Late last year, Philip Roth announced that he had retired from fiction. His profligacy and his “struggle with writing” over, Mr. Roth, 79, told The New York Times that he now spends most of his days dicking around with his new iPhone. “I haven’t read a word for two months,” he said. “I pull this thing out and play with it.” Read More
Nothing about 109 East Ninth Street screams secret art gallery. But then, a speakeasy wouldn’t install a neon sign reading “hidden hooch!” The façade of the five-story brick building, which may have been white at one point, is gray and graffitied. A bar sporting shamrock decorations dominates the bottom floor.
Call the gallery’s burner phone and the exhibiting artist will come down and open the door. These days it’s Daniele Frazier, who led the way up narrow stairs to an unmarked pewter-colored portal on the third floor. Inside is a bright, tidy room about a third the size of a subway car. This is SRO Gallery, an aptly named endeavor run by Patterson Beckwith, a founding member of the now-defunct Art Club 2000 (the collective’s work is currently in “1993: Experimental Jet Set and Trash, No Star” at the New Museum). Read More
Bjarne Melgaard will soon take over the Luxembourg & Dayan townhouse on East 77th Street with his show “A New Novel,” which coincides with the publication of, yes, his latest novel, but promises to fairly dramatically transform the space. Read More
Having conquered the Upper East Side (Luxembourg & Dayan, to be precise) and Chelsea (Zach Feuer), Mark Flood will soon take Brooklyn with a show of his black light paintings at a basement in Bushwick. Read More
The week after next, the Lower East Side’s Half Gallery will open “Hearsay,” a show of work by three female artists in their twenties. The show will feature the work of downtowner Jeanette Hayes, recent Carnegie Mellon graduate Jay Miriam and Girls star Jemima Kirke, a RISD grad and painter who has always described herself as an accidental actor. Read More
Last week Metro Pictures opened a show by the artist Andreas Slominski, best known for his previous work involving traps for mice, birds, dogs, etc., that was about sperm. Sperm was mostly the medium and sperm was even the title (“Sperm”). Just sperm! One room had a few scattered sandals, with the semen of a black panther on it—Sperm of a Black Panther (2012). The show really aims to get your attention in the first room, where you’ll find Sperm of Two Pilots (2012), said sperm high on the wall, just above a stack of hay. Read More
When you step off the elevator in the nondescript Flatiron building that houses Terence Koh’s latest project (at 1133 Broadway every night from 7 to 9 p.m. through Sept. 22), you’ll feel a bit lost. The hallways are painted a dull yellow and have linoleum floors, like a public high school, and the room numbers are in the four digits because you’re up on the 26th floor. Read More
Early next year Paul Kasmin gallery will present a show of works by Deborah Kass that centers around her “Yentl” series, Warhol-inspired pieces that feature Barbra Streisand in her role from that film. The works were mostly made some 10 years ago, and Mr. Kasmin intends to show about 10 to 15 of them. Read More
When the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off Isola del Giglio in January, killing 32 people, its captain made headlines because, far from going down with the ship, he fled the scene and was ordered by a coast guard officer to return. Remember those tapes? “Listen [Captain] Schettino,” reads the English transcript, “you saved yourself from the sea, but I am going to … really do something bad to you … I am going to make you pay for this. Go on board, [expletive]!” The Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn found poetry in this. Read More
