The almost completed Frank Gehry building on 11th Avenue, between 18th and 19th Streets is a glorious sign of the arrival of that ‘beautiful people’ power couple, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg to the Chelsea art world.
The translucent building, which will be the headquarters for Barry Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corp, will be joined by the Diane Von Furstenberg boutique building rising on the corner of 14th and Washington. When the two buildings are up and running, they will become ‘must see’ destinations for the International art and fashion crowd.
This brilliant move by Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg will not only enhance their own projects, it will confirm Chelsea as the center of the art world for the next 20 years. David Zwirner, whose ‘hot’ gallery on 19th St. is just across the road from the Frank Gehry building, has recently acquired the building on the west side of his gallery – and has arranged to rent the building on the other side, so he can expand, an obvious vote of confidence in the future.
The fact that ‘art Kingpin’ Larry Gagosian is also developeing a new space on 21st St., underlines the idea that development in Chelsea has entered a new dynamic phase.
Photos: Nancy Smith, Chelsea, NYC, May 10, 2006
~FRANK GEHRY/Barry Diller |
Posted in The Bomb | By Simon Cerigo | June 10th, 2006, 7:26am
DEVENDRA BANHART gives a small in-store concert LIVE !! at OTHER MUSIC, NYC, April 25, 2004
Photos: Nancy Smith
artlovers welcomes OTHER MUSIC – the biggest & best !! Indie music store in NYC – who have just come on board with a banner on the Indie Music Reviews – written by SIMON CERIGO.
~OTHER MUSIC/Devendra Banhart |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | June 7th, 2006, 5:31pm
The release of Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar on the Ba Da Bing! label
(home to that great noise band, The Spiney Ant Eaters) is important because it heralds
the arrival of a real musical talent, in the person of lyricist, vocalist, and
ukulele player, Zach Condon.
This debut is also very important because it points towards and adds to the loose
alternative music collection of bands known as the Elephant 6 Collective.
The main 90’s Elephant 6 Bands (Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel,
Olivia Tremor Control, Gerbils, Minders, Of Montreal, etc.) have provided
us ‘authentic music nuts’ with music documents (i.e. CDs) of unparalleled beauty,
honesty and musical experimentation.
I highly recommend any of the Elephant 6 CDs. It is former Neutral Milk Hotel
bandmember Jeremy Barnes, who helped Zach Condon put the
Gulag Orkestar CD together and he also plays on several tracks.
This is why the CD might be mistaken for the new Neutral Milk Hotel release
we’ve all been waiting for.
Not to worry, Gulag Orkestar delivers on all of the goals of
musicality, authenticity and search for new sounds that has been the
target of the Elephant 6 family for the last 10 years. Other bands that are
in some way part of the Elephant 6 family are Beulah, Essex Green, Elf Power,
Marshmellow Coast, and Music Tapes.
Beirut, Gulag Orkestar, Ba Da Bing!
Mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side
scanned from the CD:
Cover photo (top photo) ” … found in a library in Leipzig torn out of a book.
If anybody knows the photographer, please get in touch.”
other photos by: Ben Goldberg
OTHER MUSIC, JUNE 12, 2006
Zach Condon, aka Beirut, (foreground) in black shirt, plays at an in-store concert
at OTHER MUSIC, on June 12, 2006.
with him Beirut tour band musician, Paul Collins.
Photo: Nancy Smith
more photos
~Beirut |
Posted in Indie Music Reviews | By Simon Cerigo | June 7th, 2006, 2:12pm
ANTONY of ANTONY and the JOHNSONS. Photographed in December 2004, at the opening of ‘GREEN’ –
new works, drawings & sculptures by MATTEAH BAIM & LEIF RITCHEY,
with Sound Fragments by Red Bone Slim & Honey Chile,
at (**AFF*) ART FIEND FOUNDATION, 123 Ludlow St,
Lower East Side (Delancey St), NYC, December 9, 2004
Photo: Nancy Smith
more photos from the opening, Dec 9, 2004
new photos of ANTONY at the BIANCA CASADY of CocoRosie,
‘RED BONE SLIM VS. ITSELF’ opening
March 9, 2006 at The Voodoo-EROS Museum of Nice Items (**AFF**)
ANTONY’S ‘I am a bird Now’ was artlovers first Music review, by SIMON CERIGO
~ANTONY/Green/**AFF** |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | June 6th, 2006, 8:37pm
RUSTY SANTOS, of the band, ‘Rusty Santos’, at the TRACY NAKAYAMA opening,
‘dirt, seed, glory’, at atm gallery, April 27, 2006.
