the card for ERIKA SOMOGYI, ‘Violet Dawn Love Song’, which ran from January 5 – February 11, 2006 at Monya Rowe Gallery on W 26th St.
card image: Erika Somogyi, ‘The Voice in the Fire’, 2005, watercolor, gouache, and color pencil on paper, 22 by 30 inches.
….. what was more luminous? the constellation of Erika’s paintings, with their otherworldly yet somehow politically charged implications, or the equally shining constellation of underground stars, also just on the edge of being borne into the mainstream universe, who came to Erika’s opening to celebrate their friend’s vision and achievement.
ERIKA SOMOGYI opens ‘Violet Dawn Love Song’, Monya Rowe Gallery, NYC, Jan 5, 2006
Photo: Nancy Smith
more photos from the opening
~ERIKA SOMOGYI/Violet Dawn Love Song |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 22nd, 2006, 8:58pm
the deceptively simple, yet creatively resonant card, on hard stock, 7 x 7″, spoke well for this show, JACK PIERSON, ‘Early Works and Beyond’, which ran from December 15 to January 28, 2006, at Daniel Reich Gallery. A beautifully paced overview of some of Jack’s best early work, the show worked really well in the gallery and resonanted well with the holiday season. Festive and solemn, at the same time, somehow.
(the card doesn’t scan to justice, there’s a finely defined illusion of white cloth as the background)
JACK PIERSON, ‘Early Works and Beyond’, garnered an equally sensitive review by ROBERTA SMITH in the NEW YORK TIMES, of Friday, January 20, 2006. some of Roberta’s musings:
“This small survey show of Jack Pierson’s career …. also provides a useful account of Mr. Pierson’s consistently melancholic art, its siftings through the rubble of American life and its restless roaming through photography, sculpture, drawing and language. In both medium and message, Mr. Pierson’s work is about a kind of homelessness.
Mr. Pierson emerged in the early 1990’s in a generation that reacted to the slick self-confidence of late 1980’s Neo-Geo with a dilapidated disillusionment hastened by AIDS. His approach was both Romantic and hard-nosed; it favored bits of reality or language slightly rearranged. His best known works are poignant words spelled out in the plastic letters of old signs …….
For Mr. Pierson the inanimate world brims with longing and memory waiting to be coaxed forward ….”
photos from the opening
~JACK PIERSON/DANIEL REICH |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 22nd, 2006, 8:32pm
from left, in cap, GELATIN’S GABRIEL VON LOEBELL, and, ALI JANKA, (center), with collector, JOHN HALL, (right) at the closing party for ‘TANTAMOUNTER 24/7’, LEO KOENIG GALLERY, NYC, Nov 23, 2005 .
( …that’s NAOMI FISHER and JIM DRAIN smooching on the left)
The Viennese performance art group, GELATIN put on one of the most intriguing and art smart of the PERFORMA 05 (the First Biennial of New Visual Art Performance, NYC) events. They built a huge live-in “replicating” factory that took over 99% of the gallery space. Gelatin, and their suprise live-in house guest, artist NAOMI FISHER, were completely enclosed, with no windows, and no way out for an entire week. Holed up with a stock of food and lots of raw art & thrift shop materials, they handmade reproductions of objects, which anybody who wanted to, could enter into their “replicating” lair, by way of a little conveyor belt trap door and voila, after a little bit of time, the yellow light bulb would flash on, and the original and the replica were ready to be retreived.
Gelatin now likes their name to be spelled – GELITIN – the story goes that they recently had a show in Japan & that was how their name was spelled & they liked it better like that.
Sean Shanahan, who trekked in from Jersey, with his GELATIN ‘Tantamounter 24/7’ replica – that’s the top of the entry port.
more photos from the installation: GELATIN ‘Tantamounter 24/7’
(scroll down to the bottom of the report – GELITIN photos start at row 19)
Photos: Nancy Smith
~Gelatin/Gelitin/TANTAMOUNTER 24/7 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 10:58pm
JIM DRAIN and ARA PETERSON open ‘HYPNOGOOGIA’ at DEITCH PROJECTS, Wooster St, Soho, NYC, Nov 4, 2005.
A show of huge rotating geometrically patterned spheres, a roomful of hypnotic spinning disks, and a walk-in mirrored video kaleidescope. Pictures are worth a thousand words, follow the link.
