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Nikhil Chopra, as Yog Raj Chitrakar, at the New Museum

2009-11-07T06:27:01Z

Nikhil Chopra settled into his temporary home in the lobby-level Glass Gallery at the New Museum on Wednesday.

Ever since the opening of the new building almost two years ago I've heard and read many criticisms of this space, a broad, twenty-foot-deep box on the far end of Marcia Tucker Hall which the architects have described by a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. I don't have a problem with it myself, and in fact I think it's an inspired device. Especially with the right installation, meaning a powerful concept (however subtle it might be), it effects a bridge between the formal, clean white spaces of the Museum above and the vibrant life on the Bowery outside. At the same time it shares its (ideally) seductive offerings with the various functions of the foyer, shop and cafe areas, all very urban, and on a human scale. It has the special appeal of being absolutely free, and it probably works best when it is not just a large shop window but actually open to a visitor walking into the box.

Chopra's is the right installation, and �Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX� is a powerful concept. It has the seductive attraction of a live performance and the public is not only invited into the middle of it, but encouraged to bring their cameras. I wrote a short paragraph about the work after visiting the installation during the the press preview last week. This past Wednesday I spent at least two hours with Chopra's performance, in several visits throughout the day, positioning myself on both sides of the glass wall. Since his character in this work is that of a nineteenth-century artist/draughtsman (modeled somewhat on his own grandfather) I was delighted to see that at least one visitor was actually sketching, working on a pencil drawing of the entire installation/performance. Yes, he was sitting in a chair in the cafe which is witness to everything that goes on to the other side of the glass. Myself, I only had a fancy digital camera. Sigh.

The artist, in the character of Yog Raj Chitrakar, will be installed for five days within, in the Museum's description, a "gallery transformed into a turn-of the-century tableau vivant". Except for several excursions outside the museum, he will be eating, drinking, sleeping, washing, shaving, dressing, and sometimes simply observing, all while remaining inside that gallery until the end of the day Sunday.

On Thursday morning he was expected to rise, dress in his antique costume, and, carrying his ever-present brown-paper-wrapped, string-tied bundles, he was to take the subway to the bottom of Manhattan. There he was to catch the ferry to Ellis Island where he would spend much of the day sketching the New York skyline in charcoal on one of the three huge sections of canvas he will have taken down from the east wall of his temporary home. He was expected to do the same thing on Friday and Saturday, each time taking along a different section of canvas, and returning to the Glass Gallery by mid-afternoon.

Both Yog Raj Chitrakar and the by-then-completed mural can be seen inside the space all day on Sunday. I am told we can expect a surprise.

Chopra's performance and installation was curated by Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs. The New Museum has scheduled additional programs related to this work next weekend, and aspects of the performance and exhibition can continue to be seen at the museum until next February. From the press release:

At its conclusion, remnants of Chopra�s occupation of the space remain on display as an installation. Documentation from three previous performances also on view in this exhibition�Memory Drawing II (Mumbai, 2007), Yog Raj Chitrakar visits Lal Chowk (Srinagar, 2007), and Memory Drawing VI (London, 2008)�suggests the many ways in which the history and reality of a location impact the artist�s execution of characters though costuming, gesture, and action.

Obamas dump Alma Thomas following wingnuts' stink

2009-11-05T05:28:02Z

Alma Thomas Watusi (Hard Edge) 1963 acrylic on canvas 47.5" x 44.25"

I thought it was a joke, but the story seems to be true. The Painting by Alma Thomas, one of the 45 artworks the Obamas chose to borrow from national museums to hang mostly in the private quarters of the White House, has quietly disappeared from the list.

[By late October, "Watusi (Hard Edge)"], which had been the only painting listed for the East Wing - and reportedly destined for Michelle Obama's office - was no longer on the list. The Hirshhorn confirmed that it had been sent back, but no one involved with the White House loans would say why.

Right-wing bloggers had gone super crazy over the choice of Thomas' work and it now appears they've been able to both assault the personal aesthetic taste of the President and his family and exercise a cultural veto with national ramifications.

