HEADS UP:
if you are too hardcore to score $25 tix to the event, tell the doorman: Alfredo sent you.
that should get you in, no prob.
BIG ART PAR-TAY !!!!
THURS NIGHT / FEB 28, 2019 / 6 – 10 PM !!!!
BE THERE !!!!
MADAME ROSA’S . . . ‘SPIRIT’ . . . is in the house !!!!
CONTRA . . . where the BIGGEST BUZZ in the art scene – is happening, RIGHT NOW.
122 W 26th St, FL 5 / just west of 7th AVE / so, is that . . . ‘midtown’ CHELSEA ?!!!!
because it sure is . . gritty !!
hit: their website for VIP TIX – $25 !! and party like a KING.
@alfredomartinezartist . . “the subway car I had made in aluminum for a graffiti project at CONTRA.”
image via Instagram @alfredomartinezartist
@delta2nyc . . “Style from N.Y.C. the realist” (!!)
image via Instagram @delta2nyc
YEAH !! YEAH !! THAT’S RIGHT – FOLKS !!!!
DELTA2 . . is gonna paint up Alfredo’s subway car !!!!
that’s a WIN / WIN !!! if I ever did see one.
and, I’ve seen some, trust me.
~ALFREDO MARTINEZ x DELTA2 / BIG ART PAR-TAY !! MADAME ROSA’S at CONTRA / THURS FEB 28 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 27th, 2019, 6:39pm
CONTRA GALLERIES PRESENTS: MADAME ROSA’S 80s ART PARTY
THURS FEB 28, 2019 / 6 – 10 PM
CONTRA GALLERIES, 122 W 26th ST, Floor 5, NYC
go to the gallery website: & hit: ‘TAKE ME To THE 80s’. . . for VIP TIX $25 / INCLUDES LIMITED EDITION DELTA 2 PRINT
~MADAME ROSA’S 80s ART PARTY at CONTRA / THURS FEB 28 / 6- 10 PM |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 23rd, 2019, 11:51am
‘THE ART OF NEW YORK: 1980s’ – CURATED by LINUS CORAGGIO
OPENED FEB 13 & RUNS THRU . . FEB 28, 2019
CONTRA GALLERIES, 122 W 26th St, Fl 5, Chelsea / Midtown Manhattan
read more: ‘THE ART of THE 1980s’ – CONTRA
PIX FROM THE OPENING – FEB 13, 2019 / PART II
the show’s curator . . LINUS CORAGGIO stands beside his own work.
Linus founded the notorious ‘Rivington School’, and ‘Gas Station’, alternative spaces that played a dynamic role,
in the 80/90s Lower East Side underground art scene.
LINUS CORAGGIO, ‘Multi-Chop’, 2018.
the ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ lightbox by JOSH HARRIS – seems to have found its . . niche.
metal chairs by LINUS CORAGGIO.
left: painting by FA-Q / right: painting by FA_Q / LINUS CORRAGGIO.
watercolor on paper, 1985.
great piece by FA-Q aka KEVIN WENDALL !!
‘Untitled’, 1985.
mixed media collage. 48 x 36 in.
great piece by FA-Q / LINUS CORAGGIO
works by AL DIAZ aka SAMO and LINUS CORAGGIO, 2017.
AL DIAZ . . was at the opening.
left, NIK LESANTE, creative director and studio manager/production at Contra, with Contra founder STEVE MAZZ.
NOAH BECKER of Whitehot magazine, helps ALFREDO MARTINEZ tour the show.
they both contributed input to the event.
M. HENRY JONES . . ‘KEMBRA’.
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH
~’THE ART of NEW YORK: 1980s’ . . CONTRA GALLERIES / OPENING PIX – PART II |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 23rd, 2019, 11:17am
think: raw !!
think: from the street up !!
don’t let . . ‘scruffy’ fool ya.
coz that’s ‘scruffy’ – as in . . GRITTY / NYC GRITTY.
there’s a lot of heart, soul, & big big ambitions . . in this here place.
a real, hardcore . . old school / ‘downtown’ vibe.
‘THE ART of NEW YORK: 1980s’ . . CONTRA GALLERIES
122 W 26th St. Fl 5, Chelsea / Midtown Manhattan
OPENED FEB 13 / & RUNS THRU . . . FEB 28, 2019
more on the exhibit: ‘The Art of New York: 1980s’ – CONTRA GALLERIES
PIX FROM THE OPENING FEB 13, 2019 / PART I: DELTA 2 & RICK PROL
Delta 2 . . . painting, 2019.
detail . .
detail . .
detail . .
bottom right-hand corner.
