For a gorgeous hot summer afternoon, a must see is this season’s Met Roof Top installation is by Argentine architect Tomás Saraceno titled Cloud City.  The reflections of the glass surfaces mirror sky and tree tops as they intersect with windows and metal rivets creating a stunning illusion of land and sky hovering above you.

On the clever marketing angle, the offer the Cloud City cocktail, a toxic blue drink that comes with a dry ice stirstick!

By far the best work I saw during the Bushwick Open Studios was by Ross Tibbles. His work of mixed media and found objects, insist on something familiar and airy – yet eerily dark.  Something about his aesthetic really appeals to me.  The ripped paper mounted on half painted board, just the hood of a grey sweatshirt hanging.  I just could not take my eyes off the unbalanced yellow level with some kind of gas tank covered in yearbook portrait papier-mâché .

The icing on the delicious treat that was the Tibbles studio visit, was instead of the typical exhibition contact info postcards, Tibbles thumbtacked a ‘missing cat’ tearsheet with his contact info to the door. A work of art on its own right.

Honourable mention to JR Larson, amazing functional sculptures made of raw organic materials.  Especially love the birch trees.

Aaron Williams’ photographs are printed on paper that is crushed, wrinkled and cut to introduce new perspectives in the landscape and the other works that explore portraiture superimposed into reconstituted landscapes. Very striking.

The paintings and illustrations by Julia Norton, bring washes of vibrant colour over finely outlined layers of mountain surface drawn in pen.  The vivid colours add a vintage hyperreal quality to her washed coloured landscapes.

Loved the abstract photography by Carmen Von K.  In this age of instagram and visual photo sharing, it is such a pleasure to re-look at photography in an unconventional way. The photos are closeups of layers of tape and cardboard, but the size of the print and the way the bright pop colours intersect the textures of the tape makes looking at an non-objective photo such a pleasure.

The best part is the community aspect, as this festival is self-organized by the neighbourhood and featuring more than 4500 participants.

I hit only 2 hubs (1717 Troutman and 566 Johnson), out of the dozen proposed, but I saw some amazing spaces and some great work.

Highlights::

When you read ‘About Tom Sachs’ the explanation is usually along the lines of “innovative re-examination, re-construction and exploration of capitalist cultural icons and systems of daily life.”

For Space Program Mars, Sachs recreated his own version of NASA space mission to Mars and astronaut protocols in a series of videos, sculptures, and performative installations.

The most important part of the experience at the Armory is emphatically the ‘indoctrination.’ Participants are ‘indoctrinated’ through watching a series of videos, and then moving through the Mars stages and completing assessments and challenges in order to achieve the final prize that is access into the LEM – landing module.

I attended this show with a wonderful friend, who coincidentally works for a major aeronautic company. When one of Sachs’ studio assistants-come-indoctrinaters tried to convince us to participate in the indoctrination assessment test to be tasked with a skillful chore (either sweeping or screw sorting) – she laughed and remarked that “this is what the aeronautical field truly feels like, in regards to protocols and behaviours, and assessments” and she did not quite see the what Sachs was satirizing.

Key take aways from this remarkable program is:

a) The powertools are named after rap heros

b) Live by the bullets, especially #8 Always Be Knolling (I highly recommend watching the videos, they are spectacularly produced

Tom Sachs Always Be Knolling

c) His lucrative collaboration with Nike in creating limited edition running shoes and bags is amazing exclamation point in on a oeuvre highlighing capitalism.

Storm King Art Center is the most spectacular park, located just 150 km north of Manhattan. Featuring a breathtaking collection of monumental sculptures, from the iconic Mark Di Suvero, Daniel Buren, Alexander Calder to David Smith, Richard Serra, and many more, there are over 500 acres of plush grass and rolling hills to explore and discover.

Kadishman’s Suspended is one of my favorite sculptures at StormKing.  From a distance the perspecive gives the appearance that there are two sculptures one in foreground one further back resting on each other.  When you get closer, the smaller volume is actually suspended off the larger rectangle, and the massive scale still gives a feeling of increadible lightness (for an idea on scale, that is me jumping under the Suspended).

Andy Goldworthy’s Wall, uses found stones and weaves its way through a row of trees in a poetic nod to the man vs nature.

May Lin’s famous Wavefield of rippling waves of grass. As a part of the temporary exhibition Light & Landscape – this gorgeous Solarium by William Lamson, who fashioned the windows out of carmalized sugar making our visit to Storm King even sweeter.

Amazing illustrator Junko Mizuno food obsession at MagicPony/ Narwhal Projects

Wood benches by one of my most favorite Canadian artists, Tom Dean

Inspired by PS1 Move performance-painting by Olaf Breuning – I drip-poured enamel paint on my Munny doll in homage.

HIGHLINE

The newest art work on New York City’s Highline is a billboard by the sardonicly hilarious artist David Shrigley.  How Are You Feeling? Remarks “I’m Feeling very unstable and insecure” as the billboard continues on to ramble about feeling anxious and inadequate.  Shirgley inverts and redirects the rhetoric around marketing and self image – marketing tries to convince of unrealistic ideals only making the target demographic insecure and anxious about not being able to attain those billboard looks.

At this year’s Ted talks, Elizabeth Diller, partner at the architecture firm that designed the Highline diller scofidio + renfro, spoke about how one of the serindipidous surprises of the completed Highline is how it has become a place of rest and refuge for local New Yorkers – a population that is always on the go.

I love the juxtapostion of Diller versus Shirgley as his push of anxiousness upon her rare peaceful place in such an anxious and adrenaline fueled cities.

New York Art Fair week starts today.

With the arrival of new fairs to the North American market the fairs have divided into two seasons.

May 3-6 we have Pulse, NADA, Frieze and Verge to look forward to.

 March 7 -11 we have Armory Week with the fairs :

The ADAA – Art Dealers Association of America 

Park Avenue Armory - Park Avenue at 67th Street

Featuring 72 blue chip quality galleries who are members of the  ADAA.

The Armory Show 

Pier 92 & 94

Twelfth Avenue at 55th Street
New York City

Over 120 exhibitors from around the world, will be great to see the new inovations brought to the piers with Noah Horowitz who has recently assumed the role as Managing Director.

SCOPE Pavilion

VOLTA NY

7W 34th Street,

Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11^th Avenue - Between 27^th and 28^th Streets

The Dependent

ONE DAY ONLY!!!  This renegade fair, is one day only, featuring on the pulse emerging galleries.

