Hasta La Ideas

Two exhibitions explore a legendary New York artist’s fight for linguistic liberation

The character of Rammellzee is one of the most compelling to emerge from the NYC street culture scene of the late 1970s and ’80s. The Queens native began his career tagging the side of A train cars in his home borough and later moved into the budding hip-hop scene, where he emerged as an influential lyricist. Rammellzee’s obsession with futurism and linguistics led him to establish the eponymous persona, at times referred to as “The Equation.” A duo of upcoming exhibitions at the MoMA and The Suzanne Geiss Company explore the work of the reclusive artist, his manifestos and the science fiction-influenced culture that he embodied.

Created over the course of 14 years, “The Letter Racers” sculptures are on view in NYC for the first time. They represent the artist’s manifestos “Iconoclast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism,” two works written in Rammellzee’s idiosyncratic language. The written and visual works explore the slavery and corruption of language and its liberation through the artist’s own work.

The complex theory behind “The Letter Racers” has to do with the freedom of language from its historical fetters. As Rammellzee writes, “In the 14th century the monks ornamented and illustrated the manuscripts of letters. In the 21st and 22nd century the letters of the alphabet through competition are now armamented for letter racing and galactic battles. This was made possible by a secret equation know as THE RAMMELLZEE.”

Playing with metaphysical concepts in the physical world, Rammellzee used found objects from the city streets to create the sculptures. A collection of perfume caps, spray can triggers and other small detritus comprise 52 “letter racers,” armed for linguistic and galactic warfare. Witnessing the series as a whole lends insight into the man behind Rammellzee’s self-made masks as well as the impact of street culture on the American dialect.

Two years after his premature death, The Suzanne Geiss Company is exhibiting “Rammellzee: The Equation, The Letter Racers” from 8 March to 21 April 2012. At the same time, the MoMA will present a few pieces from “The Letter Racers” as part of the “Print/Out” exhibition starting 19 February 2012.

The studies that inform Arne Quinze’s monumental installations

Best known for massive, vibrant wood canopies installed in metropolitan locations, Arne Quinze presents “My Home, My House, My Stilthouse“, a collection of smaller works that helps to explain his larger undertakings. On view now through 31 March 2012 at the Vicky David Gallery in NYC, the new pieces explore themes of escapism, order and voyeurism. The exhibition gives a fascinating glimpse inside the quiet studio work that underpins Quinze’s precariously balanced structures.

While many see his work as chaotic, Quinze is quick to correct. “I don’t believe in chaos,” he says. “There is absolutely no chaos. There is only structure. I don’t believe in chaos in life.” His work is a constant building, whether that be structures or relationships, and it seeks a democracy in art that confronts and challenges. As people build fences and walls to keep things out, stilt houses to keep things below, Quinze seeks to restructure the world in a manner that is open and engaging.

Lamenting the shortage of markets, squares and other places of interaction, Quinze aims to force the issue through public art. “Today we live in a world where everything goes very fast. People are not used to saying ‘hi’ in the streets.” The victory of his work, he explains, is inspiring a dialogue: “They have a kind of openness in themselves, they have a smile, they have something to share, something to communicate with each other. For a moment they forget who they are and they communicate so much easier with each other.”

If the large works explore interpersonal interaction, the studies encourage an interface with the artist himself. “My Safe Garden” is a work enclosed in glass and backed by a large mirror. At once inspecting the work and becoming part of it, the viewer is meant to feel a connection to the locked-away corners of Quinze’s imagination. This is only possible to an extent. As he explains, “I give more questions than answers because the safe secret garden is very personal. I will not tell you what is happening in my safe secret garden, but you can be like a voyeur.”

The signature bright vermilion hue of Quinze’s work, he notes, is a color of contrast. As blood, it is both life and death; as fire, both warmth and burning; in nature, both attraction and warning. The majority of the artist’s works are constructed from wood, a “warm” material that gives flexibility and strength to his technically complicated installations. While working with a small team and city engineers, Quinze hand-builds small models to plan each project. The result is then rendered on a computer and adjusted to accommodate structural considerations.

Quinze sees his art originating from the “safe secret garden”, a concept essential to his works. For him, it marks the deepest place a person can go, one that is often hidden from the rest of the world. This theme fits with the city installations, inspiring openness and communication.

“The studio is what is really happening in my mind—my safe secret garden,” explains Quinze. “And I think from my safe secret garden I create my own world, my own vision of how I perceive, how I absorb the world and how I want to create.” Mapping his own obsessions, Quinze uses elements of these experimental pieces when thinking about how to confront viewers in his installations. Invariably, the audience is transported into his vision, forced from their own consciousness to engage with that of the artist.

