peeps who polish his mass produced very expensive sculptures (very little artistic input there other than a CAD operator)...and an unknown emerging conceptualist that a gallery took a chance on just for sheer neck. All a matter of taste in the end and if you are an aesthete then much of what Frieze has to offer will offend.

In the "Cool idea, let me try that at home" was a set of four bicycle inner tubes pinned up in squares:

Gareth James, "1.2.3.4." Yes, there was a 4th but it wouldn't fit in my viewfinder.

I am sure one could pen a PhD art history thesis on this about "de-inventing the wheel" and someone probably has in order to get curated through the Frieze door. Having flatted on the way here, I was already 1/4 on my way to making this a reality on my own living room wall. And how about this, which caught my eye from across the room as only ultramarine can ...

Hayley Thompson, Digital Light Pool LXXI 2014

"Digital Light Pool LXXI 2014" was fashioned from a plastic tray from somewhere like the Container Store, then slathered with ultramarine colored paint. I confess I was drawn to it by my current obsession with the Yves Klein's IKB stamps I spotted at the Metro Show this year:

Yves Klein Going Postal ... this will set you back $25K or more. Read about it here.

In the Riff-Off bucket (which others may kindly call "homage") was a shark that channels Damien Hirst if you haven't got room for the formaldehyde-filled tank:

Shark not in formaldehyde by ... who?

"The Physical Impossibility in the Mind of Someone Living" by you-know-who

This next riff-off is really quite cool: what would happen if you put colorfield artist Morris Lewis in a flapper dress, threw him in a blender and hit "puree?"

A flapper take on pioneering colorfield artist Morris Lewis

The real McCoy: Morris Lewis Alpha-Phi at the Met

In addition to visual irony, a lot of the spectacle of contemporary art owes itself to craft and execution -- as a canny gallerist put it, "if the art's not good, make it big and paint it black." Call me jaded, but I earn my daily crust as an advertising copywriter - a job where you come up with these "concepts" hourly but have discard them unless you can make 'em actually sell something - so I find it all a bit "easy." Like Word Irony:

This really isn't that clever

Now in the bucket of "make it big and a s***load of effort" (think Tara Donovon - but we all love her stuff), check out this impressive needlepoint with an equally big title entitled Of what is, that is is; of what is not, that it is not 2, 2012. Everyone had their noses up pressed up against it to peer at the threadcount:

Detail of the tapestry

Goshka Macuga: Of what is, that is is; of what is not, that it is not 2, 2012

I'm assuming a computer had a digital hand in producing this massive duvet cover. Imagine if they got Andres Serrano to come along and pee on it at 15 minute intervals until it turned as yellow as Warhol's celebrity pee canvases ...

Nick Cave's Sound Suits were eerily totemic, ritualistic and other -ic words; you could almost hear jungle drums and wailing sounds of someone being garotted by bugle beads over a boiling cauldron:

Nick Cave's Sound Suits

In lieu of his usual crowd-pleasing butterflies, spots and spin-paintings (because this is a serious, "If you have to ask the price, turn the page young man" art fair), the world's richest living artist, Damien Hirst was represented by Fear, a surgeon's shop of horrors. Noooo, not the kidney shaped dish ....

Above: Damien Hirst "Fear." I own a couple of the round bowls.
I assure you it is not at all frightening to do salad surgery in them.

(Got a thirst for more Hirst? See my Damien Hirst Spot Challenge blog - yes, I'm still wondering how on earth I convinced myself to visit 8 countries in 12 days to snag one of his screenprints).

Back to the Make it Big and ... bucket: Since it was Mother's Day, it was not surprising to see a Yoko Ono message of peace, love and understanding executed in her often-crowdsourced way - with a zillion post-it notes presumeably written by passers by:

Yoko Ono's crowdsourced Mother's Day installation

In the same bucket, here's a way to recycle a mountain of Chinese novels - make the Manhattan (or is it the Hong Kong) skyline out of them ... now what if this was done with Bibles - would the Vatican and Gideon be up in arms?

Above and below: impressive recycling of Chinese phonebooks et al at Lahmann Maupin Gallery

In the Make it Big and Barely Touch It bucket: Everyone must envy street/graphic artist Kaws, who's has gotten such fame and fortune out of simply putting a "x" sign on existing icons for eyes - that's even easier than drilling a table with 54 holes to hold forks ...

Kaws is really onto something here ...

In the Make it Big and Irresistably Decorative bucket I'd rather have this dominating the wall of my 236 sq ft apartment, a Bridget Riley-Hallmark-gift-bow mashup ...

Philippe Decrauzet: Untitled, 2014. Bridget Riley-Hallmark-gift-bow mashup .

And now for the Good Old Fashioned Art bucket: midst all the art-robatics, I found myself strangely drawn to comparatively "ordinary" painting and sculpture, like this George Condo:

George Condo - Tan Orgy Composition 2005

and this restfully pleasing example of Thomas Kiesewetter channeling Picasso (don't they all) ...

Above and below: Thomas Kiesewetter channeling Picasso via at 360 Mal Vorn Gallery

... and how about this comforting collage by Jens Fange (with an umlaut):

Jens Fange: The New Order, 2014

... or some pleasant abstracts even if they co-channel Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Kaz Malevich for your kitchen backsplash ...

Above and below: Alain Biltereyst, Untitled (come on Alain, sell it as feature tiles to IKEA and you'll be rrrrrich ...)

But I too am a sucker for certain visual art-robatics. One of my fave abstract artists Jeff Elrod has a knack for doing arresting things with doodles and lately, superimposing them on bokeh backgrounds:

Jeff Elrod: #InterZone 2013

Yours truly about to sucked into that big round hole

Jeff Elrod: Twilight, 2000.
I've liked Elrod ever since spotting this ultramarine number at an auction ...

A few more shots (but not many) on Chelsea Gallerista's Facebook Page

http://friezenewyork.com/

Pop-Ups, Property Promos and Pocket Paintings: New collaborations toride out the recession

2014-05-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Mixed media artist Rodney Durso, founder of Artbridge

Last week I found myself in a couple of small, personal Chelsea art events that signal the alternative ways art is being "done" these days - largely due to the economy.

The traditional way: An established gallery in a prime location which is never open Sundays, and in fact, shuts promptly at 6pm weekdays, thus winnowing out the artless tire kickers. Staff, of whom you see only the very top of their heads behind the high reception desk, basically ignore you if you wander in without an appointment, because they are busy dealing in cyberspace ... unless you're an art target of course.

The new way: slap up, pop up, art up. Let's look at three different "recession suppression" happenings I stumbled on in the same week:

THE POP UP

Rodney Durso and Blair Bradshaw: Together Again Press Release

Blair Bradshaw flanked by "Burr" and "Hamilton"

Rodney Durso (NY) and Blair Bradshaw (SF) showed their work in a small pop-up space on 526 West 26th St orchestrated by Reaves Gallery.

As I understood it, Sharon Reaves, the gallery director, recently moved from San Francisco and is making her New York debut in this flexible and low-key manner: renting a space in an existing space. It makes sense - like a pop-up window on a website, you're invited in to step inside and click around, until the window closes. Next time, a different space, a different artist, a different gallery. But if someone liked the art, connection has been made; the popped-up space is now irrelevant. Especially the internet is a 24/7 zero-rent gallery space.

Rodney Durso is a mixed-media artist who mashes up the things he clearly loves - architecture, design, politics, graphics, intense color, community. I met him while scarfing tiny little cookies at Three Tarts, the Oprah-favorited micro-desserterie he co-owns with his sister, Marla. We found we had a mutual background in advertising, and friended each other before there was this thing called Facebook.

A series of ArtBridge canvases beautifying the scaffolding in front of thevenerable London Terrace, Chelsea, NYC

Rodney also founded ArtBridge, a sustainable art innovation in itself: it commissions artists to do their darndest on otherwise uninspiring scaffolding, thus transforming the streetscape into an overhead, tree-level gallery. When it's time for the art to come down, it's made into sturdy and chic tote bags which are sold at Three Tarts among other places from around $32 and up. And who couldn't do with another sturdy, chic tote bag?

Detail of Blair Bradshaw's "Untitled (Hamilton)"

Now over to Blair: ever thought what fun lives artists must have, those who do the whimsical full-page magazine illustrations for articles about monkeys or oil spills or anti-depressants? Blair Bradshaw is one of those lucky peeps, a graphic artist with creds including New Scientist, the NYT and Absolut Vodka. We all postured over his diptych depicting a speed-dying version of the Burr-Hamilton Duel. From Wiki:

Hamilton did fire his weapon intentionally, and he fired first. But he aimed to miss Burr, sending his ball into the tree above and behind Burr's location. In so doing, he did not withhold his shot, but he did waste it, thereby honoring his pre-duel pledge. Meanwhile, Burr, who did not know about the pledge, did know that a projectile from Hamilton's gun had whizzed past him and crashed into the tree to his rear. According to the principles of the code duello, Burr was perfectly justified in taking deadly aim at Hamilton and firing to kill....

The panel features strips of stained wood neatly stamped with the death dates of both men, respectively. No, the wood was not from the tree above and behind Burr's location, but we all pretended it was ...

Art, furniture, real estate, action!

THE STAGING

Open house showing of a renovated studio with art exhibition
(Photo from www.reneefishman.com)

Staging an apartment to show it in its best light isn't new. But having an art exhibition with the gallery director, interior designer and real estate agent all present and lubed with wine and crackers is a perfect example of a modern day real estate marketing mashup.

The apartment: a $399K studio in the "post-war" Victoria building on East 14th Street.

The estate agent: Renee Fishman for Halstead Property, was apparently awarded Rookie of the Year in her industry for her imaginative approaches to real estate marketing using social media - no doubt like this, and with her professionally shot video tours. The willowy Renee's commentary rolls off her tongue like melted butter on a piping hot scone that I devoured even though I'm not in the market right now for a new cave.

The interior designer: Stephen Alessi, whose name immediately evokes those amoebic stainless steel accoutrements from the famous design house on Manhattan metrosexual's wedding list. He did a great job "on a tiny budget", showing what a difference a nice thick cream rug and a pair of Japanese-inspired curtains can do.

The gallery director: Jessica Porter, of the enigmatically named RAANDESK. She selected several art works for the apartment, with several benefits:

1. You get to see art as it might look in your own modest living room.
2. The apartment looks sharp, with any tattered Jim Morrison posters no doubt rolled out of sight in the broom cupboard
3. You get to know about another great gallery in Chelsea: Raandesk.

