JK Fake

JK Fake Myspace

I saw on James Kalm's latest youtube entry (the Rirkrit Tiravanija one) that some jokesters are going to openings impersonating him, and have even set up a Myspace account. That's my photo they used! It's a picture of Steve Kaplan (not James Kalm) giving my painting a double thumbs-up, at the opening for a show I was in at Dumbo Arts Center. 

I wonder if they are putting their videos on the internet somewhere... they might be funny. Maybe they do the bike thing even.

PLUS:

William Pym on Nate Lowman, for Artforum - 

"Nate Lowman, a pretty downtown totem seemingly welcomed as a royal at New Museum events, hovered outside, collecting his crew. 'Is this necessary?' he huffed petulantly, pointing at the growing crowd of fireman and cops improvising a solution to the three-alarm blaze around the corner..."

This is the same William Pym that got upset when I negatively compared the show of a friend of his to Nate L. and Dan Colen's last Maccarone show. I think we unintentionally started the biggest drama thread on the Philly artblog...  

Whatever Happened to "A Day Without Art?"

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An e-mailed suggestion from Michael Buitron -

"I got an email from the Getty last week listing their activities for December, which included events in conjunction with World AIDS Day, December 1. After checking out some other L.A. museum's calendars, I saw that the Getty was the only one that had events listed. I can remember ten or fifteen years ago when it seemed that every museum or gallery had something happening.

This got me to think that the blog-o-sphere would be an ideal way to resurrect the tradition. I thought about some of my artist friends who died before the advent of the internet, and how little of their work or lives are represented online.

To remedy that situation, and to mark 'A Day Without Art', I'll be posting a short tribute to a former classmate and video artist. I thought it would be a great idea if I could get other bloggers to post on December 1 anything they'd like on artists they admire who died of AIDS."

Sol Lewitt

Sol Lewitt at MASS MoCA!!!

MASS MOCA admission fees have gone up but GUESS WHAT... it's worth it! In fact, I did not even go into any of the other buildings to see any of the other shows... I had already seen everything that is up... all of my time on this visit was spent in the newly opened space housing the Sol Lewitt retrospective.

Not that I paid the full price - I always bring a "student" id and pay $10 - but still! This previously un-used building is now FILLED with three floors of Sol Lewitt wall drawings and paintings... it's spectacular... guaranteed to have you wandering around for a long time. Plus there are two videos; one video is of the assistants who spent the summer making everything and the other is of an exhibition walk-through and interview with Sol Lewitt... both of which are 100% enjoyable.

If I had been one of those fortunate enough to have spent the summer helping to paint I would have worn the same outfit everday and that paint-spattered uniform would now be a treasure. Instead I was getting infected on a farm.


This installation is up for twenty-five years.... this is now officially a pilgrimmage spot... like Roden Crater or the Rothko Chapel.

Now On View Through 2033.


Each floor is from a different period.... first floor is early work, second floor is middle work, third floor is later work. You enter at the second floor. The pieces pictured above are on the third floor, the X is from 2007 and the cube is dated 2005... both are in graphite, the medium of his earliest drawings.

CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE because it is EXCELLENT... you can view by grid or floorplan.

It's worth noting that both the Williams and MASS MoCA texts make mention of Lewitt's forty-year career, with the earliest of the early works at MASS MoCA dated 1969, yet the artist died last year at almost eighty. So if you are thirty-five and floundering don't sweat it. LeWitt had his first solo exhibition at the Daniels Gallery, New York, in 1965... he would have been maybe thirty-six.


Third floor.


View into the infamous Building 5, from a third floor balcony off of the stairs to the Lewitt installation... they are installing the Simon Starling show, which opens December 13th. I can see the giant Jenny Holzer beanbag chairs piled up in the far corner. Want one.

Nice to be able to see this unfinished installation in progress. I recall watching Spencer Finch himself - alone with a stepladder, crumpling blue filters to install Passing Cloud - from a different balcony into another cavernous MASS MoCA gallery space, way back in April or May 2007, before that lawsuit happened.

Spirit of Sharing.






First floor.


It was almost empty on Wednesday. I heard there were 1500 people at the private opening on Saturday, with 1000 attending the public opening on Sunday.


The idea becomes a machine that makes the art!!!

Make sure you stop at Williams first if you go before May 17th.

Sol Lewitt

"The idea becomes a machine that makes the art" - Sol Lewitt


Rough Draft of "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", first published in Artforum in 1967.

Went to Williams and MASS MoCA today to see Sol Lewitt. Williams has a small exhibit on early Lewitt - including the texts pictured here - which you should definitely visit (it's nearby and free) before going to MASS MoCA.

The MASS MoCA show is awesome!!! I'll post more later... probably adding to this post.


From the Word "Art": Blue Lines to Four Corners, Green Lines to Four Sides and Red Lines between the Words "Art" on the Printed Page, 1972, colored ink and pencil on paper.

lightning view

lightning view.

i can even see the barracuda.

Kellyann Burns

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Was looking at recently updated pages on the Artist's Space website and found Kellyann Burns... we were friends in school and haven't seen each other in maybe eighteen years... she was really nice and I'm happy to have found her site and paintings.

Here's a video visit to her Brooklyn studio, made in conjunction with a show she had at the North Dakota Museum of Art.... it's nice to hear her voice again.

PLUS, more recently updated good stuff checked out on the Artist's Space site:

Jesse Farber - pretty sure I hung out with him a little bit after Wendy White's dinner, with Jasmine Justice. I've seen his stuff on The Old Gold and it caught my eye again on the Artist Space site.