Greg.org has much more on both Thomas and the crazies whom her quiet work incites in this blog post published before Thomas went missing.

ADDENDUM: Richard Lacayo has still more, in this TIME/CNN on-line piece, datelined November 5th.

[image from the Hirshhorn]

Bloomberg squeaks in: Obama's cowardice saves his skin

2009-11-04T17:33:00Z

The White House switchboard lit up with calls from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg�s emissaries several weeks ago with a message that was polite but firm: The mayor is going to win re-election, they said. We think the president should stay out of the race.

lead paragraph of the lead article in the Late Edition of today's Times

Did Bloomberg really tell Obama he'd better not support Thompson? Did Obama refrain from supporting Thompson because of the Republican mayor's implied theat? Does Obama need Bloomberg that much? Did Bloomberg need a no-show Obama in order to win?

This whole scenario looked crazy yesterday; today it looks insane.

Bloomberg barely tallied 50% of the vote in a very small turnout, even though he spent $100,000,000 on his campaign. His opponent, with a tiny fraction of that kind of money, was almost unknown to most New York voters, and almost invisible. Days before the election the Times reported that some black New Yorkers didn't know Thompson was black. Obama stayed away from the campaign, and never even mentioned Thompson by name.

Does anyone doubt that Thompson would have won had Obama made even the smallest exertion to associate himself with the Democratic candidate? With an upset like that Obama, whose popularity has been declining fast lately, would have become a hero everywhere in the nation. As a coward who wouldn't challenge the billionaire mayor, and his assertion of invulnerability, Obama gets nada; New Yorkers don't get change; everyone continues to lose hope.

APPENDIX: Anthony Weiner must be kicking himself this morning.

[image, otherwise uncredited, from queenscrap]

Brooklyn Rail cover: Powhida's New Museum cartoon

2009-11-03T19:06:14Z

go to large, high resolution image here

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, especially if it's been drawn by William Powhida. The artist's editorial cartoon, addressing the current weird curatorial course of the New Museum, completely fills the cover of the Brooklyn Rail out tomorrow.

I wrote this post back on September 25th, immediately after reading the NuMu's press release announcing a metamorphosis which will find it installing a series of museum-wide shows displaying the collections of one or more of its own wealthy trustees and curated by those collectors' favorite wealthy artists.

I followed it with this related entry.

From the beginning I was sure this story had legs, but then I noticed almost no one wanted to talk or write about it, even if they were as outraged as I was. Now I think its time has finally come. Thanks, William.

Pick up a copy of the Rail if you live anywhere near one of the outlets. If not, and if you have some coin, you can subscribe (to what I think is the most vital and definitely the most beautiful magazine published anywhere) here.

[image courtesy of the artist and the Brooklyn Rail]

vote for Billy Talen

2009-11-03T00:16:16Z

I would argue that Gawker* doesn't quite go far enough in its condemnation of Bloomberg's candidacy, since it stops a little too short of suggesting the obvious alternative. I have no hesitation myself in endorsing the Billy Talen for mayor over Thompson. Thompson (unless he's actually working for a Bloomberg victory) ran an extraordinarily incompetent campaign, and he finally appears to be something of a fool (okay, just for starters, look at where he stands on bike lanes).

Talen is the candidate of a significant political party, the Green Party, but you may never have seen him or heard him; you may not have heard of him: The commercial media ignores Talen and he's not allowed to participate in their vaunted mayoral debates or in their interviews with the approved candidates. But I've heard him talk, of course to crowds, in character as the colorful and truly-righteous Reverend Billy, but also as "layman" Billy in small groups, and to individuals, and he has a better (in both senses) understanding of the city and the world than any of the politicians foisted upon us by the corporations in whose pay they perform, and certainly superior to the small-minded billionaire who blithely, and regularly, buys his high office outright.

Vote for someone tomorrow whose ideas you share. You deserve it; we all deserve it. Talen's mayoral platform is a dream - unfortunately - but that's not a bad place to start.