Seeing the three pros in one place gave the visitor plenty to do - admire the could-be-mine home, pick the interior designer's brains for the latest trends and file him away for a future project, and gaze upon some fresh new art that wasn't a series of lame, framed art gallery exhibition posters with the artist-date-time-location on the bottom.

And so, from affordable caves (well, relatively) to affordable art (since this is Chelsea Gallerista):

Raandesk's selling point is its focus on affordable art - from $100-$5000. It even has a special section called Art2Gift - works under $500. You can actually select art from the site based on price range and other categories, like buying a rainjacket from REI.com. Even more amazingly, you can click a button to "make an offer" on several works.

Jessica is clearly thinking ahead, getting young art lovers into collecting and starting a lifelong and potentially profitable relationship with them. She's also opening things up for that people who might never have thought they could afford an original. Though I have zero room for art (as I lamented last post), I found myself again, seriously contemplating becoming the owner of not one but two works on the wall behind the carefully staged and plumped sofa. Someone hold me down!

Thanks to Marie Wiltz for introducing me to Renee and Raandesk.

"POCKET" ART

Ian Mack Studio, Ellen Shire

Fragments by Ellen Shire - a perfect little pocket painting, at just 16cm x16 cm (just over 6" x 6")

I mention these two artists in this post because I stumbled across their tiny little artworks quite by chance - a real recession suppression idea.

Ian Mack, who I met at the aforementioned Reaves show, is famous for his giant bold color field abstracts, but he also creates "emergency art". Priced at around $100 each (update: now $50 as of 2014), they're tiny paintings about the size of a credit card.

"It's art to carry on your wallet," he says. "When you need an emergency art fix, just reach for your wallet" [without emptying it].

As you can see he's even doing little easels for them. None are shown on his site - you can try emailing him about his next showing.

Update: as of 2014 I'm the proud owner of this Ian Mack miniature

My "MiniMack" is a substitute for my favorite painting of his, "Big Lift," now in some lucky beach bungalow in Florida I hear...

Big Lift, my favorite Ian Mack of all time

I also stumbled across Ellen Shire, who divides her time between New York and France, some years ago at Chelsea Open Studios. She had this one tiny little painting - actually a paper mache collage that I wish I'd bought back then, because now, she can't seem to find it. She's produced some marvellous, wonderfully textural little works for somewhere around the $100 mark.

And wandering past Leo Kesting Gallery in the Meatpacking, I noticed the walls covered with tiny little paintings and constructions, some just over the size of coasters. I have no idea if they are for sale or if they're part of the interior decor, but they screamed "take me home in your pocket!"

I see a great market for art to wear, have and to hold, at a price more people can afford to have lots of.

If you can beat 'em, join 'em: Banksy's Street Residency in New York

2013-10-20T14:23:00.001-07:00

Beware of the cheap wine - and don't forget to look at the art

For those of you chasing around after Banksy's latest meticulously orchestrated stunt, his month long "New York street residency/scavenger hunt," the artist's Oct 18 edition is smack in the backyard of ChelseaGallerista, on W24th St at 10th Ave. Typically, it pokes fun at someone, in this case the gallery scene itself. Read/listen to Banksy's own cliff notes on W24th

You touch de art, I break your face - but perhaps you would like me to take a photo for you?

Under the Highline, on a pebble-strewn private lot, are two paintings hanging in an impromptu "gallery space" that are apparently collaborations with Brazilian street art twins, Os Gemeos (you might have trouble reading Portuguese so just Google image them). Adorning an 80-foot wall of PS1 on 21st St is one of the twins' signature pants-yanked-up-to-the-armpits big yellow men - itself a collaboration with another established street artist, Futura2000.

The audio narrative for this work on Banksy's site promises all the things you expect to find at a gallery opening - a bench to sit on and admire the work, a water cooler of cheap wine for ignoring the work, and paintings "so painterly you can actually see them."

Banksy apparently paid the phalanx of security guards to do their signature security guard thang, and in NYC that means being big, black and intimidating, in that order. However, he appears to have given one of them a witty script with which to address the crowds politely pushing against the yellow "CAUTION" tape - and who appeared to be the most handsome. It wouldn't surprise me if he was a paid waiter. I mean, actor.

You get five minutes then you're gonna move back behind the tape, OK?

"If you get split up from your friends and family, remember these are not the gates to heaven - you will see them again," boomed the Laurence Fishburne-act-alike.

A friend told me one of the security guards was being exuberantly and uncharacteristically obliging asking patrons if they wanted their picture taken in front of the paintings - again, you can only imagine this was meticulously scripted by Mr Laconic Ironic himself ...

There's an online ruckus about jealous street artists defacing Banksy's work even before the spray dries. As some people say, it's par for the course. The only reason why someone hasn't defaced the Mona Lisa is because it's protected by a 100 foot chasm right in front of it - last I saw it. I think Banksy probably expects and welcomes the interaction. Anything that creates a commotion spells commerce.

I'll have a video of the guard's witty script reading ready soon, so watch this space. Meanwhile, retrace my steps today here ...

The approach to the site includes a sure-to-vanish piece of yesteryear - a 35-year old car wash

The two paintings hung on the "gallery" walls of the highline

Note the water cooler of cheap wine. Apparently someone tasted it and it "wasn't good."

Do you have repose? asks the wall.

That might have been the friendly picture-taking guard but he wasn't in character when I took the shot.

The waiting throng. Apparently Banksy funded the bench, water cooler, gates, security guards and truckload of stones underfoot.

Everyone patiently waiting for their 5 minute brush with fame

Photos with oneself smiling on front of art are utterly lame so therefore must be executed.

The crowd swells - the show ends at midnight tonight.

They needn't have worried - 5 minutes enables everyone to get close.

The car wash to the left, an odd relic amongst the exploding starchitecture and generification of West Chelsea.

Ho hum.

Street art abounds in this area, though much if it is somewhat polite and accessible, like this mural across the road.

On the opposite corner is the Shvo/Kasmin GettyStation - a sheep station (get it?). Don't try and steal the sheep, big security guards abound here too, and besides, they weigh a ton - and so do the bronze sheep.

Another view of the Highline and starchitecture flanking the Banksy show.

"Well look at that, Merl ..." [Insert way better Gary Larson line here]

Just had to show you another shot of that REAL turf. Someone was seen mowing it the other day...

35 years and counting

Another shot of that classic sign. No artsy irony here. Strangely refreshing, isn't it?

A nearby gallery naturally is on its toes ...

Banksy - the man of the moment!

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: It's time to collect!

2013-02-12T20:30:00.001-08:00

The final resting place - with fellow Spot Challenger Kenneth Spriggs' "Spot Homage" reflected in the mirror

TEN MONTHS after 128 Spot Challengers (see Am I Dotty?) took off on a mad scavenger-hunt to eyeball Damien Hirst's spot paintings in 8 countries, it's time to collect from our local Gagosian. And now, a year later, one has even come up for auction at the venerable Phillips auction house (update 2/27/13: it sold for GBP 15,000 or around $22,750 USD). It remains to be seen if the owner's larger-than-life story behind the print may help or hinder its sale - there is no mention of it in the auction listing, and since Phillips are experts in the game, so we can only assume they decided not to "overshare."

SOLD! The first Spot Challenge to go on the block went for GBP15,000 in London on Feb 27, 2013. This is a snapshot of a tweet by the auction house, Phillips.

The view of my print from below ...

The unfurling of an 8-country, 11-gallery, ten month wait at City Frame, NYC

Shot at City Frame, voted best picture framer by New York Magazine and the choice of Spot Challengers Will Leung and arrestedmotion.

My edition number is 69/128 - pencilled just above my name

Dwarfed by the giant tube and the giant, double-doored entrance to Gagosian Gallery on 24th St.

There's been a fair bit of discussion on our Spot Chaser Facebook Group about whether to jettison or jive with the giant cardboard tube, which is capacious enough to be a second bedroom in a standard Manhattan studio. "Keep the toob!" say the hardcore collectors. "Just keep the label," said the framers. Space-wise, I haven't got much of a choice: I'm leaving the $25 tube to a lucky tubester diver.

Picking up my Spot Challenge print from Gagosian Gallery with artist Pamela Talese - who included a homage to Hirst in her recent show, Sugar and Fat

Spot Challenger arrestedmotion reveals the prize - lotsa dots and some cute doodling at the bottom.
Photo courtesy of Will Leung.

First Spot Challenger to post a shot was Rob Sawyer in the UK. Next was arrestedmotion - the above shot a 'fresh-out-of-the-tube' look at his print: a massive 59"x 53" screen print, complete with dedication and doodles. I confess I was hoping for one with larger spots, like the big painting at the bottom of my original post here. But hey, who's circumferencing? Apparently there are 420 spots, each one different. Blogger TwoCoatsofPaint suggests the the number 420 is a euphemism for getting high.

On our chatty little Spot Chasers Facebook group, owner of Galerie Mia Joosten (Amsterdam) Dirk Den Hartog reported the good oil from the actual printers of the print:

This is what Chloë Faine, Director of Administration, Coriander Studio (printer of our prints) said about our prints: The print does indeed have 420 individually mixed and hand screen-printed colours on it. Each spot is unique. We don't know but we suspect this is the largest number of colours to have been printed on a silk-screen print. it is certainly the largest number we have ever done. The special nature of the print was, I believe, designed to acknowledge the scale of the 'spot challenge' undertaken by those who won one. You can read about the silkscreening technique here.

My Spot Challenge card - it traveled to 8 countries (9 if you count Australia at the end)

We're off to see Gagosian ... with artist Jenny Krasner who just returned from a 6 months residency and show in Shanghai. Read my post about Jenny's collaboration with writer Heather Sellers.

So here's my pickup story: I set off To Gagosian with artist friend Jenny Krasner, fresh from Shanghai where she'd spent a 6 month's artist's residency culminating in a solo show. Jenny's mother, co-owner of the once-was Oscar Krasner Gallery apparently has some advice for artists and gallerists wanting to make it big, literally: If the art's not good, just make it big - or paint it back.

A day earlier, the New York Times published a piece about Damien Hirst splitting with Gagosian. So I was collecting my print just in the nick of time. And behold, here was Taglialatella Gallery NYC prominently displaying a Damien Hirst circular Spot Print in its front window, as if to beckon the world's richest living contemporary artist to its fold.

It's mine! A print taller than me.

Taking ownership.

On arrival we were warmly greeted by the Gagosian Gallerinas behind the desk - who, unlike the reports of cooler receptions in other galleries, were full of congratulations and grace.

Celebrating at Park Restaurant (best yogurt fruit granola in Chelsea) with fellowess Spot Challenger Chase Ghatan - and wearing my Spot Challenger uniform and hat.

