One thing leads to another, as they say. I was actually in the middle of an urban Art Safari for this project when I looked west across Chrystie Street and saw something that looked very familiar to me.
The interwebs tell me that back in August of 2015, the Brazilian twin aritsts Os Gemeos joined up with French wheat-paster JR to decorate the brick facade of 199 Chrystie Street. You can see the three trademark Os Gemeos characters: two interacting with / tagging the architecture, with one holding up a sign bearing JR’s signature eyeball graphic. Fun!
A reminder to look up more often!
This Mural is Located at 199 Chrystie Street, LES, NYC.
If you stroll all the way to south end of the High Line to where the park terminates at Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district, you may look across and consider that someone has blasted a passageway right through the building. But, that is an illusion.
A new site-specific work by Korean artist Do Ho Suh (b. 1962) visually reconnects the building facade of 95 Horatio Street with the elevated railway that once occupied the neighborhood. Although today the High Line ends at Gansevoort Street, here Suh imagines what the vista might have looked like in the days when train tracks continued to run through buildings down into SoHo. 95 Horatio Street previously housed the Manhattan Refrigerator Company, which had a private siding for the railway, allowing direct access to St. John’s Terminal further downtown.
The digitally rendered image, titled 95 Horatio Street, was just unveiled on June 26th, 2017, on the southwest corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets. Suh is interested in the emotional and psychological significance of architectural space: its relation to personal memory and the collapse of time are themes he explores across media. His fabric recreations of former homes, meticulous rubbings of the interior of his New York apartment, and drawings of mobile and anthropomorphic architectural structures are evocative meditations on the definition of home, and how this definition is affected by displacement and context.
95 Horatio Street is the sixth work to be presented in this series of public art installations, organized by the Whitney Museum in partnership with TF Cornerstone and High Line Art. This installation is organized by curatorial assistant Christie Mitchell.
Do Ho Suh: 95 Horatio Street will be on Exhibit For An As-Yet-Undetermined Period of Time.
Last Rites Gallery is currently hosting Transfigure, a group exhibition featuring new paintings by Sarah Joncas (whose work we first saw at Last Rites way back in 2011), along with Alex Garant, and husband and wife collaborative duo Kit King and Corey Popp, known creatively as Oda & King. This is a fresh group of artists that are bringing something cool and dark to contemporary portraiture.
Oda & King, Creation
Transfigure explores the overall theme of transforming one idea into something more beautiful or elaborate. The shared goal is to inspire discussion which bridges the gap between styles, mediums and other aesthetic factors existing within the realm of artistry.
For this exhibition, each artist has chosen to move beyond his or her central medium and explore the convolution of experiences, which stem from the creative process. Alex Garant has painted a collection of women’s traditional portraits with a surreal edge; where each subject not only appears to have Multiple Eyes, but multiple countenances, entirely. The painting above, of a young girl holding her pet rabbit, is absolutely astounding.
Alex Garant, Boudoir
Oda & King, Our Little Secret
My eyes sting just looking at this one.
Sarah Joncas, Wither
Oda & King, Refugee
This presentation of shifting techniques examines the complex relationship amongst artists, object, and form as well as the formative innovations that occur when one decides to move beyond their comfort zone.
Transfigure will be on Exhibit through October 3rd, 2015 at Last Rites Gallery, Located at 325 West 38th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues) in NYC.
Pairings Feast (All Photos By Gail, Click On Any Image to Enlarge for Detail)
Robert Jackson’s Tinkering with Reality is a disarmingly fun exhibit of contemporary pop-realist paintings whose everyday subject matter lends them an element of the absurd. More than anything, this exhibit reminded me of the paintings of Robert Deyber, but without the obvious visual puns attached.
Pop Betsy Ross
Pancakes
Robert Jackson’s paintings offer tightly contained theaters of absurd impossibilities that speak to the very act of creating itself. Jackson’s regular cast of characters includes unbelievably tall stacks of pastries and hamburgers, anthropomorphized apples, Oreos and balloon animals, as well as colorful wooden crates whose graphic faces flatten the picture plane even as they enhance the painting’s ‘trompe l’oeil’ effects.
Pop Floral
More Donuts
Jackson paints scenes that delight in their illusory spectacle as they navigate through painting’s loaded history. Jackson’s props lack traditional sophistication by designs – the silliness of a balloon dog or the artificial sweetness of an Oreo cookie lend a playful spirit to the philosophical conundrums that Jackson explores in his narrative-driven paintings.
Dollar
Robert Jackson’s transfixing work makes it easy for the viewer to suspend their disbelief. But there’s an element of self-awareness in Jackson’s paintings that makes the viewer conscious of Jackson not trying to simply fool, but to make the viewer think about the process of being fooled.
Props
Painted at human scale, Props looks like scene the viewer could walk into, pick up a burger and walk out of again. Jackson finds a way to cleverly imply his own presence in the work through the bitten red delicious apple on top of a Pop Kola crate, and the tiny green Fisher Price figurine on the stack of crates to the left.
The Thinker
I also really loved the way Jackson references other works of art within his paintings, such as the homage to Rodin’sThe Thinker, above.
Art Project
And of course you cannot talk about Balloon Dogs without thinking of Jeff Koons.
Icons
How many “Iconic” works can you identify in the painting above? Tinkering With Reality is one of my favorite current exhibits, and I recommend very enthusiastically that you check it out in person!
Robert C. Jackson’s Tinkering With Reality will be on Exhibit Through November 29th, 2015 at Gallery Henoch, Located at 555 West 25 Street, New York, NY 10001
