WEDNESDAY
* Callum Innes/Colm Toibin "Water/Colour" @ Sean Kelly Gallery / 528 W 29th St. The results of a Feb 2010 introduction b/w Scottish Minimalist Innes and Irish writer Tolbin, in the effect of a new body of watercolors interwoven w/ lines from Tolbin's related text "water/colour". Double-major.
* "Il conformista" (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 8p. (w/ Bertolucci intro!!) EPIC. My favorite Bertolucci film, "The Conformist", all deviant, suffocating post-Fascist Italy into sexy, cosmopolitan Paris, w/ the legendary director in person for the screening. From the discomfiting opening shot of Jean-Louis Trintignant (three-piece suit and hat) and a nude woman on a bed, to Stefania Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda's mesmeric dance, to the "Julius Caesar"-like lead-up to a denouement, this truly is one of the finest instances of a film masterpiece.
* WIERD presents Epee Du Bois @ Home Sweet Home / 131 Chrystie St (F/JMZ to Delancey/Essex), 12a. These late Wednesday parties at HSH are hot stuff, verging on the dirtier side of synthwave and industrial. Adding Cheyney Thompson to the mix (a noisy bloke w/ a grasp of sick beats) and you've got an extra-special party. Plus it's my birthday (seriously) so I plan to be there.
* Depreciation Guild + Motel Motel @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JZ to Marcy), 8:30/$8. Golden Ratio presents a solid night of local rock, anchored by 8-bit-influenced shoegazers Depreciation Guild (you'll recognize frontman Kurt as the drummer for The Pains of Being Pure at Heart) and folk-tinged Motel Motel.
THURSDAY
* Santiago Felipe @ Vig 27 / 119 E 27th St (6 to 23rd St), 8-10p. The debut exhibition for the local downtown/nightlife photographer — you know him as the burly, leathered, bearded bloke who snaps residencies at Trash! and many of NYC's burlesque shows — w/ a particular focus on celebrity and performance. And he's a badass. The reception segues straight into Vig 27's weekly "Meaner Harder Leather" burlesque show, of which Felipe is paparazzo extraordinaire.
* "She and He" (dir. Susumu Hani, 1963) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). The final film in the Toru Takemitsu festival is a haunting Michelangelo Antonioni-esque urban love story. How apropos.
* "Partner" (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1968) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 8p. Bertolucci was inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella "The Double" in this enigmatic thriller, w/ Pierre Clementi playing the classic doppelganger role.
FRIDAY
* Jacob Kassay, Robert Morris, Virginia Overton @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Form and function and generational influence, w/ Morris' classic, pioneering felt works from the '70s playing off new forays by Kassay (electroplated canvases) and Overton (a site-specific, spatially defining work).
* "Tron: Legacy" (dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2010) screenings in wide release. Reasons to see this dated '80s sci-fi sequel: 1. you love Tron (and 8-bit musicians, and your NES box etc), 2. you love Daft Punk, who scored the soundtrack, 3. you're like me and love Olivia Wilde, hottie costar to Jeff Bridges (reprising his role) and some young guy named Garrett Hedlund. Visually I expect it to kick serious ass. Plot-wise….we'll see.
* "Black Swan" (dir. Darren Aronofksy, 2010) @ BAM / 30 Lafayette Ave, Ft Greene (23/45 to Nevins, G to Fulton, AC to Lafayette). I love this film too much, from the epilepsy-inducing club scene, the ensuing Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis sleepover), to its shell of tortured beauty in the buoyant, sinister dance sequences. Either way, you will feel each tense nerve in Portman's balletic back, in her ruined feet and bleeding nails as she drifts further and further into the blurry realm between the real stage and this dark fantasy world of sinister fluttering wings.
* La Strategia del ragno (The Spider's Stratagem)" (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 8p. (w/ Bertolucci intro!) Yes, I am as stoked as you are. Another chance to catch the legendary director in person, as he introduces the early masterpiece, his first collaboration w/ cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (they went on to do "The Conformist", "Last Tango in Paris" and loads other visually striking films together). Based on Jorge Luis Borges' short story "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero".
* "The Conformist" (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1971) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). See my praise for this classic, my favorite Bertolucci film, under WED heading. And lucky for you, if you missed it at MoMA (which included a Bertolucci intro), Film Forum is being awesome and giving this film a proper screening run.
* "The Shining" (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980) midnight screening @ Sunshine Cinema / 143 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave). Name the scariest classic horror film you've ever seen (I added that "classic" bit just for parameters' sake). Chances are Kubrick's bone-chiller, awash in waves of blood and '70s-patterned furniture, is high on that list. And w/ good reason: Jack Nicholson transforms into a prowling wild animal for this role, and co-star Shelley Duvall's wide-eyed terror scares this writer more than the primary antagonist. ALSO SAT
* Twin Sister holiday party @ Live with Animals Gallery / 210 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$12. These phenomenal dream-disco-pop kids curated an awesome night of bands — Blair, John K, Avoxblue — but the best thing is they, Twin Sister, headline. Incredibly dynamic, magnetic live act, these kids.
* Dinowalrus + Sweet Bulbs @ Monster Island / 128 River St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$8. Literally next door to the Twin Sister party is this Showpaper knockout, feat. the fuzz-pop darlings Sweet Bulbs and the psychedelic Dinowalrus, now w/ an even stronger rhythm section! w/ motley crew Parquet Courts (feat. members of Fergus & Geronimo, Woods and The Keepsies)
SATURDAY
* "Novacento (1900)" (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 2p. The full 5+ hour historical epic, following Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu through 50 years of Italian history.
* Coasting + Big Troubles @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p. If you have a love for indie-rock of the garage-y angle — or you've been meaning to get down w/ the local scene I always write about — you can do no wrong w/ this solid lineup. The fuzzed-out riffs of Big Troubles and Coastings one-two punch works every time. w/ Reading Rainbow and Babies
SUNDAY
* Andy Warhol "Motion Pictures" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). Twelve of the original art pop-star's famous Screen Tests from the mid-60s, superstars Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Baby Jane Holzer, plus musicians, authors, actors and friends, alongside Warhol's films "Kiss" (1963-4), "Sleep" (1963) and "Eat" (1963) — their plots are self-explanatory. More an environment than a proper screening, you understand, an enveloping cocoon of shimmering b&w and silence.
* El Diablo Robotico + Charlene Kaye @ Union Hall / 702 Union St, Park Slope (D/NR to Union St), 7p/$10. We've got quite a contingent of virtuosos here. I'll admit I hesitated when I 1st heard El Diablo Robotico's country-ish vibe, but I cannot deny the lush layerings of the classically trained lot. And w/ Kaye, listen to that voice for like 10 seconds & you'll be convinced. She can sing, brother, from jazz to folk, and she can totally rock out. w/ Sunny ALi and the Kid
* LocalxLocal: Real Estate @ Brooklyn Bowl / 61 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 7p/FREE. Yes it's bloody cold outside, but take a listen to Real Estate's surf-imbued grooves and you'd swear you were in some late-June backyard BBQ, near the beach. The chorus is easy so sing along: "Budweiser, Sprite, do you feel alright?"
CURRENT SHOWS
* David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" @ PPOW / 511 W 25th St #301. Perhaps you've heard the news: the Smithsonian chose to withdraw Wojnarowicz's not-super-widely-known '87 film "A Fire in My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition "HideSeek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture", after an uproar by the Catholic League for its supposed hate speech, specifically a shot of a Crucifix swarming with ants. PPOW has repped the artist since '88 and, after his early death in '92 also represents his estate. And the gallery is showing that short film, in its unedited entirety, both online and in the physical gallery space. You owe it to yourself to see it in person. Taken as a whole, and in context, the Crucifix scene is less shocking than it is desperate, the ants as society flailing for support from some higher power. What I found most disturbing was scenes of amputees, legless men hobbling around city streets, one panhandling, another crossing an intersection w/ the aid of a cane, truncated to 1/3 its original length to account for his reduced height. In supporting the arts and freedom of artistic expression, this show gets my highest props.
* Keith Tyson "52 Variables" @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. Something about Tyson's multiplying nature makes his latest show, precisely 52 mixed-media paintings on shaped aluminum to resemble playing cards, makes this show feel much larger. Like he's playing w/ two decks. That's not a snub at the artist, however: the works are eye-poppingly vivacious, highly detailed and cheeky, recalling everything from stark red-on-white filigree patterns to gaudy modern bank buildings to pin-up girls to kittens. No jokers in this lot, unless you get permission to check the back room.
* Nathan Harger @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Iconic normality of the NY skyline — power-lines, cranes, crisscrossing bridge-work, aluminum-sided buildings — reduces to crisp, constrasty b&w prints.
* "Law of the Jungle", curated by Tiago Carneiro da Cunha @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Survival is key, personal and collective, when navigating the current art scene. This Brazil-heavy show does that nation proud, w/ strong works from Adriana Varejao (a visceral take on Darwin's theory, in "Cannibal Landscape"), Adriana Ricardo's soft, photographic like paintings of Rio de Janeiro's massive Rocinha favela, and Os Gemos' ecstatically patterned figure leaping from a vortex of color. Plus a "Blade Runner"-like psychedelia from Ashley Bickerton (repping Bali).
* Al Held "Concrete Abstraction" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. Some of Held's lesser known brushwork ink drawings on canvas from the '60s, revealing his Abstract Expressonist (specifically Franz Kline-like "action painting") roots before his headlong plunge into Hardedge renderings.
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres + On Kawara "Amnesia" @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. Careful you don't miss Gonzalez-Torres' '92 billboard "untitled (Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit/It's Just a Matter of Time)", rendered in his characteristically stripped down and inherently relatable style. That's the jump-off. Kawara's contribution is one day per month of the year 1994, w/ related news clippings from the NY Times, the Yomiuri Shinbun, from Hamburg or whatever he happened to be. Rebecca Cleman and Josh Kline, both of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), supply a revolving media program on the basis of memory and history, a flotilla of videos lost in the static of media space. The program through 12/24 includes such gems as Joan Jonas' "Double Lunar Dogs" (1984), Takeshi Murata's disturbing "Infinite Doors" (2010), culled entirely from "The Price Is Right" prize reveals, plus exploitation clips, film trailers, and Dan Graham's "Past Future Split Attention" (1972). Concurrent w/ the exhibition theme, this all switches out w/ "new" films in the new year.
* Djordje Ozbolt @ 303 Gallery / 547 W 21st St. I felt I needed to be stoned to truly take in Ozbolt's latest beguiling lot, sumptuous oils done in the mannerism of the Old Masters, w/ these surreal, druggy little add-ons throughout. Not that one necessary HAS to be stoned to appreciate them, though I dare you to stare at "Fear" for longer than 30 seconds, but it could help.
* Bertrand Lavier @ Yvon Lambert / 550 W 21st St. Lavier's 1st solo exhibition in the gallery's NY space is a bit like if you crossed Frank Stella's classic minimalist shaped-canvas lines paintings w/ Dan Flavin's fluorescent bars, swapping out the illumination source for neon (so maybe a bit of Bruce Nauman in there too). Sound dope?
+ Joseph Havel "Nothing." I am pleasantly stunned by Havel's little Conceptual exhibition. He encased stacks of white shirt labels (inscribed w/ the word "nothing") in Plexiglas boxes to create textural monochrome 'paintings' — strongly echoing Piero Manzoni's achromes, but w/ a refreshing twist.
LAST CHANCE
* Anselm Kiefer "Next Year in Jerusalem" @ Gagosian / 555 W 24th St. How to explain this grueling, thoroughly enriching exhibition (Kiefer's first in NY in eight years) in accessible terms? Think of diving headfirst into an 'Alice in Wonderland' like domain, only its a scorched earth, replete w/ dwarfing glass and steel vitrines enclosing haunting arrangements of dead flora and tattered garments, expansive chilly landscapes rendered abstract in layers of emulsion, shellac and physical media, plus a bus-sized rusted steel chamber outfitted w/ bedsheet-sized burlap and lead panels, screenprinted and suspended on metal hooks. Now step back for a minute: Kiefer's latest is not an easy go, nor even easy to explain, as befits the run-on sentence before this. All his imagery of relics from post-WWII Germany (the steel chamber installation is "Occupations", 76 sheet-sized photographs recalling his seminal series from '69, one of his earliest), the Bible, Kabbalah, folklore, poetry and dreams are brought to a foaming head here — the many, many vitrines, about three dozen, encircle "Occupations" like strange trees; even the polyptych landscape renderings are set in glass and steel. One of the more bracing works, if I had to pick one, is "Sefiroth", a plaster-encased dress, shaped around an invisible figure and pierced porcupine-style by enormous shards of glass (like they're emanating from the fabric itself in an unseen explosion). And yet, and yet: as overwhelming as this may sound (another one, "Johannis-Nacht", bears a lead model-size airplane nearly consumed by resin-coated fern, on a cracked ground of clay, shellac and paint), it's not an impossible, claustrophobic trek. Stay awhile and the pieces begin to spread out, permitting sight-lines to the large landscapes ("Fitzcarraldo", a four-paneler, w/ fang-like synthetic teeth dotting the thorn bushes and resin-ferns, is a beauty) and moments of contemplation amid the vitrines. You need to devote a bit of time to this one, though, but the rewards are totally worth it.
* Robert Rauschenberg @ Gagosian / 522 W 21st St. The first sentence of Gagosian's press release for this show, after Rauschenberg's quote on art as communication and its inherent ability to change, is the description "a major exhibition". I'd rephrase that "a MAYJAH exhibition". Goodness, there is a lot of art here, and I hate to use the shortcut phrase "career-spanning retrospective", but that's in the works here, from Rauschenberg's John Cage-era, infamous "White" paintings (one of those, plus a triptych in black, which I'd title "void" paintings instead, as they're sinisterly devoid of anything, active in their starkness) to the deliciously battered-but-luxe "Watchdog" sculpture, shown in the same room as the White painting and appearing as a series of seven battered and rusty pails (a la friend Jasper Johns) over chromed aluminum. "Watchdog" is from 2007 and the adjacent White canvas is 1951. Do the math. In between, we get a little bit of everything, meaning Combines (the humorous "Short Circuit" from '55, featuring a Sturtevant reproduction of a Johns flag painting inside one of its cupboards), Spreads (the vivid "Palladian Xmas" fro 1980, w/ illuminated washboards amid the screenprints of cats and fabric stripes), ROCI (aka Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange, incl "Caryatid Cavalcade II", a threateningly huge five-canvas mixture of acrylic washes and larger-than-life screenprints, of Chilean imagery and building facades), and Runts (amid his last works, sprawling Americana pigment transfers). Plus a lot of Rauschenberg I've NEVER seen before, not in my memory anyway, like his Early Egyptian works (check the pyramidal work from '73, its cardboard stacks painted Day-Glo on the reverse, projecting an orangey aura against the wall, plus its sand-encrusted neighbor from '74 w/ spoke-wheels embedded in the boxes) and the Jammer series, little more than layered, ethereal cloth works w/ rattan poles, and two Borealis works from '90 and '91 of tarnished shadowy objects on brass. Think Andy Warhol's oxidation series but way cooler. I am still taking all this in, but the essential nature of this MAYJAH exhibition should be a given, even if you didn't read this far.
* Brody Condon + Jen Liu @ On Stellar Rays / 133 Orchard St. A great juxtaposing at work here. Condon's straight of "Greater New York" at MoMA PS1, and he elaborates on those works w/ a trio of videos that feat. little more than his hand maneuvering handmade "fantasy role-play" die of various geometric forms, in a repetitive and psychedelic dance. His static work in the show, "Vat Flesh on a Pedestal of Imitation Jade" is blockishly visceral, its many surfaces smeared and pixellated mid-90s graphic design style. Liu's more prickly works shine, then, as you get to know them. Her "Folded Black Cloud" series, sharply folded wall reliefs of sinisterly clouded skies, rendered in fiberglass, are simultaneously dangerous and fragile. Her "Fugue State" works on paper, interconnected found imagery overlain w/ patterns and then "torn", reminded me a bit of James Rosenquist's Pop-culture minings, but w/ a contemporary, representational immediacy.
* Sherrie Levine @ Paula Cooper Gallery / 534 W 21st St. Experiencing Levine's work in person is crucial to drawing out the emotional impact from the subtleties of her oeuvre. Her large installation "Equivalents", two sets of 18 same-size monochrome paintings based on Alfred Stieglitz's same-titled cloud photo series from the late '20s, is an intriguing sequence of blues and grays seeping into their maple panels, exposing the woodgrain beneath, lining the gallery walls and meeting in the center. Likewise her bronze sculpture, w/ mythological references this time: check the wild texture of "Khmer Torso", reflecting the original's stone cast, and the mirrored shininess of "Les Deux Chevre-Pieds", which could once have been smooth marble. Levine reappropriates and recontextualizes, but she is careful to reveal nuances from the former works.
* Peggy Preheim "the end (final cut)" @ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery / 521 W 21st St. Don't be afraid to get close to Preheim's works. If you've heard me (or so many other critics) speak of Preheim's unique take on drawing, well let me exhaust terms like "intimately scaled", "diminutive renderings" and the like now. In sum, she draws very very tiny and very very realistic, vintage photograph quality shrunk to 1x100th of its original size, roughly, hazy-edged but alarmingly vivid and clear. Preheim incorporates currency in her new series, turning "Blind Spot", a pair of girls in sun-dresses and floppy hats, w/ a nickel-sized blank in between them, like a really big hula-hoop. This is drawn in the dead center of a snowy white thick paper, nearly 35" long, so yes you do need to get VERY close. "Twister" features these girls again, or their younger sisters, clasping hands in front of a Mobius strip, an exercise in grayscale. "Hummingbird" combines a real U.S. 1$ bill, its backside augmented w/ circles from another currency and a graphite ear. "Snow White" is even more effective: a truncated U.S. 20$ bill in the bottom left corner, an aloft eagle (w/ deftly rendered feathers) way up and center. That's it, but the vibe is so distinct.
+ Tomas Saraceno "Cloud Cities Connectome". Saraceno is working in a way finer scale w/ his weather-minded installations, outfitting the titular gallery-filling work w/ nylon monofilament that is nearly invisible, and hence impossible to traverse the space and be "one with" the work. The comparatively bulky "Biosphere 06" in the front gallery, w/ its water-drip system and tillandsia plants inside, is enchanting.
* Elad Lassry @ Luhring Augustine / 531 W 24th St. Lassry's staged, saturated-color C-prints, each in its own artist's frame, aren't my cup of tea, but they might be yours. Consider the blurry line of watermelons (green background), the VERY '80s-style female model (tie-dyed room), the cherries (against graphic white, then against red).
* Adam Helms "Without Name" @ Marianne Boesky Gallery / 509 W 24th St. How about 48 portraits of insurgents, guerillas and subversives (try Norwegian death metal!!!), in charcoal and in response/homage to Gerhard Richter's own "48 Portraits" (1971-2) of iconic 20th C. cultural figures. Helms works w/ identity as well in his flag manipulations, but I think it's portraiture where he really shines.
* David Thorpe "Peace not Pacifism" @ Casey Kaplan Gallery / 525 W 21st St. Ornate and handcrafted ceramic tile screens, glazed in intense color, act as framing device to Thorpe's mixed media installations, enormous plaster boxes w/ leather filigree patterns and watercolors on paper.
* Roger White @ Rachel Uffner Gallery / 47 Orchard St. This new series of paintings and airbrushed acrylics on paper walks the line of semi-representation, as the ordered objects, depicted in their most basic forms, retain their individual identities to the degree that they never become repetitive patterns. Some could even be high aerial views of farming villages, or studies of human motion.
* Mika Rottenberg "Squeeze" @ Mary Boone Gallery / 541 W 24th St. Claustrophobes beware: Rottenberg's ambitious, and exhilarating, and miraculous, new film is a close encounter. Wind your way to the small viewing room, but don't miss the framed portrait of Boone herself hoisting a curious cubic amalgam of what appears to be pressed lettuce, cloth and detritus. It's the tongue-in-cheek payoff, the "great work" toiled over in mechanical repetition b/w lettuce farmers in middle America, rubber-sap harvesters in India, and the players in Rottenberg's Harlem studio soundstage. We get a quintet of nail-spa hand-washers, a bored, blond DMV-type smoking cigarettes, a disembodied tongue, a line of disembodied booties, and an obese Black woman who appears to have psychokinetic powers. Everyone does their thing, ad nauseum, toward completion of this mystery product, and Rottenberg threads it all together so well that I swear you won't notice the film has looped over on itself, seamlessly.
* Philip Pearlstein "Going Forward" @ Betty Cuningham Gallery / 541 W 25th St. Pearlstein's grasp of physicality in his renderings of voluptuous models, crafting skin and shadow w/ equal care, has few equals in the contemporary art sphere (in my opinion), and the modern master has been honing this for decades. His new large oil on canvas works bear striking sensations of movement, from the strong diagonals of "Model With Speedboat and Kiddie Car Harness Racer" (Pearlstein's works are more detailed than ever) to the westward flow of everything in the backdrop to "Two Models with Weathervane Fox, Fish, Horse and Boat", leaving the two nudes in a calming moment of repose
* Miranda Lichtenstein @ Elizabeth Dee / 545 W 20th St. Photography-as-art that forces you to look twice, three times, to discern the subject and action may not be proprietary to Lichtenstein, but she absolutely has a gift for exploring several divergent perception-disrupting techniques, to great effect. Her "Screen Shadow" works, archival pigment prints all, carry this vivid dynamism w/ their moire patterns, bending and shifting their points of reference. The softer C-prints of still lifes against their reflections are sublime additions.
* Monika Sosnowska @ Hauser & Wirth / 32 E 69th St. I think a key point in the Polish artist's distorted architectural-ish sculpture is their innate relationship w/ the walls they suspend and droop from (or the floors they bow out from and explore three-dimensionally). It might sound odd in print that a bench (metal, painted black) cantilevered and crawling up a wall looks 'natural', but in Sosnowska's talent it looks intentional.