Three Artists and two Spot Challengers: Pamela Talese, Peter White (Spot Challenger), Me and Jenny Krasner brunch at the cavernous Park Restaurant NYC, a former parking garage.

We then proceeded to Park Restaurant to brunch, joined by fellow Spot Challengers Peter White and Chase Ghatan. (Note to foodies: Park has the best yogurt fruit granola. For other best cheap'n'choosy options in Chelsea, check my personally curated list, Where to Eat Between the Canvases in Chelsea .

It's not a bazooka, honest: beau carries it home.

So what about this dedication?

I requested "Spot on, Galfromdownunder!" and later thought "I bet your friends are laughing now" would have been cheekier. However, the latest reports as Challengers pick up and prise open their prints, are that Hirst (or his assistants - or maybe even his kids) has merely written "To [name]" then doodled a shark, a butterfly and a skull. That's basically a mini-catalog of Hirst's oeuvre, the consummate marketer he is. Whether he decided that some dedications were too lame and that people might attribute a lack of creativity to him is anyone's guess. ~~I was hoping he'd at least write "Galfromdownunder" rather than my real name.~~ Nope, he didn't.

Celebrating at Company Restaurant: Earlier in the week I met Spot Challenger Kenneth Spriggs from Colorado who flew to NYC and FedEx'd his print home. We're sporting "I SPOT DH" badges from Hirst woodblock printers Manifold Editions booth at the Affordable Art Fair.

Some Spot Challengers are meeting up in different cities to celebrate. Through the Spot Chasers Facebook page (set up by Hospitality Club founder Viet Kuehne) I met Colorado challenger Kenneth Spriggs who came, saw, and FedEx'd his print back home. We lunched at the very cool Company pizzeria in Chelsea, and from mathematical genius Ken I learned about big data and statistician/artist Edward Tufte, whose gallery I wander past every day but have never thought to investigate. This is why I rarely say no to any invitation to do whatever - you never know what you might learn. (In fact, I'll insert one of my guiding principles in life here: if you want to change your life, you don't need to go do anything life-threatening or expensive. Just say yes more often than no).

Ken did more than merely travel the 8 countries like the rest of us, chasing spots. The man has just devoted a bunch of time and housepaint to reproducing Hirst's Spot paintings as a kind of experimental homage. Check out A Novice Makes a Spot Painting, and dang it if he hasn't just scored an exhibition at his local pizzeria! His next coup? Hitting up art critic Jerry Salz of Make Me a Faux Richter fame.

But back to the cavernously uncozy lobby of Gago:

"Apparently there were 50 spot print tubes at the gallery," said Ken, which leads me to wonder if there are 50 Spot Challengers in NYC and why they haven't joined our Facebook group to confab ...

Some framing estimates range from $700+ to over $2000 (depending on how much rent the framer has to pay, perhaps). Perhaps I can start a framing fad of a clear tube which stands in a corner with the print facing out - certainly a lot more space-friendly to New Yorkers living in tiny spaces. I have chosen to have mine framed at City Frames along with four other Spot Challengers: 1" wood frame, plexiglass, floated. Price? $877. Spot on. Since I spent a total of $2500 plus a few airmiles to do the entire trip, the overall expense of the entire junket was not bad at all.

Now, I hope the wall I've hung it on is load bearing. Any chance of reviving the art of ceiling frescos, anyone?

Snakes, Ladders and Life Drawing: Art Director's Club Creative Carnival

2012-12-04T14:31:00.001-08:00

An albino Burmese Python - "a non-venomous constrictor."

As if being creative on demand isn't already stressful enough, any party thrown by the advertising or design industries had better be an art-directed jaw dropper or you'll be sneered out of the room - from the slick promo poster down to the burlesque aerialist gyrating with an Albino Burmese Python.

So all that and more was served up at the Art Directors Club Creative Carnival, a promo night for illustrators and their reps co-run by a portfolio company called Workbook.

The loft-like Chelsea offices of the AD club was transformed into a circus space where 30 or so artists and illustrators sat ringside, engaged in a "life drawing" exercise of the slightly contorted kind ...

Inside the ring, ladies in burlesque costumes (and skirts made from bananas) cracked whips, performed aerial acro-yoga and and fondled some pretty impressive creatures, like a yellow-hued Albino Burmese Python. How do I know it was an Albino Burmese Python?

Ben Paramonte, one of the writers at Juice Pharma (where I am currently freelancing and how I managed to get invited to this event) is a snake collector with several of his own - presumably in reinforced tanks ...

"That's an albino Burmese python and that one's a jungle carpet python - both non-venomous constrictors," he enthused, pointing to what resembled a big, yellow cornmeal baguette prior to baking. "That one's a true giant - females regularly grow 17+ feet, males top out around 14-17 feet. It's one of the most popular pythons in captivity."

Snake enthusiast Ben struts his dedication....

It was like having my very own Animal Planet host and admittedly, the women faded into the wallpaper.

"The Burmese python is native to South East Asia, and is one of the largest snakes in the world (20+ feet long); they are currently listed as invasive species in Florida, with several established breeding populations."

He added that this particular snake set off the captive breeding industry in the US during the 1980's; it is both illegal to own one in NYC and to transport it across state borders (presumeably slithering across the frontera of its own accord is OK).

"The jungle carpet python is native to Australia, and reaches lengths of 7-12 feet. The carpet python both lives in trees and on the ground. They get their name due to the intricate pattern of their scales and the velvet sheen they give off in the sun. They are rear-fanged snakes, which allows them to grab birds while in a tree. Pretty awesome animals, Darwin would be proud."

If you want to see more of Ben's favorite snake - carpet pythons - check out this link

I spent some time poking my tongue out at the critter as it coiled around it's mistress's shoulders; it responded by shooting out a little forked tongue and blinked at me quite benignly. "Feels felt like a Gucci snakeskin clutch," remarked a couple of women who touched it - smooth, just a little springy and ... warm.

Drag queens were on hand to serve pulled pork sliders, chocolate covered grapes (weird), bubbly and beer. There was also an overly healthy buffet of raw veggies that were left basically untouched. Creative freaks are not necessarily known for being health freaks.

The doodling was not merely for self-promotion - as each piece was finished it was tacked to a wall to be bought for $50 - proceeds going to an ADC scholarship fund. Many of the rendiditions were in familiar "fashion drawing" style.

A departure from typical fashion style was Picasso-meets-Haring-in-a-stripmall-near-you drawings by yellow-puffy-parker-wearing Jon Burgerman (disclosure - I now own this piece).

Burgerman, a self styled "salad enthusiast" is an established artist in his native Britain and more recently, Mexico. With with more than 10,000 Facebook fans, cool brand collaborations in his portfolio and even a line of merchandising a la Damien Hirst, he's is preparing to take New York by post-Sandy storm. His contributions, snapped up by buyers the moment he signed off his name were rendered with the Krink

brand of luminous, permanent markers (Krink has an awesome graffiti-artist-did-great story). See more of Jon's work from the evening on his blog here.

Jon Burgerman: the one that got away from me when I wasn't looking! I ended up buying the one he is holding above..

I also bought a little trio by from Nishan Akgulian that included the images below:

Thank you to guru art buyer Allison Candage at Juice Pharma for inviting me to this event!

MORE PHOTOS: A few more shots on my Chelsea Gallerista Facebook page

Pamela Talese's Sugar & Fat: from rusting iron to colorful calories

2012-10-31T13:39:00.002-07:00

A sweet show: Pamela with Gumdrops (left) and Billy's Cupcakes (right)

If you glance back through this blog you'll note that I'm a huge contemporary art fan – the weirder and more subversive, the better. But I do appreciate a good still life, especially if its weird, subversive, or makes me want to eat it. That seemed to be the gut sentiment of the enthused crowd who gathered in the lobby of a Greenwich Village apartment building to view "Sugar and Fat" by New York painter Pamela Talese.

Cheese and Hermes Scarf: Had even the most vegan diehards dreaming of brie and crackers. OK, maybe not vegans ...

The paintings featured some iconic New York sweets and treats, offset by unusual backdrops to give them a this-is-Talese-not-Thiebaud twist. Plates of mini-cupcakes disappeared in a New York nanosecond (the Oreos lingered), and many people were mesmerized by the buttery slice of brie in "Cheese and Hermes Scarf." It was the first of the 19 small paintings to get the red sticker, even though you could have scarfed a boatload of the real thing for the listed price of $1700. Speaking of scarves, the caption read "... it helped me realize the true artistry of Hermes Scarf design."

I first Pamela on her typical commute - on a folding bicycle. She flagged me down on the way to her studio in Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she'd often park her bike trailer to paint ships, rusting iron and other "patina opportunitues" en plein air. Here's a sample of her maritime oeuvre:

The Matthew Tibbetts in Dry Dock: part of Pamela's extensive, inedible oeuvre.

If you read her bio, you might deduce that ships and rust are an antidote to her sartorial past in fashion, magazine design and interior design. In Sugar and Fat, there's a spoonful that past sprinkled in almost every painting, where the calorific main event is paired with contrasting fabric and found object backgrounds.

Crazy Donuts

La Maison de Macaron: a nod to Damien Hirst

Capezzoli di Venere: or Sicilian Venus's Nipples, a hot favorite in Sicily

Keith's Fudge Tart: "I wanted to see how crazy I could make myself painting three levels of translucency.This fudge tart, sent to me by a friend, contains about 2500 calories."

The second most minimal painting next to the Hirst homage: Gumdrops.

A closer look at Billy's Cupcakes, from the much-loved store in Chelsea. Note the painstakingly reproduced cloth "from a store in Broadway."

Pamela's long time friend Robinson orchestrated the show.

While doing some calorific "research" of my own for iPad magazine Dinks NY I came across Delmonico's famous Baked Alaska. This is an ice cream extravaganza covered in minarets of piped meringue, resembling a kind of burlesque bathing cap. I suggested it as an item for the series, but Pamela set me straight - she not only paints en plein air (in the open air), she paints the real deal, not from photographs.

Apparently, even with still life, something is always moving, and capturing that movement is what makes the stillness come alive. The "sitting" would have required several canisters of liquid nitrogen or a refrigerator full of duplicates. It was easier for me to just eat it and tell her about it for Sugar & Fat II!

Delmonico Restaurant's famous Baked Alaska - it won't sit still long enough to be painted. Photo: Valerio_B on flickr. He's got willpower - I'd already eaten it before I got a chance to shoot it!