Rusty Santos engineered ‘SUNG TONGS’ for ANIMAL COLLECTIVE.
Photo: Nancy Smith
more photos
~RUSTY SANTOS/Tracy Nakayama/atm |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | June 6th, 2006, 8:15pm
TRACY NAKAYAMA, opens ‘dirt, seed, glory’ at atm gallery, Thursday, April 27, 2006.
The show ran from April 27 – May 27, 2006.
above is Tracy’s ‘archer’, 2006, ink drawing on paper, 19-3/4 x 10-3/4″
Photos: Nancy Smith, April 27, 2006
photos from the opening
atm gallery
~TRACY NAKAYAMA/atm |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | June 6th, 2006, 7:49pm
MARIE LORENZ, in her studio, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC, Nov 22, 2005
Photo: Nancy Smith
DO YOU KNOW THIS GIRL ? You do now. She’s profiled in an artlovers studio visit.
Marie Lorenz Studio Visit
Marie Lorenz is part of the exhibit, ‘LOCAL TRANSIT’, running at artists space til JUNE 24, 2006. You can see her full scale, wooden kayak, which she handmade from a kit, hanging from the ceiling, in a room of its own. If you look closely along the sides of the kayak, you can see the waterfront of Manhattan, which she painstakingly etched into the wooden panels, before it was varnished..
ALSO OF INTEREST in the show, RI WILLIAMSON, a New Zealand based artist, with a penchant for architecture & travelling, exhibits several small, meticulous & starkly minimal structures, made from powder coated aluminium, translucent film & a tiny white light source, which shines mysteriously blue from within the various tiny open windows.
photos from the opening
artists space
~MARIE LORENZ/RI WILLIAMSON |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | June 6th, 2006, 3:19pm
JOSH HARRIS surfaced in NYC – MARCH 2006 – just before he split for SPAIN.
MATT ENGER, of EXPLODING SKY, caught the moment.
JOSH HARRIS, that’s actually one of his own ‘trademark’ drawings.
JOSH HARRIS and MARK ENGER, of EXPLODING SKY WORLDWIDE, in the rikshaw, ALFREDO MARTINEZ hits the pedals.
ALFREDO MARTINEZ mans one of his big guns, MARK ENGER and JOSH HARRIS , watch. ‘artsquat’, Greene St, Soho.
ALFREDO MARTINEZ, outside ‘artsquat’, Greene St, Soho.
ALFREDO MARTINEZ, with one of his trademark gun drawings, outside ‘artsquat’, Greene St, Soho.
Alfredo’s got Josh’s cellphone# on his hand, outside ‘artsquat’, Greene St., Soho
All Photos by: MATT ENGER, NYC, MARCH 2006
more photos of the crew, at a Chinatown dinner, post soon.
~JOSH HARRIS/ALFREDO MARTINEZ/Photos by MATT ENGER |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | May 31st, 2006, 5:44pm
The word is that JOSH is in Spain, setting up a Euro verison of QUIET. He’s got MARK ENGER of EXPLODING SKY working on the uniforms, here. too bad he didn’t set up shop there before the subway terror attack, like he did here, that way maybe some real forward thinking FEMA guy could actually pinpoint Josh Harris as a terror frontman !!!!
YO! Josh, why don’t you set up QUIET in ‘ABU’ DUBAI ? forget Spain, that would really get you hot … maybe you could get GELATIN to sneak in and take out a high floor window in that sailboat hotel and put a little balconey up there ? you’d probably start WWW III. hey, you only got one life time = go for it. Instead of getting to live and write a book about it, like you do here, in the good ole US of A, you and your whole crew – would probably go to jail for 400 years! Mark Enger could make special little ‘ABU’ DUBAI uniforms with exploding airplanes going into high buildings that look like sailboats, on the patches … YO! why should we be spending millions of dollars on security … when we could be blowing all our extra tourist cash on 10 feet high fish aquariums, too! DAMIEN HIRST move over.