JIM DRAIN & ARA PETERSON, ‘HYPNOGOOGIA’
Photo: Installation Shot, Nancy Smith
~JIM DRAIN & ARA PETERSON/’HYPNOGOOGIA’ |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 10:07pm
MATT REILLY (top) and IAN VANEK are JAPANTHER … outrageously talented & over-the-top performers, JAPANTHER served up a knock-them-out dead performance at the afterparty for the book launch of CHARWEI TSAI’S ‘LOVELY DAZE’, which was held at a tiny dive, ICU Bar, on the fringe of NYC civilization, an almost bleak stretch that still exists for a few streets, where the boundaries of the West Village and Chelsea haven’t yet hooked up in glorified gentrification. Seeing this band in that locale was the kind of artworld moment we all live for…. its down in the photo report captions that links at the bottom, but it’s not redundant to say it again: for all of you who came to New York – to seek out firsthand live band experiences that left you in a state of shock & awe – I have just one word for you – JAPANTHER, JAPANTHER, JAPANTHER – the next time you see or hear that word – you just jump & run & get there.
more JAPANTHER photos from ICU, NYC, Oct 22, 2005
Photos: MATT REILLY, top, and IAN VANEK, bottom, who are the NYC band JAPANTHER, in performance for the Charwei Tsai, ‘LOVELY DAZE’ art quarterly afterparty, at ICU BAR, on the fringe of the West Village, NYC, Oct 22, 2005
Photos: Nancy Smith
~JAPANTHER |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 9:25pm
JOE GRILLO, of the artist collaborative DEARRAINDROP, meets JOHN WATERS, for the first time, and asks for an autograph, Grillo style, at the SPENCER SWEENEY opening, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, NYC, Sept 10, 2005.
Photos: Nancy Smith
more photos from the: SPENCER SWEENEY opening
photos from the most recent NYC DEARRAINDROP show, ‘Members of The Island’ ,
at Diesel Denim Gallery, in Soho, which had its opening on June 15, 2005
~Joe Grillo meets John Waters |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 8:32pm
the card for MATTHEW DAY JACKSON – ‘FORTUNATE SON’ – his first major one man show which ran from Nov 5 – Dec 22, 2005, at PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY. As American as they get, the imagery included Native American iconography and made use of such materials as: inlaid needlepoint, scorched wood, woodburned drawing, mother of pearl, abalone, yarn, tooled leather, skull beads, and even, sculpey!
The show’s card, with its dramatic photograph of the artist beside a huge bonfire, is one of the best uses of the newest rage in NYC show card/invites, which is to use hard, very heavy, in fact, impossible-to-fold ultra heavy card stock, and often the larger the better. At a relatively large, but still reasonable 8 x 10″, and with its beautiful imagery, it is just the right size to still make it into a commercial plastic protector sleeve, and is one of the few (high production) cards which really does rate being kept as a collector’s item, in itself.
MATTHEW DAY JACKSON – ‘Fortunate Son’
~MATTHEW DAY JACKSON/Fortunate Son |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 7:41pm
NATE LOWMAN opened ‘THE END and Other American Pastimes’ at MACCARONE – 45 Canal St – on Nov 6, 2005. Another great card, it wasn’t on heavy stock, and it wasn’t oversized, but it was a great image, and !! it was super glossy and the back peeled off, so it could be used as a decal sticker ! The show was as individualistic and quirky as the card.
In fact, there was an immediate buzz surrounding the show: check out why for yourself –
Nate Lowman at Maccarone
~Nate Lowman/MACCARONE |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 7:00pm
DAN ASHER, large photograph from his show, ‘bird of prey’ which opened at GBE@Passerby, NYC, on Oct 14, 2005
Photo: Nancy Smith
Dan Asher’s show ‘bird of prey’ was one of the best shows of FALL 2005, which, for no good reason, slipped by under the mainstream radar. ‘bird of prey’ was a one man compilation of photographs that ranged from stupendous iceberg and aurora borealis landscapes to extreme and violent illegal ‘backyard’ wrestling events that flourish in the mid-west – with a few Middle America portraits thrown in for good measure.
‘bird of prey’
~Dan Asher/bird of prey/GBE/passerby |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 21st, 2006, 11:35am
KAYROCK aka KARL LAROCCA , at the opening of ‘KAYROCK and WOLFY – One Sixpack Short of a Hippie Death Cult’, Jessica Murray Projects, NYC, July 13, 2005
WOLFY aka JEF SCHARF aka Little Giant Robot Zero at the opening of ‘KAYROCK and WOLFY – One Sixpack Short of a Hippie death Cult’, Jessica Murray Projects, NYC, July 13, 2005
KAYROCK and WOLFY are the powerpack duo behind KAYROCK SCREENPRINTING, which recently did the knock-down graphic design for the DEITCH PROJECTS produced, downtown art scene survey book, ‘LIVE THROUGH THIS: NEW YORK 2005’.
KAYROCK SCREENPRINTING has made artist editions for: Cory Arcangel, Matthew Brannon, Cecily Brown & Fred Tomaselli; and posters and t-shirts for The Liars, The Rapture, & The Yeah Yeahs, just to name a few.
more photos from: ‘KAYROCK and WOLFY – One Sixpack Short of a Hippie Death Cult’
Photos: Nancy Smith
note: it appears that Jessica Murray Projects has recently closed.
~Kayrock & Wolfy/One Sixpack Short of a Hippie Death Cult |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 20th, 2006, 8:59pm