SUGAR & FAT will be on view in the lobby of 350 Bleecker Street (between 10th Street and Charles) from October 25th through the end of November. Should you find yourself in the neighborhood, do stop in. There will be a reception on October 25th from 6pm-8pm, and in all likelihood, cupcakes will be served.

Columbus on the Coffee Table: A sculpture by Tatzu Nishi

2012-10-08T21:15:00.002-07:00

CLICK ON PICTURES FOR A BIGGER VIEW
A sweep around Columbus' temporary living room courtesy of the free Photosynth iPhone app

There's nothing like visual juxtaposition to tickle the human psyche ... witness he of the giant soft hamburger, fan and wall sockets fame - Claes Oldenburg (yes if you scroll down, that link does show a piece by Claes Oldenburg).

The latest art stunt in New York City is Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi's Columbus on the Coffee Table, smack bang on a traffic island in Columbus Circle.

OK, that's not the title of the work. It's actually called Discovering Columbus, playing on the fact that the man - actually a scoundrel and a butcher - discovered America. I like my title better.

I must be the zillionth person to pose like this in front of the statue

The entrance was free, and ticket holders who booked online patiently waited to climb size flights of scaffolded stairs to get to the mock "living room." Naturally, there was an elevator for the otherly-abled, out-of-shape or lazy.

The view from behind, with New York party guests

Inside, visitors sprawled on the furniture and thumbed magazines, looking out of the windows to 360-degree views of the whirling traffic in the streetscape below. I sat in a window and was shooed away by a security guard. I think the window should have had cushions there to sit in, because that's what Columbus would do if he wasn't made of marble!

The view to the north, towards Central Park

The view to the east, up 59th Street

The only thing that was missing were some rice crackers and drinks to complete the homey scene. One thing you realized is that this is the closest you'll even get to being eye to eye with the statue. When the show is over, the scaffolding will be used to scrub and touch up the statue, then it will be dismantled. You'll never get this close again, unless you're a rogue abseiler.

The wallpaper featuring icons of American pop culture

Apparently some people were annoyed to have the streetscape marred by the scaffolding required to create this spectacle - especially on Columbus Day. To ameliorate this external eyesore, the scaffolding could have been covered with a banner mimicking the base of the statue, right? Then again, they never build a monument to a critic ...

The view from the street, an annoyance to some fans of Columbus. Circle

The Japanese are usually fanatics of making things really tiny. In fact, I wrote about the Japanese obsession with miniaturization on my Upover blog. When I visited there in 2009, I noticed that even their garbage trucks were smallish, quiet and polite. Tatzu really knocked himself out with this one.

Another project by the mischievous Tatzu Nishi

Tatzu Nishi website

Design Boom has some nice pictures shot with a fancier camera than my iPhone

Google "Tatzu Nishi Columbus" and every man and his arty dog has written about this - including yours truly!

Tattered, threadbare kimonos at Shibui: why the designers want them

2012-07-01T13:14:00.002-07:00

VIDEO: Dane Owen talks about the Boro, or "tattered rags" used to describe patched and repurposed kimonos.

If you ever venture across the Brooklyn Bridge to Dumbo, possibly headed for the ultra-hip (in a rustic way) Vinegar Hill House restaurant for brunch, make sure you stumble around the corner to visit Shibui.

Dane recently restored this Japanese Step Tansu. From the Facebook post: "I would say it was early Meiji c1880. It was made with hand forged nails and hinges . Mortised and tenoned joinery. Hinoki wood frame. I have 3 other Kaidan on the website, one is a little smaller but they are real so they have to be big enough to get to the second floor and deep enough so you wont fall off."

It's a treasure trove of old Japan in a cavernous, cement floor garage. The owner Dane Owen, a Santa Fe native, pops up from behind a great wall of tansu (Japanese storage cabinets, no doubt the Ikea of old Japan at the time) as a walking Wikipedia of Japanese aesthetics and the pieces he's personally collected from the Japanese countryside.

"It's so expensive for people to get rid of things - you can't just leave them on the roadside - so you can find some amazing pieces of craftsmanship you won't see in normal stores," he said. People don't just give you stuff, however - being a Gaijin, Dane has spent years earning the confidence and respect of local contacts who led him to his greatest finds.

A Japanese fireman's kimono - layers of cotton you wet down before chopping down the combustible parts of houses.

Dane lets you poke around in drawers and find all kinds of fascinating things, like axes and board games, sewing accoutrements, ceramics and ancient fabrics. You can get stuff for as little as free (usually charmingly chipped) to thousands of dollars.

In the above video Dane talks about something we usually never see in the west - Boro ("tattered rags"). These are heavily patched and repaired kimonos, once a symbol of economic shame after the devastation of World War II, and now collector's items.

"A little girl would wear one of these for 4 years - her only kimono," said Dane. When it was impossible to patch and strengthen further with sashiko (lines of straight stitching through layers of cloth), a kimono could be shredded into threads and then rewoven into quilt covers. Apparently designers like Ralph Lauren are seeking out these items to weave into their collections. In fact, I'm designing a bikeable yoga mat bag to add to my Traffic Cone Bag line, and thinking of adding a bit of Boro as trim. What has Boro got to do with yoga? Nothing, but what fun!

The fireman's kimono is a thick, multi-layered garment that was wet down as firefighters went in to battle a blaze. This often meant smashing shoji screens and ornately carved windows so flames wouldn't spread further.

I picked up these two sake vases for around $15 each. Read about Shibui's ceramics.

A sewing station - you rest your arm on the lower surface and store needles in the little top drawer.

Unfortunately, Dane's move to a somewhat low-key area of Brooklyn means he hasn't been getting the kind of Japanophiles he needs to stay in business. Fans of Dane and Shibui implore you to check out his site and go visit his shop. He's discounted a lot of the stock heavily as he prepares for the inevitable unless we all rally to support him. Do you need or have room for a Japanese Sake vase? Of course you do. How about a multi-drawer ornate Tansu? Well tell someone who might! At the very least, go Like him on Facebook.

Want more Japan? You can read about my Japan travels from Tokyo to Kyushu with a folding bike in my Galfromdownunder Upover blog.

The gritty, cobbled-street environs of Vinegar Hill, where great sourdough pancakes and Japanese antiques collide ... photo by the Galfromdownunder in a Photoshop Elements frame of mind ...

www.shibui.com

Fine Asian Wares and Antiques
306 Water Street (in DUMBO)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Phone: 718-875-1119
Fax: 718-875-1921
E-mail: info@shibui.com

DIY Art Galleries: Home of the next Hirst?

2012-05-08T08:48:00.003-07:00

Only in New York City!

Someone from Downunder wrote me today, saying they'd been approached online by a Chelsea gallery offering representation.

The offer came with a proviso that most painterly puritans run screaming from - a hefty upfront fee of $3000, and 30% of sales (which is less than the usual 50%). It is popularly known as a "vanity gallery," where you pay for the privilege of exposure.

The question to ChelseaGallerista was, should I go for it?

Well, you're looking at someone who's never taken the road well-pedaled. I made a career out of taking marketing to the nth degree by homestaying with customers year round as an invited family member. I rode a bike for a living and turned it into a platform for customer evangelism and content-driven advocacy. I look for the opportunity, not the objection. (You'll even find me asking an Amway salesperson, so what have you got that's new and good?).

So, my take is about asking, rather than judging ... what could I do with an opportunity like this?

As you can read in this nice little post from ArtistsEmerging, there are three kinds of what I'll call the DIY gallery - vanity, co-op and rental. They all involve some kind of monetary contribution from you, the artist, whether it be a big upfront fee, ongoing contribution, ability to photocopy and help out in other ways, or perhaps all of the above. In exchange, you get to show your stuff to an audience who might not otherwise see it.

Now every artist wants Larry Gagosian to discover their shark in formaldehyde and convert it to a national monument, but that's not going to happen for most. The self-serve gallery is another way to get your work out there. If that gallery happens to be in the Promised Land of New York City, so much the better.

Like a vanity press for publishers, vanity galleries usually ask for a fairly big fee and a commission on sales, in exchange for representation, showings, and promotion in their literature and hopefully, the media. Unfortunately, they are generally despised by "real artists," who claim they can, in fact, tarnish an artist's career. I think this has much to do with prevailing attitudes than the nature of the agreement - it seems no different from retaining a public relations or law firm to handle your PR/legal affairs.

A co-op gallery is a collective of like-minded artists with a common goal, cause, or theme. Cost of entry is usually an ongoing membership fee and roster of duties to help run the gallery. The advantage is that running costs are spread out over many individuals, not a bad tactic in tough economic times - and it's always tough for artists. An example of this is the feminist Ceres Gallery in NYC. This post talks about the co-op style of gallery.

A rental gallery is just that - you pay for the space, and you may or may not get some marketing support - this may be left largely to you and your social media skills.

Which brings me to the real point of this article - if your work is good, or you can convince enough people it's good (even if it isn't) - any of these avenues can work for you, while you wait for Larry Gagosian to knock at your door. Because unlike artists in the past, you have that free, unsecret sauce: the INTERNET. And specifically, social media.

Facebooking, tweeting, YouTubing, Pintaresting ...

I was watching Jimmy Kimmel who had a gal on his show who could recite any word backwards in a split second. He discovered her on YouTube, and brought her on the show to add zing to one of his humorous advertorials. The video shows her sitting in the car as her beau utters words and she reverses them.

Just look at Justin Bieber - say no more.

Some people feel the same negativity about The Affordable Art Fair - "it's a place you only want to be in once if at all." Yet, in 2012, Damien Hirst, one of the richest young artists in the world, exhibited some woodcuts there.

Do you think Hirst worries about what people might think? Maybe you shouldn't either.

If I was an artist now, I'd set up a Pintarest pinboard with all my best work displayed. I've actually done this with my advertising portfolio. I like it because people are time poor. They don't have time or patience to go clicking through slideshows and menus. You have 2 nanoseconds to get their attention.

Meanwhile, if you have the funds and the inclination, there is nothing wrong with showing your art in any of the above channels - as long as you do your due diligence with social media.

Ms Sulu to you! GeekingOut with George Takei

2012-04-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

Patrick Yacco of GeeksOut congratulates me on winning a PJ McQuade doodle of George Takei - and seems that George "liked" this photo on Facebook.

OK, it wasn't in Chelsea, but good as ...

Last Friday I got an impromptu invite to an art raffle by my illustrator friend Justin Winslow. Oh how fun to be Justin's "fruit flyette" of an evening ... last time I mumbled "ok" to one of his texts I ended up in a place called the Rawhide staring up at an impressively gyrating, live advertisement for Iron Gym, one of which, like you, I own and have hanging, like yours, nowhere near a doorframe turning me into Wonder Woman or you into Big Arnie, unless you're a body conscious Chelsea boy. Yes, Chelsea is known for its gay population, although the plummet from gentrification to generification is fast turning it into another Duane Read/Rite Aide/Olive Garden 'burbia. But I digress.

