the very perfection of: NEW EDGE CITY
TOM FORKIN . . . ‘The Electrician’ – a solo exhibition of new work !!
opened Feb 19th
runs thru . . . SAT, MARCH 19, 2022
SOMEDAY GALLERY
120 Walker St., #3R / TRIBECA, DOWNTOWN NYC 10013
HRS: THURS – SAT / 11am – 6 PM
TOM FORKIN installation shot via Instagram @someday_gal
image via SOMEDAY GALLERY
I’m sure as hell, don’t know what the fig, oops fungii – it’s all about, and that . . intrigues me. though, I’m also sure as hell, that plenty people: poets & academics alike / could write scads of paper on the show’s ultimate meaning.
the title: ‘The Electrician’ – is brilliant, though don’t ask me to explain that, either !!
and, make a note: of the actual scale of the watercolors, up on the wall / just to the right of center. (on the wall).
I guess we can chalk this one up to: m-y-s-t-e-r-y brought upon by via hyper, over-sized realism.
sheer poetry of skills, and of course – dig those small watercolors !!
they seem to be romantic city-scapes / imbued with turn-of-the-century Victorian . . ‘vapors’ & haunting illumination.
of a fleeting, realist – nature.
strange bed-fellows . huge, meticulous 3-D mushrooms vs. tiny, dreamy streets, parks – caught on the flimiest of brushwork.
note: watercolor – seems to be in a huge revival – these days.
I find that very interesting.
ok, so: unlike the brief text above – I can actually address that thought block – most, definitively !!
contrarian-born person that I am, born under the sign of Aires ignited by flames / I almost got kicked out of my MFA Studio grad program in Montreal, in the 70’s / the era of huge, color-field painting & dry, minimalist Agnes Martin type pencil rulings / with my self-taught, strong-willed, but way dreamy . . small scale watercolors, greatly influenced by Edo period Japanese woodblock prints & poetry. they were also quick in spirit too, fast brushwork & thin wash . . very much like these, in technique.
I must have been the only person in the entire painting program – if, not the greater art scene in general, who knew what Windsor Newton meant, knew how to care for fine-tipped sable brushes, & how to tell the difference between hot vs. cold press Arches paper.
TOM FORKIN, Mushroom.
image via SOMEDAY GALLERY
I’m thinking: very much . . a small, realist watercolor – come to life / as a huge sculpture.
“Six large sculptures, six small watercolors, six main sources of electrical energy. The sculptures – paper-skinned mushrooms shaped from wire mesh – are staged in a frozen choreography.”
~gallery essay
TOM FORKIN – ‘The Electrian’/ installation shot
via SOMEDAY GALLERY
“The watercolors depict the warm glow of street lamps, composed with a snapshot vernacular and repeated obsessively from different perspectives. / There are many forms of illumination – industrial, chemical, intellectual, spiritual. A lot of the built world mimics sources of light seen in nature. Most mushrooms are known for their superior light-absorption capabilities – able to soak up & store large amounts of vitamin D from the sun . . . .
Other species of fungi appeal to a different kind of illumination – capable of breaking down the rational mind, dissolving the ego, and stimulating spiritual enlightenment.”
ahhhh: “Psilocybin can identified by a set of distinct physical characteristics: plump, golden caps, purple gils, bluish flesh and stems that, once dried, appear flakey, likestrands of hair when observed under a microscope.”
~both quotes: gallery essay
TOM FORKIN, detail mushroom sculpture
image via SOMEDAY GALLERY
“The sculptures – paper-skinned mushrooms shaped from wire mesh” /
“In Gifu Japan, a region dense with luciferin fungi, fireflies, and other bioluminescent organisms, artisans have perfected the craft of hand-made lanterns formed from rice paper & bamboo, that seek to similarly capture the weightlessness of light.”
~gallery essay
TOM FORKIN, watercolor, in ‘The Electrician’
image via SOMEDAY GALLERY
so, huh: is God – the master Electrician ?
(my son would love that . . word play, Not.)
