Day 3 in New York City – Saturday November 19, 2011

After yesterday, we decided to take it a bit easier.  Since the day before we forgot to eat till around 3:30pm, today we started out with a big American breakfast at the City Diner on 90^th and Broadway (check out the menu if you want to salivate a bit).  We had waffles, omelet with cheese  and fried potatoes, toast and coffee!  That got us fueled for the day!   Took the subway to Prince and started walking towards Greene St.   What follows is a summary of the galleries we saw.

1. Moss, 150 Greene Street, New York   – they are a very upscale design store with lots of very interesting pieces.  They didn’t let us take pictures here, so here a few things that I noted, and then was able to find later on the internet. The first two pieces reminded me of my friends art work: Eldad Pnini, and the last one was so simple an idea yet so beautiful in its execution that it made my imagination go wild with the possibilities.

 

Vik Muniz is a New York-based experimental media artist who has gained renown through his work with chocolate, dust and other quotidian materials. For Private Eyes, Muniz photographed and then scanned a pristine collection of over a thousand Victorian-era glass eyes. Muniz chose to arrange the eyes in a loose grid rather than a more complex pattern, valuing an appreciation of the individual objects over the composition as a whole.

Content: 48% Cellulose, 35% Latex, 17% Nylon, Finish: Washable, Reference Dimension: 10′  x 16′ 8″ ,Installation is sized, priced and produced on a project-specific basis. Flammability: Class A fire rated in accordance with ASTM E 84 tunnel test.  5, Customs: Scalable, Repeatable. Maintenance: This textile is washable, using mild soap and warm water. Vik Muniz © 2010 Maharam under license

Debi’s Notes:  The material is what is used in 3d laser printers, and while it sounds neat, its really just a soft plastic – and it looks it.  One of the things I noticed on this trip, is how to write materials used in the art  – you must make it sound interesting, and definitely not use the word “plastic”

 

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2.  William Bennett Gallery, 65 Greene Street, New York

They showed art from artists Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, and Paplo Picasso.  The prices were very reasonable as they were mostly all limited edition prints and lithographs, with a few original sketches by the artists.  Prices varied from $3,000 – $30,000

(This gallery by the way, was the first of my ”Marilyn’s” in New York.  She really is alive!)

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3. SICIS NEXT ART, 470 Bromme Street, New York

This was a tile and furniture design store that looked like an art gallery!  It was so funcky I had to go in.  Again, no photo’s were allows, so I will show you from their online catalog.  All these are Mosaics!  I loved this store!

(Again, – my lovely Marilyn!)

 

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4. Evolution Nature Store, 120 Spring Street, New York

Lazar said this store is a must, and he was right!  The coolest store for guys and people who are into dead things! Skeletons, taxi dermal animals, fossils, edible bug snacks,  and other ickey stuff (that I happen to love!) I bought some “snacks” for my boys so they can gross out their friends, and a cast of a real brain (for an idea I am working on)

 

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5. Across the street from the Evolution Nature Store,  was the Opera Gallery, 115 Spring Street.

They were having a show by The London Police.  I didn’t really connect so much to it, but downstairs I found a gem by artist, Delphine Diallo   (see second picture) – I recommend checking out her site, she has some nice work, and she shows  a video how she makes her collages.

London Police

Delphine Diallo, Empire of Illusion, mixed media on paper

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6. Mimi Ferzt Gallery, 81 Greene Street, New York.

This gallery shows contemporary Russian Artists only.  The gallery Director, Andrew C. Sarewitz, was very friendly and showed us around the gallery giving explanations of the different artists and works.  One artist that  struck me when we walked in was Janis Jakobson. These light objects are made out of milky clear silicon (the cheap $2 a tube type that builders use).

 

When Andrew took us to the lower gallery, I saw a painting  by Nikolai Makarov, that mesmerized me

 

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7.  Passed a window front that simply MADE ME GO INTO THE STORE. –

 

Boy, was I NOT disappointed!  Kiki De Montparnasse, on 79 Greene Street, is an exclusive designer boutique for lingerie.  But more than just the amazing lingerie that was in the store was the design and nick knacks and the subtle (and not so subtle) sexuality that permeated the store. I love how the design of stores and restaurants in NYC are a work of art in themselves!

 

With everything having a price tag of over $400, I decided not to try anything on.

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8. Since we went into a store for ME, I dragged Lazar into a store for HIM. If we were going to work on his image, I wanted to check out this gorgeously sexy men’s cloth store  – John Varvatos, 122 Spring Street

Come on Ladies, wouldn’t you just LOVE a guy to dress like that?

Lazar tried on a Jacket or two and then some vests, but when he saw the price tags ($400 – $2,000), his face turned very pale and he started to look  like a mouse in a trap.  He wouldn’t let me take pictures this time.  I think finding a new look for Lazar is not going to be so easy!