THE COMFORT INN
136 LUDLOW STREET

Fountain Art Fair

69th Regiment Armory –  68 Lexington Avenue @ 25th Street

Fountain also announced this year’s fair at a new location, moving a way from the endearing yet terrifying Frying Pan.

Handsdown, Fountain Art Fair is the most fun fair on the scene.  Though the MoMA Armory Launch Party music performance is by  Neon Indian, I can’t wait for Fountian’s Friday Night opening party hosted featuring  Spirit Animal, and a DJ set by New York legend and street art pioneer Fab 5 Freddy!

I loved these works by New York based artist Erik Patton, seen at his solo show at Amos Emo in Dumbo.  Patton photographes models while projecting video scenes on them during the shoot. He then layers paint onto the printed images -creating a layering of not only media but of gender and charged emotion.

As the title of the show is Metasexual, the harmony and dichotomy is emphasized both  visually and metaphorically. We see a beautiful blond woman with a black and white naked man superimposed on her, surrounded by a radiating aura of warm colours and dark ominous shadows.  The results are both dark and glowing, but still captivating and beautiful.

I had the immense and delicious pleasure of attending a night hosted by Butter and Egg Road.

Butter and Egg Road hosts tasting programs in international cities as foodie-travel inspired private members’ club.

Founder Ivy  Ackerman, has put together an amazing program in conjunction with Armory Week – as a blend of pleasures for all the senses.

The evening starts with a Chef’s tasting at a delicious coveted NY resto, followed by Armory related gallery tours and opening parties.

Check out the calendar for upcoming events in Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, and of course Miami during Art Basel.

I had the great pleasure of attending the preview vernissage of the Cindy Sherman exhibition, opening tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art.

With all the favourite Untitled Film Stills, and the grotesque series, renaissance portraiture, to the most recent Italian housewife series – the most charming part of this retrospective is the visual narration of the maturity of her characters.

I had a fond memory revisiting her teenage girl series – a series which I saw for the first time at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s retrospective of her work in 1999, when I was a teenage girl.

Sherman continues to be an icon and a major influencer.

The collaged canvases incorporating photography and blocks of solid coloured paint by Kunié Sigiura’s work on view at Leslie Tonkonow really speaks to Greenberg-Benjamin discourse of what is painting and art in the age of mechanical reproduction.  I especially appreciated the preliminary sketches and colour blocks works presented alongside the final paintings, as true insight into the labourous explorative techniques of these works created in the 1970s .

Visually, it reminded me of one Ian Wallace’s works, http://artjetset.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/ianwallaceatyvonlambert23.jpg

Michael Sailstorfer rocket launched tree, and the breathtaking installation of waves breaking on the shore by Paul Pfeiffer.  A tranquil aesthetic show at Paula Cooper.

The space was packed full of amazingly humourous art pieces, great music, and a gorgeous crowd that would not leave even when the bar ran out of cups.

From clothing, jewellery, housewares, sculptures, and random Oldenburg-esque pop goods made in to stuffed toys, Grey Area is the destination for the perfect treasured gift.

 I want this RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA towel

 RYAN HUMPHREY Ghettoblaster

EV Day Mummified Barbie

The MoMA’s Contemporary Drawing department hosted their annual lecture with guest speaker artist Scott Treleaven.  ArtJetSet first saw works by this talented Canadian artist at NADA Miami 2008, http://artjetset.com/2008/12/24/nada-fair-miami-2/

The lecture explored the direction of how the definition of drawing is evolving.  As a young artist Treleaven created zines – most notably Salivation Army, cut and pasted Xeroxes of photos and stories.  This greatly shaped his maturer works, as he evolved his practice towards collage, and most recently abstracted collaged paintings.

Another concept discussed was how drawings that was once considered preliminary works for performance art pieces are now being absorbed into the drawing realm as unique works on paper.

Myself, as a teenager growing up in Toronto I attended many zine fairs, and find it compelling to think how the zine has evolved into the new media blog.

Carsten Höller, scientist-come-artist, hilariously delightful exhibition at the New Museum presents the familiar in a way that challenges our preconceived notions of experience.

The Mirror Carousel is strikingly beautiful but spins at an impossibly slow speed.  Not only changing the expected velocity of fun but allowing the viewer to experience riding a carousel not as a joyful carnival ride by rather at a pace to savour every elongated second of the ride. Höller’s work centres around the reinterpretations of sensory experiences, specially enjoyed the Rabbit on the Skin and the Aquarium.

Conversely, the slide propels you down through 3 floors at an ecstatic speed then violently catapults you into a room filled with strobbing fluorescent lights and neon alligators. I experienced Carten Holler’s Untitled (slide) in 2007 at the Tate Modern in London.  The Tate’s version of the installation was more of an intricate short series of slides that connected through the turbine hall a various levels.

Life, death, humour, irony, distortion of scale, pigeons… what can you say about Maurizio Cattelan’s retrospective at the Guggenheim titled All.

It was an absolute pleasure to have met Michael Snow at the opening of his new show In the Way at Jack Shainman Gallery.

Snow is one of Canada’s greatest contemporary artist, whose ground breaking experimental films revolutionized new media and recontextualized experiencing and ways of seeing and looking.

 His new video installation remphasizes what Snow does best, creating an environment where the viewer is physically engaged in active looking.

The other video work, In the Way, was shot while filming a fleeting road below while driving.  The simultaneous conflicting sensation of standing while on the floor is projected and extraordinatry speed of movement is vertigo inducing and yet amazing.

I will never forget the first time I saw Michael Snow’s So Is This in a theatre setting.  So Is This will stand forever as one art piece that changed and influenced my life parcourse.  Here is a little youtube preview but this work really needs to be seen in a theatre setting.

Pulse is one of my favorite fairs not only because of the consistent high level of quality art and galleries, but also for the gorgeous location and courtyard installations at the Ice Palace.

I loved Blythe Project‘s booth, with these fantastic vibrant abstraction paintings by Mark Schoering and an amazing neon light sculpture hanging in the center of the booth that really pulled together the entire focal motif of the space.

On the theme of layered vibrant coloured paintings, we saw Kristen Schiele at Freight&Volume, Johannes Giradoni at Tominson Kong, and this massive diptych of runway at night by Ingmar Alge at Kuckei&Kuckei.

Jason Gringler painting at Galerie Stefan Ropke, and this interesting hanging sculpture made of hundreds of little plastic planes by Teresa Diehl at Galerie Anita Beckers

Eye catching broad horizon photos, Matthew Brandt at M+B, and Simon Lee at Cristin Tierney.