* Aakash Nihalani "Overlap" @ Bose Pacia / 163 Plymouth St, DUMBO. The 'tape-squares' phenom doesn't let the static gallery setting stymie him from a kinetic, progressive exhibition, reacting off the space in a mix of powder-coated aluminum isometric sculptures and site-specific tape works. Nihalani's talent in making us look again at familiar places in new, enlightening ways makes for a very refreshing exhibition.
* Bruce Nauman "For Children/For Beginners" @ Sperone Westwater / 257 Bowery. The pioneering conceptualist continues to set the tone of performative practice in A/V installations. If you caught "Days" (2009), his contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale, that sonic cocoon of irresistibly simple subject matter (the days of the week, repeated in seven voices), you know what I'm talking about here. He ups that w/ video, counting fingers in various combinations w/ reflective motion. This would be the strongest work in the exhibition if it weren't for the stirring piano melodies playing in the lift-gallery, their speakers hidden so the sound flits back and forth in the small chamber. It elicits a basic emotional reaction intrinsic to music, but that doesn't mean it's no less pronounced here.
* Hwang Jai-Hyoung @ Gana NY / 568 W 25th St. The artist's politically-charged, textural oil paintings, based on his self-appointed time as a laborer in the industrial town Taeback, Korea, filled with his hard-working, disenfranchised countrymen. Hwang splits the show into rugged, emotive portraits temperature-infused landscapes, like you feel the cold dampness in your skin, staring at these.
* Sang-ah Choi "Insatiable Appetite" @ Doosan Gallery / 533 W 25th St. Choi returns in a bright, eye-popping way, extending her oeuvre beyond the pop-up book Pop culture array from her Arario NY show back in 2008. This new mixed media exhibition is a bit like Aya Takano's creepy girlish figures, slackened by resin and injected w/ Choi's luminous palette. Nonfigurative paintings, like "Light and Shadow" w/ its wall-drawn extensions, are some of the deftest, eye-twitching combos of abstract and Op art I have ever encountered.
* Paulina Olowska "Applied Fantastic" @ Metro Pictures / 519 W 24th St. I dug this oblique pairing of high-fashion sensibility w/ its "behind the Iron Curtain" origins. Olowksa adapted sewing instructional postcards from Communist-era Poland into these '80s fashion mag-style large portrait paintings, these severe and sensual women striking poses against amorphous monochrome backdrops, the names of their patterned sweaters ("Landscape" etc) written in Polish like caption info beneath. She also included large collages of source materials as historical reference to her paintings.
* Wangechi Mutu "Hunt Bury Flee" @ Gladstone Gallery / 515 W 24th St. Each time I see Mutu's new large-scale collages on Mylar, she's taken her figures to another level of interpretation and figuration. This time they're ferocious amalgams of flesh, pelt, scales, feathers and foliage, metamorphosing against either celestial or poisonous backdrops. One fashiony woman-figure climbs a woodgrain-patterened tree (bearing tracings of another woman w/in), pursued by an "Alien"-like snaking appendage lashing out from behind her. The ecstatic "Oh, Madonna!" appears to have flowery, anemone-like explosions coming from her torso. Her "Moth Girls" sculptural installation, many dozen porcelain and feathered figures fill the back gallery in four rows, seemingly embodying the spirits of her past works' avatars.
* Mickey Smith "Believe You Me" @ Invisible-Exports / 14A Orchard St. Smith returns to NY Public Library, specifically the Picture Collection, for her new exhibition, though she brings some of the stacks w/ her, wedging them into a unique floor installation that is strangely ergonomic (though I'll see how well this thing ages, after much foot-traffic) and a literal basis for the new C-prints. She rephotographed images from the archives, played w/ combinations (one, w/ its garage-sale frames, is convincingly "family portrait" circa late '50s) and crops (esp. of more current figures, to playful effect).
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
My TOP TEN LIST-worthy cultural events of 2010
It's that time of year when seemingly every publication, art- and otherwise, does a 'best-of', 'year-end', 'top ten' list. Artforum did like a thousand of these. And so can I. While my writing is far more rudimentary than what you may read elsewhere, you can rest assured it is my highly subjective, slang-riddled, personally-experienced opinion. And with that:
My TOP TEN LIST-worthy cultural events of 2010 (in chronological order, b/c further ranking would be too masochistic)
1. Claude Monet "Late Work" @ Gagosian
What I said then:
051110: The recurring discussions in art-writings on museum-quality exhibitions disguised as gallery shows has culminated w/ a big payoff: the elevating experience that is this fine collection of Monets. Gagosian has succeeded in converting the 21st St location into a serene, intimate space — akin to a special exhibitions wing of the Met — and filled it w/ 27 gorgeous canvases from the Expressionist master. Walk amid the alternately shimmering and soggy "Nymphéas" and fall into the autumnal light of the Japanese footbridges and the "L'Allée de Rosiers". Lose yourself for a bit and forget your in W. Chelsea, surrounded by several hundred bustling white-box galleries.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Viewing brilliant art for art's sake, i.e. personal enjoyment and enrichment rather than making a sale. It is assuredly rare to encounter such a paradigm in a gallery setting, particularly in the blue-chip halls of Gagosian. Yet it happened, one of the most beautiful two-month spans in West Chelsea (and greater NY for that matter), leading throngs of jaded art-going locals and hordes of tourists through Monet's watery, nearly abstract ponds and meadows and into an early summer. The feat Gagosian pulled off in temporarily acquiring these masterworks, many new to these shores, purely for our viewing satisfaction earns it a firm place in this year's Top Ten. I hope you caught the show; it was a beauty.
2. New York Asian Film Festival 2010 @ Walter Reade Theatre, IFC Center & Japan Society
What I said then:
062910: By now you should know that I live, breathe and bleed film festivals, specifically NYAFF. This year's is a winner if you're into Nouveau Hong Kong action (from Wilson Yip's Ip Man 2, hot on the heels of its successful original last year, Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow and the Pang Bros' The Storm Warriors, to name a few), and there's loads else, from lovey Korean (Castaway on the Moon) to twisted Japanese (Mutant Girls Squad). I've hyped my picks already, and check the site for full schedule and ticket info (though I know you heeded my earlier alarm call and are already booking your tix, right? Right?). Also: there are 4-5 special midnight screenings this year, at NYAFF's old home IFC Center (read along for those specific nights). DIG IT!
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Perennial Top Ten favorite, and it's still the dopest show in town as far as film festivals are concerned. This year's emphasized Hong Kong action, the backbone and basis of the festival 10 years ago, and included Wilson Yip's Ip Man 2 (w/ Yip and action choreographer/star Sammo Hung in attendance = absolutely major) and the Pang Bros bonkers The Storm Warriors Squaresoft-ready brawler. Lots of bizarro Japanese flicks for me to sink my teeth into, too, like Mutant Girls Squad (the celestial pairing of splattercore directors Yoshihiro Nishimura, Noboru Iguchi and Tak Sakaguchi) and Seiji Chiba's Alien V. Ninja, which is JUST THAT and 100% dope, thereby unleashing the Sushi Typhoon wave of cherry SnoCone blood and awesomeness upon us. And amid some powerful Korean films, like Shin Jung-won's Chaw and E J-Yong's Actresses, blurring the genre line, there was the breakaway favorite Confesssions, Tetsuya Nakashima's shattering take on the drama in Japanese high-schools, all bleached color and slo-mo roughhousing, with an endless sucker-punch to the emotive core. The brunt of the festival occurred way uptown at posh Lincoln Center, which made for some transit issues but was OK. It also made the midnight screenings at IFC even raunchier. And the one-off screening of Ancient Dogoo Girl (partially Noboru Iguchi's large-breasted brainchild) at Anthology Film Archives, complete w/ a Cay Izumi dance and some director stripping, was like shabo-laced icing on the cake.
3. Sleep @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple
What I said then:
090710: The San Jose CA band who vitalized stoner rock, whose final album was one 65 min track called "Dopesmoker". Who maul slowly and lovingly w/ their sliding guitar lines and pummeling rhythm section. Heavy is just the beginning, brother.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Sleep unleashed the heaviest concert of the year, and one of the heaviest I've ever attended, both in volume and sonic intensity. And this is coming from a guy who's seen Japanese stoner rockers Boris every time they've played NY since 2006 (and they're notoriously loud). A guy who lasted through Prurient's scorching set at last year's No Fun Fest w/o earplugs (bad idea) and My Bloody Valentine's nuclear holocaust closing of "You Made Me Realise" at 2009 APW (w/ earplugs, thankfully). Who listens to Merzbow and enjoys it. Etc. Amid the throngs of black-clad, mostly hairy dudes (and my friends Jessica and Claire of local "stoner-pop" band Heliotropes, two of a reasonable number of women in the crowd), hit by wave after unrelenting wave of Matt Pike's gnarly, punishing guitars riffs off the opening like five minutes of "Dopesmoker", just shirtless Pike leering at the crowd and strumming away at his Orange Amps-augmented axe, I felt the heat from my brainstem through my core and knew this was MAJOR. Earlier that evening, Heliotropes and I had a drink around the corner from Brooklyn Masonic Temple and, out in the back patio who should sit next to us but Pike himself (with shirt), and Jessica bums a smoke off the man. He introduces himself and we share a laugh, then about an hour later we're beneath him, swaying to the riffs, devil horns up, trying to keep it together but giving ourselves up to the ultimate stoner rock band.
4. Ra Ra Riot @ Bowery Ballroom
What I said then:
092110: Be honest: you'd never peg me for a Ra Ra Riot fan, right? But I am, or more appropriately I became one, BIG TIME, w/ their new album "The Orchard", which is smart, groovy pop w/ a kickass strings duo. And I retroactively fell hard for their previous tracks and am now incorrigible. I'm seeing them again tomorrow, same time, same place, different opening bands. Yes you should, too.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
They may be indie, this six-piece of lovelies from Syracuse, but they're decidedly pop. Or popish, anyway, a far cry from my edgier, harsher listening sensibilities. Yet I saw them twice, back-to-back sold-out nights at Bowery Ballroom. Why? Partially because cellist/vocalist Alexandra Lawn is, admittedly, a hottie. But mainly, like 85%, because they're effortlessly, engagingly fantastic performers. Each night was different: Saratoga Springs, NY's Phantogram opened night one, whipping the crowd into a frenzy w/ their heavy, synth-pop. Baltimore's shoegazey Lower Dens mesmerized on night two. But Ra Ra Riot ruled. Night one began with lead singer Wes Miles only, playing a keyboard and singing the hypnotic refrains of "Keep It Quiet" — it's not quite Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place", but it had that entrancing effect on the crowd, as Wes did his thing and his bandmates slowly filtered onstage, taking their positions. Then they cut loose, w/ "Boy" through all the hits, returning for an encore w/ Alexandra taking the lead, belting out "You and I Know" w/ her jazz chanteuse sensibility. It was hot. Night two, the band was accompanied by a small symphonic ensemble, augmented their "chamber" indie-pop sound w/ strings and horns. It was…smart, dreamy, sophisticated, very cool.
5. Fantastic Fest @ Alamo Drafthouse in Austin TX
What I said then:
I didn't! Or at least in came in the form of the below image:
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Epic epic epic. It was a long time coming, returning to my alumni city, and long overdue. I am a film buff and a film-festival freak, but Fantastic Fest features the hardest of the hardcore. I'm talking REAL film fanatics, devotees, geeks in the absolute nicest, positive-light way. My daily routine consisted of waking up at 6a, bussing down to the kickass Alamo Drafthouse (cinema and dining in one — a novel idea! seriously, you see it other places, and NY sort of has that w/ reRun theatre, a commendable thing, but nobody does it better than the Drafthouse), queuing up at daybreak, actually watching the sun do its rising thing in the sky until doors opened around 9:30a, then collecting my tickets for the day, then catching (usually) five films back-to-back, until like 2a, returning home to crash and then do it all over again the next day. Like I wrote: hardcore. The festival stretched from Sept 23 - Sept 30, 2010, I arrived on Sept 24 and caught 21 films. A fair deal, eh? Plus I met directors, actors, caught up w/ friends, saw Tokyo Dolores' Cay Izumi wow the crowd w/ a sexy pole-dance at the High Ball, etc. Sion Sono's latest torturous epic Cold Fish knocked the wind out of me, debuting here before screening in NY (in 2011 hopefully?). The triumvirate of Red White & Blue (dir. Simon Rumley, USA/UK), I Spit On Your Grave (dir. Steven R. Monroe, USA, i.e. the 2010 remake) and The Dead (dirs. Howard J. Ford & Jonathan Ford, UK) ensured I wouldn't be sleeping that night. I succeeded in catching one of four secret films (Never Let Me Go, by Mark Romanek), though I was stymied by an impossible line to the hush-hush premiere of Yoshihiro Nishimura's Helldriver. That's OK, it'll receive it's NY debut soon enough, and brother you can believe that will be intense. I absolutely loved the sexy genre-busting horror in the Butcher Bros' The Violent Kind (please come to NY!) and bowed down to the awesomeness of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins and Lee Jung-beom's Man From Nowhere. Oh, there was some lighter subject matter too: anime delight Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda, Japan, opening this winter at IFC Center) and Sound of Noise (dirs. Johannes Stjärne Nilsson & Ola Simonsson, Sweden, which frankly I'd be lucky to EVER see again — please screen again!). In sum, the wildest, raunchiest, rowdiest genre film festival in the U.S., a thick slice of Texas-style whoa.
6. "Abstract Expressionist New York" @ MoMA
What I said then:
101210: Let's hear it for New York! Big canvases by badass artists, a veritable Who's Who of NY's boy's club from the 40s through mid-60s (there are a few stunning examples from women artists during the time, incl the phosphorescent "Gaea" by Lee Krasner, moving rooms from its semi-permanent position on the same floor, but the emphasis here is on "few"), ranging from familiar favorites to rarely shown masterpieces. Props due for the thoughtful installation: there is a real flow to the rooms, maintaining a richly visual exhilaration after the absolutely flooring opener, that (for me, anyway) only peters out a bit at the final gallery. But enough, on to the art:
Room One: Robert Motherwell's singular early collage-work "Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive" (1943) was acquired by the MoMA shortly after Peggy Guggenheim's exhibition that year. I'm not sure I have EVER seen this work in person, and it's a mid-sized beauty, one of the few quiet works in this gallery. B/c the scene swiftly shifts to chaos and turbulence, via Jackson Pollock's early, snarling "The She-Wolf" ('43) and "Mask" ('41), both echoing Pablo Picasso's oeuvre (and specifically "Guernica"). Pollock nearly rules this room w/ his increasingly violent abstraction — check the blue-slashed "Gather" ('44) — but he meets his equal w/ the unfurling textural mania of Richard Pousette-Dart's "Fugue No. 2" ('43), a carnival of flashing lights and masked figures, w/ sand mixed into the oil paint. We're left breathless.
Rooms Two - Four: either head straight back to Barnett Newman's solo gallery, a brilliant choice by the curators, as his minimalist, soft washes, punctuated by vertical-line "zips", quench the visual palette from the surrounding busier rooms, or head adjacent to the see Motherwell's huge "Western Air" ('46-7), a geometric landscape w/ more sand in the paint, and a wall of Arshile Gorky paintings, each more color-saturated and Joan Miro-contorted than the last (though my favorite is the grayscale "Diary of a Seducer" from '45, which comes off almost like an abstract Warner Bros cartoon still).
Rooms Five - Six: Pollock rules one, Mark Rothko the other. Both are essential. The former commands many familiar canvases, like "Number 1, 1948" that nearly suffocates in the narrower room, but I especially dug the first-time "Full Fathom Five" ('42), a smaller vertical canvas of motor-oil-like paint rivulets, covering bottle caps and nails, and the horizontal scroller "Number 7, 1950", a sideways cascade of white on taupe that almost looks like calligraphy. Rothko's room is particularly dense, w/ the deafening sunset from "No. 5/No. 22" ('50) as the antithesis to the watery slate-blue rectangle floating in a sea of dark plum in "No. 37/No. 19" ('58). You won't want to leave this room too quickly.
Rooms Seven - Ten: It is in the 7th room that (I think) we encounter the first paintings by women NY-based Abstract Expressionists, and two of 'em in particular eclipse nearly all the male competition. I speak of the aforementioned Krasner "Gaea" and the gorgeous Grace Hartigan "Shinnecock Canal" ('57), a riot of green and blue, coming off like a forest scene put through several prisms. It is intriguing to note that these two strong works share the space w/ Willem de Kooning's famous "Woman 1" (one of "only" four de Koonings in the show, meaning he is sparsely shown as well). Ad Reinhardt channels the intensity in a room of his own, a suite of his (nearly) one-color "Abstract Paintings", and Franz Kline has nearly one to himself as well, what I'm calling the Zen room, as it pairs Kline's action paintings w/ David Smith's blocky sculpture, Clyfford Still's color tremors and a grand Louise Nevelson relief "Sky Cathedral" ('58). It's only the final gallery where I lull a bit, in that it features mostly Philip Guston, and I've admittedly never been a fan, but one of his still-abstract canvases, the textural gray-and-red-orange "Painting" ('54) is pretty tasty.
This is both a scholarly experience and thrilling, emotive romp. NY's had some fine Picasso shows of late, and the galleries have hosted extensive, illuminating exhibitions on Claude Monet, Gerhard Richter, amid others. But Abstract Expressionism IS New York, so it's no surprise that the best collection of its kind is here, at the MoMA. Go see it.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
MoMA really brought it this year. I've supported this institution for modern art as a member since I moved to NY back in mid-2004, and from then on I've experienced thoughtful, nuanced (and sometimes badass) highs, coupled w/ 'meh' or what-the-hell-were-they-thinking? lows, w/ MoMA's unparalleled collection as a constant fallback. For the Abstract Expressionist exhibition, the museum both removed and culled from that collection, turning its 4th floor into a love-in for the uniquely NY style until Spring 2011. Meaning: no Picassos, no Surrealists, hell, no Pop Art even, until next May. BUT: this array of early Pollocks, loads of Gorkys, Newmans and Rothkos, punctuated by a powerful Krasner here, a Hartigan there, and a de Kooning if you're looking closely, is epic, singularly MoMA. The museum was designed to house and display these huge-ass canvases, after all — private collectors "can" show them in their homes, but this museum is intrinsically Abstract Expressionist-equipped. This exhibition shines.
7. Tokyo Dolores conquer NYC
What I said then:
101910: Tokyo Dolores — the fiercest Japan-based pole-dancing/burlesque troupe — begin their final week in NYC w/ a systematic citywide takedown. Target #1: the casual go-go scene, w/ a rippin' routine on the LES. Be forewarned: the venue is tiny, so show up on time or be cast outdoors, pressing your face against the glass while the girls work the pole inside. You don't want that.
* "Meaner Harder Leather" @ Vig 27. Night #2 of Tokyo Dolores' (aka Cay, Aloe & Alk) NY conquering is the saucy vibe of this neither-downtown-nor-uptown posh lounge. This joint caters to an upscale crowd who KNOW their burlesque, so expect the girls to bring it, Tokyo-style.
* Trash! Night #3 of Tokyo Dolores' systematic takedown of NYC's nightlife scene is a darkly glamorous affair for nightowls and electro-kids. Leather and bare skin in effect. This dance should be extra-special.
* "RoboGeisha" @ Crash Mansion. The gloves are off in the final night of Tokyo Dolores' NY tour. Cay, Aloe & Alk return to Japan, but not before unleashing a properly naughty sendoff on this wicked downtown fetish party, hosted by Stimulate. The theme flows w/ Cay's films (she was one of the two Tengu girls in Noboru Iguchi's "RoboGeisha"), and the girls are pulling out all the stops to make this a night you'll not soon forget.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
New addition to my LIST: burlesque! It had to happen someday, but I credit my new circle of NY friends and deep appreciation for their talent entirely to Tokyo Dolores. This self-made collective of artist/performers in Tokyo is led by actress Cay Izumi, who I now count as a close friend. Two of her top dancers joined her in the first-ever NY tour, the gymnastic Alk and the sensual Aloe. I followed the girls through each performance, photographing their work and assisting in setups, and while their whole run was awesome, totally flooring NYers and even seasoned burlesque performers w/ their three-girl pole routines, it was the final week, a four-part takedown, that earned them ranking in this year's Top Ten. They began at the tiny Norfolk St bar Nurse Bettie for two performances in the weekly "Spanking the LES". Cay went first with a fire and hot-wax dance, then the three girls took to the pole, astounding everyone w/ a whirlwind of sexiness. Night two at the "Meaner Harder Leather" show at Vig 27 was an Alk & Aloe duet. Cay sat next to me and we took in the girls' carefully choreographed dance: Alk spinning around the pole, Aloe doing back-bends and freeze-poses. Night three was the weekly "Trash!" show at the basement of Webster Hall, a sweaty cocktail of '80s music and hormones. Cay injured her hand backstage pre-show but put on a strong face, wrapping the wound and leading an absolutely kickass dance. They began in kimonos, stripping them off as the show continued, and when the three girls (now in varying degrees of black lingerie) danced about the pole to the thumping soundtrack, like some erotic Maypole, the audience cheered in adulation. Their final performance in NY was the monthly "Stimulate" party, a full-out fetish show at Crash Mansion, and Tokyo Dolores headlined it w/ a special "RoboGeisha" routine. Imagery from Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura's films flooded the room, amid the whips and racks, and the girls performed a double-header. First the pole. Second, a sexy zombie routine w/ local legend Stormy Leather, dressed as a maiden molested by the beautiful undead girls, then rising as an ultra-hot vampire queen, reigning over them and the crowd.
