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Open Studios in NYC Fall 07

Making ones way through the maze of art produced and exhibited in our time and in our city while trying to form an opinion of ones own, can be a challenge to say the least. But I thought this week I would step around the white cubes of NYC and plunge head first into looking, by going straight to the source, the artist and their many open studios, yes my dears I went to Brooklyn and beyond. It's a great way to see art for your self. Mind you it can be a challenge, especially when there are many studios to enter with the occasional brooding artist on the other side of the door awaiting your entry, with cheap wine and old cheese on paper plates. But that is the price to pay to see something new. And in the end there are lots of opportunities to look and talk about art. It's my favorite way of looking at art.

There were over a hundred open studios during the Annual Gowanus Artists' Studio Tour last month, and on that parade were potters, painters, sculptors, stained glass makers, and the like. A high point on this tour was seeing the ceramic sculptures by Pamela Sunday, whose work is reminiscent of Saint Clair Cemin's playful organic plastic and ceramic forms. Sunday's work taps into natural symmetries, and are stunning objects to behold. Also Elinor Dei Tos Pironti's simple and methodical paintings have an alchemist's sensibility to the way that she approaches color layered and drawn out across the canvas. There are also some great art spaces just off the canal. One of my favorites is the Reanimation Library, a small independent library which is building an anachronistic collection of resources made available for creative inspiration. This past weekend there was some great art to be seen at the Crane Street Studios Artists' Community. It is hard to miss this colossal graffiti covered building just opposite from MoMA's PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City. This open studio offered a bounty of incredibly talented and ambitious artists. Painter Ben Beshaw had some amusing realist paintings. His paintings often have a male protagonist, (an amusing self-portrait in most cases). In one painting, titled "Rainbow in the Dark" the artist stands with a steely gaze while he cradles a doe eyed rainbow tinted horse. In the background, according to the artist "is a laser light show in the sky, celebrating the rescue of the rainbow horse." It was hard not to laugh at the sheer audacity of the artist whose talent and sense of humor are terrific. Maia Marinelli, a fascinating young Italian artist, has developed some powerful knit and sewn sculptures as well as a series of devastating photographs. In one series titled "Gretta's Journal", closely cropped photos capture the scarred bodies of young girls forced into prostitution. Another series called "Fear of Love" is a meditation on female sexual and emotional identities. Reminiscent of Sophie Calle's enduring social narratives, and David Wojnarowicz's acid poetic imagery, Marinelli's work navigates soulful human commonalities with a sense of engaging mystery. Other artists of note are Cair Crawford's monumental oil paintings which abstract semacodes and labyrinthine patterns. Robert Walden's ontological road maps are a mesmerizing exploration of maps and meditations on the grid. Photographs by Anne-Katrin Grotepass contain compelling created and captured moments, reminiscent of the sculptural orchestrations of Sandy Skoglund, but there is a restraint in Grotepass' work which is more contemplative.

In the idiosyncratic context of the artist's studio, all sorts of wonderful things are available to see and understand. Everything is laid bare. There you can see what led to the decisions before the work of art is wrenched out of the artists' lair and with any luck you can talk to the artist too.

The next big artist run happenings will be the Arts in Bushwick's "Open Spaces" a one day art festival on December 2, 2007. You can find out more online. See website addresses below.

Open Studios and Events

• ArtsInBushwick.org "Open Spaces" is a one day art festival on December 2, 2007 12 noon to 8pm in Bushwick Brooklyn. More than thirty spaces will be hosting events and exhibitions featuring over 200 local artists.
  
  The events will be centered in the neighborhoods of the Morgan and Jefferson stops on the L train. Check in at Ad Hoc near the Morgan stop and Wyckoff Starr Coffee near the Jefferson stop to pick up a brochure and map of events. All events are easily accessible by foot.
  