Hell, if I could I'd even endorse him for president - right now - this time confident we'd get change when we voted for it.

*
in a post written by Alex Pareene.

[image from Bradley R. Hughes]

Henry Street lot gate

2009-11-02T23:48:22Z

untitled (torn t-shirt) 2009

NuMu, Urs Fischer and Nikhil Chopra

2009-10-29T20:12:50Z

details of Urs Fischer's "Ix" and "David"

detail of Urs Fischer's "Last Call Lascaux" (other than the fluorescents, and one "exit", everything is wallpaper)

large detail of Urs Fischer's "Yarlsberg (Reverend)" reflecting two other mirrored blocks

I had forced myself to get up much earlier than I ever really want to, which normally would have been a drag, but I was actually looking forward to yesterday's press preview of "Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty", excited to learn what all the fuss was about, and wanting to be amazed and excited.

There had been a lot of advance press, not all of it entirely auspicious, about the big deal show being installed down on the Bowery but I had decided I wasn't going to let talk about big money, cronyism, and way-too-"interested" patrons and curators affect what I thought of the artist's work itself.

But while I was still listening to the short introduction by Massimiliano Gioni, who may or may not be formally employed by the Museum but who is described in NuMu's press release as having "organized" this exhibition, I started to feel a grumpy coming on. Then, soon after alighting from the elevator on the fourth floor where we were confronted by enormous and weighty cast-aluminum abstract sculptures, one of them hanging from the ceiling, that spoke to me more of hubris than any kind of original aesthetic or penetrating intellectual breakthrough, but I'm not equipped to argue with the thousands of pages written in praise of Fisher's work, these five contracted pieces made in China probably not excepted.

The third floor space is where the magic happens. You've probably already read about it: Fischer has essentially created an enormous trompe l'oeil box. Every square inch of the walls and ceiling (which is actually a faux ceiling, including beams, constructed two feet below the real one) was lined with wallpaper which had been printed with photographic reproductions of the areas it covered, including images of the lighting, vents, door handles and exit signs, as it all appeared after the previous show had been taken down (the purplish color of the walls, while deliberate, relates to a photographic idiosyncrasy). There are four small-to-medium-size sculptures installed in various parts of the room. On my visit they elicited almost as much interest as the wallpaper, but if I were to be asked, I'd come down on the side of the room itself. While I didn't miss the details, like the photographed scuff marks and small nails from the last exhibition, I was charmed by both the idea and the reality of the room as a whole, its evocation of so many historical forms of visual illusion in art. I felt like a bumpkin in seventeenth-century Rome or eighteenth-century Bavaria, and I volunteered as much to anyone who looked like they would listen.

The Second floor is also a piece by itself (although no one seems to know whether it will be offered to collectors or museums only as a whole), and it may be the most successful part of the entire exhibition. "Service Ã la franÃ§aise" is an installation of dozens of mirrored chrome boxes each imprinted with a photographic image of some ordinary item which seems to have struck the fancy of the artist. The four sides and top of each box display precisely-documented sides, front, back and top of separate objects in the shape and volume scale of their original subjects, but not in one scale shared by all (a red public telephone box is approximately the size of a frosted Fruit Loops bar cookie).

I lingered for some time, walking around inside this orchestrated array of "monuments", perfectly-engineered and finished. I felt the impact of the work gradually alter from surprise and amusement to sweetness and, well . . . , coziness. If the piece is autobiographical, it's probably equally biographical, for everyone else, even if the visitor has never played cards, used a phone box, eaten a frosted cream puff, opened a lipstick, or touched a porcelain obelisk.

And then I was back on the first floor, where I already knew a different artist had an installation in the Glass Gallery opening the same day. Barry and I had known nothing about Nikhil Chopra until then, but we took a look at the materials which were thinly spread out in what looked like separate attractive and intriguing installations. A sign on the wall to the right described something of the artist's work and announced that he would be in residence in that gallery for five days next week, beginning Wednesday. We almost left (it was 12:30 and neither of us had had a breakfast) but decided to take another look at the the long narrow space and, in spite of the fact that we saw the note on the screen describing a three-hour performance we were quickly and irreversibly drawn into one of the video monitors on the floor.