TOM FORKIN, watercolor – street lamps.
image via SOMEDAY GALLERY
“The watercolors depict the warm glow of street lamps . . ”
~gallery essay
read: the entire essay here, & see more pix / SOMEDAY GALLERY
check out: SOMEDAY GALLERY on Instagram @someday_gal
check out: TOM FORKIN on Instagram @fork_in_tom
~TOM FORKIN . . ‘THE ELECTRICIAN’ / SOMEDAY / up thru MARCH 19 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 10th, 2022, 10:25am
talkin’ about – NEW EDGE CITY !!!
NOAH BECKER . . Publisher of WHITEHOT MAGAZINE /
interviews . . ANNA DELVEY – of ‘INVENTING ANNA’,
on his podcast !!
“JOINS US – FROM PRISON” . . . . . ??!!!!!
P-R-I-C-E-L-E-S-S . . . . . !!!!!!!
WHITEHOT ART WORLD PODCAST – DROPS: WED MARCH 9, 2022
with HOST: NOAH BECKER – via APPLE & SPOTIFY Podcasts
~NOAH BECKER INTERVIEWS . . ANNA DELVEY !! |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 8th, 2022, 10:46am
BE STILL . . MY BLEEDING, BEATING HEART !!!!
A GROUP SHOW / OF 5 . . JUST-OFF-THE-STARTING-MARK / NEW, EDGE-CITY !! ARTISTS.
& ALREADY IN – A BIG, BIG . . SPRINT !!
MARK – MY WORDS.
& MARK – YOUR . . CALENDARS !!
‘BIG COUNTRY’ – A 5 PERSON GROUP SHOW
OPENS . . FRI MARCH 11 / 6 – 8 PM
& RUNS THRU . . APRIL 17, 2022
HYACINTH, 179 CANAL ST., #4B, DOWNTOWN / CHINATOWN, NYC 10013
HRS: FRI, SAT & SUN / 12 – 6 PM / or by appointment
WITH NEW WORK BY:
PEGGY CHIANG, BEN DUAX, GENEVIEVE GOFFMAN, RYAN KITSON, and CLAIRE LACHOW
POSTER IMAGE: RYAN KITSON, CERAMIC HEART CAST – FROM A DEER HEART.
~’BIG COUNTRY’ . . GROUP SHOW / HYACINTH / OPENS . . FRI MARCH 11 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 7th, 2022, 11:49am
a ‘Dejuener sur l’herbe’ . . for our times / so, are we on the – eve of global destruction ?
up thru . . . SUN MARCH 6, 2022
‘BEN DUAX: Lon air an Fheur’
Jan 19 – March 6, 2022
HYACINTH, 179 Canal St., #48, Tribeca, NYC 10013
HRS: FRI, SAT & SUN: 12 pm – 6 pm
see: BEN DUAX PRESS RELEASE – HYACINTH
FRUITS are falling – like bombs.
a dysfunctional destruction of pattern / shatters the visual plane.
a furtive smoke of explosion erupts, and rot seeps out from behind smiling skins & over-ripe berries.
cigarettes are the ‘cynical’ . . tip-off.
well, at least they aren’t / “strange fruit – hanging from the trees” /
i.e. African American lynchings . . during Jim Crow.
but close enough, just in another language & still signaling . . human distress, at the hands, of others.
BEN DUAX, ‘Sunflowers & Pineapple Sage II’, 2022.
acrylic on reactive dye canvas / 17.75 x 14 in.
image via Instagram @hyacinthgallery
a little bit of Instagram Direct Message / Q & A . . . with BEN DUAX:
Ben Duax: Lon Air An Fheur . . is Gaelic for ‘luncheon on the grass’.
Nancy Smith: unspoken thought bubble / it’s so interesting to see some ancient linguistic roots / Fleur is flower in French / dejuener is late breakfast/brunch / so, picnic among the flowers / picnic on the grass . . but not, such a happy time, & above all, nowhere close to the ‘stylistic’ narrative – re the French Impressionists, who were so radical in their own time.
guess, I’m just a history/literary/source nerd / maybe, because I grew up in Montreal, Quebec / French Canada.
