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Openings

By Rozalia Jovanovic 6/13/12 9:45am

Openings

Natalie Frank, 'Portrait of S' (Courtesy the artist and Fredericks & Freiser)

Jonathan Safran Foer Co-Curates Retrospective Exhibition of Fictional Painter

Author Jonathan Safran Foer is teaming up with Samuel Messer, a painter and associate dean of Yale School of Art, on a retrospective exhibition at Fredericks & Freiser gallery in Chelsea. The only thing is, the retrospective, which opens June 21, is for a fictional character named “S—.”

“Retrospective of S” is really a summer group show—with a twist. The paintings in this female artist’s show are actually done by 10 different artists selected by Mr. Messer: Natalie Frank, Rochelle Feinstein, Francesca Lo Russo, Josephine Messer, Judith Linhares, Njideka Akunyili, Caitlin Cherry, Chie Fueki, Jackie Gendel and Jennifer Packer. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 6/11/12 7:47pm

Openings

15 Photos

Andre Saraiva and Aurel Schmidt at the Hole's "Portrait of a Generation"

A Portrait of a Generation at the Hole

There was a bodyguard inside the Hole gallery on Thursday night next to a velvet rope. A large sculpture of Mickey Mouse with a large and erect penis stood on one side of him. On the other side was what looked like one of the coin-operated children’s rides you might see outside of a Rite-Aid, but it was in the shape of a large pink penis. Once the guard lifted the rope, you could walk into Andre Saraiva’s exhibition, “Andrepolis.” A pinkish haze hung in the air, through which a miniature city of Art Deco-styled sculptures of buildings glowed blue, pink and purple, decked with delicate Edison lights on top. Neon lights flashed above their tiny doors, denoting which city each building represented—apropos for a nightlife impresario and artist whose Le Baron club has venues in Paris, Tokyo and New York. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 6/06/12 3:40pm

Openings

One of the portraits in "Portraits of a Generation." (Courtesy @Kathygrayson)

I’ll Paint Yours if You Paint Mine: The Hole’s ‘Portaits of a Generation’

Recent art history is filled examples of artists painting their compatriots. Think of Philip Pearlstein doing Andy Warhol, or Warhol doing Joseph Beuys. More than 100 more examples are about to join that tradition, thanks to the Hole gallery’s director, Kathy Grayson, who has asked scores of artists—including Yoko Ono, Ryan McGinley, Terence Koh, Tim Noble and Sue Webster (downtown types, for the most part)—to portray each other for a show that opens tomorrow, called “Portraits of a Generation.” Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 5/29/12 3:27pm

Openings

Candy Darling. Cut-up of footage taken from the film 'Women in Revolt,' 1971 by Andy Warhol and Paul Morissey. (Courtesy The Outlaw Art Museum)

Candy Darling’s ‘Drawings and Musings’ For Sale

Tomorrow evening, the Clayton Patterson Gallery & Outlaw Art Museum on the Lower East Side will open the exhibition “Candy Darling: Drawings & Musings 1969/1972.” The show features works by Candy Darling, the late transgender artist and muse of Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Salvador Dalì. The show will consist of 17 drawings along with photographs and a large painting from Darling’s estate, the only one she ever created.  Read More

By Dan Duray 5/18/12 10:51am

Openings

wes

East Meets West in Wes Lang’s Show at Half Gallery

Last night Half Gallery opened its show of works by Wes Lang, “Here Comes Sunshine,” which featured drawings and silkscreens with a tattoo aesthetic and the Tao Te Ching.

There may have been some of those faithful to the Tao, but the crowd outside the tiny Lower East Side space seemed to be more on the tattoo side of things, with plenty of leather and skull-themed jewelry. There weren’t as many motorcycles out front as you might have thought, though co-owner Bill Power’s teal Vespa was parked across the street. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 5/16/12 9:52am

Openings

9 Photos

(Courtesy the artist and Half Gallery)

Preview Wes Lang’s ‘Here Comes Sunshine,’ at Half Gallery

If you visit the artist Wes Lang at his studio, we’ve heard, you might get “sucked into the porn hole.” He’s apparently got a lot of porn magazines lying around. The artist said so himself in a Vice video from a few years back. Thursday night, the artist has a new show, “Here Comes Sunshine,” opening at Half Gallery, Bill Powers’s enterprise on the Lower East Side, at which the artist will unveil 10 new works, including drawings and paintings using color pencil, airbrush and automotive paint on steel. Of the work we’ve seen in the show, it seems Mr. Lang is still kind of loitering in the porn hole. And his work still takes its cues from “tattoo flash” and other Americana—the artist’s own body is covered in tattoos. Yet, while Mr. Lang’s work has been known to push the envelope—he got booted from a group show at Deitch Projects in 2007 for including works that had images of African-American stereotypes—his latest work seems pretty tame. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 5/09/12 6:37pm

Openings

5 Photos

Wherever you go, 2012

Ari Marcopoulos Unveils New Work

Ari Marcopoulos, the photographer known for his gritty and personal images of the downtown arts scene in the 1980s, and later his navigation of the cultures of snowboarders and skateboarders in the 1990s, will unveil a new exhibition tomorrow, “Wherever You Go,” at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibition includes a few photographs from a new series he shot of New York Knicks player Tyson Chandler, who just last week won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. Mr. Chandler is a relatively new subject for the photographer who in 2010 created a fanzine of the sports star with Camilla Venturini from a stream of digitally sourced images. Read More

By Sarah Douglas 5/07/12 2:05pm

Openings

5 Photos

Helmut Newton, Landing France, 1993

Perry Rubenstein to Inaugurate Los Angeles Gallery With Helmut Newton, Neil Young

Last spring, when New York-based art dealer Perry Rubenstein announced that he and his wife Sara Fitzmaurice, head of the PR company Fitz & Co., would be making the move to Los Angeles, he said he’d be opening a gallery there in fall 2011. Well, it’s been a bit delayed, but Mr. Rubenstein’s gallery is set to open its doors on June 1, with “Helmut Newton: Sex and Landscapes,” an exhibition of 40 large-scale photographs that come directly from the fashion photographer’s estate. June 2 will bring an event with Neil Young and street artist Shepard Fairey, on the occasion of the release of Mr. Young’s new album. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 4/02/12 12:37pm

Openings

E.V. Day and Kembra Pfahler, 'Giverny' (Photo courtesy Rozalia Jovanovic)

Giverny Meets the Emerald City at the Hole

Friday night, true to the words of gallerist Kathy Grayson, her gallery, the Hole, had been transformed into Monet’s gardens at Giverny, or as close an approximation as can be had on the Bowery. The installation was created to house the photographs taken by E.V. Day of Kembra Pfahler at Giverny in Ms. Day’s signature futuristic style, which feature a campy twist: Ms. Pfahler, nude, covered in brightly colored paint. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 3/09/12 3:32pm

Openings

Photo courtesy Rozalia Jovanovic

Fab Five Freddy Saw the Old Friends at Rammellzee Opening

“It’s a bit of a story, but he found us,” said filmmaker Charlie Ahearn about the late graffiti artist Rammellzee at the opening of “Rammellzee: The Letter Racers,” the debut show for Suzanne Geiss Company, a new gallery in Soho. “He was seeking out people he wanted to contact like Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fred was working with me on the film.”

Mr. Ahearn, who was speaking of the iconic ’80s hip-hop film he directed, Wild Style, was standing with Gallerist in a black-lit room. Above us, there were 26 “letter racers”—skateboards souped up and hung from the ceiling like a flock of aerodynamic, robotic birds flying madly out of a cave. Read More