It was an edited version of a 2007 performance by the artist, "Yog Raj Chitrakar visits Lal Chowk"*, and we watched it to the end, when we found we were both feeling better about the world than when we had arrived.

The Mumbai-based artist's work is described on the Brussels Kunstenfestivaldesarts site as "located in the border region between theatre, performance, painting, photography and sculpture."

Employing extremely modest means, and unassisted by any treatise or critique (at least none we had seen), the artist was able to touch both of us in a way nothing else had all morning. The impact of the literally awesome funding, resources, coordination and engineering required by the structures and objects installed in the three floors above us couldn't hold a candle to that delivered by this brief excerpt/detail of Chopra's work, a looped video monitored within an unpeopled set. I had forgotten what it feels like to be truly "amazed and excited".

I don't know what all this means, but I went out the door smiling, even though the rain had not let up.

detail of Nikhil Chopra's "Yog Raj Chitrakar visits Lal Chowk" in the Glass Gallery

*
in the city of Srinagar, the capital of the disputed, but India-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir

"Scarlet Fever" at the Hogar Collection

2009-10-28T20:07:56Z

Paddy Johnson Jill Magid I Can Burn Your Face 2009 custom pillow 18" x 18" x 5"
and Iliyan Ivanov, Apocalyptic Unicorn 2009 stoneware pet food bowl 2.5" x 6" x 6"
each edition 1 of 3 [installation view]

Ouch. Late again. "Scarlet Fever", an oddly-intimate group show at Hogar (little more than a handful of artists who studied and worked on their MFA's at Rutgers around 2000-2001), closed on Monday, and I had fully intended to do this post well before it disappeared.

I decided to spotlight this shrewd piece by Paddy Johnson not because it shows she is any more closely identified with the school's mascot, the "Scarlet Knight", than her colleagues in the show but because in a modest and wry way it seems to pull together (or finish off) so much of what has been described as the leading edge in the art world over the past decade, in art both material and conceptual.

Johnson's public visibility is very much a function of her popularity as an arts blogger, so when we learn that she called in her art for this exhibition it seems perfectly natural. Working off the only thread which held together the group of artists represented in the show, she did an on-line search using the term "Rutgers MFA" and found a Jill Magid neon image, "I can burn your face", and Iliyan Ivanov's "Apocalyptic Unicorn" triptych. Still on line, she then placed an order with Cafe Press, an internet site that prints images on all sorts of things (cups t-shirts, etc.), for a pillow and a pet food bowl, and asked them to be shipped to the gallery. Johnson calls the pair, mounted here on a white wooden shelf, a couple of "unlikely alumni gifts".

The other artists in the show were Saul Chernick, Michelle Forsyth, JJ Garfinkel, Andrew Guenther, Matthew Day Jackson, Michael Maxwell and Clifford Owens. I was only able to salvage the few images which follow. Even then, because of the reflection on the plexiglas I had to be satisfied with a detail of one of them, and, unusually, even a closeup shot hardly begins to suggest the depth and complexity of that piece (check out the description of the medium).

Matthew Day Jackson LEM Interior 2 2009 laser-engraved burned wood and plastic 48" x 36" [installation view]

Andrew Guenther Plate Face #5 2009 acrylic on canvas 45" x 35"

Michael Maxwell Self-portrait in another dimension 2009 saffron, poppy, indigo, lapis and other natural pigments, crushed quartz crystal, silver leaf and crylic on giclee print 67" x 45" framed [detail]

"395 Flatbush Avenue Ext." et al., downtown Brooklyn

2009-10-22T19:48:58Z

Marc Schubert [installation view]

Matthew Hansel Coronation 2008 oil, acrylic and ink on canvas 96" x 94"

[detail]

Matthew Hansel Flag 7 ink and acrylic on nylon flag 2' x 3' [installation view]

Mark Hansel Flag 2 2009 ink and acrylic on nylon flag 2' x 3' [installation view]

A dynamic five-month-long exhibition project in downtown Brooklyn includes a number of street-level art installations under the umbrella, "395 Flatbush Avenue Ext.". Two of the galleries, "space E" and "Space F", display a mix of paintings, works on paper, installations and sculpture, much of it created specifically for these rooms.