Delta 2, not really a ‘revival’ / not just history.
the painting is current, 2019 – raw, powerful. free flying. & attracting new fans, like a . . magnet.
I really like how this painting is presented on boxes / something real real street about that.
something improvised, of the moment.
‘scruffy’ – as opposed to, hmmm: staid / minimalist / staged.
there’s a real life force flowing – thru the show.
Delta 2.
yeah, that right-hand corner !!
Delta 2 . . .
some small RICK PROL paintings to the right.
RICK PROL.
RICK PROL.
RICK PROL / NYC RIP.
that’s so DARK. Mack the Knife.
maybe it’s a portrait of Richard Hambleton ?
one of my fav pieces in the show / sccruffffy.
skin off your teeth – raw. ragged. true.
what . . ?
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ – ?!! in an 80s show ?
you know what ? damn yes !! hardcore as hell.
JOSH HARRIS, ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ lightbox.
at the opening, ROBERT FERNANDEZ aka NOVA THE WRAITH.
most def: YES.
YiYi . . making the scene / she just re-located to New York – from Texas.
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH
~’THE ART of NEW YORK: 1980s’ . . CONTRA GALLERIES / OPENING PIX – PART I: DELTA 2 & RICK PROL |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 20th, 2019, 2:46pm
‘The Art of New York: 1980s’ – CURATED by LINUS CORAGGIO
OPENS TODAY – WED FEB 13 / 6 – 9 PM
the show runs thru . . . FEB 28, 2019
CONTRA GALLERIES, 122 W 26th St, Floor 5, Midtown Manhattan
The work of both late and living legends of 1980s New York City street art, graffiti and other seminal styles of urban work has been assembled by curator LINUS CORAGGIO – sculptor, painter and instigator of the notorious Rivington School & Gas Station spaces in the 80s/90s Lower East Side underground art scene.
The creative luminaries featured include living pioneers such as Fab 5 Freddy, LA2 (Angel Ortiz), Al Diaz (SAMO), Delta 2 & Rick Prol: as well as departed masters like Richard Hambleton, Keith haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat & FA-Q, along with surprise notables.
~CONTRA GALLERIES PRESS RELEASE
~’THE ART of NEW YORK: 1980s’ . . CONTRA GALLERIES / OPENS WED FEB 13 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 13th, 2019, 10:03am
when a little slice of the hard-core downtown art scene – was WIRED !!!!
and I mean . . w-i-r-e-d in every great way & sense of the word / you can imagine.
from 24/7 surveillance, (wired) to public real-time monitors (wired) . . to outrageous art & thought, beyond the beyond !!
wired . .
beyond your wildest dreams.
talk about . . spinning out.
guns, quilts, & orgies to . . light shows, politicians, extreme video games, and goths.
survival, comfort, Americana – before it hit / Calvin Klein & RAF SIMMONS 2018 . . big.
‘bio’ drives, zen gardens, & interrogation rooms,
and always, lots & lots of that green stuff / as Cardi says: money money money !!!!
open bars on every floor, and a 4 star chef in the kitchen.
talk about . . wired !! this was so wired.
and,
way, way before . . YOU were wired !!, on your cellphone, FB, SNAP & IG / believe it.
while, catching up with ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’, this review by the renown movie critic ROGER EBERT, popped up.
published back in OCT 14, 2009 – it makes some interesting insights.
JOSH HARRIS . . in the MARIA ALEJANDRA GIUDICI / MARIANO AIRALDI transparent, communal shower at ‘Quiet’ – the millennial party / downtown art residency . . that kick-started ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’.
it starts off:
“I’d never heard of Josh Harris, who is billed in ‘We Live in public’, as “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.’ I can be excused for thinking Harris was the fictional hero of a pseudo-documentary, until the film quickly and obviously became authentic. It’s not often you see a doc that’s been filmed over a period of 15 years.
Josh was involved in the early days of Prodigy, back in the CompuServe era, and in 1993 founded Pseudo.com which forecast audio and video Webcasting, YouTube, Hulu and countless other streamers. he was, to put it kindly, ahead of his time. In 1993, 300-baud modems were commonplace, and 1200 was fast.