Check out what I'm talking about (requires a 21+ login, you naughties!)
http://www.dailymotion.com/mwalkow
8. CMJ 2010: Nashville @ Knitting Factory
What I said then:
102610: Saturday's loaded w/ CMJ action, but I must tip my hat & bestow my #1 pick to this Panache Bookings showcase. I credit Pop Jew for getting me into the Nashville indie scene, & the triple dose of Daniel Pujol & band, Heavy Cream (their only CMJ show), & Turbo Fruits cinches the deal.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
NY can't get enough of Nashville! I was very active this past CMJ, taking in a minimum of two shows a day, usually with a day and a night show, and I must have seen nearly 100 bands and clocked 72 hours of music-listening. That's a conservative estimate. The show I'd had my focus on the whole fest, BrooklynVegan's showcase at Music Hall of Williamsburg, helmed by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, didn't wow my pants off like I'd expected. It was brilliant but just proper. I needed something rowdier, something liquor-fueled and boisterous. Something southern. And despite one gnawingly odd band thrown into the midst, the Norwegian synth-something contingent Tug, the entire night, and the last night of the fest, was everything I needed. Aussie grunge-lovelies Circle Pit opened, then after the Tug debacle (i.e. refill your drinks, check the merch tables) came the trio of Tennessee titans. Accordingly, I moved up to stage-front. Daniel Pujol and his southern-fried psychedelia PUJOL played a bouncy set, and there I was, cuties from Heavy Cream and locals in-the-known all around me, going bonkers for "Butterfly Knife" and "Too Safe". If they ever cover "Freebird", it wouldn't shock me. Then Heavy Cream, in their sexy swaggering style, the thump of "Lava Lamp" to the groovy "Watusi", and I'm up front w/ Jonas of Turbo Fruits, the PUJOL boys, singing along because we know all the words. The wave of cute girls when Turbo Fruits took the stage was clue: NYers eat this southern-rock up. Couple Jonas' thick drawl ("free whiskey shots from my man at the bar if you got a Tennessee license!") and charisma w/ searing, rockin' anthems, stage-diving and sing-alongs — the show cut all the pretension out of live music and made it incomparably fun again.
9. Hiroshi Sugimoto "The Day After" @ The Pace Gallery
What I said then:
111610: In this ineffable experimental photographer's debut solo show at Pace, he includes two 50-ft photographic polyptychs from his "Lightning Field" series, plus related single prints and even a reconstituted Tesla coil, which releases a crackling violet shock every five minutes (that's what Sugimoto-san told me anyway, when I had the pleasure w/ speaking to the artist at his opening reception). So we're thinking electrical storms. What I feel, though, is being deep underwater, safe from the obscene pressure of the depths but in some great undiscovered trench, populated by those deep-sea denizens that use bioluminescence to attract prey and see down in the abyss. Sugimoto worked electrical discharges across unexposed film in the darkroom to create such marvels as "Lightning Fields 177" (could be spacecraft) and the watery "Lightning Fields 168", expelling hot gassy haze and tendrils of light into…nothingness. That's the thing w/ many of these works, incl. the 1st polyptych in the front gallery: the unexposed film is a perfect black, or as close as perfect comes, permitting the flashes and charges of light, like dendrites or cell creation, to float against the surface. The back polyptych, however, while subtler overall, is alive w/ shadow and textures, like briefly illuminated glimpses of a never-before-see seabed, fabric-like, even, roiling and rolling across the prints. There are benches in this room for a reason: I suggest you sit down and take it all in.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Beyond the fact I met the artist at his opening reception, summoning my starstruck courage to have a brief conversation in Japanese with the legendary Sugimoto-san, this exhibition just works. Of the many many I took in this year, the spectacles and weird stuff, the brand-name and bizarre, I found warm escapism in "The Day After".
10. Peelander-Z + TsushiMaMire @ Santos Party House
What I said then:
112310: This will be my 1st up-close encounter w/ the Japanese avant-garde punks, whose live act is half-concert, half-performance art. w/ riot-grrls Tsushimamire.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
I was coaxed into attending this by my friend David, a Peelander-Z veteran, having attended like a dozen shows himself. So I didn't know what I was getting myself into except: a really bonkers Japanese-style punk show on a cold early winter's night. Brother, did I ever underestimate the experience! Local chiptune…whatevers Starscream played a boorish set, replete w/ fist-bumping bros and that loutish lot. Whatever, they came, they went. Next was the Chiba-based all-girl trio Tsushimamire — the untranslatable name is a combination of the girls' names — and they OWNED IT. Little Mari, vocalist/guitarist, w/ her perfect bob haircut, going ballistic, shredding and screaming into the mic, then stage-diving, then actually rapping, rapid-fire to the track, roughly translated as "My Brain Shortcake". Bassist Yayoi high-kicking and rock-star posing. Drummer Mizue freeze-framing from her blast-beats, then going back at it. I took a photo w/ Mari afterward. I had to. Then it was time for Peelander-Z. Think The Ramones with color-coordinated outfits, mostly culled from Trash & Vaudeville but lovingly "punched out". I'd actually met Peelander Yellow (guitarist and lead vocalist) during Starscream's set and wished him well. Little did I know how bonkers they were going to be. I'd heard stories about "audience participation", but this was next-level, a tsunami of badass. The group began w/ a photograph, Peelander Yellow, Red (the reed-lean bassist/vocalist and most overtly "punkish" of the group), Green (the brawny yet somehow pretty drummer), plus Black (lead guitarist and the most talented musician) and Pink (the sole woman and sort-of MC and hype (wo)man) posing inside a frame — for all the cameras. This segued to the call-and-response "Tacos Tacos Tacos" w/ Japanese schoolgirl-outfitted Maiko, "So Many Mikes" w/ audience members named Mike onstage, a like 10-minute long "Mad Tiger", mainly consisting of Black soloing on guitar, Pink leading the chant, and Red and Yellow limboing and leading the crowd on a snaking conga line — plus seemingly endless stage-dives, from band and crowd, and finally a mixed-percussion jam-session in the middle of the floor. That's not counting the part where Red stood on the crowd's hands in front of a disco ball, still playing his bass. Or the part where the band swapped instruments with audience members. Or Maiko-chan and Yellow leading the crowd in naming the 50 states. W/o a doubt, one of the best live acts I caught this year.
Fierce competition? You bet! In fact, this Top Ten was the most democratic, in live music (and even burlesque!) beating out museum and gallery shows! And that's not to say there was a dearth of good art this year, or nothing worth noting before May. Just a few mentions of the fierce competition: Surfer Blood's performance at Market Hotel (shortly before the venue was shut down), Olivia Shao's cerebral "The Eyvrali Score" group show at David Zwirner Gallery, Amalgul Menlibayeva's "Daughters of Turan" exhibition at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, the bonus screening of Noboru Iguchi's RoboGeisha at Japan Society, the vintage Ana Mendieta show at Galerie Lelong, Fantastic Fest alum Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (dir. Jalmari Helander, Finland) at IFC Center, and obviously Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D. You can bet 2011 is going to be twice as dope. Stay tuned.
My TOP TEN LIST-worthy cultural events of 2010 (in chronological order, b/c further ranking would be too masochistic)
1. Claude Monet "Late Work" @ Gagosian
What I said then:
051110: The recurring discussions in art-writings on museum-quality exhibitions disguised as gallery shows has culminated w/ a big payoff: the elevating experience that is this fine collection of Monets. Gagosian has succeeded in converting the 21st St location into a serene, intimate space — akin to a special exhibitions wing of the Met — and filled it w/ 27 gorgeous canvases from the Expressionist master. Walk amid the alternately shimmering and soggy "Nymphéas" and fall into the autumnal light of the Japanese footbridges and the "L'Allée de Rosiers". Lose yourself for a bit and forget your in W. Chelsea, surrounded by several hundred bustling white-box galleries.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Viewing brilliant art for art's sake, i.e. personal enjoyment and enrichment rather than making a sale. It is assuredly rare to encounter such a paradigm in a gallery setting, particularly in the blue-chip halls of Gagosian. Yet it happened, one of the most beautiful two-month spans in West Chelsea (and greater NY for that matter), leading throngs of jaded art-going locals and hordes of tourists through Monet's watery, nearly abstract ponds and meadows and into an early summer. The feat Gagosian pulled off in temporarily acquiring these masterworks, many new to these shores, purely for our viewing satisfaction earns it a firm place in this year's Top Ten. I hope you caught the show; it was a beauty.
2. New York Asian Film Festival 2010 @ Walter Reade Theatre, IFC Center & Japan Society
What I said then:
062910: By now you should know that I live, breathe and bleed film festivals, specifically NYAFF. This year's is a winner if you're into Nouveau Hong Kong action (from Wilson Yip's Ip Man 2, hot on the heels of its successful original last year, Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow and the Pang Bros' The Storm Warriors, to name a few), and there's loads else, from lovey Korean (Castaway on the Moon) to twisted Japanese (Mutant Girls Squad). I've hyped my picks already, and check the site for full schedule and ticket info (though I know you heeded my earlier alarm call and are already booking your tix, right? Right?). Also: there are 4-5 special midnight screenings this year, at NYAFF's old home IFC Center (read along for those specific nights). DIG IT!
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Perennial Top Ten favorite, and it's still the dopest show in town as far as film festivals are concerned. This year's emphasized Hong Kong action, the backbone and basis of the festival 10 years ago, and included Wilson Yip's Ip Man 2 (w/ Yip and action choreographer/star Sammo Hung in attendance = absolutely major) and the Pang Bros bonkers The Storm Warriors Squaresoft-ready brawler. Lots of bizarro Japanese flicks for me to sink my teeth into, too, like Mutant Girls Squad (the celestial pairing of splattercore directors Yoshihiro Nishimura, Noboru Iguchi and Tak Sakaguchi) and Seiji Chiba's Alien V. Ninja, which is JUST THAT and 100% dope, thereby unleashing the Sushi Typhoon wave of cherry SnoCone blood and awesomeness upon us. And amid some powerful Korean films, like Shin Jung-won's Chaw and E J-Yong's Actresses, blurring the genre line, there was the breakaway favorite Confesssions, Tetsuya Nakashima's shattering take on the drama in Japanese high-schools, all bleached color and slo-mo roughhousing, with an endless sucker-punch to the emotive core. The brunt of the festival occurred way uptown at posh Lincoln Center, which made for some transit issues but was OK. It also made the midnight screenings at IFC even raunchier. And the one-off screening of Ancient Dogoo Girl (partially Noboru Iguchi's large-breasted brainchild) at Anthology Film Archives, complete w/ a Cay Izumi dance and some director stripping, was like shabo-laced icing on the cake.
3. Sleep @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple
What I said then:
090710: The San Jose CA band who vitalized stoner rock, whose final album was one 65 min track called "Dopesmoker". Who maul slowly and lovingly w/ their sliding guitar lines and pummeling rhythm section. Heavy is just the beginning, brother.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Sleep unleashed the heaviest concert of the year, and one of the heaviest I've ever attended, both in volume and sonic intensity. And this is coming from a guy who's seen Japanese stoner rockers Boris every time they've played NY since 2006 (and they're notoriously loud). A guy who lasted through Prurient's scorching set at last year's No Fun Fest w/o earplugs (bad idea) and My Bloody Valentine's nuclear holocaust closing of "You Made Me Realise" at 2009 APW (w/ earplugs, thankfully). Who listens to Merzbow and enjoys it. Etc. Amid the throngs of black-clad, mostly hairy dudes (and my friends Jessica and Claire of local "stoner-pop" band Heliotropes, two of a reasonable number of women in the crowd), hit by wave after unrelenting wave of Matt Pike's gnarly, punishing guitars riffs off the opening like five minutes of "Dopesmoker", just shirtless Pike leering at the crowd and strumming away at his Orange Amps-augmented axe, I felt the heat from my brainstem through my core and knew this was MAJOR. Earlier that evening, Heliotropes and I had a drink around the corner from Brooklyn Masonic Temple and, out in the back patio who should sit next to us but Pike himself (with shirt), and Jessica bums a smoke off the man. He introduces himself and we share a laugh, then about an hour later we're beneath him, swaying to the riffs, devil horns up, trying to keep it together but giving ourselves up to the ultimate stoner rock band.
4. Ra Ra Riot @ Bowery Ballroom
What I said then:
092110: Be honest: you'd never peg me for a Ra Ra Riot fan, right? But I am, or more appropriately I became one, BIG TIME, w/ their new album "The Orchard", which is smart, groovy pop w/ a kickass strings duo. And I retroactively fell hard for their previous tracks and am now incorrigible. I'm seeing them again tomorrow, same time, same place, different opening bands. Yes you should, too.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
They may be indie, this six-piece of lovelies from Syracuse, but they're decidedly pop. Or popish, anyway, a far cry from my edgier, harsher listening sensibilities. Yet I saw them twice, back-to-back sold-out nights at Bowery Ballroom. Why? Partially because cellist/vocalist Alexandra Lawn is, admittedly, a hottie. But mainly, like 85%, because they're effortlessly, engagingly fantastic performers. Each night was different: Saratoga Springs, NY's Phantogram opened night one, whipping the crowd into a frenzy w/ their heavy, synth-pop. Baltimore's shoegazey Lower Dens mesmerized on night two. But Ra Ra Riot ruled. Night one began with lead singer Wes Miles only, playing a keyboard and singing the hypnotic refrains of "Keep It Quiet" — it's not quite Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place", but it had that entrancing effect on the crowd, as Wes did his thing and his bandmates slowly filtered onstage, taking their positions. Then they cut loose, w/ "Boy" through all the hits, returning for an encore w/ Alexandra taking the lead, belting out "You and I Know" w/ her jazz chanteuse sensibility. It was hot. Night two, the band was accompanied by a small symphonic ensemble, augmented their "chamber" indie-pop sound w/ strings and horns. It was…smart, dreamy, sophisticated, very cool.
5. Fantastic Fest @ Alamo Drafthouse in Austin TX
What I said then:
I didn't! Or at least in came in the form of the below image:
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Epic epic epic. It was a long time coming, returning to my alumni city, and long overdue. I am a film buff and a film-festival freak, but Fantastic Fest features the hardest of the hardcore. I'm talking REAL film fanatics, devotees, geeks in the absolute nicest, positive-light way. My daily routine consisted of waking up at 6a, bussing down to the kickass Alamo Drafthouse (cinema and dining in one — a novel idea! seriously, you see it other places, and NY sort of has that w/ reRun theatre, a commendable thing, but nobody does it better than the Drafthouse), queuing up at daybreak, actually watching the sun do its rising thing in the sky until doors opened around 9:30a, then collecting my tickets for the day, then catching (usually) five films back-to-back, until like 2a, returning home to crash and then do it all over again the next day. Like I wrote: hardcore. The festival stretched from Sept 23 - Sept 30, 2010, I arrived on Sept 24 and caught 21 films. A fair deal, eh? Plus I met directors, actors, caught up w/ friends, saw Tokyo Dolores' Cay Izumi wow the crowd w/ a sexy pole-dance at the High Ball, etc. Sion Sono's latest torturous epic Cold Fish knocked the wind out of me, debuting here before screening in NY (in 2011 hopefully?). The triumvirate of Red White & Blue (dir. Simon Rumley, USA/UK), I Spit On Your Grave (dir. Steven R. Monroe, USA, i.e. the 2010 remake) and The Dead (dirs. Howard J. Ford & Jonathan Ford, UK) ensured I wouldn't be sleeping that night. I succeeded in catching one of four secret films (Never Let Me Go, by Mark Romanek), though I was stymied by an impossible line to the hush-hush premiere of Yoshihiro Nishimura's Helldriver. That's OK, it'll receive it's NY debut soon enough, and brother you can believe that will be intense. I absolutely loved the sexy genre-busting horror in the Butcher Bros' The Violent Kind (please come to NY!) and bowed down to the awesomeness of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins and Lee Jung-beom's Man From Nowhere. Oh, there was some lighter subject matter too: anime delight Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda, Japan, opening this winter at IFC Center) and Sound of Noise (dirs. Johannes Stjärne Nilsson & Ola Simonsson, Sweden, which frankly I'd be lucky to EVER see again — please screen again!). In sum, the wildest, raunchiest, rowdiest genre film festival in the U.S., a thick slice of Texas-style whoa.
6. "Abstract Expressionist New York" @ MoMA
What I said then:
101210: Let's hear it for New York! Big canvases by badass artists, a veritable Who's Who of NY's boy's club from the 40s through mid-60s (there are a few stunning examples from women artists during the time, incl the phosphorescent "Gaea" by Lee Krasner, moving rooms from its semi-permanent position on the same floor, but the emphasis here is on "few"), ranging from familiar favorites to rarely shown masterpieces. Props due for the thoughtful installation: there is a real flow to the rooms, maintaining a richly visual exhilaration after the absolutely flooring opener, that (for me, anyway) only peters out a bit at the final gallery. But enough, on to the art:
Room One: Robert Motherwell's singular early collage-work "Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive" (1943) was acquired by the MoMA shortly after Peggy Guggenheim's exhibition that year. I'm not sure I have EVER seen this work in person, and it's a mid-sized beauty, one of the few quiet works in this gallery. B/c the scene swiftly shifts to chaos and turbulence, via Jackson Pollock's early, snarling "The She-Wolf" ('43) and "Mask" ('41), both echoing Pablo Picasso's oeuvre (and specifically "Guernica"). Pollock nearly rules this room w/ his increasingly violent abstraction — check the blue-slashed "Gather" ('44) — but he meets his equal w/ the unfurling textural mania of Richard Pousette-Dart's "Fugue No. 2" ('43), a carnival of flashing lights and masked figures, w/ sand mixed into the oil paint. We're left breathless.
Rooms Two - Four: either head straight back to Barnett Newman's solo gallery, a brilliant choice by the curators, as his minimalist, soft washes, punctuated by vertical-line "zips", quench the visual palette from the surrounding busier rooms, or head adjacent to the see Motherwell's huge "Western Air" ('46-7), a geometric landscape w/ more sand in the paint, and a wall of Arshile Gorky paintings, each more color-saturated and Joan Miro-contorted than the last (though my favorite is the grayscale "Diary of a Seducer" from '45, which comes off almost like an abstract Warner Bros cartoon still).
Rooms Five - Six: Pollock rules one, Mark Rothko the other. Both are essential. The former commands many familiar canvases, like "Number 1, 1948" that nearly suffocates in the narrower room, but I especially dug the first-time "Full Fathom Five" ('42), a smaller vertical canvas of motor-oil-like paint rivulets, covering bottle caps and nails, and the horizontal scroller "Number 7, 1950", a sideways cascade of white on taupe that almost looks like calligraphy. Rothko's room is particularly dense, w/ the deafening sunset from "No. 5/No. 22" ('50) as the antithesis to the watery slate-blue rectangle floating in a sea of dark plum in "No. 37/No. 19" ('58). You won't want to leave this room too quickly.
Rooms Seven - Ten: It is in the 7th room that (I think) we encounter the first paintings by women NY-based Abstract Expressionists, and two of 'em in particular eclipse nearly all the male competition. I speak of the aforementioned Krasner "Gaea" and the gorgeous Grace Hartigan "Shinnecock Canal" ('57), a riot of green and blue, coming off like a forest scene put through several prisms. It is intriguing to note that these two strong works share the space w/ Willem de Kooning's famous "Woman 1" (one of "only" four de Koonings in the show, meaning he is sparsely shown as well). Ad Reinhardt channels the intensity in a room of his own, a suite of his (nearly) one-color "Abstract Paintings", and Franz Kline has nearly one to himself as well, what I'm calling the Zen room, as it pairs Kline's action paintings w/ David Smith's blocky sculpture, Clyfford Still's color tremors and a grand Louise Nevelson relief "Sky Cathedral" ('58). It's only the final gallery where I lull a bit, in that it features mostly Philip Guston, and I've admittedly never been a fan, but one of his still-abstract canvases, the textural gray-and-red-orange "Painting" ('54) is pretty tasty.
This is both a scholarly experience and thrilling, emotive romp. NY's had some fine Picasso shows of late, and the galleries have hosted extensive, illuminating exhibitions on Claude Monet, Gerhard Richter, amid others. But Abstract Expressionism IS New York, so it's no surprise that the best collection of its kind is here, at the MoMA. Go see it.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
MoMA really brought it this year. I've supported this institution for modern art as a member since I moved to NY back in mid-2004, and from then on I've experienced thoughtful, nuanced (and sometimes badass) highs, coupled w/ 'meh' or what-the-hell-were-they-thinking? lows, w/ MoMA's unparalleled collection as a constant fallback. For the Abstract Expressionist exhibition, the museum both removed and culled from that collection, turning its 4th floor into a love-in for the uniquely NY style until Spring 2011. Meaning: no Picassos, no Surrealists, hell, no Pop Art even, until next May. BUT: this array of early Pollocks, loads of Gorkys, Newmans and Rothkos, punctuated by a powerful Krasner here, a Hartigan there, and a de Kooning if you're looking closely, is epic, singularly MoMA. The museum was designed to house and display these huge-ass canvases, after all — private collectors "can" show them in their homes, but this museum is intrinsically Abstract Expressionist-equipped. This exhibition shines.
7. Tokyo Dolores conquer NYC
What I said then:
101910: Tokyo Dolores — the fiercest Japan-based pole-dancing/burlesque troupe — begin their final week in NYC w/ a systematic citywide takedown. Target #1: the casual go-go scene, w/ a rippin' routine on the LES. Be forewarned: the venue is tiny, so show up on time or be cast outdoors, pressing your face against the glass while the girls work the pole inside. You don't want that.
* "Meaner Harder Leather" @ Vig 27. Night #2 of Tokyo Dolores' (aka Cay, Aloe & Alk) NY conquering is the saucy vibe of this neither-downtown-nor-uptown posh lounge. This joint caters to an upscale crowd who KNOW their burlesque, so expect the girls to bring it, Tokyo-style.
* Trash! Night #3 of Tokyo Dolores' systematic takedown of NYC's nightlife scene is a darkly glamorous affair for nightowls and electro-kids. Leather and bare skin in effect. This dance should be extra-special.