My Home, My House, My Stilthouse

2 February – 31 March 2012

Vicky David Gallery

522 W. 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

All images courtesy of the Vicky David Gallery and Arne Quinze Studio.

An artist-curated group show redefines contemporary Realism

The first in a series of artist-curated exhibitions at NYC’s Joshua Liner Gallery, “Resolve” gathers together the peers and influencing figures of the highly skilled painter Tony Curanaj. Each of the 25 contemporary artists included in the group show is classically trained and collectively they demonstrate the diversity of Realism.

“Resolve” explores the human experience artists have with a subject, and the truth in their observations. “Great art expresses life,” says Curanaj, who is more interested in works that convey a person’s sensitivities than those that are focused on the medium, or, as he puts it, “art about art.”

Considered experts of their craft, the artists, which include one photographer, two sculptors and 22 painters, have become completely involved in creating work that reflects their distinct technical prowess. Curanaj aims to show the sincerity and beauty of work made by the hand of a skilled artist. “When you’re painting from life, it’s like a high-wire net with nothing underneath you,” he says. “You could fuck it up at any point.”

The show also makes a different argument about the idea of conceptualism, a term Curanaj believes has been misused for years—especially as it relates to Realism versus abstract art. “There’s a misconception that Realism isn’t conceptual,” he says. “I think Realism is of the highest, utmost conceptual ideas because you’re continuously conceptualizing what’s in front of you and putting it down as notes and feelings, trying to depict what is life, what is reality.” He also feels that the more deeply profound an idea, the more specific the depiction should be. The artist should have a very clear solution for the concept in order to fully get the idea across and relate to the viewer.

The show’s title refers to each artist’s unwavering creative direction and continuous refinement of their craft. Each notable in their own right, alongside Curanaj, the group includes Graydon Parrish, Jeremy Mann, Jefferson Hayman, Kim Cogan, Lee Misenheimer, Shawn Barber, Kris Kuksi and Jacob A. Pfeiffer.

On view for just one month, “Resolve” opens at NYC’s Joshua Liner Gallery on 26 January and runs through 25 February 2012.

Les architectes de chez Innocad ont pu penser cet appartement sur les toits de New York. En installant une atmosphère particulière avec des choix de couleurs et de lumières intéressants, ce lieu inédit est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article avec une série d’images.

Previously on Fubiz

• Manhattan in Motion
• NYbillboard
• NY Adorned – Tradition

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Two young curators contemplate deception through a range of works that question reality

In magic, a blind cut refers to when the illusionist appears to shuffle a deck of cards, but in reality, hasn’t actually shuffled them at all. This sleight-of-hand trick is also the befitting title of the forthcoming exhibition at NYC’s
Marlborough Chelsea gallery, a group show curated by Jonah Freeman and Vera Neykov. Tapping revered Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers as its thematic anchor, “Blind Cut” explores the concept of deception in regards to identity, authenticity and originality, through his works and others’, each questioning what is real and what is fictional.

After living for decades as a struggling poet, in 1964 Broodthaers set in plaster 50 copies of a compilation of his poems entitled Pense-Bête, and put them on display at Galerie St Laurent. In the catalog for the exhibition, the Surrealist poet boldly stated, “I, too, wondered if I couldn’t sell something and succeed in life…The idea of inventing something insincere finally crossed my mind and I set to work at once.”

Re-framing his poetry as tangible works of art, Broodthaers continued to explore word-object relationships and the meaning of language throughout his short-lived career, often recontextualizing the work of his mentor, Réné Magritte. His diverse oeuvre now spans paintings, sculptural installations, photogrpahy, books and film, but with each medium he muddled the truth in order to expose the truth. “Blind Cut” also looks to another quotation by Broodthaers, which states “A fiction allows us to grasp reality and at the same time that which is veiled by reality.”

A contemporary reflection of this ideology may be found in the work of sculptor
Robert Lazzarini, who poetically distorts the familiar by toying with perception. Interested in phenomenology, Lazzarini uses real materials to create fabricated objects which sharply remind the viewer of their mundane existence.

Showing other introspective artists such as Matt Johnson, Anne Collier, Ed Ruscha and more—as well as works from influential movements like Dada and the radical architecture agency Superstudio—”Blind Cut” looks at a perpetually relevant topic with fresh eyes. In the digital age—one where Twitter verification is a measure of authenticity and bloggers post images without any concern for copyright—questions about identity, originality and reality feel like a natural part of conversation, but Freeman and Neykov have compiled a range of works that make the audience reconsider what they see.

“Blind Cut” opens 19 January 2012 at Marlborough Chelsea and runs through 18 February 2012.

More images of work from the show after the jump