Ben Duax: ‘But the idea is that the work is engaged with the question of reproduction or versimilitude, and the significance of the Gaelic language is because I live in Scotland,
and this kind of trashy casual picnic for me . . [signifies] an autobiographical context.”
N: who are the people who run HYANCINTH, & how do you know them ?
Ben Duax: The gallery is owned by a guy named WILLIAM NANCE.
N: How do you know him if you are based in Scotland ?
BD: I know him from when I lived in New York before, I used to have a studio at SLEEP CENTER in Chinatown.
N: oh, I know the place, it had an ‘advanced’ digital – light animation projection / sculpture focus,
deep, deep down in a windowless, super dark Chinatown basement, on Monroe St., near Essex Flowers.
BD: I am also in the next group show at HYANCINTH – that opens FRI MARCH 11th.
a few notes for the show’s PRESS RELEASE:
~”Enough scholarly attention paid to the canvases of Ben Daux would probably uncover a plethora of art-historical signifiers. Flashes of Matisse’s sunbathers or the weighty carcasses of Francis Bacon and Schiele’s skeletal linearity may appear in Duax’s compositions alongside the destructive adolescent gestures of Appel or Jorn.”
~”the title itself translates as the famed ‘Le Dejuener sur L’herbe’ expressed in Gaelic, a nearly disused language salvaged from the brink of obscurity . . .
Inspired by the bilingual subway and parking signage of Glasgow’s ancient streets . . .
(this show) meanders the curiously mundane, beautiful, and sometimes absurd icons that populate this, (still standing !! historic – Nancy) urban architecture.”
~”a multitude of imaging techniques . . including traditional photography, risograph duplications, digital wand scans, and reactive dye prints . . are often overlaid by conventional painting.”
(contemporary / digital impressionism ? – Nancy)
~”(the show) . . presents a data-sphere of painterly gestures that necessitate a more grandiose project than simply digging up the . . . (academic) art historic references /
it poses an opportunity to reinvent the principles of taste, manners, and culture embedded in the visual history of modern life – itself suddenly on the threshold of an unimaginable degree of digital immersion.”
(and, real life / destruction – Nancy)
~”Originally from the Bay Area in California, BEN DUAX works out of New York, and Glasgow.
he graduated with a BFA from Hunter College, NYC / in Painting, and an MFA from the University of Glasgow in Fine Art.”
check out: HYACINTH GALLERY on Instagram @hyacinthgallery
check out: BEN DUAX on Instagram @ben_duax
~BEN DUAX . . ‘Lon air an Fheur’ / HYACINTH / last weekend !! |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 4th, 2022, 11:38am
KIM & KANYE SPLIT – CUSTOM PRINTED ‘PRO’ SOCKS !!
KIM & KANYE SPLIT – IT SUCKS . . !!
but, not as bad . . . as real WAR.
damn, can’t we just go back to the good ole . . . ways & days ?!!
yeah. things definite went real south, and even more tragic – in just the last 2 days.
how much worse, can it get ?
I turn for comfort and ‘jokes’ – to a new gen of NYC artists unleashing their creativity, and WIT !!
upon some very common, and unassuming . . . utilitarian objects.
ANDREW FRANCIS . . ‘KIM & KANYE SPLIT’, 2021.
open edition, custom printed Pro ‘Soccer’ Socks.
several styles available. all current event / media – news related.
14-1/2 in. x 3-1/2 in. each sock / sold in pairs.
$40 a pair.
