Any weekday that I walk south on Wall Street towards Water Street to catch a bus home, I pass by this otherwise unremarkable Dollar Sign-Shaped Bike Rack, which not everyone knows was designed by Talking Heads frontman, Fine Artist and Avid Bicyclist David Byrne. Until some time last year (I didn’t pay attention to exactly when this changed) there was an inverted paper coffee up — which no one would stop long enough to remove –covering the upward end of the ‘S’ shape. The cup was there for about two years: I swear I am not even exaggerating that point.
The Wall Street Dollar Sign is one of nine custom Bike Racks created by Byrne in 2008, whose shapes pay homage to specific NYC neighborhoods. You can read more about them at This Link.
Rose Painting Near Van Gogh’s Grave By Julian Schnabel (All Photos By Gail)
Confession: Julian Schnabel is not an artist whose work I particularly admire. To me, his stuff almost always seems uninspired, phoned in, and, well, just plain ugly. I do not think that I’m alone in that opinion. Schnabel’s latest exhibit, New Plate Paintings, which is his first solo show at Pace Gallery since leaving Gagosian, is a collection of nearly-identical variations on a theme: paintings depicting pink roses on a bed of greenery, which is notable for being painted on a relief of broken dishes mounted on the canvas.
When I was a small child, growing up in southern California, my parents used to take the family on camping vacations to Yosemite National Park. I probably went there four or five times up to the age of 8 or so. While these vacations are many decades in the past for me now, my very vivid memories of the park and its many tall and fragrant redwood trees, crystal clear shallow streams, majestic mountains, tumbling waterfalls, and other uniquely beautiful natural sights and smells stay with me to this day. Yosemite is breathtaking. Continue reading David Hockney’s The Yosemite Suite at Pace Gallery→
Study For Aten Reign By James Turrell (All Photos and Video By Gail)
Why do people go apeshit over James Turell’s colored light installations? Because they can. At least that is my excuse. Happily, Pace Gallery is currently hosting 67 68 69 — a two-venue exhibition of Turrell’s landmark light projections from the late 1960s. Yay!
Blue Triangle
67 68 69 is the first exhibition in more than a decade to focus exclusively on Turrell’s first light works. The exhibition includes a selection of early light works, and a ton of schematic drawings by Turrell from the late 1960s, highlighting the artist’s investigation of color, light, perception and space.
Above, please enjoy a video that I took, also featuring a special appearance by Geoffrey, in the room with the Green Light Thing.
Here is some backstory on the genesis of these works from Pace Gallery’s website:
Upon moving into a vacated hotel in Santa Monica in 1966, James Turrell began experimenting with high-intensity projectors, using them to modulate space and the eyes’ perception of it. The result of these endeavors was his corner projections, the artist’s first significant works using light as a medium to create the appearance of free-floating, three-dimensional objects suspended in the corners of a room.
White Cube
Blue Wall
I need to still make a visit to Pace on 57th Street to see the rest of these, because one of those is light sculptures is Pink.
James Turrell 67 68 69 will be on Exhibit Through June 17th, 2016 at Pace Gallery, Located at 534 West 25th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District (where all of these photos were taken) and at 32 East 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
While I’m a bit “Late to the Ball, Cinderella” in getting these photos up — as the exhibit closed on April 23rd — I can’t resist sharing the amazing works of artist Tim Hawkinson. I first became aware of Hawkinson last summer, when my friend Evelyn raved about him to me in conversation, and since then he has become one of my favorite contemporary artists — particularly for his inventive and humorous kinetic sculptures. Pace Gallery recently hosted a very fun and eclectic retrospective of Tim Hawkinson’s work called Counterclockwise. For the work pictured above, Bikini (1993, reworked in 2014), Hawkinson wove electrical cords into this familiar object of clothing. Like other sculptures in this series (began in 1991, which also includes socks, shorts and a bra) Bikini maintains the original function of the extension chord; in this case, it powers Signature, the sculpture directly adjacent to it.
Please enjoy my favorite photos from the show!
Signature, 1993
Signature (1993) translates a sense of Hawkinson’s own being into a machine, giving life to a combination of working parts that continuously pens the artist’s signature onto slips of paper. Signature also records the passage of time, as endorsed sheets pile onto the gallery floor.
Signature, Detail Above and Below
Koruru
One of my favorite pieces in Counterclockwise is this gigantic Maori Mask, Koruru (2009), created from found objects from his home, such as soda bottles, egg cartons, pill bottles, foil, and vinyl. I love how it looks like some kind of gargantuan, mutant collage of car tail lights.
Koruru, Detail
Petrie
Recalling bio-morphic forms, or cellular structures, the loops and swirls in Petrie (1999) were created by attaching pens and pencils to a modified drill head. Beginning at the center of the paper, the image developed outwards, with continuous adjustments to the speed of the drill, causing variations in the ink and graphite marks. Hawkinson describes the process as “expanding though accretion, or as in the growth of a crystal.”
Petrie, Detail
Installation View with Laocoon (2004, Foreground)
Orrery, 2010
Orrery, the title referring to a mechanical model of the solar system, or of just the sun, earth, and moon, used to represent their relative positions and motions, is a sculpture which employs the circle as its main motif, and a symbol of time. The spinning wheel remains in constant motion, while a woman at a spinning wheel twists her head all the way around in circles. The rug is made of twelve concentric rings; each ring a photograph of a bicycle tire track made in the sand. Heavy.
World Clock, 2012
What looks like a rusty medicine cabinet housing typical toiletries and personal grooming objects is actually a timepiece called World Clock, which tracks global time zones with innocuous items like rotating pills in a bottle for Paris, or nail clippers for Sydney.
World Clock, Detail Skinned Knee, 2009
Hawkinson’s six-foot tall sculpture of a disembodied skinned knee takes everyday objects and positions them in new contexts, shifting scale to create a morbid close up of bloodied flesh. Characteristic of the artist’s practice of reinventing materials, the frayed denim is rendered using blankets and strands from a mop head, with painted resin used as an analogue for skin.
Skinned Knee, Detail
If this post and photos have piqued your interest, you can learn more about Tim Hawkinson’s career and work at This Link!
All Photos taken at Pace Gallery on West 24th Street as par of the Counterclockwise Exhibit, Which has Now Closed.
This also looks like a huge Roaster Pan, amiright?