On the attractive aesthetic side, beautiful drawn portrait at Zemack Contemporary.  The video – photo- multimedia works by Nici Jost at Balzer Art Projects, this Swiss artist whose works ring a Pipilotti Rist  meets Alice in Wonderland spin on seeing nature from a distorted miniature perspective.  On the theme of miniatures, charmingly ironic salt shakers turned sand-timers with little figures inside by Alta Price & Jonah Koppel at Artware Editions.

The art program is fun and edgy – New Art dealers assemble to bring forward the youngest and brightest new gallerists.

Loved this installation at American Contemporary Gallery, metallic paintings at Studio Voltaire.

Ryan Foerster at Ribordy Contemporary, series of paintings at Recess, Yamini Nayer photos at Thomas Erben Gallery.

Dynamic photo montages at Clifton Benevento by Martin Soto Climent, dark electric photos at Fitzroy Gallery.

John Hiltunen characateur montages at Creative Growth, the narrative book series at MKG127, painting by John Sparagana at Corbett vs Dempsey. 

Best curated booths go to Curro & Poncho, and Cumulus Studio‘s installation.

Compellingly strange works at Kate Werble whose booth was wrapped in trash bags, Country Club, and Hole Gallery.

Scope Art Fair celebrated their 11th year anniversary with a logo redesign.  Scope brands themselves as a progressive fair who invests heavily in encouraging the careers of emerging artists, exemplified in their initiatives like Artists Wanted (a collaboration to showcase new talent) as well as the in fair programs by Primary Flight (see Taco Stand below).  Their  new fluid linking logo is emblematic of these elements – motion, collaboration, and progress.

Hands down favorite booth at Scope was Heiner Contemporary with a booth dedicated to the work of artist Avery Lawrence.  The narrative of youth, industry, nature and industriousness collide in this warmly domestic space.  Lawrence works in a variety of media, including video, painting, self portrait photographer as well as creating this intricate wall paper exploring the disjuncture of contemporary man in constructed outdoor landscapes.

Beautiful landscape photos by Aleix Plademunt of chairs in landscape with the chairs also installed in the booth at Waltman Ortga.  Beautiful assemblage of photos highlighting the many renown artists represented at Hamburg Kennedy.  Loved these gorgeous little paintings of underwater swimming by Eric Zener offered in conjunction with his book of collected work.

Primary Flight, a Miami based multidisciplinary, multifaceted, experimental project space,  presented Kenton Parker’s Taco Shop.  This interactive space reminiscent of the shared cultural phenomena of late night street meat.

Kasia Kay Gallery had a great booth of big pop paintings.  Patrajdas Contemporary gorgeous exploded sculptures of mythological figures by Kate Macdowell.

OHWOW presented It Ain’t Fair: Materialism in a pop up tent in the Wynwood Design district.

OHWOW is collective that hosts events, pop up fairs, runs a magazine and different events representing a creative community of a variety of artists working in a range of media from photos, sculpture, mixed media, drawing and performance.

Amanda Ross-Ho,

Michael Genovese,

Nothing in the space was labeled – giving the whole space a united harmonious kind of feel.  I especially liked the works by Michael Genovese, Aaron Young, Amanda Ross-Ho, and Daniel Arsham.

Ink Art Fair is a unique fair dedicated to contemporary work on paper.  Inhabiting the surprisingly lovely Suites of Dorchester, the fair hosted 14 galleries on the ground level of the hotel.

Notable spaces included the installation of the Pace Gallery, and this Sangbim Im piece at Mary Ryan Gallery.

Verge Art Fair is an unconventional fair with a real DIY feel.  The small rooms hosted either small galleries or single artists exhibiting their work privately.  An exhibiting artist told me that when the Pool Art Fair got shut down due to incorrect permits, Verge took in some of the orphaned galleries.  Where Verge loses some points for a marque seemingly made out of construction paper scotch-taped to the front of the building — they definitely gain some big karma points for supporting emerging artists and struggling fairs.

The Red Dot Art Fair is a very decorative fair featuring around 50 different galleries, with a special selection of about a dozen galleries from Korea.

With an approachable variety of mid-ranged priced art works, there is something here to match any interior design tastes.  My only complaint is that the shaky plywood floors brought a level of cheapness to the fair which diminished the overall look and value of the gallery booths.

Significant mention goes to Adamar Fine Arts with the wall of Warhol camouflage prints.

Nice variety of works from Art Company Misoolsidae of Seoul (paintings by Saya Da Jung)

Lovely vintage looking photographs at Artion Galleries by Courtney Garrett, and abstracted organic paintings by Suzan Woodruff at George Billis Gallery.

As far as the Miami hotel based satellite fairs go, Aqua Miami has the most charm.  Atrium was filled with installations and convivial seating area that made attending feel persuasively like an art fair rather than creeping through hotel windows.

Aqua showcased some very interesting West Coast galleries, and some attractive very street looking art.

Highlights included What it is Projects, from Oak Park IL I really liked this wall installation.

Galerie SAS had an amazing space, with a good mix of work especially these murdered ceramic sculptures by Laurent Craste.

Colourfully nostalgic sentimental photographs by Kelli Connell at Gallery 339.

The Pentimenti Gallery had an amazing program, featuring attractive approachable works.  Mark Khaisman’s portraits were especially amazing, created with layers of tape on lightboxes.

  Miami Beach Convention Center

 The Ice Palace | 1400 North Miami Avenue

   NE 1st Ave (Midtown Blvd)  at NE 30th St

  Deauville Beach Resort Collins Ave & 67th St

    1671 Washionton Ave Greenview Hotel

 2637 N Miami Ave at NE 27th St.

   Aqua Hotel 1530 Collins Ave

  2505 N. Miami Ave (at the corner of 25th St)

 Suites of Dorchester  1850 Collins Avenue (19th St)

On of my favourite contemporary spaces, the Palais de Tokyo, is undergoing massive renovations, and during this time are hosting selective exhibitions in the atrium and main auditorium.

John M Armleder curated a All Of the Above, by presenting a variety of art works by 20 different artists (including sculptures, videos, and paintings) in an non-traditional manner.  He staged the works on a multilevel platform allowing the viewer only a frontal viewpoint.

This intriguing display method gave me a whole different perspective and challenged the way I typically evaluate and look at art.  Generally by passing video – the small monitors really stood out between the imposing works around them.

The second solo show of this young emerging artist Eva Nielsen at Dominique Fiat gallery exhibiting really impressive scale of painting.