The images of prime work by Marc Schubert and Matthew Hansel shown above are only a tease.

Kadar Brock [installation view]

Daniel Heidkamp [installation view]

Possibly the best show title of the year, "Too Big To Fail: Big Paintings", described another room, "Space C", filled with works which, in both their size and quality, seek to demonstrate the validity in the visual arts of that newly-immortalized national mantra.

Kadar Brock's diptych, seen in the first image above these two paragraphs, was definitely big, and didn't fail to please. The painting of the very big fenced-in shaggy yellow dog is by the curator of this particular space, Daniel Heidkamp.

"395 Flatbush Avenue Ext." is a collaboration between New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), Your Art Here and Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Five or six empty shops along 395 Flatbush Avenue Extension have been filled with exceptionally fresh art worth a detour, even a trip from the far reaches of the City's sleepier boroughs (Brooklyn's growing cultural importance makes me increasingly confident in including Manhattan in that description).

Although it may not be so important in an enterprise projected to continue for months, there seems to be some confusion, at least for me, about official opening dates of this temporary cultural station set up near the Fulton Street Mall. There was a preview the evening of October 6th, and then the very public mashup of the County Affair [Kings, that is] this past Sunday, but there will also be a reception for "Too Big to Fail" tomorrow, Friday from 6 to 8, and I assume all of the other spaces will be open as well.

Otherwise the public hours are Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon until 7 over the next five months.

The structure of the whole project has some of the aspects of "let's put on a show", but the art is not improvised (okay, maybe the County Affair was, and to its credit!). The commitment of both artists and organizers to openness, accessibility, and connection with the community where it is settling in for the next five months appears to be completely genuine. It works for me and I hope it works for everyone.

An extraordinarily-generous Joshua Smith was kept very busy at the Affair all day Sunday delivering on his offer of $1 water-color portraits.

Offset Projects is a group show of inexpensive artist-designed posters produced by the non-profit founded by artist Matthew Spiegelman.

The awesome staff of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has set up an office within one of the storefronts adjacent to all the fun. It's over to the left, near the local Applebee's at the south corner of the block.

Michael Williams at CANADA

2009-10-21T16:01:52Z

Michael Williams Bon Voyage 2008 oil on canvas 60" x 40"

[detail]

Michael Williams In the Woods 2009 acrylic on canvas 64" x 96"

Michael Williams Peanut 2009 oil on canvas 96" x 64"

[detail]

I've already said that I love this guy's painting, beginning with "At Mr. McCooks". As for Michael Williams' current show of new paintings at CANADA, "Mr. Big", I'll only add that he certainly doesn't disappoint, and that he definitely hasn't held back.

Have I already said that this is one of my favorite galleries ever?

Nancy Spero 1926-2009

2009-10-21T01:34:29Z

a part of Nancy Spero's 1989 installation on the wall of the main room of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street

Nancy Spero died on Sunday. We miss her already. But while the world is made so much poorer with our loss, her great spirit and her phenomenal work will always brighten our lives - and strengthen our resolve to be almost worthy of her courage.

Light those lights!

Related: a note on Spero's partner, Leon Golub, with a link to his 2004 NYTimes obituary

early fall 2009 art exhibitions: a bricolage (part 1)

2009-10-16T20:35:49Z

The only way I'm going to be able to show images of even a portion of the more interesting shows I've already seen this season is to go over them in a short series of entries, each combining a handful of exhibitions, and to include only a picture or two, the identity of the the artists and the venues, and a very few words.

