Unbreak My Heart.

OK. So, in the next week or so I'm going to feature the artists in the show I've curated, Unbreak My Heart (Opening on SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1st. OMG. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1st!). And away we go . . .

Press release:
Bad shit happens, like, constantly. Quite frankly, I'm surprised we all aren't in cardiac arrest by the time we're 8. I'm not tipping you to anything new by pointing out that most of us make it past childhood, grow up, and drag our "long black bag" of heartbreak along for the ride. There are plenty of ways to lighten the burden though, and one of them is to look at art. (Therapy also helps. LOTS of therapy.) Every once in awhile I'll come across art that reverses the damage done, at least a little bit. I knew when I was offered this show that I wanted to include artists who have provided me with those moments of "unbreaking". You know how it works. The world slows down and you can almost feel the shards coming back together (Blondie style), the sinewy shreds of tissue reconnecting (David Lynch style). We just have to keep our eyes open and our hearts on the block. It's gonna be alright. At least for this moment.

One Last Look.

And what was I doing in the bad corn maze (Sorry, but 38th Ave. and 13th St. a block away from 21st St.? WTF?) that is Queens? Doing another studio visit with Rosanna Bruno, of course. We were looking at this new painting to see if it would work in the show I'm curating. Turns out that it wasn't quite going to fit right, but that doesn't mean it's not an amazing painting. It really bats the viewer around. Pulling you in in one place and pushing you away in another while another spot is pulling you back in before you get too far away. A really interesting turn, this one.

Queens. 38th Ave. + 13th St.

BREAKING: Palin's "Real America" Kinda Looks Like a Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe Painting.

Graph by FiveThirtyEight
Painting, Leopard, by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.

All kidding aside, I love Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe's work. But you already knew that.

Turn.

Eileen Neff has a new show, The Key of Dreams, at Silverstein on 20th. I stopped by to check this out today. No surprise that it was fabulous, but a the real thrill was the inclusion of, Slipping Glimpse, my absolute favorite piece from Neff's show at the ICA last year.

We. Are All Romans.

Maria Bartiromo

The last night last night.

Totally amazing images by Cesar Llacuna, copyright 2008. Dig it. And be sure to click on the images to make them pop.

Lit.

Apparently it's architecture week here at HAA. The Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus is a building I love both outside and in. This looks a bit over the top, but I think I like the goofy insanity of the way German design duo Friedrich Foerster and Sabine Weissinger lit this puppy up.

No Turning Back Now. (The cards are printed.)

Unbreak My Heart on ArtCal. PICK! Most awesome.

Period.

Two stunning new tapes out now from Period Tapes. These Feathers Have Plumes' supple gold-on-red silkscreened cover contains a nice slow drone. The line it draws is that of an unstable zither, but without the instrument. God only knows what they used to make this crawling slab. It doesn't matter. This is the wonderstuff. The lines are a lot less straight on Stone Baby's Nobody Loves Me . . . Still. It sounds like the haunted boiler room in the basement of the Brill Building. Disembodied voices fade in and out of the creeping, broken rhythms. And that baby doll on the cover . . . illin'. THIS is your soundtrack for Halloween. Truly scary.

My Ass-Kicking Building In The Times.

For the architecture lovers out there . . . Architectural Wealth, Built for the Poor. Hello, Alfred Tredway White.

Just Grand.

Beka Goedde, Nearby here, nearby

I received some excellent news from Glowlab last night. They're moving to Grand Street in SoHo! I went off on their goodness awhile ago here. I was poking around the website and came across some amazing images by Beka Goedde. Hello there. I have to say, I'm a sucker for gouache. Must. See. Live.

Title Change.

Not art, but odd. I like the first version of the title better. (badly cropped screen grabs via moi) From the NYTimes online front page . . .

8:23 PM

8:44 PM

No Cock In China.

Photograph courtesy of Zoe Strauss.
Clampdown courtesy of China.

It ain't 2005 or 2017 so there's no cock in China. Zoe Strauss' AMERICA got censored at the Chinese printer because of all those scary penises. And now, she's talkin' about it.

Robert Bordo's it's always raining: Last Day To See One Of The Best Shows Of The Year.

Like I said, the Robert Bordo show show at Alexander and Bonin should be seen and not written about. It's that whole "to name it is to make it less" sentinment. Which, I know, is goofy, but everything I've read about it fails to capture the extreme goodness therein--including this review in The Brooklyn Rail by Cassandra Neyenesch. The work just feels so personal. And TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO SEE IT. So, kids . . . Go see it. It's one of my favorite shows of the year. I've seen it three times, and I might just go back today.

Some close-ups . . .

What Genius Does.

This is what it does. Writes amazing appreciations in The New Yorker about Karlheinz Stockhausen. Genius.

I've been thinking about this too.

This, I mean. Forget Heart. I've been waiting for McCain's sad vagina trick to start playing Bilskirnir at her rallies.

Deinstallation.

Last weekend. Neil Campbell's show at Marianne Boesky. Stopped by for one last look. Um, not so much. What a drag. What a great piece. Sigh. All gone now. Somebody needs to buy this and make it permanently available for public viewing.