* "RoboGeisha" @ Crash Mansion. The gloves are off in the final night of Tokyo Dolores' NY tour. Cay, Aloe & Alk return to Japan, but not before unleashing a properly naughty sendoff on this wicked downtown fetish party, hosted by Stimulate. The theme flows w/ Cay's films (she was one of the two Tengu girls in Noboru Iguchi's "RoboGeisha"), and the girls are pulling out all the stops to make this a night you'll not soon forget.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
New addition to my LIST: burlesque! It had to happen someday, but I credit my new circle of NY friends and deep appreciation for their talent entirely to Tokyo Dolores. This self-made collective of artist/performers in Tokyo is led by actress Cay Izumi, who I now count as a close friend. Two of her top dancers joined her in the first-ever NY tour, the gymnastic Alk and the sensual Aloe. I followed the girls through each performance, photographing their work and assisting in setups, and while their whole run was awesome, totally flooring NYers and even seasoned burlesque performers w/ their three-girl pole routines, it was the final week, a four-part takedown, that earned them ranking in this year's Top Ten. They began at the tiny Norfolk St bar Nurse Bettie for two performances in the weekly "Spanking the LES". Cay went first with a fire and hot-wax dance, then the three girls took to the pole, astounding everyone w/ a whirlwind of sexiness. Night two at the "Meaner Harder Leather" show at Vig 27 was an Alk & Aloe duet. Cay sat next to me and we took in the girls' carefully choreographed dance: Alk spinning around the pole, Aloe doing back-bends and freeze-poses. Night three was the weekly "Trash!" show at the basement of Webster Hall, a sweaty cocktail of '80s music and hormones. Cay injured her hand backstage pre-show but put on a strong face, wrapping the wound and leading an absolutely kickass dance. They began in kimonos, stripping them off as the show continued, and when the three girls (now in varying degrees of black lingerie) danced about the pole to the thumping soundtrack, like some erotic Maypole, the audience cheered in adulation. Their final performance in NY was the monthly "Stimulate" party, a full-out fetish show at Crash Mansion, and Tokyo Dolores headlined it w/ a special "RoboGeisha" routine. Imagery from Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura's films flooded the room, amid the whips and racks, and the girls performed a double-header. First the pole. Second, a sexy zombie routine w/ local legend Stormy Leather, dressed as a maiden molested by the beautiful undead girls, then rising as an ultra-hot vampire queen, reigning over them and the crowd.
Check out what I'm talking about (requires a 21+ login, you naughties!)
http://www.dailymotion.com/mwalkow
8. CMJ 2010: Nashville @ Knitting Factory
What I said then:
102610: Saturday's loaded w/ CMJ action, but I must tip my hat & bestow my #1 pick to this Panache Bookings showcase. I credit Pop Jew for getting me into the Nashville indie scene, & the triple dose of Daniel Pujol & band, Heavy Cream (their only CMJ show), & Turbo Fruits cinches the deal.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
NY can't get enough of Nashville! I was very active this past CMJ, taking in a minimum of two shows a day, usually with a day and a night show, and I must have seen nearly 100 bands and clocked 72 hours of music-listening. That's a conservative estimate. The show I'd had my focus on the whole fest, BrooklynVegan's showcase at Music Hall of Williamsburg, helmed by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, didn't wow my pants off like I'd expected. It was brilliant but just proper. I needed something rowdier, something liquor-fueled and boisterous. Something southern. And despite one gnawingly odd band thrown into the midst, the Norwegian synth-something contingent Tug, the entire night, and the last night of the fest, was everything I needed. Aussie grunge-lovelies Circle Pit opened, then after the Tug debacle (i.e. refill your drinks, check the merch tables) came the trio of Tennessee titans. Accordingly, I moved up to stage-front. Daniel Pujol and his southern-fried psychedelia PUJOL played a bouncy set, and there I was, cuties from Heavy Cream and locals in-the-known all around me, going bonkers for "Butterfly Knife" and "Too Safe". If they ever cover "Freebird", it wouldn't shock me. Then Heavy Cream, in their sexy swaggering style, the thump of "Lava Lamp" to the groovy "Watusi", and I'm up front w/ Jonas of Turbo Fruits, the PUJOL boys, singing along because we know all the words. The wave of cute girls when Turbo Fruits took the stage was clue: NYers eat this southern-rock up. Couple Jonas' thick drawl ("free whiskey shots from my man at the bar if you got a Tennessee license!") and charisma w/ searing, rockin' anthems, stage-diving and sing-alongs — the show cut all the pretension out of live music and made it incomparably fun again.
9. Hiroshi Sugimoto "The Day After" @ The Pace Gallery
What I said then:
111610: In this ineffable experimental photographer's debut solo show at Pace, he includes two 50-ft photographic polyptychs from his "Lightning Field" series, plus related single prints and even a reconstituted Tesla coil, which releases a crackling violet shock every five minutes (that's what Sugimoto-san told me anyway, when I had the pleasure w/ speaking to the artist at his opening reception). So we're thinking electrical storms. What I feel, though, is being deep underwater, safe from the obscene pressure of the depths but in some great undiscovered trench, populated by those deep-sea denizens that use bioluminescence to attract prey and see down in the abyss. Sugimoto worked electrical discharges across unexposed film in the darkroom to create such marvels as "Lightning Fields 177" (could be spacecraft) and the watery "Lightning Fields 168", expelling hot gassy haze and tendrils of light into…nothingness. That's the thing w/ many of these works, incl. the 1st polyptych in the front gallery: the unexposed film is a perfect black, or as close as perfect comes, permitting the flashes and charges of light, like dendrites or cell creation, to float against the surface. The back polyptych, however, while subtler overall, is alive w/ shadow and textures, like briefly illuminated glimpses of a never-before-see seabed, fabric-like, even, roiling and rolling across the prints. There are benches in this room for a reason: I suggest you sit down and take it all in.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Beyond the fact I met the artist at his opening reception, summoning my starstruck courage to have a brief conversation in Japanese with the legendary Sugimoto-san, this exhibition just works. Of the many many I took in this year, the spectacles and weird stuff, the brand-name and bizarre, I found warm escapism in "The Day After".
10. Peelander-Z + TsushiMaMire @ Santos Party House
What I said then:
112310: This will be my 1st up-close encounter w/ the Japanese avant-garde punks, whose live act is half-concert, half-performance art. w/ riot-grrls Tsushimamire.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
I was coaxed into attending this by my friend David, a Peelander-Z veteran, having attended like a dozen shows himself. So I didn't know what I was getting myself into except: a really bonkers Japanese-style punk show on a cold early winter's night. Brother, did I ever underestimate the experience! Local chiptune…whatevers Starscream played a boorish set, replete w/ fist-bumping bros and that loutish lot. Whatever, they came, they went. Next was the Chiba-based all-girl trio Tsushimamire — the untranslatable name is a combination of the girls' names — and they OWNED IT. Little Mari, vocalist/guitarist, w/ her perfect bob haircut, going ballistic, shredding and screaming into the mic, then stage-diving, then actually rapping, rapid-fire to the track, roughly translated as "My Brain Shortcake". Bassist Yayoi high-kicking and rock-star posing. Drummer Mizue freeze-framing from her blast-beats, then going back at it. I took a photo w/ Mari afterward. I had to. Then it was time for Peelander-Z. Think The Ramones with color-coordinated outfits, mostly culled from Trash & Vaudeville but lovingly "punched out". I'd actually met Peelander Yellow (guitarist and lead vocalist) during Starscream's set and wished him well. Little did I know how bonkers they were going to be. I'd heard stories about "audience participation", but this was next-level, a tsunami of badass. The group began w/ a photograph, Peelander Yellow, Red (the reed-lean bassist/vocalist and most overtly "punkish" of the group), Green (the brawny yet somehow pretty drummer), plus Black (lead guitarist and the most talented musician) and Pink (the sole woman and sort-of MC and hype (wo)man) posing inside a frame — for all the cameras. This segued to the call-and-response "Tacos Tacos Tacos" w/ Japanese schoolgirl-outfitted Maiko, "So Many Mikes" w/ audience members named Mike onstage, a like 10-minute long "Mad Tiger", mainly consisting of Black soloing on guitar, Pink leading the chant, and Red and Yellow limboing and leading the crowd on a snaking conga line — plus seemingly endless stage-dives, from band and crowd, and finally a mixed-percussion jam-session in the middle of the floor. That's not counting the part where Red stood on the crowd's hands in front of a disco ball, still playing his bass. Or the part where the band swapped instruments with audience members. Or Maiko-chan and Yellow leading the crowd in naming the 50 states. W/o a doubt, one of the best live acts I caught this year.
Fierce competition? You bet! In fact, this Top Ten was the most democratic, in live music (and even burlesque!) beating out museum and gallery shows! And that's not to say there was a dearth of good art this year, or nothing worth noting before May. Just a few mentions of the fierce competition: Surfer Blood's performance at Market Hotel (shortly before the venue was shut down), Olivia Shao's cerebral "The Eyvrali Score" group show at David Zwirner Gallery, Amalgul Menlibayeva's "Daughters of Turan" exhibition at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, the bonus screening of Noboru Iguchi's RoboGeisha at Japan Society, the vintage Ana Mendieta show at Galerie Lelong, Fantastic Fest alum Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (dir. Jalmari Helander, Finland) at IFC Center, and obviously Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D. You can bet 2011 is going to be twice as dope. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
fee's LIST (through 12/14)
WEDNESDAY
* Allora & Calzadilla @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). MoMA is on a winning streak of smart exhibitions ("Abstract Expressionist New York" and "On Line", if you've not seen 'em yet, and the forthcoming "Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures"), and the fever continues w/ this ace inclusion to the Marron Atrium. Conceptualist duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla revisit their 2009 Gladstone Gallery show, "Stop, Repair, Prepair: Variations on 'Ode to Joy' for a Prepared Piano", which features a pianist standing inside a grand piano, playing Beethoven's famous composition backward whilst wheeling the instrument around the atrium. If that sounds cool, it is a million times cooler in real life.
* "Pitfall" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes" has consistently been my favorite surrealist output by the director, but the gnawing tenseness of earlier film "Pitfall" is AT LEAST a close second. This 1st collaboration w/ composer Toru Takemitsu is epic: our rough-and-tumble protagonist stumbles sleepy-eyed across a rocky landscape, attempting to discern who's real and who isn't, as a white-suited dandy pursues him, to a soundtrack of samisen twangs. Incredible.
* "Pale Flower" (dir. Masahiro Shinoda, 1964) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Cool jazz, Toru Takemitsu style, lends the soundscapes to this essential Yakuza flick, perhaps the most "Nouvelle Vague" of the Japanese New Wave.
* G Lucas Crane + MV Carbon + Purple Haze (Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards) @ Silent Barn / 915 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood (L to Halsey, M to Myrtle/Wyckoff), 8p. AKA Cool Fest X, a noise maelstrom feat. Nonhorse, Crane's cassette-mauling nom de guerre, returning from a two-month tour of Europe and Japan, plus Metalux's MV Carbon…and honestly, any roster including side projects from the illustrious Double Leopards (here Bassett's Purple Haze guise) = mayjah.
* WIERD presents: Further Reductions @ Home Sweet Home / 131 Chrystie St (F/JMZ to Delancey/Essex), 12a. These weekly-ish WIERD parties are pretty hot stuff, if you're even remotely into the darker, gloomier (yet still dancey) side of '80s music, which is like 75% of it. Live act this week is Captured Tracks duo Further Reductions, returning w/ the sweeter side of synth-focused sounds.
THURSDAY
* "The Ricky Powell Art Funk Explosion!", presented by Frank151 @ Sacred Gallery / 424 Broadway (NR/6/JZ to Canal St), 8p-12a, RSVP: kevin@sacredgallerynyc.com. Illustrious hip-hop and street photographer Powell, aka the "fourth Beastie Boy" (he's been in the game since '85, so he earned that rep), returns w/ a major new exhibition feat. his collaborations w/ NY graf artists (CHINO BYI, Haculla, Dr. Dax, LOVE ME) plus his own iconic street shots. RSVP above to attend the opening, which includes music by Chances WIth Wolves. Get hot!
* Keith Tyson "52 Variables" @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. Tyson takes on chance again, this time in the form of mixed media paintings based on the backs of playing cards, heavily layered w/ historic meaning and all sorts of eye-trickery and double-entendres.
* Nathan Harger @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Power-lines, cranes, crisscrossing bridge-work, even the regularity of buildings: it's all typical NY-centric scenery, but you've probably never seen it this way. Harper's crisp, totally contrasty C-prints will have you slowing down "in real life" to see his subjects.
* "Law of the Jungle", curated by Tiago Carneiro da Cunha @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Survival is key, personal and collective, when navigating the current art scene. This group show, feat. Ashley Bickerton, Os Gemeos, Shay Kun, Liam Gillick, Adriana Varejao, Erika Verzutti and others mine art history to exert their staying power.
* Michael DeLucia @ Eleven Rivington / 11 Rivington St. The Brooklyn-based artist is a master of transforming mass-produced banality into abstract sculpture. He used to be Jeff Koons' assistant, so there is a certain high-finish and skillful detail to DeLucia's work (and note his draftsman-like work drawings), but his materials are solidly "working-class".
* Al Held "Concrete Abstraction" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. A less widely known series of Held's brushwork ink drawings on canvas from the '60s, revealing his Abstract Expressonist roots and before his explorations into Hardedge-style renderings.
* "re:CONTEXT" curated by Brad Silk @ Number 35 Gallery / 141 Attorney St @ Stanton. The inaugural exhibition at Number 35 Gallery's larger downtown space features Steven Cossman, Joy Drury Cox, Matthew Craven, Wyatt Kahn and Jeremy jacob Schlangen working in repurposing, reconfiguring and re-appropriating methods, executed mainly in assemblage and collage.
* Inferior Amps + Noveller @ Cinders Gallery / 103 Havermeyer St, Williamsburg (L/G to Lorimer), 8p. Caught Maya Hayuk's "Heavy Light" installation at the gallery yet? Come back, or see it for the first time, amped up w/ live music. Incl. guitar drone duo Sarah Lipstate & Shahin Motia (as Noveller & Inferior Amps) + Bunnybrains.
FRIDAY
* Djordje Ozbolt @ 303 Gallery / 547 W 21st St. Stoked about this one: Ozbolt's painting style is carries the mannerism of Old Masters, and he tends to draw from historical subject matter, but his execution is so… bonkers, hallucinogenic, wry and witty that he elevates to a class of his own.
* Eleanor Moreton "The Ladies of Shalott" @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. John William Waterhouse's narrative, reconfigured in a blurred haze of stricken figurative portraiture. Also: this is Moreton's debut stateside solo show (she shows at Ceri Hand Gallery in Liverpool UK).
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres + On Kawara "Amnesia" @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. The gallery has done this before, in one of their sparest (and in my opinion most effective) recent shows, by pairing Gonzalez-Torres w/ Robert Gober's "Prison Window". This time Electronic Arts Intermix's Rebecca Cleman and Josh Kine curate a video program for these two Conceptualists.
+ José Lerma "I am Sorry I am Perry" . The latest solo NY show for the Brooklyn-based artist since his 2006 "The Golden Sea" at the gallery.
* Lawrence Weiner "Gyroscopically Speaking" @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. Weiner's unique method of language and representation includes spatial relationships, displayed here as text works on a constructed curvilinear wall, plus related works on paper and animation.
* "The Fort of Death" (dir. Eiichi Kudo, 1969) screening @ Asia Society / 725 Park Ave (6 to 68th St), 6:45p/FREE. The final screening in Asia Society's '60s Japanese Cinema series is major: Kudo-san directed the original "Thirteen Assassins" (Takashi Miike redid it recently and it kicks every other contemporary big battle scene's ass), so you know the action sequences in this showoff b/w bounty hunters and samurai v. a gun-wielding shogunate will be nothing short of epic.
* "Kwaidan" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). If you're a fan of J-Horror (particularly the droopy black-haired "yurei" style a la "The Ring") or just love a good spine-tingling fright, you owe it to yourself to see the film whose title translates to GHOST STORY. Kobayashi's classic culls from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk tales, to frightening conclusions. I mean, one of the tales is called "The Black Hair". Don't expect today's gore and cheap shocks: rather, Kobayashi's suite are filled to the brim w/ fleeting beauty and steady, tense crescendoes.
* "Julia's Eyes" (dir. Guillem Morales, 2010) screening @ Walter Reade Theatre / Lincoln Center @ 65th St (1 to 66th St), 9:20p. Spain will remind you that there needn't be gratuitous violence and bloodshed to make a film viscerally scary. This perpetually twilit story, produced by comrade-in-psych-terror Guillermo del Toro, following the titular character's investigation of her sister's apparent suicide, as her own vision fades. A haunting Fantastic Fest alum.
* "Samurai Rebellion" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1967) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Q: what happens when you piss off Toshiro Mifune, playing the baddest-ass vassal of the daimyo? A: he kills everybody.
* "After Hours" (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1985) screenings @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). This should be required viewing for all of NY's hipster nightowls. In a nutshell: one utterly bizarre night, Salvatore Dali in '80s Soho, w/ hot artists, vengeful mobs and a creepy Mister Softee truck, the most kick-ass punk club blasting Bad Brains, and Cheech & Chong as burglars. Go back to Scorsese's archive: "Casino" wasn't his only great 'classic' film. ALSO DEC 11
* "Predator" (dir. John McTiernan, 1987) screening @ 92Y Tribeca / 200 Hudson St (1 to Hudson St), 8p/$10. If you are like this author and were too young to see the 'famous' "Predator" during its original screening run, now aren't you in luck? And much as I surprisingly loved Nimrod Antal's 2010 film "Predators", I was never 100% on the lanky, sarcastic Adrian Brody as lead. To many viewers, I think we're used to the humid, vaguely homoerotic "Métal Hurlant" landscape of muscular fighters shouting "Get to the choppah!" whilst tracking and fighting the titular creature. Thus we summon Cali. governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar (and Minnesota former governor, can you believe it?, Jesse "The Body" Ventura) to take care of business. Also: this is part of the 92Y series "Beer Goggles", which seems apt.
* "They Live" (dir. John Carpenter, 1988) screening @ 92Y Tribeca / 200 Hudson St (1 to Hudson St), 10:30p/$10. Extend your hands in praise for the B-movie film gods and take in the 2nd of tonight's "Beer Goggles" series, namely wrester "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, wearing 'special sunglasses' to see the alien overlords of LA's creeping apocalypse. Do 'They' even know who they're tangling with? Sez a gun-toting Piper: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I'm all out of bubblegum."
* TRASH! w/ Melody Sweets @ Studio at Webster Hall / 125 E 11th St, Basement (NR/L/456 to Union Square), 11p/$10 ($5 w/ flyer from DJJESSNYC.com). Why would I think of sending you to Webster Hall? B/c of the weekly basement TRASH! party, MCed by DJ Jess and and feat. the incomparably fierce Melody Sweets (resident performer at Duane Park's Saturday "Sweets' Shop"), conducting a late-night cabaret w/ Hazel Honeysuckle that will warm you to your core. Use your imagination.
* Tricky @ Brooklyn Bowl / 61 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 9p/$20. I know, I know, I'm stoked about this one, too. In the recent past, it's been a 'thing' getting Tricky to play in NY, and this is indeed a venue/bowling alley, but when the "Tricky Kid" steps out from that veil of fog, crooning to his unparalleled take on trip-hop ("Maxinquaye" anybody?), all is set well again.
* Sweet Bulbs @ Shea Stadium / 20 Meadow St, Williamsburg (L to Grand St), 8p. Get ready to sweat. Brooklyn's fuzziest noise-pop quartet Sweet Bulbs headline this sonic whirlwind, also feat. sets by Byrds of Paradise, Weed Hounds and Regal Degal.
* Deakin + Prince Rama @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave), 7p/$15. The really tall guy from Animal Collective, aka Josh Dibb aka Deakin, is a pretty significantly psychedelic solo artist in his own right, of the dub persuasion. Teaming him w/ former tour-partners Prince Rama, they of the Krishna-chant persuasion, just sounds right. The subhead for this show is "Get Weird". Sounds like a guarantee.
SATURDAY
* "Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd" book signing w/ editor Marianne Stockebrand @ David Zwirner / 519 W 19th St, 4-6p, rsvp: ashley@davidzwirner.com. Chinati Foundation, way out in the literal middle of nowhere, Texas, epitomizes the phrase "destination art". If you can't make the actual journey, this gorgeous new photo book (w/ Judd essays and other writings) may be the next best thing.
* Shag (Josh Agle) "Ambergris" + Turf One (Jean Labourdette) "The Rising" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St. SoCal's Shag moves further from his rumpus-room subjects to luxuriously otherworldly landscapes, though replete w/ familiar mid-century objet. Montreal's Turf One marries a Flemish portraiture style w/ Coney Island sideshow shock.
* Focus Shanghai: Lu Chunsheng and Birdhead @ Thomas Erben Gallery / 526 W 26th St 4th Fl, curator's talk, 3p. Michelle Loh & Katy Martin discuss this intriguing contemporary Chinese show at the gallery. Martin's forays in Chinese video art and the Shanghai scene, plus Loh's background in co-founding the Asian Contemporary Art Fair, NY and dealing in the Asian art markets should lend an intriguing conversation.
* "BIG GROUP/small works" @ In Rivers / 165 Greenpoint Ave (G to Greenpoint), 7-10p. The inaugural show at this new Greenpoint space, curated by Lau Gallico and feat. loads of local artists, incl. Lemia Bodden (photography), OH10 Mike (live sketching at the opening), plus Mayuko Fujino, Jeremiah Jones, Jessica Angel and many more. Curated by Lau Gallico & Giancarlo Romero.
* "Harakiri" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Notorious for some of the most challenging self-death scenes in film history — seppuku is no laughing matter — with charismatic Tatsuya Nakadai as one of a few honorable characters against the emerging feudal system.
* "Caterpillar" (dir. Koji Wakamatsu, 2010) screening @ Japan Society / 333 W 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St), 7p. After Hisayasu Sato's devastating visceral short "Imomushi" for the Edogawa Rampo collection "Rampo Noir", I wondered how this tale by Japan's Edgar Alan Poe could be rethought by a different director. With legend Wakamatsu-san at the helm, this should be a good one: a heavy post-WWII tale of a wounded, limbless soldier and his doting, deviant wife.