Nielsen combines black and white screen prints of industrial architecture embedded in luscious painterly landscapes for a beautiful compelling body of work. Her technique emphasizes the contrasts of dark and light and the incongruence of imposing developments and industry in the natural landscapes.

A highlight was undeniably the massive LED sculpture titled Origin by United Visual Artists and Scanner.

Glazer + Spaceman created a cathedral like setting in interpreting the Spiritualized track “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space.  The warm radiating beams of light, soft fog, and the speakers embedded in the floor created a total encompassing experience.

Life on Mars Revisited was a 4-walled installation, where film director Barney Clay and photographer Mick Rock remixed David Bowie’s music video for Life On Mars in an explosive and jarring yet pleasantly overwhelming immersive piece.

The French Institute:Alliance Française invited Sophie Calle to participate in this year’s Crossing the Lines Festival of contemporary Art.

Sophie Calle’s body of work engages in an intensely autobiographical exploration generally centered around intimate memories and failed love. 

For this installation, title Room, Calle has occupied a suite in New York’s Lowell Hotel where she has narrated stories through installed objects.

Burnt mattress drapped with a taffeta red dress, a Polaroid camera with a picture posed on the bedside table.

Handwritten letters, followed by stories of commissioning poets to write them for her.  Stories of her earliest experiences with men, cruel memories of insecurity of first loves and unrequited love.

Echoing back to Calle’s early work that she created while working as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel, Room brings out the nostalgia and power of the object linked by memory and narrative.  This is a must see experience, on view through Sunday Oct 16 at midnight.

We have all seen the rapid growth of the gourmet Food Truck phenomenon, where entrepreneurs meet foodies rolling out concept food trucks that roam the city with massive foot and twitter followers.

If you love mobility, then go check out Truck Yeah: A Mobile Meet Up TODAY, October 2, 2011 from 12-6 pm at The Crown Victoria Bar in Williamsburg.

Sponsored by Jalopnik and Gawker Artists, Art Cart NYC™ and Etta Place this initiative brings together an amazing assembly of “mobile culture” of New York City—from gourmet food, to fine art, music, design, and fashion.

They are convening in Brooklyn to celebrate the increased mobility and changing landscape of New York City.

Exotic Beta is an interesting exhibition featuring ink paintings, and an stunning collaborative installation by designer .

French street artist JR has been selected to replace KennySharf’s vividly illustrated grafitti wall with a somber massive black and white wheatpaste.  In an ironic contrast – caused by post huricane Irene water damage, JR’s paper began to weaken showing Sharf’s mural through the background.

I first saw this video in 2003 at The PowerPlant along side a massive exhibition on Liam Gillick.  Now seeing and hearing this piece in a small draped corner at the back of the Matthew Marks gallery concretized the interplay between the film projector and the scratchy vinyl in a more engaging and profound way.

Rodney Graham’s The Phonokinetoscope is a vinyl record which once engaged launches the 5 minute film loop – a phonokinetoscope.

The film is of Graham riding his bike through Berlin’s Tiergarten high on LSD.  The vivid saturated colour of the film enhance the dreamy quality of Graham’s trip and journey through the lush gardens populated by tulips and playing cards.

This exhibition of punk posters from the 70s and 80s created by the most infamous and reknown graphic artists of the day, such as Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett, Barney Bubbles, Gee Vaucher, Linder Sterling, Keith Haring, Robert Williams, and, Jamie Reid.

Cornell’s body of work is characterized by the found objects he installed in little simple boxes which evoke nostalgia, memory, and time.

Divided into chapters, each room’s theme juxtaposed contemporary works with themes that mirrored Cornell’s undercurrents.  Highlights included Feathered Fantasies which paired works by Nick Cave, The Voyeur which compared works by Jeff Koons, Michelangelo Pistolleto, Cindy Sherman, my favorite was the analogies formed in context with Cut and Paste works by John Baldassari, Lari Pittman, and John Stezaker.

The most fascinating juncture was the video installations, the bubble floating through an empty house by Rivane Neuenschwander as well as one of my favorite pieces by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist titled Sip My Ocean which I had seen at the Musée des Beaux-Art Montréal in 2000.

Titled Cloud Gate, this gorgeous Anish Kapoor sculpture caps the Millenium Park in Chicago.  The park is home to various public art pieces, including Crown Fountain, and interactive video sculpture fountain created by Jaume Plensa, as well as bandshell designed by Frank Gehry.

The hallucinogenic playground found at the end of the Highline extension, FriendsWithYou is a creative branding agency that also known for these interactive play spaces.  We saw FriendsWithYou at Scope Miami in 2008, and now in New York on a mission as they claim “to spread the idea of Magic, Luck, and Friendship™ around the world, and become Friends-With-You!”

The Flag Foundation graciously hosted the performance in conjunction with the opening of Roni Horn’s Double Mobius and One, Another a show featuring contemporary art and thematics of love, sexuality and coupling.

Nothing says says love more than gourmet ice cream sandwiches!  Customized in Flag Foundation branded edible wrappers, this vernissage offered ice cream sandwiches by Cool Haus, an ice cream truck with a menu featuring delicious treats named after famous architects.

Exhibition A launched in the new year, the VIP Online Art Fair was the first ever virtual art fair, Gawker Artists SHOP began selling edition prints, and now news of two new ventures: Art.sy and Saatchi Online.

Art.sy is an interesting platform that is currently still in development stages.  Launched by former executive from Christie’s / Haunch of Venison, and a Comp Sci engineer from Princeton in partnership with tech innovators (including the creators of Twitter, Pandora), and museums and major  gallerists  from around the world – Art.sy will work as a recommendation and e-commerce platform.

Propelled by the Art Genome Project, a program that finds similarities and distinguishing characteristics that connect art, this works in conjunction with Pandora type recommendation “if you like this you will like this as well” referral motor to propose art they have for sale.

A mash up of art dealing and long tail economics, Saatchi Online sources content from artists around the world, and takes 30% of the sale price.  Branding themselves as the “world’s biggest art market place for emerging artists” you can sort by price, media, originals or prints, as well as by keywords Saatchi Online offers an uncurated catalog  of user uploaded content.

With Gagosian’s recent iPad app launch, ArtJetSet looks forward to seeing what is to come with the advancements of these iArt initiatives.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the thriving art and culture scene during a recent trip to Miami.

We are all well familiar with the chaos and excitement when the international art world descends upon Miami during the annual Art Basel Miami Beach fair in December.

This off season summer visit happened to coincide with the Wynwood Art Walk – a spectacular monthly art event that takes place in the Wynwood Art and Design district.

