some openings

some upcoming openings -

Colleen Asper in a group show opening at Deitch Projects on Sept. 4th, 6-8 - this painting would have been so good in the lady-lacking Mr. President.

Diana Al-Hadid at Perry Rubinstein, opens September 4th.

Sally Smart at Postmasters, opens September 6th - i liked her Surface Charge installation.

Jennifer Coates at Kinz Tillou Feigen, opens September 9th !!!

Amy Wilson at BravinLee, opens September 12th, 6-8pm.

Noel Grunwaldt at Stellan Holm, opens September 12th - nice work, and it will likely be a fairly star-studded opening, if you know what i mean.

Pawel Wojtasik at Martos Gallery, opens September 18th - very good... and he once included me in a show he co-curated.

misc internet

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- Google "small abstract paintings"... with or without quotation marks. WOW.

- Roberta Smith wrote about public art last week. Is internet art considered public art? Is graffiti? She didn't mention either of those. My definition of public art is very looooose... I've added a public art label. UPDATE: I've re-read the article and now realize that Smith was writing specifically about public sculpture... it was probably an editor who made the public art headline.

- Tyler Green posted a response.

- anaba archived in the NYTimes!!! FOREVER!

- Major shake-up in my flickr ranking since I last posted the ten most-viewed photos (scroll down). Kjartan Slettemark has unexpectedly leapt into second place after getting more than 1,500 views because it was linked to in this comment thread.

- Read about the work of Kjartan Slettemark here.

- James Kalm was featured in the LATimes! That's cool. This is from April, but I just saw it.

- Speaking of LA, Eric Sall has a show opening next week at Acuna-Hansen.

Poll: Which Infant Stool Sample?

I'm taking a poll. Which 1907 infant stool sample does Cai Guo-Qiang's Whitney Biennial Gap Artist Editions T-shirt most resemble?

a. meconium
b. constipated, greasy stool of artificially fed infant. this stool is due to the administration of too much fat. it is foul-smelling, like limburger cheese.
c. stool of dyspepsia
d. stool of a case of diarrhea discolored by bismuth.
e. diarrhea discolored by bismuth. note blood and mucus.


Close-up of Cai Guo-Qiang's Whitney Biennial Gap Artist Editions T-shirt. Note splatter and apparent absence of blood.

Jason Coates on Art of This Century

Jason Coates wrote a review of Art of This Century, my 2006 show at the Markel Building. The review was never published... UNTIL NOW!

I've added links to things -

Redefining the Center
Jason Coates

When discussing Martin Bromirski's one person show at Haigh Jamgochian's wonderfully out of place Markel Building in Richmond, VA, it is quite possible to focus only on the near-perfect matchup between the small group of paintings and the site. For starters, Jamgochian's office building- which resembles a gigantic flying saucer plopped down amid the car dealerships and strip malls on West Broad Street, has the same future-as-imagined-from-the-past quality that Bromirski's misty abstracts capture. Bromirski has a knack for redefining the center, often creating art venues where there were none. He's accomplished this with his popular art blog anaba.blogspot.com, his mock Art Basel at Stuffy's Sub Shop in Richmond, and now this show at what Bromirski deems the "Bizzarro Guggenheim". But equally as interesting is the way that the paintings ask you to imagine where they have been.

The handful of small paintings are hung in a circular lobby among an elevator entrance and vending machines. Yet, even in this modest setting, Bromirski's paintings appear unassuming- almost tailor made to blend into the space. It is this unassuming quality- bordering on sweetness and pathos- that sets this work apart from his earlier, grander paintings. Previously, Bromirski's large scale work would center around a tiny, barely recognizable figure dwarfed by it's surroundings . In the new body of work, the individual paintings become characters themselves, ready to be crammed into a suitcase like a stack of dog-eared postcards and rushed off to the next adventure.

The vocabulary in the paintings is limited: each containing one or more circular elements fixed atop a hazy backdrop. Many Japanese landscape drawings make use of the sun as a balancing device, acting like a free-floating punctuation mark above the picture plane. Bromirski focuses only on this sun-shape, doing away with the rest of the picture. The sun-shapes have various colors and moods. Some rub up against each another and appear to socialize, some seem quite and contemplative.

If Bromirski's work has always dealt, in some way or another, with accumulation of experience, the new paintings wear that experience on their skin. Often the sun-shapes are cut from the paintings, reveling the layers beneath. Bromirski uses colored sand and acrylic paint to build complex, pockmarked surfaces. The result is a nebulous environment that is both ethereal and terrestrial, like the surface of the moon. In my favorite work in the show, hung just to the right of a snack machine, Bromirski lovingly repairs a large gash formed at the center of the painting by weaving it back together and dousing it with silver paint. The care with which the painting is mended is visible, and makes one wonder how (or why) it got gashed in the first place.

In an art world where the more-is-more aesthetic has become so commonplace that it can't be called brash anymore, it is nice to see an off-the-beaten-path and understated show like Art of This Century. It is a show that stokes a desire to see more, rather than pounding the viewer over the head with everything within reach. While many artists confuse making a lot with saying a lot, Bromirski clearly knows better.

- THanKS, Jason!