Harris was a myopic visionary, a man who saw the future more vividly than his own life. He was a prototype nerd, a lonely kid who raised himself while planted in front of an old black-and-white TV set, using ‘Gilligan’s Island’, as a vistual famly . . .
In the 1990s, he became one of the early dot.com millionaires , a celebrity on New York, where he threw lavish parties intended not so much for the famous as to attract brilliant and artistic kids to work for him.”
correction: Mr. Ebert gets his $$ facts a little confused here / although he does real good with the gist of it. It was Josh’s first company ‘JUPITER.COM’ . . the very first internet / trend tracking service . . which Josh started with $700, & went on to sell, shortly thereafter for $81 million dollars (!!) / then those mega $$$$ funds when into ‘Pseudo’ – which was to become the multi-channel incubator online streaming endeavor & which threw the real wild parties.
this is true: “Pseudo.com is remembered from that time as Nerd Heaven, with good pay, perks, free creature comforts — demanding only your body and soul”, and this was esp true for the other side of the Pseudo game plan – the artists who put on the outrageous parties.
this also true, when modified: He sold Jupiter, not Pseudo . . for something like $80 million dollars, and that was the end of his good timing.”
well, financially.
he did go on to become the star of a Sundance winning doc, & is still being hailed as the godfather of ‘social media’, for better, or for worse. and now his story is about to become a bonafide Hollywood feature directed by BEN STILLER, ‘Escape From Dannemora’ (!!), and the super bad / super hot . . JONAH HILL will play Josh . . !!
Josh always claimed his goal was to be known as an artist, so if it took losing it all – so be it.
down with good timing, & up with the creative respect & social media ‘props’.
ok – back to the review !!
excerpt: “The filmmaker ONDI TIMONER had already started to document Harris’ life,”
(ps: Josh hired her after seeing ‘DIG! – nancy / for all you Brooklyn ‘DIG!’ fans ),
“and was on the scene when he began a notorious project named ‘Quiet’. Try to imagine this: About 100 of the best and brightest he could find agreed to live 24 hour a day in a cavernous space below street level. They would be under video surveillance every moment. Their lives would be streamed on the web.” (remember, this is 1999 – dial-up internet !! – nancy)
“They shared dining and recreational (!!!) facilities and even a shooting range. They were given state-of-the art computers . They lived in cubicles with the square footage of perhaps six coffins.” (actually much less, maybe 2 coffins – nancy)
“These were stacked atop each other like sleeping pods in a Japanese airport.”
“And this was to be the future, in which we would all live virtually on the Internet.”
& my fave line of all:
“Remarkably, no murders claimed any of Quiet’s eager volunteers; whether any births resulted is not reported.”
& one last correction: we were NOT volunteers – we were paid, and . . well !!!
no wonder the well, ran dry.
performance artists ? I guess so, but certainly – not scripted !!!!!!
damnit, I can’t do your homework, all the time.
well, here’s the link: go read it for yourself !! – ROGER EBERT REVIEWS ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’.
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ / ROGER EBERT review from 2009 (!!) |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 12th, 2019, 6:33pm
in celebration of its . . 10th Anniversary !!
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ . . . the 2009 Sundance winning documentary,
which tells the story of web entrepreneur, social media visionary, artist / in the sense that Andy Warhol was, in the greater picture, & very outrageous master of ceremonies . . . JOSH HARRIS.
along with his very merry band of wild crazy artists !!
screens . . .
tomorrow Wed Feb 13, 2019 . .
at The Roxy Hotel, in Tribeca, NYC / a location just blocks from the original downtown ‘bunker’ !!
The Roxy Cinema, 2 Avenue of the Americas / cellar level of the Roxy Hotel.
DIRECTOR ONDI TIMONER . . . will be on hand to do a Q & A, MELISSA GIRA GRANT will be moderating.
GET TIX, here: ROXY CINEMA – WE LIVE IN PUBLIC
JOSH HARRIS . . . as the bunker, or pod hotel / for the 99+ in-house resident artists was being constructed.
it was designed & built by JEFF GOMPERTZ. it was totally wired and each pod had a screen and controls.
Josh is wearing the ‘standard’ issue / in-house crew work uniform.
actually a huge party celebrating the 2000 millennium, which Josh termed: ‘QUIET’- in a most contrarian way.
it was open 24/7 to the public, with open bars (of course) & it was a madhouse, so yeah !!
it was actually, really necessary for the ‘production’ crew – to be set apart.
the communal dining room – for the 99+ resident artist & guests !!
the party, (parties !!), and art installations . . took place in a huge 4 store / empty textile warehouse on Broadway, downtown in Tribeca, corner of . . . I wanna say, Leonard St.
but Josh also rented the empty storefront right next door, I think it used to be a Civil War era photographer’s studio ?
this inflatable, ‘bubble’ dining room ,was definitely, a showstopper.
