Artists Unite Issue

Harambee Dance Company to hold Auditions

1) The Harambee Dance Company seeks experienced and versatile dancers who are proficient in West African Dance.
Audition format: Group audition where dancers will be taught excerpts from the company repertoire; the audition will last
at least 1hour. Interested dancers can attend one of two audition dates :

Date: Monday, March 5 at 7pm
Monday, March 12 at 7pm
Location: Boys Harbor
1 East 104th street, 6th floor studio, corner of 104th and fifth ave.
enter 104th street entrance

For more information call 212 942 3566
www.harambeedancecompany.com

via Arts & Letters. A review of Susan Sontag’s last book is online at the NY Observer. Published posthumously, the book contains essays and speeches and was nearly completed before her death. The edition was designed and published by my personal favorite (as well as Sontag’s), Winterhouse, run by graphic design royalty William Drentell and Jessica Helfand.

I hold Sontag in healthy regard and never choose lightly whether to read her. She does not write like an academic, but like a prophet in the desert, with all the conversion power that implies. After September 11, 2001, she wrote:

“The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by nearly all American officials and media commentators in these last days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.”

The first time I read her, I almost gave up making art. But then I continued to spite her; to compete with her insight; to carry the weight of her observations to a new vista. The Observer’s article is titled, “Why We Miss Susan.” Hear hear.

Okay, Wendy thinks they (the cats) might like it. It’s clearly astonishing, I’ll give you that. The author of Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics writes that it’s a new chapter in art history. It’s cat painting, and apparently, it’s like, a thing. Enough so that there’s a book about it. And a web discussion (with photos). But a new artistic exploration? Neototemism? Palliative Symbolism? I think this chapter sounds pretty accurate: Trans-Exhibitionism. Or how about “Why don’t you try that on my cousin the man-eating lion-ism.” The email that informed me about this book had this apropos comment: “Isn’t this more like the excesses of the Roman Empire just before the fall????”

Just hope PETA doesn’t ever get wind of this.

I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to take advantage of the gluttonous quantity of art shipped into the city for the Armory show and it’s competitors/colleagues this weekend. I suffer from a less-is-more style of art viewing, so art fairs aren’t my cup, but I sipped by carefully picking the fair in the list with the smallest size, but widest world perspective: Scope.

I generally have a suspicious reaction to statements like, “It was awful!” that I hear so often from artists who attend fairs. I think it’s probably more accurate to say that there’s an awful lot of mostly competent stuff, but when seen all together, it’s noteworthy how little stands out from the crowd. This was certainly the case at Scope. I could barely bring myself to look at a lot of it. Here are the items that stood up out of the crowd, albeit mostly for personal reasons. One satisfying aspect was its diversity, of media as well as nationality.
The photography jumped out–it seems to have taken over the European galleries, especially. Probably it jumped because large scale is still so much the rage. I can’t believe that photographers are willing to accept so much digital distortion in their 40 inch prints, but there it was all over the place. My local fave, Yossi Milo, however, was a cut above, showing work from superb past and upcoming shows, including Kelli Connell, who works a single model into identity-searching narratives.

-Kelli Connell, Double Life

Galerie Baer, from Dresden had some cool work, including artist Stefan Lenke’s paintings and photography. The paintings were very spare without being minimal, the photos hinted at an interest in color and texture that plays out in the paintings.

-Stephan Lenke, Eliot

-Stephan Lenke, Straße

Marc de Puechredon of Basel was showing Raphaele Shirley, whose piece, Elevation in Time, creates an experience of self for the occupant of a box. The box is a study for a commission to create four elevators in Monte Carlo. The interior includes images and mirrors, plus a tentacle-like set of lights and speakers hanging from the ceiling.

In an admirable concept/outcome pairing, Mike Weiss Gallery’s Tom Fruin creates fascinating, intimate, almost needlecraft pieces from found drug bags and other garbage and fragments.

-Tom Fruin, Virgin Mary
When I read about Jean-Christian Bourcart recently, I thought his technique of shooting photos of the light emerging from the projection booth sounded clever, but a one-liner. The results, though, on view at Andrea Meislin Gallery were mesmerizing.
-Jean-Christian Bourcart, Stardust #34

Crown Gallery in Brussels caught my eye as a reason to look at some paintings, albeit on paper. These charming, approximately 10 x 12 inch pieces by Tina Gillen were sweet without being saccharine and dark without being jaded.