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH / top: front, bottom: back.
order yours now !! – via Andrew’s Instagram:
check out: ANDREW MERIWTHER FRANCIS on Instagram @andrewmeriwetherfrancis
~ANDREW FRANCIS . . ‘KIM & KANYE SPLIT’ / SOCKS |
Posted in If I had $200, The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 1st, 2022, 9:33am
it was hard enough to write about art . . . in the age of Covid /
but, now – in the poo poo poop Putin war on Ukraine, it’s even even harder.
it only leads one to the horrifying conclusion – that things can go – even worse.
even though I like to joke a lot, or maybe because I like to joke a lot / you know the maxim:
the tears of the clown / it’s looking pretty sad for humanity – though the creativity, heart & brains exist . . damn !!
it’s real bad . . . when the bullies – persist !!
when the bullie win out over the creatives / it’s not a good – look for world survival.
I had personal experience of this during Covid, don’t ever, ever talk to me – about corrupt ESU cops in Jersey City,
or, elsewhere . . for that matter !!
and, now just like the rest of the world, I watch the blue & yellow vs. red / news with huge horror, and dismay.
I hate to say this, but I definite believe in pinpoint death squads & drones.
and way, way earlier, as opposed to . . . later. I know it raises issues, but seriously !!?
so, much for your . . artist – pie – in – the – sky . . take.
not, me !!
& #metoo !! & #resist !!
funny how, the LUKE MURPHY created – LED DELI animated, ‘RESIST’ banner / at the top of this page,
just keeps on giving.
keeps on being relevant – as the tears / I mean . . years, go by.
RUI TENREIRO . . . the currently Stockholm-based, multi-talented illustrator,
storyteller, and filmmaker /
just posted this grave & solemn illustration – to his Instagram page.
this other maxim . . is totally true too: pictures speak louder than words.
RUI TENREIRO: “Front cover (without text) of my book ‘Lanterns of Nedzu’ for Sanatorium Forlag,
Publishing House, Sweden / ‘Lanterns of Nedzu’ is a (possibly weird) adaption of the ‘Kaidan Botan Doro’,
a story which has never been 100% successfully adapted, in my opinion, as the story itself is cursed, just
like its characters.”
image & text via Instagram @rui.tenreiro
RUI TENREIRO, was born 1979 (he’s 43),
and, grew up in Mozambique / during the horrific civil war there, which only ended in 1992.
he later moved to Oslo, Norway. and seems currently / re his online bio . . based in Stockholm, Sweden.
source: LAMBIEK COMICLOPEDIA
check out: RUI TENREIRO / Instagram @rui.tenreiro
notes on: ‘KAIDAN BOTAN DORO’
~’Botan Doro’ . . is a Japanese ghost story that is both romantic & horrific /
it is one of most famous of the ancient Kaidan / ghost stories . . .
the plot involves sex with the dead, and the consequences (apparently really really bad) of loving a ghost.
~it is summed up in 3 words: beauty and fear /
~the ghost of Otsuyu, a beautiful lady who died pining of love /visits her beloved every night, intersects
with a horrendous clan of betraying & betrayed characters, in a tale of “sordid human relationships, revenge & retribution.”
~source: ‘KAIDAN BOTAN DORO – Beauty & Fear’, 2019 – mydramalist.com
there’s also . . .
a striking clip / of a graphic visually minimal short film, that Rui wrote & directed / a few years back, 2013 /
& it seems particularly . . . haunting / futuristic.
‘MOSHANYANA’ – by RIU TENREIRO / on VIMEO – click here for link
all 3 in mages via VIMEO – MOSHANYANA – VIMEO
~RUI TENREIRO . . ‘Lanterns of Nedzu’ |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 27th, 2022, 12:08pm
almost 20 years ago – to the day !!!!
that’s FAITH RINGGOLD . . on the right,
at the landmark . . . ‘Quilts of Gee’s Bend’ opening – at the Whitney Museum when it was uptown (!!)
on the left, is the exhibit’s curator . . . ALVIA WARDLAW. NOV 21, 2002.
