Advertorial content: One of our favorite NYC retailers STORY is presenting “Home for the Holidays” with the support of Shop Small, the initiative founded by …
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On 22 October, fine artist and filmmaker David King Reuben will make his US debut at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in Chelsea,…
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The Rhode Island School of Design 2013 MFA Graduate Show opened last night at the ClampArt gallery in Chelsea. The show is comprised of the work of six RISD…
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Taking a moment to relax in the heart of New York City can be a challenge. Thorin Decatur, proprietor of the newly minted barbershop Decatur & Sons wants to change that. Decatur developed his barbering skills…
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L’équipe design de Synthesis DNA a récemment installé cet espace de travail « Chelsea Workspace » pour un de leurs clients désirant vouloir continuer à travailler chez lui dans les meilleurs conditions. Le rendu de ce bureau est tout simplement incroyable, proposant un espace à la fois confortable et optimisé pour le travail.
NADA debuts its first NYC art fair with a rooftop marketplace
Popping up in Miami during Art Basel for nearly a decade now, New York-based NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) brought the show closer to home this year. The non-profit wisely timed their alternative art fair to run alongside the NYC debut of Frieze, London’s major art event that drew dealers and collectors from all over the world to Randall’s Island for the first time. NADA offered a great antidote to the frenzy of Frieze, taking place in a four-story building in Chelsea that made good use of the rooftop with a Phaidon book booth, coffee shop and a showing from Artis—a nonprofit that supports contemporary Israeli artists.
Instead of presenting work in a booth, Artis hosted The Artis Shuk, a playful rendition of traditional Middle Eastern marketplaces, or shuks (also known as souks). Works from more than 20 artists were available for sale, but unlike in the gallery booths at the rest of the fair, prices were listed on small cards displayed next to each piece. Most were less than $500 and all the proceeds went to the Artis Grant Program, which awards more than $125,000 to artists and nonprofits every year.
The undeniable standout at the shuk was an untitled sculpture of a glass of Turkish coffee sliced in half by Gal Weinstein. Turkish coffee, known in Israel as “mud” coffee, is an iconic Middle Eastern image. “Coffee can act as an invitation to a conversation or as reprieve from routine. Shown using the scientific visual language of a cross section, it also speaks to the gap between the efforts to analyze the Middle East and its complex reality,” explains Weinstein.
Another highlight, “Rolodex” by Zipora Fried is a real Rolodex the artist found. Fried went through it page by page and covered up all the names and numbers with archival tape, emphasizing the sense of loss that a discarded history of a person’s entire network would represent. Fried’s work often features covered faces as well as “drawings so dense they rebuff any illustrative meaning” and sculptures that are altered to deprive them of their functionality.
Working in a somewhat similar vein, Naomi Safron Hon seems to revel in making objects useless. “Straining, Mixing, Grating” and “Cement Grater”, two of her clay-clotted kitchen tools, were on display at the shuk. Hon uses these objects to symbolize how politically-motivated creation and destruction impact our daily lives, but on a more basic level, the delightful way the clay oozes out of the implements is aesthetically quite satisfying.
“D.I.Y: Fold Your Own Skull” is a kit by Itamar Jobani that you can use to construct a 3D skull from paper or plastic sheets. The pieces come pre-cut and pre-scored—all you need is glue. Jobani didn’t just want to make a cute rainy day project, he wanted to engage the buyer in a hands-on, art-making process.
Behemoth sculptures from scaled-down materials by Will Ryman
Currently at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, “Anyone and No One” is an exhibition that tests the limits of scale and complexity. The three pieces that compose the show are situated in both of Paul Kasmin’s two Chelsea locations—a first for the gallery—and thoroughly invade the spaces from floor to ceiling. We’re always on the lookout for art borne from the “painstaking process“, and Will Ryman‘s latest works—each made up of hundreds of thousands of smaller objects—mark the ultimate labor of love.
Occupying the 27th Street gallery is “Bird”, a two-ton sculpture of an aviary figure clutching a limp rose in its beak. The 12’x16′ body is made from 1,500 nails that were fabricated for the work. The bending of the nails around the head and eyes is mesmeric, the effect of combining brute materials with delicate interlacing and texture.
The 10th Avenue location opens with the prostrate body of “Everyman”, a giant human figure that stretches 90 feet along the gallery walls. The flesh is created from 30,000 bottle caps and the shirt from the blue soles of 250 boots. In the adjacent space is a labyrinth of stacked paintbrushes, whose curved, organic walls create a walking space for visitors to explore. The 200,000 brushes have been glued together to reach a height of 14 feet.