-Tina Gillen

Moti Hasson’s sampling, from current show artist, Paul Pagk, was a treat. I liked these paintings a lot more in person after being unimpressed seeing them a couple times online or in print. Goes to show you how much painting is a visceral experience.

Paul Pagk, Lexicon 19

Bryce Wolkowtz Gallery was the electronica territory-holder at Scope. There was a variety of interesting work that was plugged in at this booth. A favorite was Vic Cosik’s twist on the ubiquitous LCD screen movie viewing experience. His process converts video into ascii characters that dance together to form the images. Here’s a closeup and a more pulled out shot of one piece.

Okay, I’ve hit photo, painting, digital, installation, collage. I was underwhelmed with drawing offerings, sorry to say. To wrap up then, I found these sculptures by Ewerdt Hilgemann, presented by Art Affairs in Amsterdam, just beautiful. The work proceeds from minimalist formal studies and literally takes the wind out of it — or forces it in a new direction by using vacuum to sculpt the steel structures without touching them.

And there’s a good description of what attending an art fair can do for you, take the wind out of your sails or force you on. Thankfully, I came home raring to get to work.
-Ewerdt Hilgemann, from Imploded Sculptures

Art Fairs this week in NYC

http://www.artdealers.org/artshow/index.html - The Art Show- Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA)

http://www.thearmoryshow.com - The Armory Show

http://www.divafair.com - DIVA
http://www.fountainexhibit.com/ny2007/index.htm - Fountain

http://www.laartfair.com - LA Art

http://www.pulse-art.com - Pulse

http://www.reddotfair.com - Red Dot

http://www.scope-art.com - Scope

I’d be going to Pulse if i wasn’t stuck in the hinterlands

It is an auspicious occurence when one gets to work with people one admires. This is certainly the case for me with my fellow Artists Unite Issue contributor, Sky Pape, who has a show of drawings at June Kelly in SoHO this month. I have had the opportunity to consider Sky’s work quite intensively during the two years since her last solo show at June Kelly, when we first met, and it’s been a great time.

To put the current show in perspective, it is important to realize that Sky is one of the rare artists who creates different-looking work as she moves through her career. She does this not because she cannot dive deeply into one “style,” or because of artistic ADD, but because her work has a strong core exploration into the art of drawing per se and her dexterous inquiry into this medium continues to provide her with juicy chapters.

A trip to her web site will provide samples of these chapters:

• Her series, Silver Linings found her exploring graphite as both a line-making material and a three-dimensional texture in the same piece. The work is absolutely stunning; it reflects the light differently as one changes viewing angles and gives every indication of being large objects that have somehow been flattened onto a sheet of paper.

• The Inklings series are a demonstration of Sky’s relationship to paper, which for her is not simply a substrate for drawing, but is nearly always an equal partner in the drawing with ink or other mark-making material and has an art, history, and politics of its own. The Inklings are objects as well as drawings; beautiful patterns of marks and stacked lines in which the dance between the paper and the ink has seamless transitions—first the line is an inked edge, then the ripple of the paper suffices to carry it forward.

• The Behind the Seen drawings demonstrate depth literally, as ink that soaks through handmade paper, and show Sky’s willingness to experiment, be surprised, and master new methods. This was the first of Sky’s work that I saw in person, and I was reluctant to leave the presence of these drawings that seemed at once so anciently symbolic in outcome and so completely modern in production.

Which brings us to her current show. Sky’s most recent work synthesizes, rethinks, and moves beyond everything before. Drawing Breath, which is certainly an apt description of the life force she seems to get from the act of drawing, is a symphony of techniques working together to create drawings of organic complexity and beauty. For a while now, she has been working with blown ink—expelling ink through a straw to create a line that is somewhat “out of control” (not unlike Brice Marden’s stick drawings). In the drawings in the show, she allows the blown lines to become objects by cutting them out and layering several sheets of lines and paper. The boldness of these drawings cannot be overstated—when I had her unwrap some for a preview, I had the sense that a theatrical production was underway among the dynamic layers comprising the pieces.

The show includes a range of scale, from 20 x 30 inches to 80 x 60 inches, all on drawn, cut, and layered handmade paper that she obtains from Nepal and Japan. The colors of the paper are striking and the organic nature of the cut lines is remeniscent of blood vessels, roots, or river deltas while sometimes invoking figures or formal patterns.

This is a great show from a really smart artist and well worth a trip to SoHO, where good contemporary art is clearly still alive and well.