The event, organized by a very fun collective called Geeks Out (read: gays into comics, art toys and therefore ComiCon) was a fundraiser to celebrate the 75th birthday of actor George Takei. For the uninitiated, Takei is most famous for his role as Mr Sulu in precambrian episodes of Star Trek. He is loudly and proudly gay and, judging from the exuberant videos on his site, seems to be having more fun than any sentient being in this galaxy.

The event poster was covetable too - designed by GeeksOut organizer Josh Siegel.
What am I wearing? My favorite dress from Animated Closet, Brooklyn, found at ConiCon ...

After scarfing the best lasagne in Manhattan at Cola's (8th and 17th), we got to the event - at a church(!) just in time to miss Justin's own Takei art piece being won by one lucky duck, Theo. Unlike many of the submissions which were perfectly appropriate and lovely framed inkjet prints, Justin gave away the original. Lucky Theo!

Lucky Theo wins Justin's Winslow's Takei and gets to meet the artist.

As to the raffle mechanics, $10 ($20) bought you 5 tickets (10 with a beer) which you could slip into any of the ballot boxes depending on which artwork you most wanted to win. Theo put all all 10 tickets on Justin's work and it paid off.

Read about Justin's Takei

I spread my bets and put one ticket in the box for each of 5 different works - there were so many great ones - and was amazed when my number came up. Unfortunately my artist, PJ McQuade from Brooklyn wasn't there to see possibly the only straight person in the room win it. It was presented to me by the friendly co-organizer, Patrick Yacco.

"Dang, I really wanted that one!" came a chorus of Justin's friends as I minced back to my place in the crowd, making me feel like I should have gifted it to a die-hard fan. Ah, but as a card-carrying Asian, who knows of the racial-never-mind-gender discrimination that forever lurks in the hinterland of Caucasia, it felt like a significant and empowering acquisition. OK, so Takei's Japanese, I'm Chinese-Australian ... nothing Wong with that ...

Rainbows and starships and swords - Oh, my!
George Takei aka Mr Sulu, by PJ McQuade. Read about this picture

On leaving the event, which was lacking only in having no Wonder Woman dancing up the aisle (athough there WAS a Ghostbuster), the group meandered south to the Western-themed gay bar, Flaming Saddles in Hell's Kitchen. Cleverly, this establishment affords a clear view from the street of gee-up boys line dancing on the bar to the predictably excellent music that most gay bars are famous for (why can't straight establishments do good music - like, just buy the same CD's, OK?).

People inside were having so much fun (why can't straight establishments be like that?), but with reluctance I bade the group farewell, as I had to be up with the garbage trucks to teach my 8.30am Saturday yoga class at YoGanesh (and yes, we'd love to see more Chelsea boys swing by - actually, more boys period).

Namaste, pardner!

Galfromdownunder aka ChelseaGallerista at ComicCon

Complete catalog of Takei Back the Night submissions

Hirst and Banksy: Butterflies of a Feather?

2012-04-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

Damien Hirst: Cathedral Print, Duomo 2007 - spotted at Phillips de Pury, Park Ave Evening Collections
Article: 9,000 butterflies killed in Hirst's latest artwork

VIDEO: Damien Hirst Retrospective at the Tate Modern, April 2012

In the space of hours my inbox has been deluged with news stories about mega-artist Damien Hirst.

The first is about his new website complete with Hirst-cam. Two cameras (when they're switched on) are trained on his worktable, platoons of assistants and hopefully, fleeting glimpses of the man himself: www.damienhirst.com

The second is about a new series of Hirst multiples selling at the 2012 Affordable Art Fair, a place where, the career-conscious have told me, an artist might start, spend one, maybe two seasons ("tops"), and hopefully never "need" to return. In this exhibit, his dealer Manifold Editions is offering his spot series as woodcuts, a word my brain unfortunately flummoxes with "woodblocks" and immediately pops up a opicture of a Japanese wave and Fuji. Spot Challenger Alex Nochese sleuthed it out and reports "AFF had very small single spot prints for $1,500; nothing at AAF is over 10,000. The rest were 1500-4000 and relatively small to medium size."

The third was a series of Hirst poster downloads, though I don't know if they'd be digitally signed. Put them behind museum glass and who'd be the wiser?

The fourth is a particularly snarky Independent op-ed titled "Damien Hirsts are the sub-prime of the art world." Here, author Julian Spalding is hell bent on blowing the whistle on the Hirst-led "art bubble," and urges people to "sell their Hirsts now before the crash." And presumeably, buy his book.

All this can be seen as merely the frothy foam of Hirst's current retrospective at the Tate Modern.

Yours truly having a field day with Hirst's spots at the Gagosian Davies St London, on the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge

You can make a lot of frenemies arguing about art vs commerce. Indeed, when I decided to do the Spot Challenge, reactions from friends, beau and onlookers ranged from "What a waste of time" to "he's a con man" to "what a great idea - just do it!"

ART <----------- your favorite artist somewhere along here ---------> COMMERCE

I confess that as a former Saatchi & Saatchi scribbler (in three countries) I have no problem standing at the junction of art meets commerce and staring off into the distance in either direction. Art nourishes the soul, commerce nourishes our dinner table. Or rather, commerce enables us to live, art gives us something to live for. Yet most artists are expected to be underpaid and live in poverty, because of a sense that "they're having fun and I'm not" or "art is not necessary to life."

Hirst has successfully bridged that divide. Regardless of whether you like him or not, he's at least producing something we can choose to admire or even download for our wall, something tangible cheaper and a lot less dangerous than derivative.

1. What makes art, art? According to minimalist giant Frank Stella, it is "if you say it is," I explored this in my SVA essay, based on satirist Steven Colbert's skit in which he invited three mega-famous artists to doodle over a particularly odious inkjet print, and then asked Steve Martin if he'd buy it. He didn't, but it sold for $27K at auction to benefit a worthy cause.

2. What is "ultimate power" for an artist? To have your work reach the status of the Mona Lisa? I propose an alternative: what if Hirst reverse-engineered his success by flooding the market with fakes, reducing the work of his work to zero, then going off and doing something else? He's got the money to do it.

"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (Damien Hirst)

"Can't see it happening - because people will always buy into the idea," said my art loving friend and professor Economics, Ed.

Proving, that it's not about art, it's about the people, and the mystique.

I wrote an article "challenging" Banksy to reverse engineer himself here. I hallucinate that Hirst is quietly going through ticking them off himself. What do you think?

A simple spin painting on a small sheet of letter sized paper, rumored to be the work of one of Hirst's kids.
It was successfully auctioned for a few thousand dollars at Phillips de Pury.

The Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: The dottiest scavenger hunt ever

2012-02-20T17:35:00.000-08:00

I popped up out of the subway in Athens to face a phalanx of police riot shields. In LA, Stephen Spielberg's mother proudly toured me through her shrine to her son's talent (it's on the way to the restroom of her diner). Then there was Occupy London with its dystopian yet fiercely activist vibe ... and the $10/night Kung Fu hostel buried in one of Hong Kong's buzzing cities-within-a-building with its Changi prison aesthetic and crazed woman who refused to budge from my bunk bed …

SPOT PLANKING: One of the funnest things you can do in Geneva at the Gagosian Geneva gallery.

Thanks to Johan @Gogo for being a great sport!

My latest escapade was a complete departure from anything I've attempted before: the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge - a kind of global art scavenger hunt.

The brief: dash across datelines visiting 11 galleries showing the artist's Spot Painting retrospective, get your official "been there, spotted that" card stamped, and as a reward, receive a spot print personally signed and dedicated to you by Hirst himself.

It was one of the stressful, yet exhilarating adventures I've ever undertaken. I can safely say that although I was in Paris in the morning, Geneva at lunchtime and Rome in the afternoon, I saw as a more stuff that on other trips with a more leisurely schedule. Those Japanese tourist buses are onto something!

The full spot-by-spot journey is thrashed out in a series of blog posts below. Who knows if Hirst will even repeat this kind of thing (it took him a year to deliver our print), but you can trace my journey (NY -> LA -> London -> Paris -> Geneva -> Rome -> Athens -> HK) now:

SPOT #1-3: New York, New York, New York!

The Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Am I dotty? (3 down, 8 to go!) in which I snag 3 spots in one city and start seriously thinking about doing the challenge
A challenge on top of the challenge in which I impose an additional challenge on myself: visit all 8 countries using only my signature Traffic Cone Bag as luggage
Minimalism to go aka my trip list, and how I managed to fit 8 countries' worth of gear into one (ok 2) small Traffic Cone Bags

SPOT #4: New York to LA

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: New York to LA (4 down, 7 to go!) in which I meet the diminutive Ms Spielberg senior and even sample her blintzes

SPOT #5-6: LA to London

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: LA to London (6 down, 6 to go!) in which I encounter the sobering Occupy London protest and reflect on why the heck am I chasing spots when others are just chasing a living wage

SPOT #7: London to Paris

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: London to Paris (7 down, 4 to go!) in which I am whisked to Paree on the TGV, am gifted a book on Picasso and eat a Corsican lasagne

SPOT #8: Paris to Geneva

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Paris to Geneva (8 down, 3 to go!) in which I get to ook at a bunch of Swatch watches and Rolexes and not much else

SPOT #9: Geneva to Rome

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Geneva to Rome (9 down, 2 to go!) in which I stay in the most charming little hostel and do as Romans don't really do

SPOT #10: Rome to Athens

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Rome to Athens (10 down, 1 to go!) in which I pop up in Syntagma Square amidst the riots and again question why I am chasing spots when a whole nation is chasing a better standard of living

SPOT #11: Athens to Hong Kong

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Athens to Hong Kong (11 down, FINISHED!) in which I end up in the most bizarre budget accommodation imaginable (google Mirador Mansion) and treated to dinner by colleagues of Mark Mobius, from my Bike Friday heydays...

IT'S TIME TO COLLECT...

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: It's time to collect the print we've been promised. It took a few months to arrive, and it turned out to be bigger than Britain...

Picking up my Spot Challenge print from Gagosian Gallery with artist Pamela Talese - who included a homage to Hirst in her recent show, Sugar and Fat

Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Athens to Hong Kong - FINISHED!

2012-02-18T05:05:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Andrew Luk of Gagosian Hong Kong for this admirable composition. The painting was hung a little lower than the one in Athens - probably because everyone in Honkers is 5' nothing like me.