* Light Asylum + Violens @ Santos Party House / 96 Lafayette St (NR/6/JMZ to Canal St), 8p/$10. I never thought I'd be a fan of Light Asylum's post-punk, bass-heavy disco-house, but when Shannon Funchess commands the mic, and her deep, Grace Jones-like voice carries over the pounding rhythms and electronics, I had an epiphany. I guess it's like charismatic Christians, only w/ house music. She'll make a believer out of you.
* NYC Punk & Underground Record Fair @ Southpaw / 125 5th Ave, Park Slope (234 to Bergen St, D/NR to Union St), 10a-4:30p/$5. Dig punk, metal, new wave, esoteric underground stuff? Dig it even more when it's on vinyl? Brother, are YOU ever in luck.
SUNDAY
* "The Talent Show" @ MoMA PS1 / 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City (E/M to 23rd St/Ely Ave, 7 to 45th Rd/Courthouse Sq). PS1 surveys the relationship b/w artists and their audiences, from '60s performance art, happenings and Conceptualism to contemporary social media. The roster spans exhibitionism to sociopolitical relevancy, and is dope enough that I'll name 'em all: Stanley Brouwn (getting lots of play of late despite his unarchivable nature), Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Peter campus, Graciela Carnevale, Phil Collins ("that" Phil Collins), Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tehching Hsieh, David Lamelas, Piero Manzoni (wise inclusion), Adrian Piper (another wise inclusion), Amie Siegel, Josh Smith (ditto), Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, Hannah Wilke, Shizuka Yokomizo and Carey Young.
+ Feng Mengbo "Long March (Restart)". An interactive video-game installation combining Super Mario Bros w/ Mao-era propaganda? Yes!
* "Kidnapped" (dir. Miguel Angel Vivas, 2010) screening @ Walter Reade Theatre / Lincoln Center @ 65th St (1 to 66th St), 9:15p. This Fantastic Fest/Sitges alum is a grueling, realtime home break-in story, w/ a minimum of cuts and a maximum of restless energy to promote audience discomfit.
* "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" (dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1983) screening @ Japan Society / 333 W 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St), 7p. For simplicity's sake: starring David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano, in the same film.
* Cristina Black @ Union Hall / 702 Union St, Park Slope (R to Union/Q/23/45 to Atlantic Ave), 9p/$7. I'm always up for something new and not necessarily punk, and the smoky-voiced chanteuse Black and her stellar storytelling is just that.
TUESDAY
* Elliott Puckette @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. New mixed media paintings by Puckette, lyrical swipes and scratchings against monochromatic backdrops.
* Santi Moix "May the Earth Rest Lightly On You" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 511 W 27th St. A watercolor diary of Moix's travels through Barcelona, Morocco, New York and the Ivory Coast.
* "Black Swan" (dir. Darren Aronofksy, 2010) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 7p. On the one hand, I can hardly fathom seeing this bracing film at MoMA (the unsuspecting elder viewers freaking out during the epilepsy-inducing club scene, the ensuing Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis sleepover), but on the other, its shell of tortured beauty is shattered upon exiting a multiplex. Either way, you will feel each tense nerve in Portman's balletic back, in her ruined feet and bleeding nails as she drifts further and further into the blurry realm between the real stage and this dark fantasy world of sinister fluttering wings.
* "The Social Network" (dir. David Fincher, 2010) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 8:30p. It's that Facebook film, which I haven't seen yet.
LAST CHANCE
* Adrian Piper "Past Time: Selected Works 1973-1995" @ Elizabeth Dee / 548 W 22nd St. Some of Piper's most political, combustive works, and this is coming from a brilliant artist astute at 'getting to' the viewer, latching onto our thoughts, preempting them, and leaving us w/ a LOT to mull over. "It's Just Art" (1980) will do it: a news broadcast interlaid w/ Piper, in sunglasses and looking fierce, mouthing wordlessly, plus newsprints feat. her thought-bubbles in related dialogue/response. "Ashes to Ashes" (1995) is an intensely personal one, family photos and text reflecting her parents' death, though I liked the balance here w/ "I Am Somebody. The Body of My Friends" (1992-5), 18 photographs of Piper w/ said friends. And a treat here, and (at least on surface-level) lighter in subject matter, is "The Big Four-Oh" (1988), a rare installation work from Piper, involving a deconstructed suit of armor, 40 hardballs, and her diary, plus a looping video of the artist dancing (back to the camera) effortlessly to '80s music. Don't miss it.
* Damien Hirst "Medicine Cabinets" @ L&M Arts / 45 E 78th St. Its like the YBA stars aligned for this seminal trove of archival works from Hirst. Let me try to explain: the ground-floor gallery (of this charming multistory town home, bien sur) contains Hirst's "Sex Pistols" medicine cabinets from '89, each bearing a track title from "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistol", while the upper floor features a slew of Sex Pistols ephemera (framed LPs, torn T-shirts w/ paint, assumedly Hirst's, spattering the fabric) AND a four-part cabinet entitled "The Sex Pistols", but that one is from '96 and unrelated to the downstairs cabinets except in 1) name and 2) drugs. Are you following me?? I barely followed that myself.
* Anthony Caro "Upright Sculptures" @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Caro just may be the leading force in divergent sculptural alchemy today, blending weathered, rusted steel and wood (here luxuriously chunky railroad ties) like they were always meant for one another, star-crossed. These tall forms were assembled from various found materials w/ extra emphasis on texture, the woodgrain gorgeous and pronounced, the patina REALLY patina'ed. Each embody a powerful nostalgia, again like these forms were meant to pair up, like they were once some operating steampunk creation, transfixed for eternity now in these metaphysical poses. And speaking of textures, the disarming "Up Landscape", while entirely painted steel, looks curiously soft — my first thought was Urs Fischer's painted aluminum "drooping sculptures", but Caro's is more abstract and physical.
* William N. Copley "X-Rated" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. The gallery recreates Copley's infamous '74 installation at former Huntington Hartford Museum on Columbus Circle (can you believe it??) in a riot of libidinous physicality in large acrylics on linen. The overt 'pretty' stuff is few and far between, though that's obvious if you're attending a vintage Copley show, but they're overall accessible, and I found some quick favorites. Number one would be "The Happy Hooker" — of all titles, I swear — a gorgeous woman in half-undress, seemingly out of E.L. Kirschner's time (trust me on this). Also: "Maltese Falcon", for its framing. And note Copley's amusing signature placement, on thighs, ass, even a tube of lubricant ("Last Tango in Paris", obvs).
* Roxy Paine "Distillation" @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. The titular installation in this show is perhaps Paine's closest blurring of his machinelike earlier works w/ his stainless steel "coated" trees, at least in my experience. The humongous "Maelstrom" tumbleweed on the Met rooftop last year was a joy but still in fell in the context of Paine's Dendroid series. This new one is more like a sleeping industrial giant, snaking its way through the gallery w/ lug-nuts, boilers, hazard-red highlights, spigots and even a human-sized furnace attached to it. I almost expected it to rattle wheezily to life, spewing smoke and motor oil. The tree elements (and some mega mushrooms) are there too, but they blend seamlessly w/ the mechanical elements. He follows this up w/ work drawings and a small-scale reproduction of "Distillation" (neat to see, easier to do a once-over then navigate the full-sized beast), plus a visually arresting relief of hyperrealistic 'shrooms in the side gallery, entitled "Oscillation".
* Matt Connors "You Don't Know" @ Canada / 55 Chrystie St. Connors magnifies idle scribblings into a sort of dynamic lexicon, obliterates color w/ semitranslucent white paint and/or soaks the paint into raw canvas like Kool-Aid stains, in this pretty dope solo show. His experimentation rewards us w/ a unique style of abstraction in an ever-morphing field of abstract artists, a series never as obviously massive as the Abstract Expressionists but not so precisely tiny as his contemporaries Tomma Abts or JJ Peet. The roughly equal assortment of scribbles, erasings and infused-color works are offset by several digital C-prints, two of which sit unadorned, rolled up and precarious on the gallery's uneven floors, in two seemingly solid, vegetal colors.
* Allora & Calzadilla @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). MoMA is on a winning streak of smart exhibitions ("Abstract Expressionist New York" and "On Line", if you've not seen 'em yet, and the forthcoming "Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures"), and the fever continues w/ this ace inclusion to the Marron Atrium. Conceptualist duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla revisit their 2009 Gladstone Gallery show, "Stop, Repair, Prepair: Variations on 'Ode to Joy' for a Prepared Piano", which features a pianist standing inside a grand piano, playing Beethoven's famous composition backward whilst wheeling the instrument around the atrium. If that sounds cool, it is a million times cooler in real life.
* "Pitfall" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Teshigahara's "Woman in the Dunes" has consistently been my favorite surrealist output by the director, but the gnawing tenseness of earlier film "Pitfall" is AT LEAST a close second. This 1st collaboration w/ composer Toru Takemitsu is epic: our rough-and-tumble protagonist stumbles sleepy-eyed across a rocky landscape, attempting to discern who's real and who isn't, as a white-suited dandy pursues him, to a soundtrack of samisen twangs. Incredible.
* "Pale Flower" (dir. Masahiro Shinoda, 1964) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Cool jazz, Toru Takemitsu style, lends the soundscapes to this essential Yakuza flick, perhaps the most "Nouvelle Vague" of the Japanese New Wave.
* G Lucas Crane + MV Carbon + Purple Haze (Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards) @ Silent Barn / 915 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood (L to Halsey, M to Myrtle/Wyckoff), 8p. AKA Cool Fest X, a noise maelstrom feat. Nonhorse, Crane's cassette-mauling nom de guerre, returning from a two-month tour of Europe and Japan, plus Metalux's MV Carbon…and honestly, any roster including side projects from the illustrious Double Leopards (here Bassett's Purple Haze guise) = mayjah.
* WIERD presents: Further Reductions @ Home Sweet Home / 131 Chrystie St (F/JMZ to Delancey/Essex), 12a. These weekly-ish WIERD parties are pretty hot stuff, if you're even remotely into the darker, gloomier (yet still dancey) side of '80s music, which is like 75% of it. Live act this week is Captured Tracks duo Further Reductions, returning w/ the sweeter side of synth-focused sounds.
THURSDAY
* "The Ricky Powell Art Funk Explosion!", presented by Frank151 @ Sacred Gallery / 424 Broadway (NR/6/JZ to Canal St), 8p-12a, RSVP: kevin@sacredgallerynyc.com. Illustrious hip-hop and street photographer Powell, aka the "fourth Beastie Boy" (he's been in the game since '85, so he earned that rep), returns w/ a major new exhibition feat. his collaborations w/ NY graf artists (CHINO BYI, Haculla, Dr. Dax, LOVE ME) plus his own iconic street shots. RSVP above to attend the opening, which includes music by Chances WIth Wolves. Get hot!
* Keith Tyson "52 Variables" @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. Tyson takes on chance again, this time in the form of mixed media paintings based on the backs of playing cards, heavily layered w/ historic meaning and all sorts of eye-trickery and double-entendres.
* Nathan Harger @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Power-lines, cranes, crisscrossing bridge-work, even the regularity of buildings: it's all typical NY-centric scenery, but you've probably never seen it this way. Harper's crisp, totally contrasty C-prints will have you slowing down "in real life" to see his subjects.
* "Law of the Jungle", curated by Tiago Carneiro da Cunha @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Survival is key, personal and collective, when navigating the current art scene. This group show, feat. Ashley Bickerton, Os Gemeos, Shay Kun, Liam Gillick, Adriana Varejao, Erika Verzutti and others mine art history to exert their staying power.
* Michael DeLucia @ Eleven Rivington / 11 Rivington St. The Brooklyn-based artist is a master of transforming mass-produced banality into abstract sculpture. He used to be Jeff Koons' assistant, so there is a certain high-finish and skillful detail to DeLucia's work (and note his draftsman-like work drawings), but his materials are solidly "working-class".
* Al Held "Concrete Abstraction" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. A less widely known series of Held's brushwork ink drawings on canvas from the '60s, revealing his Abstract Expressonist roots and before his explorations into Hardedge-style renderings.
* "re:CONTEXT" curated by Brad Silk @ Number 35 Gallery / 141 Attorney St @ Stanton. The inaugural exhibition at Number 35 Gallery's larger downtown space features Steven Cossman, Joy Drury Cox, Matthew Craven, Wyatt Kahn and Jeremy jacob Schlangen working in repurposing, reconfiguring and re-appropriating methods, executed mainly in assemblage and collage.
* Inferior Amps + Noveller @ Cinders Gallery / 103 Havermeyer St, Williamsburg (L/G to Lorimer), 8p. Caught Maya Hayuk's "Heavy Light" installation at the gallery yet? Come back, or see it for the first time, amped up w/ live music. Incl. guitar drone duo Sarah Lipstate & Shahin Motia (as Noveller & Inferior Amps) + Bunnybrains.
FRIDAY
* Djordje Ozbolt @ 303 Gallery / 547 W 21st St. Stoked about this one: Ozbolt's painting style is carries the mannerism of Old Masters, and he tends to draw from historical subject matter, but his execution is so… bonkers, hallucinogenic, wry and witty that he elevates to a class of his own.
* Eleanor Moreton "The Ladies of Shalott" @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. John William Waterhouse's narrative, reconfigured in a blurred haze of stricken figurative portraiture. Also: this is Moreton's debut stateside solo show (she shows at Ceri Hand Gallery in Liverpool UK).
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres + On Kawara "Amnesia" @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. The gallery has done this before, in one of their sparest (and in my opinion most effective) recent shows, by pairing Gonzalez-Torres w/ Robert Gober's "Prison Window". This time Electronic Arts Intermix's Rebecca Cleman and Josh Kine curate a video program for these two Conceptualists.
+ José Lerma "I am Sorry I am Perry" . The latest solo NY show for the Brooklyn-based artist since his 2006 "The Golden Sea" at the gallery.
* Lawrence Weiner "Gyroscopically Speaking" @ Marian Goodman Gallery / 24 W 57th St. Weiner's unique method of language and representation includes spatial relationships, displayed here as text works on a constructed curvilinear wall, plus related works on paper and animation.
* "The Fort of Death" (dir. Eiichi Kudo, 1969) screening @ Asia Society / 725 Park Ave (6 to 68th St), 6:45p/FREE. The final screening in Asia Society's '60s Japanese Cinema series is major: Kudo-san directed the original "Thirteen Assassins" (Takashi Miike redid it recently and it kicks every other contemporary big battle scene's ass), so you know the action sequences in this showoff b/w bounty hunters and samurai v. a gun-wielding shogunate will be nothing short of epic.
* "Kwaidan" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). If you're a fan of J-Horror (particularly the droopy black-haired "yurei" style a la "The Ring") or just love a good spine-tingling fright, you owe it to yourself to see the film whose title translates to GHOST STORY. Kobayashi's classic culls from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk tales, to frightening conclusions. I mean, one of the tales is called "The Black Hair". Don't expect today's gore and cheap shocks: rather, Kobayashi's suite are filled to the brim w/ fleeting beauty and steady, tense crescendoes.
* "Julia's Eyes" (dir. Guillem Morales, 2010) screening @ Walter Reade Theatre / Lincoln Center @ 65th St (1 to 66th St), 9:20p. Spain will remind you that there needn't be gratuitous violence and bloodshed to make a film viscerally scary. This perpetually twilit story, produced by comrade-in-psych-terror Guillermo del Toro, following the titular character's investigation of her sister's apparent suicide, as her own vision fades. A haunting Fantastic Fest alum.
* "Samurai Rebellion" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1967) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Q: what happens when you piss off Toshiro Mifune, playing the baddest-ass vassal of the daimyo? A: he kills everybody.
* "After Hours" (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1985) screenings @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). This should be required viewing for all of NY's hipster nightowls. In a nutshell: one utterly bizarre night, Salvatore Dali in '80s Soho, w/ hot artists, vengeful mobs and a creepy Mister Softee truck, the most kick-ass punk club blasting Bad Brains, and Cheech & Chong as burglars. Go back to Scorsese's archive: "Casino" wasn't his only great 'classic' film. ALSO DEC 11
* "Predator" (dir. John McTiernan, 1987) screening @ 92Y Tribeca / 200 Hudson St (1 to Hudson St), 8p/$10. If you are like this author and were too young to see the 'famous' "Predator" during its original screening run, now aren't you in luck? And much as I surprisingly loved Nimrod Antal's 2010 film "Predators", I was never 100% on the lanky, sarcastic Adrian Brody as lead. To many viewers, I think we're used to the humid, vaguely homoerotic "Métal Hurlant" landscape of muscular fighters shouting "Get to the choppah!" whilst tracking and fighting the titular creature. Thus we summon Cali. governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar (and Minnesota former governor, can you believe it?, Jesse "The Body" Ventura) to take care of business. Also: this is part of the 92Y series "Beer Goggles", which seems apt.
* "They Live" (dir. John Carpenter, 1988) screening @ 92Y Tribeca / 200 Hudson St (1 to Hudson St), 10:30p/$10. Extend your hands in praise for the B-movie film gods and take in the 2nd of tonight's "Beer Goggles" series, namely wrester "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, wearing 'special sunglasses' to see the alien overlords of LA's creeping apocalypse. Do 'They' even know who they're tangling with? Sez a gun-toting Piper: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I'm all out of bubblegum."
* TRASH! w/ Melody Sweets @ Studio at Webster Hall / 125 E 11th St, Basement (NR/L/456 to Union Square), 11p/$10 ($5 w/ flyer from DJJESSNYC.com). Why would I think of sending you to Webster Hall? B/c of the weekly basement TRASH! party, MCed by DJ Jess and and feat. the incomparably fierce Melody Sweets (resident performer at Duane Park's Saturday "Sweets' Shop"), conducting a late-night cabaret w/ Hazel Honeysuckle that will warm you to your core. Use your imagination.
* Tricky @ Brooklyn Bowl / 61 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 9p/$20. I know, I know, I'm stoked about this one, too. In the recent past, it's been a 'thing' getting Tricky to play in NY, and this is indeed a venue/bowling alley, but when the "Tricky Kid" steps out from that veil of fog, crooning to his unparalleled take on trip-hop ("Maxinquaye" anybody?), all is set well again.
* Sweet Bulbs @ Shea Stadium / 20 Meadow St, Williamsburg (L to Grand St), 8p. Get ready to sweat. Brooklyn's fuzziest noise-pop quartet Sweet Bulbs headline this sonic whirlwind, also feat. sets by Byrds of Paradise, Weed Hounds and Regal Degal.
* Deakin + Prince Rama @ New Museum / 235 Bowery (F to 2nd Ave), 7p/$15. The really tall guy from Animal Collective, aka Josh Dibb aka Deakin, is a pretty significantly psychedelic solo artist in his own right, of the dub persuasion. Teaming him w/ former tour-partners Prince Rama, they of the Krishna-chant persuasion, just sounds right. The subhead for this show is "Get Weird". Sounds like a guarantee.
SATURDAY
* "Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd" book signing w/ editor Marianne Stockebrand @ David Zwirner / 519 W 19th St, 4-6p, rsvp: ashley@davidzwirner.com. Chinati Foundation, way out in the literal middle of nowhere, Texas, epitomizes the phrase "destination art". If you can't make the actual journey, this gorgeous new photo book (w/ Judd essays and other writings) may be the next best thing.
* Shag (Josh Agle) "Ambergris" + Turf One (Jean Labourdette) "The Rising" @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery / 529 W 20th St. SoCal's Shag moves further from his rumpus-room subjects to luxuriously otherworldly landscapes, though replete w/ familiar mid-century objet. Montreal's Turf One marries a Flemish portraiture style w/ Coney Island sideshow shock.
* Focus Shanghai: Lu Chunsheng and Birdhead @ Thomas Erben Gallery / 526 W 26th St 4th Fl, curator's talk, 3p. Michelle Loh & Katy Martin discuss this intriguing contemporary Chinese show at the gallery. Martin's forays in Chinese video art and the Shanghai scene, plus Loh's background in co-founding the Asian Contemporary Art Fair, NY and dealing in the Asian art markets should lend an intriguing conversation.
* "BIG GROUP/small works" @ In Rivers / 165 Greenpoint Ave (G to Greenpoint), 7-10p. The inaugural show at this new Greenpoint space, curated by Lau Gallico and feat. loads of local artists, incl. Lemia Bodden (photography), OH10 Mike (live sketching at the opening), plus Mayuko Fujino, Jeremiah Jones, Jessica Angel and many more. Curated by Lau Gallico & Giancarlo Romero.
* "Harakiri" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Notorious for some of the most challenging self-death scenes in film history — seppuku is no laughing matter — with charismatic Tatsuya Nakadai as one of a few honorable characters against the emerging feudal system.
* "Caterpillar" (dir. Koji Wakamatsu, 2010) screening @ Japan Society / 333 W 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St), 7p. After Hisayasu Sato's devastating visceral short "Imomushi" for the Edogawa Rampo collection "Rampo Noir", I wondered how this tale by Japan's Edgar Alan Poe could be rethought by a different director. With legend Wakamatsu-san at the helm, this should be a good one: a heavy post-WWII tale of a wounded, limbless soldier and his doting, deviant wife.
* Light Asylum + Violens @ Santos Party House / 96 Lafayette St (NR/6/JMZ to Canal St), 8p/$10. I never thought I'd be a fan of Light Asylum's post-punk, bass-heavy disco-house, but when Shannon Funchess commands the mic, and her deep, Grace Jones-like voice carries over the pounding rhythms and electronics, I had an epiphany. I guess it's like charismatic Christians, only w/ house music. She'll make a believer out of you.
* NYC Punk & Underground Record Fair @ Southpaw / 125 5th Ave, Park Slope (234 to Bergen St, D/NR to Union St), 10a-4:30p/$5. Dig punk, metal, new wave, esoteric underground stuff? Dig it even more when it's on vinyl? Brother, are YOU ever in luck.