Images: Swarm, 2006 (Ink, gouache and cut handmade paper, 33 ½ x 31 ½ inches); Never a Wasteland, 2005 (Ink, gouache, and cut paper, 30 ½ x 20 ¼ inches); opening of Drawing Breath at June Kelly Gallery.

Check out upcoming events this month and next in NY and LA. A great resource for recording artists to make things happen: www.musictalkssessions.net/

Artists, friends and colleagues:

Join us at the next artHARLEM Artist Get Together
Saurin Parke Cafe
Friday February 23, 6-8 pm
Take the B/C train to 110th St.

http://saurinparke.blogs.com/saurin_parke_cafe/index.html

RSVP: gina@artharlem.org

Saturday, February 24
THE JAMIE FOX TRIO

Jamie Fox- guitar
Carlo DeRosa- bass
Rob Garcia- drums

We’ll be playing at:

PIPER’S KILT
4944 Broadway (at 207th St.) 9-12 pm.

They are trying to add music to this comfortable neighborhood joint. Good food and good beer available. No cover charge.

Available will be copies of the new CD “When I Get Home”

There’s a lot of midnight oil being burned at Artists Unite, but every now and then we get to look out from under our mound of work. An interesting critique from Roberta Smith in the Times sounds like something that would have been less embarassing to the curators in person than in print, but has piqued my interest in this painting show:

“High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975,” a brave if deficient exhibition organized by Independent Curators International, which concludes its three-stop tour at the National Academy Museum.

Maybe I’ll even make it to this one…

Fighting Violence against women and children (more in english at bottom)
V-DAY New York en Español 2007
Una Produccion Benefica de
Los Monologos de la Vagina
de Eve Ensler
Como parte de la Campana Mundial Dia-V
∑     ∑    ∑    ∑
Libreria Caliope
Jueves 8 de Marzo 8:00 PM
Teatro Anacaona/ Culturarte
Viernes 23 de Marzo 7:00 PM
Viernes 30 de Marzo 7:00 PM
∑     ∑    ∑    ∑
Presentando a Daya Robles, Frances Melgarejo, Danielle Pollaci, Ana Montero, Karina Aybar, Rosalina Belkis Espinal, Lourdes M. Perez, Shyla Kinhal, Any Benitez, Mireya Cruz y Yoli Torres

Quien: Teatro Las_Tablas.
Que: V-DAY New York en Español 2007.  Una evento de la Campaña Mundial Dia-V
(V-Day)  presentando “Los Monologos de la Vagina” de Eve Ensler a beneficio de Nuevo Amanecer, un programa comprensivo de violencia doméstica creado por El Centro de Desarrollo de la Mujer Dominicana .
Donde: Libreria Caliope y Teatro Anacaona/Fundación Dominicana Culturarte.
Cuando: Jueves 8 de Marzo, Viernes 23 y Viernes 30 de Marzo,  2007.
Objetivo: Crear consciencia para terminar la violencia en contra de mujeres y niñas y recaudar fondos para Nuevo Amanecer.
Boletos: Reseve llamando al (212) 569-9115 o escribiendo a Las_Tablas@nyc.com.

La Campaña Mundial Dia-V (V-Day) es un catalizador para la mobilización de comunidades creando consciecia para terminar la violencia en conta de mujeres y niñas.  La campaña se lleva a cabo en febrero y marzo de cada año desde el año 2000.  Lideres  locales usan el arte y el activismo para cambiar  las percepciones tradicionales en torno a la mujer y la violencia.  “Los Monólogos de la Vagina” es el vehículo que da voz a estos temas y a otros eventos Día-V.   Los eventos V-Day proven una via para que actores, activistas, y mujeres locales colaboren y se expresen de maner única, según su expeiecncias individuales y su público en especifico.  Los fondos recaudados son donados directamente a organizaciones locales que están trabajando para  terminar con la violencia.

———————–

The World-wide Campaign Dia-V (V-Day) is a catalyst for the mobilization of communities creating consciecia to end violence against  women and children. The campaign is carried out in February and March of every year since year 2000.
Using the art and the activism to change to the traditional perceptions around the woman and the violence. “the Monólogos of the Vagina” is the vehicle that gives voice to these subjects and to other Di’a-V events. The V-Day events proven one via so that actors, activists, and local women collaborate and they are expressed of maner only, according to their individual expeiecncias and its public in I specify. The collected funds are directly donated to local organizations who are working to end the violence.

A new book by Michael Norton. Listening to this author speak was a humbling experience. via PRI’s The World.