EXPLODING SKY WORLWIDE, (Mark Enger) is back in business and has recently re-located the silkscreen shop to Newark – the new artist city, if you want loft space at decent prices. They say its just 15 mins into Manhattan, on the PATH TRAIN.
Mark Enger/EXPLODING SKY/Studio Visit
from left, JEFF GOMPERTZ, MATT ENGER, JOSH HARRIS and MARK ENGER, Chinatown, March 24, 2006, just before Josh leaves for Spain.
MATT & MARK ENGER, aka THE ENGER BROS. they say they got the bling around their necks from Josh, in return for a ‘Brokeback’ ‘twin’ sandwich up on ‘the Farm’ – that’s an ‘insider’ joke.
Chinatown, March 24, 2006
Photos: Nancy Smith
~JOSH HARRIS/QUIET/Internet Roadkill/Exploding Sky/THE ENGER BROS |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | May 26th, 2006, 5:57pm
THEO CERIGO, the youngest member of the 100+ QUIET crew, in his pod, DEC 23, 1999. Theo is 11 at the time. He is wearing the standard issue QUIET uniform, orange pants and a grey work shirt. This helped identify the in-house crew from the huge throng of visitors, as QUIET was an open party 24/7. The shirts were soon, a day after this photo, silk screened with QUIET trademarks by MARK ENGER of EXPLODING SKY. JOSH HARRIS – of Pseudo and Jupiter.com fame, threw the 1 million dollar Millennium Party, held at 2 downtown loft buildings on Lower Broadway the week before and, a few days after JANUARY 1, 2000. It’s still the biggest, and edgiest, artist blow-out this town has ever seen.
Photo: Nancy Smith
The whole place was wired with 24 hour camera surveillance, as you might deduct from careful inspection of the above photo. In effect, the first ‘reality’ show, JOSH hired a film crew led by ONDI TIMONER to film the event (24/7). Theo was the go-fer for the main film crew. Ondi is currently shaping a final cut of the party, called ‘THE BUBBLE’ which will place QUIET within the framework of the huge rise and bust of the most flamboyant and visionary dot.com millionaire to hit the fan, JOSH HARRIS. At his peak, the time of QUIET, he was worth 36 million, not bad for a guy from California who came to NYC with a used car that he sold and turned into Jupiter.com – the first internet ‘trend & tracking’ site. Some say Josh got too caught up by his immersion in the art world, and forgot to keep his eye on the bottomline. He had a definite eye for the edgiest talent in town, and now he’s just sitting back, waiting for his art collection to bring in his next wave of moolah..
An interesting aside .. JOSH HARRIS is the guy who financed the WORLD TRADE CENTER caper by GELATIN and paid for the helicopter & film crew that filmed it. GELATIN actually infiltrated the World Trade Center and built a little alcove balconey on which one could stand, out of a high WTC office window. talk about ‘gansta’ street art in forbidden places. The book about it, is sold out … but its out there. (I think JAMES WAGNER, an early GELATIN fan, has a copy).
see some recent pix of ONDI TIMONER, and some of the QUIET crew.
Ondi went on to score a BEST DOCUMENTARY AWARD at SUNDANCE for her acclaimed, 7 year in the filming, rock portrait of THE DANDY WARHOLS and THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE – “DIG!”
QUIET was eventually shut down by a c0mbined force of FEMA, the NYPD & the NYFD, (the NYC Police dept, the NYC Fire dept) for various reasons, not the least being FEMA’s belief that it was a ‘suicide’ cult ! .. not to mention the firing range, run by ALFREDO MARTINEZ, in the basement of the main building, … AND the toxic room, run by AIDAS BAREIKIS and AARON BREWER, right next to the pod hotel, designed and built by JEFF GOMPERTZ, that housed 100 artists !
JOSH HARRIS, who surfaced recently in Manhatttan before departing for SPAIN, is quick to point out now, that the next big call for FEMA and the NYPD and NYFD – was the World Trade Center disaster, …. think on that.
photos of the recent JOSH HARRIS sighting in Manhattan
~JOSH HARRIS/QUIET/Theo Cerigo |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | May 25th, 2006, 10:28am