Josh commissioned MARIA ALEJANDRA GIUDICI to make it, and damn, she did . . a great job.
Maria, and her then-husband, MARIANO AIRALDI, also built and designed the notorious transparent communal shower.
you can imagine among that group, there were . . quite a few, characters, and true-to-life, exhibitionists !!
a kid we called, ‘Cowboy’ – was one.
okay, not to break the ‘spell’
spoiler alert: there were actually a couple of standard private bathrooms, in the basement / but, as for the shower ?
just the transparent communal one. lucky the building had been a textile warehouse, and there were lots of scraps and rolls of fabric lying around, so my solution . . was to shower under a fleece ‘cape’.
because, yes !!
there were omni-present cameras – filming all the time & the footage was screened real-time /
you could be eating dinner, and there’d be somebody, or more likely somebodies (!!) naked in the shower, carrying on, carefree as a bird / on the dining room monitors.
it wasn’t called . . ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ – for no reason.
& Ondi was actually there, in charge of all the footage.
did we mention: The Interrogation Room’ ? the zombies, and the techies.
screenshot: NANCY SMITH, in the ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ trailer.
if you notice the ‘gypsy-like’ life-force . . caught in melt-down, a classic hard-core NYC artist, in the green & yellow puffer jacket, that would be . . me.
of course, there were all kinds of ways, ‘living in public’ – could affect you, could become / ‘living in hell’.
esp when the only rule was: you couldn’t leave !!
there was nothing in place to restrain you, but: if you left, you couldn’t come back.
that was cause enough.
and if you were looking for a mayor, Josh was not . . he.
he was too busy judging live sex contests. and I was supposed to be doing a ‘quilting bee’ — ha ha ha ha.
I mean, someone else was tending a Zen garden, (RIP) Mark Enger of Exploding Sky was silk screening. it wasn’t all neon red light, and war zones, for sure. that was what was so interesting, and talent, really, talent in the end . . was what counted, incl entertainment talent, or as the straight-laced art world calls it . . performance art.
someone was growing a Zen garden, ALEX ARCADIA had goldfish swimming in a moat of water, around a life-size Zen temple (to Arcadia, btw, not to the ‘gods’.)
(RIP) MARK ENGER, of EXPLODING SKY, another cowboy, was silk-screening concentric circle ‘targets’ . . onto crew members’ work shirts.
it was a self-contained artificial world, no windows, no sunlight. things got unreal.
it was much like a spaceship, except instead of astronauts . . it was filled with knock-down artists, with nothing to lose, & (plenty of Pseudo big bucks $$$ to gain) / hardcore all-day, all-night partiers / extreme video gamers, full-on goths & not to forget, Alfredo’s full-fledged shooting gallery, with assault rifles for all (for real), in the sub-basement.
things got unreal, things got hyper, people got un-hinged.
(not to forget, the professional ‘sex workers’, Josh seeded the place with.)
forget getting naked on camera, in my case it was my my life that un-raveled before the all-seeing cameras. and I guess, imprinted into history, now.
I got provoked, taunted, in a way nasty way, and in that 24/7 hyper-speed world, I responded quite singularly.
I got . . into a fight. knocked the dumb, groupie art chick ‘art dealer’ – out with one punch.
I almost killed her, (for real). the cameras didn’t catch the action, Ondie was cursing over that / it was an obscure corner where we made ourselves coffee, but the story-line runs through-out.
lucky I didn’t kill the dumb chick, I mean, how was I to know – she was sitting on flimsy plastic 99 cent store chair, and it rocked over backwards, with a hard thwack on the old concrete floor / with just one impassioned punch to her neck. who’d I ever hit before, anyways ? ok. maybe Rene Ricard, back in the Fun gallery days. slammed a door on his face. he deserved it.
hey, don’t come into the kitchen – if you can’t take the HEAT !!!!!
I was pretty upset as it was. and I was supposed to be one of the ‘grown-ups’ at the party !!
the folk art / historian . . ‘quilt lady’.
but imagine, if that little lady, we call luck – wasn’t with me, I’d prob be in prison, and prob so would Josh.