“Anyone and No One” is Ryman’s first exhibition at the at Paul Kasmin and will be on view through 24 March 2011.
Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 Tenth Avenue
515 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10011
Frank Yamrus’s self portraits take inspiration from a midlife crisis
Debuting a series of self portraits at NYC’s Clamp Gallery today, Frank Yamrus returns from a photographic hiatus after several years of soul searching from out behind the camera. “I Feel Lucky” marks the photographer’s response to his mid-life crisis, reproducing significant moments from his life in an exploration of faith, relationships, mortality, photography and health. Reveling in the changing lines of his face and facing demons of his past, Yamrus creates a thoroughly personal examination of his life to date.
Many of the themes from the series are explained in a brutally honest essay that accompanies the exhibition book. Yamrus admits hitting a creative wall in the years leading up to this show, feeling consumed by his photographic work. Accompanying this shift was the marked change in his appearance, from his jowls—which he associates with his father—to his expanding midsection. Rather than shirking these shortcomings, Yamrus prints them in high definition for the world to see.
Sexuality is a recurring theme in the photographs, building off the success of his “Rapture” series. Critical moments like Yamrus’s last female relationship; moments with Frank, his partner of 30 years; and his thoughts on parenthood are among the featured moments. While he isn’t a parent, Yamrus recalls a pregnancy scare with an old girlfriend and his role as an uncle as influential factors on his personal development and his transition to maturity.
The images play between reality and fiction, at once playfully spontaneous and highly staged. True to the experience of memory, his constructions are partly informed by past events, filled in by his own imagination. Spurred by the difficulty of aging, the collection becomes a celebration of his life to date, full of instances that reaffirm and validate his many stages.
Clamp Gallery
16 February – 24 March, 2012
521-531 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
All images courtesy of Frank Yamrus and the Clamp Art Gallery
New work by the NYC artist known for his colorfully bold “prison” paintings
Earlier this month, one of New York CIty’s native artists,
Peter Halley, invited some members of the press into his studio for a preview of his new works. For over 25 years Halley has painted his “prisons” and “cells,” reflecting the “increasing geometricization of social space in the world we live in.”
Regardless of how you read the social commentary, these bold, bright paintings masterfully impose color and texture on the canvas. His use of a Roll-a-Tex, an industrial tool, creates such a powerful contrast of texture within his “cells” that the varied surfaces are visible when standing ten feet away.
His new works will be on display at the Galerie Thomas Modern
in Munich starting 9 September 2011 and running through 19 November 2011.
Images courtesy of The Ballast.
Exploring the limits of greyscale in a group show
With a mission of reinvigorating Chelsea’s once youthful and vibrant art scene, Mallick Williams (daughter-in-law of actor Robin Williams) launched Mallick Williams & Co. in November of 2010. In the short time since opening, the upstart has already drawn attention for its ability to connect big-name artists to high-profile young collectors and shows no signs of stopping with their first official gallery show, cleverly titled “Hueless,” opening tomorrow.
An exploration of the possibilities of grey scale, “Mallick Williams & Co. carefully curated pieces from both artists who normally work in black and white (in mediums such as graphite, charcoal, paper cut and photography) alongside work from artists who are stepping out of their traditional colorful palette to create something uniquely hueless.” At the core of the group show is a roster of heavyweight street artists, including Shepard Fairey, Eric Haze, Skullphone and Russel Young. These more established artists will show alongside lesser-known talents like Marissa Textor and Sam Ske.
Young’s piece, “Fifteen Minutes With You; Well I Wouldn’t Say No”, consisting of acrylic paint enamel and diamond dust screen-printed onto linen, creates an ethereal manifestation of a memory without falling into the abstract (pictured below left). Another portrait, “Drawn Face V” (above left) by Dirk Dzimirsky aims to “not only portray the physical attributes, but more importantly the subjects inner presence of life. I chose drawing over painting as this allows me to create many layers over layers of lines and dots which react to each other in order to create a vibrant texture with directions and movement.”
On the darker side thematically, Marissa Textor’s piece “An Outlet for Pent up Forces,” (also graphite on paper, like Dzimirsky’s) breathtakingly depicts volcanic rock in photorealistic detail. Nicholas Forker takes on a “shattered sense of community in the face of capitalist driven isolation” with a greyscale drawing representing an artist informed by a globalized marketplace of ideas.
“Hueless” runs through 15 April 2011. Visit the Mallick Williams & Co. website for the full list of artists.
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