  Here is a link to their press release which I posted on my website. View the press release for the Arts in Bushwick "Open Spaces"
  


• Crane Street Studios 18-19 November cranestreetstudios.blogspot.com


• Annual Gowanus Artists' Studio Tour 20-21 October agastbrooklyn.com
  

Selected Artist Websites

• Ben Beshaw benbeshaw.com


• Anne-Katrin Grotepass annekatringrotepass.com


• Maia Anthea Marinelli maiamarinelli.com


• Pamela Sunday pamelasunday.com


• Robert Walden robertjwalden.com

John Jurayj - Not Here

John Jurayj, a talented young painter, plumbs the landscape of memory in his second solo exhibition at Massimo Audiello. This new body of work includes a series of colorful paintings and works on paper that operate in an ambiguous space.

Much like painter Mary Heilman's serious but playful approach to paint and Brendan Cass's infantile palette, Jurayj's abstracted landscapes have rich surfaces. Some sparkle and appear to be on a traditional chalk ground of deep rich flat color that is abruptly interrupted with slashes of bright energetic paint spatter and stroke. Other paintings reveal bold lines that strip away the painted layers to reveal a reflective colored Plexiglas ground in which reflections of the room and the viewer become a part of the work.

In an uneasy manner the artist is taking us away from real world moments through his distant cool focus on color and surface. Yet upon a closer look, below this visual activity are buildings and cities, dwellings bombed and burning. The subject matter of the paintings, central to the artist's personal history, is inspired by the pointless wars of his ancestral Lebanon.

Once a vacation destination for stylish jet setters before war tore the towns and people to shit and continued for a dismal generation. These paintings capture the horror with colorful tricks upon luscious surfaces to put us at ease, as if we might find some calm escape for a moment in gazing upon impotent abstraction.

Amidst the body of robust war-torn canvases are several powerful portraits on paper. The eyes of various men -- Lebanese political leaders -- have been burned away as if with a cigarette in some fetishized moment of punishment or perhaps through a blinding unleashed by national or ethnic pride. These portraits of their blindness exhibited in juxtaposition with the explosive paintings bring down an indictment on the world's deciders.

The spiritual and intellectual comfort I might have wished to find in an exhibition was replaced with a welcome reminder of our own times. The playwright Eugene O'Neill captured the spirit of moments like this rather well in a letter he wrote to his son shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"It is like acid burning in my brain that the stupid butchering of war has taught men nothing at all, that they sank back listlessly on the warm manure pile of the dead and went to sleep, indifferently bestowing custody of their future, their fate, into the hands of State Departments, whose members are trained to be conspirators, card sharps, double-crossers, and secret betrayers of their own people; into the hands of greedy capitalist ruling classes so stupid they could not even see when their own greed began devouring itself; into the hands of that most debased type of pimp, the politician, and that most craven of all lice and job-worshippers, the bureaucrats."

Artists in a time of war find ways to respond, some turn inward, others outward, radicalized and poetic on a fine line that allows us to turn away from the landscape confronting us, but only for a moment. And when that moment is over we return to the here and now, more energized and clear-headed. Jurayj's personal is political and offers us a succinct response to the blind governors and the sleeping mind in the face of stupid, stupid, stupid war.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson, Artist
Written for the Gay City News

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Exhibition Information

John Jurayj "Not Here"
Through 22 December

Massimo Audiello
526 West 26th Street No. 519
New York, NY 10001
www.massimoaudiello.com

DGENERATE NATION - Skate With Me on Vimeo

DGENERATE NATION - Skate With Me from DGENETICS on Vimeo.

Event at the Rapture Cafe NYC

Some Very Funny Information Design About Relationships

Designer Gregory Dizzia has created an information graphic which documents all his significant amorous relationships with the opposite sex. And it is very funny. There are icons representing what they did (eg. Kissing, etc..) positive attributes (nice eyes, lips, good listener) I thought it was telling that there was no attribute for "talking" or "conversation" I guess they didn't talk much. Any way this was hysterically funny. It reminded me of the guy who posted all those audio files of psycho ex-girlfriend voicemails. HAHAHA

You can download a pdf of the poster. to see it in detail.

Jacques Louis Vidal's Wood Woman

Saw this spastic dancing wood woman at the gallery Sunday on the lower east side last week. I love how incredibly awkward and unapologetic it all is.