vernissages | NYC, April 5-9

Among unseasonably cold or warm weather spring has arrived in New York and the majority of trees are not in full bloom yet. Nevertheless walking to vernissages is always a pleasant activity bringing peacefulness and enjoyment. Below are my picks of the week, with a preference for geometric explorations:

Pat Steir at Pace Print

Enrico Castellani at Dominique Lévy Gallery

Rethinking Space: Work from Post-War Italy at De Buck Gallery

Dennis Adams at Kent Fine Art

Olivia Fraser mandalas and other sacred geometries at "The Sacred Garden" at Sundaram Tagore

Vernissages | NYC: Atara Baker at Fox Gallery NYC

An unusual thought provoking pop-up exhibition is on view at Fox Gallery NYC: the mixed media paintings /anthropomorphic masks by Atara Baker, an Israeli born and California based artist who spent over a decade in South Africa. The curator Annette Benda-Fox relates Baker's work to the recent exhibition of Picasso's sculptural work at MoMA "Walking through MoMA’s historic Picasso sculpture exhibit last month, I was once again struck by the impact non-western (African, Oceanic) art exerted upon modern art in the 20th century.  From Picasso’s revolutionary Les Demoiselles d’Avignon through Brancusi, Paul Klee, Giacometti, David Smith, Henry Moore, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Keith Haring, John Michel-Basquiat, Antoni Tapies,  and others, primal energy has imbued the artist’s vision and work. I first observed this while cataloging African and Oceanic art for Sotheby's. I was deeply affected by the works' emotional power, beauty and symbolism.

vernissages | NYC October 1

Canal Street & Varick, October 1, 7:48pm

 

Robert Wilson "Black & White" at The National Arts Club

 

 

Rashid Johnson “Anxious Men” and  "Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s", at The Drawing Center

vernissages | Center for Book Arts

Two exhibitions at Center for Book Arts draw attention on the book as art form, beyond the analog object we are familiar with. 

The exhibition /mit ðə detə/: Source Materials Visualized presents "artists’ books, book-related artworks, and text-based new media that are visual interpretations, extrapolations, and recontextualizations of researched source materials such as data analysis, surveying, mapping, plotting, data mining, statistics, analytics, observations, and schemes." Here books as object include even the embodiment or visualization of digital data, where electronic quantified realities are presented with an aesthetic statement.

The exhibition Embraced: the International Community  is the fourth and final exhibition of the Center’s 40th anniversary year-long celebration; it "examines the influence the Center has had on the international book arts scene as well as the international artists who have come to the Center to study, exhibit, or teach".

camminando & vernissages | "It's been a hard day's" Spring Evening

"It's been a hard day's" evening and I have been tired and upset.
     My usual dealing with my still legal spouse non-sense and irrational behavior, this morning has been aggravated by hearing of the appointment of new chief architect at New York City Transit (NYCT), Such appointment is related to of this NY State agency's corruption and nepotism, which I have been a victim myself in 2004.
      Focusing on the PhD work helped, yet a sense of frustration about my domestic situation coupled with the NYCT unhappy memories of discrimination, almost took over. But, as usual walking provided healing.
      My destination was the exhibition of paintings by the Hungarian Simon Hantaï (1922 – 2008) at Mnuchin Gallery, in the Upper West Side, The exhibition, titled "Simon Hantaï | Pliage: The First Decade", included paintings from the 1960s, created using pliage, (“folding”) technique. It was quite uncanny that the artist was Hungarian-born but Paris-based, similarly to Rufolf Laban, to whom I am devoting good part of my days while working on the PhD literature review.
     I found solace in the end of the afternoon sunlight, making the city skyline reflections nostalgic and comforting. The park was majestic and calming, so were the paintings.
   
    Art and nature...Spring is here, at last!

Midtown skyline from Oak Bridge

Crossing Central Park, on my way to the Upper East Side

"Simon Hantaï | Pliage: The First Decade" at Mnuchin Gallery

 

A waxing moon behind Belvedere castle

Total walk length: 4.5 km

Vernissages & camminando | Not the Usual Art Materials in Chelsea, March 26

It was a quite inspiring evening, and the theme du jour was finding materials outside art supply stores to make art. Anything goes, from spiderwebs to shoes, nails and broken bottle. Yet a vibrant evening showing that art making is live and well. 

"live" and completed spiderwebs in display in a darkened room

Spiderweb, spiders and manmade networks: Tomás Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar

"Arman And César" at Allan Stone Project

Joyce Kozloff "Maps + Patterns" at DC Moore

Annette Lemieux "Everybody wants to be a catchy tune." at Kent Fine Art,

West 25 Street