Read my complete Spot Challenge chronicle

The Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong was my last stop on the Spot Challenge. How awful to come all this way and fluff it ... but it nearly happened.

Unable to secure a China Visa "on the fly" to visit my cousins in Beijing for a couple of days, I'd moved my onward flight forward. This meant I'd have to sit for a few hours at Beijing airport, then depart for Hong Kong same day, as the immigration rules dictate. (It was cheaper to do this than re-book the flight).

An Etihad airlines officer summoned me to the counter. It appears, madam, you do not have a valid onward ticket out of Beijing. WTF? I'd spent an eternity at the Beehive Hostel in Rome calling the eternally inconvenient United Airlines office in the USA (can you believe it? A global airline that requires you to call long distance to their terminally busy home office!), trying to move that flight forward. The problem? The supposedly updated email confirmation didn't contain the new flight number.

"If we let you fly, they will send you back here and we get fined," she said.

After much head scratching and concealed panic I suddenly hit on the idea of looking at my United Mileage Plus account on the computer of Christina, a woman whose sole ambition in life is to solve flight connection glitches. We drilled down and bingo, there was the updated ticket number. "I LOVE MY JOB!" she whooped.

This is a serious procedural oversight by United, so be warned - check for your ticket numbers in the confirmation email.

Good Morning Beijing

People say good things about Middle Eastern airlines. Those countries have money, cheap oil and a lot of those pilots fly the Royal Family around. They *should* know how to fly a plane, right, said one blogger. So I felt optimistic about flying Etihad, the airline of the United Arab Emirates. The stopover was in Abu Dhabi ($US595.40). The other choice, Aeroflot, had the cheapest Athens-Beijing fare (<$US500) but stopped over in Moscow. Hmmm, with one of the most treacherous European winters on record, do I choose a plane that goes north, or one that goes south? After overhearing that another Spot Challenger got stuck up north in tundra for 2 days, it was no brainer.

Like staring up a peacock's butt - in a good way. The ornate Abu Dhabi airport

It was an incredibly long flight. On stumbling out of the plane in Beijing. I walked for miles through a series of cavernous glass boxes, punctuated now and then by a lone food concession, to get to the China Air Gate Lounge. For a long time I was the only human being in that hemisphere of the airport. The food choices were utterly dismal: one cafe selling slices of white bread with a single slice of processed ham or processed cheese inside, or a hot dog roll with same. The cafe near my gate lounge was slightly better, I had a bowl of noodle soup for an outrageous $US11.

Glassy Beijing Airport - amuse yourself by making a free 3 minute call to a local

The experience was sweetened by getting a free 27 minutes of yammering to my cousins in Beijing: The phone booths offered a free 3-minute call to a local number. You could not call that number twice from the same phone within 30 mins, so I trekked though 3 gate lounges, each with a bank of 3 phones, and worked my way through them. I'm sure a camera lens above was swivelling about and following my thrifty ass ...

Good Afternoon, Hong Kong

I landed in Hong Kong on a Sunday night with four days to kill - two more than I'd hoped for. At this time of the year the weather is chilly and foggy; the Peak was completely obscured. And, the Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong didn't open until Tuesday.

The scenes that greet you in Honkers - a spectacular harbor, and rampant commerce, the old and the shiny new.

After being almost bankrupted by the Brit pound and to a lesser extent, the Euro, I was now in a far less expensive country, as long as I stuck to hostels and hole-in-the-wall dumplings. $HK100 is worth around $US12, which buys a 50-minute foot massage with change ... such an indulgence is 8-10 times that in the USA.

The first thing on my mind was to find accommodation. Unlike in Paris, I failed to ignite the hospitality of the HK CouchSurfers, so I headed for Mirador Mansion in Kowloon, an area known for cheap traveler accommodations. Here, you can get a "basic box" - a little windowless room with a private bathroom for $US25-30 per night. The most famous of these buildings is Chungking Mansions, a multi-story tenement building with ground floor shops and a grimy, fluourescent-lit ghetto ambience of travelers (mostly African and Asian), permanent residents, mini sweatshops, pop up cafes, pets in cardboard boxes and little businesses small, shady and surreal. Mirador Mansion was simply a quieter version, with less itinerant corridor action and a few less cats.

The ins and outs of Mirador Mansion, a "ghetto of globalization" like its famous neighbor next door, ChungKing Mansion - only a little more laid back

One of the residents

From outside it looks like a simple shopping mall

What $US10 buys you. Ultra thin mattresses, roomates with a story and ... a free window!

Just my bad luck: this was the weekend of a major Gemstone show, and even the crummiest rooms were booked out. Closets were being offered at $US36 or more. I went from floor to floor afraid of what I'd see when the elevator doors opened, wondering why I was risking taking the tiny, creaky elevator. Some places we're decked out like a bordello, with paper lanterns and gaudy bunting. Is there hot water?

"Of course!" came the snippy reply, "this is Hong Kong!"

Modestly appointed but security is high - cameras are trained on every corner of the Kung Fu Garden hostel

In my search I met a man who suggested the Kung Fu Garden Hostel down on the 3rd floor, which offered a dorm bed for an unprecedented $HK80 or $US10. At that price I was prepared for the worst. I discovered it was a little better than that, if you disregard the wafer thin mattresses, a shower nozzle grazing the toilet cistern, an itinerant Pakistani woman I found sleeping in my bed who refused to give it back and Changi prison aesthetics. It was actually a bona fide kung fu studio and was blessed by a semi-outdoor tiled sitting area - hence the name "garden" - the equivalent of palatial grounds in Hong Kong.

Making instant friends at the Garden Hostel - as one does in hostels!

Bizarrely, the place grew on me over three days. I met fascinating people, like the gal in the bunk above, a semi-precious gem broker from Shenzen; she was the go-between for an African gem supplier and her rolodex of jewelry clients in China. There was the transplant from Malaysia, who wanted to be on the cusp of the solar technology boom in China. I met a Californian gal who was teaching in Guangzhou, a Korean gal who had her iPhone picked from her pocket in the street the day she arrived, and a sharp young dude from Eastern Europe who bought up dated cellphones, unlocked them and sold them to his comrades. "Beats working for someone else," he said. He brandished a giant bundle of 2 gigabyte SD cards, a cash cow for him that we now spurn in our our unbridled lust for 16 gigabyte class 10 cards.

One of the guests was a wealthy, 70-year young Italian gent who was originally holed up in the Holiday Inn nearby paying $HK1000 a night, but wasn't meeting anyone "interesting."

"I travel to meet interesting people," he'd said, booking into the Garden Hostel and happily tapping away on his iPad.

"You know there's a cafe down the corridor, right?" said Bob. "Near the cat in the box." It was a private apartment, serving Hong Kong tea, omelette sandwiches and the daily paper.

Bamboo scaffolding is quite at home among the glass and steel

Shopping because you have to.

Hong Kong is a shopping mecca, but being so close to China, you wonder if what you're getting is authentic or a knock off. I made the mistake of asking a store assistant if his iPads were real.

"What kind of question is that, look at the prices first before you make comment!" he snapped.

I ended up buying the first souvenirs of the entire trip - a pair of stainless steel stud earrings from the Swatch Shop (which I didn't see in Geneva) and a Morgan Paris top (which I didn't see in Paris.)

A great relief was the free and plentiful wi-fi in shopping centers, public areas and museums. Like a true internet addict, I think I sat in one mall for two hours surfing my iPhone.

As far as food goes, everyone heads for Temple St Night Market to buy $5 iPhone cases and eat even cheaper noodle dishes. By this time I was jonesing for a foot massage. My boots weren't made for walking this far, and I was more than ready to hand over the $HK100 ($US12) for 50 minutes of relief.

Temple St Market. Eat.

Shop.

Get some relief!

I found a place decorated with giant reflexology posters, which my sister says doesn't mean anything, just sly marketing. It was ground floor, which felt less dodgy than the neon signs beckoning you up to some godforsaken 5th floor. It was worth every shekel. The 60-something masseuse clearly knew what he was doing, and by the end of it, all traces of fatigue had disappeared completely. The rest of the journey home was like walking on air. I suspect that the painful poking of my calf at strategic points may have simply deadened nerve endings long enough for me to get back to the hostel. Chinese massage, called Tui Na, is spreading to many western cities, especially New York and Sydney where it is "$1 per minute." Tui Na competes with the $120/hour massages in luxe surroundings, so and if you're not worried about organic this or aromatherapy that, it's a bargain.

Gagosian Hong Kong - the final spot!

The threshold to the Spotty Gates ...

Tuesday finally rolled around and I set off on the Star Ferry for the gallery in Peddar St. This was the culmination of all this madness, expense, jetlag and ridiculing by my art-educated pals. Behind the desk, Tammy had written at least three long and detailed emails to me about what to see, do and eat in Hong Kong, for which I was deeply grateful. Andrew, her colleague, patiently took a photo integrating my spot hat into one of the paintings, as you can see at the top of this post.

Tammy and Andrew display my completed score card.

The security guard was appropriately unsmiling and humorless. I wondered if there's an Art Gallery Security Guard University where they learn precisely the right body language that substitutes for the AK-47 that McDonald's security guards tote in Nicaragua. (The security guards at the Art Gallery of New South Wales must attend a different university - one came up to me and asked how much I knew about a Cy Twombly Tryptych, then proceeded to discuss its provenance.)

Andrew Luk is an artist - no wonder he took such a great shot finale shot.

"So how do you want your dedication to read?" said Andrew. Yes, this was the moment. Think carefully now. Should I wish to sell this work in the distant future, when I need to pay someone to wipe my tush while I dribble all over myself (don't laugh, it happens), would anyone want to buy a piece that said "Dear Bob, Nice one cobber! Love Damien?" Because at the Armory (Pulse? Scope? Can't remember which art fair) I saw one reading just that.

I could leave it blank, and then it would look like just one of his prints you can buy for $3500 in a cardboard tube from the Spot Shop or Damien Hirst online store. The adventure would be obfuscated. So after pacing around the gallery with the security guard eyeing my every move, I returned to the desk and scribbled "Spot On, Galfromdownunder" on the sheet.

Later, I thought, maybe it should read, "Bet your friends are laughing now." This, despite articles like this ...

So, Spot Challenge done and dusted. How best to celebrate? In Peking Duck style, of course!

Heading to Kowloon - and the Peking Garden restaurant - on the Star Ferry

The view from Kowloon at night.

Virginia and her family treated me to dinner at the Peking Garden Restaurant.

Hunan chicken, jellyfish ...