Don't take my word for it's great goodness though. Jerry Saltz nailed it. Nailed it, I say. One last look back, because, well, it was such a good piece it's even fun to remember. Anyway . . .

By rights, another gallery show that opened in Chelsea those first nights should be as irksome, dull, and derivative as Serrano’s and Attie’s. Yet, except for one terrible clunker of a metal sculpture, Neil Campbell’s show is rivetingly mysterious. Campbell paints black blips, circles, and other shapes on the wall. That’s it. But his pitch-perfect way of blending architecture, placement on the wall, size, and edges produces retinal and phenomenological power. Two black ovals painted at solar-plexus height make the room go rubbery and space wobble. The wall seems to disappear as you imagine you’re looking through the gallery into a parallel universe of dark matter. A nearby grid of dots is like a Mondrian in space. The black and yellow circles make one aware of the inconsistencies of vision, the little ghosts, floaters, and halos that form when one looks intently at something. This piece doesn’t stop popping.

Campbell is revisiting older ideas and artists, and shades of Lawrence Weiner, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Bridget Riley hang over this mesmerizing outing. But so does the spirit of something deeply committed, convincing, and felt. Campbell’s show demonstrates that if you see only one good thing in a day of viewing, you’ve had a good day. That’s how strong powerful art is.

Space Available.

Last weekend I ran into Patty Harris on 6th Avenue when I was taking in my Rega for repairs. I raved about her work back in 2006. She's in the MFA program at Queens College and Gallery 151 is putting on a guerilla show with the crew on West 18th Street. It opens on Friday night. This should be fun.


Patty Harris

Accidents Will Happen.

Click the image to blow up the pdf. A match made in delapidated heaven.


Steve Flanagan, painting


Kristin Holcomb, photograph

Ultimate.

Word.

No Brainer.

Well, yeah. Barbara Kruger's New York magazine cover wins Cover of the Year. Was there any doubt? I think not.

Maverick. Maverick. Maverick.

Of Thee She Sings.

Zoe Strauss is bangin' like Marc Bolan right now. Her book, AMERICA is soon to be released and her upcoming show AMERICA: We Love Having You Here will be opening on November 22 at Silverstein. Yeah. This is an early note, but I'm psyched. I've gone through the .pdf of the book about five times now, and it only gets stronger with each reading. It'll put a healin' on ya. I promise.

But you already know how I feel.

It Takes Two.

Goodness alert! The mighty, inventive and mightily inventive Electric Kulintang are playing Joe's Pub tonight. I've already got plans, but YOU should go. Susie Ibarra + Roberto Rodriguez = wide open grooves.

Stacks.

David Ellis, What's he building in there?

This photo doesn't come close to conveying the absolute magic of this piece by David Ellis that's in the group show, All Cut Up, at Roebling Hall. Today is the last day so this is your last chance to see it. Approaching the work from across the room I thought that it was a really interesting painting, but as I got closer I realized that it had been made out of old album covers. It felt like the organ fill at the beginning of Skynyrd's Tuesday's Gone, the way the chords pull up to the edge and then recede back into the song with you in tow.

Oh, and did I mention that the rest of the show is fucking excellent? The rest of the show is fucking excellent.

Young.

I'm not biased about the show, Young, at PLUTO Gallery because it's where my show is on deck. I'm biased because the curator, Steve West, owns my favorite bar in DUMBO. I was diggin' the precision of Kirsten Kramer's figures and the shadows (both visual and emotional) cast by Lisa Beckner's sculptures.

All In.

Gilbert & George @ the BMA. It's like Andy Warhol had a baby with Kraftwerk and then raised it in Devon. G&G are as direct as they are confusing. I like that.

Maverick.

Common People Live Forever.

Shit, man. Interview is oh-so-very back. You go, Glenn. One of the most thrilling interviews of the issue is between Jarvis Cocker and Elizabeth Peyton. Jarvis Cocker. Elizabeth Peyton. Best of both worlds, baby. She's readying her retrospective at the New Museum and he's getting ready to enjoy his shopping trolley. We get to watch while they talk about the room they share in the tower of song. Classic Interview. Read it online here, but note that it's another annoying-ass Flash site so you'll have to click on ART and then wait for it to scroll itself to the right and then you'll have to do the little scrolly thing on the side that'll keep the text moving down even after you've stopped scrolling. Thanks, Adobe! But honestly, it'll be worth your effort to read this piece of ultra goodness. Seriously. Go read it, like, supernow. Here.

+ + + 100% related . . . ! ! !

Jarvis Cocker interrupts Michael Jackson's "performance" in 1996 at The Brit Awards.

Jay-Z does Wonderwall at Glastonbury, 2008.

L'anglais sans peine.

Seriously. It's like Ionesco wrote a one-woman play for Tina Fey.

"It's the freakiest show."

Dude. I like this painting.

Martin Bromirski has a show opening at John Davis Gallery on Saturday, October 11. Great title: Circus on Mars. Going for berserk, yo.