Apple Sculpture By Claude LaLanne Photographed at Paul Kasmin Gallery By Gail in January 2019
They say that celebrity deaths come in threes. This past week we said goodbye to playwright Terrence McNally, legendary Drummer Bill Rieflin and, on a local scale, NYC Gallerist and Photographer Paul Kasmin, whose renowned Chelsea galleries have provided Worleygig.com with amazing content for more than a decade.
Continue reading RIP NYC Gallerist Paul Kasmin
Photo By Gail
PK SHOP is pleased to introduce an exclusive new edition by Nir Hod. Inspired by the artist’s Genius series of paintings of precocious and portentous children, the 11 1/2 x 7 1/2 inch chrome-plated sculpture is produced in editions of seven in four bold colors: gold, pink, and two additional colors that will be announced at a later date.
A meditation on beauty and loneliness, Hod’s poised and alluring young geniuses dwell in a world of paradox, where their cherubic cheeks contrast with their scornful expressions and lit cigarettes. Philosopher Roy Brand describes them as “…little demons without disguises. But they are also yearning, beautiful, and charming, and their narcissism is more a sign of internal happiness than of vanity.”
Entitled Nicolai, the series accentuates the vulnerability of these child prodigies by pairing the knowing expressions and eerie self-possession of the painted geniuses with the sculpture’s three-dimensional diminutive body. Referencing the seductiveness of luxury materials, Hod implements chrome for the first time with this series. The shiny high-polish of the chrome is transformative; the cutting edge medium transforms the traditionally-rendered sculpture into an object of the modern world. The mirrored surface of the work appeals to the viewer’s inner narcissist, while the rich colors reflect the vivid imagery of contemporary life.
I Want Always to Be Remembered in Your Heart, By Nir Hod (All Photos By Gail)
Israel-born artist Nir Hod’s current exhibit at Paul Kasmin Gallery manages to be both visually beautiful and subtly political — a combination that this painter/sculptor does very well.
Once Everything Was Much Better Even The Future features Hod’s monumental sculptural work of the same name, a snow globe containing a moving scale model of a pumpjack encased in oil and swirling “snow” comprised of gold-colored flakes, a reflection of the immense wealth generated by the oil trade.
Detail
Hod’s globe encompasses an idealized, isolated landscape of oil extraction in which production and consumption can peacefully coexist. When I was growing up in California in the 1960s and ’70s, these oil pumps were all over the place, so this piece inspired a great feeling of nostalgia for me.
Characteristic of Hod’s work is a dark glamour that is both alluring and menacing, exemplified in his three new series of paintings. In I Want Always to be Remembered in Your Heart, smoldering flames are superimposed on delicate flowers, alluding to the paradoxical coexistence of beauty and destruction.
Through a chroming process he transforms matte canvases into reflective, mirrored surfaces in the series All We Wish For, Let it Be and The Back Room.
In All We Wish For, Let it Be, the artist renders ethereal clouds and shattered glass, alluding to a cycle of destruction and rebirth.
The Back Room presents contrasting black and white scratches upon chrome surfaces emanating light. Both works underline the artist’s pursuit of the sublime as a place of pleasurable fear and forbidden desire.
The Worley Gig Highly Recommends This Exhibit.
Nir Hod’s Once Everything Was Much Better Even The Future will be on Exhibit Through October 25th at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Located at 515 West 27th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Art By el Seed, All Photos By Gail
Geoffrey and I were in the thick of an exhausting Art Crawl last Saturday, trying to catch up on dozens of exhibits whose opening receptions we weren’t able to hit on September 12th — the official kick off to the NY Art Scene’s Fall/Winter Season — when we were drawn into the Leila Heller Gallery by the colorful graphic mural by Tunisian artist el Seed wrapping the gallery’s windows from 25th Street around the corner and down 11th Avenue.
La2’s Homage to Keith Haring Graffiti Room
I really enjoyed this exhibit, which has close to a hundred pieces by dozens of contributing artists. Read the press release for more information at This Link. I’m just going to post photos I took of a few of my favorite pieces without much further commentary, if any.
Continue reading Leila Heller Gallery Presents Calligraffiti 1984 / 2013
Genius is a word whose depth of meaning generally takes too long to talk about. It’s a heavy word, and the current exhibit of paintings and sculptures by Nir Hod at NYC’s Paul Kasmin Gallery, entitled Genius, is equally heavy. The Genius exhibit includes over 50 paintings and several sculptures created over a span of two years. It is the first solo exhibit at Kasmin for the Israeli-born artist, who now lives and works in New York.
Continue reading Must See Art: Genius By Nir Hod at Paul Kasmin Gallery