I’ll admit it. I’m nuts about blanchett. And I’m not alone. Obviously. There’s a really long article about Ms. Blanchett in the Feb. 12 issue of the New Yorker that only makes me more nuts. Not because she’s beautiful (though she is in her way), and not because she’s talented (oh my god, she is in so many ways with 27 movie roles to date — ranging from outlaw in Heaven to Queen in Elizabeth), but because of what she and her husband, playwright and director Andrew Upton are about to do. Which is, they will take a three-year appointment as co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. To quote John Lahr’s article:

…never before had an actress of Blanchett’s caliber, at the height of her powers and popularity, made this kind of commitment to the theatre community that launched her.

The article is quite thorough on her craft and allure, so I’ll punt and say just go find the New Yorker. I can’t imagine having such a long period of access to an interviewee as this interview implies, but Lahr does a good job of keeping on course with the art topics amidst Blanchett’s many family and work committments.

photos from IMDB

Okay, so sometimes those annoying “thought you might find this interesting” emails are, well, interesting.

Those of you who appreciate draftsmanship and wit will find this Julian Beever site, um, interesting…

I keep hearing more and more rumors about a Police reunion tour. My local WFUV said they’re on the Grammy Awards show, and a tour to follow. Sending out an S-O-S….

Feb 12 update: Does anyone have a link to the Grammy video?

If you did a now:here:this piece for this exhibition, please submit it to me by end of day Friday, February 9.

Thanks!

Artkrush’s current issue covers one of our frequent topics, noting artists (like Blue Noses, whom we mentioned here) who take pen, brush, or action toward current affairs.

From Milan Kundera’s new “essay in seven parts,” The Curtain (via Arts and Letters):

“Every novel created with real passion aspires quite naturally to a lasting aesthetic value, meaning to a value capable of surviving its author. To write without having that ambition is cynicism: a mediocre plumber may be useful to people, but a mediocre novelist who consciously produced books that are ephemeral, commonplace, conventional — thus non-useful, thus burdensome, thus noxious — is contemptible. This is the novelist’s curse: his honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania.”

A review of the book, which considers the role and creation of the novel, is here.

HVG Performing Arts Group presentsThe Robinson/Suonsaari Duo
in our
“Sundays at Five” concert series
February 25, 2007
5 PM

The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens
116 Pinehurst Avenue on W.183rd
For Reservations, call 212.923.7800 x1941
Suggested donation $12
Please join us in the Hudson View Gardens Lounge for what promises to be one of THE jazz events of the year, not only for Washington Heights/Inwood residents, but for New York City. Each of these masters will be bringing to this very special duo recital a vast selection of their instrument collection - from reeds and brass to gongs and percussion. We are encouraging families to bring their kids to this afternoon concert, as it will be a perfect opportunity to expose one and all to the vast sounds and textures, and spontaneity, that only great jazz and improvisational musicians can create! (more…)

…a hit French movie.

It could have been Charlie Brown’s favorite record in Peanuts.

But “The Heart Is A Small Balloon” is really the new album by Life In A
Blender

and you, as our dear friend, are invited to our show this Thursday night,
Feb. 8,  at 9 pm at the very wonderful Union Hall in Brooklyn (702 Union St. by
the corner of 5th Ave.) where we will be selling the new album to our inner
circle–YOU.
Pinataland plays right after we do.
And hear Arrah and the Ferns from Indiana at 8 pm.

People have been asking:
Is it better than playing “the smell game” in front of Popeye’s Fried Chicken?
Does it sound better than a beachball being deflated under the weight of a
young and drunken Bea Arthur?
Will everyone in the room look thinner when I listen to it?
Will I find myself dangling from love’s icy cold maw, muttering
“Currrrrapp!!”??
Is it better than the gum that goes squirt?
Will I see pussywillows quivering in the breeze?
Will I be striking muscleman poses before a roaring fire as officials declare
me “The Bantam-Weight Bouquet of Sensuality?”
Will I find myself holding a baby whose diaper feels not unlike a Blimpie
tuna hoagie?
Is it a perfect soundtrack for watching the dancing waters at the Dutchess
County Fair?
Will I feel like I’ve been folded into an origami bird who is getting an
atomic wedgie?

The answer is YES, YES, a thousand times YES.

So please come.  Bring your friends and by all means get
The Heart is A Small Balloon
(to be said with a French accent)
by Life In A Blender
Call for help–206 295 6024
We hope to see you–we do, we do.