I'll proceed, roughly, in the chronological order of my visits.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Thee Fracture Garden 1995 mixed media 12" x 12" (on 20" x 16" Arches paper)

Invisible Exports's show of work by the legendary and heroic artist and performer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, "30 Years of Being Cut Up", closes on Sunday (October 18th). I took this shot of the radiant artist during the opening reception last month:

[first image from Invisible Exports]

The Bruce High Quality Foundation University

awaiting creation

Flush with the accolades of the academy which it critiques, the creative, enterprising and inspired Bruce High Quality Foundation is expanding its role and operations into pedagogy itself. On September 11th the art collaborative's latest (and perhaps inevitable) creation, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University (BHQFU), opened the West Broadway doors of its new operation, hosting a reception for its fans and any number of potential matriculates, both learning-thirsty and insurgent.

engaged

Jade Townsend

Jade Townsend Sick, Sick Wind 2009 installation, variable dimensions [detail of installation]

I'm showing an image of Jade Townsend's pig-shaped battleship, the centerpiece of his show, "Sick Sick Wind", at Priska Juschka. It closed today but I'm sharing it now not just because it was an extraordinary construction, but because it gives me an excuse to delight in the memory of Duke Riley's Naumachia, of which it was a particularly dramatic part.

"Heartbreak Hotel" at Freight & Volume

Kadar Brock The Impossibility of Love in the Fourth Dimension 2009 oil, marker and spray paint on canvas 20" x 24"

Kim Dorland Untitled 2009 oil on panel 20" x 16"

Lucas Moran Neon & Lilacs 2009 oil, gorilla glue and acorn tops

This group show actually closed on August 12, just before the fall season opened in earnest, and that was the day I visited it. As a late summer show, it was pretty much below the radar for most gallery visitors; I thought it deserved much more notice than it must have gotten, so I'm posting a few images. "Heartbreak Hotel", at Freight & Volume, included new work by Fanny AlliÃ©, Erik den Breejen, Kadar Brock, Kim Dorland, Andrew Guenther, Jonathan Hartshorn, Annamarie Ho, Peter Hutchinson, Min Hyung, Misaki Kawai, Peik Larsen, Jim Lee, Lucas Moran, Danial Nord, Daniel Ranalli, Max Razdow, Michael Scoggins, Russell Tyler, Tabitha Vevers, Eric White and John Yau.

"The Female Gaze" at Cheim & Read

Anh Duong The Lure of Disillusion 2008 oil on canvas 85" x 45" [a self-portrait]

The Cheim & Read exhibition, "The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women", also closed in (late) September, but it had settled into the gallery for a blessed three months, encouraging return trips. Barry and I went only twice; it wasn't enough.

The artists included were Berenice Abbott, Marina Abramovic, Ghada Amer, Diane Arbus, Vanessa Beecroft, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Kathe Burkhart, Julia Margaret Cameron, Victoria Civera, Rineke Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, Anh Duong, Judith Eisler, Tracey Emin, Ellen Gallagher, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Chantal Joffe, Deborah Kass, Maria Lassnig, Zoe Leonard, Sally Mann, Marilyn Minter, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, Collier Schorr, Joan Semmel, Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, Hannah van Bart, Hellen van Meene, Kara Walker, Francesca Woodman and Lisa Yuskavage.

It occurred to me just now that, since the gallery's partners, John Cheim and Howard Read, do not mention the name of the curator in their press release, this awesome show was itself almost certainly the product of a male gaze: Maybe there's hope for us all.

[image from Cheim & Read]

Billy stops Bloomberg, asks "What're you doing here?"

2009-10-14T21:58:23Z

asking the Mayor what right he has to even be on the platform

Green Party candidate Reverend Billy Talen was at the mayoral debate last night. He hadn't been invited to participate as a candidate, since our fake-democratic system only gives full recognition office seekers who have attracted serious money from corporate interests expecting payoffs - or very serious money from themselves in the case of one of the two politicos running this fall.

