Hasta La Ideas

Artists reinvent favorite album art in a group show

Skindeep approximations, deceitful marketing ploys, masterpieces of graphic design—cover art’s slippery role gets a tribute in Cover Version (LP), curator and artist Timothy Hull’s second show to take up the theme. The first, held at Los Angeles’ Taylor De Cordoba gallery, had artists dreaming up alternate covers for books in 2008, but in this show Hull tasked the over two dozen artists with re-imagining record covers that made an impact on them.

Predictably, the resulting exhibit currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music runs the range, from the iconic (Grace Jones’ Night Clubbing by Colby Bird) to sardonic (
Mathew Cerletty’s stock photograph version of Harvest) and silly (a topless girl astride a dinosaur as envisioned by Dave McDermott).

The show is open through 20 March 2011, check out more images in the slideshow below.

A grassroots group show launches with orgasm drawings, partially-chewed crayons and other performances

Armed with an “if you build it they will come” attitude, psychologist Ilana Simons curated the upcoming group show at the Prince George Gallery with the vision of creating an “instant art collective.” In a similar vein to a pop-up shop, the exhibit is the upshot of quick thinking after seeing the space on her hunt for a place to hold a wedding reception. “When I stumbled upon the space and realized my friends and I could go in on it for gallery space, it just became a no-brainer.”

Showing alongside the New School professor, works spanning simple line drawings to paintings. The nine artists showing include David Pettibone (below left), a fellow at the New York Academy of Fine Art, Michael Alan (above left) whose chaotic visions of New York City create abstract fantasies in vibrant colorways and Jenny Keith (above right), who represents animal emotions in her work.

Chris Colvin (below right) will exhibit pieces from his upcoming solo show at Lincoln Center, which include mixed media portraits from his series called “The Bust Collection.” Retired ophthalmologist turned full-time artist Jane Lubin incorporates her knowledge of biology into works featuring strange bodies in odd locations and bulging eyes. Prudence Groube (bottom left), an Australian artist fascinated by the idea of dismembering the self, will exhibit her colorful ink-on-paper works which are chiefly centered around her fictitious character Mimachan, who “inhabits the space between the seen and unseen.”

An opening night reception from 6-9pm this Friday, 14 January 2011, will launch the show with live performances dedicated to fine art. Sarah H. Paulson will perform with a group of other women, who will recline in the nude, and use their toes to draw whatever comes from their soul. Valmonte Sprout will paint with Crayola crayons she partially digested earlier in the night while the “ambidextrous visionary painter” Roman Zelgatas will paint himself in a translucent phone booth.

The Prince George Gallery show opens 14 January and runs through 26 Febuary 2011.

As collectives go, the loosely-organized, street art-focused Barnstormers stand out as much for a global scope—they count chapters in New York and Tokyo—as for a growing roster that reads like a who’s who of the genre. The group exhibit opening this Thursday, 18 March 2010 at Joshua Liner Gallery will feature the work of some 35 of these all-stars in a show that highlights each artist individually.

Swoon, David Ellis, Ryan McGinness, KR, Chris Mendoza, Kenji Hirata, Mike Ming, Doze Green and Maya Hayuk, to name a few, all will participate in the massive event which will include painting, video, printmaking, and other mediums.

The Barnstormers formed in 1999 after Ellis led 25 artists to the small town of Cameron in his native North Carolina to paint barns, tractor-trailers and farm equipment. Inspired by the initial collaborative energy, the clique continued working together with phenomenal synchronicity to construct large-scale murals that they describe as “motion paintings.”

While they’ve exhibited as a group before at Cincinnati, OH’s Contemporary Arts Center, the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, HI and North Carolina’s Southeaster Center for Contemporary Art, this Group Exhibition marks the largest to date and the first to celebrate the solo careers of members who’ve made major strides in the past decade.

One of the most well-known of the bunch (who’s lately been getting more attention for his weekly themed events), McGinnness will conduct his “Confessional Booth” via Skype at set hours from Spain where he’s currently working. If this one wildly creative, post-Warhol example of Barnstormers work is any indication, we can say this show isn’t to be missed.