Friday, March 31, 2006

Courageous, Baby.

Tiny light, you're a star.

During tonight's New York Voices, Zoe Strauss took over my TV. What a kick. It got even better when I started to look at the pictures I had taken of my television. The crossfades were the happiest of accidents, some doubling up the heartbreak and beauty.

I know that this is a lot of photos, but I couldn't stop clicking. Plus, it's always fun to reference The Low Road.























My two favorite Biennial artists together. Zoe looks at one of Marilyn Minter's paintings.


Like I said: heartbreaking.





With All Your Power.


I stopped by the Corrine Wasmuht opening at Friedrich Petzel last night. The painting felt like a Flaming Lips chorus. Full-on with everything rushing past your heart.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Jah Above. The Fire Down Below.


Experimental noise label Hospital Productions just opened one of the best specialty music shops in the city in the basement of one of the other best specialty music shops in the city, Jammyland. Get your noise on, kids. Mad deep selection. Good prices. And just like the store above their heads, these guys know everything, but not in a way that makes you feel bad because you don't. Get there and be damned.

Cheers!

Hat tip to Mia G. of Death By A Thousand Cuts for the heads up.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Manuel Ocampo: Artist Statement

Now this is an artist's statement. Click for the closeup.

Throught April 29 at Gray Kapernekas Gallery.

Buck Owens, RIP.

He was a-pickin', and I was a-grinnin'.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Let Me Bring You Songs From The Woods.

Last night I went to the opening for the wonderful and appropriately scatalogical Manuel Ocampo show at Gray Kapernekas Gallery. I'm tellin' ya. This gallery does not know the meaning of failure. Go.

Go. Go. Go. And don't miss the artist's statement/painting in the back room.

This is an older painting. I'll post jpegs of the new work soon.


Sherrie Levine's show opens tonight at Paula Cooper. At least, I think it does. I might be totally wrong about that. What is it with these high end galleries with crap web presence? Cooper's site is on Artnet and it usually lags a show or two behind. Just like Sonnabend's crap site on Artnet. Whatever. I'm quite comfortable walking to the lower end of Chelsea at the risk of finding an empty gallery if there's the slightest possibility of seeing new work by Levine. If anybody knows for a fact that I'm wrong about this please email me.

Build a boat and I will come. Friedrich Petzel--very much on a roll lately--will open Tobias Rehberger's American Traitor Bitch Saturday night. I've been drowning in goodness at that gallery lately so the frigate is much appreciated. I received these installation images from the gallery and they cracked me up, especially the second one. I just wanted to put "WTF?" speech balloons around everybody's head.


Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Wade Guyton: Andy Warhol vs. King Tubby Inna Painta House Fire.


I'm betting that a lot of people will be checking out Charline Von Heyl's excellent show this weekend after the on-the-money review by Jerry Saltz. While you're there, don't miss Wade Guyton's show of paintings, Color, Power, and Style, in Petzel's smaller gallery next door in the old Printed Matter space.

I saw the show a couple weeks ago at a private view with the artist. Anybody whose art makes me think of of both Andy Warhol and King Tubby can count me as a fan. Guyton's paintings come to life through the abuse and misuse of color printers. He feeds linen through the machine to cover the surface with an earthy instability. I'm really comfortable with painting being done by machines. A brush is a machine. A machine can be a brush.

Andy Warhol and King Tubby? Machines make mistakes. Really, really interesting mistakes. Sometimes their errors are even beautiful. Guyton, like Tubs and Andy before him, finds the beauty therein and tweaks it for maximum impact. Guyton especially made me think of King Tubby when he talked about trying to coax the desired results out of his less-than-ideal printer. In the 70's in a studio in Jamaica this is exactly the kind of technology stretching that led to Tubby's best work. This is how the workaround becomes part of palette. And Guyton's palette is full, like an echo on fire.




Hat tip to DJ Porkchop for the RE-inspiration.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil.


Yeah. That's Barbara Bush through the eyes of Karen Finley. I put up a new post over at my Creative Time blog about the private view with Finley at Gray Kapernekas Gallery last week. I'm pretty sure that she might be the smartest human being on the planet. If you were depressed by the Whitney Biennial you should go see this show. If you weren't depressed by the Biennial you should go see this show and then you'll be depressed about the Biennial. It's a win-win situation.