I had envisaged celebrating alone over $HK19 soup dumplings in Temple St, but to my amazement Virgina, colleague of Mark "Father of Emerging Markets" Mobius at Franklin Templeton Investment, offered to take me to dinner with her family. Mobius spends most of his life darting from country to country checking out promising businesses - and riding a bicycle - including the Bike Friday I sold him a decade earlier. Thank you Zita for connecting me with Virginia. Here's an archived story about my ride with Mobius on a Friday

Biking with one of my first customers back in the day: the immortal Mark Mobius in Singapore, 2009. Read about this.

The Hong Kong Art Gallery

The Peak was still shrouded in fog so I gave it a miss, and headed for the Hong Kong Art Museum. It happened to be showing works by Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong, who, conincidentally, is a minimalist "dot painter" of a different stripe. Read about it in the shot below. Was this exhibition set up in response to the Hirst show across the river? One can only surmise ...

Reminiscence of Jiangnan - in "just a few dots and lines."

Former Residence of Qiu Jin

Two swallows - so minimalist, there actually aren't any swallows.

Nest, an interpretation of the Bird's Nest stadium which housed the Beijing Olympics

My last scouting effort was to try and find a yoga studio. 40 hours of sitting on planes and trains without time to stop and stretch was taking its toll. I navigated a labyrinth of steep streets in Central to locate a studio - only to discover it was charging $US40 a drop in class. YoGanesh, the Manhattan studio where I teach part time, charges $15 for a drop in. It was time to leave Hong Kong.

Land of hand sanitizer

"About 300 people died," said a nurse in the Tsiu Wah restaurant whose table I was sharing for my last supper in Honkers. After the outbreak of SARS, door handles were being disinfected many times a day. "Everyone was scared to go out."

Sorry about this shot, but it says "This handle is disinfected twice a day" - HK Art Museum.

On getting back to my dorm I discovered a woman sleeping in my bed who refused to budge. To save any hassles, I upgraded myself to a windowless private room for $25 to get a good night's sleep. One thing you have to be careful of: set a reliable alarm if you need to catch a flight. Without a window, you wake up whenever and have no idea what time it is. Here's what a typical private room looks like in Kowloon:

View towards door. The door at left is to bathroom. My back is against the wall.

View of room. Alarm clock is essential as there are no windows to wake you up. My back is against the door.

At 3am there was a loud banging on the metal door. It was the woman who had taken my dorm bed. She'd been evicted the day before for non-payment and her stuff dumped outside. She'd returned with a full week's rent and a vengeance.

"$10 buys you a lot of stories," chuckled Bob, the solar energy entrepreneur.

On the Virgin flight to Australia, the item below was considered "news."

Suddenly I don't feel so bad about spending the past week chasing colored spots.

Next: How I did this global jaunt with one Traffic Cone Bag

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Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: The joy of carry-on with 8 countries and 1 small Traffic Cone Bag

2012-02-17T21:35:00.005-08:00

I popped up in Athens to face a phalanx of police riot shields. In LA, Stephen Spielberg's mother showed me her wall of fame to her son (it's on the way to the restroom). Then there was Occupy London ... and the $10/night Kung Fu hostel in Hong Kong with its Changi prison aesthetics and woman who refused to budge from my bunk bed …

I just got back from doing the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge - a kind of global scavenger hunt where you had to dash around visiting all 11 galleries showing his Spot Paintings (NY-LA-London-Paris-Geneva-Rome-Athens-HK), and as a reward, receive a personally dedicated print. It was one of the maddest, funnest things I've ever done. You can follow my journey by scanning the posts before this one and clicking "older post" until you've had a gutful.

The large Traffic Cone Bag was my get-spotted-and-get-away luggage.

So this post should really be titled, The Joy of Carry On.

I set myself up on a kind Challenge-within-a Spot Challenge: can I do the 8-country scavenger hunt in a northern hemispherical winter, carrying just the clothes on my back, and one of my Traffic Cone Bags?

The small TCB shown in split personality mode.

Don't mind the tote in the background - that's for transient stuff like the next meal! At La Guardia Airport on the way to LA.

Having spent years on the road as a solo fully-loaded touring cyclist and digital nomad (by fully loaded I mean carrying your life support system, not being drunk), I've learned how to travel ultralight. The key is multifunctional gear, a notion that inspired me to design my multi-purpose and seemingly popular Traffic Cone Bag.

At the eleventh hour I almost caved and took my utterly indispensible MacPac ultralight slim backpack (oh why do they insist on making the new ones a drab functional blue?) but, with a deep breath, stepped out of my apartment carrying just the large TCB - stuffed to the gills mind you, a packable MUJI bag on my arm for carrying transient stuff like food and ... nothing else!

An ad for the TCB in Momentum Planet, a cycling magazine

Pictured at the top of this post is the complete kit. In the lower center is my large Traffic Cone Bag in city (black) mode.

All right, one small disclosure - I actually had the small Traffic Cone Bag inside the large one, functioning as an inner bag for the itty bitty stuff like camera, sunglasses etc. So if I needed to break it out as an additional bag I could, but this was never the case. The "double bagging" made for extra compartments within the overall shape. It's how I generally use my Traffic Cone Bag on a daily basis.

So for gear freaks, here is a complete inventory of the above main picture.
Note that the items marked (*) were worn by me every day.

YELLOW CIRCLE - Left third of photo, top to bottom:

Black fleece headband (found on a bridge in Geneva, after I lost my Smartwool headband in LA)
Black wool balaclava (Smartwool)
*Special Spot Hat (wool, from an Ecuadorian artisan in NYC - so cool!)
Black wool beanie (bought in Peru)
Toiletries bag (Eagle Creek), important items include hand sanitizer (Wholefoods), SPF stick (Naked Bee), Cold & Flu tincture (Integral Yoga or QuantumHerbal - ESSENTIAL and WORKS), Fish Oil tablets (Carlsson), Balm of Gilead (Australian Scent), earplugs
Glass water bottle (Wholefoods - in hindsight, too small and inflexible)
Foldable brush/mirror
*Blue Long Rainshell (Eastern Mountain Sports)
*Black wool fleece hoodie (Icebreaker 320)
*Cream wool neck gaiter (Smartwool)
*Dark blue microfibre packable blazer (Aspesi Italy- my #1 tailored but technical must-have)
*Black fleece gloves (New Balance)
*Handkerchief (x2)
*Quickdrying underpants (x3, Ex-Officio boyshort) in a mesh bag
*Traffic Cone Bag (large), with small one inside
Passport neck wallet with pen, passport and ID card (don't laugh - I've never fumbled for my boarding pass)
Spot Challenge card

RED CIRCLE - Middle third of photo, top to bottom:

*Black long sleeve wool t-shirt (Icebreaker 250)
Black long sleeve thermal zip T (CRAFT)
*Black cycling tank (Terry Eurohalter - ESSENTIAL)
*Colorful long sleeve top (Custo Vintage)
*Grey thermal pants (Nike)
Black wool leggings (Icebreaker 150)
*Grey wool leg warmers (DeFeet)
*Wool socks (x2, Smartwool PhD crew)
*Black tall boots (Steven)

ORANGE CIRCLE - Right third of photo, top to bottom:

Black wool t-shirt (Icebreaker 150)
Tunic dress (Animated Closet, Brooklyn)
Steven (Madden) calf-height leather boots (with comfy insoles added)
*Canon S100 camera with lanyard, charger, 3 batteries (good stills, easier to carry than my SONY DSC-HX9V which is admittedly better for video)
16 gb SD cards (x4, SanDisk)
Wallet with credit cards, business cards (Timbuktu, a gift from Mike McGettigan at Trophy Bikes)
Gold ballet flats (Bloch, for airplane travel and at hostel etc)
Packable nylon shopping bag (Muji - for transient stuff like food)
Negative ionizer for plane travel (Brookstone - could be total BS but have not read reports to the contrary)
Earphones
Travel wall socket adaptor (Travelon)
iPhone 4S with charger
Printouts of Google Maps of all gallery locations
Printouts of all plane, train and ferry tickets

Additional items, not shown:

Rubber thongs/flipflops - purchased at Hong Kong hostel for shower
Small microfiber travel towel - purchased in Hong Kong
Book "Super Sad Love Story" - gifted to Annika in London because of no time to open it
Third pair of Ex-Officio underpants - because I'm wearing them
Mini umbrella - because I forgot to put it in the photo
Canon S100 camera - because I used it to take this wide angle shot
Oris windup watch, borrowed for trip- because I'm wearing it on my wrist
Inflatable neck pillow, which I lost somewhere in LA but didn't really need after all
Headlamp (Petzyl), left hanging in my bunk at Athens Hostel but later recovered
Small mesh bag to hold itty bitty things like sunglasses, tissues, camera charger and SD cards, and the most useful thing of all - a selection of ziploc bags

My velveteen CUSTO top was the only flash of color I needed - no (loseable) jewelry necessary.

The Finer Points of Packing

1. Warmth without bulk was key. The combination of 3 layer-able bottoms: Nike thermal pants, Icebreaker 150 wool leggings and DeFeet wool legwarmers allowed a permutation of 6 different pant options, depending on how cold it was. I generally wore the Nikes with the DeFeet legwarmers over the top. To sleep, I just wore the leggings. Wool tends to go a long time between washes ...

2. Black with a dash of color: the overall idea is to wear black, black, black, with a dash of outer color, negating the need for jewelry or any kind of extraneous adornment - and avoiding looking like a Ninja, especially with a black balaclava. The spot of color was provided by my Custo Vintage Spot top and my Special Spot Hat. As a backup, funky Animated Closet tunic dress.

3. If you get wet it sucks. That justified wearing the Eastern Mountain Sports 3/4 rainshell, which provided 3 useful pockets and an overall barrier against the world - and it looks way cooler than a standard packable hiking shell! Plus a mini umbrella for sudden downpours and London drizzle.

3. The MUJI (or similar) packable nylon bag is great for toting your things to the bathroom and back, carrying transient things like food etc - I could break it out to carry my relatively bulky outerwear when going into warmer areas.

4. Pick up cool stuff along the way. Don't forget that as you file out of the plane through First Class, you'll often see discarded goodies they give to the passengers, which are way nicer than your cattle class accoutrements. I snagged an abandoned metallic mesh zippered bag from someone's seat and it was used to carry my mounting pile of receipts. I passed on the used socks, however ...

5. I cannot stress the value of my ASPESI microfiber blazer so I don't have to look like a backpacker who stepped out of a camping shop. It cost me $150 Euro but I carry it with me everywhere in life - it’s worth every cent.

