Andrzej Zielinski at DCKT Armory Show Booth

Dennis Christie and Ken Tyburski of DCKT gallery blew everybody out of the water last week at the Armory Show 2010 on Pier 94. First of all, those guys are amazingly productive, even outside of the Armory Booth: a) since the gallery lies a few doors down from the New Museum on the Bowery, they’re open every day of the week (in order to accommodate both the museum crowd, and the crowd that goes to the museum while it’s closed and turned away), b) Ken and Dennis are die hard and always working it behind the desk (I still have never seen an intern), and finally c) they curate a rigorous schedule of exhibitions, most often including a second project in the back of the gallery. Jumping back to the booth, this last week at the Armory, the dynamic duo planned on 4 different exhibitions in 5 days!

The artists on view this week all share one dominating characteristic: seduction. Seduction through color and texture, through mystery, and through the enticement of a woman. The booth is quaint and handsome, somehow the perfect size to house exhibitions by five of the gallery’s artists. On Wednesday, Cordy Ryman threw his last name out the window with his colorful, densely textured, block paintings – so chunky they might be sculptures. One multi-paneled baby blue piece began as a painting on the wall, and smoothly transitioned out onto the floor. Other works rested firmly on the booth’s wall, or stood coolly in the corner. On Thursday, Andrzej Zielinski’s candy-coated fluorescent paintings assaulted the eye with color. The pieces radiated light, and emitted some sort of happy gas, putting a smile on my face.

On Friday, I was able to access an art fair version of DCKT’s most recent show at the gallery, a photographic essay by Zoe Crosher. The viewer (voyeur) is allowed into the private life of Michelle DuBois during the time while she was living around military bases in the Pacific Rim during the 70s and early 80s. We see Du Bois, a prostitute, posing for pictures taken by unknown photographers (her clients). Evidence that DuBois was a playful prostitute, she dresses up as a cavewoman, a cowgirl, secretary, or anything else that could set her off giggling, as she often is seen doing in the photographs. Most notably, she is consistently confident, sexy, and proud of her womaness, rather than the contemporary idea of a prostitute (the kind most often portrayed on crime dramas) as weak and ashamed. In these various bedroom scenarios (although, she is always full dressed), DuBois comes off as coy, rather than scandalous – an innocent girl rather than a provocative temptress.

On the fourth day, Ted O’Sullivan was introduced to the booth. Throughout the installation of over a dozen dark, sexy paintings, the viewer’s eye jumps from genitalic focal point to genitalic focal point. One canvas looks like a murkier version of a Peter Doig butterfly, floating not in real space, but perhaps through a grey, foggy camera lens. If Tim O’Sullivan’s paintings had a smell, it would be musky. On view throughout the five days of the Armory Show was a table by Ryan Humphrey, a chaotic array of wooden wheels placed under a glass tabletop that proudly shouts their brand of extreme sport: skateboards, BMX, and so on. Accompanied by four fluorescent, exotically patterned chairs, Ken and Dennis were able to sell in style.

On top of the quality of the artwork, the gallerists have installed, destalled, and installed without flaw. There was no evidence of hardware, paint splatters, spackling, or nail holes from missed measurements or hurried installation. One could not even see their tools or packing materials lying around. With the fair running nine hours a day, with various events in between, one wonders if Ken or Dennis slept at all last week! I can imagine them frantic and bustling all night long installing the next day’s show and packing up the previous day’s show, yet still presenting themselves as cool and calm – and stylish might I add – during the course of the day. Now the Armory is over, and I can guarantee that they are back at work, tending to Josh Azzarella’s solo photography exhibition and already planning for the next one.

Zoe Crosher at DCKT Armory Show Booth

Ted O'Sullivan at DCKT Armory Show Booth

El Museo del Barrio hosted a panel discussion on Wednesday, 3/10 as tribute to the conclusion of BBBP, the Bronx Blue Bedroom Project.

Many participating artists attended, including Matthew Burcaw, who also wore a curatorial hat during the two years the Blue Bedroom served as an unconventional community art space.

The robin blue “space” was the bedroom of Mexican-American artist Blanka Amezkua who made her bed scarce when receiving visitors coming to see the art installations, which changed each month. Through the use of such an intimate place, she accomplished two goals simultaneously. First, she created a haven for artists to exhibit their completed work or create site-specific work for the immediate, surrounding community, better known as neighbors. Secondly, she gave artists with no previous show experience the encouragement, AND the opportunity to present their work to the public for the first time.

As measured by the packed house and enthusiasm of the audience, BBBD successfully crossed multiple cultural boundaries to create an impact on a community. Moving forward, Ms. Amezkua expressed an interest in getting out of the bedroom and taking her project to the street. Given her huge success in the Bronx, crowd control may be an issue next time around.

Read more on the closing of the project, known as “Blue Was Never My Color, Anyway!”

Megawords magazine is produced by Anthony Smyrski and Dan Murphy.  An attractive little mag with more photos than words.  The opening party gave me another excuse to visit Printed Matter.   Here are the boys, and apparently they all grew up in Philly together.  Check out the zine at megawordsmagazine.com

Just a quick post on Scope Art Fair.  Didn’t join Morgan on his tours, but did get a chance to see some art on opening night. Bumped into some friends and familiar faces.  It’s the first day, so everyone is still looking good and fresh!