Galleries stay open late to welcome the hundreds of local Miami residents that come to the area to enjoy the new works on display.

I have seen New York’s Chelsea district on Thursday nights when galleries host vernissages, but the attendance and enthusiasm at this Wynwood Art Walk was like no art walk I had ever seen.

After passing through dozens of galleries the party culminates at the Wynwood Walls, a subset outdoor art project launched by Deitch Projects during Art Basel 2009.   The park features 12 massive walls painted by some of the most influential and renown graffiti artists, a live improve band was making music, people dancing, a massive gallery space, and restaurant Wynwood Kitchen & Bar which is entirely wallpapered by Shepard Fairey  murals.

The gallery space is currently hosting the Peter Tunney Experiment

Wynwood Art Walk takes place the second Saturday of every month.

Famed activist Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been reportedly detained by the Chinese government since April 3, 2011, which has subsequently sparked a global outcry and a massive Free Ai Weiwei campaign.

Weiwei is a renowned artist,  photographer, and sculptor well known for his collaboration in the design of the Birdnest Beijing National Stadium for the Olympics as well a vast body of subtle yet politically charged artworks.

There is a massive amount of information available at Free Ai Weiwei  as well you can download these Free Ai Weiwei glasses HERE, based off his series  “Study in Perspective” of his outstretched arm giving the defiant middle finger to political or cultural centers.

Transfinite is a noise and video immersive installation by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda.  The baseline for the work is the visual mathematics of binary code, which as an abstract language is the base for all computer media and technological processes.

The Park Avenue Armory is a perfect venue to highlight the polarities of the installation’s story – A historic building where the sound of beeps and pings resonnate and the binary codes and barlines flash upon the massive screens.

MoMA PopRally presented a three night performance featuring the collective SSION at MoMA PS1.

Performing songs from their new album Bent, the absurdest spectacle combined  fantastic video backdrops, costumes, and props.  The thematic content hysterically touched on subjects on feminism, a few classic grunge rock covers,  dieting and purgatory.

SSION is a group collective lead by front man Cody Critcheloe, and an entourage of drag queens, performance artists, and musicians that to likes of Huizenga, Alexis Blair Penney, Colin Self, Mykki Blanc, Sky Ferreira, and Casey Spooner.

Some waited up to 3 hours in the bitter New York winter to view the piece, which is heralded as a compelling transfixing work, where Marclay edits together thousands of clips of watches and clocks from popular film.  The excerpts are supposed to illiterate the spanning of time and the importance of passage of time in cinematic narrative.  The 24 hour piece is ironically synced to the local time of the exhibition space.

Good news for those who did not get to see the showing, The Clock has been recently acquired by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Video projections and performance transformed the city, as art filled the streets and venues around the Lower East Side.

Aida Ruilova media performance featured a pair of twins dressed as nurses, that simultaneously filmed and broadcasted their performance live with iPhones as a reflection of social networks and technology in interactions in the city.

Let Us Make Cake is a collaboration of video works that were created to be projected on the façade of the New Museum.  The brilliant assemblage of artists making art was an affective exploration in re-contextualizing the museum as white-walled interior cube into an animated 53 meter high canvas.

St. Patrick’s, New York City’s oldest cathedral, was host to two compelling projects.

Valeska Soares’ Walk On By was presented in the courtyard.  Two plexiglass benches placed in front of a video of a bench in a lush green park, inviting viewer to become a passive participant.  The screens were animated by ghostly figures of typical park inhabitants – an old man playing the accordion, a young girl dancing around the bench, a gentleman reading the newspaper, the mundane solitary actions performed in a park.  This work was contrasted by the Marco Brambilla‘s Civilation, a looped 3D digital short which cycles through Dante’s Divine Comedy that cycles through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven (with cameos by famous faces as StayPuff Marshmallow Man, Michael Jackson, amongst others).

The Affordable Art Fair goal is to make art accessible to all buyers at all the price ranges.  A truely wonderful fair, hosting a diverse range of gallerists and artwork, the greatest pleasure was seeing the many people walking out with wrapped artwork in hand.

Though the misconception of Affordable can ring as cheap and low quality, this fair hosted a gorgeous array of work and international galleries from Argentina to Austraila.

Favorites included blue abstracted horizons at Sarah Myerscough, Sean Brannan’s birch trees at Madelyn Jordon, and Edouard Buzon paintings at Envie d’Art.

This three part festival includes the Conference portion of lectures, panels and symposia, StreetFest inviting over a hundred grassroots organizations and local business to present their products along the Bowery, and Projects section which hosts art installations, performance and walking tours around the Downtown area.
ArtJetSet is looking forward:

May 4: The keynote panels by architect and inovator Rem Koolhaas

May 5: Presentation by Jaron Lanier author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

May 6: The Reconfigured City panel hosted by Elizabeth Diller, Frank Duffy among others.

Shannon Plumb: The Window Series installation on the facade at 200 Lafayette St, bw Broome and Kenmare.

Jon Kessler: Theater of Situations at Salon 94.

The inaugural event being held April 23,  is SOLD OUT, but as an ongoing event throughout the year, I am looking forward to attending the next one.   Four artists will present paintings on stage at Exit Art’s Trickster Theater space.  Before the paintings are presented, the title of the work will be announced, and the audience will have three minutes for silent observation, as encouraging the viewer to focus on the act of looking, building a platform for painters and audience members to share ideas.

PAINTING CLUB Saturday, April 23 / 6-9pm Presenting artists: Stephanie Campos, Ariel Dill, Osamu Kobayashi, and Rebecca Watson Horn

CRG presented Wishing and Praying as their curated show during ADAA fair in New York, and now at their main gallery space in Chelsea.  This thoughtful and contemplative show exemplifies contemporary look at religious iconography in a variety of media.  Beautiful.

Click HERE to see the post on ADAA

In conjunction with the Post-War & Contemporary sales starting on May 11, Christie’s will be installing Urs Fischer’s Lamp/Bear in midtown Manhattan.   This 7-meter high bronze teddy bear will be snuggled under a black bedside lamp on display for the next five months.

Marc Séguin is an ArtJetSet favorite, whose career we have watch since 2008.  His masterful grisaille technique combined with layering of think pigments and taxidermied animals is visually beautiful while emotionally challenging.

For Séguin’s first solo show at the Mike Weiss Gallery titled Failures, he exhibited portraits of political figures and destroyed chruches. We have seen his earlier large scale works that depicted political and religious figures (click HERE and HERE to see the other ArtJetSet posts), and now we see his portraiture scaling down in size which emphasizes the theme of failure of these iconic figures.

