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.
Continue reading Nir Hod’s Once Everything Was Much Better Even The Future, at Paul Kasmin Gallery
Roxy Paine, Incident/Resurrection, 2013 (This Image Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery. All Other Photos By Gail)
Paul Kasmin Gallery, in collaboration with Rail Curatorial Projects, is currently hosting the exhibit Bloodflames Revisited, curated by Phong Bui. For this exhibit, in which bright red is a predominant thematic color, a red wooden catwalk has been constructed inside the gallery for visitors to walk on, and the floor has been covered with straw. Very interesting!
Bloodflames Revisited includes works by Worley Gig favorites like Lynda Benglis, Will Ryman, Roxy Paine and Cindy Sherman plus John Bock, Lee Bul, Cameron Gainer, Candida Höfer, Bill Jensen, Michael Joo, Deborah Kass, Alex Katz, Benjamin Keating, Glenn Ligon, Chris Martin, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Donald Moffett, G.T. Pellizzi, Joanna Pousette-Dart, Dorothea Rockburne, Do Ho Suh, Superflex, Tunga, Not Vital and Joe Zucker.
“We were all interested in building a field of vision in which the relationship between the works of art and the spectators is intergrated with greater amplification,” explains Bui.
Rose I By Will Ryman
In this exhibit, Bui and the participant artists pay homage to the seminal March 1947 Bloodflames exhibition at Hugo Gallery, which Alexander Iolas directed before opening his eponymous gallery. Organized by Nicolas Calas and designed by Frederick Kiesler, Bloodflames presented works by Arshile Gorky, Matta, Isamu Noguchi and Jean-Claude Reynal among others.
Kiesler’s design called for an unconventional exhibition construction, wherein artworks were projected and tilted at various angles from the gallery walls, to allow uncommon perspectives of view. His bold architectural interventions dissolved the barrier between viewer and artwork. By recontextualizing this groundbreaking exhibition, Bloodflames Revisited evokes the inventive spirit and unified spatial experience of the original exhibition.
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Redemption of the Flesh: It’s just a little headache, it’s just a little bruise; The politics of the future as urgent as the blue sky, 2008 (Computer-controlled animatronic cloned sculptural installation, fiber-glass and animal hair over aluminum, and synthetic “blood”).
The imposing Daniel Joseph Martinez piece above takes over the entire rear wall of the front gallery. I am sure it looks quite different at this juncture than it does in this pic from the opening reception.
Here are few of our favorite pieces from the show.
Michael Joo, Intuited Composition
Do-Ho Suh, Specimen Series: Stove
Look, it’s Alice Cooper!
Bloodflames Revisted will be on Exhibit Through August 15th, 2014 at at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Located at 293 Tenth Avenue at 27th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Rhyndacus (2014) By Walton Ford (All Photos By Gail)
Paul Kasmin Gallery’s Tenth Avenue space is currently hosting Watercolors, an exhibit of new paintings by Walton Ford. For Watercolors, Ford continues to explore the visual and narrative scope of traditional natural history painting with his monumental watercolors, chronicling encounters between human culture and the natural world.
The Tigress (2013)
Several pieces in this exhibition expand upon Ford’s longstanding practice of incorporating written marginalia in his work, and feature for the first time musings penned by the artist from the perspective of his animal subjects.
Bosse-de-Nage 1898 – “HA HA!” (2014)
As in his previous work, Ford draws upon his ongoing natural history research, mining literary sources, folklore and historical anecdotes for inspiration and imagery. The painting Rhyndacus (2014) is derived from an account in Aelian’s De Natura Animalium. This ancient Roman miscellany of the natural world briefly mentions an impossibly large, sixty-foot serpent inhabiting Phrygia (present day Turkey) that was said to magically lure prey into its open maw. The artist has vividly realized the imaginary snake in a strikingly detailed portrait towering nearly 10 feet tall. By depicting native Turkish flora and fauna, Ford conjures a monstrously majestic Ancient Roman vision of the East.
The Graf Zeppelin (2014)
In another work, The Graf Zeppelin (2014), Ford engages the story of Susie, the first female gorilla brought to the United States. She arrived in New York in 1929, having crossed the Atlantic in a first class cabin aboard the German airship. Ford depicts Susie mid-flight and has written marginalia from her point of view, carefully channeling her observations and state of mind.
Windsor, May 1829 (2014)
A third recent work, Windsor, May 1829 (2014), focuses on a formidable mandrill named “Happy Jerry” who lived in Edward Cross’s menagerie in London during the early nineteenth century. In his 1870 book Heads and Tales, Adam White describes Happy Jerry sitting at table, drinking port, smoking a clay pipe and dining with King George IV. Ford, again through meticulous research, recreates this unusual luncheon at Windsor. As he did with Susie, Ford incorporates Happy Jerry’s postprandial thoughts and sensations in the watercolor, writing from the primate’s point of view.
Because the paintings are behind glass, and owing to the natural light coming into the gallery from the street, capturing glare-free imagery in a photograph is quite challenging. So, let me just add that my photos do not do the works adequate justice and it is best to see them for yourself.
Walton Ford’s Watercolors will be on Exhibit through June 21st, 2014 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Locted on the corner of Tenth Avenue and West 27th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District.
Refinery By David LaChapelle (All Event Photos By Gail)
People reading this blog post right now likely fall into one of three categories. The first are folks who are fans of artist/photographer David LaChapelle’s extensive and highly impressive body of work. The second are those who only know his name because LaChapelle is guilty of having photographed America’s most notoriously repellent “Famous for Being Famous” family, The Kardashians, for their 2013 Christmas Card. And the third group are those who are confusing him with African American comedian Dave Chapelle. Just being serious.
Continue reading David LaChapelle’s Land Scape at Paul Kasmin Gallery
Mademoiselle Pogany II By Constantin Brancusi (All Photos By Gail)
Paul Kasmin Gallery’s current offering is Brancusi in New York 1913 – 2013, an exhibition of significant works from the Estate collection of Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi. The show celebrates Brancusi’s 100th Anniversary in New York following his debut at the Armory Show in 1913, where Brancusi exhibited five works that directed modern sculpture on a radical new path.
Continue reading Brancusi in New York 1913 – 2013 at Paul Kasmin Gallery