SUNDAY
* "The Talent Show" @ MoMA PS1 / 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City (E/M to 23rd St/Ely Ave, 7 to 45th Rd/Courthouse Sq). PS1 surveys the relationship b/w artists and their audiences, from '60s performance art, happenings and Conceptualism to contemporary social media. The roster spans exhibitionism to sociopolitical relevancy, and is dope enough that I'll name 'em all: Stanley Brouwn (getting lots of play of late despite his unarchivable nature), Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Peter campus, Graciela Carnevale, Phil Collins ("that" Phil Collins), Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tehching Hsieh, David Lamelas, Piero Manzoni (wise inclusion), Adrian Piper (another wise inclusion), Amie Siegel, Josh Smith (ditto), Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, Hannah Wilke, Shizuka Yokomizo and Carey Young.
+ Feng Mengbo "Long March (Restart)". An interactive video-game installation combining Super Mario Bros w/ Mao-era propaganda? Yes!
* "Kidnapped" (dir. Miguel Angel Vivas, 2010) screening @ Walter Reade Theatre / Lincoln Center @ 65th St (1 to 66th St), 9:15p. This Fantastic Fest/Sitges alum is a grueling, realtime home break-in story, w/ a minimum of cuts and a maximum of restless energy to promote audience discomfit.
* "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" (dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1983) screening @ Japan Society / 333 W 47th St (E/M to 53rd/Lexington, 6 to 51st St), 7p. For simplicity's sake: starring David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano, in the same film.
* Cristina Black @ Union Hall / 702 Union St, Park Slope (R to Union/Q/23/45 to Atlantic Ave), 9p/$7. I'm always up for something new and not necessarily punk, and the smoky-voiced chanteuse Black and her stellar storytelling is just that.
TUESDAY
* Elliott Puckette @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. New mixed media paintings by Puckette, lyrical swipes and scratchings against monochromatic backdrops.
* Santi Moix "May the Earth Rest Lightly On You" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 511 W 27th St. A watercolor diary of Moix's travels through Barcelona, Morocco, New York and the Ivory Coast.
* "Black Swan" (dir. Darren Aronofksy, 2010) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 7p. On the one hand, I can hardly fathom seeing this bracing film at MoMA (the unsuspecting elder viewers freaking out during the epilepsy-inducing club scene, the ensuing Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis sleepover), but on the other, its shell of tortured beauty is shattered upon exiting a multiplex. Either way, you will feel each tense nerve in Portman's balletic back, in her ruined feet and bleeding nails as she drifts further and further into the blurry realm between the real stage and this dark fantasy world of sinister fluttering wings.
* "The Social Network" (dir. David Fincher, 2010) screening @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St), 8:30p. It's that Facebook film, which I haven't seen yet.
LAST CHANCE
* Adrian Piper "Past Time: Selected Works 1973-1995" @ Elizabeth Dee / 548 W 22nd St. Some of Piper's most political, combustive works, and this is coming from a brilliant artist astute at 'getting to' the viewer, latching onto our thoughts, preempting them, and leaving us w/ a LOT to mull over. "It's Just Art" (1980) will do it: a news broadcast interlaid w/ Piper, in sunglasses and looking fierce, mouthing wordlessly, plus newsprints feat. her thought-bubbles in related dialogue/response. "Ashes to Ashes" (1995) is an intensely personal one, family photos and text reflecting her parents' death, though I liked the balance here w/ "I Am Somebody. The Body of My Friends" (1992-5), 18 photographs of Piper w/ said friends. And a treat here, and (at least on surface-level) lighter in subject matter, is "The Big Four-Oh" (1988), a rare installation work from Piper, involving a deconstructed suit of armor, 40 hardballs, and her diary, plus a looping video of the artist dancing (back to the camera) effortlessly to '80s music. Don't miss it.
* Damien Hirst "Medicine Cabinets" @ L&M Arts / 45 E 78th St. Its like the YBA stars aligned for this seminal trove of archival works from Hirst. Let me try to explain: the ground-floor gallery (of this charming multistory town home, bien sur) contains Hirst's "Sex Pistols" medicine cabinets from '89, each bearing a track title from "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistol", while the upper floor features a slew of Sex Pistols ephemera (framed LPs, torn T-shirts w/ paint, assumedly Hirst's, spattering the fabric) AND a four-part cabinet entitled "The Sex Pistols", but that one is from '96 and unrelated to the downstairs cabinets except in 1) name and 2) drugs. Are you following me?? I barely followed that myself.
* Anthony Caro "Upright Sculptures" @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash / 534 W 26th St. Caro just may be the leading force in divergent sculptural alchemy today, blending weathered, rusted steel and wood (here luxuriously chunky railroad ties) like they were always meant for one another, star-crossed. These tall forms were assembled from various found materials w/ extra emphasis on texture, the woodgrain gorgeous and pronounced, the patina REALLY patina'ed. Each embody a powerful nostalgia, again like these forms were meant to pair up, like they were once some operating steampunk creation, transfixed for eternity now in these metaphysical poses. And speaking of textures, the disarming "Up Landscape", while entirely painted steel, looks curiously soft — my first thought was Urs Fischer's painted aluminum "drooping sculptures", but Caro's is more abstract and physical.
* William N. Copley "X-Rated" @ Paul Kasmin Gallery / 293 10th Ave. The gallery recreates Copley's infamous '74 installation at former Huntington Hartford Museum on Columbus Circle (can you believe it??) in a riot of libidinous physicality in large acrylics on linen. The overt 'pretty' stuff is few and far between, though that's obvious if you're attending a vintage Copley show, but they're overall accessible, and I found some quick favorites. Number one would be "The Happy Hooker" — of all titles, I swear — a gorgeous woman in half-undress, seemingly out of E.L. Kirschner's time (trust me on this). Also: "Maltese Falcon", for its framing. And note Copley's amusing signature placement, on thighs, ass, even a tube of lubricant ("Last Tango in Paris", obvs).
* Roxy Paine "Distillation" @ James Cohan Gallery / 533 W 26th St. The titular installation in this show is perhaps Paine's closest blurring of his machinelike earlier works w/ his stainless steel "coated" trees, at least in my experience. The humongous "Maelstrom" tumbleweed on the Met rooftop last year was a joy but still in fell in the context of Paine's Dendroid series. This new one is more like a sleeping industrial giant, snaking its way through the gallery w/ lug-nuts, boilers, hazard-red highlights, spigots and even a human-sized furnace attached to it. I almost expected it to rattle wheezily to life, spewing smoke and motor oil. The tree elements (and some mega mushrooms) are there too, but they blend seamlessly w/ the mechanical elements. He follows this up w/ work drawings and a small-scale reproduction of "Distillation" (neat to see, easier to do a once-over then navigate the full-sized beast), plus a visually arresting relief of hyperrealistic 'shrooms in the side gallery, entitled "Oscillation".
* Matt Connors "You Don't Know" @ Canada / 55 Chrystie St. Connors magnifies idle scribblings into a sort of dynamic lexicon, obliterates color w/ semitranslucent white paint and/or soaks the paint into raw canvas like Kool-Aid stains, in this pretty dope solo show. His experimentation rewards us w/ a unique style of abstraction in an ever-morphing field of abstract artists, a series never as obviously massive as the Abstract Expressionists but not so precisely tiny as his contemporaries Tomma Abts or JJ Peet. The roughly equal assortment of scribbles, erasings and infused-color works are offset by several digital C-prints, two of which sit unadorned, rolled up and precarious on the gallery's uneven floors, in two seemingly solid, vegetal colors.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
fee's LIST (through 12/7)
NOTE:
A shout-out for my friend, photographer Santiago Felipe. His debut NYC photo exhibition is coming up very soon, DEC 16 at Vig 27 (check back for a LISTing). You may know the man, if you frequent DJ Jess' Trash! party and been photographed by a bearded, leather jacketed gent. Or if you come to the weekly "Meaner Harder Leather" burlesque show at Vig 27, where Felipe is resident paparazzo. I met him back when Tokyo Dolores was in town — Felipe shot the girls at Trash! and I was interpreter/poser. He has a Kickstarter campaign to help offset the costs/impending deadlines of his debut exhibition, so why not have a look and contribute? As I say: support dopeness.
WEDNESDAY
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Luciano Berio "Sequenzas I-X" (1958-1984) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. Some of the best experimental programming of its kind, in this case revisiting classic compositions within the symphonic domain, led by composer-musicians Zach Layton and Nick Hallett. Each of the four nights is stacked with awesomeness (I find Thursday super-compelling). This third annual season begins w/ extended techniques from Berio's "Sequenzas" for solo instrument, feat. 10 NY-based musicians, ranging from Shelley Burgon on harp to James Austin Smith on oboe, to implement their virtuoso takes.
* "Shaken and Stirred" w/ Stormy Leather @ The Delancey / 168 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Delancey), 9p. Yes, my LIST will cover burlesque! This weekly show, hosted by DJ Jess (he of Friday's Trash! party), is particularly hot tonight due to the dangerously stunning Stormy Leather.
* Food Stamps @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/FREE. A shattered amalgam of indie buzzwords — lo-fi, electro, New Wave, goth — could be used to describe this young local duo Food Stamps, beginning a month of weekly residencies at Bruar Falls. But then lead single "Silence" (w/ its costume-y music video) works so very well. w/ McDonalds
THURSDAY
* Peter Davis, Laura Larson, Cindy Workman "Sleight of Hand" @ Lennon, Weinberg Inc / 514 W 25th St. I wonder what Larson has been up to since completing her entrancing short film "Electric Girls and the Invisible World" (think Spanish fantasy-thriller style), the subject of a solo show at this gallery last year. Pairing her w/ Davis' razed and baked abstracts (he hasn't shown here in several years) against Workman's manipulated figurative paintings (like Wangechi Mutu crossed w/ Lisa Yuskavage, but way more pinup) should be interesting.
* "Sculpture: 12 Independent Visions" @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. This gallery does sculpture well, w/ a roster of heavy-hitters. Expect a range from contemporary Frank Stella (fully in his psychedelic twisty forms stage) to classic George Rickey and Arnaldo Pomodoro to new Grisha Bruskin and epic Ursula Von Rydingsvard (which is reason enough for me to attend).
* "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" (dir. Jalmari Helander, 2010) FREE PREVIEW @ reRun Theatre / 147 Front St, DUMBO (F to York St, AC to High St), 10p/FREE. I suggest queueing early for this one, the big winner at this year's Sitges Film Festival and one of the most original "holiday-themed" thrillers. You'll never think of elves the same way again.
* "Meaner Harder Leather" @ Vig 27 / 119 E 27th St (6 to 23rd St), 11:30p. Another necessary inclusion to my LIST (see The Delancey on WED) is this weekly burlesque extravaganza at lounge Vig 27. The headliners/curators/MCs are in the title, the fiercest Misty Meaner, the kinetic Go-Go Harder and the seductive Stormy Leather. Each week special guests share the stage w/ this tempestuous triumvirate, & this one is particularly dope: Calamity Chang, who rules "Spanking the LES" at Nurse Bettie, joins the party. Also: MHL stalwart Mocha Lite + "Catholic schoolgirl" Maddy Mann. Two snaps, in a Z formation.
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Karlheinz Stockhausen "Gesang der Junglinge" (1955-6), "Kontakte" (1958-60), "Mikrophonie" (1964-5) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. I am super-stoked about this, night two of Damstadt's third annual season of experimental programming. Connoisseurs of electronic music in its fullest form take note: these rare readings from Stockhausen (Holger Czukay of Can, composer Gilles Tremblay and the mighty La Monte Young are 3 of his many distinguished pupils), incl. "Mikrophonie" performed by Iktus Percussion Quartet (w/ Levy Lorenzo and Elad Schniderman on electronics), should make for an enchanting night.
* Carlos Giffoni + Northampton Wools @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 10p/$12. A night of fine contemporary experimental music forays, anchored by No Fun Fest curator Giffoni's harsh electronics and feat. prepared guitars by duo Thurston Moore & Bill Nace.
* Run DMT + Former Ghosts @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JZ to Marcy), 8:30p/$8. How deep are you willing to go? This dark, dancey night, w/ Former Ghosts (Freddy Rupert collaborating w/ Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart) plus local psych contingent Run DMT, will take you there and further. w/ Sun Araw
* Ikue Mori @ The Stone / 16 Ave C (F to 2nd Ave), 8p/$10. The ever accomplished experimental electronics maestro performs selections from her new Tzadik release "Class Insecta".
* Warpaint @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/SOLD OUT! (I mean, try your luck?). Dreamy, multilayered and slightly creepy vocals are the linchpin of this LA quartet's dusty post-punk vibe.
FRIDAY
* "Black Swan" (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010) in wide release. A significant problem I face when making my year-end Top Ten list, an exercise in cultural sadomasochism I'm telling you, is these late-entry, highly significant events. A film starring Natalie Portman AND Mila Kunis is reason enough to snare my full attention, but up the ante w/ Aronofsky at the helm of a chic visceral psychological horror film and you've got a winner (and possible Top Ten contender).
* "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" (dir. Jalmari Helander, 2010) @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). A sleeper hit at this year's Fantastic Fest, adored by the audience for its creepy, stirring warmth and richness. Imagine the Santa Claus fairytale, except the big guy kidnaps and mutilates children, v. the far North (i.e. Laplands, Finland) and an incredibly perceptive kid. Note: Fri/Sat 8:25p screenings incl Skype Q&A w/ Helander.
* Woman of the Dunes" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) screenings @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). This riveting art-house classic begins Film Forum's essential Toru Takemitsu festival, named for the experimental Japanese composer, who flung bits of symphonic and Japanese classical instruments into shard-like arrangements to seduce, frighten and captivate the viewer. Teshigahara's surreal tale of a bug-collector trapped w/ a siren-like woman at the bottom of a sand pit is as erotic as it is enigmatic. Also SAT
* "Black Christmas" (dir. Bob Clark, 1974) midnight screening @ Sunshine Cinema / 143 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave). OK so it's not "Silent Night Deadly Night", but this pioneering holiday-time slasher flick is just over-the-top enough to work. Quoting the ads: "if this movie doesn't make your skin crawl…it's on too tight!" ALSO SAT
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents John Cage "Concert for Piano and Orchestra" (1958), Christian Wolff "For 1, 2, or 3 People" (1964), Peter Kotik "Kontrabandt" (1967) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. The orchestra of S.E.M. Ensemble (w/ Petr Kotik as director) take on Cage and Wolff's aleatory procedures and graphic notation.
* Dream Diary + Eternal Summers + Grooms @ Shea Stadium / 20 Meadow St, Williamsburg (L to Grand), 8p/. Kanine Records' "Wear Your Favorite '90s-style Christmas Sweater Holiday Party" is a roundabout way of saying don't be afraid to geek out to a stacked lineup of indie-rock, some of which veers sharply into the pop realm. Which is no less roundabout, but very dope.
* Super Vacations + Big Troubles + The Surprisers @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Virginia's rough and jangle five-piece Super Vacations join a local lineup of the strong, fuzzy indie scene, feat. LIST-favs Big Troubles.
SATURDAY
* "The Trial" (dir. Orson Wells, 1962) screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 11a. How does one adapt one of Franz Kafka's most discomfiting, cerebral-maze novels, of the accused Josef K navigating an increasingly bizarre legal system against the unrelenting Law? By casting a slim, coolly perturbed Anthony Perkins as the titular victim and Jeanne Moreau as his hot, inscrutable neighbor, and handing the directorial reigns to Mr. Wells, that's how. Also SUN, same time.
* "Youth of Japan (Hymn to a Tired Man)" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1968) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 6:30p. A rare import of this obscure Kobayashi film (which despite entering the '69 Cannes film festival hasn't had great exposure stateside), about a former soldier, rendered deaf from WWII, becoming an inventor and running into his old Imperial Army bully in the patent office. w/ intro by "Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu" (1994) dir. Peter Grilli, plus a 15-min excerpt of Grilli's doc.
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Tom Johnson "An Hour For Piano" (1971) + Philip Glass "Knee Plays, from Einstein on the Beach" (1976) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. The final night of Darmstadt's third annual eclecticism should be a trove of lovely minimalism, split b/w Joseph Kubera's performance of Johnson's work and a suite of Glass, arranged and led by violinist Mary Rowell.
SUNDAY
* "Age of Assassins" (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1967) screening @ Asia Society / 725 Park Ave (6 to 68th St), 3p/FREE. A mad scientist turning asylum patients into assassins v. secret agent Tatsuya Nakadai, annnnd it's a comedy (sort of)!
* "Antonio Gaudi" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Teshigahara's nearly wordless portrait of Barcelona and Catalan architect Gaudi's soaring works is complemented by Toru Takemitsu's electronic score, created entirely of manipulated Catalonian folk compositions. Also MON
* "The Ceremony" (dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1971) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 7:30p. The classic satire of eccentric, well-to-do family on the outside but completely decayed and depraved on the inside. Told via flashbacks to encapsulate all the weddings and funerals, with Toru Takemitsu's chilling score.
* North Highlands + The Luyas @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JZ to Marcy), 8p/$10. A smart combo courtesy of Glasslands, the local psych-folk quintet North Highlands and the ethereal artsy Canadians The Luyas, the latter w/ their Frente!-esque frontwoman and richly layered sound structure totally mesmerized me at BrooklynVegan's CMJ Public Assembly party.
* Ikue Mori w/ Jennifer Choi & Marco Cappelli @ Roulette / 20 Greene St (12/ACE/NR to Canal St), 8:30p/$15. No Wave legend and current experimental electronics performer Mori (who also plays The Stone on THU) is joined by Tzadik contributor and dynamic cellist Choi and freeform guitarist Cappelli for an evening of improv.
MONDAY
* "Floored By Four" @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 7p/$15. Peerless bassist/bandleader Mike Watt's NY Project, feat. Nels Cline (guitar), Dougie Bowne (drums), Yuka Honda (keyboard) and the man himself on his instrument of choice. w/ guest performers incl. Miho Hatori (a Cibo Matto covers session?) and keyboardist Thomas Bartlett (Dovetail).
TUESDAY
* "The Face of Another" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). A brilliantly creepy urban drama from Teshigahara, A kind of Jekyll & Hyde Tatsuya Nakadai fills the businessman's suit, cavorting with his estranged wife (unbeknownst to her) courtesy of a lifelike mask. The denouement precedes the cold confusion at the end of Bernardo Bertolucci's "Il Conformista" by like four years.
* "Chinmoku (Silence)" (dir. Mashiro Shinoda, 1971) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 6p. Based on Shusaku Endo's novel on the entry of Jesuit missionaries to 17th C Japan and feat. a koto/classical guitar 'mixed cultures' soundtrack from Toru Takemitsu.
* Charlene Kaye & The Brilliant Eyes @ Knitting Factory / 361 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, G to Lorimer), 7p/$10 ($5 w/ toy). A Toys For Tots Benefit — yes it's the holiday season, so share the love! Soulful chanteuse Charlene Kaye and band make the evening even more special by performing w/ middle schoolers of Bronx Prep Charter School's Chamber Choir.
CURRENT SHOWS
* "On Line" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). Score one for MoMA (two really, if you count the outstanding "Abstract Expressionist New York" on the 4th Fl), and if you've been avoiding this institution for whatever reason: CHECK IT OUT. This survey on the line, its transformation from "mere" pencil-and-paper to explorations in space, even performance, since the early 20th C., is pretty major and well outfitted. It boasts both the best of MoMA (a peerless archive of works) and the museum's potential to launch a kickass show (by drawing key and obscure works from that peerless archive). Oh there are loads of usual favorites, which lose absolutely zero even if you've seen 'em dozens of times. Like: Jean (Hans) Arp "Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance)" (1916-7), Man Ray's majestic "The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows" (1916), Carolee Schneemann's classic "Up To & Including Her Limits" (1973-6, shown fittingly as an installation) and, at the very end, Julie Mehretu's "Rising Down" (2008), which is actually a very important step for MoMA, in their ongoing curve of including important (young) women artists in their collection. Plus there's loads of less-seen-but-known gems by big names: Robert Rauschenberg's awesome "Automobile Tire Print" (1953, created by John Cage's auto!), Eva Hesse's "Hang Up" (1960, counted as her 1st 'major' work), Fred Sandback's spiky purple-yarn cascade from '67, and Michael Heizer's "Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing" (1970, which is infinitely more badass than its cut-and-dry title). BUT: MoMA balances this lot w/ a whole bunch of artists you may well NOT know, seamlessly incorporating their contributions to the ongoing dialogue w/ the line. Like: Belgian abstract sculptor Georges Vantongerloo (a bunch of plastic/Plexiglas forms from the early '50s), Brazilian Anna Maria Maiolino (incredible cut-paper interventions from the '70s), and Swede Sophie Tottie (rippled ink works "Written Language" from 2008) — and of course the mighty Gego, aka Gertrude Goldschmidt, a whole slew of her heavy-metal works incl. "Drawings Without Paper" from the '80s, which succinctly sums up a theme of this exhibition.
* Huma Bhabha @ Peter Blum Chelsea / 526 W 29th St. A stunner, as Bhabha continues her forays into reapplying ink, paint and collage onto vintage photography. Imagery of Achilles — or more specifically heels — trod massively across arid landscapes and highways, grillwork hands grapple with the earth and half-completed structures, a two-headed dog (or the blurred, Francis Bacon-like motion of a normal canine) seems to visibly shiver furiously in front of a large government facade. Elements extend beyond the borders of the photographs, Bhabha colorizes b&w prints, in a riotous cycle of destruction and creation.
* Marin Majik & Goran Skofic @ Ana Cristea Gallery / 521 W 26th St. Two very compelling young Croatian artists in their joint debut U.S. gallery exhibition. Majik's photorealistic oils of wide-open interior spaces reveal almost vertigo-inducing depth-sensory effects, like you could plunge straight into them. Skofic's stark video work is enamoring: check the two-channel "White (shooting)", in screens facing one another, one of the artist 'shooting' an invisible rifle, the other a line of multiple Skofics, freezing in stop motion each time they're 'shot'.