By contrasting personalities like Lee Harvey Oswald, the Pope, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, and Nazi soliders, the message is a persistent narrative of the failures in the hands of the powerful.

Beyond the forum, Gawker Artists SHOP an online market place that offers products like iPhone cases and skins printed with unique art by represented Gawker Artists.

Now Gawker Artists wants to fill your walls with art!   They have just launched and are now selling limited edition, signed and certified giclée prints by two of their featured artists Nicholas Bohac and Scott Listfield.

Each edition of 100 prints is sold for only $90!  Click HERE to purchase now!

This year the Independent stepped up with some bigger named galleries, and redesigned booths that allowed for flowing spaces while simultaneously embracing the spectacular building and aura that is the former Dia:Chelsea.

Obligatory neon and large large text based works at Meyer Riegger and Sutton Lane.

The Independent seemed to host a lot of sculpture, possibly because the space can accommodate sculpture so well.

Massive chimes by Klause Weber at Andrew Kreps, mixed media industrial sculpture by Josephine Meckseper at Elizabeth Dee, the taxidermy puppy by David Shrigley.

Exploded car by Michel François at Bortolami and this intricate metal cube sculpture.

Some beautiful mixed media paitings, Walead Beshty at Tanya Leighton.

Alex Brown and Tom of Finland paintings at Feature Inc. and a large new work by David Salle at Maureen Paley.

PINTA – the Latin American art fair was held here last year quite successfully since they assumed the entire ground floor space .

The deep narrow booths at Pulse created claustrophobic narrow aisles that made this fair an awkward viewing experience.

Really loved this amazing Packing tape on plexiglass technique by Mark Khaisman at Pentimenti, as well as this nice red square piece at Shshana Wayne.

Nice to see less political works and more approchable paintings like these Markus Linnenbrink and Markus Weggenmann at FTC.

Even the figurative works were mildly abstracted, like Ryan Martin’s collaged paintings at CTS Workshop, Alex Prager photos, Mario Muller painting at Mary Ryan and the Jane Hambleton at Michael Rosenthal.

New perspective in sculpture, the wire speach bubbles by Greely Myatt at David Lusk, and the miniature tree tornado by Jorge Mayet at Horrach Moya.

The upper level hosted ImPulse, hosting galleries that were invited to present solo exhibitions.

ArtJetSet favorite was Damian Stamer’s abstracted landscape paintings at Freight+Volume.

Really enjoyed Mark Schoening’s paintings at Blythe Projects, as well as Rene Barge photos at Dorsch.

A considerably small fair, The Art Show invites blue chip galleries to present solo and two artists exhibitions or strategically curated booths.

The interior of the fair was quite somber with a pallet of dark deep gray walls and carpeting, the quiet lull of the space was filled by some nice booths hosting the much expected Matisse, Picasso, and American photography.

The most beautifully curated presentation titled Wishing and Praying was at CRG.

A brilliant and compelling presentation of religious iconography, like these works by Arnulf Rainer and Robert Buck.

Peter Blum presented a solo show of preliminary works on paper by David Reed.  Known for his large abstract works, these gorgeous colour and form studies elaborate on the extensive building, pallet testing, and sketching invested in each painting.

Enoc Perez monochromatic Fountain Bleu hotel painting, and James Welling photo of the Glass House.

Beautiful sculptural pieces at Sperone Westwater and Rachel Whiteread coloured resin works at Luhring Augustine.

Maxwell Davidson presented a humouristic thematic exhibition titled The Objectification of Pop, with works from Tom Wesselmen and the typical 1960s pop artists, along side this work by Leo Castelli, and reconstructed tapedeck by Kiel Johnson.

Exquisitly delicate works on paper David Opdyke at Ronald Feldman, and Jaume Plensa at Galerie Lelong.

Of course large text based works that we’ve seen as a predominant theme through all this season’s fairs, at Cheim&Read and Yazid Oulab at CRG.

Fun bright paintings at Regen Projects, and the miniature sculptures of everyday objects by Tom Friedman at James Cohan.

Much of the art, like the fair itself, has a crude alternative-pop street feel, especially resonated by its location at The Frying Pan at refurbished lightship that has been resurrected as an event space and bar.

Liked the vitrine by Evo Love at Stash Gallery, massive installation by Greg Haberny that filled one full space with floor to ceiling paintings and constructions.

I especially enjoy Fountain’s dedication to special artist project installations.

I visited In2it,  and had a nice conversation with sculptor and inhabitant Jason Robert Bell.

The igloo is a performance space and occupancy is also being sold as a timeshare.  Layered with carpeting and fur, the igloo features a working air conditioner to underline the irony “selling art is like selling air conditioning in the arctic.”

Tragically, during the set up of this installation, Bell had a studio fire.  I encourage you all to purchase a share of time in In2it support the rebuild.

This year Volta offered a very innovative idea for their catalog – instead of a big heavy tome, visitors were given an empty folder and the information prospectus were available at each booth, granting the viewer the ability to personalize their catalog with the information of the art they liked.

Following my current inclination towards big bright abstracted painting, my favorite booth was Pierre-François Ouellette.  Artist Dil Hildebrand starts with a hyperrealistic ground (for this show being the staircase in his studio) and then paints layers and blocks of paint building up vivid abstractions of texture and line.

Oana Farcas tiny 2 inch² paintings at Larmgalleri, and the miniature constructed architectural environments by Jeremy Mora at Wolfe Contemporary which paired nicely with tree vitrine rooted in plaster by Paul Nugent at Kevin Kavanagh.

To be expected, beautiful but politically charged art was rampant, like Alberto Borea’s photos about drug wars at Isabel Hurley, Mark Jenkins’ terrifying installation of a masked thugs, Dan Tague’s photos of folded dollar bills which spell out messages for help at Jonathan Ferrara, and Mary Temple’s ink drawings on paper of portraits of political figures.

Of course a stunning array of notable paintings bringing a vibrant dose of colour to the fair.  Jennie Ottinger’s books at Johansson Projects, Peter Oppenheim’s large paintings, Summer Wheat’s portraits of zombie heads.  I had the pleasure of meeting artist Ryan Fenchel who told me about his exploration of working through sculptural design in creating these collaged planed pastels on paper.

Loved Anselm Reyle at Michael Schultz, glitter painted by Armleder at Massimo De Carlo, Jason Martin’s pure pigment on metal at Lisson, and Katrina Grosse giant abstract painted sculpture.