(image courtesy Anonymous Gallery)

(image courtesy Anonymous Gallery)

Artcards provides special coverage during Armory Arts Week this year.

• Read reviews: check back here for reviews on which fairs to visit and which part of the fairs are not to be missed.
• Join us for private tours at SCOPE Art Fair, Chelsea, and Williamsburg.
• Create your own plan for the week, use the Artcards NYC website.
• See our quick list of all 13 fairs.

image: courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

If you’ve never seen Pae White’s work, this would be a good excuse to go see the 2010 Whitney Biennial.  Being an admirer of Ms. White’s work, which has narrative qualities combined with designer’s aesthetics, I was not disappointed at her chosen piece for the Biennial.

When the elevator doors opened to a huge Pae White tapestry on the third floor of the Whitney I was mesmerized. This is my first Whitney Biennial experience, I have to admit, even though I’ve been in New York most of my life. But 2010 is starting out good, as the optimistic buzz has been going around in the art world.

The huge tapestry shows a cloud of smoke, in its pure form, blown up to a dramatic proportion, revealing subtle changes in light, shadow, form containing air, and all the connotations behind it. I give respect to the curators who decided to put this piece as a greeting to an amazing show. If time allows, I’d write a broader description about the entire Biennial but I’d rather focus on one good piece: Pae White’s Smoke Knows. At first glance, you might think that it’s a painting, but stepping closer, or for those who knows Ms. White’s work, you’ll know that it’s a more complicated process.  As a huge hanging tapestry, it’s quite complicated to produce. Is there another artist out there that uses this traditional method of tapestry professionally in their work? I can only think of the stuff hanging in the Met or the Cloisters dating back to the Medieval days.

The photographic image of smoke can suggest many things, but to the modern eye it becomes an illusion, both sexy and dreamy. White describes it as the “‘dream of becoming something other than itself’ by contrasting an image of something immaterial with the physicality of fabric”.  Isn’t that the goal of being an artist?  To become something other than themselves…  As I walk past White’s smoky image into the other works, I instantly have to shift into numerous other little worlds. Although I have to say, the third floor is my favorite, I didn’t find any other pieces as strong as Pae White’s. She is brilliant in her choice of method, subject, simplicity, and finally in scale.

The Whitney Biennial runs from Feb. 25 to May 30.

While having the potential to come off as a bit of a Debbie Downer, Roberta Smith contributes seasoned wisdom with traditionalist tones in this weekend’s NY Times Arts & Leisure section.

The title, Post-Minimal to the Max, is odd and misleading, so I suggest disregarding it, but the writing nicely frames the current art moment as a scaled-up rehash of themes from 70’s Conceptualism. Smith begins with a roll call of recent New York museum exhibitions (Gabriel Orozco, Urs Fischer, Tino Sehgal) and briefly laments the season’s menu as “dispiritingly one-note.” While a fan of these shows, she fears that they represent the congealing of another chapter of institutionally approved Art History (a behavior she later insists that we now know too much to repeat). While we all have our own preferences, and Smith is no exception, the article is not a critique of one vision in favor of another, but rather a concerned observation of the lack of variety in the shows that are currently on view. Absent, she notes, is an interest in the personal, and the urgently hand-made. Following this, is a reading of where we’re at, based on what’s missing. But like a doctor telling us that we need more fiber, what’s being advocated is not fiber, but a balanced diet overall.

“We cannot live by the de-materialization — or the slick re-materialization — of the art object alone.”

After all, variety is good for the art wold for the same reason that it makes for healthier DNA: regular exposure to the unfamiliar allows us to keep growing as a whole. The idea here is not that the Art world is based on the survival of the fittest (much as it can often feel that way), but rather that a diversity of visions is crucial to our understanding of the present, and also makes for a more interesting conversation. Imploring curators (the real audience of this article) to think outside of the ‘hivemind,’ she invites a larger conversation about our continued obsession with newness, nowness, and brand names. Although referring to a beehive, this potent little term also calls to mind the frenzied buzz of Wall Street, where information pertaining to the patterns of the collective are studied in order that individuals may profit from it. But whether you are a broker or a bee, your business is a working knowledge of the thing in demand, not the thing that nobody is talking about. This tendency of market economies to seek out and define a normative goal leads directly the condition that Smith writes about: a kind of aesthetic myopia where all we want to see is what is getting seen the most. This model can also be seen in everything from viral videos on the internet, to the use of algorithms developed in the financial sector to analyze (and exploit) trends in the Art market.

What gives the article its call-to-reason tone is the nature of the moment from which Smith is attempting to right our ship. Her argument is reminiscent of one recently put forth by the White House, attributing the success of Fox News to the simple fact that it is selling the clearest narrative for people to follow. So too in the Art world do we want clarity, and the more others are following something, the less likely will it be a waste of our time to do the same; at least we will have something to say when it comes up in conversation. Here Smith’s article rightly reminds us that the aim of the Arts was never for all of us perceive the same reality. We look for alternative ways of looking, or at least that’s why I got into this racket.

If, as Don Draper says, Happiness is a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that ‘Whatever you’re doing is OK,’ then surely nothing is more annoying than a Times critic who cries for a return to common sense. It is a risky position to take, as such a plea can easily make people feel judged for the fun they are having. To me it sounds like good advice though, for those in the Art world looking to move past the values inherited during the last decade’s proximity to the market.