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9. Team Gallery, inc., 83 Grand St. New York – Last Gallery for the Day! – CONCEPTUAL, CONCEPTUAL, CONCEPTUAL

This exhibition, as you can guess, was very conceptual, and as Lazar and I sat in the empty room watching the Video Art, we had a discussion about conceptual art.  The question being, “If you have to have it explained to you through text, does that mean the art is still good or has failed”  Neither of us understood this exhibition at all, and while sitting watching the video art, we had a difference of opinion if the “change bulb” sign was part of the piece or just a malfunction.  I will include here the photo’s and the Press Release, and I would be more than happy to create a discussion on this subject online with you.

Cory Arcangel vs. Pierre Bismuth

Cory Arcangel and Pierre Bismuth

November 3rd – December 23rd 2011

83 Grand Street

Conceptualists Cory Arcangel and Pierre Bismuth disorient viewers by remixing and reversing emanations from contemporary mass media and pop culture. In this collaborative exhibition, each artist maintains his identifiable signature in the presentation of seven works: three Bismuth pieces chosen by Arcangel, three Arcangel projects selected by Bismuth, and one work created in tandem.

The collaborative piece included here is a presentation of Guy Debord’s 1973 film Société du Spectacle (Society of the Spectacle) with the instructional signal of a projector — “CHANGE BULB” — permanently blinking over the image track. While the original film contains intertitles listing philosophies excerpted from the filmmaker’s critical text of the same title, Arcangel and Bismuth insert an overriding, permanent text that operates as a reminder of the inevitable breakdown of technological devices and systems of viewing. Infused with the artists’ distinct brand of subtle wit and intellectual reversal, the action is a particularly Debordian gesture of viewer interuption — adétournement — exactly the kind of disruptive act the original film was considered to perform through its edits, excerpts, and appropriations.

 

The new works by Cory Arcangel further the artist’s practice of personalizing public data by changing a variable in a media or entertainment artifact to reveal moments of omission, obsolecence, and failure. In Living Situation, Arcangel re-inserts several coughs previously erased from a live recording of a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major (“Eroica”), Op. 55 by the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Arcangel’s newly remastered digital file is played on an iPod through a new lifestyle product called the XL Model Geneva Lab GenevaSound Stereo. In Various Books / Various Scents, Arcangel infuses a selection of influential cultural texts and works of popular literature, like Ice-T’s autobiography, with mists of celebrity-endorsed perfumes. The gesture weds the marketing agendas of celebrity scents and pop-lit with the critical strategies of theoretical texts, all of which threaten to evaporate in an instant.

 

Similarly, Pierre Bismuth creates new work by manipulating the intrinsic structural qualities of media objects and images. Redeemed presents the discarded fragments from various neon fabrications, most likely advertisements. Bismuth realizes the mismatched sizes and colors of neon tubes as new, complete works, delivering them to their literal linguistic designations — the origin of the word neon translates to “something new” — so there is a structural completion in both form and meaning. For his 2007 video Proposal for Improbable American TV Program – Part II – Seinfeld, Bismuth adds layers and layers of the sitcom’s ubiquitous laugh track until it becomes impossible to make out any of the dialogue; the simple transformation foregrounds the invasive nature of televisual prompting. Bismuth nullifies the work of comedy with laughter.

The two artists are showing together here at the invitation of the gallery. They are not intimate friends but rather two individuals who share a certain energetic and anarchic approach toward the creation of artworks in a mode one might refer to as “parasitic”. All of the pieces which the artists have chosen for the show have been created by attaching a gesture to an artwork that already is imbued with meaning. Are the artists simply re-animating these previous meanings, merely re-contextualizing them historically, or are they creating radical new meanings through their interventions?

DEBI:  “WELL????? Any Comments??? Opinions?”

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10.  Passed by the window and had to go in!  Ingo Maurer LLC, 89 Grand Street, New York, NY 10013

THE COOLEST LIGHT/ART DESIGN STORE.   I would even go so far as to call it a Gallery of light sculptures!

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We had reached our saturation point for the day, so we went to find some nourishment.  The girl working at the Team Gallery recommended a French bistro type place close by so we headed there.  The place, Le Pain Quotidien,  was warm, inviting and had a great light menu.  Lazar ordered the Paris Ham & Aged Gruyere Tartain (Sandwich), and I ordered the same without the Ham.

We got back to Kenny’s at around 5pm, sprawled on to our couches with exhaustion and enjoyed the sound of silence for about half an hour or so.  We couldn’t get the energy up to go to Brooklyn to another art gallery opening (They start at 6pm – 8pm in New York – so early!), so we crashed out and woke up around 10pm.  I made us both  a small cup of tea and we started talking art.  We made a game of it, taking turns.  One penetrating question about art and life each. (If only we had recorded this conversation it would have made a great script!)  This kept going back and forth, till we decided to continue the question answer game over dinner.  It was around Midnight, but we found a great restaurant open all night called the French Roast on 86^th and Broadway .  Ordered a sandwich then headed over to  Prohibition on 520 Columbus St.  for some live music .

There was a band playing called Superhero and they were playing good rock cover music.  Stayed, dancing till their last song, and then walked through the cold New York night, back to our comfortable and familiar couches.

End of Day 3.

Tomorrow:  MoMA and GLAAD OutAuction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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