With Paul Kasmin Gallery’s entire space was a neon fenced off empty lot, The Armory Show brought forward neon sculpture on a large scale. Wall text piece by Jeppe Hein at 303, Sam Van Aken’s neon forest at Ronald Feldman, and (victim of a personal sentimentality of birch trees) Anthony James at Nicholas Robinson.

Reconsideration of Balloons: Real inflated balloons at Gonzalez y Gonzalez counters Jurgen Drescher aluminum speech bubbles at Mai 36, and Gimhongsok ceramic balloons.

Other works I really enjoyed looking at were Larry Rivers collage at Hilgre, Marc Quinn’s massive scale orchids, Sebastiaan Bremer’s large photo compositions (which we saw in Miami in very small), and hands down favorite Ryan Gander’s arrows shot through the wall at Lisson.

Armory Week New York has officially opened!
Amongst the expected blue chip big name artworks and ironic money/value references:
Click to view slideshow.
Obligatory Damien Hirst prints for sale on edition, a floor made of pennies at Untitled Gallery, and Reed Seifer dollar bill installation.

This year’s The Armory Show had a strong current of overtly political works. With the socio-political upheavals seen around the world and in local media, seeing artists respond visually is not surprising.

With performance piece at Kukje of an illegal immigrant in a donkey suit, Rokni Haerizadeh at Thaddaeus Ropac which the artist draws animal figures over the faces taken from news media photos, and Tomas Espina at Ignacio Liprandi who paints with gunpowder.

For innovation at the fairs, an applause to Chowaidi&Co gallery at the Modern Pier for their bold green wall, and the Springer & Winckler Gallery for showing Lohner & Carlson’s video installation on iPads.

Here is a summary of all the fairs that are taking place, with the vital info for visitors.

Click on the links for fair info and location maps!

ADAA The Art Show

Location: Park Ave Armory, Park Ave + 67th St

Hours: Wed – Sat 12pm – 8pm  // Sun 12pm – 6pm

Admission: $20

The Armory Show

Location: Piers 92 & 94, 12th Ave + 55th St

Hours: Thurs – Sat 12pm – 8pm // Sun 12pm – 7pm

Admission: $20

Volta NY Show

Location: 7W – 7 West 34th St

Hours: Thurs 2pm – 7pm // Fri – Sun 11am – 7pm

Admission: $15

Pulse Projects

NEW Location: Metropolitan Pavilion 125 West 18th St

Hours: Thurs 1pm – 8pm // Fri – Sat 12pm – 8pm // Sun 12pm – 5pm

Admission: $20

Scope Art Show

NEW Location: 320 West St (West Side Highway) + Pier 40

Hours: Thurs – Sat 12pm – 8pm // Sun 12pm – 7pm

Admission: $20

Independent

Location: 548 W 22^nd St (X-Initiative / Dia:Chelsea)

Hours: Thurs 4pm – 9pm // Fri – Sat 11am – 8pm // Sun 12pm – 4pm

Admission: FREE

Fountain

Location: Pier 66 Maritime, 26th St + 12th Ave (Frying Pan)

Hours: Thurs – Sun 12pm – 7pm

Admission: $10

Moving Image :: NEW ::

Location: Waterfront New York Tunnel 269 11^th Ave

Hours: Thurs – Sat 11am – 8pm // Sun 11am – 3pm

Admission: FREE

Red Dot Fair

NEW Location: 82 Mercer St between Spring St + Broome St

Hours: Thurs – 11am – 6pm // Fri – Sat 11am – 8pm // Sun 11am – 6pm

Admission: $10

Verge Art Brooklyn

NEW Concept: Multiple Locations Click HERE for map

Admission: FREE

The incredible recovered wood sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard became the stage for a modern dance peformance choreographed by Nancy Garcia to present the F/W jewlery collection of SAMMA , by designer Hanna Sandin.

As the dancers moved the jewlery clanged together and against the performers adding a weight to the sound of the performance.

Celbritist Manifesto

Lu Magnus is a new space in the LES framed as an art laboratory and salon.

Hosting a variety of events, Lu Magnus goes beyond the traditional notion of gallery as exhibition space towards a participatory environment of the salnons of the past. The diversity of their program brings together a spectrum of genres of art including performance, book readings, fashion, film, dance and food. Check their website for upcoming events.

Nic*Rad’s live performance of his Celebrtiist Manifesto was the perfect complement to the idiom of this space. A brilliantly intelligent and sardonically hilarious culmination of art, conversation, performance and spectacle, he frames James Franco “as the greatest artist of this generation if not all time.” The manifesto is insightful and dramatic and filled with some great anecdotal one-liners that poignantly spins the icon of James Franco around pop celebrity culture to artstar-dom. One of my favorite lines: James Franco who should play Vito Schnabel in a movie about Vito Schnabel directed by Julian Schnabel in which Vito Schnabel plays the young Julian Schnabel… wherein they lounge together and talk about the excesses of the art world and sip port in the Palazzo Chupi.

The sound installation at the opening of Highways Connect and Divide at Foxy Productions, blew the crowd away!

Gas tanks expelled a cold wind of oxygen and sound. The piercing shrill lulled into a humming buzz as the tanks emptied.

The side gallery at Benrimon Contemporary hosts RePop, a popup store where buttons, prints, multiples like carved soap and catalogues can be purchased.

A compelling narration through his early performance and body work of the 1970s and how his desire to move his art beyond self reflective works into a greater reactive realm escalated his creative oeuvre towards architecture and public art.

He founded Acconci Studio, where he and his team have created some remarkable projects which resonante the ideas of the interjection of private within public space, the boundaries of the body, the fluid spaces that wave and ripple into one and other in this inverted möibus waves.

Favorites included Bad Drema House at MIT, and Mur Island in Graz, Austria.

Photograph of Vito Acconci by Paul Ott.

Welcome to ArtJetSet’s new platform.

Hosting 137 booths, VIP was divided into four exhibition halls – Premier Large and Premier Medium for leading galleries, Focus presenting 23 galleries each showing only 8 works by single artists, and Emerging presenting works created within the last 2 years by emerging artists.

The fair was highly criticized for the tech glitches, like the chat function not working, and the slow server due to overwhelming traffic.

My own criticism is that while users could “favorite” work or share their collections, but this information was only available during the course of the fair. After the closing of the fair, all the “favorite” information was lost and not retrievable by the user.