I mean, there was a ‘toxic waste’ installation (for real), right next to the 99 sleeping pods, which could have blown up at any moment, and how many people in there – knew that ?
that was also – a big part of it.
just how willing people were to put themselves – ‘online’, in public / with no knowledge of whose watching / or who the other players are, & just what . . hidden forces could be at work.
not to mention, apparently . . . nothing fades away / on the web.
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ / NYC SCREENING w ONDI TIMONER / WED FEB 13 – 5 PM |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 12th, 2019, 12:43pm
the quiet . . SPIN.
LUKE TODD – ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’
OPENED . . FRI JAN 25, 2019
GALERIE MICHAEL BARGO, CHINATOWN
PIX – FROM THE OPENING:
LUKE TODD, at the opening.
industrial, yet graceful.
set in a specific motion, opaque in color, and yet: a void / a mind-set.
the surfaces, their metallic nature . . violated the white walls.
the struggle between my camera, and the flat sculptures – was more ‘kinetic’, than the actual gear movement.
the interlocking, interloping teeth, of the almost random-shaped . . circles / ovals . . moved very very slowly,
as if grace were more important, than raw speed ?
it prob had a lot to do with the complexity of the shapes, and it might have been more effective visually, to have seen the shapes move . . more dynamically, more graphically, but then ?
would we be thinking – about them, so much ?
prob your best bet, for realizing the ‘wheels’ . . ‘turn’, and eat, or meet and greet . . each other,
would be the wired, mechanical works in the back.
that was an interesting ‘angle’, to entertain . . at an art show.
not all the ‘mechanical works’, were wall pieces . .
some were . . free-standing, yet still quite – wired.
their contrast to reality, was heightened by the Chinatown window scene.
and they weren’t all black – some were red.
but again, a perfect pitch – for a mechanical piece.
very much in contrast, to the world – we have to move through.
“your taxes were lowered / but your refund is less, much less.” / wtf
nothing is black & white.
nothing is what it seems / or what we are told. nobody really believes anything, they are told.
it’s all . . smoke & mirrors.
it’s all . . spin.
there was something about that barely moving, quiet ‘spin’ – that was so pervasive.
& in a way, in which a more aggressive, or obvious ‘gear’ spin – would not / have not been.
a kind of . . spiritual ‘temperature’.
and yet, also a . . VALENTINE.
red ‘hearts’, running along the wall.
people got real social, at the opening.
the quiet accomplishment of the show / pulsed in a warm way – strange, considering it was so mechanical ?!!
it’s hard to condense the beauty of this show, or define . . it’s effectiveness.
quiet . . interlocking ?
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH
~LUKE TODD . . ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’ / PIX FROM THE OPENING |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 9th, 2019, 3:17pm
LUKE TODD . . . ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’/ GALERIE MICHAEL BARGO
@lukemichaeltodd: etch bath
watch the clip: video via Instagram @lukemichaeltodd
note: it’s super fascinating to see beyond an art work’s final production, esp re: those with technical platforms /
but, in this case it’s also . . like lifting a veil, and finding pure magic.
the warm, luminous color, and the thick liquidity, of the ‘etch bath’, contrasts so brilliantly against the end-product.
the cold steel, and it’s hard surface. and then, factor in . . how like honey, the etch bath moves, in deep undulating waves.
with a rocking, rhythmical chorus – heavily sloshing back & forth, within the perimeters of the container /
versus the hard-won, rigid & measured ‘turning’ movement of the teeth of the gears.
with nothing random in that final action, that purrs silently on the wall, plugged into its electric socket.
a warm, deep ocean vs. the precise clockwork of a . . large large watch.
~LUKE TODD . . ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’ / 2 scoops of butter |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 2nd, 2019, 1:55pm
LUKE TODD – ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’
OPENS FRI JAN 25 / 6 – 9 PM
& runs thru . . end of FEB 2019
GALERIE MICHAEL BARGO, 103 BOWERY, 3rd Fl, CHINATOWN, LOWER EAST SIDE, NYC 10002
well, better than . . eggs.
& as with regards to Cardib & her gang twerking /
to twerk, . . or NOT TO TWERK !!
NOT !!!!
the art world coming in . . . industrial, but smooth – as butter.
~LUKE TODD . . ‘FOURTEEN GEARS’, GALERIE MICHAEL BARGO / OPENS FRI JAN 25 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | January 25th, 2019, 3:58pm