Our current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the super rich guy, had been barred from seeking a third term by two city-wide referendums, but he managed to do a cynical end run around them by manipulating a vote by the members of the City Council (very "interested" parties themselves) which we were told took precedence over the popular will. Almost like how spending $10,000 a minute on your mayoral campaign gives a candidate precedence over mere mortals.

When Bloomberg began to speak Talen interrupted him, shouting, "What are you doing here? We voted for term limits!" [video here]

NURTUREart benefit tomorrow evening

2009-10-11T15:28:09Z

we must cultivate our garden

NURTUREart is just about the smartest, most generous and most completely rewarding non-profit around for both supporting and showing the unfamiliar and the unexpected, not least because its mission is not only about emerging artists, but about emerging curators as well*.

This remarkable institution's 2009 benefit will be tomorrow night, October 12, at Claire Oliver in Chelsea. There's more information here.

The image at the top is from the current show in NURTUREart's Bushwick gallery space, titled "Plan B", a group exhibition curated by Krista Saunders. It's a detail of work by The K.I.D.S. and Secret School, "Growing a Network of Secret Gardens", a site-specific mixed-media installation which inhabits, in the phrasing of the installation label, "the entire neighborhood where they work and play".

*
At least 50% of the artists included in their Gallery Program shows must be from the NURTUREarts registry of artists who do not have representation, and each year curators are invited to submit proposals to their Emerging Curators Program for review by a rotating panel of experienced curators, arts professionals, and members of the board.

Derek Stroup at A.M. Richard

2009-10-11T01:18:24Z

installation view of Derek Stroup's "Blue Panel", on the left , and a large detail of the slightly larger "White Panel" on the right (each completed in 2009, of enamel paint on sheet metal, with an aluminum stud below, and measuring approximately 5' x 6')

Derek Stroup Shell 1 2008 digital C-print

Derek Stroup's show, "Station Pieces", in the front rooms of Williamsburg's A. M. Richard gallery closes tomorrow, Sunday. Barry and saw it this afternoon and we immediately designated it a top pick on ArtCat.

In this elegant, and very eloquent small show the artist presents conceptual work attached to imagery stubbornly-familiar to all of us. Stroup also deals with a number of the contemporary art world's current recognized preoccupations: He incorporates or tackles the subjects of street art, economic devastation, the endangered planet, sculpture assembled from existing materials, hand-made versions of machine-made products, digitally-altered images, realism, abstraction, the new minimalism, text (or its effacement), the recording of built landscapes, and architectural fragments. He pulls it all together with amazing skill, to totally original, and gorgeous, effect, but when we leave its presence Stroup's art rewards us with questions whose answers will continue to elude us.

The installation may ostensibly be devoted to commonplace proprietary gas stations, but, to begin with, all logos have been completely erased. This was accomplished digitally on the one photograph included, and with thick strokes of paint (much as tags or graffiti are routinely removed by the owners of the property on which they are inscribed) on the three "paintings", whose surfaces or mountings have been co-opted for use as minimalist, abstract panels - sculptures in fact, since they are rendered on large sheets of riveted steel attached to other elements.

The commercial signs and the apparatuses, having now been rendered entirely anonymous, appear to have lost their purpose, and the world which created them - and was fed by them - may have entirely lost its validity. Or not.

The largest, most ambitious and most complex piece in the show is "Red, White, Grey 2 (Station Exterior)" which, except for its essential conceptual element, might suggest the practice of any number of younger sculptors today, except that the materials Stroup uses are not exactly "found"; instead, designed to assume a specific form, the components were pulled from the racks of suppliers of new construction materials.

I tried to get an image of "Red, White, Grey", whose nine feet by nine feet dimensions ensure that it fully occupies the larger of the two rooms, but I couldn't come up with anything which even suggested the awesome impact of the piece I stared at this afternoon.

You have to be there. Really. So this thumbnail can only be a rough approximation:

[second image from artnet]