6. Ziploc bags are probably the most useful thing you can ever take. Nowadays you can use washed ziploc bags from granola and other food products - the bags and zips are strong and more environmentally conscious

7. I normally take my laptop everywhere. My iPhone 4s did all the kinds of things I'd want to do on an iPad or my MacBook Pro, including write blog posts (like I am doing at this very moment) using the Blogger app. The tiny size + wonderfully tiny wall adaptor was a perfectly workable trade off. The only sucky thing was lack of free wi-fi in most of the places I went in the EU. I disabled voice and data roaming completely, for fear of getting an unexpected huge bill, but in hindsight should have activated it for emergency calls only - like calling my host to rendezvous.

My friend Colleen showed up in Athens with her Traffic Cone Bag - it's good for Island hopping!

Tripod stand. More interested in yoga than art? See my Galfromdownunder Yoga blog.

Read about the Traffic Cone Bag

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Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Rome to Athens (10 down, 1 to go!)

2012-02-17T02:41:00.000-08:00

I popped out of the subway at Syntagma to a warm welcome

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Today I headed for Athens, my penultimate stop in the Spot Challenge. A 9am Easyjet flight means I had my butt on the 6.10am airport bus at Roma Termini. This was a bargain flight: just 60 Euro or $US75.77.

On the way to the airport I spotted ... at least three Damien Hirst Spot billboards! Am I the only one who saw them? Unfortunately, my compact Canon S100 wasn't fast enough to capture them for posterity as we whizzed by; my less compact Sony DSX-HX9V would have grabbed it in a flash.

This was my first ever visit to Greece. The Gagosian Athens gallery was right around the corner from the subway interchange at Syntagma Square, the scene of ongoing skirmishes between students and police. I popped out of the subway to face a phalanx of riot shields. A few people - and a lot of teens wagging school - were milling around in the square. I got the feeling some event had passed, or was about to happen. I asked three youths, aged about 17, what was going on.

"It's more important to be here than in school."

"This morning they pushed people - and little children - all the way back there." The boys pointed to the end of the square. Shouldn't they be in school?

"Yes, but we feel it is more important to be here."

In the streets flanking the square, platoons of police in dark blue uniforms were spilling out of dark colored vans.

On top of the steps, directly facing the riot police, sat two teenage girls who weren't at all fazed by authority. They were screaming something at the officers in Greek, thrusting open palms, and I wish I knew what they were saying. The police seemed unfazed, and suddenly, backed away across the street to the forecourt of Parliament House.

A very vocal pair of teens with no fear of authority.

Men in blue back up the men in green

By this time I'd backed away myself and headed up the street - a mere three blocks away, to the Gagosian Gallery in Merlin Street.

Artsy tree lined streets a couple of blocks from the confrontations

The Gagosian Gallery Athens

Christina and Katerina not only stamped my card ...

... they pointed me to a decent souvlaki around the corner!

I was acutely aware of the irony of my visit; outside, people were rioting over government corruption and the resultant financial levies imposed on the ordinary worker. Inside this gallery, I was looking at spots daubed with household paint on canvases, valued at ridiculous amounts of money, on which I'd spent a month's modest month's salary coming here to ogle. It harked back to my time in Cuba when I had $2000 strapped to my thigh - 100 times a professional Cuban's monthly salary - yet I felt it was my last paycheck. "We have something you don't have," said a Cuban. "It's called the quiet - something money can't buy," she said. Or as my ex use to say, "Money can't buy happiness, but it can get you into a lot of places looking for it." Check out my book The Handsomest Man in Cuba

Reunited with an adventurous friend

I met Colleen McGuire years ago while working as the card-carrying Customer Evangelist of Bike Friday. She owns and runs a successful tour company called Aegea Adventures, with a cycling arm called CycleGreece. It was voted one of the top ten bicycle tour companies on the planet by National Geographic Adventure.

Meeting Colleen at the Benaki Art Museum

Adventurous Colleen was recovering from a particularly nasty fall in Turkey, where she broke both ankles and a couple of ribs. She insisted on meeting me and with the help of her stellar partner Yannis, showed up undaunted with a walking frame. She also insisted we wait 30 minutes to see the hourly changing of the guard in front of Parliament House. This is a sober, three-man ritual which is repeated every hour, rain hail or shine. It looks a little like a slo-mo Can-Can from the Ministry of Silly Walks, but you'd better not laugh. I couldn't imagine it taking place in the dead of winter at 3am ... but indeed it does.

The changing of the guard - every hour, on the hour, 24/7, rain, hail and cosmic dust

Greek men must all do one year of national service, "a dark time in every man's life," said a policeman watching over the square.

After, we hopped a cab to the Athens Backpacker hostel (about 25 Euro), superbly located a block from the Acropolis and the mega-modern Acropolis museum. My only regret in scheduling my itinerary was not allowing a second day in Athens. The hostel and Colleen both concurred that the hysterical media coverage of the riots in Greece were hurting local businesses badly, by keeping tourists away.

"It's only on certain days and only in Syntagma Square," they insisted.

Plenty of room at the inn, no thanks to the media hysteria about the Athens riots

The Acropolis, night and day

Tomorrow ... Hong Kong, the final stop on my Spot Challenge.

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Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: Geneva to Rome (9 down, 2 to go!)

2012-02-15T19:49:00.000-08:00

I nearly dropped my camera when I saw this. Do they really think a "NEW!" starburst will attract American tourists? Hang on, it works for toasters and hamburger helper!

In case you weren't sure you've landed in Italy, there are plenty of clues right at the airport ..

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It's a long, long, long hike to the Easyjet gate lounge at Geneva Airport. As it was such a short flight (1 hour), I made the mistake of thinking of it as a domestic flight in the USA, where you can arrive an hour before take off. I've smugly sat in the gate lounge charging my phone or laptop while everyone else rushes to shuffle along the gangway to their pre-assigned seat. I've even waited for the eleventh-hour "Passenger Lynette Chiang, please come to the gate lounge, your flight is now boarding ..." before calmly packing up my things and strolling to the door like I own the place ...

The wonderful patina of old Rome ...

Doh! EU airlines require 2 hours, even if it's hop and a skip. I had to run the length of three football fields to find everyone nose against nape at the aircraft door.

The $US160 flight was fast and the hot chocolate was better than watery Swiss Miss or Hersheys syrup that usually passes for same in the USA. Rome, the land of good food, is nigh! At 4.40pm we touched down, and in an in 1 hour I was at Roma Termini, the main bus/train interchange. I knew it was ambitious to get to Gagosian Gallery at Via Francesco Crispi before it closed at 7pm, so I'd allowed for two nights in Rome.

The main transit hub of Rome, and just a stone's throw from a bunch of hostels.

A local CouchSurfer who wasn't able to host me had suggested the Yellow Hostel. Without bothering to scroll down and read the find print, I'd made an online booking.

Now I had the chance to read it, and saw that it had an age restriction - you had to be younger than 40. (I guess that's no worse than the Electronic Music Appreciation Society I'd started in Eugene, which had a tongue-in-cheek age restriction: you had to be older than 40.)
Further, the text made no bones about it: "if this rule is not respected, a full night's accommodation would be charged."

A shoe shop in Rome with a courtesy bar!

I couldn't imagine they'd turn away an elder traveler like me in low season, but I wasn't going to risk it. My Lonely Planet City Guide to Rome, which I should have consulted earlier, recommended a sublime-sounding place called The Beehive Hostel, 20 Euro for a dorm bed and run by yoga-minded people with an organic café .. I was sold. And it was just a couple of blocks from Roma Termini.

I fronted up and totally lucked out. There was one dorm bed left. "Normally we're fully booked year round," said Yuli, from Indonesia. I poked my head in the room and noted I'd be sharing with 5 guys. Snoring? No problem. I had ear plugs, and besides, I'd feel a lot more comfortable bunking with 100 guys than being in a hostel which precluded me for being born in the sixties.

Yuli let me call and cancel the Yellow Hostel from reception. "I'll refund your deposit as a courtesy, but normally we'd charge you for the first night," came the business-like reply.

Thus I came to spend two nights in one of the best hostels I've ever stayed in. It was more like a hotel. A grand old house nestled in a high-walled garden, impeccably maintained, with organic shower gels, shampoo and hairdryers in the spotless bathrooms, complimentary towel, a cosy downstairs living room decorated with photos of the owners' kids and travels, and a wonderful organic in-house kitchen-café, serving a few simple but instantly appealing items - like home made whole wheat bagels and preserves. Yum! There was even came with a Beehive manual that listed the owners' favorite eateries and other must-see sights.

I complimented the handsome breakfast chef, Gianluca on his menu, but he just shrugged. "I've helped out here part time for years." He had degrees in HR, and was trying to be optimistic about the job climate in Italy, which apparently, is far from bellisima. I suggested he start a food cart, because they seem to be the only people making money apart from Wall Street: selling food - always in demand - with a low overhead.

The Gagosian Gallery Rome

I set off on the half hour walk to the gallery and didn't make it until late afternoon, distracted by pizza and tourist vortexes like the Trevi fountain.

The Gagosian Rome is the most impressive I've seen - a classically ornate, carved building with tall glass doors.

Gagosian Gallery in Rome

The gallery is an elliptical space, with paintings dotted around the wall. This time I tried to photograph my Traffic Cone Bag, the singular piece of luggage I was carrying for this 8 country trip (10 if you include my failed Beijing leg and Sydney at the end).

Showing my only piece of luggage on this global trip - my Traffic Cone Bag - in cycling (orange) mode.

The Gagosian Gallery Rome

Oh my ... I look like death warmed up after all this running around - put a bit of that red ink on my lips and cheeks, please!

The final stop of the day was a visit to the Spanish Steps. I looked back along the road I had started walking on and saw an opening between the buildings in the distance with sun shining on an obelisk. Know the feeling? When a distant scene beckons you to go check it out, even when your feet hurt, you've spent too much money and it's getting dark?

Three views of the Spanish Steps at sundown

A curious glitch in the Blogger photo upload produced this two-tone shot of the Trevi Fountain by night. I'm going to say it's been Rothkoed!

No-one does pizza like the Italians - in Italy. This scrumptious roasted pepper and eggplant slice from a hole in the wall called Fior de Pizza.

No boat to China

Rome was my last chance to see if I could get a visa to China, specifically, Beijing. If I had beat it to the consulate I might have been able to plead with them to process it same day, but I basically gave up on the idea, and decided to just enjoy Rome. It was all too hard. China visas are incompatible with spontaneous travel, they must be arranged in your home country.

Tomorrow ... Athens!

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