* Focus Shanghai: Lu Chunsheng and Birdhead @ Thomas Erben Gallery / 526 W 26th St 4th Fl. A dynamo of a dual show, presenting a side of contemporary Chinese art you may not know. The duo Birdhead (Song Tao and Ji Weiyu) feature a photo installation from their "Xin Cun" series on today's Shanghai, plus two fluid-camera shorts by Song to draw the experience further inward. Filmmaker Lu Chengsheng complements this w/ his full-length film "History of Chemistry: Vol 2", a surreal post-industrial narrative set within anonymous London, drawing comparisons from this writer to Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Red Desert" in the pitched cameras, agoraphobic mise-en-scene and deft incorporation of sounds. Lu's film is loose enough that you can walk into it halfway, stay for 10 minutes and jet, but don't be surprised if the suffocating action within, suited and hatted men carrying boxes through empty urban tunnels and the like, transfixes you for quite awhile longer.
* Lee Krasner "Paintings 1959 - 1965" @ Robert Miller Gallery / 524 W 26th St. Krasner's seminal 'night journey' paintings created during bouts of chronic insomnia, all of them necessarily painted at night and most in a coffee-toned palette of cascading letter-like elements and abstract gestural strokes. The epically huge "Another Storm" (1963), w/ its melted cherry ice cream tones, rivals MoMA's collection. Add Krasner's show as a must-see accompaniment to MoMA's "Abstract Expressionist New York".
* "Einfluss: 8 From Dusseldorf" @ Hosfelt Gallery / 531 W 36th St. A fertile grouping of young contemporary artists from the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, some of whom bear undeniable marks from their teachers, like Gerhard Richter and A.R. Penck, and most of whom have never shown in the States before. Bernard Lokai's rugged, small-scale abstracts preclude Richter's studies, especially w/in the supposed representational nature of these brilliantly colorful works. Cornelius Volker's (student of Penck) does gestural, realistic little oil paintings, and his nine-part "Meerschweinchen" of long-haired guinea pigs on Pop-monochrome backdrops is half-kitsch, half-cute. Luka Fineisen, the sole sculptor of the lot, blurs that line too in her resin-coated "Milk" relief, which looks exactly like that. Introducing the Next Wave from Germany. Are you ready?
* Hwang Jai-Hyoung @ Gana NY / 568 W 25th St. The artist's politically-charged, textural oil paintings, based on his self-appointed time as a laborer in the industrial town Taeback, Korea, filled with his hard-working, disenfranchised countrymen. Hwang splits the show into rugged, emotive portraits temperature-infused landscapes, like you feel the cold dampness in your skin, staring at these.
* Sang-ah Choi "Insatiable Appetite" @ Doosan Gallery / 533 W 25th St. Choi returns in a bright, eye-popping way, extending her oeuvre beyond the pop-up book Pop culture array from her Arario NY show back in 2008. This new mixed media exhibition is a bit like Aya Takano's creepy girlish figures, slackened by resin and injected w/ Choi's luminous palette. Nonfigurative paintings, like "Light and Shadow" w/ its wall-drawn extensions, are some of the deftest, eye-twitching combos of abstract and Op art I have ever encountered.
* Odili Donald Odita "Body & Space" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 513 W 20th St. Dynamic polygonal color abstract paintings, rhythmic and space-defining. Odita adds acrylic latex wall-painted works as well, jagged shards that invade and punctuate the environment.
* Tabatabai, Schiff, Bell @ Danese / 535 W 24th St 6th Fl. A neapolitan (ice cream) of minimalism and subtlety. Karen Schiff's meditative patterns on paper are the busiest of the lot, while Dozier Bell's tiny charcoal on Mylar renderings of dusky twilight are more engrossing than they may sound in print. But Hadi Tabatabai ruled for me, infusing his stark monochromes with delicate, laborious woven grids, to intriguing doubling effect.
* Aakash Nihalani "Overlap" @ Bose Pacia / 163 Plymouth St, DUMBO (F to York St, AC to High St). The 'tape-squares' phenom doesn't let the static gallery setting stymie him from a kinetic, progressive exhibition, reacting off the space in a mix of powder-coated aluminum isometric sculptures and site-specific tape works. Nihalani's talent in making us look again at familiar places in new, enlightening ways makes for a very refreshing exhibition.
* Leah Tinari "Perfect Strangers" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. Last Tinari exhibition included a photo booth. Had you snapped a photo of yourself in that (knowing what you were getting yourself into), you might find a painted, brightly lit blow-up in her new show. What we have is a good lot of game participants, pulling faces and striking poses in front of eye-crawling fabric patterns, alone or in small groups. Tinari titled these w/ her own seemingly spontaneous witticisms ("Her Hairstyle Makes For A Great Shape", to a young woman in a just-so bowl-cut; "Seen Through White Frames", to another woman w/ white-plastic-framed glasses; "I Like This!", one guy huffing hot air into another guy's ear).
* Adam Pendleton "BAND" @ The Kitchen / 512 W 19th St. Rashida Bumbray curated this enveloping multimedia exhibition. New works from Pendleton's ongoing "Black Dada" and "System of Display" series (the former body of work appeared at MoMA PS1's "Greater New York") begin the journey, leading to the screening room and three-channel titular video installation. Pendleton refashions Jean-Luc Godard's "Sympathy for the Devil" w/ art-rock band Deerhoof, following their recording session for "I Did Crimes For You" in a fractured, Nouvelle Vague-esque parallel, all in gorgeous contrasty b&w.
LAST CHANCE
* Ilene Segalove "The Dissatisfaction of Ilene Segalove", curated by Dean Valentine @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. This is a beautiful, autobiographical little exhibition culled by Valentine of the Cal Arts Conceptualist, both political and (self) deprecating and w/ a media undercurrent. I've seen Segalove's contributions in museum group shows but never to the degree as here, a range of photography and film works from the '70s and '80s, often w/ her family as subject when she isn't in front of the camera herself. The simplest renditions, like "Close But No Cigar", where Segalove mimics a Barbie Doll, down to the featureless torso, are easy convo-starters, but compare to her family photo collage of (she says) Asiaphile Dad and costumed daughter dissecting a hard cheese w/ chopsticks, which bears that self-deprecating yet stirringly emotive effect I alluded to above. Don't miss it.
* Tony Oursler "Peak" @ Lehmann Maupin / 201 Chrystie St. Have you seen Dave McKean's warped fantasy film "MirrorMask"? The amorphous mechanical figures in it were the 1st thing I thought of when taking in Oursler's engrossing new show, eight minuscule mixed media/video works suspended on snaking metal pedestals. These are nearly devoid of Oursler's spectacle-creating shots of wrong-hued blinking eyes and sputtering lips, speaking dissonant soliloquies to the viewing public. Instead we get these multilayered, very involved little vignettes like "Castouts", w/ intermingling male-female speakers and an overall cyberpunkish aura. "Bunker" is another cool one, the action occurring in like a torn-open cave w/ a hoodie-wearing figure in the foreground plus a violet-toned woman encased in a glass globe in the back. The contents of the dialogue throughout are still Oursler-esque: obsession, frustration, isolation, but I think the small-scale nature of them totally works in his favor.
* Mickey Smith "Believe You Me" @ Invisible-Exports / 14A Orchard St. Smith returns to NY Public Library, specifically the Picture Collection, for her new exhibition, though she brings some of the stacks w/ her, wedging them into a unique floor installation that is strangely ergonomic (though I'll see how well this thing ages, after much foot-traffic) and a literal basis for the new C-prints. She rephotographed images from the archives, played w/ combinations (one, w/ its garage-sale frames, is convincingly "family portrait" circa late '50s) and crops (esp. of more current figures, to playful effect).
* James Casebere "House" @ Sean Kelly Gallery / 528 W 29th St. You might remember two of the lead, large-scale C-prints in the main gallery from this year's Whitney Biennial, taken from Casebere's massive scale-model of Dutchess County NY. They are paired w/ other daytime and twilight "scenes", shots of mowed lawns, varying swim pools and burning logs in this plainly beautiful slice of Americana. Now contrast that w/ the much earlier works in the front gallery, a decidedly creepy selection of gelatin silver prints from the '80s and '90s that appear to be encased in either snow (good!) or ash (spooky!). What's consistent is Casebere's mindful use of lighting for both realistic and dramatic effect.
* Suzanne Caporael "The Memory Store" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. This new array of soft-edged polygons on linen reflect Caporael's cross-country travels and her own experiences w/ America's impenetrably abstract nature. Each work is named after a destination and the artist's notes about it hint to the origins of the work: "No. 617 (Clarksville, TN)" looks like violet stairs w/ a pink cast, at twilight. The reductive "No. 604 (Coopertown, NY)" looks to me like a multicolored pennant flag, from a ballgame or something, zooming out from a plane of flat gray.
* Thomas Nozkowski @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. The latest from Nozkowski continues his seemingly endless array of small-scale colorful abstractions, w/ snapshot-styled works on paper as their related variations. The man is a machine: there's like two dozen smallish oil on linen (mounted on panel) works here, plus their equal in drawings, yet each feel unique and intimate whilst keeping Nozkowski's familiar geometric vocabulary intact. They're quite abstract, of course, but they never segue fully into that maelstrom of nonrepresentation: there remains bits in each that compel the eye to seek further. Ex: "Untitled (8-137)" looks very much to me like a zoomed-in view of a pennant stretch across the beach, w/ soft-focus sand, shore, water and rich orange sunset appearing as planes of color around it (it's clearer in the painting than the gouache/colored pencil work). Another, "Untitled (8-128)", seems more like a workout in color theory a la Gerhard Richter (or Paul Klee), a bunch of unlike squares in a black field, but the accompanying work-on-paper looks more like the bust of a person, wearing a patterned Zentai suit, mind you, but still… Lots of beauties, here.
* Gedi Sibony @ Greene Naftali / 508 W 26th St 8th Fl. I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, whether that's a 3+ hour experimental film or a cutting-edge NY-based neo-Conceptual/installation artist who works w/ recycled materials w/ beguilingly little explanation into, uh, just what we're looking at. The latter is Sibony, and his new solo show at the gallery is a fantastic treasure hunt into themes concurrent w/ much of art itself. Give this one some time, and the nuggets of wisdom you trove from the sparsely outfitted rooms will gleam in your subconscious (maybe a good idea to see John Baldessari's brilliant, pop-experimental retrospective at the Met, which I detail above). Like the piece that confronts you upon disembarking the lift and heading down the hallway into the main gallery, "The Cutters", whose composition (both visually and banally stated on the gallery guide) is 'canvas, paint, wall', which sounds precisely like 98% of PAINTINGS (the paint itself isn't specified) only… the canvas is raw and draped like a shroud over a hollowed-out section of wall, seemingly culled from the architecture of the building itself (but cunningly created in Sibony's studio, such is his talent for creating site-specific works), the paint itself mostly relegated to the backside of the piece, which, incidentally, you can walk through like a doorway. Another more expansive work behind it, the lengthily titled "From the Center, Skinny Legs, Satisfy the Purposes of Pictorial Representation Completely, and Her Trumpeted Spoke Lastly", factors in creative elements (an acid green shag carpet, flipped against the wall; a matted drawing, reversed in its frame, a hollow-core door covered in taupe paint; a sheet of white vinyl) and deconstructs them. There's more here — incl. a tricky collaboration w/ friend Diana Lyon in a side gallery looks, I swear, like a black-foam donkey in repose on a foam-stuffed sofa, half underneath a flowered screenprinted cloth — so go check it out. Or take me w/ you and we'll do it together.
* Albert Watson @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Wow, this is a really sexy show. A look back at the iconic photographer's jarring oeuvre, from Alfred Hitchcock clutching a skinned chicken to this phantasmagoric triptych of jellyfish hovering behind Plexiglas. The disarming "Monkey with Gun, New York City", probably the 1st thing you see when you walk into the gallery, is uncompromisingly sinister and not what I mean by 'sexy' (nor "Hornet #1-3, Car Graveyard, Las Vegas", though this one's pretty dope). I'm referring to the large C-print "Anouk Dirske, New York City", actually a cropped close-up of her stomach and hands crossed over her pubis, bathed in contrasty shadows, and to "Monica Gripman, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands", or really any of the very beautiful women transfixed in his lens.
* Erwin Wurm @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. Ahead of the trickster Austrian artist's solo show at Lehmann Maupin, this gallery hosts the first U.S. appearance of Wurm's 2008 self-portrait installation "Selbstportrat als Gurken", i.e. 26 uniquely cast and convincingly painted pickles on different-sized white plinths. If you didn't catch that, it's a room full of pickle-sized sculptures. And if you're STILL wondering "well, Brian, does that mean this is an essential, must-see show?" all I can say is "obvs".
* Wangechi Mutu "Hunt Bury Flee" @ Gladstone Gallery / 515 W 24th St. Each time I see Mutu's new large-scale collages on Mylar, she's taken her figures to another level of interpretation and figuration. This time they're ferocious amalgams of flesh, pelt, scales, feathers and foliage, metamorphosing against either celestial or poisonous backdrops. One fashiony woman-figure climbs a woodgrain-patterened tree (bearing tracings of another woman w/in), pursued by an "Alien"-like snaking appendage lashing out from behind her. The ecstatic "Oh, Madonna!" appears to have flowery, anemone-like explosions coming from her torso. Her "Moth Girls" sculptural installation, many dozen porcelain and feathered figures fill the back gallery in four rows, seemingly embodying the spirits of her past works' avatars.
* Erwin Wurm "gulp" @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Somebody had fun with body-stockings! That someone is the Viennese trickster Wurm, and his idiosyncratic, physical sculpture is in full effect at this gallery, in a set of contorted aluminum sorta-figurative forms either content w/ or struggling against their brightly colored fabric-y bindings. He tempers these w/ fabric pulled over canvas, like the brilliant blue "Mental States", which is some pretty great party lettering for being cut-fabric. Another work is called "Me Under LSD", which features a powdery, acid-yellow brain-cloud over an aluminum limb. Stare at that one long enough, and Wurm's accompanying video "Tell", which features two hot young people having a philosophy discussion straight out of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life", to the point where their auto drives up a wall onto a roof like nothing out of the ordinary, will make TOTAL SENSE.
A shout-out for my friend, photographer Santiago Felipe. His debut NYC photo exhibition is coming up very soon, DEC 16 at Vig 27 (check back for a LISTing). You may know the man, if you frequent DJ Jess' Trash! party and been photographed by a bearded, leather jacketed gent. Or if you come to the weekly "Meaner Harder Leather" burlesque show at Vig 27, where Felipe is resident paparazzo. I met him back when Tokyo Dolores was in town — Felipe shot the girls at Trash! and I was interpreter/poser. He has a Kickstarter campaign to help offset the costs/impending deadlines of his debut exhibition, so why not have a look and contribute? As I say: support dopeness.
WEDNESDAY
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Luciano Berio "Sequenzas I-X" (1958-1984) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. Some of the best experimental programming of its kind, in this case revisiting classic compositions within the symphonic domain, led by composer-musicians Zach Layton and Nick Hallett. Each of the four nights is stacked with awesomeness (I find Thursday super-compelling). This third annual season begins w/ extended techniques from Berio's "Sequenzas" for solo instrument, feat. 10 NY-based musicians, ranging from Shelley Burgon on harp to James Austin Smith on oboe, to implement their virtuoso takes.
* "Shaken and Stirred" w/ Stormy Leather @ The Delancey / 168 Delancey St (F/JMZ to Delancey), 9p. Yes, my LIST will cover burlesque! This weekly show, hosted by DJ Jess (he of Friday's Trash! party), is particularly hot tonight due to the dangerously stunning Stormy Leather.
* Food Stamps @ Bruar Falls / 245 Grand St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/FREE. A shattered amalgam of indie buzzwords — lo-fi, electro, New Wave, goth — could be used to describe this young local duo Food Stamps, beginning a month of weekly residencies at Bruar Falls. But then lead single "Silence" (w/ its costume-y music video) works so very well. w/ McDonalds
THURSDAY
* Peter Davis, Laura Larson, Cindy Workman "Sleight of Hand" @ Lennon, Weinberg Inc / 514 W 25th St. I wonder what Larson has been up to since completing her entrancing short film "Electric Girls and the Invisible World" (think Spanish fantasy-thriller style), the subject of a solo show at this gallery last year. Pairing her w/ Davis' razed and baked abstracts (he hasn't shown here in several years) against Workman's manipulated figurative paintings (like Wangechi Mutu crossed w/ Lisa Yuskavage, but way more pinup) should be interesting.
* "Sculpture: 12 Independent Visions" @ Marlborough Chelsea / 545 W 25th St. This gallery does sculpture well, w/ a roster of heavy-hitters. Expect a range from contemporary Frank Stella (fully in his psychedelic twisty forms stage) to classic George Rickey and Arnaldo Pomodoro to new Grisha Bruskin and epic Ursula Von Rydingsvard (which is reason enough for me to attend).
* "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" (dir. Jalmari Helander, 2010) FREE PREVIEW @ reRun Theatre / 147 Front St, DUMBO (F to York St, AC to High St), 10p/FREE. I suggest queueing early for this one, the big winner at this year's Sitges Film Festival and one of the most original "holiday-themed" thrillers. You'll never think of elves the same way again.
* "Meaner Harder Leather" @ Vig 27 / 119 E 27th St (6 to 23rd St), 11:30p. Another necessary inclusion to my LIST (see The Delancey on WED) is this weekly burlesque extravaganza at lounge Vig 27. The headliners/curators/MCs are in the title, the fiercest Misty Meaner, the kinetic Go-Go Harder and the seductive Stormy Leather. Each week special guests share the stage w/ this tempestuous triumvirate, & this one is particularly dope: Calamity Chang, who rules "Spanking the LES" at Nurse Bettie, joins the party. Also: MHL stalwart Mocha Lite + "Catholic schoolgirl" Maddy Mann. Two snaps, in a Z formation.
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Karlheinz Stockhausen "Gesang der Junglinge" (1955-6), "Kontakte" (1958-60), "Mikrophonie" (1964-5) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. I am super-stoked about this, night two of Damstadt's third annual season of experimental programming. Connoisseurs of electronic music in its fullest form take note: these rare readings from Stockhausen (Holger Czukay of Can, composer Gilles Tremblay and the mighty La Monte Young are 3 of his many distinguished pupils), incl. "Mikrophonie" performed by Iktus Percussion Quartet (w/ Levy Lorenzo and Elad Schniderman on electronics), should make for an enchanting night.
* Carlos Giffoni + Northampton Wools @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 10p/$12. A night of fine contemporary experimental music forays, anchored by No Fun Fest curator Giffoni's harsh electronics and feat. prepared guitars by duo Thurston Moore & Bill Nace.
* Run DMT + Former Ghosts @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JZ to Marcy), 8:30p/$8. How deep are you willing to go? This dark, dancey night, w/ Former Ghosts (Freddy Rupert collaborating w/ Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart) plus local psych contingent Run DMT, will take you there and further. w/ Sun Araw
* Ikue Mori @ The Stone / 16 Ave C (F to 2nd Ave), 8p/$10. The ever accomplished experimental electronics maestro performs selections from her new Tzadik release "Class Insecta".
* Warpaint @ Music Hall of Williamsburg / 66 N 6th St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford), 8p/SOLD OUT! (I mean, try your luck?). Dreamy, multilayered and slightly creepy vocals are the linchpin of this LA quartet's dusty post-punk vibe.
FRIDAY
* "Black Swan" (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010) in wide release. A significant problem I face when making my year-end Top Ten list, an exercise in cultural sadomasochism I'm telling you, is these late-entry, highly significant events. A film starring Natalie Portman AND Mila Kunis is reason enough to snare my full attention, but up the ante w/ Aronofsky at the helm of a chic visceral psychological horror film and you've got a winner (and possible Top Ten contender).
* "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" (dir. Jalmari Helander, 2010) @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). A sleeper hit at this year's Fantastic Fest, adored by the audience for its creepy, stirring warmth and richness. Imagine the Santa Claus fairytale, except the big guy kidnaps and mutilates children, v. the far North (i.e. Laplands, Finland) and an incredibly perceptive kid. Note: Fri/Sat 8:25p screenings incl Skype Q&A w/ Helander.
* Woman of the Dunes" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) screenings @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). This riveting art-house classic begins Film Forum's essential Toru Takemitsu festival, named for the experimental Japanese composer, who flung bits of symphonic and Japanese classical instruments into shard-like arrangements to seduce, frighten and captivate the viewer. Teshigahara's surreal tale of a bug-collector trapped w/ a siren-like woman at the bottom of a sand pit is as erotic as it is enigmatic. Also SAT
* "Black Christmas" (dir. Bob Clark, 1974) midnight screening @ Sunshine Cinema / 143 E Houston St (F to 2nd Ave). OK so it's not "Silent Night Deadly Night", but this pioneering holiday-time slasher flick is just over-the-top enough to work. Quoting the ads: "if this movie doesn't make your skin crawl…it's on too tight!" ALSO SAT
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents John Cage "Concert for Piano and Orchestra" (1958), Christian Wolff "For 1, 2, or 3 People" (1964), Peter Kotik "Kontrabandt" (1967) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. The orchestra of S.E.M. Ensemble (w/ Petr Kotik as director) take on Cage and Wolff's aleatory procedures and graphic notation.
* Dream Diary + Eternal Summers + Grooms @ Shea Stadium / 20 Meadow St, Williamsburg (L to Grand), 8p/. Kanine Records' "Wear Your Favorite '90s-style Christmas Sweater Holiday Party" is a roundabout way of saying don't be afraid to geek out to a stacked lineup of indie-rock, some of which veers sharply into the pop realm. Which is no less roundabout, but very dope.
* Super Vacations + Big Troubles + The Surprisers @ Death By Audio / 49 S 2nd St, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JM to Marcy), 8p/$7. Virginia's rough and jangle five-piece Super Vacations join a local lineup of the strong, fuzzy indie scene, feat. LIST-favs Big Troubles.
