Anima Pemumbra 4 by Menton3 (All Photos By Gail, Click on Any Image to Enlarge for Detail)
Things got dark and scary at Last Rites Gallery, as they are wont to do, at Saturday night’s opening reception for the Gallery’s Fifth Anniversary group show. Of course, dark and scary is how we like it at Last Rites, a gallery dedicated to exhibiting Horror Themed art and surrealist / pop art that falls to the right of the macabre.
Dead General By Esao Andrews
Curated by Gallery Director (and freelance photographer) Derek Storm, this collection features paintings, sculptures, drawings and mixed media works by over forty artists, including a selection of Last Rites‘ roster of represented artists such as Chris Mars, Jason D’Aquino, Chet Zar, Beau Stanton and the legendary HR Giger.
Birth Machine Baby Bronze Sculpture By HR Giger
Deep Rising By Colin Christian
Colin Christian has a beautiful sculpture in the show and his equally talented wife, Sas Christian has contributed a painting, below, that to me looks a lot like actress Naomi Watts.
The Fear By Sas Christian
Mark Kostabi and Me
Mark Kostabi was there! It is always fun to see Mark, he is so nice and such a charmer!
How About a Refill? by Mark Kostabi
It is not very challenging to pick out Mark’s contribution to the show. His style is extremely distinctive.
Drowning Salvation by Matt Dangler
I liked this one a lot.
These two artists created this paint during the exhibit. I guess that qualifies it as “Performance Art.”
Red King By Michael Hussar
This very fun and diverse exhibit will be up until May 18th, 2013, so be sure and make a trip over to Last Rites at 511 West 33rd Street while you can!
Bold Hype Gallery’s summer group exhibition, Suggestivism, opened last Thursday in NYC. This fun exhibit of paintings and sculptures, which features 43 of the new contemporary art scene’s most talented and intriguing artists, was curated by uber hot surrealist painter Nathan Spoor, whose fantastic work we first discovered just a year ago at his own Bold Hype solo exhibit, Phantom Passport. The concept of Suggestivism, according to Spoor relates to introducing “a common creative thread amongst several disparate and unique voices within the modern art world.” Thus, you may notice seeming shared influences among the artists – which is very cool and ends up drawing you further into the search for meaning in each piece.
Kathie Olivas
Artists participating in the exhibit include some of our favorites such as Eric Richardson, Jason Limon, Chris Mars, Chet Zar, Kathie Olivias, Colin Christian and Spoor himself, as well as Annie Owens, Bob Dob, Bob Schnider, Brandt Peters, Brendan Monroe, Chandler Wood, Christian Van Minnen, Dan May, Darren Legallo, David Molesk, Francesco Locastro, Heidi Taillefer, Heiko Muller, Jason Maloney, Jeff McMillan, Joe Vaux, Joey Remmers, Julian Callos, Kevin Peterson, Marco Mazzoni, Mia Araujo, Michael Page, Naoto Hattori, Nathan Ota, Nathan, Nc Winters, Rod Luff, Sandow Birk, Scott Schiedly, Skinner, Thomas Doyle, Tom Bagshaw, Winnie Truong and Yevgeniya Mikhailik.
Eric Richardson
I really loved this exhibit and would “suggest” that you check it out before it closes. See more pictures from Thursday’s opening after the jump!
Suggestivism will be on Exhibit Through June 30th, 2012, at Bold Hype Gallery, Located at 547 W. 27th St., 5th Floor New York, NY 10001
I saw Color Me Obsessed, The Replacements’ documentary, last night and really enjoyed it. It was a good-sized crowd in the theater, though probably with the narrowest age range you would ever see at a movie (from about age 45 – 55 ). First and foremost, Color Me Obsessed is a movie for fans only. Each story about a particularly awesome or atrocious gig was met with knowing nods and laughs from the crowd. I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t know about the band enjoying it. And, with no music from them included in the film (more about that later), it doesn’t expose them to a new audience.
The film offers a great chronology of The Replacements and features lots of back-story on what was happening in the Minneapolis punk scene of the time. Interestingly, it has plenty of interviews with members of Husker Du (though not Bob Mould), but not with the other big TwinTone band of the time, Soul Asylum. It does offer profiles of the surviving band members with an emphasis on the late Bob Stinson, who Director Gorman Bechard sees as the core and spirit of the band.
All of the talking heads (including Tommy Ramone, Peter Zaremba, Jessie Malin, John Rzeznik and Steve Albini, among numerous others) are clearly hardcore fans. It’s interesting that almost none of them are upset that Stinson left/got fired from the band because of alcohol abuse, showing a lack of concern about his health, but others felt that it represented the band “selling out,” which pissed them off. This sentiment contrasts with how much affinity these fans/friends had with the members because they were “regular guys.” In some ways the film (inadvertently) shines a bright light on the indie scene. Everyone’s favorite record was the one they heard first (Let it Be being the exception for some of those there at the beginning), which tends to reveal how hardcore fans can have problems changing with the band.
The central question is whether The Replacements made records their fans loved because they were fuck ups (and we saw their zenith) or whether, had they not been fuck ups, they would have reached a wider audience. The answer is, of course, unknowable, but after the first few laughs of them doing something stupid to either just be assholes or sabotage their career, it just gets sad. Plenty of bands cleaned their act up and made great records. Why not them?
Director Gorman Bechard was present at the screening to talk about the film and why he decided to not use any of the band’s music, etc. As he explained it, he likened it to faith. Bechard proposed that if people can believe in god by only reading about him, then they could do the same about The Replacements – and he believed in The Replacements. I reasoned that there were licensing issues as well, though you would think that, since the movie was a love letter to the band, the record companies would have licensed the music without a problem. NBC letting them show the SNL performances; well, that’s probably a different story. One thing giving credence to his explanation is that the film used very few pictures of the band as well (and most of those were at the very end). I’m assuming those would be plentiful and inexpensive. The bottom line is that if you are a fan of the band you’ll like the movie.
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars. To find a screening of Color Me Obsessed in your area visit This Link.
The Replacements, from left: Paul Westerberg, Chris Mars, Bob Stinson and Tommy Stinson
Bob Stinson, lead guitarist and founding member of The Replacements, who passed away on February 18th, 1995 after years of hard drug and alcohol abuse, would have celebrated his birthday today, December 17th (born in 1959). I remember reading an article called “Hold My Life,” a brutally honest and deeply sad interview with Bob, in SPIN magazine less than six month before he died. You could see right then that he wasn’t long for this world. Rest in peace, Bob.