Guiseppe Luciani - never met him, but I like his paintings... and I went to his website and saw more good stuff.

bradley buzz

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...because the artist doesn’t call on painterly competence, the work stands out in a gallery scene that has, overall, the ready-for-prime-time surface sheen of an M.F.A. show - Holland Cotter

- Aaron Namenwirth doesn't know what to say.
- Matt Connors doesn't know what to say.
- Chris Sharp says retarded.
- Dictionary Colen recalls Rothko (in the comments after Sharp's review).
- more comments.

openings + shows to see

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THURSDAY:

Elmer Bischoff, at George Adams - (with Andrew Lenaghan in the other room... he had the definitive Bush portrait)
Chuck Webster, at ZieherSmith.
Alexi Worth, at DC Moore - i'm psyched to see this show.

FRIDAY:

Maureen Cavanaugh, at 31GRAND - star-studded action-packed standing-room-only see-and-be-seen!... you will have to go back a second time to see the paintings, for sure... this is the last official 31GRAND show before they merge with Black & White.

more to see (already opened):

Patrick Hill is included in a group show in the middle room at Andrea Rosen. I loved his Bortolami show.
Carol Rama, at Maccarone.
Cora Cohen, at Michael Steinberg - reviewed on Artcritical, reviewed in Brooklyn Rail.
Kelley Walker, at Paula Cooper.
Jennifer Cohen and Vlatka Horvat, at Rachel Uffner.
Richard Prince, at Gagosian.
Unbreak My Heart, at Pluto - group show including Rosanna Bruno and EJ Hauser.
The Unforgiven, at Stellan Holm - group show including Dan "Dictionary" Colen, Nate Lowman, Steven Parrino.
Joe Bradley, at Canada - to check out the show that inspired such a killer review.

I'm sure there are others I'd like to see... bummed I missed Aurel Schmidt and Bram Bogart last month. I didn't know they had shows up.

MISC

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Chris Sharp on Joe Bradley, at Canada - "it doesn’t get much more retarded than this". Dan Colen responds at disjointed length in comments, Dan is seriously hung up on the word "chortle". Dan is OFFENDED, which is fairly hilarious.

RELATED: Artloversnewyork photos from the opening. The Rothko Chapel. Seeing a crucifix at the Rothko Chapel. Jerry Saltz on Dan Colen and Nate Lowman at Maccarone.


Hannelore Baron, Untitled, 1985, from s(election), at Gallery Schlesinger, through November 29th.

RELATED: the flag in art.

Cora Cohen, at Michael Steinberg, on Artcritical.

MORATORIUM EXTENSION ALERT!!! Roberta Smith on photography based painting - "as art formulas go, nothing beats paintings based on photographs".... "it is something of an art-world plague". JUST in Time! The Jerry Saltz call for a four-year moratorium on photography based painting expired this year! I can't wait for the Marlene Dumas reviews!

Hey, every Martha Rosler review starts out with the "conscious decision" made to place a quarter in the turnstile and enter the show... am I the only one that tried to push the thing without putting a quarter in? Guess what, you didn't need to put a quarter in to make the thing turn.

I thought that show was a snooze...

ATTENTION! Nick Kuszyk is not Banksy! Nick's nickers are in a twist... the photographer has posted a response including Nick's e-mail to him. What is the big deal/surprise that somebody publicly making public art might get photographed, especially if it is the art of an (over-rated) superstar, and especially if a big part of his schtick is his "anonymity". Duh, he is courting that attention.

(and i like street art)

MORE ON THE MYSTERIOUS and SENSITIVE NICK! -


THIS IS MY FAVORITE KUZSYK... CliCK HeRE!

Nick Kuszyk curated an awesome show at McCaig-Wells!


This is the kitchen of my friend and I got her hooked on Nick Kuszyk and now she is OUT OF CONTROL. this is only one side of the kitchen.


Nick + Kai!!!!

Jon Lutz's Old Gold

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Patrick Brennan
Jaime Gecker
Carrie Pollack
Christopher Knowles
Gianna Commito
Liz-n-Val
Scott Olson

...and many more!!!

Penn Collects

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Weirdness... I just found this video blog entry in which Penn (of Penn and Teller) shares his huge collection of Tony Fitzpatrick etchings. He doesn't consider himself an art collector even though he has a "Tony Room" of every Tony Fitzpatrick etching ever made and says he will get every one yet to come.

Penn also talks about the work of another artist he got very early and who has since become a superstar.

RELATED: Iron Man

Judy Glantzman, Rita Ackermann... PLUS

Judy Glantzman, at Betty Cunningham

I'm trying to post some final images of good stuff I saw last month, and was about to do Ackermann or Glantzman, then I realized I just did Goodman and Heilmann... so the question became: Are there any excellent women painters with names ending in -man that did not have a show in October? I even saw Amy Sillman at the Tang.


Judy Glantzman. Glantzman on PaintersNYC. Click on any of these images to see them much better.


Rita Ackermann, at Andrea Rosen - the barely-there huddled grouping of figures is like what is happening in that top Glantzman piece.


Rita Ackermann - painted sides are nice. I wasn't too into the non-painting stuff.

Andrea Rosen had a fantastic Linda Benglis in the way back.

some friends had shows...

Gina Occhiogrosso, at The Arts Center Gallery, Saratoga Springs NY - this show opened last week and runs through November 22nd. There will be a discussion with the artists (Gina and Katherine Patterson, it's a two-person show) Thursday Nov 13th, at 6pm.


Jennifer Coates, at Kinz Tillou Feigen - neutron teddy caught in a thicket of strokes... click the picture to see it bigger.


Jennifer Coates review, by Elliott Green, Nov 2008, Artnews.


Amy Wilson, at BravinLee


birds-eye view.


Diana Al Hadid, at Perry Rubinstein - reviewed in NYTimes.