SATURDAY
* "The Trial" (dir. Orson Wells, 1962) screening @ IFC Center / 323 Sixth Ave (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 11a. How does one adapt one of Franz Kafka's most discomfiting, cerebral-maze novels, of the accused Josef K navigating an increasingly bizarre legal system against the unrelenting Law? By casting a slim, coolly perturbed Anthony Perkins as the titular victim and Jeanne Moreau as his hot, inscrutable neighbor, and handing the directorial reigns to Mr. Wells, that's how. Also SUN, same time.
* "Youth of Japan (Hymn to a Tired Man)" (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1968) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 6:30p. A rare import of this obscure Kobayashi film (which despite entering the '69 Cannes film festival hasn't had great exposure stateside), about a former soldier, rendered deaf from WWII, becoming an inventor and running into his old Imperial Army bully in the patent office. w/ intro by "Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu" (1994) dir. Peter Grilli, plus a 15-min excerpt of Grilli's doc.
* Darmstadt Essential Repertoire presents Tom Johnson "An Hour For Piano" (1971) + Philip Glass "Knee Plays, from Einstein on the Beach" (1976) @ ISSUE Project Room / 232 3rd St, Gowanus (D/NR to 9th St/4th Ave), 8p/$10. The final night of Darmstadt's third annual eclecticism should be a trove of lovely minimalism, split b/w Joseph Kubera's performance of Johnson's work and a suite of Glass, arranged and led by violinist Mary Rowell.
SUNDAY
* "Age of Assassins" (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1967) screening @ Asia Society / 725 Park Ave (6 to 68th St), 3p/FREE. A mad scientist turning asylum patients into assassins v. secret agent Tatsuya Nakadai, annnnd it's a comedy (sort of)!
* "Antonio Gaudi" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). Teshigahara's nearly wordless portrait of Barcelona and Catalan architect Gaudi's soaring works is complemented by Toru Takemitsu's electronic score, created entirely of manipulated Catalonian folk compositions. Also MON
* "The Ceremony" (dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1971) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 7:30p. The classic satire of eccentric, well-to-do family on the outside but completely decayed and depraved on the inside. Told via flashbacks to encapsulate all the weddings and funerals, with Toru Takemitsu's chilling score.
* North Highlands + The Luyas @ Glasslands / 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, JZ to Marcy), 8p/$10. A smart combo courtesy of Glasslands, the local psych-folk quintet North Highlands and the ethereal artsy Canadians The Luyas, the latter w/ their Frente!-esque frontwoman and richly layered sound structure totally mesmerized me at BrooklynVegan's CMJ Public Assembly party.
* Ikue Mori w/ Jennifer Choi & Marco Cappelli @ Roulette / 20 Greene St (12/ACE/NR to Canal St), 8:30p/$15. No Wave legend and current experimental electronics performer Mori (who also plays The Stone on THU) is joined by Tzadik contributor and dynamic cellist Choi and freeform guitarist Cappelli for an evening of improv.
MONDAY
* "Floored By Four" @ (le) poisson rouge / 158 Bleecker St (ACE/BDFM to W 4th St, 6 to Bleecker St), 7p/$15. Peerless bassist/bandleader Mike Watt's NY Project, feat. Nels Cline (guitar), Dougie Bowne (drums), Yuka Honda (keyboard) and the man himself on his instrument of choice. w/ guest performers incl. Miho Hatori (a Cibo Matto covers session?) and keyboardist Thomas Bartlett (Dovetail).
TUESDAY
* "The Face of Another" (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966) @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St). A brilliantly creepy urban drama from Teshigahara, A kind of Jekyll & Hyde Tatsuya Nakadai fills the businessman's suit, cavorting with his estranged wife (unbeknownst to her) courtesy of a lifelike mask. The denouement precedes the cold confusion at the end of Bernardo Bertolucci's "Il Conformista" by like four years.
* "Chinmoku (Silence)" (dir. Mashiro Shinoda, 1971) screening @ Film Forum / 209 W Houston St (1 to Houston, ACE/BDFM to W 4th St), 6p. Based on Shusaku Endo's novel on the entry of Jesuit missionaries to 17th C Japan and feat. a koto/classical guitar 'mixed cultures' soundtrack from Toru Takemitsu.
* Charlene Kaye & The Brilliant Eyes @ Knitting Factory / 361 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg (L to Bedford, G to Lorimer), 7p/$10 ($5 w/ toy). A Toys For Tots Benefit — yes it's the holiday season, so share the love! Soulful chanteuse Charlene Kaye and band make the evening even more special by performing w/ middle schoolers of Bronx Prep Charter School's Chamber Choir.
CURRENT SHOWS
* "On Line" @ MoMA / 11 W 53rd St (E/M to 5th Ave, 6 to 51st St). Score one for MoMA (two really, if you count the outstanding "Abstract Expressionist New York" on the 4th Fl), and if you've been avoiding this institution for whatever reason: CHECK IT OUT. This survey on the line, its transformation from "mere" pencil-and-paper to explorations in space, even performance, since the early 20th C., is pretty major and well outfitted. It boasts both the best of MoMA (a peerless archive of works) and the museum's potential to launch a kickass show (by drawing key and obscure works from that peerless archive). Oh there are loads of usual favorites, which lose absolutely zero even if you've seen 'em dozens of times. Like: Jean (Hans) Arp "Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance)" (1916-7), Man Ray's majestic "The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows" (1916), Carolee Schneemann's classic "Up To & Including Her Limits" (1973-6, shown fittingly as an installation) and, at the very end, Julie Mehretu's "Rising Down" (2008), which is actually a very important step for MoMA, in their ongoing curve of including important (young) women artists in their collection. Plus there's loads of less-seen-but-known gems by big names: Robert Rauschenberg's awesome "Automobile Tire Print" (1953, created by John Cage's auto!), Eva Hesse's "Hang Up" (1960, counted as her 1st 'major' work), Fred Sandback's spiky purple-yarn cascade from '67, and Michael Heizer's "Circular Surface Planar Displacement Drawing" (1970, which is infinitely more badass than its cut-and-dry title). BUT: MoMA balances this lot w/ a whole bunch of artists you may well NOT know, seamlessly incorporating their contributions to the ongoing dialogue w/ the line. Like: Belgian abstract sculptor Georges Vantongerloo (a bunch of plastic/Plexiglas forms from the early '50s), Brazilian Anna Maria Maiolino (incredible cut-paper interventions from the '70s), and Swede Sophie Tottie (rippled ink works "Written Language" from 2008) — and of course the mighty Gego, aka Gertrude Goldschmidt, a whole slew of her heavy-metal works incl. "Drawings Without Paper" from the '80s, which succinctly sums up a theme of this exhibition.
* Huma Bhabha @ Peter Blum Chelsea / 526 W 29th St. A stunner, as Bhabha continues her forays into reapplying ink, paint and collage onto vintage photography. Imagery of Achilles — or more specifically heels — trod massively across arid landscapes and highways, grillwork hands grapple with the earth and half-completed structures, a two-headed dog (or the blurred, Francis Bacon-like motion of a normal canine) seems to visibly shiver furiously in front of a large government facade. Elements extend beyond the borders of the photographs, Bhabha colorizes b&w prints, in a riotous cycle of destruction and creation.
* Marin Majik & Goran Skofic @ Ana Cristea Gallery / 521 W 26th St. Two very compelling young Croatian artists in their joint debut U.S. gallery exhibition. Majik's photorealistic oils of wide-open interior spaces reveal almost vertigo-inducing depth-sensory effects, like you could plunge straight into them. Skofic's stark video work is enamoring: check the two-channel "White (shooting)", in screens facing one another, one of the artist 'shooting' an invisible rifle, the other a line of multiple Skofics, freezing in stop motion each time they're 'shot'.
* Focus Shanghai: Lu Chunsheng and Birdhead @ Thomas Erben Gallery / 526 W 26th St 4th Fl. A dynamo of a dual show, presenting a side of contemporary Chinese art you may not know. The duo Birdhead (Song Tao and Ji Weiyu) feature a photo installation from their "Xin Cun" series on today's Shanghai, plus two fluid-camera shorts by Song to draw the experience further inward. Filmmaker Lu Chengsheng complements this w/ his full-length film "History of Chemistry: Vol 2", a surreal post-industrial narrative set within anonymous London, drawing comparisons from this writer to Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Red Desert" in the pitched cameras, agoraphobic mise-en-scene and deft incorporation of sounds. Lu's film is loose enough that you can walk into it halfway, stay for 10 minutes and jet, but don't be surprised if the suffocating action within, suited and hatted men carrying boxes through empty urban tunnels and the like, transfixes you for quite awhile longer.
* Lee Krasner "Paintings 1959 - 1965" @ Robert Miller Gallery / 524 W 26th St. Krasner's seminal 'night journey' paintings created during bouts of chronic insomnia, all of them necessarily painted at night and most in a coffee-toned palette of cascading letter-like elements and abstract gestural strokes. The epically huge "Another Storm" (1963), w/ its melted cherry ice cream tones, rivals MoMA's collection. Add Krasner's show as a must-see accompaniment to MoMA's "Abstract Expressionist New York".
* "Einfluss: 8 From Dusseldorf" @ Hosfelt Gallery / 531 W 36th St. A fertile grouping of young contemporary artists from the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, some of whom bear undeniable marks from their teachers, like Gerhard Richter and A.R. Penck, and most of whom have never shown in the States before. Bernard Lokai's rugged, small-scale abstracts preclude Richter's studies, especially w/in the supposed representational nature of these brilliantly colorful works. Cornelius Volker's (student of Penck) does gestural, realistic little oil paintings, and his nine-part "Meerschweinchen" of long-haired guinea pigs on Pop-monochrome backdrops is half-kitsch, half-cute. Luka Fineisen, the sole sculptor of the lot, blurs that line too in her resin-coated "Milk" relief, which looks exactly like that. Introducing the Next Wave from Germany. Are you ready?
* Hwang Jai-Hyoung @ Gana NY / 568 W 25th St. The artist's politically-charged, textural oil paintings, based on his self-appointed time as a laborer in the industrial town Taeback, Korea, filled with his hard-working, disenfranchised countrymen. Hwang splits the show into rugged, emotive portraits temperature-infused landscapes, like you feel the cold dampness in your skin, staring at these.
* Sang-ah Choi "Insatiable Appetite" @ Doosan Gallery / 533 W 25th St. Choi returns in a bright, eye-popping way, extending her oeuvre beyond the pop-up book Pop culture array from her Arario NY show back in 2008. This new mixed media exhibition is a bit like Aya Takano's creepy girlish figures, slackened by resin and injected w/ Choi's luminous palette. Nonfigurative paintings, like "Light and Shadow" w/ its wall-drawn extensions, are some of the deftest, eye-twitching combos of abstract and Op art I have ever encountered.
* Odili Donald Odita "Body & Space" @ Jack Shainman Gallery / 513 W 20th St. Dynamic polygonal color abstract paintings, rhythmic and space-defining. Odita adds acrylic latex wall-painted works as well, jagged shards that invade and punctuate the environment.
* Tabatabai, Schiff, Bell @ Danese / 535 W 24th St 6th Fl. A neapolitan (ice cream) of minimalism and subtlety. Karen Schiff's meditative patterns on paper are the busiest of the lot, while Dozier Bell's tiny charcoal on Mylar renderings of dusky twilight are more engrossing than they may sound in print. But Hadi Tabatabai ruled for me, infusing his stark monochromes with delicate, laborious woven grids, to intriguing doubling effect.
* Aakash Nihalani "Overlap" @ Bose Pacia / 163 Plymouth St, DUMBO (F to York St, AC to High St). The 'tape-squares' phenom doesn't let the static gallery setting stymie him from a kinetic, progressive exhibition, reacting off the space in a mix of powder-coated aluminum isometric sculptures and site-specific tape works. Nihalani's talent in making us look again at familiar places in new, enlightening ways makes for a very refreshing exhibition.
* Leah Tinari "Perfect Strangers" @ Mixed Greens / 531 W 26th St. Last Tinari exhibition included a photo booth. Had you snapped a photo of yourself in that (knowing what you were getting yourself into), you might find a painted, brightly lit blow-up in her new show. What we have is a good lot of game participants, pulling faces and striking poses in front of eye-crawling fabric patterns, alone or in small groups. Tinari titled these w/ her own seemingly spontaneous witticisms ("Her Hairstyle Makes For A Great Shape", to a young woman in a just-so bowl-cut; "Seen Through White Frames", to another woman w/ white-plastic-framed glasses; "I Like This!", one guy huffing hot air into another guy's ear).
* Adam Pendleton "BAND" @ The Kitchen / 512 W 19th St. Rashida Bumbray curated this enveloping multimedia exhibition. New works from Pendleton's ongoing "Black Dada" and "System of Display" series (the former body of work appeared at MoMA PS1's "Greater New York") begin the journey, leading to the screening room and three-channel titular video installation. Pendleton refashions Jean-Luc Godard's "Sympathy for the Devil" w/ art-rock band Deerhoof, following their recording session for "I Did Crimes For You" in a fractured, Nouvelle Vague-esque parallel, all in gorgeous contrasty b&w.
LAST CHANCE
* Ilene Segalove "The Dissatisfaction of Ilene Segalove", curated by Dean Valentine @ Andrea Rosen Gallery / 525 W 24th St. This is a beautiful, autobiographical little exhibition culled by Valentine of the Cal Arts Conceptualist, both political and (self) deprecating and w/ a media undercurrent. I've seen Segalove's contributions in museum group shows but never to the degree as here, a range of photography and film works from the '70s and '80s, often w/ her family as subject when she isn't in front of the camera herself. The simplest renditions, like "Close But No Cigar", where Segalove mimics a Barbie Doll, down to the featureless torso, are easy convo-starters, but compare to her family photo collage of (she says) Asiaphile Dad and costumed daughter dissecting a hard cheese w/ chopsticks, which bears that self-deprecating yet stirringly emotive effect I alluded to above. Don't miss it.
* Tony Oursler "Peak" @ Lehmann Maupin / 201 Chrystie St. Have you seen Dave McKean's warped fantasy film "MirrorMask"? The amorphous mechanical figures in it were the 1st thing I thought of when taking in Oursler's engrossing new show, eight minuscule mixed media/video works suspended on snaking metal pedestals. These are nearly devoid of Oursler's spectacle-creating shots of wrong-hued blinking eyes and sputtering lips, speaking dissonant soliloquies to the viewing public. Instead we get these multilayered, very involved little vignettes like "Castouts", w/ intermingling male-female speakers and an overall cyberpunkish aura. "Bunker" is another cool one, the action occurring in like a torn-open cave w/ a hoodie-wearing figure in the foreground plus a violet-toned woman encased in a glass globe in the back. The contents of the dialogue throughout are still Oursler-esque: obsession, frustration, isolation, but I think the small-scale nature of them totally works in his favor.
* Mickey Smith "Believe You Me" @ Invisible-Exports / 14A Orchard St. Smith returns to NY Public Library, specifically the Picture Collection, for her new exhibition, though she brings some of the stacks w/ her, wedging them into a unique floor installation that is strangely ergonomic (though I'll see how well this thing ages, after much foot-traffic) and a literal basis for the new C-prints. She rephotographed images from the archives, played w/ combinations (one, w/ its garage-sale frames, is convincingly "family portrait" circa late '50s) and crops (esp. of more current figures, to playful effect).
* James Casebere "House" @ Sean Kelly Gallery / 528 W 29th St. You might remember two of the lead, large-scale C-prints in the main gallery from this year's Whitney Biennial, taken from Casebere's massive scale-model of Dutchess County NY. They are paired w/ other daytime and twilight "scenes", shots of mowed lawns, varying swim pools and burning logs in this plainly beautiful slice of Americana. Now contrast that w/ the much earlier works in the front gallery, a decidedly creepy selection of gelatin silver prints from the '80s and '90s that appear to be encased in either snow (good!) or ash (spooky!). What's consistent is Casebere's mindful use of lighting for both realistic and dramatic effect.
* Suzanne Caporael "The Memory Store" @ Ameringer McEnery Yohe / 525 W 22nd St. This new array of soft-edged polygons on linen reflect Caporael's cross-country travels and her own experiences w/ America's impenetrably abstract nature. Each work is named after a destination and the artist's notes about it hint to the origins of the work: "No. 617 (Clarksville, TN)" looks like violet stairs w/ a pink cast, at twilight. The reductive "No. 604 (Coopertown, NY)" looks to me like a multicolored pennant flag, from a ballgame or something, zooming out from a plane of flat gray.
* Thomas Nozkowski @ The Pace Gallery / 510 W 25th St. The latest from Nozkowski continues his seemingly endless array of small-scale colorful abstractions, w/ snapshot-styled works on paper as their related variations. The man is a machine: there's like two dozen smallish oil on linen (mounted on panel) works here, plus their equal in drawings, yet each feel unique and intimate whilst keeping Nozkowski's familiar geometric vocabulary intact. They're quite abstract, of course, but they never segue fully into that maelstrom of nonrepresentation: there remains bits in each that compel the eye to seek further. Ex: "Untitled (8-137)" looks very much to me like a zoomed-in view of a pennant stretch across the beach, w/ soft-focus sand, shore, water and rich orange sunset appearing as planes of color around it (it's clearer in the painting than the gouache/colored pencil work). Another, "Untitled (8-128)", seems more like a workout in color theory a la Gerhard Richter (or Paul Klee), a bunch of unlike squares in a black field, but the accompanying work-on-paper looks more like the bust of a person, wearing a patterned Zentai suit, mind you, but still… Lots of beauties, here.
* Gedi Sibony @ Greene Naftali / 508 W 26th St 8th Fl. I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, whether that's a 3+ hour experimental film or a cutting-edge NY-based neo-Conceptual/installation artist who works w/ recycled materials w/ beguilingly little explanation into, uh, just what we're looking at. The latter is Sibony, and his new solo show at the gallery is a fantastic treasure hunt into themes concurrent w/ much of art itself. Give this one some time, and the nuggets of wisdom you trove from the sparsely outfitted rooms will gleam in your subconscious (maybe a good idea to see John Baldessari's brilliant, pop-experimental retrospective at the Met, which I detail above). Like the piece that confronts you upon disembarking the lift and heading down the hallway into the main gallery, "The Cutters", whose composition (both visually and banally stated on the gallery guide) is 'canvas, paint, wall', which sounds precisely like 98% of PAINTINGS (the paint itself isn't specified) only… the canvas is raw and draped like a shroud over a hollowed-out section of wall, seemingly culled from the architecture of the building itself (but cunningly created in Sibony's studio, such is his talent for creating site-specific works), the paint itself mostly relegated to the backside of the piece, which, incidentally, you can walk through like a doorway. Another more expansive work behind it, the lengthily titled "From the Center, Skinny Legs, Satisfy the Purposes of Pictorial Representation Completely, and Her Trumpeted Spoke Lastly", factors in creative elements (an acid green shag carpet, flipped against the wall; a matted drawing, reversed in its frame, a hollow-core door covered in taupe paint; a sheet of white vinyl) and deconstructs them. There's more here — incl. a tricky collaboration w/ friend Diana Lyon in a side gallery looks, I swear, like a black-foam donkey in repose on a foam-stuffed sofa, half underneath a flowered screenprinted cloth — so go check it out. Or take me w/ you and we'll do it together.
* Albert Watson @ Hasted Hunt Kraeutler / 537 W 24th St. Wow, this is a really sexy show. A look back at the iconic photographer's jarring oeuvre, from Alfred Hitchcock clutching a skinned chicken to this phantasmagoric triptych of jellyfish hovering behind Plexiglas. The disarming "Monkey with Gun, New York City", probably the 1st thing you see when you walk into the gallery, is uncompromisingly sinister and not what I mean by 'sexy' (nor "Hornet #1-3, Car Graveyard, Las Vegas", though this one's pretty dope). I'm referring to the large C-print "Anouk Dirske, New York City", actually a cropped close-up of her stomach and hands crossed over her pubis, bathed in contrasty shadows, and to "Monica Gripman, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands", or really any of the very beautiful women transfixed in his lens.
* Erwin Wurm @ Jack Hanley Gallery / 136 Watts St. Ahead of the trickster Austrian artist's solo show at Lehmann Maupin, this gallery hosts the first U.S. appearance of Wurm's 2008 self-portrait installation "Selbstportrat als Gurken", i.e. 26 uniquely cast and convincingly painted pickles on different-sized white plinths. If you didn't catch that, it's a room full of pickle-sized sculptures. And if you're STILL wondering "well, Brian, does that mean this is an essential, must-see show?" all I can say is "obvs".
* Wangechi Mutu "Hunt Bury Flee" @ Gladstone Gallery / 515 W 24th St. Each time I see Mutu's new large-scale collages on Mylar, she's taken her figures to another level of interpretation and figuration. This time they're ferocious amalgams of flesh, pelt, scales, feathers and foliage, metamorphosing against either celestial or poisonous backdrops. One fashiony woman-figure climbs a woodgrain-patterened tree (bearing tracings of another woman w/in), pursued by an "Alien"-like snaking appendage lashing out from behind her. The ecstatic "Oh, Madonna!" appears to have flowery, anemone-like explosions coming from her torso. Her "Moth Girls" sculptural installation, many dozen porcelain and feathered figures fill the back gallery in four rows, seemingly embodying the spirits of her past works' avatars.
* Erwin Wurm "gulp" @ Lehmann Maupin / 540 W 26th St. Somebody had fun with body-stockings! That someone is the Viennese trickster Wurm, and his idiosyncratic, physical sculpture is in full effect at this gallery, in a set of contorted aluminum sorta-figurative forms either content w/ or struggling against their brightly colored fabric-y bindings. He tempers these w/ fabric pulled over canvas, like the brilliant blue "Mental States", which is some pretty great party lettering for being cut-fabric. Another work is called "Me Under LSD", which features a powdery, acid-yellow brain-cloud over an aluminum limb. Stare at that one long enough, and Wurm's accompanying video "Tell", which features two hot young people having a philosophy discussion straight out of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life", to the point where their auto drives up a wall onto a roof like nothing out of the ordinary, will make TOTAL SENSE.
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