VIP was a information and sensory overload, with the click through scrolling and size scaling of the images, artist bios and CVs, gallery history, pricing, sizing, pop up windows and drop down menus.

Compelled by the urge to click and read about every galleries, artist, and info bubble possible, I spent 3 hours just clicking and browsing before attempting to look at anything seriously.



One true pleasure was experiencing video art. Personally a tough critic of video works – I was impressed by the sound, quality, presentation and streaming of video work. Truly enjoyable experience to actually watch and experience video works on the VIP Fair platform – admittedly video that I would likely skip over at traditional fair.

As a non-traditional fair, many of the galleries used this forum to explore and expand the boundaries of the “fair” concept.

Untitled Gallery offered Brendan Fowler performance at the price range of $0-5000.

Where other galleries uploaded high resolution images and videos, Limoncello Gallery used tiny Polaroid images displaying the works for sale, forcing the visitor to click and zoom into each one in order to see them. Though an interesting motivation, I do not think this was so effective.

As e-commerce presents new platforms for artists, gallerists, and collectors to view and acquire art, I believe that the art fair should retain its integrity as a physical forum to meet and experience the art world first hand.

Charles LeDray installation titled workworkworkworkwork recreates a thrift store sorting facility and sales floor at a shrunken scale.  The awkward perspective sets the viewer above the ceiling.  This all encompassing eerie field of view makes the objects seem not like children or doll clothes but a sad real life Gulliver’s Travels.

The remarkable part is that each piece of clothing is meticulously hand sewn, and each artifact from the garment bags to the hangers are all hand crafted.

Founded by Bill Powers, owner of the Half Gallery and Rx Arts (a non-profit that places art in hospitals) his wife and fashion designer Cynthia Rowely, Exhibition A seems to be selling a for profit extention of what they used to offer as fundraising fodder for Rx Art.

Many galleries and e-commerce inititatives are moving towards selling editions, prints, and multiples as a way to entice new young collectors at an accessible and affordable price point.

Art E-Commerce sites have been proliferating recontextualizing the experience of art as well as growing celebrity via accessibility. With initiatives like Exhibition A, VIP Online Art Fair which sell work by established artists, through to 20 x 200 which sells affordable art prints at various sizes and pricing scales, and KiptonART which sells emerging art in a range of media and prices.

The exhibition includes the video A Fire in My Belly, by David Wojnarowicz, that had been recently censored by the Smithsonian and created much uproar in the conversation around censorship and religious iconography in the museum space.

oh my god, by Sam Van Aken is a wall of stereo speakers emitting various voice clips of people saying “oh my god” – from television and film to attrocious news media stories.

Sharon Stone in Abuja combines video, photo, and installation in a discussion around Nollywood – Nigeria’s growing film industry.

The space is engaging and inviting, pushing a comfort and familiarity with photos by Pieter Hugo, an inviting salon installation by Mickalene Thomas, and video piece by Zina Saro-Wiwa, British-Nigerian film-maker and founder of AfricaLab.

The show presents an extensive range of themes, textures, subject matter. Gorgeous painting made with paint and tea bags and urban landscaped created on a reflective surface shot by paint. The sculptural works of Debanjan Roy, Ruby Chishti, and G.R. Iranna resonnate issues of the human condition in India extending from gender, class and social political challenges.

Exhibited in the atrium of the MoMA in New York, the installation occupied a massive space, and stood as a monument of this period in Chinese history, a record of his mother’s life, as well as a tribute to his father’s death.

Exhibited in Vancouver Art Gallery through several rooms, the installation allows for a more intimate experiential connection and relation to the objects. The broken pieces, the familiar lables, and the sheer amount and weight of the objects that occupied the museum’s galleries.

In 1970, for Baldessari’s Creamation Project, he incinerated all his works created before 1966. It was great to see a few of the surviving pieces in this show.

Spanning all his major thematic movements, including my favorites, the photocompositions like Kiss/Panic and the red dot series.

As well as some of his video works:

At the closing of this show, the PowerPlant will undergo a massive re-looking. Including renovations to the physical building interior, refreshing the branding strategy, and online personality. Looking forward to the relaunch March 2011.

Spectacular Olaf Breuning and Cynthia Rowley. Rowley created bespoke denim outfits, and the models had paint poured on them by Breuning. A photographer captured the performative aspect of the pouring and the presentation of the new work of art, while the garment became the unique art object.

Conveniently hosted Halloween weekend, CHERYL and American Apparel created a psychotic space dedicated to bizaare performance. Participants were able to receive “Psycho Make-Overs” with the American Apparel clothes, fake blood, hair extensions, and lots of glitter.

Rob Pruitt and Marc Jacobs created a green-screen catwalk guided by ‘fashion show directors’ who shouted encouragement as participants were hurled down a blue corridor and flashed with lights. Upon entering the next room, the surprised viewer is confronted with their own multi-perspective runway show with them as the star model.

Rashaad Newsome and Alexander Wang was a vocal performance amazing beyond words. Newsome uses sound bites performed live to create a symphonic harmony of gossip sounds.

Tauba Auerbach and Ohne Titel beautiful modern dance piece, contrasted by the fairly boring Jonah Bokaer and Narciso Rodriguez lone performer in the dark.

Contrasting light and dark, strong and fragile, massive cinder block sculpture mirrored by ghostly pencil on paper drawings of cinder blocks – leave the viewer questioning the ideas of what we occupy and the limits of weight and space consumed around us.

Thematically divided by Pop art, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist, Post Moderns and contemporary, this blockbuster show exemplifies the power house artists and the major collections that have acquired the works.

My favorites include Chuck Close portrait of Zhang Huan, Kiki Smith sculpture, Michal Rovner, amazing Clifford Still, Zhang Huan airplanes.

Dan Colen is quoted as saying that this current show at Gagosian is about “failure and potential, accident and intention, most minute and most infinite.”
Colen creates a transitionary space using an inverted skateboard half-pipe, and installation of knocked over customized Harley Davidson motorcycles, and massive canvases with abstract patterns painted with chewing gum. A self-reflective self-indulgent show.

Cinders Gallery

The video piece by Jessie Rose Vala was beautiful, as well as the intricate drawings by Marc Waren Jacques. The closing also featured great live music Cassie Ramone, lead vocalist for Vivian Girls.

ArtJetSet has been recently attending the Wednesday night Drink and Draw. 3rd Ward offers a great atmosphere, cold beer and good music to satiate all your creative appetites during the 2 hour life drawing class.

Today’s AM New York newspaper wrote an article about the events, coincidentally featuring ArtJetSet in the photo!!