Jaime Gecker

Jaime Gecker, Landing, 2009, photo transfer, spray paint, latex on canvas, in The living and the dead, at Gavin Brown.


Jamie Gecker, polaroids collage, in the sum and all parts, in a temporary(?) space at 427 Manhattan Avenue.

Jaime Gecker in two group shows. The Gavin Brown show is up through August 7th, and the sum and all parts closes this Sunday 7/26, with a closing party Saturday night 8-12. I've been trying to post the shows that are closing today or this weekend (Hudson Franklin, Slough).

Old Gold has an interview with the sum and all parts curators Jenny Borland and Beau Rutland. Really liked the two LeRoy Stevens contributions.

PLUS: Also closing this Sat 7/24 is Jane Benson at Thierry Goldberg... definitely worth seeing if you will be visiting the LES today or tomorrow. I'll post photos later. Jaime Gecker on Old Gold. Jamie Gecker on anaba last summer in The Longest Day.

Navid Nuur

Navid Nuur is showing a tight collection of polaroids at ADA Gallery, part of a show curated by artists Derek Cote and John Henry Blatter, from the pages of their Daily Constitutional.

These twenty-eight polaroids are propped on tiny nails, and all show the same corner of what is probably the artist's studio, in The Netherlands. The placement of the camera doesn't change, so the lines of the floor and walls remain fixed within the white-bordered grid of photos. Also fixed are some of the elements within each photo, most prominently what looks like an up-ended metal table or shelf thing; the black lines of this thing are the internal skeleton of each picture. The other elements in the corner, mostly unrecognizable industrial stuff, are rearranged in each photo: stacked on the floor, leaning against the wall or shelf-thing, on top or below or within. Like twenty-eight little temporary sculptures. One of the elements is a flourescent light fixture, so the light of each photo is a bit different with the lights on or off, or leaning against the wall or shining on the corner. The center grouping of photos glows green, with the light reflecting off something green in the corner and the rest of the lights in the room turned off.

I love the scale of this piece, it feels like a miniature, like a dollhouse. A few of the photos include more recognizable objects - a skateboard, a broom - which shift the reading and sense of scale.

Very nice.

Ryan Mulligan is also in this show with some funny and paranoid drawings, sketches of homes turned fortresses, with lists and notes explaining the new protective features. Number two on the check-list for Extreme Compound Modification is "establish fail-safe plan". Other notes-to-self include "store extra lumber in cut and debarked form" and "maintain morale at all costs".

These made me think of Ryan's room from his Anderson Gallery show last year. I think he is in a show at Art Space opening soon?

"no photography"... of Richard Pettibone???

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Revisiting the Richard Pettibone show at the Tang I was watched like a hawk by the security guards. My mission was to get a photo of one of the double-sided glass cases holding a bunch of his little paintings, to show how perfect the backs are. Pettibone makes tiny stretchers using tiny nails, with tiny braces. The backs are as captivating as the fronts.

But I couldn't get a photo because the security guards at the Tang are the most attentive you will ever see. Walking up to the mezzanine level where the Kathy Butterly sculptures are on exhibit a lady leapt up from her chair and smiled at me. I felt so bad continuing on to the Pettibone show - she seemed like she really wanted to watch someone.

The Tang's "no photography" rule is exasperating on this visit especially because so much of Richard Pettibone's own photo-realist work of the seventies was produced from polaroids taken in museums. He took photos of work by his contemporaries as well as that of artists like Eakins, Gerome, and Ingres. Those polaroids, often taken at odd angles, were then reproduced exactly - including the white borders of the polaroid.

From a wall text at the Tang beside the photo paintings -

"In 1974, Richard Pettibone moved away from mere emulation of Photorealist style by incorporating historical works of art into the pictures. Using photographs he had taken in New York museums, Pettibone depicts white-bordered snapshots of ..

Taken at lateral angles, the picture emphasizes the works in situ status. These tiny, exquisite paintings reiterate art history's reliance on photography to propagate our knowledge about painting."

It's ironic and sad that the Tang, which promotes itself as a teaching museum, forbids that further propagation.

UPDATE 12/05/07: Nobody ever commented on this post, but I did soon hear from both a Pettibone and co-curator Michael Duncan. The Pettibones sent me a CD of images, and Michael Duncan asked for my address and said he would send a copy of the catalogue... but HE NEVER DID!

1/4 career flashback - the potato years

potato polaroid 2, 1989, martin bromirski, originally uploaded by Bromirski.

Welcome to my ongoing Quarter of a Career retrospective.

Tonight we examine the potato year, 1989. This year is not officially part of the quarter-career (1990-2005), but the potatoes were fun and I want to show them. Pictured above is one of my potato polaroids. I made potato jack-o-lanterns and let them wizen and harden. Very scary.

You may also like the paintings of the boxing potatoes, the elvis potato (very Basquiat) and the texas potatoes. There were so many other potato paintings - there was the potato mystery train and the celestial potato - now so many of these are feared lost.

What is the difference between the potatoes and the meatballs? Nothing! They are all delicious.