ARCHIVAL PHOTO: NANCY SMITH . . & probably one of my most important – art-wise & historically !!
it was first published on artnet, in the ‘People’ section of the Magazine,
under then-editor, WALTER ROBINSON.
see the original report: ‘ART LOVERS NEW YORK – PHOTOS by NANCY SMITH’ – FALL 2002
note: FAITH RINGGOLD, born Oct 1930, in Harlem, NYC – was a very robust, vivid strong woman,
when I took that photo on NOV 21, 2002 – & that would make her . . almost 70 in my photo !!
just pushing 90 now, she was in attendance at the New Museum private & press opening, last night.
THE NEW MUSEUM NYC PRESENTS:
‘FAITH RINGGOLD: AMERICAN PEOPLE’ / FEB 17 – JUNE 5, 2022
check out: ‘FAITH RINGGOLD’ EXHIBIT via Instagram @newmuseum
note: The New Museum will present a “VIRTUAL – LIVE TOUR of the EXHIBIT” /
with GARY CARRION-MURAYARI / a live=stream open to all – via that same Instagram link . . !!
on . . . WED FEB 23, 2022 at 2 PM
note: the public opening is tomorrow night, THURS FEB 17, 2022 / 7 – 9 PM
pay what you wish / register . . for timed admission tickets
~FAITH RINGGOLD . . GEE’S BEND QUILT SURVEY OPENING / WHITNEY MUSEUM / NOV 2002 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 16th, 2022, 10:26am
ALYSS ESTAY / @uh.lease . . . posted a really awesome photo,
of one of Taylor’s really awesome – new ‘plant’ sculptures – at THE HOLE LA debut opening /
TAYLOR McKIMENS, ‘Plant’ sculpture, papier mache & acrylic paint.
PHOTO: VIA INSTAGRAM @uh.lease (ALYSS ESTAY)
check out: ALYSS ESTAY on Instagram @uh.lease
~TAYLOR McKIMENS . . THE HOLE LA |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 16th, 2022, 10:13am
IT’S A WRAP – PAPER-WISE !!
TAYLOR McKIMENS . . . has some new ‘paper’ plant sculptures in the new, 3rd HOLE / an LA OUTPOST – DEBUT OPENING !!
TUES FEB 15, 2022 / 6 – 8 PM
THE HOLE LA, 844 LA BREA, LA, CALIFORNIA 90038
TAYLOR McKIMENS installing his new, papier mache plant sculpture – at the new West Coast branch – of THE HOLE.
image via Instagram @kathy_grayson
check out: TAYLOR McKIMENS – Instagram @taylormckimens
~TAYLOR McKIMENS . . NEW PAPIER MACHE SCULPTURES . . THE HOLE LA – DEBUT OPENING / TUES FEB 15 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 15th, 2022, 9:41am
IT’S A – WRAP !!!!
ANDREW MERIWETHER FRANCIS, ‘CONSENT CANDIES’ / “should we . . . ?”
(open edition), 2018 /
packaged ‘candy’, 5 x 5 in.
custom-made Valentine’s Day Candy – that we all grew up with !!
in a sandwich . . baggie.
available at the huge . . P.A.D. / PROJECT ART DISTRIBUTION exhibit – at WATER ELWOOD MUSEUM, upstate NY.
see: P.A.D / Project Art Distribution Instagram
image via: P.A.D. / PROJECT ART DISTRIBUTION Instagram
see: WALTER ELWOOD MUSEUM of the MOHAWK VALLEY
NOTE: LAST 2 WEEKS TO SEE THIS . . !!
PS: PATRICK MOHUNDRO FOUNDED P.A.D / ART PAD DISTRIBUTION – ALTERNATIVE POP-UP ART EXHIBITS
SOPHIE MA CURATED THIS ELWOOD MUSEUM NY EXHIBIT – WHICH IS A BIG SURVEY & RUMMAGE SALE/
of PAST P.A.D Projects !!
UP THRU . . . FEB 27, 2022 !!!!!
GO ON !! – TAKE A TRIP !!!!!!!!!
check out: Andrew Meriwether Francis on Instagram @Andrewmeriwetherfrancis
~ANDREW MERIWETHER FRANCIS . . HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY CANDY / P.A.D. |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | February 14th, 2022, 10:03am