PLUS: Vittorio Colaizzi's review of the same show... An Assault on Taste!!!


Haigh Jamgochian's Markel Building, Richmond VA.... FROM SPACE.

Heaven

Are you going to Heaven? 2 Question Test Reveals Answer.

POETRY and ART at Geoffrey Young Gallery

Martha Lewis, Pseudonymity, 2008, acrylic gouache on paper - it's a small piece, click the photo to see it much enlarged.

Exquisitude, at Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington MA.


Martha Lewis - she had three small pieces... mandalas and machines... really liked. This green one is so Kirby. Bring me my Image Duplicator!

Paging Mike Martin, come in Mike Martin... you would also like these Martha Lewis works. I miss my old bedroom with the Mike Martin painting on the wall.


Gianna Commito, Tent, 2008 - as featured on The Old Gold! Old Gold-miner Jon Lutz will be adding an interview with her later on. She was in a Drawing Center show last year with Jered Sprecher... I think they went to school together (?).


Gianna Commito, Bend, 2008


Kathy Bradford, Room of Unencumbered Promise, 2008 - that studio painting on the right reminded me a lot of Brenda Goodman's excellent studio paintings, with the canvases piled up. Guston-y.

Katherine Bradford talking with James Kalm. Katherine Bradford interviewed by Peter Acheson and Chris Martin, for The Brooklyn Rail.


Steve DiBenedetto, untitled, 2008, oil on linen, 24"x18".... click here to see a lot more Steve DiBenedetto from his current huge show in Albany. WORTH the TRIP.

POETRY READINGS! - Geoffrey Young is a poet, and the gallery holds poetry readings. We heard Derek Fenner, Ryan Gallagher, and Geoffrey Young read... Derek and Ryan are both published by Bootstrap Press.

Derek Fenner - so funny... all of the poems were about Katie Couric... and he played a slideshow of his KC art and related photographs as he read (and sang).

Ryan Gallagher - read one of his own poems, but mostly stuff from his book translating the funny vulgar bitter (love) poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Catullus on Wikipedia.


Geoffrey Young - THE MAN!

King Kutter

Rotating Driveline Contact Can Cause Death.


King Kutter.

Steve DiBenedetto

Casa Amnesia, 2008

Steve DiBenedetto at University Art Museum, SUNY Albany.


detail of Casa Amnesia - i love red and blue together... they are Spider-Man colors.


detail of Casa Amnesia


detail of Casa Amnesia - hot pool of grenade green.


Half a Place, 2005


detail of Half a Place - carnival Eiffel Tower of electro-guns, zap.


Edge Dwelling, 2008


detail of Edge Dwelling - glyphs like guns, in each pane.


Breakup, 2003-04 - better in reality, maybe you can see some of the good stuff if you click the picture to make it bigger. Here's a much smaller helicopter+spinning color-wheel+octopus painting from 2000.

The many helicopter paintings and drawings are full of short choppy strokes, spaces, and breaks... like the choppy thwack sound of helicopters. The lines and ridges shared the same pulsing blade whop. It was a synaesthetic experience like what I get with some of Charles Burchfield's paintings and the pulsing hum of ciccadas.

Helicopter sounds (third one down is good), blade whops. Some intense sounds, I want to make music. Here I am playing the Netflix strip.

Red and Green Abstraction, 1997-98 - pre-helicopter and octopi? maybe he didn't even start those until he was forty? here's another (relatively) early abstraction, i didn't get the date or title.
Fester, 1999 - earliest of the helicopters and octopi in the show...
Untitled, 2000
Cryptopsy, 2000-01 - sort of a bio-Lasker... like J. Lasker and T. Winters got caught in the same transporter.
Octotech, 2007


detail of helicopter from Octotech, 2007.


Steve DiBenedetto is upstairs, Keith Edmier is downstairs.


Ceilings are fantastic... place feels like Iran or something, even the outside.

RELATED: as seen on anaba!!
- Lane Twitchell at University Art Museum
- Judith Linhares at University Art Museum
- James Siena at University Art Museum
- Mr. President at University Art Museum

a show

I'm going to have an unexpected show in October... this is good news because my resume was looking pretty bare for 2008. Also have a show happening at the start of the new year, although I should probably get back in touch with them and confirm things.

- failed again to see the DiBenedetto and Edmier shows. I'll try again next Saturday... either that or maybe go to Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington to see this show recommended to me by Jon Lutz (because of the inclusion of Gianna Commito).

- those interested in following the Steven Parrino talk started here, continued (a little) in the comments here, but mostly here and here, should check back on Bill Schwarz's blog to read the many subsequent comments.

- Timothy Buckwalter did a three-part "oral history" with Philadelphia artist Michael Macfeat... and Mildred Greenberg was mentioned (!) -

"Michael Macfeat: In 1986 I founded Meat, giving the original Heat group members a chance to exhibit with a wider selection of artists, with me in the unenviable position of curator. There were 16 original members, the five Heat artists plus Harry Anderson, David Goerk (of Bunnydrums), Judith Schaecter, Millie Greenberg (a septuagenarian), Tom Steigerwald, Bill Russell, Martha Masiello, Linda Stoudt, Arline Peco and Bill Hooper."

click here to scroll through much Mildred...