Vernissages NYC | Chelsea June 23

"Bolt Out of the Blue" at Sean Kelly

Scott Ogden at Ricco-Maresca

"Intersections" at Marloborough

"The Unfinished Film" at Barbara Gladstone

"Migrations" at Freight+Volume

Performace NYC | A different Summer Solstice Celebration

This year the first day of summer began with an overcast sky and I decided to skip my annual solstice celebration with a meditation of setting sun. But I was not disappointed landing at Hendershot Gallery, which hosted a "Special Performance by Christopher Brooks and Christopher Lancaster". Christopher Brooks created a figurative portrait of Christopher Lancaster playing the cello.




Before the performance I also had a chance to visit the remarkable exhibition "Of Memory and Time" themes which I explore quite often in my own work —time more than memory.

Installation views from "On Memory and Time"

Vernissages NYC | Chelsea June 16: Geometry, Minimalism, Post-Minimalism

Hisao Hanafusa at Gary Snyder Project

"Conversations In Post-Minimalism Abstraction" at Leo Konig

Susanna Starr at Elizabeth Harris Gallery

Performances | Improvisation | Music

Down to the Lower East Side on Monday evenings is where you will find us for the next few weeks.








And why? Because The Stone at 2nd Street and Avenue C is the setting for music improv performances organized by the Woodstock-based Creative Music Studio (www.creativemusicstudio.org).




Karl Berger inspires, teaches, and leads performances from the piano.







From the opposite end of the performers, Ingrid Sertso's vocalizations soar above, jump in with, and underpin the other performers.

This jazz-inspired, world-sounding music, with western underpinnings presents something new every time.

Vernissages NYC | Geometry: Selected Works from the Estate of Mary Ann Unger

2011 witnesses a major comeback to geometry in visual arts, often in the work of artists whose creation date to the pre-digital era. Another important exhibition opened yesterday at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery: "Geometry: Selected Works from the Estate of Mary Ann Unger". The power of geometry and complex forms was explored in great depth by the late artist, who died of breast cancer in 1998. Unger was mainly known for her large scale three-dimensional public art works at the borderline between architecture and on sculpture, work shown in several major institutions, including the Albright-Knox, Hirschhorn, and Neuberger Museums. The work shown at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery is mainly two-dimensional: repetitions of primary geometric forms originate organic patterns and becomes a grammar for bio-geometric shapes.
A compelling exhibition, celebrating the power and harmony of geometry.

Geometry: Selected Works from the Estate of Mary Ann Unger
June 14 – July 22, 2011
Maxwell Davidson Gallery
724 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor

Exhibitions NYC | "Savage Beauty": Trans-Human

“Savage Beauty”, the Alexander McQueen retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, is a must see.
The majority of McQueen’s designs shown at the exhibition are not wearable —as they do not perform the utilitarian function of clothes. His fabrications are often extension of the human body, which metamorphoses into snakes, trees, sea creatures; a reality which transforms nature into a fantastic world, where unicorns, butterflies, mussels and bones —among many other nature artifacts— become prosthesis of the human body in a surrealistic dark vision.
Romanticism is the recurring theme in many different versions, from the darkness of gothic to the more ethereal
McQueen’s design production was extremely prolific, often at the borderline between fashion and art. His fashion shows were real performance art experiences, including multimedia non only as enhancement of the fashion items presented, but as expression of his visionary thinking and designing. The movies shown are best representing of this thinking, as they can best communicate the itinerary taken by the designer in his creations.
The exhibition was somewhat disturbing but made me think.

And if you seek "grounding" visit the roof installation by Anthony Caro, very much down to Earth, compared to the surreal worlds of Alexander McQueen.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
Metropolitan Museum of Art
May 4, 2011–August 7, 2011

camminando MIAMI | Holocaust Museum

Holocaust Museum of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation

“I memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust”

This is not a large memorial in area, but impact and sensitivity is not compromised in conveying emotional gravitas. Architect & Sculptor Kenneth Treister was successful in creating a disturbingly beautiful and poignant moment of reflection in a tucked away corner close to the action of infamous South Beach. Meant to provide a haven of remembrance and knowledge of an horrendous slash of history, Treister created achingly expressive full-size bronze sculptures throughout the site culminating in a 42 foot hand with 1000 figures crying out in anguish as they reach out to humanity.

Opened in 1990, the surprisingly evocative twists and turns of this tribute earn the title of “Memorial”. One emerges with the consciousness touched; uplifted to a time and place to clutch in our hearts and minds: reflecting pools, black granite, pink Jerusalem stone, names, historical facts, shrines and tunnels all bring us to a place of deep contemplation.

1933-1945 Meridian Avenue,

Miami Beach, FL 33139

Phone: 305 538 1663

Hours: 9:00AM - Sunset

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

http://www.holocaustmmb.org/

Heron having a contemplative moment on the steps of the Memorial

camminando NYC | Walking the Line and Encountering a "Roof Piece"

The High Line hosted the recreation of Trisha Brown Dance Company's "Roof Piece" on its 40th anniversary.
Ten dancers performed on different rooftops surrounding the southern end of the High Line, mimicing each other's improvised movements.
The northern end of elevated park also just opened. It was a lovely evening, in a successful, although unusual, marriage between industrial archeology and nature.

The new High Line extension celebrated by AOL with inflatable sculptures

camminando | NYC: Sol LeWitt "Structures, 1965-2006" at City Hall Park

A great encounter while I was walking uptown on Broadway, emerging from the belly of New Amsterdam: Sol LeWitt "Structures, 1965-2006" at City Hall Park.

Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) is one of the prophets of minimalism and art based on geometry, therefore, one of my favorite artists. His work spans from two-dimensional drawings and prints to three-dimensional artwork such as wall installations, sculptures (defined structures). Almost all his oeuvre is based on the repetition of a vocabulary of simple (primitive) shapes: triangles, circles, squares, cubes and prisms. Almost all of the above, on view at the City Hall Park exhibition, organized by the Public Art Fund.




Quite in contrast with typical Sol LeWitt's work is one his latest workd "Splotch" (2005). The description instead remarks that the work, in spite of its visual appearance is generated by a rigorous process based on laws of projections, combining extrusions of two-dimensional shapes with color. The work was also fabricated from a three-dimensional digital model —quite a déjà vu...

Public art, geometry and minimalism in a green space: what can I ask more?

Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006
City Hall Park
between Broadway, Park Row and Chambers Streets
May 24 - Dec 2, 2011
Mon – Sun: 6 am – 9 pm